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Title: History of the Pianoforte and Pianoforte Players
Author: Bie, Oscar
Language: English
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PIANOFORTE PLAYERS ***
A HISTORY OF THE PIANOFORTE AND PIANOFORTE PLAYERS
[Frontispiece: Portrait of Franz Liszt.]
A
HISTORY OF THE PIANOFORTE
AND
PIANOFORTE PLAYERS
TRANSLATED AND REVISED
FROM THE GERMAN OF
OSCAR BIE
BY
E. E. KELLETT, M.A.
AND
E. W. NAYLOR, M.A., MUS.D.
WITH NUMEROUS PORTRAITS, ILLUSTRATIONS, AND FACSIMILES
[Illustration: colophon]
LONDON
J. M. DENT & COMPANY
NEW YORK
E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
MDCCCXCIX
_All rights reserved_
Dedicated
TO
EUGENE D’ALBERT
Editors’ Preface
This work does not profess to be so much a literal translation as a
somewhat free version of Dr Bie’s “Das Klavier.” The author, writing as
he does for a German public, naturally uses a more philosophic style
than would be generally intelligible in England. Availing themselves,
therefore, of Dr Bie’s kind permission, the Editors, with a view to
making the book more acceptable to English readers, have allowed
themselves considerable liberty both in omission and in addition. For
all portions of the text which are enclosed in square brackets they
hold themselves responsible. The footnotes, except a few which are
specially marked, have been added by Dr Naylor.
E. W. N.
E. E. K.
Contents
CHAP. PAGE
I. OLD ENGLAND--A PRELUDE 1
The Domestic Character of the Piano, p. 2. Queen Elizabeth
at the Spinet, p. 3. Shakespeare and Music, p. 5. Mediæval
Church Music, p. 7. Ecclesiastical use of Folk Songs, p.
8. Popular Contrapuntal Music, p. 9. The Folk Song and
the Instrument, p. 10. The Organ and the Lute, p. 11. The
Clavier and Secular Music, p. 12. Italian influence in
England, p. 13. Cultivation of Music in England, p. 15.
First Books of Clavier Music, p. 16. Classes of old English
Pieces, p. 17. The Virginal, p. 18. History of the Clavier,
p. 19. The Clavichord, p. 21. The Clavicymbal, p. 23.
Virginal Pieces, p. 26. Thomas Tallis, p. 27. William Bird,
p. 28. John Bull, p. 32. Other Composers, p. 38.
II. OLD FRENCH DANCE PIECES 40
England and France, p. 41. The Dance, p. 43. The Dance and
Common Life, p. 43. The Dance and the Stage, p. 45. The
_Danseuses_, p. 45. Allusions in Dance Names, p. 48. Old
Programme-Music, p. 49. The Titles, p. 51. Chambonnières,
p. 52. Couperin, p. 53. Rameau and others, p. 65.
III. SCARLATTI 68
A Preface by Scarlatti, p. 68. His Life, p. 70. His Style
and the Italian Musical Emotion, p. 71. Technique, p. 73.
Love of Adventure, p. 74. The Opera, p. 75. The position
of Music, p. 77. Chamber Music, p. 78. Clavier Pieces, p.
79. Frescobaldi and Pasquini, p. 80. Corelli, p. 82. The
Da Capo Style, p. 84. Scarlatti’s Sonatas, p. 86. Other
Italians, p. 89.
IV. BACH 91
German Music, p. 91. Kuhnau, p. 92. Bach and Musical
History, p. 93. Bach’s Life, p. 94. His Formal Principle,
p. 95. The Inventions and Symphonies, p. 97. The Toccatas,
p. 98. The Fugues, p. 100. The _Wohltemperiertes Klavier_,
p. 101. The Original Editions, p. 102. The Suites, p. 104.
The Fantasias, p. 109. Bach’s Forms, p. 111. Technique,
p. 116. The Hammer Clavier, p. 121. Bach and the Modern
Pianoforte, p. 112.
V. THE “GALANTEN” 126
The Change of Taste, p. 127. The “Professional Musician,”
p. 129. Spread of Clavier Music, p. 131. Musical
Periodicals, p. 131. Pianoforte Factories, p. 133. Stein
and Streicher, p. 134. Handel, p. 137. Philip Emanuel Bach,
p. 138. Haydn, p. 149. Mozart, p. 151.
VI. BEETHOVEN 157
Beethoven Contrasted with the old Composers of the Empire,
p. 159. Cosmopolitan Life of the Pianist, p. 161. Viennese
Pianists, p. 160. Public Contests of Pianists, p. 161.
Dussek, p. 164. The Sonata of the Time, p. 165. Beethoven’s
Nature, p. 167. Music as a _Speech_, 167. The “Development”
of Motives, p. 171. Rise of the Tragic Sonata, p. 172.
The Sportive Beethoven, p. 173. His Forms, p. 175. His
Archaism, p. 177. His tendency to the “Galant” style, p.
179. His Last Works, p. 181.
VII. THE VIRTUOSOS 183
Beethoven’s Technique, p. 183. The Clavier Schools of this
period, p. 185. The groups of Technicians, p. 189. The Life
of the Virtuoso, p. 192. Concerts and Improvisations, p.
196. Compositions, p. 197. Piano and Opera, p. 201. The
Étude, p. 203. Clementi, p. 208. Cramer, p. 210. Hummel, p.
211. Czerny, p. 216. Kalkbrenner, p. 218. Weber, p. 218.
Moscheles, p. 221.
VIII. THE ROMANTICS 224
Romance, p. 224. Franz Schubert, p. 225. Robert Schumann,
p. 231. Early Works, p. 231. Jean Paul, p. 232.
“Davidsbund,” p. 235. Private Life, p. 237. The “Neue
Zeitschrift für Musik,” p. 238. “Davidsbündler Tänze,” p.
238. “Carnival,” p. 240. F sharp minor Sonata, p. 241.
“Fantasie Stücke,” p. 242. “Études Symphoniques,” p. 242.
Bach and E. T. A. Hoffmann, p. 244. Kreisleriana, p. 245.
Op. 17, p. 246. “Novellettes,” p. 248. Mendelssohn, p. 249.
“Faschings-schwank,” and later Works, p. 254. Chopin, p.
255. His Art, p. 257. His Life, p. 258. George Sand, p.
259. Works, p. 261. Style of Playing, p. 264. Field, p.
265. Chopin’s Method, p. 266. [Sterndale Bennett], p. 268.
IX. LISZT AND THE PRESENT TIME 271
Liszt and the three Types of Artists, p. 272. Life, p.
274. Liszt and Thalberg, p. 277. A Pianist’s Creed, p.
281. Paganini and Liszt, p. 282. Liszt’s Concerts, p. 286.
Piano Works, p. 287. The Interpreters p. 292. Virtuosos
of Older Style, p. 293. Rubinstein and Bülow, p. 294.
Virtuoso and Teacher, p. 299. Tausig and d’Albert, p. 301.
Modern Virtuosos, p. 301. Risler, p. 301. The Pianist’s
Profession, p. 302. The Piano as a Social Factor, p. 303.
Piano Instruction, p. 305. The Practical and Theoretical
Schools, p. 306. The Common or “C major” keyboard compared
with the “Janko,” p. 308. Present-day Piano Factories, p.
310. Steinway and Bechstein, p. 311. The Piano as a piece
of Furniture, p. 313. Pianos _de luxe_, p. 315. The Market
for Piano Literature, p. 316. Modern Piano Works, p. 317.
Alkan, p. 317. The Post-Romantics, p. 318. The French
School, p. 319. The Russians, p. 320. The Scandinavians,
p. 321. The English and Americans, p. 322. The Germans, p.
322. Jensen, p. 322. Brahms, p. 322. Raff, p. 323. Living
Germans, p. 324. Conclusion, p. 326.
AUTHOR’S POSTSCRIPT: AND ERRATA 328
INDEX 329
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 334
[Illustration: Guido of Arezzo and his protector, Bishop Theodal,
playing on a Monochord. Vienna Hofbibliothek.]
Old England: a Prelude
[The drift of the remarks immediately following, which the author
entitles a “Prelude,” is, that Music is at the present time flourishing
more at home than in public; that the playing of chamber compositions
is more popular than the representation of huge operas; and that
therefore it is a suitable time to consider the history and scope of
the instrument which, more than all others, has made possible this
cultivation of domestic music. He begins then by contrasting the huge
performances of Wagnerian drama at Bayreuth with what he calls the
“intimate” character of a private pianoforte recital at home.]
Those were great days in which the foundation-stone was laid at
Bayreuth. Days in which the creative philosopher of the stage threw his
sceptre over the Ninth Symphony; days when choice spirits met together,
who tremblingly passed through the moment in which they saw something
never heard of become reality; days of a joyous intoxication when
Liszt and Wagner embraced each other with tears; days that Nietzsche
calls the happiest he had ever spent, when something brooded in the
air that he could trace nowhere else--something ineffable but full of
hope--those days, alas! return no more. In those days music, that music
which the million greet with cheers of rapture, stood enthroned on the
Stage, which gives to art its public hold upon the world. The living,
new-creating music has to-day once more fled to the concert hall, to
the haughty and more select rows of aristocratic amateurs who listen to
the symphonic poems of Richard Strauss. These are tender and delicate
creations beside the dramas of Wagner. They are elves, they elude us,
and there are those, who see them not. We have been driven to them as
the highest musical expressions of our time.
Since the trumpet-notes of Bayreuth died away we have conducted our
musical devotions on a smaller, more intimate scale. Already, beyond
the concert hall, we see opening the private chamber, holiest of all,
and the chamber music, which is to the music of the stage what etching
is to painting. It is the old ebb and flow. As we passed from the
single instrument to the orchestra, from Beethoven’s orchestra with its
travail for expression to Wagner’s stage with its world-embracing aims,
so we are now passing back from the stage to undiluted music first
before thousands of listeners, then before hundreds only.
And now, if I had my way, I would bring the pianoforte before a small
audience, say of ten persons, not in the concert hall but in the
home, where the artist may give his little concerts, in the fitting
hour of twilight, playing to a company every one of whom he knows.
Under such circumstances, indeed, one can implicitly trust himself to
the _intimate_ character of the pianoforte. Then stream from it the
sweet tones of the harp, then, like strings of pearls, come chains of
roses from its notes, or Titanic forces seem to escape from it, and
my soul lies wholly in the player’s finger-tips. Is it then that the
piano is a contemptible instrument compared with the violin or the
string-quartet? Do I then remember how it sings so hoarsely, and how
its scales are so broken, and how the soul of its melody is so dead
without the breath of the rising and falling tone?
Of course, if it expresses itself in the piano-concerto, on the podium
of the orchestra, or even if it trusts itself, in trio or quartet,
to the company of strings or wind, then it moves my compassion. A
foreign atmosphere envelops it even if Beethoven’s concerto in E flat
major is resounding; and a weakness haunts it, if in chamber music it
alternates with the dominating melody of the singing violin. But when
once the clang of the violin and of the Cor Anglais[1] has faded from
our ears, and all comparison has been laid aside, then, and then only,
the soul of the pianoforte rises before us. Every good thing must be
considered _per se_ apart from all comparison. Is it no good thing to
have the whole material of tone before one’s ten fingers, to penetrate
it, _truly_ to penetrate it; to feel beneath one’s nerves all the
subtleties of all music--the song, the dance, whispering, shrieking,
weeping, laughter?--all, I mean, voiced in the tone of the pianoforte,
the epic tone of this modern Cithara, which, in its own kind, embraces
the lyrical nature of the violin and the dramatic nature of the
orchestra? In such all-embracing power the piano is in the twilight
chamber a strange and dear tale-teller, a _Rhapsode_ for the _intimate_
spirit, which can express itself in it by improvisation, and an archive
for the historian to whom it unrolls the whole life of modern music in
its universal speech from a point of view which gives us the whole in
the average. Then only do I love the piano--then is it faithful, then
noble, genuine, unique.
* * * * *
Queen Elizabeth of England is sitting in the afternoon at her spinet.
She is thinking of the conversation which she has had this forenoon
with Sir James Melville--a conversation which the latter has preserved
for us in writing. He was in 1564 ambassador from Mary Stuart to
Elizabeth. Elizabeth had asked him what was Mary’s style of dress, the
colour of her hair, her figure, her way of life. “When Mary returns
from the hunt,” he answered, “she gives herself up to historical
reading or to music, for she is at home with lute and virginal.” “Does
she play well?” asked Elizabeth. “For a queen, very well,” was the
answer. And so, this afternoon, Elizabeth is sitting at the spinet, and
playing Bird’s or Dr Bull’s Variations on popular airs. She plays from
the very (or a similar) copy which to-day is marked in the Fitzwilliam
Museum at Cambridge as Queen Elizabeth’s Virginal Book. She does not
notice that Sir James and Lord Hunsdon are secretly listening. When
suddenly she sees them standing behind her she stops playing. “I am not
used,” she says, “to play before men; but when I am solitary, to shun
melancholy.”
Fifty years before, Albert Dürer had given an illustration of
Melancholy in his famous engraving. Melancholy, as dignified
Depression, is sitting in the open air, surrounded by the implements
for Manual Labour, Art and Science. It expressed the anticipated pain
of the misfortune which lurks in the good fortune of knowledge and
intelligence; the pain of the dawning Age of Wisdom, for which Erasmus,
in his Praise of Folly, had already shown a just contempt. In his St
Jerome, Dürer represents the deliverance from Melancholy. St Jerome,
in the contemporary engraving, is sitting quietly and contentedly at
home, while the sun shines through the circular panes,[2] the papers,
books and cushions being so neatly disposed around, and the lion
so wonderfully sleeping beside him. But--in the corner stands his
house-organ or spinet!
Something of the spirit of the St Jerome breathes through the
Elizabethan music--a tone of the Volkslied, or of that intimate
world-sense, alongside of the decaying mediæval counterpoint (decaying
as the Gothic architecture was decaying) like scenes of popular life
or of lyrical beauty, which display themselves chiefly in the drama,
in the midst of scenes of historic ceremonial. Everyone has observed
what a subtle sense for soft musical tones is revealed throughout
Shakespeare’s plays. The Duke in Twelfth Night loves the Volkslied, the
old song, “old and plain,” which “the spinsters and the knitters in the
sun, and the free maids that weave their thread with bones, do use to
chant: it is silly sooth, and dallies with the innocence of love like
the old age.” He heard it last night; he will hear it again to-day:
“Methought it did relieve my passion much, More than light airs and
recollected terms Of these most brisk and giddy-pacèd times.” And it is
the fool who sings it to him--that typical figure of the love-thoughts
and of the love-business of the people: the fool, who in every play
has the largest store of old popular songs, and who in this very drama
empties a very cornucopia of them. But Shakespeare’s holiest encomium
on music is sung at night, in that idyllic scene at the close of the
Merchant of Venice, between Lorenzo and Jessica. The moonlight sleeps
upon the bank; the lovers sit in silence before Portia’s house and let
the music steal upon their ears. “Soft stillness and the night become
the touches of sweet harmony.” Lorenzo endeavours to cheer Jessica with
the music. We can well believe that his impassioned words express the
feelings of the poet himself, who has marked his Shylock, his Cassius,
his Othello,[3] his Caliban, with the stain of a heedlessness of
music:--
“The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils.”
Portia enters the moonlit garden and hears the gentle tones, not
knowing whence they come. She feels keenly the eternal magic of
invisible music which lies pillowed in silence and night. The whole
scene is a hymn on the infelt soul of musical self-centredness, wherein
man finds his best self.
So too, perhaps, stood Shakespeare by the spinet of his beloved, and
to his musical sense the tones and the love are blended together, his
loved one becoming transfigured into music:--
“How oft when thou, my music, music playest,
Upon that blessed wood whose motion sounds
With thy sweet fingers, when thou gently swayest
The wiry concord that mine ear confounds,
Do I envy those jacks[4] that nimble leap
To kiss the tender inward of thy hand,
Whilst my poor lips, that should that harvest reap,
At the wood’s boldness by thee blushing stand.
To be so tickled, they would change their state
And situation with those dancing chips,
O’er whom thy fingers walk with gentle gait,
Making dead wood more blessed than living lips.
Since saucy jacks[4] so happy are in this,
Give them thy fingers, me thy lips to kiss.”
It is in the Elizabethan age that the clavier begins for the first
time to play a part in the world. In the English clavier-music, as in
all English music at that time, there is a ravishing bloom, which
vanished just as quickly from the popular concerts, never to appear
again. Circumstances combined to favour it. A certain repose, a
dependence upon art came upon the London society of that day, and at
such times art penetrates easily into the privacy of the home. For
centuries had the Low Countries held the sway of music; but the art
of tone, which had made its way thither under the stars of Dufay,
Okeghem, and Josquin des Près, remained in the service of the Church.
It represented the rapid development of contrapuntal vocal harmony,
as it had slowly developed itself into music _per se_ from the
figurations, which at the end of the tenth century began to found
themselves on the _canto fermo_ of the Gregorian material. Around the
Gregorian pillars there had arisen a mathematical system of rules and
proportions; of musical vaultings, symmetries, and mouldings, in
which the ordering world-spirit seemed to have realised itself. As
yet, however, there was no melody whose contour was unifying; no
harmony whose development was to be foreseen; no singing voice
resting on the support of an accompaniment. The voices ran according
to the laws of their _tempi_, all equally important from soprano to
bass; and their harmony only aided in reducing them to an average.
The _instrument_ of this great sacred music was the human voice, at
first only the bearer of the tone, but then gradually here and there
betraying a greater depth of feeling: and yet this great function of
the voice had a value for expression which is not to be underrated.
Even in this mathematical tone-system there lay the power of
exhibiting nature as she is.
[Illustration: Orlando Gibbons. After Grignon’s engraving in Hawkins.]
If art was to escape from these rudiments into more intimate circles,
the appropriate social surroundings must be provided. _The home_ must
develop.
The public art of the Middle Ages had divided its favours between
church and hall; it was in the church that counterpoint found its
development; it was in the hall that the old popular song, without
making special advance, maintained itself. The popular song ranged
itself over against counterpoint, for it was pure melody, as we
understand melody to-day, and it was well arranged as to rhythm in
four or eight-bar “strains.”[5] In two ways, however, counterpoint
and popular song might meet: the first might absorb the second, or
_vice versa_. It is well known what took place when counterpoint
absorbed the popular song: throughout the later Middle Ages popular
songs, even the vulgarest, are taken up in masses or motets as
motives for figures; nay, more, when they alternate, while the
Gregorian _cantus_ holds its own alongside, church hymns are named
after popular songs, and we stumble everywhere upon masses named
after their underlying melody,[6] “L’homme armé,” “Malheur me bat,”
“O Venus,” and the like. But, as might be expected, these are taken
up utterly into the framework of the voice-mathematic; their peculiar
aroma disappears; they are thrown into contrapuntal form. Far from
betraying a worldly element, such as Ambrose conveyed under
allegorical paintings of old landscape in religious pictures, they
betray on the contrary a total absence of the secular sense. To them
the content of the melody is so indifferent that they never once
display it.
[Illustration: Young Scholar and his Wife. Painting by Gonzales
Coques (1614-1684), in the Royal Gallery at Cassel.]
Secondly, the popular song on its own side stands apart from
counterpoint. Since counterpoint is the recognised style of the time,
popular song has no choice but to appropriate that means of
expression. Hence arises the Madrigal, the most festive form of this
appropriation, which sets popular themes to many parts, but with the
utmost art. It exhausts all the requirements of better taste in
secular music in the sixteenth century. Societies like the
Arcadeltian[7] have resulted in an extraordinary growth of published
material, and it is no mere accident that this process has continued
in England, thanks to the exertions of a Madrigal Society, down to
our own time. Yet the popular song was too opposed to the choral
setting to feel itself at home in this form long and universally. It
tended to unison or to the total absence of words; in the latter case
it could still remain contrapuntal and became simply a tone-piece;[8]
in the former the counterpoint existed, so to speak, simply at the
pleasure of the melody, as it did in hundreds of old melodies
throughout the world. These old popular songs, of remarkable origin
in their plain melodious orderliness, became finally the precursors
of modern music. While they marked the monodic principle, and gave to
the expression the full value which it had in all early music, they
accustomed the ears to the pleasure of the fully-outlined melody, and
compelled the combination with this of an equally well-outlined
harmony. Thus the way was prepared for the great discovery of the
monodic opera, which arose in Florence about 1600.
But in that wonderful drama, which the emancipation of the secular or
popular principle in the music of the sixteenth century presents, the
instrument appears as the second agent, with its greater freedom as
contrasted with the human voice. Choral counterpoint penetrates into
the music of the future in the two ways of the one-part song and of
the instrumental polyphony, which form a quite natural whole. In
proportion as vocal music became more individual and more full of
soul, the absolute instrumental music gained in meaning. But we must
mark two impulses which necessarily condition each other. As the
one-part song was, so to speak, a victory of the logic of expression
over the metaphysic of many-parts, so the latter also was a
transference of counterpoint to the instrument.
[In the late sixteenth century, counterpoint can scarcely be said to
survive in any popular shape except that of the Catch or (endless)
canon, the performance of which, when the complete melody is once
learnt, is merely mechanical, and requires no great intelligence or
attention from the singer. But to perform continuous contrapuntal
music requires very great intelligence, and such concentrated
attention as is seldom found in its perfection amongst mere singers.
Instrumentalists therefore, as being superior in these indispensable
qualities, were naturally called upon, first to assist, and then to
displace the singers, who had allowed themselves to rest on their
physical gifts rather than on the accomplishments of the
intellect.][9] Thus it is the instrument which opens to the popular
song and to the dance of the same kind, within the contrapuntal
style, new paths of promise; and this principle of popular music,
after it had held itself for a century in the almost neglected plain
melody under the wintry covering of ecclesiastical counterpoint,
becomes, in a moment, conscious of its immeasurable powers. Still,
further, here there was the ground on which the popular song, so long
differenced from counterpoint, gradually overcame it and was able to
develop its principle freshly and clearly. In the opera we see it
suddenly break with counterpoint; but this kind of art suffered by
this suddenness, since it swung uneasily to and fro from the heights
of the stage-reformation to the depths of virtuosity. Instrumental
music escaped this sudden break, took up into itself counterpoint,
transformed it out of itself, and passed on to meet a development far
more regular and advancing with giant strides. What instrument, then,
was best for the reproduction of the contrapuntal play of the voices?
Next to choral song stood the organ, with its power of holding on its
tones. Slowly, therefore, as we might expect, the organ steps into
the contest with the church-choir. At first more clumsily, then more
gently, its voices contrast and work into counterpoint. The organ
also offers, as exchange for the sung chorus, direct transferences
from motets of Josquin and Orlando Lasso. But so soon as the organ
recollects that it is not vocal but an instrument, it begins--shall
we say?--to run off into flourishes. All kinds of adornments and
grace-notes start up, and finally the organist prides himself on
departing utterly from the composer’s or author’s intention, and
embroidering the theme at pleasure. A Prelude and a Fugue in this
style appeared to the men of that time dreadful enough to linger
over; as Hermann Finck writes, “they run sometimes by the half-hour,
up and down over the key-board, trusting thus, with God’s help, to
attain the highest, never asking where Dan Time, or Dan Accent, or
Dan Tone, or Bona Fantasia, are staying in the meanwhile.” Further,
when the organ had purified itself in the great epoch of German
church-music, it had perforce to remain in the service of the Church.
It felt the influence of the audience, which was brought into rhythm
and harmony by the secular principle of music--that influence which,
in the Protestant Choral and in the creations of Bach, made itself
felt as a brilliant reaction of the secular musical sense on the
church tradition.
Alongside of the organ came the lute, which for so long had been the
chief instrument of the home. Yet the lute, with its tones drawn from
so few strings, was unable to show itself very productive. It had
provided the accompaniment of songs, and music in many parts had very
early been arranged for it.[10] At all times, therefore, the lute had
imitated the contrapuntal style, though in simple fashion, and
occasionally certain passages had been accented with chords thrown in
arpeggio-wise. Whether the lute accompanied a voice, or whether it
took up the popular melody into itself to produce “absolute” music,
it exhibited a style of its own, conditioned by its own limitations,
even as, alongside of the organ, it had its own note-script.[11] It
was not convenient accurately to retain on the lute every separate
voice. An instrumental style was formed; men became accustomed to the
sufficiency of this simplicity of tone; dances were written for the
lute, as Hans Judenkunig in his lute-book offers a “Court-dance,
Panana[12] alla Veneziana, Rossina ein welscher Dantz” and the like.
As time went on, all well-known pieces were arranged for the lute, as
they are to-day for the piano. Encyclopædias appear--as for example
in 1603 the “Thesaurus” in ten volumes of “Besardus nec non
praestantissimorum musicorum, qui hoc seculo in diversis orbis
partibus excellunt, selectissima omnis generis cantus in testudine
(the lute) modulamina continens.” Graceful figurations arise, which
in France and Italy receive fine names, while the German lute-player
sets himself strongly against these complicated “battements,”
“tremblements,” or “flattements,” against this or that “passagio
largo,” “stretto,” “raddopiato.” But, on the whole, much as the lute
achieved, it could not suffice to compel the complete admission of
the whole musical material into the home.
The heavy _churchiness_ of the organ and the light secularity of the
lute were thus constrained to unite themselves in an instrument which
was sufficiently flexible to effect the representation of all the
voice parts at once yet more easily than in the choir, and which
could embrace the whole tonic scale so completely as to expand the
limits of the voice both above and below. It must be a light,
moveable instrument, a miniature of the organ. The clavier offered
itself for this end; and in it organ and lute met in fruitful
wedlock.
Such is the position and the meaning of the clavier in the great
struggle for freedom of the secular music-principle which fills the
sixteenth century. With this begins the history of the clavier, and
simultaneously the history of the orchestra. The orchestra flourishes
where the clavier flourishes, and _vice versa_. The combination of
single instruments in a body, and that _one_ instrument which alone
can represent that combination, are manifestations of the same
movement, namely, of the transference of the church choral
tone-practice into the sphere of the secular, where in place of the
counterpoint which ran on by the hour, an interlaced system of
harmonies, a strict organisation of melodies, gradually assumed the
mastery. The orchestra occupied itself with public representations;
the clavier with the advance of the new music in the home. Already,
in Venice, had instruments taken their share with the singers in the
church; now chamber-music also began to flourish. Later, in France,
the court-orchestra gained a special significance, and very shortly
the clavier also made its importance felt. In Naples the orchestra
appears simultaneously with the Italian opera, and shortly afterwards
arises Scarlatti with his clavier-pieces. In Old England the
orchestra was regarded with a special affection; and thus it is that
in England the clavier first flourishes.
The early development of instrumental music in Venice cannot have
been without its influence upon London, which not only cast an eye on
the social and topographical aspect of the city of the lagoons, but
also allowed itself to be consciously influenced by Italian culture.
So early as 1512 we hear of Italian masques performed in the Palace
at Greenwich; and when, in 1561, a tragedy by Lord Buckhurst[13] was
performed with introductory pantomimes and orchestral music, we
recognise the Venetian touch in the individual character of the
instruments. In Act I. the violin, in Act II. horns, in Act III.
flutes, in Act IV. oboes, in Act V. drums and pipes are set down.[14]
The orchestra of Queen Elizabeth exhibits strong features of the
mediæval physiognomy: there are sixteen trumpets (about equal to the
number of the singers in the associated chorus) and three
kettle-drums stand in close relation to them. It is the old official
festival music once more. Eight violins, one lute, one harp, one
bagpipe, two flutes, and three virginals are the relatively weaker
supplanters of the more intimate orchestral type. The respective
costliness appears from the account: the lute, £60; the violin, £20;
the bagpipes, £12. The Italian operatic orchestra started on the
opposite path, gradually getting rid of the stringed instruments and
adopting wind. It was, however, very thin, and even in France the
orchestra of the sixteenth century appears hardly more elaborate than
a Papal orchestra of the fifteenth. It is the English orchestra that
at this time stands at the head, not even the thirty instrumentalists
of Munich being equal to it. Above all there seems to be growing a
division of labour between orchestra and chamber-music, so much so
that Prätorius, when in his great musical work (1618), he mentions
such combinations of lute-choirs, calls this style of chamber-music
especially English. “Die Engelländer nennens gar apposite à consortio
ein consort,[15] wenn etliche Personen mit allerley Instrumenten, als
Klavicymbel und Gross-spinett, grosse Lyra, Doppelharff, Lauten,
Theorben, Bandorn, Penorcon, Zittern, Viol de Gamba, einer kleinen
Diskant-Geig, einer Quer-Flöt oder Bock-Flöt, bisweilen auch einer
stillen Posaun oder Racket zusammen in einer Compagny und
Gesellschaft gar still, sanfft und lieblich accordiren, und in
anmuthiger Symphonia mit einander zusammen stimmen.” Hence it appears
that the orchestra and the chamber-music of old England were the
chief things. In the former the wind prevailed, in the latter the
strings; but the clavier had its place in both kinds. For the
clavier, during many years, even when it had made good its position
as a solo instrument, still took its part in orchestral combinations.
Even in Hasse’s time the _Kapellmeister_ at Dresden sat at the
clavier.
Under such circumstances it is no wonder that the old English clavier
should have flourished, or that it was in England that it first
recognised its mission. The influence of this was great enough to
bring about a speedy development on the continent. The cultivation of
music was not only wide-spread, but also very ancient; so much so
that the old musical writer Tinctor (1434-1520) expressly ascribes
the origin of all contrapuntal music to England. The compositions of
the thirteenth century were, in grace of melody, simplicity of
rhythm, and modernity of harmony, far in advance of their age.
(Compare the canon in six parts,[16] “Sumer is icumen in” of the Monk
of Reading, before 1226.) It is noteworthy that the English possessed
of old a popular, simple, melodious tendency in music which reminds
us of Mendelssohn. This has made English music great and also small.
Great, for at a time when the whole musical world struggled with the
contrapuntal want of system in harmony and melody, the English were
capable of preparing the way, in systematic, plastic form, for the
new conquering secular principle. Small, because so soon as this
principle became universally recognised, they laid themselves to
sleep in the luxurious enjoyment of their tradition, and set up
foreign ideals, such as Mendelssohn and Handel,[17] who were endowed
with the like gifts.
[Illustration: Lady at the Clavier. Painting by Dirk Hals (?1656), in
the Rijksmuseum at Amsterdam.]
Madrigals of Elizabeth’s time are so familiar to us that Dr Ambros, of
Prague, could produce them in Prague with great success, drawing from
J. J. Maier’s German collection. That free geniality of the English
in its ancient dress, which conceals all triviality, overcomes us
even to-day. With the clavier-pieces it is the same. We are charmed
with the extreme simplicity of their musical form, and we love them
because they come before us in an archaic dress. They exhale an aroma
whose popular sweetness mingles beautifully with the slight harshness
of their naïve style. Allowing ourselves a touch of triviality, we
find ourselves wondering that these works seem to be quite outside
their own time, and in the modernness of their spirit surpass even the
renowned contemporary performances of Gabrieli and the other Venetians.
In this London, the imitator and rival of Venice, we fall upon
the first clavier-books that, as such, were ever collected in the
world. Strictly speaking, they are not the absolute first. We
read on the title-page of a collection of Chansons, Madrigals and
Dances, issued at Lyons in 1560 by S. Gorlier: “Premier Livre de
tablature d’Espinette.” We learn from Prätorius that the inscription,
“For an Instrument,” which appears so often on old works, is not
to be understood universally, but to be confined to the clavier.
Nevertheless, it is in England that we first find in any numbers
collections of expressly-marked clavier-pieces, springing from a
special impulse of musical enthusiasm. First in interest stands the
so-called Queen Elizabeth’s Virginal Book, one of the chief treasures
of the Fitzwilliam Museum, lately transcribed into our own script for
Breitkopf and Härtel. Granting that it may have been written after
the time of Elizabeth, it yet, with its three hundred pieces, goes
back to the earliest names of this school--Tallis, Bird, Farnaby,
Bull. Next, in the library of the late Rimbault, an important English
historian of music, we find, in manuscript, a Virginal Book of the
Earl of Leicester, and another of Lady Nevill. Doubtless great lords
and ladies had many manuscript collections of this kind, including
copies of the favourite pieces of the day. But soon manuscript gave
way to print. In 1611 appeared the first copper-engraved set of pieces
ever seen in England. This was “Parthenia, or the Maydenhead of the
first Musicke that ever was printed for the Virginalls. Composed by
three famous masters: William Byrd, Dr John Bull, and Orl. Gibbons,
Gentilmen of His Majestie’s most illustrious Chappell.” A modern
edition of this collection was issued in 1847 by the indefatigable
London Musical Antiquarian Society. From the materials collected by
this Society Ernst Pauer, whose contributions to the history of the
clavier have achieved a great repute, formed his collected edition of
Old English Composers, which presents, in modernised form, special
pieces by Bird, Bull, Gibbons, Blow, Purcell, and even Arne, who,
though later, is not uninteresting.
[Illustration: Title-page of the first English engraved Clavier Music,
1611.]
The pieces in these collections are of three kinds. First, free
fantasias,[18] such as were also composed for organ and lute under
the name of prelude, preamble, or even toccata (here denoting simply
piece). In their essence fugal they are broken and intersected by
florid passages. In the second class, a canto fermo was taken from
a church melody, and developed after the approved fashion in fugal or
figured style. Or, finally--and this is the most usual case, and the
style most appropriate to the clavier--a number of variations, or even
groups of variations, if the theme has several sections, are formed
into a series. The theme itself is a popular song or dance. Popular
songs, as they swept uncounted through England and Scotland, are
inexhaustible. Even to-day they retain their freshness. To the whole
piece they impart their tense and melodious rhythm. The dances--in
common time called Pavans, in triple, Galliards--are frequently named
after noblemen,[19] and are in their variations adorned with the same
encomiastic flourishes as the songs.
The clavier, for which these English musicians wrote their pieces, was
of the kind called a virginal. The virginal was a peculiarly handy
kind of spinet. It is not to be assumed that, after the quibbling and
flattering fashion of the time, it was so called in compliment to the
Maiden Queen. The name is older. Possibly it is due to the fact that
the small size of the instrument made it specially suitable for young
girls. We find scarcely any pictures of _men_ sitting at the clavier.
In Italy the same name was in vogue; but we are not here concerned
with the whole history of the nomenclature of old keyed instruments.
We are only so far interested in the history of the instrument as
it forms the basis for the rise of the _literature_, i.e. _style of
composition_, which concerns us in its human aspect. The histories
of the clavier, those of Rimbault, Oskar Paul, and others, place
the history of the instrument in the foreground. Even Weitzmann has
appended to the last edition of his “History of Clavier-Playing and
Clavier-Literature,” a comprehensive chapter on this subject. But the
history of the clavier is a very complicated matter if we are tedious
on it, and a very simple matter if, without becoming inexact, we are
brief upon it.
It is a union of the harp with the mechanism of key-action. Harps, in
which the strings are plucked with the plectrum, are in some form or
other as old as music itself, and appear in the most various shapes in
the first dawn of civilisation. The mechanism of the keyboard, which
by means of an easy leverage adapted to the human fingers, gives the
player control over the sounds of pipes or strings, is not quite so
ancient, since it presumes a certain inventive capacity; but it is
old enough to be equally beyond our chronological powers. In Europe
we find keyed organs as early as the first centuries after Christ.
The application of this action to stringed instruments was completed
in the monochord. The monochord, an instrument well-known to the
earliest theoretical musicians, was a board with a string stretched
across it on which the intervals could be clearly marked and sounded
by mathematical division: the half marking the octave above the pitch
of the whole length of the string; the third part of it giving a fifth
above that octave; the quarter part giving a fourth above that fifth,
namely a note two octaves above the pitch of the whole string; the
fifth part sounding a major third above the last named note, viz., a
seventeenth above the pitch of the whole length; and so on.
The simple monochord developed itself after the tenth century in
two directions, the musical and the technical. Its development was
musical, inasmuch as three or four strings took the place of the _one_
in order to produce a chord instead of a simple arpeggio; an aim
which the church music attained by the multiplication of instruments
sounding only one note each at a time. It was technical, inasmuch as,
in place of the constant alteration of the “bridge” which divided the
string, _keys_ were introduced, which not only divided the string
at the desired spot, by a flat metal pin (called “tangent” from its
action in simply “touching” against the wire), but also caused it
to sound. With twenty keys and only a few strings, of course it was
necessary for several keys to divide the same string, and to sound
it at different points in its length; whereby the simultaneous
sounding of several notes was brought into the proper limits. Though
thus really many-stringed, the instrument still retained its name of
_mono_chord. Gradually the number of keys increased, and in increasing
proportion the number of strings, which still remained of equal
length. About the year 1450, probably, the clavier attained this, its
earliest form of the monochord. It served an educational purpose.
Virdung, Abbot of Amberg, who in 1511 published his German “Music with
Illustrations,” is our authority for the development of the monochord
up to the first true clavier-form--that of the _clavichord_--which is
nothing more nor less than the many-stringed many-keyed “monochord”
which we have just described. The self-contradictory “mono” was
rejected, and ‘_clavi_’ substituted (Lat. _clavis_, a key). The
_clavis_ is the key which in the organ admits the wind to the pipes,
in the clavier sets the strings in motion.
[Illustration: From the Weimar “Wunderbuch,” a Clavichord of about
1440. One of the oldest representations.]
[Illustration: From the Weimar “Wunderbuch,” Primitive Spinet, of
about 1440. One of the oldest representations.]
The clavichord introduced a new means of “expression,” viz., the
“Bebung” (trembling, shivering), which could be applied to any of the
notes by a gentle after-pressure of the key, a mournful, soul-moving
_vibrato_, which was only possible with the peculiar mechanism of
the clavichord, where a “tangent” both divided the string and at the
same moment instantaneously created the sound. A slight relaxation
of this pressure on the key caused a slight lowering of pitch; a
slight renewal of pressure a corresponding heightening. The German
players of the eighteenth century could scarcely find it in their
hearts to resign this delicate effect, even for the advantages of the
modern pianoforte. Here for the first time the keyboard mechanism
had succeeded in producing a modification of the tones by “touch”
alone, and the keyed instrument had gained its soul. How confined were
the old eight keys of the Hurdygurdy,[20] the favourite instrument
till the rise of the lute, where the strings were strained against a
rosined wheel turned by a crank (a sort of everlasting fiddle-bow),
while the keys divided the strings into notes--an antiquated
compromise between clavier and violin! How clumsy was the treatment of
the organ-keys so late as the fourteenth century, in which, according
to Prätorius, the keys were struck with the fist! But from this time
the art of mechanics develops quickly, and the rapid increase of the
number of keys in the clavichord shows us how speedily its supremacy
was attained. The fall of the key was shallow, the quick-sounding
tone encouraged ornamental flourishes, which were more easily played
on the clavichord than on our heavy-touched pianoforte. Yet it was
long before the number of strings became equal to that of the keys.
Not till the eighteenth century (about 1725) do we find clavichords
with a string to every key. (These are called _free_ instruments, in
contra-distinction to the old _tied_.)[21] It is obvious that the
“tied” clavichords did not admit of _all_ chords; but those which were
impossible were discords, avoided on other grounds by the older music.
To sound C and D flat together was impossible; but no one complained,
for no one, for reasons of style, wished to try it. But, on very
old clavichords, C and E are also incapable of being simultaneously
sounded--a fact which gives us many a hint for the criticism of the
oldest pieces.
In the form of a simple case, fit to be laid on the table, and later
when fitted with its own stand, frequently painted on top and sides,
or with its keys set in ivory and metal, the clavichord continues to
the beginning of the nineteenth century. Although the strings were
then duplicated, although it was possible to attain in the touch
stronger or weaker, louder or softer, expression, yet it could not,
with its far too great simplicity of tone, hold its place in the
rapidly hurrying development of music. It had taken one thousand years
to improve the monochord, five hundred more to produce a clavichord,
two hundred and fifty more were required to bring the clavicymbal[22]
form to its perfection; and yet a hundred and fifty for the
clavicymbal to emerge into a Steinway or a Bechstein.
The _clavicymbal_ represents a second form of the clavier, which
begins its career about 1400. Its invention is directly due to
the influence of the organ. When the clavier began to replace the
organ in the home, a desire was felt for the stronger notes of the
great wind-instrument. The clavichord was unequal to the task. A
new technique was required. The strings, instead of being touched
and divided, were plucked with quills, which stood out at the side
from the jacks, at the end of the key-lever. For this purpose it was
necessary of course that the strings should be tuned each to its
proper note, and therefore have each its due length. The mechanism of
plucking, and the measurement of the strings, give to the clavicymbal
its character as distinct from the clavichord. The tone becomes
rippling, metallically glittering, firm and yet rattling; nay, it
might be called romantic, if it could sustain its poetical air, which
it gains for us in the first instance by its strange character. But
it was a defect that the tone was unsuitable for _nuances_; for,
unlike the clavichord, it was unable to produce _forte_, _piano_,
or the “Bebung.” Here a hint was taken from the organ. Stops, as
with the organ, were added; these, as they were drawn out or pushed
in, made it possible to use either one, two, or three strings on
any single key, thus offering three gradations from piano to forte.
Or, by the same means of a stop, a damper of leather or cloth was
put on the strings, and thus an imitation of the lute was effected.
Or, thirdly, both these appliances were united by providing two
keyboards placed one over the other, on which at will the player
could play loud or soft. Hence arose dozens of combinations. Strings
were coupled in unison or octave, registers were made either for hand
or foot, keyboards were made to shift, the shapes of the cases were
either rectangular or in the “flügel” form (like our grand pianos)
to accommodate the gradual shortening of the strings as they reached
the higher octaves, the cases were either small, or larger, and
furnished with magnificent stands, such as were brought out by the
first famous clavier-manufactory, that of the Ruckers at Antwerp, who
flourished at the end of the sixteenth century; there were almost as
many names as shapes. Those with smaller cases were called Virginals,
those in the shape of a swine’s head were called Spinets (“Spinet”
referring to the plectrum of quill); while the larger instruments
were “Clavi-cymbals” (cembalo, a “dulcimer”; though the clavicymbal
was a _harp-with-keys_, not by any means a dulcimer, which is the
progenitor of the pianoforte, a very different matter), or in Italy
“Gravicymbels,” in England “Harpsichords,” in France “Clavecins.”
The keyboard, at first incomplete in the lower “short” octave,[23]
gradually spread itself over three or even five octaves. The fulness
of tone was greater, but the touch necessarily heavier than of old.
The new instrument was unsuited for the quick development of a natural
system of “fingering.”
[Illustration: A Concerted Performance. Engraved by H. Goltzius
(1558-1617).]
The technique of clavier-playing advanced but slowly from the mere
tapping of the finger-ends to the dexterity of to-day, which lays
under contribution the whole arm as far as the elbow. In the first
clavier and organ “school,” which was published by Girolamo Diruta in
Venice about 1600, and which bears the title, “Il Transilvano, sopra
il vero modo di sonare organi e stromenti di Penna,” are already to
be found rules for the use of the fingers, for the holding of the
hands, and as to the differences of organ and clavier-playing; but
fifty years later, according to Weitzmann, Lorenzo Penna,[24] in his
“Albori musicali,” knows no other rules than that the hand should be
raised high, and that, as the right ascends the scale and the left
descends, the third and fourth fingers should be alternately used,
and _vice versa_ with the third and second. Old pictures confirm this
statement. In England we meet notable examples of the influence of
this Italian fingering. The thumb, as the finger that passes under the
others, is still for a long time an _enfant terrible_. The technique
is still that of the zither, simply transferred to keys. It is not
till the time of Bach that the special technique of percussion springs
into existence.
It is astonishing to see what feats were attempted by the old English
masters of the virginal in spite of their scanty means. We feel
how they love this instrument, which, in spite of itself, pointed
out to them the way to the Promised Land of music, namely, to the
stiff rhythm and arrangement of the secular music. For example, we
actually find in the virginal books pieces by the famous Amsterdam
organist, Sweelinck, and arrangements of compositions by Orlando
Lasso, as well as all kinds of transcriptions of Italian works; but
the gems are the variations on popular songs and the dances. In the
contemporary virginal music of Venice this relation is reversed. There
the Ricercari (pieces for lute, organ, or harpsichord, displaying the
tricks of counterpoint), the Toccatas, the Preambles, are overlaid by
the heavy, clumsy harmonies of the Middle Ages; they stagger about in
uncertain syncopations, dabbling with 5/4 time, and confused with the
most intricate figurations. It is only towards the end[25] that they
yield a clear formal idea. Not until the younger Gabrieli do we see
rhythm more clearly defined.
In England, however, the fruitful songs and dances admit none of
these flabby harmonies; all the ornamentation of the variations is
accommodated to the simple fabric of the piece; the clear melody is
allied with an equally clear harmony; and they are woven, by the quick
and light tone of the virginal, into a musical movement which, in
order to live, must include a thousand delicately elaborated _nuances_
of thought.
Compared with the lute dances, which necessarily retained the
stiffness of their fabric, there is here a blossoming field, a
veritable new world. The organ gives the voice parts their character,
the lute supplies their tone-colour, but the child of these two
parents has its own standing and its own future.
About 1500 we meet with the first Old English clavier-pieces, as well
as Aston’s Hornpipe, a variation on a popular song. A manuscript
collection in the British Museum, known as the “Mulliner Book”
(Mulliner was a master in St Paul’s School), offers us the earliest
specimens of clavier-works of this kind, by various masters, from
the middle of the sixteenth century. Many of the pieces by Thomas
Tallis, the old master of this school, are exceedingly rhythmical.
He was organist under four reigns--those of Henry VIII., Edward VI.,
Mary and Elizabeth. There is a canon in two parts, in lines which
can be grasped at a glance, and which makes full use of sequential
repetitions--a sure sign, from the early times of church music, of
the advancing rhythmical consciousness. Gradually there is added to
the canon a running bass, which at first sounds twice, and finally
rolls forth quite unhindered, rendering the whole picture easily
grasped by the eye. The unaided eye indeed, in these old pieces, is a
good judge. Without being preoccupied by the archaism, which perhaps
wearies the ear, it detects the intellectual art of the composer, as
it were, at a certain distance. It observes the great and small curves
of the voice-contours, sees the succession of the canonic themes,
notices the parentheses in which long passages are confined, and the
delight of the composer in the clearness of the pattern. It is indeed
as a finely-sewn, carefully-fashioned pattern that we see an exercise
of this kind, simply worked out, but richly adorned with broken
chords--such, for example, as the figuration of the “Felix namque”
which Tallis has as the third piece in the Fitzwilliam Virginal-Book.
The _nuances_ of the accompaniment rejoice in their ornamental
existence.
William Bird, the pupil of Tallis, whose life reaches from 1538 or
1546 to 1623, would be reckoned as the father of modern piano-music,
if only this English school had exerted some influence on art, and did
not stand so isolated in musical history. We shall call him the first
of the clavier-masters. Both organist and singer in the Royal Chapel,
where both services were alternately demanded from all the adult
musicians, he had a considerable interest in the monopoly of music
printing and of the music paper duty which was granted by Elizabeth
first to Tallis and then to him. A happy man he was not; he appears
to have suffered more than most in the religious persecutions of the
time. We have hardly a word in the authorities as to the hours of work
of these old musicians; but indirectly we learn from the Act against
Rogues and Vagabonds that private instruction was a not unusual
_parergon_ of the musicians.
[Illustration: Page from “Parthenia,” the first English engraved
Clavier Music, 1611.]
Prosniz, the collector of all clavier-literature, in his “Handbuch
der Klavierlitteratur”--a work not to be implicitly relied on--calls
Bird’s music coarse and tasteless. Weitzmann agrees, saying that it
is composed with intelligence and art, but heavy and without soul.
But this is the fate of all transition styles. If we observe, from
the standpoint of modern music, the traces of the old style, as for
instance the change of time and the “flabbiness” of the harmony
in the Fantasia, which comes eighth in the Virginal Book, or the
cross-passages in the interesting Piece 60, they are indeed coarse
and tasteless. But we must endeavour in such things to put aside the
modern point of view. Mediæval music is not a preliminary step to
the modern, but something quite different. It is pictorial, as the
other is plastic. If we would hear their “molluscous” harmonies, and
their indistinctness of rhythmical arrangement, we must lay aside
the rhythmical canons of modern music; we must accept the molluscous
nature and want of distinctness as something purposed, and we must
follow without preoccupation this web of voices, enjoying it note by
note. The piece is so delicate, so quite in colour, that the last
note is a shock to us. In fact, the conclusion of these pieces, with
its formal clash, under which the harmonies and voices assemble
themselves in a stiff group, is a contradiction to their inmost being,
a desertion of the pictorial principle and--in a word--the germ of
the coming style. In a greater degree than we can bring ourselves
to believe, the ultra-modern expression-music is allied to this
conception of the art of tone.
It is true that we justly judge Bird chiefly from the modern point
of view, since we are investigating the progress of history, and
therefore work for the new, the developing, rather than for the old.
But it is precisely from this point of view that he presents such
surprises that we are not at first able to form a decisive opinion
about him. I find a quiet pleasure in observing his harmonies, which
are felt rather than calculated, as, for example, the sudden D major
chord in the famous song, “John, come kiss me now” (Virginal Book,
No. 10), and in studying the delicate parallel legato passages,
the gradual change of melody, the growing complexity, the unusual
variations, the alternation of hands, the rhythmical developments. In
the ninth variation there run together plain quavers, dotted quavers,
and the melody above all.
New suggestions, aroused by the clavier, are constantly being
introduced. Prelude xxiv. has a stiff structure. The Passamezzo-Pavan
and Galliard (Nos. 56 and 57) present broken chords as a genuine
clavier-motif, and the most delicate canonic repetitions by means of
a thematic modulation from the key of F to that of G. Very neat is
the descending D C A in the seventh galliard-variation alternating
with E D B. Bird is particularly fond of writing a passage based on a
chord of F, and immediately followed by another based on G. This is
akin to the practice of the drone in bagpipes, and has analogy with
the ancient “Pes,” or “pedal” two-part vocal accompaniment in “Sumer
is icumen in.” The similarity to the bagpipe drone is rather striking
in “The woods so wild” (Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, No. 67) or in “The
Bells,” where the lower bell voices repeat themselves in a way that
reminds us of the pedal bass of Chopin’s Berceuse.
The rich technique of “Fortune” (No. 65), the wealth of figures in “O
Mistress Mine” (No. 66), the harmonies of the Passamezzo dances (Nos.
56 and 57), cling to the memory. But chief are his two most modern
clavier-pieces--the variations on “The Carman’s Whistle” (No. 58) and
“Sellinger’s Round” (No. 64, where the piece is complete, not abridged
as in Pauer’s edition). These have often been issued in popular form,
and in Pauer’s collection are provided with modern execution marks.
“The Carman’s Whistle” is a perfected popular melody, one of those
tunes which will linger for days in our ears. At the beginning of the
third and fourth bars Bird sets the first and second bars in canon,
in the simplest and most straightforward style. Next come harmonies
worthy of a Rameau, with the most delicate passing notes. In the
variations certain figures are inserted which are easily worked into
the canonic form, now legato with the charm of the introduction of
related notes, now diatonic scales most gracefully introduced, now
staccato passages which draw the melody along with them like the
singing of a bird. Finally fuller chords appear, gently changing the
direction of the theme. From first to last there is not a turn foreign
to the modern ear.
The “Sellinger’s Round” is more stirring. Its theme is in a swinging
6/8 rhythm, running easily through the harmonies of the tonic, the
super-dominant and the sub-dominant. It strikes one like an old
legend, as in the first part of Chopin’s Ballade in F major, of which
this piece is a prototype. The first variation retains the rhythm and
only breaks the harmonies. Its gentle fugalisation is more distinctly
marked in the third variation, which at the conclusion adopts
running semiquavers, after Bird’s favourite manner, anticipating
at the conclusion of the one variation the motive of the next. The
semiquavers go up and down in thirds, or are interwoven by both hands,
while melody and accompaniment continue their dotted 6/8, in a fashion
reminding us of Schumann. In the later variations the quaver movement
is again taken up, but more florid and more varied with runs which
pursue each other in canon. This piece, perhaps the first perfect
clavier-piece on record, which had left its time far behind, was
written in 1580.
Alongside of William Bird stands Dr John Bull (1563-1628). These two
represent the two types which run through the whole history of the
clavier. Bird, the more intimate, delicate, spiritual intellect; Bull,
the untamed genius, the flashing executant, the restless madcap,
the rougher artist. It is noticeable how these two types stand thus
together on the very threshold of the clavier-art.
John Bull, at nineteen, became organist of Hereford Cathedral, and
at twenty-two a member of the Royal Chapel. In the following year
he becomes Bachelor of Music of Oxford, three years later Doctor of
Music of both Oxford and Cambridge. When, in 1596, Sir Thomas Gresham
founded his College in London, he was made Professor in Music, and
that without (as the statute demanded) lecturing in Latin. But he
held this post no more than five years. We find him, “on grounds of
health,” travelling in foreign countries. His playing created the
greatest enthusiasm. The French, the Spanish, and the Austrian courts
were in a furore. Like all later executants, he is the subject of
myths. There is an anecdote that a kapellmeister of St Omer showed
him, as an extraordinary curiosity, a piece in forty parts.[26] Bull,
nothing daunted, added another forty parts to it. The kapellmeister
stares, and takes him for the devil himself. After an absence of six
years he returned to England, where, like his satanic prototype, he
resists all authority. He resigned all academic positions, threw up
his post in the Royal Chapel, and in 1613 again set out, without
permission, for the Continent. Four years later he emerges as organist
of Notre Dame in Antwerp, where he died in 1628.
[Illustration: John Bull, at the age of 26, after Caldwall’s engraving
in Hawkins.]
From these few biographical notices we figure him as a restless
ambitious spirit. As the peaceful life of a mediæval painter is to
the splendid existence of the seventeenth century artists, so is
the relation of Bird to Bull. And Bull’s works exhibit many of the
lineaments of an elegant _faiseur_.[27] He is not so fond as Bird
of the primeval freshness of the popular songs and dances, nor does
he work out his pieces with Bird’s virgin purity. The side-issue is
often with him the main object; the figuration is often licentious,
and both hands vie in the performance of the closest and most
difficult passages. Often, indeed, his pieces assume a grotesque
appearance, hard and antiquated harmonies, in which the leading note
is conspicuous by its absence, being crossed with runs in semiquavers,
dotted rhythms, rapidly intruded chords, four-fold imitations,
syncopated grace-notes, mingled two and three-time passages in wild
and bewildering confusion. The eye looks as it were on a specimen
of Indian ornamentation, in which, among the confused lines, a pure
human feature is almost indistinguishable. From the first piece of
the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, Bull’s thirty “Walsingham” Variations,
which later Bird treats so much more simply, the executant shines out
in his whole personality. There are thirty studies on figure motives
which in Bird are reduced to a dozen. The semiquavers run like will
of the wisps in their most unsubstantial courses, resembling endless
chains, which are here and there interrupted with leaps of a sixth
or seventh, to knit them together in the self-same run higher up or
lower down. The ornamentation is richer than with Bird, melting in
its _sfumato_[28] the lines of the voice almost after the manner of
Couperin. The clavier, even more than the organ, lent itself, with its
isolated tones, to such trills, slurs, and mordents,[29] which give to
the sound an apparently longer existence. It is these that, down to
the time of the German classical music, give the stamp to the special
physiognomy of the clavier-piece. I called them just now _sfumato_.
As in painting the sharp outline of the body gradually gives way
to greater truth to nature, and in Lionardo is replaced by the
specifically pictorial obliteration of the _sfumato_, by which, so to
speak, we see round the corners; so the ornamentation in these pieces,
in which the clavier is seeking its own means of expression, assumes
the habit of obliterating its thin outlines until finally the figures
thus obtained regulate the lines of the melody as a fixed motif, or
even become an end in themselves. It takes an inner effort before we
can transplant ourselves into this old world of ornamentation. We must
learn to feel it as it would be played by the old masters: we must,
if possible, play it ourselves on old and lightly-responding spinets.
Our heavy and serious pianos are unsuitable to them; they sound too
forcibly and harshly. The average pianist cannot play them; and hence,
in his new edition, Pauer has for the most part cut them out.
Doctor Bull’s flying fingers, utterly altering as they did many a
church-tune and many a dance, were constantly making discoveries among
the clavier-figures, just as the worst of executants has since done.
Thus, in Bull’s somewhat bewildering forest, we find many a germ of
future wealth: broken triads, which even in the contrary motion of
both hands delight us in the midst of all kinds of consecutive fifths;
broken octaves, of which Beethoven was so fond, a greater frequency
of the crossing of the hands, by which the voice-part gained a wider
field, and finally endless repetitions of the same note, either singly
or in the middle of a passage,--this last a genuine clavier-device,
for which later the new repeating mechanism was invented. Also, in
harmonic relation, Bull seeks out many novelties, boldly bending the
voice-part to his will; as he does in the truly stupendous Prelude
No. 43, in the Virginal Book, or in the bold enharmonic modulation
in Piece 51, an exercise in DO, RE, MI, FA, SOL, LA, a theme which
appears a tone higher at each repetition, starting from G, in the
midst of close figuration, until the C sharp simply changes to D flat.
There is a Lute Book of Bull’s in Vienna which gives us pieces like
the following: “Miserere Mei,” “Galliard,” “La chasse du Roy,” “Salve
Regina,” “Canon perpetuus, carens scriptura, notulis in systemati
positis scriptus,” and so on. Let us not think too badly of them.
The Virginal Book also has a variegated collection. In the time of
variations, “variatio delectat,” there are collections for household
use, which are not necessarily an indication of a want, on the part of
the originator, of the sense of the characteristic in an instrument.
At this epoch the instrument delivers men from the mediæval love of
grouping instruments. And I even find that Bull in certain pieces has
shown a noteworthy sense for characteristic. He has once a simple
bag-pipe melody e f e d e f d c, called “Les Buffons,” with a series
of variations in humorous style. There are at first chords with simple
broken accompaniment, then hopping semiquaver figures, then a popular
canon, then slurred sixths, and similarly right on to the conclusion,
which is as usual fully harmonised, in the turns of which, of course,
his want of plasticity, as contrasted with Bird, is clearly shown.
More striking still is the working out of his best-known piece, the
variations on the fresh delightful song, the “King’s Hunt,” giving
us a romantic reminiscence of horns and trumpets. Something of this
romance runs through his figures. He uses the horn-motive of the
second part specially for a longer variation, which is simple and full
of character. The flourish of runs in quavers, which he also uses in
Galliard No. 17 of the Virginal Book, and the systematic answering of
right-hand chords by the left hand, which appears also in Galliard 11,
are here specially characteristic. We seem to see tramping horses and
waving flags delineated in ancient technique. He was specially good
in such hunting pieces. On the musical side, as his somewhat awkward
variations on the fine “Jewel,” though among his best pieces, clearly
show, he cannot be compared to the magical Bird; but his sense for
characteristic and for technique has aided the advance of the clavier.
Both of these superiorities are parts of his nature, which expressed
itself most completely in this style. The clavier needed both types.
[Illustration: Henry Purcell, 1658-1695.]
The most characteristic and notable piece of this school is the third
in the Virginal Book, a Fantasia by John Munday, which represents no
less a phenomenon than the changes of the weather. Over its sections,
which have no thematic connection, but have various distinctions
of rhythm--_e.g._, quietly moving semibreves and minims; jerky
dotted quavers interspersed with semiquaver rests; extensive runs in
semiquavers, etc.--he writes in this succession four times each, “Fine
Weather,” “Lightning,” and “Thunder.” Instead of “fine” appears once
“warm” weather; and a slow passage, marked “a clear day,” forms the
conclusion. The characterisation is of course extremely superficial,
and the last time the lightning rolls just like the thunder. But this
novelty, as a symptom, ought not to be overlooked. It reveals to us
the consciousness of characteristic, and the increasingly intimate
character of the clavier. Technically, Bull inaugurated a school.
Of the various authors of the Virginal Book, Ferdinand Richardson
(who exhibits pure part-writing), Giles Farnaby, Orlando Gibbons,
Peter Philips, to a large extent follow his footsteps. Farnaby thus
early writes pieces for two virginals; he darts, in the midst of
his technique, through a graceful “Spagnioletta,” and often lights
on interesting modern passing chords, as, for example, running
upwards, b, f sharp, d, a, where a follows b and c d. In the use of
chords Peter Philips (who arranges many pieces of Orlando Lassus
in the Virginal Book) stands in the first rank. In the Pavan (No.
76), which is dated 1592, he has in the conclusion[30] unheard-of
simple alternating triads; in the Galliard he deals with the most
beautiful suspended chords; and in the “Galiarda Dolorosa” (No. 81) he
introduces chromatic colouring.[31] We can perceive how much he must
have learnt on his Italian and Dutch travels from the flourishing art
of the Continent. The spirit of Bird does not exert so powerful or so
enduring an influence as that of Bull. The anonymous Piece 14 of the
Virginal Book is a famous Alman (German dance), which in the severity
of its subject reminds us of Bird, and its working-out is done by
means of single-note passages of melodious motive.
[Illustration: The so-called “Hand” of Guido of Arezzo, with an early
and extensively used diagram of the scale-notation.]
In their clearness of arrangement and harmonious development, so far
as they do not deal with dance or song, the majority of the pieces
of the Virginal Book are marked by the spirit of the Toccata of the
great Dutchman Sweelinck, which appears as Piece 96. Here the spirit
of Bach is seen before its time. Gradually the distinctive edges of
individuality fade away. A piece by Thomas Morley on the theme, “Goe
from my window,” whose melody he himself partially employs again in
his “Nancie,” appears again almost unaltered in the same Virginal
Book, and is then ascribed to John Munday. With John Blow, Henry
Purcell, Thomas Augustine Arne, in the following generations,[32]
English clavier music blends with the general Continental stream,
till it is absorbed and must seek its nourishment from without.
[1] The Cor Anglais is mentioned here as expressing a
tone-colour which is entirely foreign to the pianoforte.
This instrument is the alto hautboy. Its name is a curious
instance of a “ghost” word, viz.: in its original meaning,
“Cor anglé,” a bent or “angled” tube, German “Krummhorn,”
it was misunderstood and explained as Cor Angl_ais_, Corno
Inglese, English Horn.
[2] Readers who do not know the picture must not be misled
by this expression. St Jerome’s window-frames are filled
with numberless little rounds of bottle-glass.
[3] The bagpipers play before Othello’s house, and the
clown reproves their nasal tone. Othello himself gave them
money to go away, which argues rather in his favour. As for
Caliban, he was a true musician, except when drunk. Even
then he liked howling catches. See especially Tempest, Act
iii. 2, 136.
[4] This passage is the only one in Shakespeare where the
slightest inaccuracy or looseness in the use of a technical
word is to be noticed. The word “jacks” is here used
carelessly, meaning the “keys,” over which of course the
fingers walk, and which leap up to kiss the inward of the
hand. The actual “jacks” are _inside_ the instrument.
[5] _Cf._ Shakespeare on “eight-bar strains.” See
“Shakespeare and Music” (Dent), by E. W. Naylor.
[6] Readers to whom this ancient method of composition
is new will find in Mendelssohn’s “St Paul,” an easily
accessible example, viz.: the chorus “But our God abideth
in Heaven,” where the second trebles sing in long notes the
old melody of the Apostles’ Creed. No one could recognise
it in the midst of the counterpoint of the other vocal
parts, and this is the point in question; namely, that the
mediæval writers used secular tunes in the same way, and
were held blameless.
[7] Named after Jacques Arcadelt, of the early sixteenth
century, one of the many natives of Flanders who so
distinguished that period of Madrigal composition; a
first-rate man.
[8] Doubtless the author refers to the tendency in
the sixteenth century for voice parts to be made
interchangeable with instrumental parts. Many instances
might be given both in Italy and England, _e.g._ if a
tenor voice were absent, the part was played by a tenor
instrument, viol, cornetto, trombone, or what not. This
was the more easily made habitual since instrumental
accompaniment merely consisted in doubling the vocal parts.
[9] This paragraph replaces some rather obscure sentences
in the original, and aims at conveying their general sense.
[10] An excellent book, which ought to be known widely,
containing many examples of early lute music, is W. G. v.
Wasielewski’s History of sixteenth century instrumental
music. Berlin, 1878.
[11] Meaning the “Tablature,” a system of writing music
for the lute which has nothing in common with our “staff”
notation. A set of six horizontal lines (representing six
strings), was used, and letters (_a_, _b_, _c_, etc.) on
these indicated the semitones, reckoning _a_ as the “open
string,” _b_ as the semitone above that, and so on, for
each separate string.
[12] Another spelling for Pavana, or Pavan, slow dance in
square time.
[13] The play was _Gorboduc_, otherwise _Ferrex and
Porrex_. The author is better known as Thomas Sackville.
[14] See “Shakespeare and Music,” pp. 169-171, for other
English examples.
[15] “The English call it quite appositely by the name
‘Consort’ (from Latin consortium) when several persons with
various instruments, such as ... etc. ... play together in
sweet concord with one another.”
[16] It is misleading to say “in six parts.” There are six
voices, but the canon proper only takes four. The other two
sing, independently of the canon, a “bussing bass,” founded
alternately on Do and Re.
[17] In the early seventeenth century it was matter of
complaint in England that “French songs” and instrumental
music “in the Italian manner” were more popular than
necessary.
[18] These were also called by the plain English name
“fancies.”
[19] When Sir Toby says to the caper-cutting Sir Andrew: “I
did think, by the excellent constitution of thy leg, it was
formed _under the star_ of a galliard,” may he not refer to
one of these dedications of dances to noblemen?
[20] _Drehleier._ The instrument referred to is of the
ninth century.
[21] _Bundfrei_ and _gebunden_, the former only was capable
of striking any combination of notes at once--_e.g._, four
or five adjacent semitones.
[22] One of the many names of what we know best as
“harpsichord.”
[23] What were known as “short octaves” were to be seen
almost in our own time in certain old organs. For three
centuries the following or a similar arrangement was
practised. Supposing the lowest notes of the keyboard ran
thus: E, F, F sharp, G, G sharp, the first E being that
under the bass staff. But when the E key was put down, the
note _sounded_ was the C a third below; when the F sharp
key was played, the resulting note was the D below; the G
sharp key produced the low E, which should have had its
own key to itself. Thus the keyboard, which apparently
stopped at E under the bass staff, really had D and C
below, arranged to sound on two other keys. So to produce a
diatonic scale beginning from the low C of the violoncello,
the keys actually played had to be: E, F sharp, G sharp, F,
G, etc., which would produce C, D, E, F, G, etc.
[24] Penna’s name should not be connected with the word
“Penna” in the title of Diruta’s book, where it merely
means “quill,” and “stromenti di Penna” = “harpsichords.”
[25] This is also the case with the English variations. The
last one is commonly the most valuable and convincing.
[26] It is right to mention here that Thomas Tallis
actually did write a motet in forty parts, “Spem in alium
non habui,” which, thanks to the enthusiasm of Dr Mann of
Cambridge, has been published (1888), and performed in
public on more than one occasion during the last few years.
[27] Meaning a “manufacturer” of show pieces.
[28] _Sfumato_ means “smoky,” and refers, in painting, to
the blurring of the outlines.
[29] The mordent is a grace where the main note is
alternated rapidly with the note below.
[30] This is a really fine passage, and (by the way) bears
every mark of the madrigal for double chorus.
[31] The passage has four times over a chromatic scale
of six notes, _every note_ properly harmonised. Neither
Purcell (a century later) nor Bach (later still) could have
done it better.
[32] The author here makes a startling leap of a century
or so in his chronicle of English composers. From Munday,
who was a grown man in 1586, he suddenly goes to Blow and
Purcell, who flourished in 1690, and even mentions Arne in
the same breath, who died in 1778.
The “isolation” of the early English clavier school is
fairly explained by the immense amount of attention
that was now given, from 1600-1695, in England, to the
development of the dramatic scena or cantata, for one
or two voices, to the song, and to the cultivation of
concerted music for strings and keyed instruments. It is
only to prevent any one from supposing that there was _no_
“secular” music in England between the days of Elizabeth
and the coming of Purcell that I give a few names, all of
which have a real claim to remembrance. Songs--Campion
(flourished 1600), Johnson (1600), Cæsar (early 17th
cent.), Cooper (1612), Laneare (1620), H. Lawes (1630),
Wilson (1640). Cantatas or “Scenas”--H. Lawes (1630), C.
Colman (1640). Instrumental music--Gregorie (mid. 17th
cent.), Jenkins (1630), W. Lawes (1630), Lock (1650),
Sympson (1660).
[Illustration: D’Anglebert, Chamber Musician to Louis XIV., after
Mignard.]
Old French Dance-Pieces
The independent musical fame of England--omitting Purcell, the
evening star--rests solely on this early period. Hence we have been
led to trace the musical history of England further back than that
of countries where the stream spread over a wider area. Old English
music, indeed, had no influence worthy of the name. It stands, like
a half-mediæval prelude, before the actual history of the piano. It
is true that it shows the forces which are to work in the future;
but they are not yet brought into the line which they are constantly
and exclusively to follow. This process begins rather in France; it
unites itself later with a second movement which comes from Italy,
and follows a broader and more lively path through Germany until it
reaches our own times.
Oskar Fleischer, the founder of the splendid Berlin collection of
old musical instruments, has endeavoured, in his book on Gaultier,
the great French lute-player, to describe English and French
relations in the seventeenth century. But the hints which, in his
view, the elder Gaultier[33] gained in England, are only matters of
execution. Flourishes which in England were marked, without precise
discrimination, with / or //, found a more exact representation among
French lutenists. I do not mean that every performer did not put his
own interpretation upon them. Every lutenist or clavier-player issues
a new code of these _agréments_; but the basis remains essentially
the same, and it is possible that the flourishes were adopted, by
an impulse derived from England, into lute-music and thence into
clavier-music. Thence they soon spread themselves over the whole
musical field. But it is a mistake to imagine that these _agréments_,
which infest old French compositions like locusts, were a peculiarity
of the country, the “style galant” of France. The peculiarity lies
elsewhere, in the form, in the dance.
English clavier-music had attached itself to the song. From the
song it derived its stiffness of form and the grace of its melodic
outline--two important aids in the advance of music. But its treatment
of these pieces was conducted in a manner which reminds us of the
middle ages of music. The form, a continuous succession of variations,
sprang from the idea of figuration, which constituted the essence
of mediæval music; and the voice parts were worked out in general
on the fugal principle or in canonic imitation, both factors of the
mediæval music. The early ripening of English music, and its close
connection with the old Dutch vocal or organ composition, brought it
about that the _form_ rested still partly on tradition, while the
_content_ already pointed towards the future. Even dances were worked
out in this manner, which belonged especially to the time. In France
the system was the exact opposite. There, the form of the variation,
and the absolutely fugal clavier-exercise, are as seldom found as the
simply-harmonised song.
The emancipation in France was due to the attainment of a point of
departure which was as distant as possible from anything vocal. The
dance--although of course there were some sung dances--had early
allied itself with the purely instrumental exercise. It has never been
treated so entirely “à plaisir des gorges,”[34] as Gargantua expresses
it. It had a stiff arrangement in common with a stiff harmony. It
never showed much affinity with the contrapuntal twists and turns of
the voice, to which song associates itself so easily from its close
connection with choral music. If we compare the earliest instrumental
dances of the sixteenth century with the dances, in several parts, of
the old song-books--the “Rat’s-Tail,” the “Crane-Bill,” “Fox-Tail,”
“Cat’s-Paw,” “Peacock’s-Tail,” and the like, we see how rapidly the
influence of the instrument over a clear and light vocal current was
increased in France. Here especially does the dance, from the very
earliest times, enjoy great popularity. It is very early set to the
lute or the clavier, other instruments being but rarely employed. Men
grew accustomed to pieces in a condensed musical style, harmonised
simply and melodiously, contracted in form. These were regarded on
their own merits, and not as subjects for variations and figurations.
It was for this reason that the French clavier-piece was more
fruitful, more musical, and more capable of development than the
English.
The dance then is the darling conception of French music; and
French dances are the nucleus of all instrumental music. So early
as 1530--for we can go back a great distance--the Paris printer,
Attaignant, the oldest of French note-engravers, published all
kinds of musical volumes “reduict de musique en la tablature du jeu
d’Orgues, Espinettes, Manicordions,”[35] etc. We wonder to-day how M.
Attaignant could transcribe his pieces “out of music” into the script
of organs, spinets and monochords. But by “music” he meant nothing
more nor less than song, and song, down to his day, was nothing more
nor less than music. A few years after the German music-publisher
Agricola[36] wrote:--
“Drumb lern singen du kneblein klein
Itzund inn den jungen jarn dein,
Recht nach musicalischer art
Las aber keinen vleis gespart.”
“Thou little boy, come learn to sing,
Now, ere thy youth has taken wing.
Let all be done with art refined,
And give thereto thy heart and mind.”
[E. E. K.]
For music, he had once before said, is the foundation on which
all instruments rest. Attaignant was one of the first to make
transcripts of this “music” for keyed instruments. Nay, more; as far
as our knowledge goes, he was the first who in general printed for
such instruments. On his title-pages stand for the first time the
words spinet and clavichord, although the claims of the organ are
allowed. And it is noteworthy that the dances play the principal
part in his books. Here the Frenchman already peeps out. Galliards,
Basse-dances,[37] Branles, Pavans, are brought into a clear and
relatively good harmonic form, without much complication of the
instrumental parts. They are often, as for example in a charming
Galliard in F major, of entrancing _naiveté_. Not too many runs in the
treble, not too much harmony in the bass, and all exquisitely adapted
for the instrument.[38]
A hundred years after, the dance still rules French music, and not
merely French music, but French life. The forms of social intercourse,
as they were fashioned for the universal use of Europe at the court
of the Parisian princes, were modelled on the broad rhythms of
the dance. Going and coming, bowing and sitting, complimenting
and smiling--all the pleasure in the formal beauty of hollow
conventionalities, all this is nothing but the light and yet regulated
step, the theatrical and yet sympathetic essence of the dance. The
French people, having resolved to live their life, determined to do it
prettily; and therefore to put even their ordinary motions and common
gestures under the mild rule of the dancing master. Even in rough and
ready England, traces of this are extant; witness the would-be grace
of the formula of “introduction.”
In lute-music the dance takes the form of ceaseless corantos
and sarabands; on the stage it supplies the framework for the
love-representations of the time. In 1671 appeared _Pomona_, Perrin
and Cambert’s first French public opera. In it, cattle drivers and
agricultural labourers ply their dances. The great Lully, most fertile
composer of the nobly tedious French national operas, is inconceivable
apart from the school of the dance. His tunes, at every possible
opportunity, run off into the beloved dances of three or four strains,
now inserted in airs and prologues, now as episodic dances. By this
means the flexibility of the voice parts increases year by year;
and since Lully is a composer for the clavier, many of his dances
easily adapt themselves to clavier-arrangements, to which indeed they
are very early subjected. Lully is the most vigorous teacher in the
rehearsal of opera-dances. The style and the school of dances reach
such a height in Paris, that they give the law to the whole world just
as their social etiquette does. “France,” writes Mattheson, “is and
remains the true school of dancing.”
After the time of Lully, who had done so much for the development of
the characteristic dance, the art advances with rapid strides. The
Pantomime was invented by the Duchess of Maine: it was in 1708, at her
famous festivals, “les Nuits de Sceaux,” that the last scene of the
fourth act of Corneille’s “Horace,” was pantomimically represented
with musical accompaniment.
[Illustration: Le Maître de Musique. Painting by Jan Steen
(1626-1679), in the National Gallery, London.]
Of old the parts of women in the dance had been taken by men. Lully
ventured to introduce female dancers. Here begins the epoch of famous
“danseuses” who, in accordance with a natural law, become the centre
of public interest. We owe to Castil Blaze a list of those _grandes
dames_ who took up the profession. Henceforward the art of song and
that of dancing divided equally the popular affection, for the two
were not always separate callings. La Prévost was the first to essay
a solo dance, which she set to a violin solo of Rebel. La Pélissier
inaugurated costume-dances. She had purchased the whole wardrobe of
Adrienne Lecouvreur, lately deceased, and was thus able to appear in
the ballet “Le Carneval et la Folie,” in the characters of Jocasta,
Mariamne, Zenobia, Chimène, Roxana, Paulina, Célimène, Agatha, and
Elvira. Next we see rising the star of La Camargo, who from her début
in the ballet “Caractères de la Danse,” was the amazement of the
world, the discoverer of operatic airs set to the dance, the glass of
fashion, the arbitress of mode, against whose decisions there was no
appeal. But, as Castil Blaze tells us in his history of the French
theatre, all were surpassed by La Sallé, with her noble figure, her
lovely form, her perfect grace, her dancing so full of expression and
voluptuous languor. Not only does she dance; she writes dances. She
invents a Pygmalion, in which the divine statue assumes life, and
engages in a long pantomime with the sculptor, who teaches her to
assume her humanity by means of the measured motions of the dance. La
Sallé brought this ballet on the stage in London first and then in
Paris; and the London correspondent of the _Mercure de France_ writes
to his paper of the extraordinary furore created by the new art. For
Sallé had at last rejected the lingering relics of the old ballet--the
anachronisms of costume--in order to be able to give full expression
to the spirit of the dance. “She ventured,” says the correspondent,
“to appear without skirt or bodice, with loose hair, and absolutely
unadorned. Over corset and undergarments she had only a simple muslin
dress, and seemed the very image of a Greek statue.” Sallé appears
to have practised her dances without virtuosity, as a mere artistic
representation. She essayed no acrobatic leaps, no _entrechats_, no
pirouettes. Contrasting her with Camargo, Voltaire exclaimed:--
“Ah, Camargo, que vous êtes brillante!
Mais que Sallé, grands dieux, est ravissante!
Que vos pas sont légers, et que les siens sont doux!
Elle est inimitable, et vous êtes nouvelle:
Les Nymphes sautent comme vous,
Et les Graces dansent comme elle.”
The victories of the dance were universal. Even public ceremonies were
taken up in its advance. The “Messe des Révérences” was altered into
the “Ballet des Écrevisses.” In their first delight of dominion, love
and the pleasure of life revel in the light and magical rhythms of the
dance. The great and flourishing masked balls of the opera, acquiring
a new rapture, lead on to new dances--the Calotins, the Farandoule,
the Rats, Jeanne qui saute, Liron Lirette, le Poivre, la Fürstemberg,
le Cotillon qui va toujours, la Monaco--old songs of universal popular
origin; or, like wines and laws, named after towns and races, and now,
as dances, naturalised on the parquet. How ancient is this connection
between song and dance, in which the name of the song remains attached
to the dance! This is a process which is of daily occurrence in our
music-halls.
Famous _danseuses_ received characteristic nicknames. The elder
Duval du Tillet was called “La Constitution,” because her father
was an eminent clerical constitutionalist; the younger was
affectionately dubbed “Church Calendar.” La Mariette was called
“the Princess,” on more private grounds. It was the same with their
male companions. The three brothers Malter were called “the Bird,”
“the Devil,” and “Knickerbockers.” I stay to refer to this as this
French nickname-mania explains the bizarre inscriptions of so many
clavier-pieces. An amusing story is told of a certain Cléron, who, in
the demi-mondaine circles from which her beauty and seductive arts
had brought her to the opera, was known as “Frisky” (Frétillon). In
the opera she greeted her new friends very affectionately, but added,
“I shall do my best to be agreeable to you; but if any one calls me
Frisky, let him know I will give him the best box on the ear he
ever had in his life.” Mademoiselle Cléron was no boaster, adds the
narrator, and was pretty likely to keep her word.
The due understanding of old French clavier-music then, must start
from the knowledge of the dance. Almost all its pieces are dances,
whether they declare themselves as such or not. They take up the
numerous existing dance-forms and develop them in the ways already
described. But in addition to this formal principle we must notice a
second, the symbolic. The pieces _mean_ something, and mean more and
more the further the century advances. As if to console themselves for
the want of content which belongs to the dance in itself, composers
are fond of indicating in their titles and dedications all kinds of
relations which give to their pieces a more marked physiognomy or a
more comprehensible expressiveness. For this purpose they had not only
at their disposal the old song-names which clung to the dances, but
a hundred other associations. They loved the dance, but they loved
associations also. Nicknames and allusions flew from the smiling lips,
and men had the fairest inducements to take the abstract in a concrete
sense. The chief inducement was the stage with its representative
music, the stage, so passionately loved by the French in the middle
ages that even from the thirteenth century we have dramatic lyrical
plays with the most delicate songs by the trouvère Adam de la Hale.
These stand like flowers in the midst of their time, and penetrated
so deeply into the life of the people that the little song of Marion
“Robin m’aime” is still, they say, sung in the Hennegau. The fairies,
which had already played their part in the works of this mediæval
opera-composer and writer, had in the later French opera their rich
harvest of beings of symbolic meaning. In Lully’s works there is quite
a swarm of abstract figures, gods, demi-gods, personifications, which
in small scenes or great airs bring out this characterising function
of music to the utmost degree possible. But what such things as the
good and bad Dreams, or the nymphs and Corybantes in the “Atys,”
entering as chorus, performed in characteristic music was as nothing
to what was done by the great ballets which drew heaven and hell
into the circle of their representations. “Le Triomphe des Sens,”
“Les Voyages d’Amour,” “Les Génies,” “Le Triomphe de l’Harmonie,”
“L’Ecole des Amants”--all these are titles of operas and ballets of
those times which had as their aim to represent musical things as
symbols of sensuous incidents. From the lists of ballets and operas
performed from Lully’s time right into the eighteenth century the
application of fêtes, rococo-amusements, love-pictures by Watteau, or
idyllic porcelain-ornamentation, to stage purposes, speaks with no
uncertain sound. In such an environment, recollecting the renowned
fantastic art of the contemporary Callot, we are led to understand the
unusual preference for the direct association of clavier-pieces with
particular persons or things.
But here we must speak specially of programme-music.
A Pavan called “La Bataille,” full of vigorous trumpet-signals and
horn-echoes, was inserted by Tielman Sufato in his collection of 1551.
Shortly before that date a Zürich lute book included dance-songs,
“mitsampt dem Vogelgesang und einer Feldschlacht.” The song of birds,
the imitation of animals, and all kinds of confused shrieking--a
comic counterpoint--offers rich material to the programme-music of
the sixteenth century. Even before an Italian had written the famous
fugal chorus, in which the scholars, with a comical employment of the
dismembered canonic voice-exercise, declined _qui_, _quæ_, _quod_, in
the ears of the raging schoolmaster--even before this, contrapuntal
janglings were well known. Jannequin, the Frenchman, depicted in
_chansons_ with many parts the battle of Marignano, the capture of
Boulogne, war, jealousy, women’s gossip, the hare and hounds; or, on
the other hand, the song of birds, the lark or the nightingale. We
hear in the music of this time the thirds of the cuckoo, the clucking
dactyls of the hen, the chromatic mewings of the cat, the trills of
song-birds. The boldest of these pieces--an earlier Howleglass--was
perhaps Eckard’s representation of the turmoil in St Mark’s Place at
Venice (1589), in which noblemen, beggars, hawkers, soldiers, appear
with all the artistic counterpoint appropriate to their respective
classes. Thus programme-music, in the sixteenth century, enjoyed
an international repute. It must not, however, be regarded as an
achievement of modern music, but rather as something as old as music
itself. The tempest which the Greek Timotheus represented on the
kithara, and the fight of Apollo with the Python, which Timosthenes
depicted on the flute and kithara, in all its stages--the challenge,
the struggle, the hissing, the victory--had a renown in very ancient
times. Programme-music belongs to all ages of musical development,
and appears always as a natural phenomenon, never as a revolutionary
movement. It marks the _ne plus ultra_ of the need of musical
expression, which cannot find satisfaction in pure musical forms, and
seeks to justify itself by extra-musical titles. Thus on the extreme
limit of ancient hymn-music stood a Timosthenes, on that of mediæval
choral-music a Jannequin, on that of modern instrumental music a
Berlioz.
We can trace the psychology of this programme-music with great ease
in the French instrumental art of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries. From the first definite orchestral programme-piece--the
storm in Marais’ opera Alcyone--to the volume of François Dandrieu,
“contenant plusieurs Divertissements dont les principaux sont les
caractères de la guerre, ceux de la chasse, et la fête de Village”;
from the lute-dances of Gaultier to the clavier-pieces of Rameau, we
see nothing but an endeavour of the developed dance-form to enter
into relations with actual life--an endeavour which leads to the
manifold names of the pieces. Formerly the dances had taken their
names from the songs. Now, as definite pieces, they are so full of
special significance, so rich in all kinds of characteristic figures
and harmonies, that the composer feels his mind insensibly drawn to
incidents of life, of persons, of characters, humours, landscapes,
and calls upon all his fertility in association to fashion decorative
titles out of them. Music, which has arrived at the limits of
the traditional dance-forms, passes over from the formal to the
characteristic. As Berlioz’ Queen Mab is nothing but a further
development of Beethoven’s Scherzos, and not a heaven-descended music,
discovered in Shakespeare, so the pieces of the great clavierist
Couperin, whether they have descriptions of humours or personal names
for titles, are merely the developments of dances, which, so fertile
were they, reminded the composer of life itself. Couperin himself
declares that he gives in his pieces portraits, which appear to give
to others also, before whom they are performed, the actual features
of the models. But it is obvious that he could hold himself as a
portrait-painter, only so far as his music was rich enough, by its
definite relations to actual life, to give clearer definition and
a distinct picture to its stream as it flowed in a thousand forms.
Like all programme-musicians, he is such, not from poverty in musical
invention, but from wealth. The French are a people that revel in the
fulness of forms, and find their very life in the special magic of the
formal presentation of all things, whether social or artistic. Thus in
their hands all musical forms, melodious, harmonic, rhythmic, grew so
luxuriantly, that at all times, from Jannequin to St Saens, in order
to live they have necessarily turned to programme-music.
Yet the titles of the clavier-pieces are not fully explained by
this reference to the value of programme-music for the French mind.
We must take into consideration also an old decorative tradition.
Let us open the magnificent volume of lute-pieces by the famous
Denis Gaultier,[39] which came into the Berlin Museum of Engravings
along with the Hamilton collection. It is fantastically called “La
Rhetorique des Dieux,” because only gods could speak so movingly by
music, and equally fantastically he introduces all kinds of titles for
the pieces, such as “Phaethon struck by lightning,” “le Panégyrique,”
Minerva, Ulysses, Andromeda, Diana, “la Coquette virtuosa,” and
the like, besides several “Tombeaux,” by which term dedications to
deceased persons were generally indicated.[40] If we compared these
sixteenth century pieces with their names, a certain nimble fancy
is required to find actual programme-music in them. Of a genuine
representation of the content there is no pretence. Minerva, Echo,
and the Coquette would seem to have more in common than they ever
suspected. The titles are nothing but decorative stamps, resembling
those medallions of Aphrodite which are so often engraved over a
love-poem. The interpretation is always in the widest spirit possible.
It is amusing to see how the editor of the collection labours to
explain the names while confining himself exclusively to the vaguest
generalities. On “l’Homicide,” or The Fair Murderess, as it is also
named, he writes: “This fair creature deals death to every one who
sees and hears her; but this death is so unlike the usual death that
it is the beginning of a life, not its end.” It could not easily
be more plainly indicated that there is no clear representation of
anything to be seen in the piece, and that the title is a piece of
self-flattery in the dress of the fantastic. Already had the elder
Gaultier, the founder of this lute-school, recognised, or perhaps
even invented, these decorative titles, such as “le canon,” “la
conquérante,” “les larmes du Boset,” or “la volte,” “l’immortelle,”
“le loup.” This last, it is certain, is no ordinary wolf, but howls so
musically that it is really a man.
The custom of adding decorative titles was made universal by the
lute-players, but the tone-painting must always have been of the
slightest. Otherwise the old historian of the lute, Baron, could
not have been so irritated at them as to write, some decades later,
“Gallot has given such strange names to his pieces that we have need
of close study to see their relation with the subject. For example,
when he wishes to express thunder and lightning on the lute, it is
a pity he has never added a note to tell us _when_ it lightens and
_when_ it thunders.” (We are reminded of the old English clavier-piece
on the same theme.) “We shall seldom,” he adds, “light on a French
piece but the name of some noble dame is attached to it, after whom,
if she so pleases, the piece is named.”
The clavier-players adopted this custom all the more willingly as
their instrument, so full of resource and so capable of expressing
shades of meaning, allowed them to raise these titles from their
decorative and shadowy existence into genuine programme-inscriptions.
We see this remarkable process clearly exhibited in Chambonnières, a
clavier-player who towers in solitary grandeur, and marks an epoch by
his introduction of the clavier _suite_, by the clear adaptation of
his dances to the clavier, by the first realistic use of these titles,
and by the establishment of a precise character in the clavier-piece,
which holds its ground even to-day. He is not, like William Bird, the
original of modern clavier-music, but its actual father, from whom a
straight unbroken line stretches down to the present day.
Jacques Champion de Chambonnières sprang from an old family of
organists, and was born at the beginning of the seventeenth century.
The year of his death seems to be fixed as 1670. Titon des Tilliers,
who in 1732 wrote his “Parnasse Français,” a work of great antiquarian
research, says of Chambonnières that he played the organ very well,
but the clavier with special genius, and that his pieces as well
as his execution gained a considerable renown. His fame increased
until Louis XIV. appointed him his chief clavier-master; and his
compositions appeared in two volumes. In Titon’s times these pieces
were still admired. Copies of these works are very rarely to be found
to-day; but the great French historian, Farrenc, had the good luck to
get possession of one of them, and he has freshly edited it in his
famous collection of old clavier-music, “Le Trésor des Pianistes.”
While Attaignant still bound his dances together according to their
classes, there are here mixed sets of dance-pieces after the example
of the lutenists, in simple setting, but with the adornments of the
time. The succession is not yet so elaborate as in later _suites_, and
_courantes_ stand often one on top of another. The construction of the
melodies has still a certain gentle, unforced charm, which gains our
attention though its influence is scarcely irresistible. The canonic
element appears strongly only in the Gigues, three-time dances with a
lively movement. Every piece has its dance-inscription, and some have
in addition their special titles, as La Dunkerque, La Verdinguette,
la Toute Belle, Iris; or more distinct indications as the Slider,
the Barricades, the Young Zephyrs, the Peasant Girl. A Pavan with
slow conclusion in three sections is called “The Conversation of the
Gods.” Here the sliding, the zephyr, and the peasant, are easily to
be recognised in the music. Nevertheless, complete liberation from
the merely decorative framework of the fantastic title was not yet
attained.
The man to accomplish the great work was François Couperin, called
by his time “the Great.” The piano-player of to-day hardly knows
his name; and yet it is only two hundred years since men spoke of
him in the same breath with Molière and Watteau. A genial, smiling,
clean-shaven man--so the somewhat unsatisfactory portraits depict
him--with half-length peruke, polite and yet slightly subtle, with a
certain priestly sobriety of demeanour, his light fingers run over
the hundred adornments of his spinet-pieces. He seems half astonished
at his fame, and wholly ignorant that a whole art is one day to
rear itself on his shoulders. It was only with difficulty that the
pressure of his friends induced him to print his dances, which he
wrote for himself in memory of his experiences, or the preludes which
he wrote as exercises for his numerous pupils, or the concertos which
he composed for Louis XIV.’s Sunday musical evenings. He watched
with painful anxiety the tedious process of engraving. As we to-day
inspect these prints, we are struck by the joyous _naïveté_ of the
art, by the graphic awkwardness with which the notes overflow the
five-lined limits of the clef, and by the soul which breathes from
the delicately-engraved prefaces. He thinks that his portraits are
accurate pictures, and thankfully acknowledges his indebtedness to the
intimate character of his instrument. His notes as to execution, his
“gaiement,” “tendrement,” and “sans lenteur” (he is always warning the
performer against slowness) and all the other guides to interpretation
which he inserts, he excuses by saying that the pieces seemed to
express something which could not be embraced in accurate language.
In spite of all this pedantry of teaching he appeals to the sensitive
musical appreciation which will find the right way of interpretation;
and in spite of all this reference to the spiritual momentum of music
he is a stern disciplinarian in form and technique. In the midst of
the utmost freedom of movement we discern a strong feeling for style,
just as in the contemporary architecture the most playful license
of the rococo is strangely mingled with the most sober attention to
classical rules.
[Illustration: François Couperin, “Le Grand.”]
The Couperins, like the Chambonnières, were a widely spread musical
family. It was old Chambonnières who, in a noteworthy fashion, had
discovered Louis Couperin, the uncle of François. One morning the
father of François and his two brothers who lived in the neighbourhood
of the old master, brought a serenade for his inspection.
Chambonnières was struck with it, asked after the composer, brought
him to Paris, and thus laid the foundation of the fame of the family
from which the great perfecter of his work was to spring. François was
born in 1668. He lost his father when he was ten years old, but in
Tomelin, the organist of St Jacques-la-Boucherie, he found a teacher
and a second father. His life, as its details have come down to us,
was simple and uneventful. He became organist of St Gervais and
chamber-clavierist to the king, and died in 1733. But the dedications
of his works enable us to conceive him more definitely. He appears
in them as the professional artist and man of the world, pampered by
noble ladies, and kissing their hands with graceful flatteries. We
see him as he moves in the salons of Paris, which were then beginning
to realise their mission. He is the admired artist of the court
which he charms with his chamber-music; the intimate of the Duke of
Burgundy and of the Dauphin, of Anne and Louis of Bourbon, giving his
lessons and receiving pensions of a thousand francs. A true lady’s
man, he thinks the hands of women better adapted to the clavier than
those of men. He is the first to sanction ladies in his own family
as clavier-players. His daughter Marguerite Antoinette, and his
cousin Louise, played at court. Marguerite even became the teacher
of the Princesses, and was official royal clavier-player--in France
certainly, and probably in the world, the first woman to hold such a
post.
The music of Couperin has something of this feminine quality. It
is more truly “virginal” music than that which Queen Elizabeth
once played in her quiet chamber. But its grace is not hidden;
it is coquettish and conscious of itself. It is the high style
of grace which belongs to the French culture of the eighteenth
century. A spinet stands on a smooth parquet, and the ladies sit
around with their roguish eyes and tip-tilted noses, smiling at all
the well-recognised allusions, as the then flourishing pastel-art
has fixed them for us in light colours. It is light, entertaining
music, in which the thoughts of their own accord run on bright and
resplendent paths. Short pieces; _courantes_ with their lively,
scarcely broken triple-rhythms; _allemandes_ in their decorous and
interwoven quadruple time; _minuets_ with their pretty, melodious
triple rhythm; _chaconnes_ and _passacaglie_ rearing their piquant
erections on slow-moving basses; _sarabands_ in their triple movements
and interesting national colouring; _gavottes_ with their graceful
movement in soft two-time, the hurrying fugal _gigues_, and all
the many other unnamed dances--all these give the ear, without
exertion, a subtle delight. The rondo-form takes a supreme rank; it
is constantly growing from a simple round-dance with refrain into a
genuine clavier-composition, seeming to forebode the sonata which
still remains unborn within it. Its theme, like a Ritornel, recurs
among the “couplets” or episodical passages; but it is only seldom
that the couplets set themselves in conscious opposition to the theme.
Usually they adopt its rhythm or the character of its melody, and play
with it until, neatly and gracefully, they glide back into the theme
itself. There is no iron rigidity of thematic handling. A delicate
colour-sense holds the parts together. Couperin does not regulate
his pieces according to any definite scheme of dance-successions; he
binds the dance and the non-dance, the piece in one or more sections,
together into one bouquet which he offers to his lady-friends, often
with a polite dedication appended, under the general title of “Ordre.”
Twenty-seven such “Ordres,” in four volumes, were published by him
between 1713 and 1730.
[Illustration: Concert. Painting by Gerard Terborch (1617-1681), in
the Royal Museum at Berlin.]
The music of Couperin is as simple as possible. But we must not judge
its sound by the somewhat heavy pianofortes of our time, which,
even in the playfulness of a rapid passage, seem conscious of an
_arrière pensée_. No; the spinet, which, even at its saddest, had a
joyous exhilaration--this was the instrument of this playful music.
The passages glide on, usually in two voices, of which the one is
played by the right hand, the other by the left; and whether these
voices are tied in chords or chord passages, or whether--as occurs
more rarely--full chords, usually arpeggio, stand between, in either
case there is a delicacy which recalls to us the origin of French
clavier-music in the sweet-toned lute. But Couperin advanced yet
further. In his last “Ordres” his compositions increase in depth; the
more luxuriant conceptions and deeper feelings of a lesser Beethoven
show themselves; the playful and ornamental element recedes into
the background, and the compositions become those of a master who
has summed up whole centuries of music in himself. From the insipid
melodies of Lully’s time Couperin has fashioned more graceful and
charming turns of expression; not only roguishly dancing-melodies,
in which the vigorous popular songs seem to live again, but also
melodies of the intellect, in which the soul of Mozart might seem to
dwell. He prefers to advance in the diatonic scale; and the sense for
the general outline of the composition, which is so often wanting
in the older generation, is in him so unerring that he permits, with
inimitable skill, the semiquavers of his “papillons” to sway up and
down through entire bars. Yet occasionally his melodies seem ashamed
of their nakedness, and, as in the “Sailor’s Song,” draw the flowery
robe of adornments so closely round them that we can scarcely trace
their limbs. There are the well-known short and long grace-notes,
upper or lower, the _pincés_, _ports de voix_, _tremblements_, and the
whole apparatus of ornamentation, which was then larger than it is
now, and which, in spite of the stern admonitions of the composer’s
marks, was frequently at the mercy of the performer. Like almost all
composers of that day, Couperin gives in his first volume the table of
his ornamentations, but he insists strongly on their exact carrying
out. To players of to-day his _agréments_ are anything but pleasant.
They seem to destroy our sense for the pure run of the voices, and
are painful in their superabundance. But we must play them with
_historical_ fingers, and seek to understand the psychology of their
expression. They give to the quick clavier-tone a significance of its
own; they are, so to speak, running drills, cutting the tones deeper
into the relief of the piece, some more, some less, until they bring
out the light and shade which serve to aid expression in the material
of the clavier. Could we hear Couperin play, we should certainly
hear the pure voice more distinctly than we imagine, enfolded as
it would be here and there by deeper or brighter shadows of the
ornamentations which bring out its form in plastic manner. His was a
technique which was lost to us with the thorough comprehension of this
music. Couperin took pains to bring it to the highest perfection. At
times he introduced a slight tempo rubato; he took from the note at
the conclusion something of its length, and gave to another at the
beginning a short pause for breath, inventing for the former the mark
of aspiration, for the latter that of suspension. Here the endeavour
was the same as with Prall-triller[41] and grace-notes. Instead
of the ornamentation, the short pause, like the white mounting of
a picture, raises the important note, giving to it its meaning and
with the meaning the due expression. But later, in the last “Ordres,”
Couperin must have felt the inadequacy of these marks. The aspirations
and suspensions retreat into the background, while the sign ) becomes
more prominent. This sign simply marks off an independent musical
phrase in order to resign its due interpretation to the sympathetic
feeling of the player. Such is the trouble he takes with the
traditional style of ornamentation and its spiritual expression.
But the remaining musical peculiarities of his composition follow the
simplest lines of development. Freedom of motive increases. Tremolo
accompaniments, interesting sequences, a playful counterpoint--this
latter especially in the pieces for two claviers, or in the “Pièces
croisées” for clavier with two manuals--in fact an inexhaustible
array of new forms arises. Thus the harmonisation simplifies itself
along with the advance of the entire musical development. Couperin
modulates, into the dominant or sub-dominant, by means of their
related notes, in major and minor keys. By his turn for repetitions
of short figures on changing basses--a truly modern motive--or
by bold passages of passing notes--for instance, in the saraband
“La Majestueuse,” we find once e flat, d, f sharp, g, a, one over
another--he gives us interesting harmonies, which appear, especially
in the _allemandes_, as full, heavy chords, already anticipating Bach.
The theatre of Couperin is rich and varied. The representations
which we see in this theatre under the innumerable titles of the
pieces, range over the whole world. Some of the characters are
also not strange to us; others we soon learn to know; a few remain
unintelligible to us since the relations they betoken are too
subjective. But all lend to the pieces a personal value and an
intimate charm, as Goya’s editions present them to us; and it is from
them that the clavier derives its great significance as interpreter of
this intimate personal art.
“Nanette” greets us with her pleasant quavering melody; “Fleurie” is
more subtle, and sways delightfully in richly-adorned 6/8 time; the
“Florentine” blooms in graceful, gentle play of quick triolet-figures;
but the “Garnier” has the dress of the confined fantastic time,
having not yet cast off her heavy folds. “Babet” is “nonchalamment”
contented; “Mimi” has a temperament which the many slurs and points of
the ornamentation can scarcely fully exhibit. “Conti” (or “les Graces
incomparables”) works lullingly out her counterpoint; “Forqueray”
(or la Superbe) has a physiognomy of almost academic severity. Many
ladies pass by us in these pastel-portraits. We are amused with the
divine Babiche (Les amours badins) and the beautiful Javotte (or
the “Infanta”); but the most beautiful in melody is Sœur Monique,
an intellectually delicate creation, and the most beautiful in
construction is “La Couperin” (perhaps the musician’s cousin Louise)
who poses before us in a masterly, stately, and slightly fugal
movement.
Then follow the troops of nameless ones. First the nuns--the blondes
in the minor and the brunettes in the major section. Then the
charming and melodious representatives of landscapes: Ausonian,
Bourbon, Charlerois, Basque. Then the “Enchantress,” who of course
in process of time suffered much from her magic. Then the “Working
Woman,” who finishes her course, but is surpassed in it nevertheless
by the “Diligent One.” The “Flatterer” and the “Voluptuous Woman”
are a relatively quiet pair. The “Gloomy One” is sharply defined,
with her dismal, jerky passages, and the heavy full chords. The “Sad
One” exhibits the light sentimentality of all archaic melodies. The
“Spectre” sweeps past in slurred thirds. Close behind come the “Gray
Women” with their ponderous sad march. The “Fox-Tail” has tripping
broken chords; the “Lonely One” shows her caprices in the rapid
successions of grave and gay. Then follow, in endless succession, the
“Princesse d’Esprit,” “l’Insinuante,” “l’Intime,” “la Galante,” “la
Douce et Piquante,” faithful ones, _risqué_ ones, bold, visionary,
mysterious ones, with their chromatic descents. “Le Turbulent” is one
of the few men in the list.
His more general portraits are the most satisfying. They depict
emotions, characters, animals, plants, landscapes, occupations,
bits from all kinds of life, which are often inscribed with the
favourite antique titles. Thus “Diana” with her broken chords leads
us into the forest, and shortly after in the second part we hear her
horns sounding; while in the “Hunt” a more romantic note is struck.
In a broad violoncello-like “Romance” the wood gods are singing
and the satyrs dance a very melodious and attractive Bourrée. The
Amazon rushes on in thirds, which bear a striking likeness to the
_leit-motif_ of Die Walküren; and Atalanta runs past in rapid figures.
Hymen and Amor sing a marriage-song, the former in the first part more
firmly, the latter in the second more delicately and tenderly. The
Bells of Cythera sound to us from the holy island, rising and falling
alternately, enlivened by glissando-passages. This motive Couperin
adopted a second time in “Les Timbres.”
The Bees hum and revolve round one point; the Butterflies flutter past
in ravishing triplets; the Fly buzzes and dances round her own melody;
the retiring Linnet hurries through restless triplets; the complaining
Grasshopper chirps in endless imitative short grace-notes; the Eel
twists itself now tightly, now loosely; the Amphibian creeps along
in legato notes, winding itself through bar-sections of Schubertian
length; the Nightingale in Love sings her piercing plaintive accents
in quick and ever quicker trills, or as Victor chants more joyfully
and triumphantly. Or, again, blooming lilies rise before us in
delicate self-enfolding figures with petal-like ornamentations; the
sedge rustles eternally to its melody; the poppy spreads abroad a
wonderful secret mysterious tune, with many slow arpeggio thirds; and
garlands twine themselves in festal guise on a canonic trelliswork.
Life unfolds itself in its entire wealth. Here we have the rolling
play of the waves, there the purling and rippling of the brooks, and
the twittering of the birds--a foretaste of the slow movement of
the Pastoral Symphony. Then again, under the name of “Bontemps ou
l’étincelante,” an appeal is made to the emotions of springtide or
fair weather; we live as it were in a small forest of enchantment.
In the second part--Les Grâces Naturelles--one of Couperin’s most
intellectual melodies breaks forth, showing all the chaste delicacy
of Mozart. There rises the blooming landscape of St Germain en Laye;
farther off we catch a sight of teeming orchards from which the music
of bagpipes sounds forth. The reapers draw nigh with cheerful song;
the buffoons--males in minor and female in major--stir their happy
limbs; the jugglers appear and ply their tricks;--we can hardly
distinguish the trick and its solution, or the rapid intermingling
of left and right hand--the knitters lace their rolling semiquavers
together right to the “falling meshes” at the end; the click-clack
of the lace-makers--tic, toc, choc, tic, toc, choc--beats joyfully
hither and thither in the broken chords of a _pièce croisée_. Even
the milk-maids of Bagnolet have their appropriate pieces. There the
gossipping wife--a reminiscence of Jannequin--beats her rapid bubbling
motive; there the short rolling courses of the famous little windmills
play their humorous part; here hobbles a cheery lame man along; there
staggers a _bizarre_, syncopated, now swift, now slow Chinese. “The
Man with the queer Body” makes his springs, in scattered notes, and
close by stands the idyll of “Dodo,” or “Love in the Cradle,” the
bass of which rocks itself to and fro in a _pièce croisée_. “Wavering
shadows” glide ghost-like in sadly-sounding movements throughout this
play of life.
The “Sentiments,” full of feeling, with their beautiful “anticipation”
notes, the long legato-movement of the “Idées Heureuses,” the
“Regrets” and “Amusements” musically darting to and fro, the
syncopated tender “L’Ame en Peine,” the wonderful “Langueurs Tendres,”
the somewhat lengthy “Charmes,” the “Agréments” with _their_
agréments, the free diatonic of the various morning melodies,[42]
the gentle toying of the “Bagatelles,” of the “Petit Rien,” of the
“Brimborions,” the rapture-like “Saillie”--these are inward reflexes
which have not quite the clear sensuousness and realism of the outer
experiences. The following are the most elaborately worked out, and
are presented in “cycle” form.
The “Earlier Ages” appear in four figures--the first exercise gives
the syncopated “Muse naissante,” the second the rocking “Enfantine,”
the third the rioting “Adolescente,” the fourth the “Délices” in
violoncello style, which is Couperin’s favourite for the attainment of
the most delightful effects.
Or the great “Shepherds’ Feast” with the twanging musettes of Taverni
or Choisy, and the lightly rocking rhythms.
Or the five-act Ballet of the “Pomp of the great and ancient
Menestrandise.”[43] Act I., the pompous entry of the Notables and
sworn probationers. Act II., a bag-pipe song of the hurdy-gurdy-men
and beggars. Act III., a joyous dance of the jugglers, clog-dancers,
and Merry-Andrews with bears and monkeys. Act IV., a duet of the
crazy and the lame. Act V., breaking up of the whole troop by the
animals--furious étude in semiquavers.
Next, the cycle of the old and young men; the former sober, the latter
happy.
[Illustration]
But, before all, that original of Schumann’s Carnival, “Les Folies
françaises ou les Dominos.” Maidenhood in invisible colours, Shame
in rose, Impetuosity in red, Hope in green, Faithfulness in blue,
Perseverance in gray, Longing in violet, Coquetry in a domino of
many colours, the old gallants in purple and gold, the cuckolds in
brown, silent Jealousy in dark gray, Rage and Desperation in black.
Externally the form is that of a great ballet of the time; internally
it is the variation of collected pieces on a single harmonic
succession, its contents are the allusions easily comprehended at the
time; the characterisation is carried through with great skill; but
its musical setting is even shorter than is usually the case with
Couperin’s clavier-pieces.
The Preludes, which Couperin appended to his “Art de Toucher
le clavecin,” he named, in accordance with their _ad libitum_
performance, the Prose of clavier-literature. These dances and
pictures were to him the poetry, rhymed and rhythmical. And it was
precisely their formal completion which was of importance for the
future of clavier-literature. We see the forms developing. In his best
pieces the Sonata is already foreshadowed. The fulness of motives,
as they occur to him in his two best compositions, the splendid
“Favorite” and the stupendous “Passacaille,” is elsewhere thematically
limited. In the recapitulation of the main theme at the beginning of
the second part of the pieces, in the rhythmic similarity between the
rondo-motive and its “couplets,” in many a thematic working-out, shown
for example in “La Trophée” with its wonderfully modern sonata-style,
lies the promise of thematically-developed music of succeeding
generations. To the same purpose is his increasing sense for the
association of several pieces. The many slow second pieces, or the
popular dances such as the Polonaise, the Sezile, the Musette, which
form the concluding parts of a group, the repetition of the first
part after the second, the divisions into slow movement, slower, and
lighter, which are specially visible in “La Triomphante,” and “Les
Bacchanales”--all these are as much the germ of the future sonata
arrangement, as the severer thematic was the germ of sonata-playing.
The charm for us lies in observing, in the springtime of art, the
natural uprising of these forms which appear to us almost laws of
nature.
His “Art de toucher le clavecin,” the first school-book specially
devoted to the clavier, was published in 1717 and dedicated to the
king. This was a noteworthy advance. There was to be no longer a
teaching of mere notation, but a teaching of technique and execution.
“The method which I here propose,” says Couperin, “is unique, and
has nothing to do with the tablature, which is only a counting of
numbers. I deal here chiefly with all that belongs to good playing. I
believe that my observations are clear enough to please connoisseurs
and to help those who are willing to be helped. As there is a great
difference between grammatical and rhetorical rules, so there is an
infinite distance between tablature and the art of good playing.” Such
a general musical “fabrication” and grammar, in spite of many advanced
ideas, had been the work of St Lambert, which appeared from 1702 to
1707, and which in its first part (called “Principes du Clavecin”)
devotes only a few lines to actual clavecin playing, and extends the
second part (called “De l’accompagnement”) also to the organ, and
other instruments. It is painful to him that his experience is treated
lightly and turned into a “school.” The parents of the pupils, he says
later, ought to place the most implicit reliance on the teacher, and
yield him the completest powers. The teacher even takes the key of the
instrument with him, and no playing should be attempted without his
supervision. The scholar sits with his fore-arm horizontal before the
clavier, elbows, hand and fingers in a line--the fingers thus lying
quite flat on the keys. He has his body turned very slightly to the
right, and the right foot a little stretched out. In order to prevent
grimacing while playing, he often places a mirror in front in which
he can watch his motions. A bar over the hands occasionally regulates
the equality of their height; for the holding of the hands high makes
the tone necessarily hard. Looking about of any kind is forbidden,
and above all, coquetting with the public as if the playing were no
trouble at all. And although, finally, everything in the performance
depends on experience, taste, and feeling, yet rules are given for
performance to which the player must conform. Couperin frequently
disregards the fingering of his predecessors, and to the examples
which he gives of his new art he adds confidently in a side-note that
he is convinced that few persons in Paris have the old rules in their
heads--Paris being the centre of all good. Step by step we have harder
and harder studies developed from a single figure, and directions
for finger exercises fill the rest of the volume. The change of
fingers on one note, the avoidance of the same finger twice in scale
passages, the first application of the thumb in passing under are his
characteristic points. These are all symptoms of the endeavour to
form a legato style suitable to the clavier; they are the external
indications of the suppression of the lute. Couperin’s abhorrence of a
vacuum runs through his whole teaching of the clavier. The adornments,
the avoidance of too long note-values, the legato finger-exercise--all
are the systematic development of the powers which arise from the
necessity of _short_ tones in the clavier. He once introduces a
charming short fugal _allemande_, in which both voice-parts work in
contrary motion in most flowing style in order to show what “sounds
well” on the clavier, and opposes to it the one-sided broken chords
of the Italian sonatas of whose light style he has on other grounds
the highest opinion. “The clavier has its peculiarities as the violin
has _its_. If its note cannot swell, if the repetitions of one tone
by striking do not suit it, it has advantages on the other side,
precision, neatness, brilliancy, and width of compass.” Perhaps
Couperin was the first who had an absolutely good ear for the clavier.
In comparison with him his elder and younger contemporaries must give
place. Dumont, le Begue, D’Anglebert, Loeilly, Marchand, Dandrieu,
and even the brilliant Rameau, composer of operas and founder of
modern musical theory, are his inferiors. It is now demonstrated
that Rameau published his first clavier-compositions in 1706, seven
years before those of Couperin. But these pieces had just as little
meaning and result as those of Marchand which appeared the year
previously. They must have differed little from the style of the
old school of Chambonnières. Rameau in later years is much freer
and more developed, like Couperin, whose work he continued with the
happiest results. He is no pioneer, but an improver of the ways. How
powerful are his _allemandes_, how dainty his _gigues_, how brilliant
the conduct of the thematic in his Cyclopes and his Trois Mains!
What a depth of invention appears in his variations on Gavottes, in
his Gigues, and in his splendid Niais de Sologne! How wonderfully
melodious is his “L’Enharmonique,” what a realism is there in his
“Hen” and in the “Call of the Birds”! How clear, how penetrating, how
rich in promise is his technique! In him there are musical conceptions
of extreme penetration and melodious harmonic turns which live for
ever in the ear. From the “twenties” to the “sixties” all kinds of new
editions of his works were produced, so popular were they, as they
would still be, if the public knew these enchanting little works.
[Illustration]
Thus the fame of the clavier is fixed in the Paris of the beginning
of the eighteenth century, and its future assured. It is a kind of
symbol of history that from the guild of violinists, founded by a
king of violin-players, which reigned throughout the seventeenth
century, should have proceeded, first the dance-masters, for reasons
of independence, and then the organists and clavierists, who actually
maintained that a musician was he only who played an instrument with
full harmony. The orchestra went its own way, the “grande bande des
violons” and the “petits violons” of Lully’s time having laid the
foundation. The clavier was again the opponent of the orchestra, and
concentrated the whole body of tone in its keys. An intimate, personal
interpreter of musical emotions, it chooses to perform its functions
in itself. Its consciousness of its own importance grows to a height.
No longer will a clavecin-player when accompanist be the Cinderella
among a company of proud sisters. “The clavierist,” cried Couperin
indignantly, “is the last to be praised for his share in a concerto.
What injustice! His accompaniment is the foundation of a building
which supports the whole, and of which no one ever speaks!”
[Illustration: Rameau, out walking. Old engraving from the
Nicolas-Manskopf collection, Frankfort.]
[33] Gaultier “the Elder” was a French lute-player,
who also published (in collaboration with his cousin
Pierre Gaultier) a collection of pieces for lute, with
instructions for playing. He flourished _temp._ Charles I.
References to him may be found _inter alia_, in Herrick,
who calls him Gotiere or Gotire.
[34] _Anglicé_, “for the sheer fun of howling.”
[35] M_a_nicordion = M_o_nocordion = a clavichord in which
_one_ string had still to provide several notes. See full
explanation elsewhere in this book.
[36] Agricola. Pupil of J. S. Bach.
[37] Galliard, in triple time, with a “leap” in every other
bar (second beat); Basse-dance also in triple time, but
“sans sauter,” all solemn sliding.
[38] For examples of these pieces, Wasielewski’s book on
sixteenth century instrumental music is invaluable. Also
see Arbeau’s “Orchésographie,” and my “Shakespeare and
Music.”
[39] This is yet a _third_ musician of the name, according
to Hawkins.
[40] Called a “knell” in England. See Shakespeare, Henry
viii., iv. ii. 77.
[41] _Prall_ means rebounding quickly, or springing back.
The Prall-triller consists of the main note, the note
_above_, and the main note again, and should be executed
_fast_.
[42] _Aubade_, English “morning music” or “hunts-up.”
[43] The “Pomp” is the “Masque,” as it would be called in
England. The “great and ancient Menestrandise” is the old
association or guild of Minstrels. The Charter of the King
of the Minstrels, granted by John of Gaunt, King of Castile
and Leon, and Duke of Lancaster, dated 1381, may be seen in
Hawkins’s History of Music. An old verse in “Robin Hood’s
Garland” alludes to the festive sports of the Minstrels in
these words, which almost reproduce the above description
of Couperin’s piece:--
“This battle was fought near Tutbury town
When the bag-pipers baited the bull,
I am king of the fiddlers, and swear ’tis a truth,
And call him that doubts it a gull;
For I saw them fighting, and fiddled the while,
And Clorinda sung Hey derry down:
The bumpkins are beaten, put up thy sword, Bob,
And now let’s dance into the town.
Before we came to it we heard a great shouting,
And all that were in it look’d madly;
For some were a’ bull-back, some dancing a morrice,
And some singing Arthur a Bradley.”
[Illustration:
Old engraving after Wagniger’s design. The true musician is climbing
up the Ladder of Contrapuntal Art ever higher and higher (see in the
engraving the words _plus ultra_) to the Concert of Angels (legitime
certantibus). From the “Basis and Fundamental Tone” the musical notes
are being carried to the Gold-furnace (various flames in which are
labelled, _e.g._ motet, canzonet, canon, etc.). The enemies are seen
up above breaking the tritone, the false fifth, and the ninth; arrows
are being shot at the Artist on the left as he writes (volenti nil
difficile, “nothing is difficult to the willing mind”), but they
are shattered on the Shield of Minerva, on which is represented the
Austrian Eagle. ]
Scarlatti
Domenico Scarlatti, perhaps the greatest clavier-player that Italy
ever had, prefaces a collection of thirty sonatas, which appeared
at Amsterdam,[44] with the following words: “Amateur or professor,
whoever thou art, seek not in these compositions for any deep feeling.
They are only a frolic of art, intended to increase thy confidence
on the clavier. I had no ambition to make a sensation; I was simply
requested to publish the pieces. Should they be not utterly unpleasing
to thee, I shall all the more willingly undertake other commissions,
in order to rejoice thee in a lighter and more varied style. Take
then these pieces rather as man than as critic; so only shalt thou
increase thine own content. To speak of the use of the two hands--D
denotes _dritta_, the right, and M _manca_, the left. Farewell!” It
is noticeable how here in a few words the whole essence of Italian
clavier-music is summed up--the fresh, cheerful disposition of the
artist; the respect for the amateur; the pleasure in mere sound and in
musical construction; the thorough working-out of intellectual motives
(in the manner of the Étude); and the stress laid upon the equal
participation of both hands as essential factors in the “concert,”
[using this word in its older sense as expressing the association of
two or more vocal or instrumental “parts”]. The word “concert” was
well understood in these early days to mean the combination of two
viols; and music of such a kind was, in form and in content, the true
precursor of clavier-music, in which the right and left hand “parts”
are strictly on an equality both in difficulty and importance.
These are the distinguishing marks of Italian clavier-art, and within
these limits it works.
But Scarlatti is especially remarkable to us in the present day, in
that he occupies the position of an early writer whose pieces still
play a part, though a small one, in modern public concerts. Liszt,
for example, was partial to him, and arranged his “Cat’s Fugue”;
while Bülow edited a representative selection from his pieces.
Czerny published (through Haslinger) two hundred of his so-called
Sonatas--though, by the way, the last of these pieces belongs really
to the father, Alessandro Scarlatti. Before that time the remains of
the master had formed no inconsiderable part of private manuscript
collections, such as those of the Abbé Santini in Rome, and others.[45]
Domenico Scarlatti, the famous son of the not less famous Alessandro,
who was a composer of operas and chief of the Neapolitan School,
exhibits in old portraits a serious, severe, even pedagogic
countenance. There is also much of the pedagogue in his pieces; yet I
think him fresher, gayer, more happy in life and mind than this face
would lead one to suppose. His “Exercises” move with vigorous strides,
and are far too full of esprit to be pedantic. His life was that of
an artist universally honoured, and rejoicing in his fame, a type of
which his contemporary Handel is the model; and his biography reveals
no less activity than his works. A pupil of his renowned father, in
the midst of the volatile, melody-loving, easily-stirred Neapolitan
world, he set out early for Rome, in order to become the scholar of
the great theorist Gasparini and of the organist and clavier-player
Pasquini. In 1709, at the age of twenty-six, he made the acquaintance
of Handel at Venice, and in sheer admiration, followed him to Rome.
There he remained ten years, and became kapellmeister of St Peter’s,
gaining a reputation by the works of his genius. In 1720 we suddenly
find him in London as clavicymbalist of the Italian opera. Here his
“Narcissus” was performed. A year later again he was in Lisbon, where
the King of Portugal made efforts to detain him, and where for a time
he gave lessons to the Princess. At this time the fame of his playing
and of his compositions reached the farthest bounds of Europe, and he
ranked thenceforward as the first executant of the age. He returned
again to Italy, and from Italy to Spain. He remained in Madrid from
1729 to his death in 1757. Here all kinds of honours were showered
upon him; he was Knight of St James, and chamber-player to the Queen,
who still retained a grateful memory of the lessons he had given her
at Lisbon when she was Princess of Asturias. To her he dedicated his
first-published pieces, prefixing to them the lively preface above
quoted.
Italian music has to French the relation which Bull has to Bird, or
the virtuoso to the poet. In Scarlatti we seek in vain for any inner
motive, nor do we feel any need of an emotional rendering on the part
of the performer; his short pieces aim only at _sound_ effects, and
are written merely from the love of brilliant clavier-passages, or to
embody delicate technical devices. They are not denizens of Paradise,
who wander, unconscious of their naked beauty, under over-arching
bowers; they are athletes, simply rejoicing in their physical
strength, and raising gymnastic to a high, self-sufficient art. We
admire them, as we admire an acrobatic troupe of strong and stout
character; we admire them--not too much, yet with a certain eager
anticipation of the next interesting and unusual feat of skill. We
wonder at their mastery of technique, and the systematic development
of their characteristic methods; we rejoice that they never, in their
desire to please, abandon the standpoint of the sober artists; but
our heart remains cold. There is an icy, virgin purity in this first
off-shoot[46] of absolute virtuosity, which kindles our sense for the
art of beautiful mechanism, for the art of technique _per se_--an art
which, after all, the historian of the clavier must not depreciate by
comparing it with that of the _inner_ music.
[Illustration: Adrian Willaert, of Venice, after the engraving
published in 1559 by Antonio Gardano, Venice.]
The Scarlatti style is a genuine product of the Italian musical
emotion. The Italian is not born for heavy, contrapuntal, “vain
ticklings of the ears”; nor, on the other hand, for too intimate
effusions or symbolic mysteries. He is sensuous through and through;
delight in playing and in sound is the very life of his music, as
delight in outline and in colour is the very life of his painting. The
intoxication of absolute tone runs through the masses of his churches,
the operas of his theatre, the chamber-music of his salons. Delight
in sound gave the impulse to every Italian musician in his bid for
fame. It created virtuosity, which loves playing for its own sake; it
created the dramatic choruses, with which the Venetian school began
its career; it created the melody predominating over the harmony,
with the discovery of which in the Florentine opera the greatest blow
was struck for the new principles of “secular” musicianship. From
love of sound the Venetians cast the instruments free from their
old corporate unity, and gave them an individual meaning and value.
From love of sound Frescobaldi led the organ, Corelli the violin,
Scarlatti the clavier, to undreamt-of technical creations. And the
_bel canto_ of the human voice almost attained the capacity of an
instrument; so small was the influence of the mere words. They were
enamoured of melody, which, unlike the ecclesiastical counterpoint,
sought its new objective not in the manifold transformation, but in
the natural development of a motive: they were captivated with the
“da capo” repetition of concerted pieces or arias, a habit grounded
on the psychological law of the higher effectiveness of all repeated
passages. They rioted in the multitude of forms, in which they found
a place for every kind of music, for every “tempo,” every rhythm, and
for all kinds of expression. Throughout all this was to be perceived
the sensuous Italian love for music, which expressed in this
manifoldness its freedom of artistic activity, and in that freedom the
unity of thematic construction and consequently the unity of formal
repetition.
[Illustration: Frescobaldi.]
Technical ability was appreciated in Venice earlier than elsewhere.
The registers of organists at St Mark’s go back to 1318. In Venice
not the office only, but the art, was honoured. The musician was not,
as he was much later at Florence, interrupted by the ringing of a
bell, if he continued his performance too long. The emancipation of
artists, which in our own century we have seen carried out in the
person of the orchestral conductor, was in Venice effected by the
instrumental musician; and as to-day the orchestra has grown in repute
by the agency of the conductor, so in those days the prestige of
instrumental music advanced alongside that of the performer. At the
beginning of the seventeenth century a Frescobaldi could already gain
so important a position as player of the organ and clavier, that it
was said that no clavier-player was respected who did not play after
his new fashion. When he gave his first recital in St Peter’s, thirty
thousand persons were there to hear him. What Frescobaldi was in the
first half of the seventeenth century, that was Pasquini in the second
half. In Italy, Austria, and France he was treated like a prince; and
his tombstone bears the proud inscription, “Organist of the Senate and
People of Rome.” With Scarlatti the art of clavier-playing reaches its
height, and begins to decline. It is not clavierists but violinists,
the wordless rivals of the singers, who have carried the type of
Italian virtuosity into our own times--Corelli, Vivaldi, Locatelli,
Tartini, Paganini.
This sensuous devotion to music apart from inner meaning, this passion
for poetic beauty, the Italians have not yet, even under Wagnerian
influences, wholly forgotten. The victorious rule of absolute tone,
while it constituted their greatness, carried with it the germ of
their decay. Virtuosity is the mark of their art and of their life.
We must take them as they are, in the whole light-hearted temperament
of their existence. This Bohemian type of the Italian musician of
the time may profitably be compared with the similar French type.
What a seductive brilliancy there is in the adventurous career of
a Bononcini! His operas are received at Vienna with unparalleled
enthusiasm. Queen Sophia Charlotte is the clavier-player at the
production of his “Polifemo” in Berlin. In London he enters upon a
contest with Handel, in which social intrigues are involved with high
political aims. Next, he appears in a lawsuit, and is unmasked as a
common plagiary[47] of a madrigal of Lotti’s; shortly after he is away
to Paris with an alchemist, who swindles him of all his property,
and leaves him to make his living by the sweat of his brow to his
ninetieth year. Stradella’s fate is well known--how he ran away with
the mistress of a Venetian before the first performance of his own
opera;[48] was more than once attacked with a dagger, and finally
actually murdered.[49] What, compared with this, is the story of
Rameau’s youthful love and its punishment, and of his tardy attainment
of the haven of fortune, or what the anecdotes of Marchand, with his
love affairs, his expulsion from Paris, and his smiling return? The
dangerous glitter of this Italian Bohemianism is the fitting framework
of that sensuous, lively, irresponsible music.
It was inevitable that the Italians should invent the opera--the
opera, in which every thing tends rapidly to the spectacular; singers,
scene painters, musicians, and the public. Apart from its relation
to opera all Italian music is unintelligible, and it is no accident
that for centuries the Italians stood in the forefront of opera.
Those lucky misunderstandings are well-known, which led, about the
year 1600, to the rise of this form of art. A circle of Platonic
dreamers (led by Giovanni Bardi, Count of Vernio) in Florence,
anxious to revive the ancient tragedy, engaged certain musicians
to compose monodic songs with accompaniment. They merely meant by
this to be antique; but as a matter of fact they were unconsciously
acting along the line of the most modern of needs, which had long
tended towards isolated melody. The dainty and delicate songs,
which took their origin in this, the Venetians, and afterwards the
Neapolitans, accepted eagerly as a material on which to construct
forms of ravishing virtuosity, until a Jomelli, with his dashing
bravura passages on the most solemn words, finally arrives at that
very “laceramento della poesia”[50] which the Florentine reformer
Caccini had once fanatically combated as a madness of the ancient song
in several parts. In a very short time the opera runs through the
whole gamut of the joys and sorrows of virtuosity. The sweet charm of
sound, exhibited by a voice which bears the melody, so suited to the
narrow outlines of poetry, is found in the old vestal airs of Caccini
and Peri. The delight in a multitude of forms, in an alternation of
different rhythms in short portions of the aria, lived in the songs
of the Venetian Cavalli, in which we are reminded of the alternating
tempi of the old instrumental pieces[51]--the toccatas, fantasias,
and canzoni. Yet empty vanity shows itself all too soon. The original
simplicity was overlaid by various corrupt accretions, first by
songs, introduced in loose dependence on the action, then by complete
concerted pieces, which are indicated in the libretto--together with
directions to tailors, architects, and decorators, and alongside of
the titles and orders of the performers. In Naples, worse still,
the music gradually declines into a stiff and wearisome form and
sweet playful nothingness. The well-defined outline of the aria
appears, now regularly written “da capo”; it alternates to a tiresome
degree with the accompanied recitative; the chorus recedes into
the background before the soloists. It is the old typical form,
skilfully adapted to virtuosity, precisely as a sonata of Scarlatti is
differentiated from a toccata of Frescobaldi or Pasquini. Originality
is vanquished; elegance has created a set of formalities in which
technique can freely exercise itself. The substantive style, so to
speak, has given way to the adjective, and matter is conquered by
form. This Neapolitan class of opera, which thus exalts the virtuoso,
begins with Alessandro Scarlatti. He is the father of that species
of art which is afterwards included in the name of Italian opera,
in which we see a contempt for the words, a love of vocal bravura,
the supremacy of the aria, and a delight in the human voice as an
instrument. In the forms of his ornamentations we discover again in
antitype the passages of Domenico; in his love of the _da capo_ and
instrumental repetitions of vocal phrases we see once more in antitype
Domenico’s repetitions of shorter or longer groups of bars. In the
“Alessandro nelle Indie” of the Neapolitan Leonardo Vinci the hero
sings arias full of slurred “divisions,” syncopations, unprepared
sevenths, which to a man acquainted with Scarlatti’s sonatas appear
to bear a strong family resemblance to Scarlatti. Old rubbish bears
germs of new creations; released from the heavy burden of the words,
the light play of the voices in the clavier-pieces introduces a fresh,
youthful life that is full of promise for the future.
The isolation of the voice and of the instrument, the sensuous delight
in sound, demands a chamber-music and a chamber-style. Chamber-music
demands the Maecenas of the great house, and the wealthy amateur, who
is so powerful a factor in every advance of art. Roman musical life,
for instance, draws its strength from the practical encouragement
of the Pope’s, or from the concerts and operas performed in
aristocratic houses. A Venetian nobleman, Benedetto Marcello, became a
distinguished and favourite composer, a poet and a satirist. A Roman
nobleman, Emilio dei Cavalieri, became the founder of the modern
oratorio, an opera-composer of the advanced school, perhaps even the
very earliest composer of vocal monody. Vincenzo Galilei, the father
of the astronomer, became known by his monodies in that circle of
Florentine Platonists, to whose worthy amateurism is due the origin of
the opera; and he wrote a work on the technique and fingering of all
instruments.
Music in the home is in Italy not too intimate, but proud, splendid,
mere pastime. Like the opera of the virtuosos, like the secularised
church-music, it tends to rely upon effect, and lives on applause.
It depends chiefly on the performer, and knows little of the mutual
intelligence of souls. A subtle aristocratic love of music runs
through the Italy of the Middle Ages. Many are the names of high-born
men and women who had mastered the art of the lute by ear--for a
notation was as yet unknown.[52] In the Decameron (1350), alongside of
the novel-telling, it is song, lute-playing, viol-playing, dance and
choral refrain, with which that pleasant company loves most to kill
the time.
The music of dances, songs, and instrumental pieces, which was soon
to find its proper home in the clavier, is a child of the world,
and, in the view of a serious theoretician like Pietro Bembo, it is
exposed to all the dangers of emptiness and vanity. In 1529 he writes
to his daughter Helena, who like many of the women in her position,
intended to receive instruction on the clavier in her convent: “As to
your request to be allowed to learn the monochord,[53] I answer that
you cannot yet, on account of your youth, understand that playing is
only suited for idle and volatile ladies; whereas I desired you to be
the most pure and loveable maiden in the world. Also, it would bring
you but little pleasure or renown if you should play badly; while to
play well you would have to devote ten or twelve years to practice,
without being able to think of anything else. Consider a moment
whether _this_ would become you. And if your friends wish you to learn
to play in order to give them pleasure, reply that you do not wish to
make yourself ridiculous in their eyes; and content yourself with the
sciences and domestic occupations.”
A hundred years later chamber-music is at its zenith. The great
Carissimi (d. 1674) put the flourishing chamber cantata[54]--that
half-dramatic, half-lyric song of the seventeenth century--by the
side of the monodic church-songs of Viadana; and Steffani added
his renowned chamber-duets. The case was precisely similar with
instrumental music; by the side of the “sonata da chiesa,” with its
free and independent style, came the “sonata da camera,” as a suite
of favourite dance forms;[55] and the “concerti,” with their several
instruments playing to a small accompanying orchestra. Above all, the
possibility is now realised of suitably accompanying monodies and
concerted works on the clavier, from the figured bass; and this in
its turn contributes not a little to the victorious advance of the
melodic song. But as a solo-instrument, the clavier suns itself in the
light of the chamber-style, in which brilliancy, dexterity of hand,
and elasticity of form are not less admired than the many small and
spirited caprices, which in the “grand” style of music have perhaps
not yet been attempted.
[Illustration: A Clavier Lesson. Painting by an unknown Dutch Master,
17th century, in the Royal Gallery at Dresden.]
Among all the instruments of tone which achieve an independent
existence in Italy, the clavier naturally takes its stand last.
From its first movement towards this independence, in Venice in the
sixteenth century, to the full liberty of a Scarlatti, stretches an
interval of a hundred and fifty years. It was in fact partly too much
occupied in the orchestra, and partly too dependent on the technique
of the organ. We find it already in the orchestra in the first
operas of Peri; under Monteverde, the first of all great orchestral
geniuses, there were two claviers, on the right and left of the stage.
They serve to accompany solo singing, or, along with small organs, to
fill up the harmony of the orchestral body. As a rule the operatic
composer writes only the figured bass, but occasionally adds some of
the melodic voice-parts; the conductor completes the score, leaving to
the several players, however, a certain freedom of improvisation in
colouring, a freedom which a well-trained musician would not abuse to
the detriment of the _tout ensemble_.
But clavier-pieces pure and simple had a characteristically
_dependent_ existence. Even in that Venetian circle where Willaert
(1490-1563) Gabrieli,[56] and Merulo moved, in which instruments
were first emancipated, in which they were boldly introduced into
church-music, and solo-pieces were written for orchestral or for keyed
instruments, even here the soul of the clavier lay still fettered. It
is the organ that indicates colour and takes the lead. In the pieces
of the two Gabrielis, or of Merulo, the old contrapuntal, pictorial
fashion lives still almost untouched by external disturbances; and the
picture seldom allows us to anticipate that stiff adherence to the
theme, and that well-wrought harmony which, in the England of the same
age, we found so full of promise. Down to the time of Frescobaldi,
organist at St Peter’s in 1615, who stands as a landmark in this
development, the Italian sense for absolute music is far too strong
for an “applied” music to be able, as it did in France and England, to
_modernise_ the instrumental pieces by their necessary dependence on
song and dance. Canzoni[57] are treated in a light fugal style; the
so-called Ricercari[58] represent another and freer fugal form; the
toccatas, capriccios and fantasias are variegated attempts to unite
all tempi and all kinds of playing in one piece. The composers are
aiming at typical forms, and only attain an unrestrained formlessness
which all these pieces with their trifling differences alike exhibit.
The juxtaposition of chords, successions of canonic imitations, free
alternations of tempo, piquant applications of the newly-discovered
chromatic possibilities--all these interest these writers much more
than character or expression. All these ricercari, canzoni, fantasias,
toccatas, are alike “sonatas”--pieces which exist for the sake of
their _tones_ and technique, and, as Couperin says, not in the least
for the sake of their soul or content. Dance-suites and variations
on songs, which as time went on gained in popularity, sharpened,
here as elsewhere, the sense for form; but these never became the
predominant class. The free form of the fantasia always ranked as the
principal species of the higher clavier-pieces. In Frescobaldi we
already see the process of crystallisation. His canzoni and fugues not
only exhibit for the first time the good fugal style familiar to us,
but also betray the modern sense for arrangement and method in their
frequent division[59] into three movements, and in their progressive
quickening of tempo. He it is also who reduces under a distinct law of
arrangement the various movements of the whole instrumental fantasia.
With Pasquini in the second half of the seventeenth century, we meet
the visible line of demarcation between organ and clavier. Hitherto
the organ had been in everything the predominant partner. The whole
aspect of the clavier-pieces was that of the organ. The old Venetians
had frequently written for it in three or four parts and brought
the instrument into popularity. But even Frescobaldi had written no
piece for clavier alone. Diruta, organist at Chioggia, the pupil of
Merulo, wrote a dialogue between 1597 and 1609 on the best method of
playing organ and clavier, and had of course drawn attention to the
characteristic features of clavier-playing; but all his observations
on holding the hands horizontal,[60] on the good and bad fingers
(the second and fourth are the “good,” and fall on the strong accents
of the bar), or on the ornamentations and their execution, are in
the first instance written with reference to the organ. Indeed, he
actually begins his book with a panegyric on that instrument. As
a matter of fact the true emancipator of the Italian clavier was
Pasquini. He wrote for the clavicymbal alone; in his figures and
style of play he thus early showed a genuine sense for the clavier;
he abandoned the practice of setting chord passages and runs in close
juxtaposition, but elaborated out of the two the proper clavier style;
he brought into strong connection with a theme the quicker and slower
parts of his sonatas, and set them clearly over against each other;
and he attempts, as in his Capriccio on the motive of the cuckoo’s
song, to draw from the clavier all kinds of characteristic effects,
still wild and confused, but full of the freshness of spring.
[Illustration: Virginal in shape of a work-box.]
[Illustration: The same opened, showing the instrument within, which
can be taken out.]
[Illustration: The instrument taken out. Constructed in 1631 by
Valerius Perius Romanus. De Wit collection, Leipsic.]
So far is the early Italian clavier (when the violin begins its
victorious career) from assuming a leading position, that the
cembalo can do nothing better than make use of the experiences of
the violin. For we must give up the legend of the genius of Michel
Angelo Rossi. This story is one of the most amusing freaks of musical
history. We find in many popular collections of old music an andante
and allegro in G major by this man, who is tolerably well known as
an operatic composer and violinist. He was a pupil of Frescobaldi
and died in 1660. This piece is so captivating in its melody, so
decided in its form, so restrained in its arrangement, that it would
have done honour to Mozart. Had these pieces truly sprung from the
_intavolatura_ of Michel Angelo Rossi, the modernity of their form
and melody would give such a shock to musical history that it would
be shivered into fragments. Yet a man like Pauer, who published them,
could actually believe that this music was possible before 1660.[61]
A later historian, Rolland, in his “Histoire de l’Opéra avant Lully
et Scarlatti,” led astray by the same mistake, fancies he detects
in the choruses of Rossi’s opera of Hermione anticipations of the
Zauberflöte.[62] Parry alone, the author of the brilliant article on
the sonata in Grove’s Dictionary of Music, has boggled at this pseudo
Rossi. Heaven knows to whom the pretty little pieces really belong. It
is not unlikely that Scarlatti wrote them in his old age.
[Illustration:
Italian cembalo, from a monastery, of the 18th century. Made of
cypress wood. The pictures on the lid represent a concert of monks and
a landscape. On the sides of the case are Cupids and garlands. De Wit
collection, Leipsic. ]
The thematically precise sonatas and concertos of Corelli, the old
violin master; the pieces of Vivaldi, so wonderfully rich in melody;
the intellectual suites of Locatelli; it is in these violin works
that the form of the Italian instrumental piece first appears,
deriving itself from the joint experiences of the free toccata and
of the fettered dance. Corelli, who died so early as 1713, was one
of those strange phenomena in the history of art, which reach the
utmost heights of an epoch, without freezing into an icy classicism.
His pieces are even to-day of a ravishing sensuousness, and must be
produced in the flowery dress of an improvised _coloratura_.[63] They
mark the highest point in the monodic style of the virginal Italian
music. From the point of view of melody they are the freshest dances
and arias written about 1700, full of unparalleled invention and of a
rhythmical freedom which anticipates the scherzi of Beethoven. They
are indeed the works of a genius in form. But they never stiffen into
one shape, like the operatic overtures.[64] In Corelli the sonata
still stands in the full bloom of its manifold forms. Among his
numerous pieces there are not many which exhibit precisely the same
arrangement of the movements and of their tempi, or of the various
dances. Even the number of these movements varies, so that one can
lay down no precise rule. Slow movements begin, or stand in the
middle, or come at the end; or even, with a modernised reminiscence
of old times, introduce themselves for a few bars[65] between the
allegros and the vivaces. This is, from the point of view of form, the
same rhythmic freedom which Beethoven, on deeper material grounds,
reintroduced in his latest sonatas and quartets. All is held together
by an ornamental, delicate, and thematic filigree-work. More rarely,
as in the fourth Sonata da chiesa and in the fifth Sonata da camera,
a certain thematic relation between the several movements is to be
detected; but within the movement the thematic conception is so worked
out that it is treated with natural modulations and appropriate
intermediate passages. The movement falls into two parts which are
repeated as a matter of course; the second part begins with the
modulated main motive of the first. Occasionally, as in the allemande
of the tenth concerto and in the allegro of the twelfth, we find an
exact return to the first theme. This combination of the da capo
system with the modulation of the theme; and in the midst of this
the miniature da capo system of the concerted violins imitating each
other; and especially the favourite concluding repetitions of bars,
alternating from forte to piano,--all these became the groundwork of
the Scarlattian style.
The da capo is in fact the scaffolding of this formal music. To our
modern minds it appears pointless; but in those days it was natural
enough. Some day the history of musical repetition ought to be
written; it would be indeed the history of quite half of music. Even
in Greek writings we meet melodic repetitions; it is on the principle
of imitation that the contrapuntal style of the Middle Ages[66] is
built; from the repetition of parts, or the rearrangement of the
themes, musical sentences become capable of new effects; and further,
there was the germ of progress in the thematic conception of whole
bars, whole groups of bars and whole movements, which finally,
whether arias or sonatas, were taken da capo. This is the last step
of thematic music which has shaken off the contrapuntal forms.
To-day we are in a period of repetition which, for want of a better
word, we may call “Thematic.” In dependence on the old beginnings of
programme-music, which were greatly developed by Beethoven, the new
_subjective_ repetition takes the place of the older. This new form
works chiefly in the _idée fixe_, in the Leit-motiv, which is subtly
treated and varied according to the situations represented. Founded
deep in the essence of music, the principle of repetition has at all
times been an ever-changing, ever re-incarnating characteristic of the
condition of the tonic art.
[Illustration:
Old engraving representing Scarlatti playing a Harpsichord with
two rows of keys; and certain well-known contemporaries of his. A
satire on the unheard-of successes of the famous Italian Soprano,
Cafarelli. From the Nicolas-Manskopf collection, Frankfort-on-Main.
Cafarelli’s cat is sitting in the foreground singing an Italian
parody. The persons represented are named on the right. The two verses
are as follows: “The concert of these great Italian masters would be
beautiful, if the cat did not join in. Just in the same way, the sweet
harmony of two souls joined by the god of Love is constantly being
interrupted by some animal or other.” ]
It gave to the Italian sonata of its time the same character of unity
which the rhythm of the dance gave to the French clavier-piece.
But, before the separate movements could reach their full formal
development, the emancipation of the thematic subjects from
counterpoint, and their absolute self-dependence, must be completed.
The Italian ear, from its mere pleasure in motive and its development,
released the subject from obligatory contrapuntal treatment. From the
old thin forms of toccata and capriccio sprang fugal exercises with
poor and limited themes, to which, so early as 1611, the old Francesco
Turini gives the sounding title of sonatas. They are full of the
passages associated with solo-instruments; they sound with flexible
melodies; they run off in the measured steps of the dance, and circle
round with repetitions of motives, groups, and movements. The point
which a Rameau, in his “Cyclopes,” attains by an extension of the
rondo-form--perhaps under the gentle influence of the sonata--is
reached by the Italian by formalising the free fantasia, under the
influence of the dance. It is _form_ at which everything on all sides
aims.
[Illustration]
In Scarlatti’s sonatas we have very rarely more than one movement;
the two-movement groups of the sonatas, numbered by Czerny 122 and
123, are exceptions. The pieces might be combined into sonatas on the
Corellian model but for the lack of slow movements, which Scarlatti
did not willingly write for the brilliant and spirited clavier. The
structure of the movements displays that perfect freedom which still
reigned in that springtime of the age of musical form. If we are
so inclined, we may often detect, as in the prototype, a[67] first
and a second theme; but the signs of this later form of the typical
sonata are still so hidden that in many pieces we might, with equal
justification, detect five or six themes in the more melodious or
decorative passages. All is in transition, but the thematic conception
is never left utterly in the background. The motives come out in
apparently reckless profusion, but scarcely one remains without its
adequate treatment. We observe all possible arrangements. Sonata
110 has a perfectly incongruous middle movement; in Sonata 111 a
moderato alternates with a presto, and both are repeated in fuller
elaboration. On the other hand some sonatas preserve throughout the
same rhythmical movement. As a rule the second part of a movement
concludes like the first, but in a different key, just as it began
like the first, but again in a different key; or sometimes Part II.
begins with some different motive from that of Part I., or even with
one absolutely new. Usually the beginnings of both parts are somewhat
stiff in their thematic, while their later course is usually more
free. The development of a main motive--which in later times begins
the second division of a movement in sonata form--is as yet confined
to no definite part. Not rarely it is despatched in the first part,
as in Sonata 169, where the dactylic-trochaic motive is so taken up,
more or less decidedly, in the first part, that only the very briefest
reminiscence is left for the second. The general construction is well
illustrated in the eighth sonata--runs of five semiquavers (_sic_) in
A minor[68]--a fugal movement proceeding in crotchets, diatonically
rising and chromatically descending--groups of diminished sevenths
descending to C--conclusion, the semiquaver motive again. Part II.:
the latter motive modulating from C, through G minor to D minor, with
an insertion of the former figure in crotchets, developed as in the
conclusion of Part I., and returning from D minor to A minor.
Formal structure is the be-all and end-all of the Italian sonata.
Technique is its very life. An inexhaustible brilliancy and exclusive
adaptation to the clavier is the characteristic of Scarlatti. He
has in his eye the thousand possibilities of clavier-technique,
and throughout his pieces there breathes a glow of enthusiasm which
draws us easily from beginning to end with the sweet grace of an
irresistible rhythm. The successive retardations, as in the arias of
his father Alessandro’s Rosaura, the changes of hands, the rivalry
of concerted violins, the delight in passages of quavers with thirds
and sixths as their harmonic accompaniment, such as is seen in the
pieces of Corelli, long-sustained notes with sudden leaps which seem
to be derived from the violin--all this is yet treated from the point
of view of the clavier, and, so to speak, new-born from it. There is
little song in Scarlatti, and a singing phrase is preferably repeated
with brilliant decorations; for the _leggiero_ is much better adapted
to the spinet than the _arioso_. As a rule, both hands roll on in a
two-voiced exercise in pure and simple movement without any additional
encumbrance of heavy harmonies. It is a spectacle of fireworks. Deep
bass-tones are suddenly introduced; high thirds fly off; thirds and
sixths are darted in; close arpeggios swell into monstrous bundles
as they are filled in with all possible passing-notes; octaves are
vigorously introduced; the hands steer in contrary motion, to one
another, away from one another; they are tied into chains of chords;
they release themselves alternately from the same chords, the same
groups, the same tones; unison passages in the meanwhile run up
and down; chromatic tone-ladders dart through, then slowly moving
phrases or still-standing isolated treble notes are seen confusedly
dotted over the changing bass as it runs up and down, in a kind
of upper pedal point; harsh sevenths one after another; repeated
notes, syncopated effects, parallel runs of semiquavers with leaping
side-notes, such as we know so well in Bach; sudden interchanges from
major to minor, a device of which the Neapolitan operas are so fond;
bold characterisation by means of sudden pauses; startling modulations
by means of chromatic passages; embellishments rarely introduced; a
delicate arrangement of tones from the severest fugues to the most
unrestrained bourrées, pastorales, or fanfares--such is the world
of Scarlatti’s clavier-music. The “plucked” clavier (clavichord)[69]
as yet does not admit of the delicacies of touch[70] which delight
us in the pianoforte; and its technique, too, will have to consider
the three main problems--how to arrange the musical conception in
the light and lively style suitable to the clavier, how effectively
to combine the two hands, and how to use the opportunities which
spring from the divided movements of the single hand. These three
problems--what the fingers can do, what the hands can do, and what
the clavier can do--are solved by Scarlatti with all the readiness
of his Italian temperament. His style luxuriates in the liveliest
crossings of the hands--a practice he is said to have diminished as
years increased his bodily dimensions; and his ideas blossom out
into a captivating, often eccentric freshness, as, for example, in
his fugal theme G, B♭, E flat, F sharp, B♭, C sharp [D] (ascending),
which he has taken as the foundation of his best known and perhaps
most splendid composition, the Cat’s Fugue. Legend indeed asserts that
these boldly combined tones were suggested to him by a cat gliding
along the keyboard.
The most distinguished names of those who have laboured with success
at the Italian clavier are those of Alberti,[71] whose preference
for the skilfully broken chord-accompaniment has given rise to
the title “Alberti Bass”; Durante, who was dry, calculating, and
destitute of emotion; Galuppi, the graceful and courtly; the somewhat
superficial Porpora; the subtle Paradies; and Turini, who is by far
the most brilliant of all the Italian inheritors of the mantle of
Scarlatti. They take two or three movements for a work; they combine
dance-pieces and sonata-pieces; they pursue new melodic and rhythmic
graces; but they all group themselves around or after their hero,
Domenico Scarlatti, who, as first and greatest, has ushered in the
pure Italian delight in sound as voiced by the clavier.[72]
[Illustration: An Octave Spinet (tuned an octave higher than usual).
18th century. De Wit collection.]
[44] Before 1746. Burney says they were printed in Venice.
[45] The engraving and printing of music was rare, even in
the case of popular masters, till late in the eighteenth
century. In most cases short and simple clavier pieces
were copied privately. This method of spreading works
about in our own time when printing has made everything
democratic is not lost, but made aristocratic. When Wagner
copies the Ninth Symphony, or when a scholar copies an old,
unpublished work, we have an instance of the personal love
of manual labour in a dilettante or scholar--the work of
the hand in an age of machinery.--[Author’s Note.]
[46] A far earlier exponent of pure virtuosity is found in
England in Dr John Bull, whose pieces, written a century
and a half before Dom. Scarlatti’s, bear every mark of
devotion to “pianistic,” as Bülow would call it. The author
seems to recognise this a few lines back.
[47] Plagiarism of the most thorough-going character was
common in the eighteenth century, and can hardly have been
accounted disgraceful, considering how frequently Handel
himself practised it, appropriating subjects of fugues,
long passages, and whole movements, from Stradella, Kerl,
Urio, Steffani, and others.
[48] A “spiritual” opera, or oratorio.
[49] A doubtful story. S. died _circa_ 1681, probably in
his bed.
[50] “Tearing the passion to tatters.”
[51] For instance, in the numerous seventeenth century
English “cantatas” for solo voice, and the contemporary
instrumental fantasias, where it is common to find short
sections in triple time breaking the continuity of the more
ordinary quadruple time.
[52] A notation for the lute was published as early as 1512.
[53] “Monochord” is synonymous with “Clavichord” here. The
word was often used for the keyed instrument, probably
because the “German” clavichord had tangents at the ends
of the levers, which cut off the right length of the
string, just as the moveable “bridge” of the acoustician’s
monochord of one single string does.
[54] Our modern notion of a “cantata” includes the free use
of a chorus; whereas the seventeenth century “cantata” was
for a solo voice with accompaniment of a single instrument,
harpsichord, lute, or viol da gamba.
[55] For instance, Corelli’s trios, two books (out of four)
of which are “suonate da camera,” chamber music, the rest
being “da chiesa,” for church.
[56] Two Gabrielis, uncle and nephew; the former, Andrea,
dating 1510-1586, the latter, Giovanni, 1557-1612. Andrea
was a pupil of Willaert and he succeeded Merulo as “second”
organist of St Mark’s, Venice, in 1566.
[57] “Canzone,” a sixteenth and seventeenth century term
for a sort of vocal madrigal.
[58] “Ricercari” (compare French “recherché”), the name of
a class of pieces for organ or cembalo in which the object
was to include as many ingenuities of counterpoint as
possible.
[59] Compare Byrd’s Cantiones Sacræ, 1575, where the pieces
are divided in this way, _e.g._, Pars Prima, Pars Secunda.
[60] Meaning that the fingers were held straight out,
and consequently only the first, second, and third (in
so-called “German” notation, 2, 3 and 4) would be in common
use, the ends being nearly of a length.
[61] It is difficult to set the limits of what is possible
in such matters; _e.g._--John Jenkins wrote a “Fancy” for
three viols, before 1667, which modulates from F major
through the whole set of flat keys, up to G flat, whence he
coolly turns a rather sharp corner home to F. No one would
have dared to suppose this possible.
[62] This might well be. Compare the first phrase of the
Recitative, which precedes Dido’s dying song in Purcell’s
“Dido and Æneas,” with the first phrase of Wolfram’s
recitative before the “Star” song in “Tannhäuser.”
[63] This _coloratura_ means the elaborate ornamentation
with which Corelli used to overlay the plain written violin
part. Joachim’s edition gives Corelli’s own version of the
sonatas as he himself used to play them.
[64] These in France were usually arranged adagio, allegro,
adagio; in Italy, allegro, adagio, allegro, but in both
countries they had found very early a stereotyped form for
the succession of their movements.--[Author’s Note.]
[65] Such things are found as late as Mozart; cf. overture
to Zauberflöte.
[66] The true origin of imitative counterpoint is almost
certainly the _Rota_, what is nowadays called a Round.
This sort of infinite canon was already perfect in the
thirteenth century in England. No doubt the _Rota_ itself
was invented by an accident.
[67] The “first” and “second” subjects are often very
clearly distinct in the binary form of Scarlatti. The
“second subject” is not a mere continuation of the “first”
in the subordinate key, as more generally it is in J. S.
Bach, but it is another melody altogether.
[68] The movement here described is apparently the “Presto”
on page 25 of the first volume of Mr Thomas Roseingrave’s
edition of Scarlatti. The groups, so-called, of “five
semiquavers,” are of four descending semiquavers, followed
by a crotchet, making five notes altogether.
[69] The action of all these keyed instruments, whether
called virginal, spinet, clavecin, clavichord, harpsichord,
cembalo, is the same, namely, a “plucking” of the string
by a projection of quill or leather. The exception is
the _German_ clavichord, which was not a keyed harp, but
a keyed “monochord,” with key levers in connection with
“tangents” of metal, which sounded the string and cut off
the right length of it at the same time.
[70] The _German_ clavichord referred to in the note was
able to produce a most delicate effect of tremolo or
repetition, called _Bebung_. This was possible simply on
account of the “tangential” action of the German instrument.
[71] Alberti rather deserves the title of an early
“decadent.” His broken-chord formula is mainly a way of
avoiding trouble in writing real passages.
[72] Pieces by Durante, Galuppi, Porpora, Paradies, and
Ferdinando Turini (1749-1812), also the disputed movements
mentioned on p. 82, which bear Rossi’s name, may be found
in Litolff’s publication “Les Maîtres du Clavecin.”
[Illustration: German Clavichord, 17th century, “gebunden” (explained
on page 22). De Wit collection.]
Bach
In 1717, when Scarlatti as yet dreamed not of his Spanish renown,
and shortly after Couperin’s first little pieces had appeared, the
Parisian clavecinist Marchand made a journey to Germany. At the Polish
court of Dresden he created a furore by his playing, and a famous
contest was the result, got up, as it appears, by intrigue, between
Marchand and an organist of Weimar, Johann Sebastian Bach. The King
was present in person. Marchand began by improvising variations on a
French song, and was loudly applauded. Bach then took the same theme,
but varied it twelve times over so marvellously that without further
contest he carried off the palm from his famous adversary, who, when
Bach proposed a competition on the organ, incontinently fled from
Dresden.
Who was this Bach, and what was this sudden development of German
music? Hitherto not much had been heard of it in foreign countries,
and on looking at the German tablatures[73] of the older time one
could only recognise an honourable but somewhat clumsy struggle. In
the sixteenth century, perhaps when, in wider circles, some mention
was made of the great vocal compositions of Isaac and Senfl, a certain
Nürnberger, Hasler by name, proposed himself to Gabrieli in Venice as
a pupil, and later his renown was heard at the courts of Vienna and
Dresden. In the next century another German, Johann Jakob Froberger,
was associated with Frescobaldi in Rome, and his fame also was
afterwards heard at the Viennese court. He cannot have been unpopular,
for a number of anecdotes clustered round his name. Froberger, and
with him Pachelbel of Nürnberg, began the emancipation of the clavier
in Germany. In the Hanse Towns of the north were good organists, such
as Buxtehude in Lübeck and Reincke in Hamburg; but no one in Italy or
France troubled himself with them.
The fame of Italian sonatas and French suites was such a matter of
course, that the Leipzig organist, Kuhnau, when he in 1700 published
his collections of genuinely German clavier-pieces, plumed himself
mightily, in his chatty prefaces, on the fact that now at last, even
in Germany, good music was to be had, which could take its place by
the side of the foreign. “Even in Germany,” he exclaimed, “oranges
and citrons at last bloom!” The excellent Kuhnau ventured to give
the title of sonata to a piece on the model of the Italian sonata da
camera, although it was written not for violin but for clavier. Hence
it is often said that he was the creator of the clavier-sonata. But
this piece has nothing in common with the later popular composition
of that name; it was a cento of several movements in various tempi,
as the suite was a cento of several dances. Nay, the Cyclopes of
Rameau stands nearer to the later type than this. The suites and
sonatas of Kuhnau are pure clavier-pieces, somewhat marred by the
usual failings of youth, and running every theme to death, but clear,
vigorous, and adapted to the fingers, smooth in feeling and modern
in technique. But the most curious work of Kuhnau is his “Biblical
Histories.” Here he illustrates on the clavier all kinds of Scriptural
stories, like the death of Goliath, the cure of Saul, the marriage of
Jacob, Hezekiah’s recovery, the life of Gideon, and Jacob’s death, in
sonata-form, on the model of the programme-music[74] of the time, and
with the assistance of verbal elucidations. Yet Kuhnau is as little as
Froberger or anyone else a forerunner of Bach, who so overshadows the
work of his predecessors that one may almost say he is independent of
them.
It is indeed hard to compare Bach even with the other wonders of the
history of art. For there is scarcely one who is so identical with
his art as is Bach with music. A Michel Angelo does not include a
Rembrandt, nor a Rembrandt a Monet; but in Bach there is a Beethoven,
a Schumann, a Wagner. I believe that if the Almighty had wished to
offer to men in sensible form what at that time was called music,
he would then have given them the work of Bach. In it there are the
deepest secrets of musical polyphony, as well as the most intense
degrees of decadent expression; the mysticism of the Middle Ages is
there no less than the perspective of the future. But content and form
are not dissociated as they are in history; they are identical, they
are one and the same, as they are in the philosophic concept of music.
Once, and perhaps once only, in this world has the “Thing in Itself”
been realised, and the difference between concept and actuality been
reduced to nothing. The history of music can be written with almost
exclusive reference to Bach. We might show how it has converged
towards him and again diverged from him in search of its special
partialities. We might point out how it revolves round him, comes to
him, and goes from him in the course of the centuries, just as in the
case of the imitative arts we show that they come from Nature and go
to her.
Bach’s life was the most uneventful conceivable. He made no journeys
to Rome and Paris; he learned musical literature by studying and
copying. A true “Old Master,” he sits with his serious, almost severe
countenance, in the midst of his large family of twenty children,
all musical, and composes for instruction or for his own pleasure,
without seeing many of his compositions printed. His renown had no
wide extent;[75] his bold extravagances aroused only that hostility
which does not bring honour, and in his successive posts at Arnstadt,
Weimar, Köthen, and Leipzig, he had little opportunity for sunning
himself in the rays of princely favour. A single moment of his life
perhaps stands out prominently, when Frederick the Great at one of his
concerts received the list of strangers in Potsdam, and interrupted
the playing to say to his officers, “Gentlemen, old Bach has arrived.”
He was instantly summoned, and, in his travelling dress as he was,
improvised on a theme of the King’s, which, when completed and
published, he dedicated to the King as “Musikalisches Opfer.” When two
great men meet, the whole world feels the electric shock.
With the appearance of Bach the whole history of music turns to
Germany. And clavier-music, so far as it has a particular meaning, is
henceforth German. England, France, and Italy, sink either gradually
or suddenly into the background.
Bach’s clavier-music is a complete world, a mirror of his music as a
whole. As Nature is her whole self in every leaf, so in every piece
or group of pieces Bach is the whole Bach. Thus for the first time it
came about that the clavier became capable of interpreting the whole
nature of a great man. With the early Englishmen it was the embodiment
of the whole tone-poet; with Couperin the whole man, indeed, but a man
who was nothing but a dancer; with Scarlatti a whole clavier-player;
but with Bach the whole nature of a man of whom it is impossible to
say whether the musician or the intellect in him was the greater. This
was the first outstanding peak attained by the clavier.
The natural creative principle from which Bach works, that which gives
unity to his being, is the conception of counterpoint. Music can
be written in which every single voice is treated as an independent
line, and in which the art of combining these lines reaches the
highest possible development, as in a picture of Holbein--and this is
counterpoint. Or music could be written, in which an upper melody,
clearly illuminated, runs on an advancing basis of accompanying
harmony without much attention to purity of voice, as in a work of
Ribera--and this is the style resting on “accompaniment.” Bach’s
essence lies in the contrapuntal method. He conceives the voices _over
against_ one another; and at the very moment in which he interjects a
motive, there is a second or third motive introduced, embracing the
other in contrapuntal wise.
[Illustration: Konrad Pau(l)mann, the first German writer for keyed
instruments, blind. Died 1473. After a modern drawing by Wintter.]
Yet he has taken the accompaniment-style also into himself. Just as
little as he can ever be censured for defect in melody, so little
has he ever neglected the newer “secular” harmony--rather, he has
carried on his counterpoint in accordance with its laws. He has of
course as little respect as any other first class musician for the
common Italian accompaniment with its singing melody alone. If he
adopts it, it is in very discreet fashion; the richly decorated arioso
soaring above the vigorously moving _basso continuo_ in such delicate
arrangement that we think rather of an ornamented contrapuntal
passage than of a light singing voice accompanied by the cembalo with
_figured_ bass.
In this secularisation of counterpoint by means of the contrasting
features of an arioso, the foundation of a bass, and the modern system
of a network of harmony, he exhibits the characters of both musical
styles in one, and gives us the unification of two epochs, which
necessarily opened a boundless prospect into the future.
Two or more voices running alongside are treated in their relation to
one another. Here the simple contrapuntal exercise, which sets them
neatly together, and enfolds their rhythms into each other, will soon
cease to satisfy. The best-sounding contrapuntal relations are those
in which the voices show some slight traces of imitation. From the
lighter imitations rises the stricter canon,[76] and at last the exact
and regular succession of canonic repetitions is reached. The ideal is
then an exercise in which every note of every voice has its imitative
relations, and in which the whole is so interconnected that not a
stone can be removed without bringing about the fall of the whole
structure.
We see Bach himself at this work. He works more lightly and elegantly,
or more heavily and massively, not by arbitrary choice, but according
to his subject. He begins with a Prelude, in which a gentle
interlacing of voices answers to his mood; imitations, arising as if
of their own accord, are inserted here and there. Then there is the
final gigue of a suite, in which a rapid 6/8 theme has to be treated,
in spite of its rapidity, with a certain canonic severity, which gives
solidity to the conclusion of the whole suite. Then again we have a
slow movement of intertwining voices, such as is found after the first
preluding bars of the F sharp minor and C minor Toccatas; the voices
alternately take up the mournful themes, with no strict regularity of
exact succession, wonderfully floating, according to a fixed purpose,
and gently swimming in their harmonies, with no recognisable support,
almost a fairy-like echo of mediæval counterpoint. Or, finally, there
is a regular fugue, which stands there like a monument, with hardly
a superfluous note; in regular succession the voices present the
theme in single or double counterpoint, always alternately imitating
at the fourth or fifth, with a never-failing reference to the tonic
key; and near the close, where still greater closeness of imitation
is demanded, proudly and stiffly vaulted over with diminutions or
augmentations of the theme.
Bach has left us clavier-works in which we see perfected the simplest
form which the contrapuntal conception could assume in his hands.
These are the fifteen “Inventions” and the fifteen “Symphonies,”
which in the manuscript appear with the inscription, “Straightforward
directions, by which the amateur of the clavier, but especially the
one anxious to learn, is shown a plain method, not only of playing
properly in two parts, but also, on further progress, to undertake
three obbligato parts; at the same time also not only gaining good
inventions, but also personally performing them, and, above all,
attaining a cantabile style in playing, as well as a good foretaste of
composition.” This curious preface ends, “Verfertiget von Joh. Seb.
Bach, hochf. Anhalt-Cöthenischen Capell-meister, Anno Christi 1723.”
The simple homeliness of the time speaks in this title-page; and it is
well to appropriate to-day as much of this as possible, in order to
lose nothing in the enjoyment of these fifteen two-voiced Inventions
and these fifteen three-voiced Symphonies. Even to-day Bach demands
the desire of learning in amateurs, who should feed their pleasure
with diligence, and enter into the feelings of the composer. One who
sits at the clavier with a zeal worthy of Bach’s compositions, will
find in these thirty simple contrapuntal pieces a small storehouse of
treasures. He will be captivated by the elegance of this canonic music
as soon as his fingers are able to play in parts; but he will never be
released from the influence of the many-coloured glittering character
of these compositions. They are the drawings of a master, which in
a few strokes depict great objects; sketches of a great artist, so
full of scholarship that they cover the whole of life. The solemn
Invention in F minor, the eccentric one in B flat major, the Symphony
which sounds so mournfully in E flat major, or the chromatically
gloomy F minor, the sprightly staccato G minor, the graceful A major
whose traces are to be found in so many works of a later time, and
the rhythmical, freely-singing B minor, with its harp-like strokes,
in which Beethoven and Chopin, yet unborn, seem to meet--these pieces
were then unique in literature, and still remain so.
[Illustration: Skull of Sebastian Bach, with Seffner’s modelling of
his features.]
In these fantasy-pieces the fugal conception is dealt with on a small
scale; in the Toccatas on a large scale. The clavier-toccatas of Bach
are free pieces of that wonderful many-sidedness of construction
which a music might still possess that had not yet stiffened into
conventionalism. When we sit down to play the Inventions and
Symphonies, we point our fingers as if for miniature work. But when we
sit down to the Toccatas, we dispose our arms and hands, as would have
been said in Bach’s time, “in einer gewissenen grossartigen Freyheit,”
with a certain large freedom. These Toccatas will be eternal
favourites, because of their air of improvisation which develops the
fughetta out of the preludic movement, and scatters the playful,
pleasant technique in the midst of the severities of imitation.
Inexhaustible in the apparent formlessness of their form, they stand
on the threshold of modern literature as the great models of that true
clavier-style which will always have a touch of the extempore as one
of its characteristic features.
In the Toccatas it can be seen how Bach permits his fugal conceptions
organically to grow. It is in them that we see the psychology of
the fugue more purely than in the strictest formal fugal movements.
Take, for example, the F sharp minor Toccata. Here the fingers
preludise over the keyboard, gradually growing slower, the passages
differentiate themselves into motives, which gently imitate each
other, until at length they come to rest on a solid bass. This is the
moment of lyric inspiration; and the soul sighs itself out in a slow
movement, which weaves itself in fugal style, speedily sweeping forth
in its own free, harmonious woven-work. A staccato-motive breaks in;
rolling semiquavers soon crystallise around it; it grows and swells in
a three-voiced fugue; loosens itself, becomes lighter, and passes off
into an operatic joyousness, circling round in repetitions, which to
us seem almost too wide for the narrow significance of this motive.
A pause, and in the new-won freshness emerges the first chromatic
adagio-motive as a lively floating fugue, soon breaking forth into
four voices, and ending in a stirring finale.
Take the D major Toccata. Here there is a joyous prelude of ascending
scales, running off in chords and tremoli. An insertion of a fresh
capriccioso motive follows, which pursues its course mingled with
playful figures. A pause in adagio; mournfully moving melodies, freely
accompanied by tremoli; softly passing over into a quiet three-voice
fugue, which again leads to preluding passages, speaking recitatives,
broken chords, till the great wild hunt of triplets surges in its
fugal power. This D major piece is in content and technique Schumann
all over.
Similarly, one easily recognises the development of soul in the
solemn C minor Toccata, which is dominated almost throughout by
a charmingly-constructed fugue; or in the D minor Toccata, with
its stirring and beautiful adagio-movement; the G minor with its
bacchanalian finale; the rapid G major; and the never-to-be-forgotten
E minor with its clearness and restraint. They are all built up on an
inner meaning, and show a grandeur in their intimate nature such as
only Beethoven has dared to express on the clavier, and a soulfulness
never surpassed by a programme-musician in our century in his own
style. But the fugue has in them become the indwelling soul, and the
whole speech of music has absolutely ascended into their form. We see
it come, grow, and depart.
One who has investigated the psychology of Bach’s fugue in the
Toccatas, will no longer fail to recognise it in his pure and absolute
fugues. A fugue of Bach--this sounds to the _lay_ musical ear as the
very sum of all that is academic. But in reality never were fugues
written which were developed less academically, or which flow so
entirely from the soul. Only take the fugal form not as the end in
itself, and not as a mere example of musical architecture--only
take pains to discover the spirit of its unfolding--and we shall be
astounded at the endless variety of the inward musical life which is
profusely showered into this form. The essence of a fugue of Bach
is just this freedom from all architecture, this suppression of all
calculation in favour of the spiritual development. The fugal form,
that well-known series of enlargements and arrangements of the pure
canon, is to him a prime _datum_, from which, nevertheless, he has
formed no unbending principle. But he works with this material in such
a way that he keeps the development of a piece always subordinate to
the character which the fugal theme imposes on him. The theme is the
title, the piece the contents.
His genius reveals itself in perception of the thousand possibilities
of unfolding which lie in his themes--some advancing diatonically,
some studded over with pauses, some with sudden stops on sevenths,
some marching on in massive choral style, some humorously staccato,
especially those with startling false accents, others drawn in large
outlines which excite curiosity and scarcely stand forth in their
clear rhythm till the ninth or tenth bar, and which he was so fond of
because they gave the strongest stimulus to the coming development.
[Illustration: J. S. Bach.
Bust by Carl Seffner. Modelled on the actual skull. After His, J. S.
Bach (Vogel, Leipsic).]
Let the “layman” accustom himself not to be frightened by fugues. The
fugue in the grand style of Bach, constructed with that unparalleled
art which the first C major fugue in the “Wohltemperiertes Klavier”
displays, or which is shown in the C sharp minor fugue, with its three
themes gradually stratified one above the other, or rolling themselves
off with that extraordinary ease which we daily admire in the famous
A minor--this kind of fugue is a necessary speech of music: it is
melody, it is a natural language which can never disappear. To grasp
it, to assimilate it, until the many voices or even many themes of its
development stand clearly before our eyes in their full characteristic
value, is a feast for the musical epicure to which hardly anything
else can be compared. Bach’s fugues are _playable_. They are not too
easy; but they are so in the spirit of the clavier that the fingers
soon lose their timidity, and the work is as a mirror in which they
speedily recognise the necessary nature of their motion. And there is
an eternally fresh animation in this activity, in which no deception,
no dilettantism, no superfluity can exist for a moment.
The great artist, to whom the “Fantasy” is a presupposition, does
not work on it, however much it may seem to the crowd a chief aim;
he works on the form which requires this kind of work. We see Bach,
through his whole life, labouring at the fugue; and the encyclopædic
work, in the midst of which he died, “The Art of Fugue,” shows us
heights of power in this form which make us dizzy. Besides certain
scattered fugues, he has made a collection of different periods in
the two volumes of the “Wohltemperiertes Klavier.” Here every major
and minor mode of every semitone is doubly treated, with a prelude
and fugue--a comprehensiveness of arrangement which was partly due
to the taste of the time,[77] and partly can be referred to the
secondary aim of the work, which was the introduction of a system of
clavier-tuning which should be sufficient for practical purposes, in
which no acoustic solecisms should be committed to suit convenience,
and in which all the keys should be used indifferently and in their
completeness by pupils. It is not hard to detect that the unity of
these two volumes is not very complete. Even Spitta, a meritorious but
somewhat tasteless biographer, who seeks to find the “higher” unity
in all Bach’s works, is compelled to grant that there are varieties
of style and intrusions of alien matter in the “Wohltemperiertes
Klavier.” But that is no loss. The brilliant many-sidedness of its
contents can support even this discontinuity of style (which, by
the way, is but a slight discontinuity) and this artistic fusion of
certain preludes and fugues, which originally were not composed with
a view to each other. No one will fail to perceive how wonderfully
the preludes combine with each other and with many of the fugues. The
whole, perhaps, gains something of the character of the old composite
epics, such as Homer or the Bible. Bach’s autograph of the first part
bears the date 1722; there is no complete autograph of the second
part, and this Bible of clavier-playing was first printed in 1800, two
or three generations after its production.[78]
If we look at the original editions of the six works which were
printed in Bach’s time, they speak in no uncertain tone of the taste
of the age. From 1726 to 1730 appeared the “Klavierübung”--the first
part, with the suites which are known as “Partiten.” In 1735 we have
the second part of the Klavierübung, containing the Italian Concerto
and the “Ouverture nach französischer Art” (also a suite). In 1739
appeared the third part, in which are found organ chorales along
with four duets for two claviers. In these the distinction between
organ and clavier is as feebly marked as it always was before the
invention of the pianoforte. The fourth part, which appeared in 1742,
contains the great Variations for clavicymbal with two keyboards.
Besides these, in 1747 appeared the “Musikalisches Opfer,” in which
the theme of Frederick the Great is elaborated; and, in 1752, two
years after Bach’s death, was published the “Kunst der Fuge.” He could
only venture on the printing of the “Kunst” in his later years, when
the Bach fugue had made some way in the world. The “Musikalisches
Opfer” came out under the protection of the King; all the other
clavier-pieces which seemed to him likely to pay for the printing are
of a lighter kind--suites and concertos “for the delight of amateurs,”
as it stands on the title-page. The three types of the great Bach
counterpoint--the miniature Invention, the free Toccata, and the
absolute Fugue--then, as now, appealed to too select a circle to
attain the popularity of dances and concertos.
If Bach’s greatness is in the former works stupendous, in the latter
it is loveable. Here we learn to know his other side. It is his “other
manner.” Here, instead of the severe canonic development of a theme,
attention is paid to the voices as parts of a harmonious whole; he
steps down from the cothurnus, and moves familiarly in pleasant
comedy. Still, the contrapuntal conception is the basis of the
structure; but simply harmonised floriations of melody are interwoven,
so that the clavier almost rivals the arioso of a violin. Between
the extremes of the first movement of the “Chromatic Fantasia,”
with its free rhythms, arpeggios, recitatives, and song-passages,
and of the second movement, the regular fugue--extremes which mark
the two limits of Bach’s style--there is an endless abundance of
methods of treatment, in which now the contrapuntal element and now
the arioso takes the lead. We see Bach in this second group of his
clavier-works, the suites and concertos, pass over into the enchanting
fields of Italian sensuous music. But it is remarkable how he never
loses for a single moment his unique depth and his insatiable delight
in form. There is a very abyss between a suite of Bach, founded on
the Eternities, and one of Handel’s, owing its popularity to the
transitory charms of dexterous trivialities.
There are three great groups of Bach’s clavier-suites: the so-called
Partiten, which appeared in print in his own life-time, the “English
Suites,” and the “French Suites.” The Partiten, which were first
published separately, must, as the earliest work of this author known
to the public, have struck the whole world with bewilderment. It was
the first bound of a unique genius, the elevation of a traditional
form of art into quite unparalleled shapes, a storm of intellectual
lightning in a region long regarded as exclusively owned by Frenchmen
and Italians. Even to-day the Partiten belong to the most select class
of clavier-literature; and I cannot for a moment conceive how they
are not to be regarded as superior by many degrees to the English
and French suites. In no book is the future of music more clearly
foretold. To see in the B flat major corrente, Chopin; in the B flat
major gigue, Schumann; in the C minor sinfonia, Beethoven; in the C
minor Rondo and Capriccioso, Mendelssohn; in the A minor Scherzo,
Mozart, is no mere enthusiastic fancy.
[Illustration: The Fifteenth Sinfonia of John Sebastian Bach, from the
Royal Musikbibliothek, Berlin.]
The Partiten outgrew the ordinary scheme of the suites (allemande,
corrente, saraband, gigue) as Beethoven’s sonatas outgrew the old
scheme of sonatas. They have given a new life and a new spirit to
a traditional form. The suite, which at the end of the seventeenth
century has become merely conventional, is so elevated by the spirit
of Bach that it thenceforward stands in the world of actuality.
Even Schumann selects a similar form for the expression of modern
emotions. The suite having been thus despatched, the sonata is in
similar fashion put into precise and regular form, to be transfigured
later by Beethoven with the same modern spirit. Bach had the fortune
and the genius to relegate the traditional suite into the past, and
to see the conventional sonata dawning in the future. Thus with him
the dance-piece and the free piece remained fresh and lively. Suite
and sonata were only different external ways for reducing several
pieces to unity. There, men took their stand on the old familiar
series of dance-tunes, without ever thinking of the dances themselves;
here, they found for the first movement a practical form, and, in
the event, ranged the adagio, scherzo, and rondo together, just as
their predecessors had used the saraband, minuet, and gigue. On this
tendency to unity on the part of the clavier-pieces, from the first
English variations, through Couperin’s Ordres, to Bach’s suites,
Italian sonatas and German sonatas, Chopin’s Albums, Schumann’s
Scenes, Liszt’s Epics, too much stress need not be laid. Even more
than the orchestra, the clavier leans to short pieces, but the
intellect demands some excuse for binding them together.
If we take a striking liveliness as the characteristic of the
Partiten, we indeed find a feature in which they are distinguished
from the French Suites, but which is far from exhausting their
qualities. Solid melodies, humorous capriccios, enchanting dances,
tuneful airs, everything is included in these works. In their pages
we realise how the spirit of Bach strives to utter the very utmost of
which it feels itself capable. And in these introductory preludes,
toccatas, or symphonies, in these flowing allemandes, gliding
correntes, heavy sarabands, filigree-worked gigues, in those numerous
intermezzo movements, such as burlesques, rondos, airs, minuets, and
passepieds, there are turns of genius, the form of which is impressed
for ever on the mind. I think of the sweet running movements of the
astonishing B flat major Gigue; of the brilliant structure of the C
minor Capriccio, which concludes the Partita in place of a Gigue; of
the D major aria, in which breathes the whole grace of the eighteenth
century; of the bold and rhapsodical Saraband in D major; of the
rich colouring of the introductory E minor Toccata; the rocking
melody of the allemande, the sombre glow of the saraband, the wayward
syncopations of the gigue.
The six English Suites, which we may certainly assume to have been
put into juxtaposition by Bach himself, stand between the six
printed Partiten and the six French Suites, whose combination was
only probably, not certainly, due to Bach. They would seem to have
been called “English” suites, because they were arranged for some
Englishman; the original title was apparently “suites avec prélude.”
For the English suites, like the Partiten, have each a fairly long
introduction, fugal in style, but not conforming to the strictest laws
of the fugue. The intermezzi, also, are as numerous as in the case
of the Partiten. But that extreme intellectual severity is wanting;
they are more graceful and polite. This character is especially
noticeable in the introductory fugal movements and the intermediate
dance pieces; and one who seeks rather a play of tone than grandeur
of soul will perhaps find here a richer yield than in the Partiten.
Neat, volkslied-like sarabands, ravishing bourrées, rococo gavottes,
ornamental minuets, the exquisitely delicate passepied in E
minor--these all lie so thick one on another, that one cannot recall
a more sparkling album of dainty dances in the whole eighteenth
century. It is true that in the Vienna school (as in the case of the
younger[79] Muffat and others) there is in this class of dances a
gentle soothing quality, which gives us the first hint of the coming
beautiful Viennese dance-music; but they are, like those of Handel,
too short in duration and too featureless for us to be able to return
to them with the extraordinary affection with which we return to those
of Bach. These are so rich in invention that they cannot in many
centuries lose their flavour. The dancing underpart of the D major
gavotte in the D minor suite, the multiform air of the D minor, E
minor, and A minor sarabands, the filigree-counterpoint of the E minor
Passepied, the extreme daring of the A minor bourrée, the transport of
the A minor prelude, which even grows into a roundelay,--what a depth
of originality is there in all these pieces, in which the repetitions
so wonderfully satisfy the laws of the mind without becoming
mechanical!
How the French Suites came by their name is hard to say. More French
than the English suites they are certainly not, for they are quite
as Bach-like as the latter. Without Preludes and without too many
Intermezzi or “Doubles” (repetitions with variations), they are of
astonishing variety. The Allemandes especially, as first movements in
every suite, display such a manifoldness of form, that in fact nothing
is left in common to them but the four-time beat. The song in the
Saraband and the dance in the Intermezzi appear to the same effect
as in the English suites, and a light tone runs through the whole.
But the tone is lightest of all in the E major suite, which with its
rolling allemande and courante, its singing saraband, its stiff and
formal gavotte, its characteristic polonaise, its tricksy bourrée,
and its cheerful gigue, is a perfect paradise of dainty devices.
The flowing courante in it strikes our fancy; for it is precisely
in the courantes of these suites with their heavy old-fashioned
movements that we shall most often hit on the rare occasions on which
we must regard Bach as already obsolete. The ornamentations tend to
appear less befitting to us, scattered so profusely as they are in
these movements. But to Bach, little as he could as yet succeed in
emancipating himself from ornamentations, they were no longer such a
matter of course as with the old French clavecinists. If we compare
the different manuscripts of his works, we see the uncertainties and
alterations. Bischoff, in his excellent critical edition of Bach’s
clavier-music (Steingräber) has therefore only engraved large those
ornamentations which were without doubt always played by Bach. Taste
will fill them in in certain places on grounds of symmetry and
“thematic”; but they are no longer bewildering in their profusion.
Among the suites which do not belong to these collections, we
recollect with great pleasure the dainty dances and intermezzi--for
example in the E flat major suite, and especially that in B minor
with overture in French style (Largo--Fuga--Largo) which appeared in
the second part of the Klavierübung as a piece for two manuals. It
presents, among the many intermezzi, a gavotte in the style of the
orchestral Partiten, which links itself with the choicest dances, in
graceful style, of the preceding century. From the clavier-suites we
pass to the clavier-sonatas, which, still in the style of Italian
art, mingled with dances, offer free combinations of different
movements. The melodious andante of the D minor sonata, and its
final allegro-movement rattling off almost in one part, are perfect
pearls. A step further we reach the fantasias with fugues; especially
the polyphonic one in A minor, the recitatival “Chromatische” and
the concerto-like C minor, fugally treated, but still not a fugue.
These three fantasia-pieces were Bach’s direct bequests to the
future. In the polyphony of the brilliantly rushing fantasia in A
minor, rising with endlessly delicate melody, we are reminded of the
“Meistersinger”; in the chromatic fantasia, with its broad narration
and grandiose concluding pedal point, the clavier seems to us to speak
with the freedom of a drama; in the significantly constructed C minor
fantasia rests the whole formal talent of the instrumental composers
of the expiring eighteenth century.
The three “brilliant” fantasias incline naturally to the concerto
style, which partly abandoned counterpoint in favour of a mere
accompaniment, and partly subordinated it to the careful elaboration
of a single voice-part. The problem of committing a whole concerto
to the clavier alone, Bach has solved in his famous “Italian
Concerto”--Italian in the conception of the style of execution
proper to concertos, which in Italy developed itself specially on
the violin--Italian in the form of a slow movement enclosed by two
quicker movements, which had emerged as the most practical method
for the violin (half in rivalry with the Tutti, half in the interest
of solo virtuosity). Bach has in the Italian concerto perfectly
attained the object of writing in several movements a clavier piece
fit for execution. The grand sonatas of a later time have been able
to add nothing essential to it. The first movement is an ingenious
combination of pregnant motives, which reminds us of tutti-effects,
of running semiquaver figures, and melodious passages on moving
quaver accompaniment, which correspond to the second lyrical theme
of sonatas. The slow movement is a great recitative song with a
berceuse-like accompaniment, of a structure so delicate that we are
irresistibly reminded of the contours of old primitive pictures.
It has the dainty grace of archaic outline, just like that in the
two-part interwoven arioso[80] of the B minor Prelude, or in the crisp
melody of the E flat Prelude (Wohltemperiertes Klavier I.). The third
movement, which is quicker, unravels the whole into the cheerful
linked play of floating parts, unsurpassed in elegant construction by
any of the great formalists. Floating passages run up and down among
chords, falling like drops of rain, and the voices combine in pleasant
unity.
[Illustration: Facsimile of Title-page of Bach’s Manuscript of the
Wohltemperiertes Klavier. In the Royal Musikbibliothek, Berlin.]
The entire multiformity of music at the beginning of the eighteenth
century is expressed in the clavier-works of Bach. As yet the
sonata-form with its two themes, and its “free” section in the middle
of the movement, has not become the consecrated scheme;[81] and
all the forces which had gradually worked towards this form exert
themselves unfettered, in order to make themselves effective now in
this, now in that combination of movements and parts of movements.
“Thematic” is not neglected. To a series of suite-movements similar
commencing motives are given, and the motives of earlier parts are
taken up in the later. But this tendency to unity does not act as
a restraint upon form, and does not reduce everything to one stiff
mould. There is a fugue with a prelude, by Bach, that in E flat major
(Wohltemp. Kl. i.), which offers perhaps the most delicate example of
this unrestrained unity of motive. The Prelude, which is much longer
than the fugue, begins with semiquaver figures, whose characteristic
is melodious sustained passages advancing by sixths and sevenths;
after this introduction, begins in toccata-fashion a kind of slow
fugue, which unfolds the just heard motive in a terser form; and
finally, in a third part, mingles itself with the former semiquaver
figure. The fourth part is so to speak moulded in the fugue form,
which in its “subject” makes use of the characteristic leap of a
seventh, found in the Prelude, as a main feature, and brings the play
to a conclusion in a busy and lively manner. The relations of motive
are only to be _felt_, not seen; but they are _there_, and give to
the formal freedom of this piece a vigour of its own. Thus, in many
of Bach’s pieces, apart from the direct thematic motives, we shall
find this indirect assonance, which, springing from a general feeling
of unity, is, in fact, a more dainty framework for the piece than any
unity that could be impressed on it from outside.
So also is it with the construction of the pieces. We find everywhere
traces of the later sonata-style; and not less in the dance-forms
than in free movements. It was too natural to repeat the beginning of
the piece at the end, then to transpose a second theme into the main
key, and in the centre to work out the main motive in a kind of free
fantasia. But so long as the author held fast to the binary form of
the piece, and to the Da capo of each half, as was the case at this
time, so long did the parts of the “developments” and repetitions fail
to concentrate themselves so completely as not to leave a rich field
of varied forms in which fancy could move at ease. Bach’s imagination
was keen enough to give to every one of these forms, as they developed
themselves each moment, a natural and elemental strength. A toccata by
him, although they are all very various in form, or a fantasia, like
the C minor, which is of sonata-character, is built up so firmly and
self-evidently that the later uniformity of the sonata seems rather to
betray a weakening than a strengthening of style.
[That the severe forms of Prelude and Fugue are abundantly capable of
expressing poetical ideas is easily shown. Turn only to the D minor
Prelude and Fugue in the second part of the Wohltemperiertes Klavier.
Although the casual reader perceives in the one movement merely an
exercise in two parts, in the other, one in three parts, it requires
only a slight exercise of imagination to see that the work really
pictures some such feelings as the following: In the Prelude, a man
suddenly realises himself in the true “out-of-doors” of this life,
with the rain and hail of difficulties and troubles sensibly battering
him. Bravely, but ineffectually, he tries to push through the tempest,
and sinks wearily into half-sleep, is awakened by a renewed riot of
the elements around, tries harder than before, and longer too, to
impress himself on his circumstances, and be master of things, and
succeeds in a sorrowful kind of way, for the storm passes, sighs
itself out, and he at last can rest. In the Fugue, he tries to begin
his work in the world. His efforts are strong in their intention, but
die down as weakly as the devil himself could wish, one after another.
But though these messengers of his will return to him empty again and
again, he still goes on. “It is the best I can do, and something may
come of it in the end,” he seems to say. And there is in the final
bars, where the subject occurs for the last time, a certain expression
of savage pleasure at the thought of not having given in, mingled with
the abiding knowledge of an abundant measure of continual failure,
such as is no imagination to any man who cares about his work, and has
arrived at the sorrowful conviction that most of his walking must be
done in the dark.][82]
Perhaps the Bach Preludes show this freedom on the most liberal scale.
For the Prelude is not so much a kind of form, like the Toccata, but
a mere Piece before a Piece; it lays down the lines to be followed,
but in itself is uncertain, unfixed in form. The Prelude may be a
Toccata or a Sonata, a Symphony or an Invention; it can let its upper
part, in arioso style, wander over the continuo, or it may burst forth
in fullest polyphony. It may have the rhythm and regularity of beat
of the dances, or may speak with the freedom of recitative without
thought of a repetition. The abundance of possibilities which Bach
found at his disposal in the working out of themes, construction,
and style, are mirrored in the Preludes, from the real fugue to the
playful method of the court-musicians.[83] Anyone who undertakes
the pleasant task of simply running through the Preludes of the
“Wohltemperiertes Klavier” (vol. ii.), will be able to appreciate
the full spring-like freshness in which the free music of this time,
so rich in promise for the future, lived out its life. And, like the
discriminating observer of nature, he will admire, in just these yet
unspoilt forms, the great harmony and natural unity which is exhibited
by the young life of the creation. The Prelude in E major will always
seem to me a blossom of this spring-time (“Wohlt. Kl.” i.)--one of
the daintiest pieces ever written for the clavier. In an easy 12/8
time the poem begins with an allegretto theme, ingeniously invented,
and playful in style. It is supported by two voices; but they soon
take part canonically in the delightful movement. We have, in the
play of cheerful thought, come to the dominant of the dominant[84]
(F sharp), and from this F sharp we rest, in a humorous change, a
moment on D, and even G, till, just as rapidly, we emerge through
a chromatic maze at B natural once more (Bar 8). The repose of the
succeeding dominant passage is gently stirred by ravishing transient
modulations, on which the very spirit of happiness seems to rest. A
beautiful chain of syncopations leads us through F sharp minor, and a
jubilant run of semiquavers, built on a dominant chord on E, brings us
to the recapitulation of the opening subject in the key of A (Bar 15),
starting from which the movement repeats itself accurately (for eight
bars) in its eternal cheerfulness, the piece closing with a couple
of bars in Schumann’s ingenious manner, still sweetly suggesting the
spring-song of its earlier strains.
We find, then, that nothing essentially new in “form” has been used
by later artists, of which the germ did not already exist in Bach.
Nay, even in programme-music (supposed by many to be an invention of
modern times) for the clavier, which Kuhnau so quaintly worked out
in his Biblical Stories,[85] Bach has entered the field in a youthful
composition. He is singing the departure of his brother. The first
adagio movement in anapæstic rhythms represents the flattery of the
friends, who are trying to dissuade the traveller from his journey. It
is time for the fugue, and this is the picture of various misfortunes
which may befall him in foreign parts. A mournful arioso passage on
a ground bass,[86] chromatic in character, is a universal lament
of his friends. In a full-chorded Intermezzo they come and bid him
good-bye, seeing that it cannot be otherwise. Now the postillion sings
his air, broken with octave passages, representing the smacks of his
whip; and since a fugue is the end of all good things, we hear one in
four parts raise itself above the post-horn, with whip episodes to
increase the realism. The young Bach did not go as far as Frohberger,
who represented the assaults of robbers, crossings of the Rhine, and
even forcible ejectments with violence, on the clavier; or as Kuhnau,
who had given the cheating of Laban in “deceptive” cadences,[87] and
Hezekiah’s doubtings in the rehearsal of a choral; yet this kind of
programme-music declined in the eighteenth century precisely as it has
grown up again in the nineteenth.
If we believe Spitta, Bach also left behind him one of those
anagram-pieces which were so in the taste of his time--the fugue
on the letters B A C H. But the composition seems too leathern and
insipid for us to be able to express a decided opinion. There is in
literary criticism a well-known false method--the wish utterly to deny
insipidity to the great. But since Bach’s authorship of the “B A C H”
fugue is not vouched for, and since he never elsewhere put together
so many dull pages, we are not compelled to load his memory with its
weight.
[Illustration: John Mattheson, at the age of 37.]
As we find in Bach the possibilities of all the great forms of the
succeeding centuries, so we find in him also all the germs of future
expression, rhythm, harmony, and melody. Nothing is more perverse than
to regard this music as academic and expressionless. Expression is
never absent from counterpoint except when it sacrifices impressionism
to the mere display of technical mastery. We shall even to-day seek
in vain for piano compositions more full of expression than some
of the preludes contained in the Wohltemperiertes Klavier. In the
remarkably decadent C sharp minor, in the B minor, so full of gentle
mournfulness, in the E flat minor with its grandiose solemnity, in
the B flat minor with its organ-like seriousness, or in the F major
with its Meister-singer melody[88] (in Part II. Wohlt. Kl.), there
is an unsurpassed depth of expression. Nowhere is there a greater
variety of characters than would be presented by a comparison of the
fugal themes in this work. Merely to turn over a few of its pages is
to see before us an abundance of content which no other music-book
would easily conceal in so narrow a space. It is in the service of
expression that the motives for the architecture of the fugues are
unfolded; in the service of expression the rhythms are developed,
whose skilful planning is only clearly seen in a piece like the G
major Prelude (Wohlt. Kl. i.); in the service of expression are formed
the harmonies, from their simple successions, as in the C major
Prelude (W. Kl. i.) or of the C sharp major Prelude (W. Kl. ii.)
to the complicated retardations and tied notes of the B flat minor
Prelude (Wohl. Kl. i.), or in the B minor fugue (W. Kl. i.) on a theme
so wonderfully sad that no bolder chords can be found in the days of
the most furious chords of the seventh. In Bach, says Marpurg, the
different talents of a hundred other musicians were united.
Bach played very quietly. In his time technique began to change its
principles. The hand was no longer to be held out flat, but curved, so
as to provide a series of hammers rather than levers. The passing of
the fingers over each other, as practised by Mattheson, a player of
distinction almost equal to Bach and Handel, gave way to a systematic
_under_-passing; and the thumb, which Bach had seen applied by former
generations only to wide stretches, began its important part as the
“linking” finger. The remains of Bach’s finger-exercises, and the
directions which stand in the lesson-book of his son Philip Emanuel,
have been usefully compared[89] by Spitta, who has drawn a picture
of the technique of John Sebastian, which in its grandeur well fits
with his work. “It was a system of under-moving fingers, worked out by
unparalleled practice and talent, applying not merely to the thumb
but to the middle fingers, and usually so arranged that only a longer
finger can pass over a shorter.[90] This produced a technique which,
like Bach’s work, united past and future in one classic method. Our
thumb-technique, which in essentials goes back to Philip Emanuel, is a
mere fragment of Bach’s method, just as the whole succeeding art was,
compared with Bach, but a fragment on a large scale.” But it is hard
to be clear on these matters. Before the time of “schools” technique
was a matter of personality; and reconstruction to us of a later age
is utterly out of the question.
Should a diligent scholar try to reconstruct from Bach’s pieces his
technique, so far as it had influenced musical form, he would soon be
brought to a pause. For when we examine this literature, we see that
to the master everything was possible, and that he never gave form
to a conception for the sake of technique. He is a stupendous genius
who does not write for everybody, and therefore his compositions are
often difficult; but the difficulties are never against the genius of
the clavier, and can be conquered by anything but idleness. He has,
again, written some taking show-pieces, like the Prelude and Fugues
in A minor (Steingräber, vii. 29), which, as “paying” salon pieces,
sound much harder than they are; and, alongside of these again, are
pieces which spring from the very joy in the abundance of possible
techniques and of new conceptions. To this class belongs, if genuine,
the Fantasia in A minor (Steingräber, vii. 8), in which pure technical
fireworks are let off, of short scale passages for both hands,
swinging chords and octaves, running motives with astonishing passage
effects, passages of sixths with over and under accompaniments, and
melodious phrases with embellishing harmonies. But here the first rank
is taken by the famous “Goldberg” variations, already printed by Bach,
partly set for two manuals, an album of thirty technical conceptions,
in which everything possible in tone-material is contained, from
arioso to canon, from _grave_ to _presto_; everything, in fact, which
Bach ever adopted for the setting of his ideas. The twenty-ninth
variation, which can also be played on one manual, brings before us
chords and passages of interwoven beauty which prepare beforehand the
way for Liszt. Even in technique, then, the genius of Bach stretches
over centuries.
It cannot be exactly maintained that Bach treated the clavier wholly
individually, but he nevertheless has helped to individualise it.
At the beginning of last century, when the clavier was still for
the most part an accompanying instrument, when it sustained in the
orchestra the foundation-harmonies, even if at the same time another
clavier entered in concerto-wise, genius itself could not release the
instrument from this corporate conception without running against
the whole spirit of the time. It is remarkable how Bach left it the
character of a thorough-bass instrument, and yet allowed it so much
independence. It has at one time the divided nature of the unifying
organ, as organ-pieces were then regarded still as practically ready
for the clavier; at another the pizzicato and running character of
the lute. Bach could entitle his formally interesting E flat major
piece, Prelude, Fugue, and Allegro (Steingräber, vii. 30) as Prélude
pour le luth _ò çembal_.[91] From the traditions of the lute and organ
the peculiar nature of the clavier comes into existence, and it was
in the maintenance of the _via media_ between these less delicately
expressive extremes that its future lay. How _individually_ Bach
regarded the clavier is seen in the pieces in which it is combined
with flute and viol da gamba or violin, or in the concertos with
one, two, three, or even four claviers. Among these the C major and
D minor concertos with three claviers, now combined, now isolated,
represent the highest points of this older form of the concerto, as
yet not adapted for solo-virtuosity. But yet plainer is his insight
in the direct transcriptions which he has made of violin pieces for
the clavier. He interpolates in the freest fashion middle voices,
which are kept together by “pedals;” ornamentations which draw out
the air of the melody in clavier-style; or rapid vibrating over-parts
which make up for the loss of the long-drawn violin tones. And by
this insight into the peculiar character of the clavier, he makes
it more capable not only of speaking with its own voice, but also
of spreading over wider circles the literature of other instruments
by means of suitable and self-intelligible transcriptions. Bach’s
extreme love of this instrument, which so often gave him the means of
expression for his musical conceptions, contributed not the least to
such an interpretative mission. Slowly the world accustomed itself to
understand music, not _per chorum_, but _per instrumentum_.
It is at this point that the great need is felt. A mechanical advance
is required to bring the expressive capacity of the clavier into a
line with the demands of genius upon it. The rivalry between the
clavicymbal and the clavichord[92] was not yet quite decided. In
Romance lands the former was the favourite; in Germany the latter.
On the former great effects could be better produced; on the latter
the more soulful tone, and the unique embellishment called “Bebung.”
Bach wrote much, including the Wohltemperiertes Klavier, for the
clavichord, which even his son Philip Emanuel still preferred to
the clavicymbal. But he was so unable to disguise from himself the
counter advantages of the fuller and broader quill-instrument, that
he published pieces for “Kiel-flügel”[93], with two manuals and
registers for forte and piano. These registers were the only means
for giving light and shade to the monotonous note of the “cymbal”;
to give light and shade by turns, as in the organ, so that on the
upper manual a melody could be played loud, and on the lower the
accompaniment could be played soft. In Kuhnau we see the forte and
piano, which he aimed at by simply striking on the clavichord, used
as a means of expression. In the Biblical Stories Jacob has just
been cheated by Laban, in receiving Leah for Rachel. “The bridegroom
is contented,” as a minuet shows us; but “his heart prophesies
misfortune,” and the measure rushes on, becomes piano and più-piano;
suddenly Jacob takes heart again--forte; after a bar or two he goes to
sleep--piano; he wakes--forte; falls into deep slumber--piano. In his
“Italian Concerto” Bach had made a much more specialised use of this
by the register. He had mingled loud and soft parts, and each hand
alternately is marked forte or piano. In these, and similarly in the
echo-movement of the suite with “Ouverture à la manière française,”
we are led to think of a splendid clavicymbal, such as the one
preserved ostensibly as Bach’s in the Berlin Museum of Instruments.
In that, every one of the combinations of four strings can be altered
by pulling a register: the manuals admit of coupling, and a soft
lute-stop is provided.
[Illustration:
Pedal-clavichord. Consisting of two manual clavichords, with
two strings to each note, of (8 ft. and) 4 ft. tone, and a
pedal-clavichord with four strings to each note, two 16 ft. and two 8
ft. Inscribed “Johann David Herstenberg, Organ-builder at Geringswald,
made us, 1760.” De Wit collection. ]
We know of a hundred attempts to improve the sound of the clavier,
and make it more expressive. Here, too, the eighteenth century is the
experimental preparation for the happy successes of the nineteenth.
Now the string-choruses were tuned in octaves, now pedals were added
for low notes, now the sound-boards were strengthened, now the lower
strings were made of copper, and the higher of steel; and throughout
a rich experience was acquired as to the best way of constructing the
separate parts. Leather plectrums appear everywhere in order to make
the tone softer and less metallic. The clavier, in fact, was made to
imitate all possible orchestral instruments, and even such natural
phenomena as thunder and lightning, by means of register-stops. Or,
the forte and piano stops were combined, ever more artistically, into
as many as two hundred and fifty permutations, so that an endless
number of shades was possible.
The solution of the problem was the modern hammer-clavier or
pianoforte, in which the strings are no longer plucked but struck with
hammers, so that every _nuance_ of touch depends on the fingers. The
story of the pianoforte is the usual Story of Inventions. While people
were labouring to solve the problem by theoretical calculation, it
had long lain solved in an unsuspected fashion before them, and those
who were slowly working at the practical realisation were personally
forgotten, until a positively sufficient experience made the new
invention popular. The beginnings of the pianoforte are therefore,
as usual, obscure. The striking of the strings with hammers had long
been the method employed in the dulcimer. At the beginning of the last
century an artist named Pantaleon Hebenstreit was much talked of, who
played the dulcimer so perfectly, that everyone was astounded at the
new sound-effects. It is possible that his success gave the impulse:
in any case, in the year 1711 there emerges in Italy an instrument
called the pianoforte--because it could be played piano as well as
forte--elaborated by a certain Bartolommeo Cristofori, who was soon
forgotten. This instrument is clearly pictured in writings recently
recovered as a hammer-clavier; Cristofori, as curator to Ferdinand
de’ Medici, had a splendid collection of Belgian, French, and Italian
Flügel-instruments to look after, the study of which, without doubt,
aided him in his invention. His pianoforte, which at first shows a
still more primitive technique, gradually draws sensibly nearer to the
modern system; yet, on account of its unaccustomed tone and touch, it
was unable to gain any appreciable results in the following decades.
Cristofori could not have dreamt that an Italian society of our time
would build a monument to him as inventor of the world-charming
pianoforte, in the national sanctuary, the Santa Croce of Florence.
Whether Hebenstreit built on Cristofori, Cristofori on the French, or
the French on the Germans, is unknown. Possibly the pianoforte was
invented thrice over, in Italy, France, and Germany. In France appears
Marius in the year 1716 as the inventor; in Germany it would seem that
a certain Schröter, incited by the success of Hebenstreit, invented it
in 1717; at least he himself says so in a writing first published in
Freiberg in 1763, ten years after the death of the instrument-maker,
Silbermann. But Silbermann had in any case the merit of having, at a
more fortunate time than Cristofori, worked so hard at the perfecting
of the pianoforte, that from him its increasing spread and the gradual
displacement of the clavicymbal and clavichord may be dated. Yet this
very Gottlieb Silbermann had constructed a “cimbal d’amour,” which by
a cleverly devised mechanism heightened the tone of the clavichord--so
“lonesome, melancholy, and inexpressibly sweet.” But his later renown
rests on his exquisitely manipulated pianoforte. He had a good master
in this difficult work--John Sebastian Bach. When he brought his first
model to Bach the latter found it too weak in the treble and too hard
to play. Silbermann was first vexed, then stimulated by this censure.
He then sold no more, and went on making improvements in it until the
old Bach, as Agricola[94] says, gave him unmixed commendation.
If we play Bach to-day on our extremely refined pianofortes, we are
inclined to imagine that his fine effects are solely due to the
perfection of the instrument. And this opinion is not wholly false.
Though in the cembalo there sounded in his ear something of the
accustomed solemnity of the organ, there is yet in his music a cry for
a subtle and expressive instrument which he as little possessed as
Beethoven possessed an orchestra suited to his ideas. In every great
tone-creator lives a superabundance of imaginative form which the
instruments of the time cannot embody, and to which the instruments
instantly strive to become equal. Because Berlioz was, the modern
orchestra is. Because Bach was, the pianoforte is, which knows how
to express with justice the subtleties of his soul-music. I think
for example of the never-to-be-forgotten theme of the C sharp minor
prelude in the first volume of the Wohltemperiertes Klavier. The
clavichord could only give this theme in a thin lament; the spinet in
a rigid and unmanageable form. But what features does not the motive
show as the piece runs on! Now it has the slow-breathing rhythm of a
noble aspiration, now the opening eyes of an expectant Cecilia, now
the heavy oppression of a martyr soul, now the holy rage of a last
noble complaint, now the sweet weariness of Christian humility. And
with these various tints the piece builds itself up into a broad
picture, which leads from renunciations through pain to renunciations;
with these tints every line, every note of the theme is given an
active life, as it pursues its course. Composition like this demanded
an instrument which should be capable of a new expression in every
touch. All that Bach dreamed of, the pianoforte gave, awakening the
gentle soul of the clavichord to an unthought-of fulness of existence,
and changing the mechanical force of the clavicymbal to a sudden
consciousness of personality. The voices of a fugue-passage would
now be personally separated from each other; every line in the great
lacework could be brought out at the moment according to the feelings
of the performer. What, under the sacred laws of Bach’s music,
slumbered in the depth of the breast, found in the new instrument its
unreserved interpretation.
[95]It seems at first sight almost tragic that Bach himself can never
have realised these effects, which are so familiar to us in connection
with his music as it is nowadays interpreted on the pianoforte. But
perhaps it is the wisdom of Fate to ordain that the cup of the artist
should ever be dashed by a certain bitterness, the conscious falling
short of attainment as it appears in complete idea before his mind.
[Illustration: “Bundfrei” Clavichord (_i.e._ with a separate string to
each key), by Chr. G. Hubert, Bayreuth, 1772. De Wit collection.]
When an artistic form reaches perfection, its active life is over, and
it is a subject of contemplation, no longer a tool to be used.
And just so, when the instrument necessary to the full interpretation
of Bach’s clavier-music, the pianoforte, had arrived within measurable
distance of perfection, then did Bach’s own Art reach its highest
formal expression, then once more did the fashion of things suffer a
change, and his work began to take its place as a colossal monument
pointing on the road towards the House Beautiful.
Bach is, as it were, the priest of modern music. His congregation
sit at his feet daily. Wherever a pianoforte is found, there is his
temple. But though the priest cannot utterly control the worship of
his hearers (nay, many will bow the knee to Rimmon in the house of the
God), still his voice is strong, his words are true, and they may hear
if they will.] This is the significance of Bach, and the longer we
live, the more we shall believe it.
[73] The word “Intavolata” was used about 1600 to describe
the “arrangement” of a many-voiced madrigal for the
keyed instrument. Hence “intavolatura” comes to mean a
“copy” presenting all the parts at one view, and such
“arrangements” for clavier were common and popular.
[74] More than a century before Kuhnau, an English
clavier composer, John Munday, composed a piece of
“programme-music,” with the various sections labelled,
_e.g._--Faire Wether, Lightening, Thunder, Calme Wether,
A Cleare Day. It is the third piece in the Fitzwilliam
Virginal Book.
[75] Bach died in 1750. Hawkins published his great History
of Music in 1776, and in spite of the fact that he had his
information direct from Bach’s son, John Christian Bach,
then living in London, he appears quite ignorant of any of
his works but the Clavierübung (1731-42), from which he
prints three short harpsichord pieces.
[76] This is certainly not so, historically speaking.
The strict canon is far older than what we understand by
“imitation.”
[77] Long before Bach was born, we find an English composer
anticipating this comprehensive treatment of the scales.
Before 1667, John Jenkins wrote a series of “Fancies” on
each degree of the alphabetical scale, three movements to
the set. The keys actually used are C, D, E, F, G, A, B
flat, all minor except F and B flat. But, as is mentioned
in a previous note, in one of the three movements in F,
Jenkins modulates nearly through all the flat keys, at
any rate as far as D flat, thus showing that already
in the middle of the seventeenth century an Englishman
contemplated Bach’s accomplished work of using the scale
on every semitone. And this by no means fixes the ultimate
limit. Bull’s fantasia on Ut, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La--piece
number 51 in the Fitzwilliam book--modulates into all the
twelve keys. Though this does not _prove_ that instruments
were as yet tuned with an equal temperament, it does prove
that Bach was in no sense the originator of the idea,
and the probability is very great that the system was in
practical use in England in Elizabethan times. Bull was
flourishing in 1590.
[78] The date of the first edition of the “Forty-eight” is
uncertain, namely, 1799 or 1800, London. (Author’s note.)
[79] August Gottlieb Muffat, of Vienna, 1690-1770, son of
Georg Muffat, organist of Strassburg Cathedral.
[80] This movement is in three parts, and the allusion
is to the two upper voices, which maintain a duet in
_cantabile_ on a gently moving quaver bass.
[81] The idea of the two subjects, and of the “free”
section after the central double bar, was already realised
incompletely. In the shortest “binary” movements the scheme
of _keys_ is found to be P, Q. (double bar) || Q, various,
P.
[82] This paragraph is suggested by a corresponding one in
the author’s German edition.
[83] The author means such composers as Rameau, Galuppi,
Couperin, who wrote for their audience to a great extent.
[84] This expression may be misunderstood unless reference
is made to the music. The passage arrives at the key of B
(the “dominant” key), but the F sharp mentioned is merely
the bass note.
[85] See above, p. 92.
[86] A “ground” bass is a short passage repeated an
indefinite number of times through an extensive movement.
In this case it consists of four bars, and is not repeated
so strictly as usual, though its general figure is kept up
throughout.
[87] This expression, “deceptive” cadence, is a translation
of _cadenza d’inganno_, one of the several cadences or
closes which had names given to them by the old theorists.
The “inganno” cadence was something like the “interrupted”
cadence, but was supposed to lead into _another key_, hence
the “deception.”
[88] The author possibly refers to the flowing freedom of
the counterpoint in the quintet in Wagner’s opera. But
there is no need nowadays to demonstrate that the Bayreuth
master is as necessarily a contrapuntist as he of Weimar.
[89] Meaning, of course, that the fingering methods of
the father and son are by no means identical. The former
employed the crossing of the fingers over one another
freely; whereas Philip Emanuel’s notions of fingering
are practically ours. See his “Exempel nebst achtzehn
Probe-Stücken, etc.,” date 1780.
[90] This method is still commonly practised. Chopin,
Liszt, and others, supply innumerable examples,
particularly of the passing of 4 over 5.
[91] That is, “for the lute _or_ clavier.”
[92] It is necessary once more to remind the reader of the
_essential_ difference in “action,” power of expression,
and strength of tone, between these two instruments; and of
the unfortunate ambiguity which exists in the use of the
name “clavichord.” _Vide supra_, pp. 21 and 89, note.
[93] Kiel = quill, flügel = wing, _i.e._ a keyed instrument
with a plucking “action” of _quill_ plectrums, with a case
made in the shape of a bird’s _wing_. Grand pianofortes
are still made in this shape, and therefore are still
called “flügel” in Germany. Kiel-flügel is synonymous with
clavicymbal (hence “cembalo”), and means “harpsichord.”
[94] Agricola was a pupil of John Sebastian Bach, and in
1754 helped Bach’s son Emanuel to write a biography of his
father.
[95] Suggested by corresponding paragraphs.
[Illustration: Philip Emanuel Bach, as he was in his Hamburg period.]
The “Galant” School
When Bach died, the musical centre of gravity tended to Germany; but
it was doubtful what precise line would be followed. On Bach anything
could be built. A great period of counterpoint might rise in which
voices might go through a new series of harmonic complexities, similar
to, and yet so different from those of the Middle Ages. Or there
might come a period of great suites in which the simple dance-forms
might grow in many-sided development. A high pathetic style might be
introduced, or the details of expression might attract the attention
of the amateur. The forms of the various compositions might alter in
either direction, of new freedom or new restraint. Counterpoint might
be deserted, concerted playing might be improved in the direction of
increased grace.
For all or any of these possibilities Bach laid a foundation, and it
only remained for the taste of the time to decide on the choice that
should be made.
The taste of the time, leaving on one side both the pathetic and the
scholarly, went off into the domain of the graceful. The experience
of music was similar to that of architecture, which had already
gone through the epoch of the “baroque” and “rococo,”[96] by which
designers had sought to give variety to the lines of their work.
Compared with the energy and manly swing of the Italian Concerto, a
sonata of Philip Emanuel Bach is fairly characterised as “rococo.”
In place of the sober delight in bold outline appears the “galant”
appreciation of eccentricities and wayward curvings. Passion is
ashamed of confessing itself openly, and offers the amusing spectacle
of a natural emotion wilfully covering itself with an incongruous
vesture of conventional form.
The newly formed tendency towards simple sensuousness does not obtrude
itself; it merely smiles in the graceful oscillations of subtle
harmonies.
Caprice is the true ruler, and in improvised outpourings, speaking
pauses, piquant leaps, stupefying enharmonic changes, purposed
perverseness of motive, she places the same material under the hands
of the fair performers, which, a short time before, had taken such a
scholarly form.
Where strict canons of the voices used to be carried honestly through,
we now observe a pleasant trifling with imitation which becomes
coquettish, and the pedantic old Dux and Comes[97] put up very well
with the change in their conditions of service. Counterpoint turns
into mere accompaniment, and daintiness with humorous ornament is the
object of the composer.
The new auditor is the delicate dilettante who listens no longer so
much to the inner parts, the ancient severity of which vanishes
and is replaced by chord music. Now we listen to the melody, to the
over-part, and we unfold its whole charm, revealing a hundred secrets
of melodic pleasure, and disentangling them at ease. And in all this
capricious enlivening of music there remains the same delightful
contradiction as in the paintings and buildings of the time--the
contradiction between inner freedom and the aim at a fixed form. The
external form is to replace what was offered by the inner; and yet,
from these new free figures, the intention is primarily to gain this
form. The aim is not at collections of suites, but at the type of the
free movement, of the piece, of the sonata. It is the same spectacle
as when we see Hogarth and Greuze expressing a definite moral lesson
in their pictures, or architectural principles conveyed in the play
of childhood. In music, however, that exclusive predominance of form,
which the French Revolution caused to prevail in the representative
art, has never been quite attained. It is important to notice that
this was only possible since music had emancipated itself from French
influence. It was only in Germany that a Beethoven could arise.
The distinction between “professional” and “amateur” is one to
which our attention is always more and more drawn. “Tablatures” and
apparatus for the scholar vanish gradually, and titles meant to
attract the amateur become more frequent. Bach’s inscription--“for the
delight of amateurs”--over suites and concertos, appears on more than
one title-page. We read “Cecilia playing on the clavier and satisfying
the hearing,” or “Manipulus musices, a Handful of Pastime at the
Clavier,” or again, “the Busy Muse Clio,” or even “Clavier-practice
for the delight of mind and ear, in six easy _galanterie parties_
adapted to modern taste, composed chiefly for young ladies.” A certain
Tischer has put it very shortly on some suites--“The Contented
Ear and the Quickened Soul.” As the most complete refiner of this
taste, relying on the public at large, appears Philip Emanuel Bach,
who inscribes his sonatas “easy” or “for ladies,” and thus openly
confessed, much as he was censured therefor by the pedants, that he
had systematically introduced the light _genre_ as a music for the
future.
[Illustration: F. W. Marpurg, Theoretician and Clavier Teacher.
1718-1795.]
Like the princes in the seventeenth century, or the middle classes in
the nineteenth, it was the nobles in the eighteenth who played the
part of Maecenas; and under their patronage appears, for the first
time, a precisely marked musical society. Here too, in music, the
nobility became an invaluable link between the artistic court and
that public interest in art which, it would seem, is the necessary
condition of all future advance. Even in the didactic musical romance
which old Kuhnau wrote in 1700 under the title of “The Musical
Quack,” we miss the type of the amateur Maecenas. In the background,
invisible, stands the prince who keeps the chapel; in the foreground
there are only musicians and quacks. The amateur who is not a quack,
the genuine dilettante, first attains importance in the beginning of
the century; but very shortly the concerts which are given in the
salons of the Fürnbergs, Esterhazys, and Schwarzenbergs, do more for
the beneficial advancement of art than even the devotion of a keenly
musical court such as that of Frederick the Great at first was. The
greater courts, like Dresden and Munich, begin somewhat to decline,
while the smaller advance, and in England, Italy, and elsewhere, the
nobility, who are not unlike small sovereign princes, aid the spread
and development of music. The nobility are soon followed by the
gentry; but it was not till the Revolution had shattered the nobles
that the bourgeois Maecenas steps upon the scene. In this displacement
of old relations it was inevitable that the clavier should play its
important part; in accordance with its social nature it advanced more
and more from an accompanying or supplementary instrument into an
independent centre of drawing-room existence, as well as of bourgeois
evening parties. Thus, in the attractive and successful pieces of the
generation from 1750 to 1800, its popularity was for the first time
established. Old Bach had as yet been the most serious professional
musician who had yielded to “galant” impulses; and his concessions
to the popular taste were only by the way. The distinction between
public improvisation on set themes, and public interpretation of
written works, was not yet sharply defined. The player was at his
highest when he extemporised variations or fugues on a given subject.
Such had been the improvisations of Sebastian Bach; but the spirit
of improvisation, as it lives in the works of Philip Emanuel, is
something quite different. In him the hand directly follows the inner
feeling, constructs easily and simply, and plays for the sake of the
playing, not for the sake of the art. Before the clavier had become
a social instrument, this division of labour between composers and
players had become imperative; reproduction was bound to diverge into
a separate branch. The amateur, on whom more and more the art depends,
is incapable of composing, but he will, on his clavier, hear the works
of the masters, which are now so numerous, or even play them himself.
He desires to have acts of operas, arrangements of concertos, or many
dainty short pieces. The old clavier-books, which we can trace from
the Elizabethan Virginal Book to the volumes of Bach’s children, now
gradually disappear. Instead of copying with its personal character,
the press is more and more in requisition, and the musical treasury
is more and more thrown open to the public. The engraving of notes,
during the eighteenth century, rapidly improves, and the clefs and
types become more simple. The ornamental devices become constantly
more fixed, and the player has less and less liberty in his use
of them. And whereas, in earlier times, the instruction-books did
not always distinguish between composition and playing, now, since
Couperin’s time, the instruction-book of pure playing became
constantly more common; while Philip Emanuel, to whom, perhaps with
justice, we trace the systematisation of the principles of modern
clavier-playing, wrote a book on playing, and then waited eight years
before publishing a second part on the thorough bass.
The extension of musical interest led further to such a multitude of
musical magazines as even to-day is not to be found. For the most part
they disappear after a few years, but we have, as a matter of fact,
in a year’s issue of such a paper, a very fair picture of musical
tendencies. I have before me a volume of the last of these, published
in 1762, by George Ludewig Winter, in Berlin. It is well printed,
with dainty rococo borders. Very amusing and characteristic is the
sanguine Preface, in which also is to be discerned the inability of
the German tongue to restrain itself while talking of our classics.
“Music,” says the publisher, “serves either to delight with its mere
art the professor, whether he be such by nature or by cultivation--as
a well-built house, or a well-laid out garden, satisfies the
connoisseur; or, on the other hand, it is the language of emotion.
Then roar forth tones teeming with revenge, sorrow glides over the
strings, passion frantically beats the air, joy revels in the blue
æther, friendship and love sigh forth on the delicate notes, praise
and thankfulness well from a full heart on the vigorous melody, or
rise, cleaving the clouds on the tongues of men, to the very throne of
the Almighty.”
The good man, with his fearful fluency, declares that he is going
to bring forward much of the lighter kind--meaning what we call the
dilettante class of music. The numbers appeared week by week, and the
continuation was always postponed for the next, often at the most
thrilling passages--in the approved style of the clever magazine. The
authors’ names are only given when they are very well known. Among
these distinguished men are many whose names have not remained in the
memory of history--fashionable composers, such as every epoch has
in plenty. But there are also Philip Emanuel Bach, Kirnberger, and
many others of the great Bach School. Most of it is clavier-music.
Operatic airs, which occasionally appear, are so arranged that the
voice part, under which the words are printed, is played by the
right hand, and the completing orchestral notes are written small
in the upper staves. There are also popular songs in abundance. A
French spirit breathes through these pages; a fashionable spirit of
enjoyment. The short character-pieces, which the French loved so
dearly to introduce with significant titles, are mingled plentifully
with sonatas and rondos, arranged in the Italian manner. Under the
character-pieces, in the appropriate places, as in the biblical
stories of Kuhnau, the explanatory programme-text is printed. Thus
in a piece called “La Spinoza,”[98] the developments are marked as
being philosophic reflections on a certain theme. Two pieces, called
“Wonderment” and “Youthful Joy,” easily explain themselves. In one
piece entitled, “Two friends grumbling over their wine,” by the
arrangement and form of the two voices, in right and left hands, is
represented how they converse, console each other, gain courage,
and wait for a friendly glance of fortune. The most humorous is a
short clavier-piece, “A Compliment,” which, usually in two voices,
exhibits the following spirited contents: “If you are well, I am
charmed.” “Rather I am glad that I see you so well” (Repeated). “I
have heard that you have been poorly: I am sorry to hear it.” “Heaven
be praised I am recovered.” “But I am ashamed”--“allow me”----They
quarrel who shall bring the chair, and finally sit down. “I recommend
myself”--“and _I_ recommend _myself_”--“to your friendship.”
It was precisely at this period, when the clavier first became
truly popular, that its construction was rapidly and constantly
improved. It was then that the separation of the two systems of
mechanism--the so-called English, and the Viennese--took place. The
names mean nothing, for both systems alike arose in Germany proper.
The distinction lies in the fact that in the English the hammer rests
on a separate bracket from which the key strikes it, while in the
Viennese the hammer rests directly, though loose, on the end of the
key-lever.[99]
Although Germany was so partial to the clavichord with its intimate
intellectuality--a quality which even to-day we can only reproduce
in its fulness by reproducing the clavichord--yet it was the German
pianoforte which for a long time took the lead. It was one of the
first triumphs of German manufacture, and perhaps precisely because so
little manufacture lay in it. In Italy the invention of Cristofori had
vanished without leaving a trace. So utterly indeed was it forgotten,
that when Italy decided, though very tardily, to replace the
Gravicembalo by the pianoforte, instruments of this construction were
preferably brought out there with the notice, “built in the Prussian
manner.” Alongside of the Silbermann pianofortes, those of Friederici
of Gera--which were known as “Fort Bien” and were still built largely
on the clavichord model--and those of Spath of Regensburg, enjoyed
a great renown in the second half of the century. But soon, chiefly
through emigration, the best manufactories were transported to foreign
parts, and it is only in the latest advance of German industry,
especially by the labours of Bechstein and Blüthner, that pianos built
in Germany itself have again achieved a world-wide repute.
The great French, English, American, and Austrian piano-factories can
almost all be traced back to Germans. The three great Parisian houses,
those of Erard, Pleyel, and Pape, were founded by Germans. Steinway
emigrated from Brunswick to build in America those pianos which are
to-day regarded as the best. Johann Zumpe carried the hammer-clavier
to England,[100] where it was played by German executants, and brought
into repute. It was, however, English houses, with that of Broadwood
at their head, that effected the improvements which have resulted
in the appropriation of the name “English” to the mechanism of
Silbermann.
Factories alone, however, would never have brought about the final
victory of the piano if there had been no virtuosos to play them.
Clementi in England, Mozart in Germany and Austria, were the workers
who won the decisive triumph of the piano. Even Philip Emanuel Bach
had much preferred the clavichord to the newer instrument. But
Mozart, the first world-virtuoso, the idol of the concert hall,
thinking solely of sound-effects in the great halls, never hesitated
for a moment between clavicymbal and piano. In 1777, at the age of
twenty-one, he made, at Augsburg, the acquaintance of Silbermann’s
disciple, Stein, the inventor of the Viennese mechanism. This received
the name of “Viennese” when Stein’s children came to Vienna, and
there, along with Streicher, the well-known friend of Schiller,
established the world-renowned business. Here in this family for the
first time appears a new phenomenon in musical society. Round the king
of clavier-builders and his musical wife, young Streicher and Nanette
Stein, there moves a brisk circle of musical spirits. It is a type
which in our time has further gained in importance. With the greater
popularity of the art, the social standing of the piano manufacturer
has risen; and nothing contributed more to the introduction of the
piano into middle-class houses than the reputation of this much-envied
Viennese coterie.
Old Stein and young Streicher are two clearly-marked types. The latter
is a romantic spirit, raves over the just-played “Robbers” of his
school-fellow Schiller, forms the plan of going to Hamburg to perfect
himself in clavier-playing under Philip Emanuel Bach, but never gets
there, since he spends all his time running from town to town with the
restless Schiller. Then he gives music lessons; next he meets Nanette
Stein, marries her, goes to Vienna, becomes manager of the factory,
and makes the invention associated with his name, in which the hammers
strike from above. Finally, he becomes a centre of Viennese musical
life. What a contrast is this modern industrial prince to the old
Stein, working like a mediæval crafts-master there in Augsburg at his
claviers, and giving equal devotion to every single part! He has been
sketched by Mozart in a well-known letter; and I reprint this picture
of the last of the old patriarchal clavier-builders, because it is not
less interesting as showing the type than as showing the condition of
technique at that time.
[Illustration: Streicher’s Pianoforte and Concert Saloon. After the
lithograph of Lahn-Sandmann.]
“I must now,” writes Mozart, “begin at once with Stein’s pianoforte.
Before I saw anything of Stein’s work I liked Spath’s best; but now
I must give the preference to Stein’s, for they damp much better
than the Regensburg instruments. If I strike hard, whether I let the
fingers lie on the keys or lift them up, the sound is over and done
with the very instant I lift my hand. I may come down on the keys
as I like, the tone will always be the same; it never hangs fire;
it doesn’t get weaker, or grow stronger, or stay on; it’s just all
_one_. It’s true you can’t get a pianoforte like that under three
hundred florins, but the trouble and diligence he shows is not to be
repaid. His instruments have this point that makes them better than
others: they are made with an escapement which there isn’t a man in
a thousand knows anything of; and without this it is just impossible
for a pianoforte to help blocking or sounding again. His hammers,
when the piano is played, fall back again the very moment they touch
the strings, whether you hold the key down or let it go. When he has
finished a piano, so he says, he sits down to it and tests all kinds
of passages, runs and leaps, and works and scrapes until the piano’ll
do anything; for he works only for the good of music, and not his own
merely, or he would be done long before. He often says: ‘If I myself
didn’t love music so passionately, or couldn’t do a little on the
piano, I should long ago have lost all patience in my work; but I’m
just a lover of instruments which don’t try the player and will last.’
His pianos _do_ last, too. He guarantees that the sounding-board won’t
warp or break. When he has got a sounding-board ready for a piano, he
puts it in the air, rain, snow, sun, or any beastly thing, to warp it,
and then he glues crossbars in until it is strong and firm. He’s quite
glad when it warps, for you’re about certain nothing more can happen
to it. He often cuts into it himself, and glues it again, and so makes
it strong. He has three of these pianos ready, and I have played
to-day on them for the first time.
“The machine which you move with the knee is also made better by him
than by others. I scarcely touch it, when off it goes; and as soon
as I take my knee the least bit away, you can’t hear the slightest
after-sound.”
[Illustration: George Frederick Handel. Engraved by Thomson.]
We see from this letter of Mozart’s that in 1777 the “escapement,”
which lets the hammers fall back immediately after the strings
are struck, was as yet by no means universal, but that the pedal,
which was pressed at the side by the knee and raised the dampers,
was already a usual feature. What numberless small modifications
and improvements must have been introduced before the developed
mechanism exhibited by the key-levers, the hammers, the dampers, the
escapements, the pedals, the sounding-boards, could have advanced
to the self-evident simplicity which made possible the meteoric
splendours of piano-technique about the middle of this century! Prices
for pianos were still fairly high. The younger Ruckers obtained three
thousand francs for a clavier, but it had painted on it those rich
pictures with which the spinet, when it began to take its place among
household furniture, was so captivatingly adorned. We hear also that
the Parisian pianos with leather-plectrums (jeu de buffle) fetched,
in their finest specimens, as much as three thousand francs. A Wagner
clavicymbal from Dresden, which was a so-called _Deckenclavier_,
in which the tone could be softened or strengthened by fan-shaped
dislocations of the inner lid, fetched six hundred and sixty thalers;
and Frederick the Great actually gave seven hundred thalers to
Silbermann for the first hammer-claviers. If Stein, with his three
hundred florins, seems to fall off from this price, we must remember
the difference in the purchasing power of money. But, to-day, two
thousand marks for a good pianoforte is cheap in comparison with the
prices of those days. It is only through the growth of popularity
that the greater demand and the lower price have become possible.
I turn to the works themselves. Our step falls very heavy, and our
judgment may easily be unduly harsh, when we have just parted with
old Bach. This meeting with genius, which we celebrate in every
bar--this earnest greatness which meets us at every turn, has made
us very exacting in our demands for the higher beauty. In the first
moment the “Galant” School seems to us a school of pigmies, until the
sight has again adjusted itself, and the vision has again become awake
to the miniature beauties of this smaller art. A good transition is
provided by Handel, for, against Handel, Philip Emanuel Bach appears an
astonishing genius.
The tendency of the public, to group celebrities in pairs, has
brought not merely Goethe and Schiller, but Bach and Handel, into
juxtaposition. How little the scholarly hermit had in common with the
grandiose world-musician--who first followed the wise prescription,
glory in Italy, gain in England--would be seen from a comparison of
their clavier-writings, which are a fair average of their general
work. Handel is the negation of the classic. He gets his results
from materials close at hand; brings them into plastic clearness,
and writes from the point of view of the vulgar herd; he is never
troubled by an exacting inward conception, or overwhelmed by his own
imagination, as are all true classic artists.[101]
Handel’s clavier-pieces are written in an extravagantly popular
style. His suites, which moreover embrace not dance-forms only; his
capriccios, variations and fantasias, flow like futile “water-music.”
They are brilliant without being difficult, and entertaining
without being suggestive. There is no colour on the sky of their
landscapes; no tempest lashes their trees. We roll in our coaches
on well-macadamised roads, the melody of the wheels reminding us
meanwhile of this or that well-worn turn in the operas or oratorios.
Seldom is a halt necessary in order to look at the view. Perhaps
we may stop a moment longer than usual at those frequent singing
sarabands in the popular style, at the charming salon-gigues
(especially the long one in G minor), the genuine virtuoso’s
Tarantella, or at the better F sharp minor suite with its short
free prelude, staccato largo, insinuating fugue and dramatic gigue.
Perhaps, also, the fugue with its _three beats_ from the E minor
Prelude may please us; but there is a something which the whole fails
to give us. It is an acquaintance--not a personal intimacy.
Quite other is the impression produced by the “galant” music of Philip
Emanuel Bach. While his elder brother Friedemann stands somewhat
nearer to Sebastian in kind, and actually wrote pieces, like the C
minor fugue, of which the old man need not have been ashamed, Philip
Emanuel, with greater decision and also with greater significance,
pursued a different path. It is as if fate had marked out this
difference. Sebastian Bach held Friedemann as the cleverer musician;
but he frittered his life away. Philip was first set to study
jurisprudence, and out of the painstaking lawyer grew the sober and
energetic composer. The life of Philip was as simple as his father’s.
In 1740, at the age of twenty-six, he went to the court of Frederick
the Great, where he worked as royal cembalist and accompanist. In 1767
he went to Hamburg, and died there in 1788. He does not seem to have
been able to agree with the King; and it is likely enough that he felt
and worked more freely in Hamburg. Berlin was always having trouble
with its people. Had Philip Emanuel stayed there, Berlin would have
been the greatest centre of piano-playing in Germany, and its walls
would have been associated with lasting memories of the ancestors of
modern musical forms. Had Mozart, in later years, accepted the offer
of Frederick William II. of a position as chief Kapellmeister with the
extraordinary salary of three thousand thalers, Berlin would have been
enabled to absorb a little of the musical life of Vienna. Or, later
still, if the Academy of Singing had been given to Mendelssohn (who
was a candidate), rather than to Rungenhagen, the intoxicating glory
of Leipzig, which lasted for a time, would have been transferred to
the banks of the Spree. But the spirit of Zelter remained over Berlin.
In 1753 Philip Emanuel published at his own expense his “Essay on the
true Method of playing the Clavier.” This was the most copious work on
clavier technique that had yet appeared. It was at the same time the
sufficient apology for the technique of the thumb, which has become
the ground-work of our fingering. When the extreme importance of the
thumb had at last been recognised, it was not hard to investigate
systematically the places of its application. The main rules were
necessarily that, in ascending, the thumb of the right hand is put
_after_ one or more black keys, and the thumb of the left hand in
descending, and _vice versa_. The setting of the thumb on the black
keys themselves must be avoided, and the passing over of one finger by
another, which earlier had been the main feature in scale passages,
was now abandoned. The whole art was built on the thumb, which passed
under in the right place. This work of Philip Emanuel, which gives
special attention to the legato, may be called a panegyric on the
thumb. In this clear insight, as well as in the arrangement of his
exercises, which begin with scales and chords, preferring the unison
practice of the two hands, and advancing slowly to easy pieces, his
work is still one of our most modern exercise-books. We might guess
that in this diligent application of his thumb-technique to scales
and broken chords, Philip Emanuel places in the forefront of his
exercises certain scale figures which to-day could not correspond to
the most pressing necessities of the piano-player. We should expect
them to be a mere training of the hand, and no preparation for the
real difficulties which appear in actual literature. A glance at the
works of any great master will show us, however, that such is not the
case. These very scales, chain-passages, and broken chords, which are
the material of teaching, are also the figures of free composition.
Some fashionable composers may have employed them extravagantly,
because they were at the fingers’ ends of the players, but the most
independent writers must use them, because they are, from the very
nature of the clavier, the most fruitful in effect and most harmonious
in sound. The old disruption of musical material into short passages
of four or five notes was now antiquated. Performers practised the
whole scale and the chord. And since Philip Emanuel carried through
this natural training with methodical clearness, his teaching has been
fruitful, and has not run merely _alongside_ of the literature. In
his book we can clearly see how the clavier has contributed not least
to the formation of modern secular musical perception. In this its
equal temperament, which was so urgently necessary, and its complete
presentation of the tone-material, which so to speak we have only to
read off, have largely aided.
The case is dissimilar with his treatment of the “manieren.”[102]
On their employment he writes as follows: “No man, assuredly, hath
doubted concerning the necessity of ‘manieren.’ We can observe
it herefrom, that we meet them everywhere in great abundance.
Everywhere are they indispensable, if one considers their use.
They hang the notes together, and give them life; they give them,
if it be necessary, a particular energy and weight; they make them
pleasing and therefore awaken a peculiar attention; they assist to
make clear what is their meaning, which may be sorrowful or glad or
otherwise disposed, as it pleaseth, yet do they contribute of their
own thereto; they give a notable part of opportunity and material to
the true execution; a moderate composition can by them be aided, as
without them the best air is empty and monotonous, and the plainest
meaning must appear throughout obscure.” This is a judgment which
surprises us in a man so intelligent and advanced as Philip Emanuel.
He has not yet perceived that ornamentations were in his time only
the relics of an earlier style. An appoggiatura, which takes away
half or two-thirds of its note, and thus becomes a mere melodious
retardation, or a double-shake which completely disintegrates its
note, and requires to be expressed by an antiquated stenographic mark,
is already a mere fossil in a period which gives such independence to
the melody. It is not the notes which then appear which are fossil,
but their arrangement as decorations. What had originally been truly
decoration, in the heyday of figuration, had, in the course of the
eighteenth century, long become an emancipated melodic phrase. The
idea of the retardation, which earlier veiled itself under the name
of appoggiatura with suspended main-note, was not allowed to step
in openly; and the doppelschlag[103] or the trill could say plainly
what they were, without masquerading as modest satellites of some
main-note or other. Had Philip Emanuel but had the courage to discard
the old signs, and to hear the customary ornamentations as independent
music, he would have been able to spare himself much dead weight, to
avoid much confusion, and to get rid of the trammels of many dead
traditions, which have come down even to our day. He has in his book
exhibited a stirring knowledge and an individual treatment of the
“manners”; yet he was forced to maintain an arbitrary distinction
between the “manners” and the other figurations, although between
the turn and any other melodious line-curve there is no longer any
essential difference whatever. He has not been able to introduce any
system into the relation of the appoggiatura with its note; and,
because he saw that the effect of the appoggiatura could be produced
equally well without the little note, he has been obliged to take
refuge in the sentence: “The appoggiaturas are partly written like
other notes and thrown into the bar, and partly specially indicated
by small notes; while the larger ones keep their full value to the
eye, although in practice they lose something of it.” At this point he
should have been able to see that a system of “manieren” as such was
no longer possible.
From indications given by Philip Emanuel, it would seem that in
these matters he was deliberately behind his time. He bemoans that
the well-known marks in clavier-pieces were already beginning to be
strange, and points to the careful way in which the French had always
put in their marks. He delights as a rule in setting up the French as
the masters of the clavier-exercise, and is vexed that people had an
“evil prejudice” against their pieces, “which yet,” he says, “have
always been a good school for clavier-players, forasmuch as this
nation, by the smoothness and neatness of its playing, hath marked
itself off specially from others.” Philip Emanuel’s love for the
French is a very important point to keep in mind in appraising his
works. Not only did he find in them the only great precedents for his
“galant” style; he has also expressly continued the method of Couperin
and Rameau by transcriptions, in the French manner and the French
language. Nay, his endeavour, in his sonatas and rondos, to construct
stiffer forms with _reprises_, appears as a mere continuation of the
French rondo; and, however Italian the musical form may be, in more
than one of his pieces, we inevitably think of the “Cyclopes” of
Rameau. Possibly his whole book was suggested by Couperin’s “L’Art
de toucher le clavecin,” and respect for this French tradition has
hindered him from revolutionising the “manieren,” which still had
their justification in France, so thoroughly as he did revolutionise
the finger-exercise. It is thus very amusing to see how he himself
challenges comparison with Couperin. He calls him “a teacher formerly
so profound,” referring of course to the “manieren.” The “formerly,”
of course, implies that Couperin had not yet learnt the thumb method,
and had been too fond of changing the fingers on one note. In point
of ornamentation it was _he_ that was conventional; and in point of
fingering--why, old Sebastian, lately dead, stood between him and
Couperin.
“Fantasia-making without strict tempo,” says Philip Emanuel in one
place of the Essay, “seems in the main to be specially adapted for the
expression of the emotions, because every kind of barring brings with
it a certain constraint.” In this verdict and in its application lies
for us to-day, viewed externally, the greatest surprise which Philip
Emanuel offers us. He has, as a matter of fact, written many fantasias
which are almost designed without bars, and thus very logically give
expression to the character of improvisation which they bear. They are
great recitatives full of reflective melodies, of linked staccati, of
sounding broken chords, which the player, when moved, knows how to
unfold. They were the last free specimens of the unfettered forms of
the older time.
Not only in these fantasias, but as a rule in his whole creative
energy, especially in the Hamburg period, Philip Emanuel exhibits
that extempore humour and freedom, which has at all times given to
clavier-pieces their greatest charm. He has sufficient invention to
be rarely at a loss; and the pieces from his earlier “Württemberger
Sonaten,” which are still more contrapuntal than the later, or from
the later six volumes “Für Kenner und Liebhaber,”[104] have all that
variety and multiplicity in unity which was also a feature of the
collections of John Sebastian. But the desire for caprice works in
him more strongly than the fulness of invention. He is untiring in
pulling a melody humorously to pieces, in surprises of pause or in
remarkable transitions. Occasionally his language positively dances,
and it is hard to be certain whether it is intentional distortion--a
cloak for poverty--or the genuine caprice of the moment which leads
him after the charms of eccentricity. In any case he belongs to those
rare and subtle natures which in a moment give us the genuine artistic
touch of brotherhood.
Even in his harmonies his freedom is clearly noticeable. He does not
object to write separate movements in different keys, which he often
connects by direct transitions. The third Sonata in the “Kenner und
Liebhaber” stands in the first movement in B minor, in the second in G
minor, and in the third in B minor once more. The fifth Sonata, which
is set in F major, begins quietly with a phrase in C minor. In the
first Rondo of volume V. we find the chord of the seventh (G, E, B, C
sharp), set at the key-deciding place, _in B minor_; a chord at which
some of our best memories of Wagner are revived. For such things he
was severely censured by his comrades in the profession.
As to his melody, it is as delightful as is to be expected from
“galant” music, and from that only. At one time it shows a charming
sentimentalism, in which the stronger use of retardations has its
share, now it is frisky and playful, toying with itself; in both
cases anticipating Mozart. Specially characteristic of the author are
numerous melodic phrases, the like of which have played an important
part down to our own time. Philip Emanuel used them with the greatest
depth and penetration in the F sharp minor movement of the A major
sonata (No. IV. in Kenner und Liebhaber, vol. i). In all these points
he manifests his independence; and in spite of his study of the
French, it is but seldom that, as in the “Siciliana” of one of his
sonatas in the “Musikalisches Allerley,” we catch an echo of a phrase
from Couperin.
Like all the “galants,” he wrote much. A considerable number of his
works were printed in his own time in the magazines or separately.
Among these the sonatas to Frederick the Great to Charles Eugene of
Württemberg, to Amalie of Prussia, and the “Kenner und Liebhaber,”
take the first place. But yet more remained unprinted. Prosniz has
counted four hundred and twenty of his clavier pieces, of which two
hundred and fifty were printed. There is no modern comprehensive
edition of his works, but the “Kenner und Liebhaber” has been very
beautifully reissued by Krebs in the Berlin Academy collection of
original editions. Apart from the first volume these are written
exclusively for pianoforte.
The name of Philip Emanuel generally rises to our lips when we speak
of the origins of the modern forms of chamber-music and symphony.
This is correct enough if we are content to establish his claims as
an agent in the crystallisation of the two main forms of classical
composition--the Sonata and the Rondo. But the creator of these forms
he was not; he found them very far advanced in France and Italy, and
on the other hand he handles them so freely that their regulation
cannot be said to have been completed till the days of Haydn and
Mozart. Thus he is in these points also but an intermediary.
The strict sonata introduces first a main subject, then in an allied
key an allied subject; next the middle section[105] in which these
subjects are developed and completed; and lastly it repeats the
exposition, transposing the subordinate subject, however, with a view
to the finale, into the main key.
In the Rondo, on the contrary, there is _one_ main theme and many
subordinate motives. The main theme is chiefly melodious; the
by-themes alternate in all kinds of forms among the repetitions of the
melodic strophe.
To the Sonata and the Rondo all older dance and fantasia forms
gradually gravitated. The Sonata is the more dramatic, the Rondo the
more lyrical. The Rondo, considered as to logical content, is the
more organic; but advance and climax are wanting to it. The Sonata
on the other hand, is, because of its _reprises_, less intellectual
than architectural; but it has the sobriety of greatness. Usually, in
thinking of the forms of this musical age, our thoughts dwell on the
Sonata--in which form as a rule the first movement was cast. But the
Rondo was equally important, and is equally often used in the second
or last movement. Purer dance-forms were always in use as intermezzos
between the movements.
[Illustration: Mary Coswey with the Orphica, a portable clavier, which
at the beginning of this century had a certain vogue.]
In Philip Emanuel, then, we see a preference for the types of the
sonata and the rondo which prepares the way for their sole supremacy.
He only needed to proceed eclectically. Not only the French Rondo but
the Italian Sonata had led to the _reprise_ form. Philip Emanuel did
not advance far beyond these models. A second theme is not universal
in his works; and only the modulation of the keys within the first
half, to the dominant or relative major, is strongly stamped on them.
The Sonata movement with him still admits of all _tempi_. In the
third of the “Kenner und Liebhaber” Sonatas the peculiar sonata-form
is not on the whole adhered to, but allegretto, andante, cantabile,
follow each other in free fashion. On the other hand, in the following
piece, the first and the last movements both show the sonata-form; but
in the first of the “Württembergers” only the last movement has the
stricter sonata-style. The third sonata of Volume II. of the “Kenner
und Liebhaber” is actually written in a single movement. On the other
hand the second Württemberger begins with a genuine sonata with double
subject; and in the Kenner und Liebhaber, Vol. III. No. 2, the type of
the modern sonata appears in full development. We see then from these
examples that while Philip Emanuel uses the _reprise_ of the first
part almost universally, he is yet far removed from the classical
model of the sonata. In a word, we shall find in him nothing that is
not already to be found in Rameau, Scarlatti, or above all, his great
father.
The Rondo was more in accordance with his genius. Here, where he had
fully developed French models, it cannot be denied that with all
his freedom in detail he has brought the form appreciably nearer
to the classic type. Even Beethoven was often unable to improve on
his alternations of intermediate movements, or the grace with which
he returns to the air and makes his theme gently rock to and fro.
He loves those simple popular rondo airs, which, as we listen, we
all seem to have heard before. As couplets[106] he prefers to use
technically brilliant figures, which in their turn offer a good
contrast to the air. He is untiring in toying with the theme. He
makes it now break off in the middle, now become sentimental; now it
becomes questioning. As time goes on he develops his whole power of
expression, so that he is far removed from a stiff alternation of
theme with couplet. In a fantasia (K. and L. v.; last piece), which
is perhaps his most charming composition, he blends the rondo-form
most skilfully with the free style of an improvisation, and thus
shows himself on his best side. Hardly less delightful is the last
piece in Volume VI., a Fantasia-Rondo whose main theme is a kind
of hunting-call. In this movement the hunt is interrupted by a
beautiful romantic _andante_, then by emotional reveries in _larghetto
sostenuto_, and in the conclusion the reflective style gains the upper
hand.
The Rondo was so attractive to him because by its means he was able
the more easily to bring his beloved “affettuoso” into expression.
And his inner genius was not so much formal as lyrical. In his music
there is even to-day a strong spiritual charm, to which the slight
archaism adds a pleasant flavour. In his Rondos he comes very near
to us, and not less in those little characteristic pieces which,
written in dance-form, followed French models in the very style of
the inscriptions. He uses for titles proper names, such as Hermann,
Buchholz, Böhmer, Stahl; and such more general appellations as La
Xenophone, La Sibylle, La Complaisante, La Capricieuse, L’Irrésolue,
La Journalière, and Les Langueurs Tendres--names, it will be
remembered, used also by Couperin. La Sibylle has a wonderfully
beautiful melody; and Les Langueurs Tendres is such an unsurpassable
air in two mournful voices, that it bears endless repetition. Nothing
has ever been written to surpass this tender clavichord-sadness.
The great counterpoint of Bach is now forgotten with extraordinary
rapidity. The ancestor of the following generation is Philip Emanuel.
Wherever we look, to the London Bach, Johann Christian, to the
Austrians--anywhere--we find the work influenced by his style. “He is
the father and we the boys,” said Mozart.
[Illustration: Joseph Haydn. Engraved by Quenedey.]
Haydn knew well what he owed to Philip Emanuel, and was as little
chary to acknowledge it as Mozart. In actual essentials Haydn made
no advance in clavier-music. The stream is perhaps a little clouded,
and it is not till Mozart’s time that it again becomes clear. Haydn’s
genius lay in composing for the orchestra, not for the piano. He
has of course written clavier sonatas--they number thirty-five--and
other pieces in which the clavier takes part; as numerous and light
as the works of all these “galant” musicians. But his trios are to
be preferred to the sonatas for piano only; there is more depth in
them; and the ideas are lit up more brightly by the instrumental
combination. Only in the sonatas after 1790, as in the first in E flat
major (Br. and H.) does something more noteworthy emerge--but by that
time Haydn had studied Mozart.
Still further, in his pieces, Haydn is no great virtuoso. In his
Trios he knows well how to make the most of the character of the
clavier, by contrasting it with the strings, by means of arpeggios,
all kinds of passages, full chords, and the beloved octave-melodies.
But a more interesting virtuoso performance, such as that in the F
minor variations, appears very rarely. The ornamental work is still
extensive, but within limits; and much of it is written out in full,
just as the cadenzas, which used to appear in small notes, are now
preferably printed in the usual type. At the end of the century
everything was taken away from the caprice of the player, except the
great cadenzas at the conclusion of the concerto-movements. Philip
Emanuel had taken a last important step, when, in his Sonata dedicated
to the Prussian Princess Amalie, he wrote out exactly for the second
time the ornamentations and alterations in the frequent repetitions of
musical phrases of a few bars, instead of leaving them to the pleasure
of the players. To judge by his preface, caprice in these matters
must have flourished like a green bay-tree; and he takes great credit
to himself for having been the first to offer accurately formulated
“alternative _reprises_,” which run no risk of spoiling the whole aim
and meaning of the piece. His point of view is interesting. It is, he
says, not possible to avoid altering a musical phrase in repeating it.
This conception is endorsed by all his contemporaries and successors
in style, in their works: Haydn and Mozart cannot be conceived apart
from this mannerism of altering a musical idea in repetition by
slight turns and adornments. This method is the fixed law of movement
of their musical ideas, and dictates their progress through long
stretches in advance. Deep founded in the general delight in variation
so characteristic of the time, it enables us to understand that
great development which forms a whole branch of musical history--the
development, namely, of improvised “manieren” into strict and firm
melodies.
As far as _form_ is concerned, the work already begun is continued
by Haydn. The Sonata-form tends to limit itself more and more to
the first movement; more and more clearly does the “second theme”
crystallise itself; slow-drawn movements are preferred more and
more in the second place, and graceful rondo-like movements in the
third--without, however, any appearance of compulsion. The only relic
of the traditional “suite” of dances, which Haydn retains in his
sonatas or symphonies, is the “Minuet” which he is so fond of using as
an intermezzo.[107] The old dance-forms, _as_ dances, were so speedily
forgotten, that in a certain trio a delicate slow waltz is marked as
“allemande”--whereas the old allemande is not even written in the time
of a waltz, apart from the difference in style.[108]
[Illustration: W. A. Mozart. Engraved in 1793 by C. Kohl (1754-1807).]
Haydn received more from the clavier than he gave to it. He
transferred to the orchestra the clavier-forms of the time, and thus
pointed out to it the path to the symphony. Without doubt the modern
symphony, in the first instance, is to be traced to the clavier
pieces of Philip Emanuel Bach; and Haydn, to whom fell the task of
the intermediary, was the first to put the rich development of this
chamber-music to practical use. Clavier and orchestra always advance
in mutual rivalry, treading on each other’s heels. In Haydn it was
the clavier that aided the orchestra; in Beethoven the orchestra aided
the clavier; Mozart, standing between, gives to each its own.
Thus it is that Mozart has given much, and much of its special
character, to the clavier. This equilibrium--and Mozart is always
the very personification of equilibrium--is most striking in his
piano-concertos, which justly enjoy the renown of having created an
epoch in this class. Especially remarkable is the C minor concerto,
in which the piano experienced one of its chief emancipations. On one
side stood the orchestra, on the other the instrument, and yet neither
of these two great rivals loses anything of its essential nature;
rather, they owe to this very rivalry many of their best effects.
When clavier and orchestra address and answer each other; when the
clavier intertwines itself with the strings and the wood, and they in
turn blend with the clavier; when in the running strife each sounds
in its own style and gives birth to a natural variation of phrases
and to delicate alterations of the constituent forms; all proceeds in
accordance with that self-evident logic which, at such critical points
in artistic history, naturally dispenses with internal laws.
Mozart is the great virtuoso who, even as a boy, was the astonishment
of Europe. It is not to be expected that he should content himself
with the intimate reflectiveness of the pianoforte; he drags it out
into the great world; he needs the concerto-form just as he needs
great concert halls. The new pianoforte, with its fuller and more
subtly expressive tones, is precisely adapted to his aims, and he
is the first to launch the pianoforte on its decisive career. With
his triumphal progresses the popularity of the new instrument was
not likely to decline. The great enchanter leaves the tiny victories
of the spinet far behind; his public recitals in hired halls, which
henceforward become more and more popular, demand new feats. He has to
work on bold lines; he has to bring into use the special features of
the instrument he adopted; the rippling scale-passage, the variety of
tone, the _forte_, the _pianissimo_, the hundred gradations between
these extremes, the altogether new possibilities of sentimental
expression which were now at the disposal of the public performer. But
amid all the intoxication of the concert hall, the virtuoso remains
an artist; the idol of the hour retains his deeper feeling. As he was
only truly himself when, after the furore of publicity, he touched the
notes in solitude or before a few friends, so in his concertos, behind
the external glitter, a romantic soul lies hidden. In the beautiful
Romance in the D minor Concerto, for example, the soul looks out on us
with a wonderful and never-to-be-forgotten intensity.
In almost all his pieces Mozart composes according to the bidding
of the moment. He is an “occasional” composer. In the concertos the
occasion was his own appearance on the stage. In the duets and double
pianoforte pieces he found the occasion in his association with
his sister. From this species of performance he drew new effects.
The D major sonata for two pianos stands alone in the skilful and
effective blending of the two instruments. His four-handed sonatas are
astonishingly successful in the individualisation of the hands, and
started a numerous class of clavier-pieces which have been too often
misused. We shall not appreciate such duets, if we take the clavier as
a diminutive orchestra.[109] But here again Mozart has been unwilling
utterly to sacrifice combined effects to individual demands.
[Illustration: Beginning of Mozart’s A minor Sonata. Royal
Musikbibliothek, Berlin.]
Through the ravishing chamber-music in which, especially in the
quintett for oboe, clarinet, horn, fagotto and pianoforte, the
splendid treatment of the pianoforte with regard to the wind deserves
notice; through all the melodious pieces for piano and violin, the
trios, the quartetts; to the numerous smaller clavier-pieces, the
fashionable variations, the relics of the suites, the scattered
fugues, the fantasies so rich in variety; we follow Mozart to the
eighteen pure piano sonatas, which are the very miniature mirror of
his unfailing musical invention. We shall treat them in chronological
order, for here for the first time we perceive a distinct development
which renders such treatment the most natural and advantageous.
At first we meet the daring harmonies and enharmonic changes by
which every innovator makes himself notorious, and which draw on him
the first severe criticisms. But there is not yet the concentration
of later works. A light counterpoint runs through the whole, a
conscientious treatment of the themes, which bears witness to sound
training. A striking feature is the unforced inventiveness in motives,
which succeed one another in unfailing profusion. Intellectual themes,
as for example in the B flat major, remind us of Philip Emanuel.
The form becomes more distinct, the rules of sonata-arrangement
more rigid. But it is not till we reach the A minor (1778) that the
full brilliancy of form is seen. This piece has all that wonderful
proportion and balance even in the smallest parts, which was, and
remained, Mozart’s most peculiar characteristic. Proportion in the
well-balanced opposition of themes in all three divisions, in the
liveliness of the piquant semiquaver runs, which already leave
Scarlatti far behind, in the brilliant and yet simple execution of the
last movement--proportion, indeed, is everywhere.
After 1778 our impressions deepen. The D major is the creation of
Mozart’s indestructible caprice. The motives become ever more tuneful,
more _speaking_: in the C major we hear the phrases as though sung; we
seem to hear words with pauses for breath, as from a distant exquisite
opera. The melodies run after each other, and--what is so typical a
feature of Mozart--it is by this that our attention is held rather
than by any inner development of the themes.
[Illustration: Mozart at the age of seven, with his Father and Sister.
Engraved 1764, by J. B. Delafosse (b. 1721) after L. C. de Carmontelle
(? about 1790).]
The A major sonata is an excellent example of this melodic regularity.
Its contours are of an unimagined loveliness, and its airs of a
magic delicacy. The Turkish March stands out in variegated national
colours, far removed from every triviality--if only we give to the
Janissary rhythm its full due.
The airs become broader, the piquancies more daring, until the
allegretto of the B flat major with its jubilant sevenths stands
before us as a new peak of Philip Emanuel’s Rondo forms. Here is that
bright laughter, which from Mozart’s lips has the most delightful of
sounds.
This was in 1779. In 1784 Mozart has entered upon the second half of
his life, the unhappy half, and the C minor sonata appears. New tones
now strike upon our ear, harsh, strong, broad, intense. But all is
still in proportion. The hand is freer, rushing more boldly from the
heights of the piano to its depths; bolder also are the episodes which
are the pivots of the thoughts. In all is the sweet intoxication in
the bewildering sound of the pianoforte, and the air so full of soul,
growing richer in retardations, and more and more taking the lines
which Mozart decisively fixed for the beautifully-formed melody. A
strange reserve, the reserve of maturity, characterises the last
movement, otherwise so flowing; its expressive raggedness forbodes
new things, the victory of matter over form--in a word, Beethoven;
and then, in this period of Figaro and Don Giovanni, we meet the F
major, the most sombre in content of all his writings (1788). With
its two movements we are accustomed, not improperly, to connect the
Rondo written in 1786. Counterpoint has slowly advanced to its old
position--the sign of the mature man, who is seeking his fixed abode.
This it is which stiffens the weft into what at times is a solidity
worthy of Bach. The dominion over the world of tone is now absolute,
the melodies sing heavenward, as for example in the theme of this
andante, which came spontaneously from his soul.
We have reached the limit of the “galant,” over whose fields dark
clouds are already gathering. But we are also at its highest point.
In Mozart the ideal of popular music was more fully realised than
its father, Philip Emanuel, could ever have dreamed. Mozart’s
well-balanced nature preserved the clavier from superficiality; and
he himself was saved by an early death from sacrificing this balance
to the sombre thought of a new time. His sense for form brought the
sonata into more typical shape, but the endless melody and the free
intelligence of his music took all sharpness from the forms. No music
can be less easily described in words than his; and therefore, as a
great beautiful sound, it was the best content which the forms of the
galant popular epoch could find. It is not till we have left youth
behind that we see proportion and equilibrium in this repose; and it
is then, as Otto Jahn says, that we are amazed at the wonderful wealth
of this art and at ourselves for being so slow to feel it.
[Illustration: Upright Hammer-clavier (pianoforte), about 1800, called
the “Giraffe.” Mahogany and bronze, with open work in green moiré.
Three pedals, _forte_, _piano_, and “fagotto.” By Joseph Wachtl,
Vienna. De Wit collection.]
[96] Both these adjectives apply to decorative ornament.
The general idea of “baroque” is “odd” or “outrageous.”
“Rococo” implies an elaborate want of good taste.
[97] “Dux,” the _leader_, _i.e._ the “subject” of the
fugue; “Comes,” the _attendant_, _i.e._ the “answer.” So
called because the one follows the other as a matter of
course, like master and servant.
[98] Meaning “The Philosophy of Spinoza,” _i.e._ an
illustration of Spinoza’s method, given in musical notes.
[99] It is impossible to describe this action in words. See
the diagrams in Grove’s “Dictionary of Music,” vol. ii. pp.
716 and 718.
[100] I possess a Zumpe pianoforte, date 1766, which is
apparently the earliest surviving made by him in England.
E. W. N.
[101] Such a judgment of Handel, which would be ungracious
in the mouth of an Englishman, is not unfitting in a
German. England alone, apparently, knows and cares about
Handel, the athlete in _choral_ music.
[102] _i.e._ the ornamentations, turns, appoggiaturas, etc.
[103] The doppelschlag was the “turn,” beginning with the
_note above_.
[104] “For professors and amateurs.”
[105] Various names have been used for this “middle
section” of the “sonata form,” _e.g._--“Development,”
“Fantasia,” “Free part,” “_Durchführung_, carrying
through,” “Working-out.”
[106] The word “couplet” is here used as in Couperin, and
other old French composers. It means the subsidiary themes
or sections which alternate with the main subject in these
ancient rondos. Call the main theme A, the subsidiary ones
B, C, D, etc. Then the course of the movement is--A, B, A,
C, A, D, A, etc., and B, C, D, etc., are called “couplets.”
[107] See, for instance, Haydn’s earliest string quartets,
where he commonly has _two_ minuets, one on each side of
the “slow” movement.
[108] Does not “allemande” here simply mean “German” waltz?
[109] It is a great pity, and a great loss in every
way, that the careful _artistic_ playing of duets on
one pianoforte has largely ceased. What Moscheles and
Mendelssohn were not ashamed to do in public, surely is not
an unworthy employment. It should be revived, if only to
popularise Schubert’s beautiful works for four hands, the
widespread ignorance of which is a simple disgrace to us
all.
[Illustration: Beethoven at age of 31.]
Beethoven
When a great scheme was started in Berlin for a common monument to
Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, it was plain to see that the artists
felt themselves in the presence of a very mixed task; but it was not
so clear where the incongruity lay. They stood under the influence of
the popular opinion, which binds these three heroes under a single
yoke, and they were the victims of this influence. Nations have an
instinct of symmetry in the classification of their great men. The
ancients had their seven sages; to-day we are content with two or
three; but even so the combinations are none the less strained. The
false ideas due to the pairing of Bach and Handel, or of Goethe and
Schiller, are hardly to be numbered. The triumvirate of Haydn, Mozart,
and Beethoven, is the very acme of perversity. Haydn and Mozart,
though two fundamentally different natures, have yet in common the
similar features of the age. But Beethoven is as little like them as
Goethe is like Racine. We have only to glance round a salon in the
Vienna of the last century. The old Haydn and the old Salieri sit
smiling and friendly on a sofa; they move in the stilted fashion of
the eighteenth century; they retain in their carriage all the features
of the “Zopf und Schopf”[110] period; and in every judgment, in every
gesture, they show their antagonism to unrestrained emotion. Over
against them a young man is leaning on the piano. His demeanour is
modish though untidy, and smacks of the Rhine; his movements natural
but wooden; his hair is loose and disordered; his compliments are few;
he accepts strangers only on compulsion; his playing is perhaps too
vigorous, too full of feeling; and the ideas which he incorporates in
his works are in their originality half revolutionary, half romantic.
This new-comer is Beethoven, a man so different from the settled type,
from the old “composers of the Empire,” as he himself calls them, that
it is easy to anticipate the future which he himself is conjuring up.
He is the first of the Titans, the first of the great fragmentary
natures, the first tone-artist who breaks the forms of music to
pieces on the iron of his emotions. A strange Providence closes his
outward ears, and thus gaining a clearer vision, he receives from
Nature herself unheard-of inspirations. How this strange new man, this
romantic raver, could be coupled with Haydn and Mozart is a wonder;
but popular opinion accounts for it. Beethoven came to Vienna just as
Mozart began to be missed. The world gave him the honour of attaching
him to the classic school. But it is a mere blunder to treat him as
the end of an epoch--he is the beginning of a new one.
It must be observed at this point that the world had meanwhile become
really musical--or perhaps less truly musical than music-loving. Nay,
more; political events, as formerly church ceremonies, could now be
celebrated in music. The famous concerto which Beethoven gave in
honour of the Vienna Congress was perhaps the first great occasion on
which music lent itself in festal manner to the adornment of public
events. It was now no longer a mere incident in a commemorative
display, but to a great extent pure music; and the rapid and vigorous
education of men to instrumental music by the classical masters
was the necessary precedent condition of the attainment of this
point. In these matters the clavier played its important part as an
intermediary and a teacher; it made the innovations into current coin,
scattered them among people in their homes, and accustomed their ears
to understand better and better the absolute language of music, as
it dealt in wider and wider abstractions. The publishers were more
active, the issues more frequent, the popular settings more numerous
and artistic. Even the great men themselves take a share in the work.
A frequent phenomenon in the music-trade is that composers like
Clementi, Dussek, and Pleyel, themselves open publishing houses--and
secure the advertisement of their wares, oftener perhaps than was
really necessary.
International exchange became more active year by year. If we look
to London, we see Johann Christian Bach at work, helping to give
form to the Sonata; we observe Haydn and Pleyel in vigorous rivalry
for the favour of the public; we see the virtuoso Clementi from
Italy setting up a clavier-school. In Petersburg meanwhile lives the
Englishman, Field, one of the chief nocturne-romancists, and Klengel
and Berger, the Germans, all three brought out by Clementi. Next we
see there also J. W. Hässler, the ex-hatter, who has left behind such
agreeable works that Bülow regarded him as a good intermediary between
Mozart and Beethoven. In Paris the opera is the favourite agent of
musical pleasure. With Gluck the old quarrel between the Italian
and the northern manner is renewed. Chamber-music retreats into the
back-ground. Schobert and Eckard, decorative musicians, are hardly
known beyond the border; and Adam and Kalkbrenner, who restore the
fame of French clavier-technique, leave productive art on one side.
In Vienna there is a swarm of prominent figures. Gradually the city
is preparing itself for the state of things which in 1820 W. C.
Müller thus describes in one of his “Letters to German Friends”: “It
is incredible how far the enthusiasm for music, and especially for
skill on the piano, is now being carried. Every house has a good
instrument. The banker Gaymüller has five by different makers; and the
girls especially play a great deal.” Indeed, a glance at the society
of Vienna at that time shows us innumerable ladies, ranging from the
merest amateurs to the maturest artistic performers, thronging round
the great and the mediocre alike. Even Beethoven, the misanthrope,
sees himself surrounded by them; he cannot keep from them, nay,
he often does not choose to do so. The Baroness Ertmann, Julia
Guicciardi, Nanette Streicher, are some of the actual persons of the
fair sex, who, amid innumerable legendary beings, hovered about the
Master. As usual where social life forms the basis of culture, the
ladies come to the front. Invitations fly in bewildering profusion;
the great houses exchange their guests; new compositions are made
known in the salons before they find a publisher; and when they
are published, old acquaintances become subscribers. This narrow
circle gives a great opportunity for the advance of chamber-music.
An accurate observer will notice how the modern international
musical public slowly develops itself from this old-fashioned, close
corporation.
The names of the best teachers are in every mouth. Czerny, who was
destined to raise Vienna technique to its height, and to become the
teacher of a Liszt, tells us in his Memoirs who were known as the
best teachers in Vienna at the commencement of the century: “Wölffl,
distinguished by his bravura-playing; Gelinek, universally popular for
his brilliant and elegant execution; Lipawsky, a great sight-player,
renowned for his performance of Bach’s fugues. I still remember how
Gelinek once told my father that he was invited out for an evening to
break a lance with a foreign player. ‘We mean to hew him in pieces,’
said Gelinek. Next day my father asked Gelinek how the fight of
yesterday had gone. ‘Oh,’ said he, ‘I shall remember yesterday’s
fight. The young man has a devil. I never heard such playing. He
improvised fantasias on an air I gave him, as I never heard even
Mozart improvise. Then he played compositions of his own, which are
in the highest degree wonderful and grand, and he brings out of the
piano effects the like of which we never heard of!’ ‘Ah,’ said my
father, astonished, ‘what is this man called?’ ‘He is,’ said Gelinek,
‘a little, gloomy, dark, and stubborn-looking young fellow, and he is
called Beethoven.’”
Beethoven was discontented. He knew what lay within him, and yet
could not help seeing how the crowd preferred to shout itself hoarse
over the brilliant exponents of technique, then beginning to swarm
over Vienna. He was brought into a contest not only with Gelinek,
but with Wölffl, who was renowned for his abnormally long fingers.
Such contests are a mark of the times. As yet the division of labour
between composers and interpreters had not been introduced. Playing
and invention had a more intimate association. The following is
the programme of the “Academy,” which Mozart performed in 1770 at
Mantua: “First, a symphony of his own composition; secondly, a
pianoforte concerto, which he will play at sight; thirdly, a sonata
just placed before him, which he will provide with variations and
afterwards repeat in another key. Then he will compose an aria
to words given to him, sing it himself, and accompany it on the
clavier. Next, a sonata for the cembalo on a motive supplied him by
the first violin[111]; a strict fugue on a theme to be selected,
which he will improvise on the piano; a trio, in which he will take
the violin part _all’improviso_; and, finally, the last symphony
of his own composition.” No sharper contrast can be conceived than
this performance offers to the modern concert. Almost all is here
arranged for sight-playing and improvisation, or for the instantaneous
exertion of inventive or executant skill. There is in this still a
good deal of the earlier notion of music, in which the conception and
visible development of a theme was preferred to the performance of a
completed work. Later, the demand for such instantaneous performances
gradually disappears. In Mozart the cadenza at the conclusion of the
concerto-movements remained as the last refuge of the improviser
in the written-out piece. Beethoven insisted that his E flat major
concerto should be performed without an improvised cadenza.
At a period in which instantaneous performances were so popular,
contests of the kind mentioned above were not misplaced. But Beethoven
had more to suffer in them than others, since his genius had already
outgrown them. He was a poet who loved to live apart and to offer
his gifts in a more intimate fashion. How wonderfully did that very
deafness, which turned his genius inward, preserve him in later
years from public playing and conducting! But, before, he had been
forced to enter the lists not only with Wölffl, with Gelinek, with
the renowned technist Hummel, but actually with so contemptible an
artist as Steibelt. This Steibelt was one of the disgraces of the age.
Bespattered with praise, he rushed through Europe with his trashy
compositions, his battles, thunder-storms, Bacchanals, which he played
_ad libitum_, while his wife struck the tambourine in concert with
him. The populace was enraptured, for Steibelt and Madame tickled
their nerves with sparkling shakes and tremolos. At the house of the
Count von Fries he fell in with Beethoven. A quintett of Steibelt’s
and the B flat major trio of Beethoven’s (Op. 11) were played. In
the latter occur the variations on a theme of Weigl, from the opera
L’Amor Marinaro. Beethoven was out of humour and would not play. A
week later the same company met again. On this occasion a quintett by
Steibelt is again played, and to it Steibelt adds a series of wild
clattering variations on the same theme of Weigl. Such “Leit-motive”
attacks are familiar in these contests. It is well known that
underlying Mozart’s Zauberflöte overture is a theme which Clementi
had already used in his B flat major Sonata. Clementi had played
it in a contest with Mozart, who did not care much for the Italian
“mechanical” artist. But Beethoven this time avenged himself bitterly
on Steibelt. After a long persuasion from his friends he stepped
negligently to the piano, struck with one finger a few notes from the
just-played quintett, and twisted it in and out until he had produced
a fantasia; but Steibelt, before the conclusion of the piece, left the
room and never came near him again.
Thus Beethoven lived in a world with which he had no sympathy. It is
true that there were some houses in which the higher class of music
was openly cultivated. Such a house was that of Van Swietens, where
Beethoven often played to a late hour from Bach’s Wohltemperiertes
Klavier. But the multitude, whose musical horizon was bounded by the
Italian opera, occupied itself with the glitter and splash of the
executants. In such a city old Diogenes might have sought long for a
man. A composer of the best class, Friedrich Wilhelm Rust, who in the
midst of his capriccios in the style of Philip Emanuel often showed
features reminding us of Beethoven, died at Dessau in 1796 alone and
inglorious. A Franz Schubert lived close by Beethoven, but no one knew
of his existence. Those who are heard of are virtuosos and writers for
the pianoforte. Dussek, however, is of importance not only from the
technical point of view, but from that of true _art_. He is noteworthy
also as the first musician to compose almost wholly for the piano,
with or without accompaniment. How distant are the times when we could
feel surprise when a piece appeared written for piano alone! And this
man, within the limits of his genius, made the poetry of the piano
into a life-work. It is as if for the first time an anticipation
of Chopin rose before us; but the likeness is after all only in
externals. Dussek is the bourgeois romancist, when he spends his whole
year in the country with his lady-love; but he is the true son of the
eighteenth century when he in turn attaches himself to successive
princely patrons. Especially devoted was he to the musical Prussian
Prince Louis Ferdinand, on whose death at Saalfeld he wrote a suitable
composition. His style would seem to have been noble and full, and his
pieces are more charming than was usual at the time. Unlike Hummel
he was very partial to the pedal; and it is in his pages, perhaps,
that we find it for the first time accurately employed. His works
themselves are of all kinds and degrees of merit. When, led by his
national temperament (he was a Czech), he gives full play to the dance
forms in the last movement, he strikes a fine and fresh note. He was
one of the first to use syncopations effectively. But he has also
written a final movement, that of the E flat major sonata in 6/8 time,
which has a true and solid worth over and above its dance-form. He is
less attentive to his first movements, and his most famous sonata,
that in A flat major, which he entitled “Retour à Paris,” disappoints
in this regard our expectations. In his second movements he is quicker
to light on tones which, by their tender character, linger in the
memory; as above all in the slow movement of the D major in 2/4 time.
After all, if Dussek does not stand among the immortals, he yet, in
intellect and power of invention, ranks among the lesser stars[112] to
whom we owe the full elaboration of the popular forms. His style is
soon grasped. We know one of his sonatas already as soon as we hear
the first bars. A broad first theme gives us a good tune; then it goes
smoothly flowing through grateful passages to the second theme in the
dominant or relative key. Other runs give the fingers some further
opportunity for bravura; perhaps a third scrap of melody peeps out,
and we are at the landmark of the first double bar. Next some suitable
free fantasia is arranged, which sounds more scholastic than it is; we
pass with it through a series of related keys--until a motive already
known, the first theme, brings us back again with a smooth glide to
the beginning, from which point the movement practically repeats
itself. In the following movements there is a longer melody adorned
with variations. In the third a seductively familiar theme tickles our
fancy, which at times spreads itself out in bravuras, or gives itself
effect in a very poor imitation of a fugue.
[Illustration: Dussek.]
In company such as this Beethoven stands absolutely alone. It is true
he has not yet wholly cast off the garment of his time. In many a
harmonic phrase, in many a formal turn, he is a child of the period;
above all in many a _naiveté_. And he not seldom exerts himself about
passages which are utterly unworthy of him. He, the composer of the
A major symphony, wrote at the same time the incredible “Battle of
Vittoria.” Conscious advance, such as Wagner set before himself, is
to him unknown; and we find among his later works various things that
remind us of an earlier period, as, for example, the wonderfully
Mozart-like C major Rondo for the pianoforte. But his _naiveté_ was
strangely warped; and thus arose noteworthy mixtures of style, such as
we so often observe in men who stand on the borders of two ages. His
character was the most complicated that ever musician had; and only
investigators who know not the demon of the great soul, can seriously
ascribe the paltry avarice of the master to humane goodwill for the
notorious nephew whom he supported. A soul like Beethoven’s is a
mystery into which we can only penetrate slowly and with difficulty;
and who knows--even if perhaps the deepest secrets of his “last style”
should become common and familiar, whether even then the last word
would have been said on this strangely complicated and distorted
character? But Beethoven composed from the soul outward. This was the
great novelty. And we must penetrate into his soul if we will rightly
apprehend him.
The enthusiastic compiler, Thayer, who died while writing
Beethoven’s biography--musical history has often been the death
of its authors!--remarks very excellently how differently from
others Beethoven already sketches out his work. The motives stand
there in hasty cursive--applications of motives--tone-ideas in
words--as a painter sketches or a poet notes down his observations
or inspirations. It bubbles up not like Bach’s steady stream of
self-restraint, but in a torrent of unmeasured passion, which regards
self-restraint as a weak concession and the correctness of the
“galants” as a lie. In this man music spoke in words, not in pictures.
He had the unparalleled boldness to tear out his secret feelings, all
bleeding as they were, and hold them up before his own gaze. It was
the boldness of a Zarathustra-nature. He belonged to those who worship
Bacchus, not to those who follow Buddha. In Thayer’s possession was
a note from Beethoven to his friend Zmeskall of Domanovecz. “For the
future I bid farewell to the cheerfulness which I sometimes enjoy;
for yesterday, through your Zmeskallic chatter, I became quite
gloomy. The devil take them--I don’t want to know anything of their
universal morality. Might is the morality of men who distinguish
themselves above others. It is my morality, anyhow. If you start on
me again, I shall pester you until you find everything I do noble and
praiseworthy.”
We shall then only understand Beethoven thoroughly when we leave form
on one side and take music as a speech. It is no feeble paradox to
say that the reason why Beethoven, in his operas and songs, paid so
little attention to the words, was because the music was to him words
enough. To this greatest of instrumental geniuses was revealed the
great secret of pure music, which, precisely because it has no speech
or language, speaks infinitely the more profoundly. Words obstruct it.
When Beethoven, at the end of the Ninth Symphony, has recourse to the
human voice, everyone feels that it was to him only the highest of
all instruments, with which he can do yet more than with trombone or
contrabass. It is the utmost triumph of the pure musician who can draw
even the voice under his sway.
[Illustration: Cast of Beethoven’s living face, 1812.]
Music is to him a speech, because it is full of associations of ideas,
which bring tones into relation with the outer world, and make them
reverberate with a thousand inner meanings. In his orchestra we hear
nature, as in his pianoforte we hear the orchestra. Not without
reason has Bülow, in his edition of Beethoven, in more than one place
translated the piano-piece for the reader into score, in order to
make its content clearer. These are things which did not exist in
Bach. The world of tone has sacrificed her great unity for the great
fragmentariness of unveiled speech, and a never dreamt-of height was
thus reached in that absolute tone speech, which formerly in Venice
and in England had taken the place of the mediæval vocal music.
What a Gabrieli, a Bull, a Bird, a Couperin, each in his own way,
had begun, was by Beethoven brought to full completion. Here was the
perfect opposition to the Middle Ages. Here was the Michael Angelo
who could stand alone against the ancients. The abstractions were
perfected, the relations more general, the language more intelligible.
If Beethoven began his first Symphony with a chord of the seventh,
it was possible to understand what he meant by it. To this man, who
completed one epoch in beginning another; to this symphonist and
chamber-musician, the clavier must become a daily necessity. His life
has been written in his works. Words, which could only fetter him, are
kept at a distance; the notes tell the story by themselves.
[Illustration: Lithograph by C. Fischer, after the original portrait
of 1817, by A. Kloeber (1793-1864).]
If we would understand Beethoven’s language we must study the
way in which he works out his motives. His peculiarities are the
peculiarities of the naturalistic school. The melody mounts or
falls as his emotion mounts or falls. He takes a motive and narrows
it until its parts curve upon each other, and then again makes it
greater and broader, until it lies open before us. This is a deep
and mysterious language, which deals with the tones as a word, an
expression; which looks on us, shall I say? like the eye of certain
animals--we understand them through and through, and yet their speech
is not ours. But the most powerful agent in stirring our emotion is
the rhythm, that soul of all expression. It is the absolute pulse of
things, which only the finer ears can hear in the outer world; it
lies here before us in its artistic purity. The pauses, the leaps,
the syncopations, the gigantic parallelisms of structure, the dynamic
surprises, leave but a thin wall of partition between the phenomenal
and the transcendental of music. There is no longer any reserve in
the language. There are some movements in which Beethoven’s music
stands at the very doors of verbal speech: such, for example, as the
allegretto in Op. 14, 1 and the first movement of Op. 90. The words
appear to tremble on the lips; but it would be the disappearance of
the apparition were we to utter them.
Over Beethoven’s realm broods a deep tragedy. A constraining
seriousness speaks to us--the dark abyss of passionate emotion: a
total pitilessness, a gloomy brooding, accents of misery, a unison of
terror. Beethoven began his piano publications with the three sonatas
(Op. 2.) dedicated to Haydn; works full of inexhaustible inspirations,
of the ravishing freshness of youth. The second is introduced by sharp
accents and those broad extensions of chords by means of octaves,
which remained to the end characteristic of the author. Another
man would have begun the piece _after_ this tragic cry, with the
contrapuntally-rocking motive. But the first of his greater tragic
outbreaks was the mighty Sonata in C minor, the so-called Pathétique,
which he dedicated to his patron Lichnowsky. Upon the heavy, slow
introductory passage follows the stormy First Movement, whose themes
are, first, a tempest of rage, secondly, an utter despair; and the
Grave intrudes its monitory remembrances in the midst. Unity of
colouring is preserved. Over the second singing movement, and the
third with its rondo-like passages, lies the same sombre tone; and the
conclusion is sharply cut short.
Beethoven revels in the gloomy. He buries himself in deep tones,
as in the Andante of the Pathétique or in Op. 22, its cheerfulness
notwithstanding. Later, on the magnificent Broadwood, which he
received from England as a present, he goes with delight into the
regions of the deep. A mystic tremolo attracts him; and the “trios” of
his scherzi are full of the sonorous murmuring of billowy chords.[113]
A new and grand expression of pain is the last movement of the
Moonlight Sonata (Op. 27, 2), which is as full of hopelessness as the
last movement of the other Sonata of this great pair (Op. 27, 1) is
full of invigoration. The threatening strokes of the quaver chords
which sharply define each repetition of the stormy motive-passages,
the quivering secondary theme, the unrestful rests, the melodies,
which seek to calm down the seething bass; all this was a world of
seriousness which the clavier had not yet learned to know.
But this was still a _composition_, compared with the naturalistic
chaos of the Recitative Sonata (Op. 31, 2). This first movement is
a remarkable embodiment of gloomy brooding, which is continually
being disturbed by despairing cries, until it finally loses itself in
that resignation of utter indifference, which is a typical form of
Beethoven’s tragic finales.
It seems to me beyond question that the impulse which drove Beethoven
to compose great piano-pieces was supplied by the concerto-form. The
concerto, in its secular character, had not remained without its
advantages; it was broader and freer than the regular sonata. It
avoids _reprises_ in the first movement, and arranges the divisions
with more circumspection. In order to give the clavier-player a
chance to rest, the orchestra must take over some independent parts.
It begins with a broadly planned section, which so to say arouses
curiosity, in which various themes are treated; and portions of this
introduction are then inserted between the successive entries of
the pianoforte, or even simultaneously with them. The piano itself
appears usually three times. In the first and last of these the music
is to some extent repetition, the intermediate section is a kind of
free fantasia. Even in Mozart a strict unity of theme between the
orchestral and the solo sections is not always to be observed; it was
Beethoven who first carried it thoroughly out. He it was who with
visible affection fashioned the concerto form. It is no accident that
the two last of his pianoforte concertos, the G major and E flat
major, to-day enjoy an exuberant popularity. What Mozart had promised
in his C minor concerto, these perform to admiration. They are built
entirely on that plastic sensuousness which is the essence and the aim
of the concerto. Their themes are remarkably adapted for a polyphonous
orchestral development, for a delicate imitation on the piano, or for
the storm of the fullest harmonies.
The technique, whether of the piano or of the orchestral colouring,
though joyous, is yet severe. Far from all coquetry and all mere
show--the technique stands, especially in the cheerful E flat major,
on a height of extraordinary purity. The form is clear, but not
so precise as not to admit of modifications in single sections,
especially those devoted to the solo instrument. The intellectual G
major, the technical E flat major, represented an extreme of happy
sympathetic innovation.
We only need to compare the great Waldstein Sonata in C major (Op. 53)
with the Concertos, in order at once to see that the latter have stood
godfather to the former. There are not merely external likenesses, as
when the piano figures a theme which might have been played already
on the orchestra, or when more important divisions close with a long
shake, as in all concertos the piano sections usually do on the
re-entrance of the tutti; or when with passages played pianissimo,
and hurrying ghostlike, or in octaves, an effect is introduced which
in Beethoven’s concertos the delicate piano is generally used to play
out in contrast with the orchestra. Rather the important likeness
lies in the whole broad outline. The themes appear as a rule twice,
as is naturally the case in the concerto; the exposition is done
leisurely and cheerfully; a cadenza, such as Beethoven had already
used (_e.g._, in Opp. 2, 3, and 27, 2), gives to the conclusion of
the first movement a specially concerto-like quality. The second
slow movement is a short emotional transition, such as Beethoven has
written so exquisitely in the G major and E flat major concertos; and
the last movement, far from being a “concession” to the “light-robed”
muse, is a spirited rondo, in brilliant style it is true, but in its
augmentations and diminutions, its _stretto_ and the trill-conclusion,
a genuine Beethoven--as no other could be.
As thus the dependence on the broad effects to which the concerto
style had accustomed the hearer, gave to the first movement of the
sonata a new form and extent which it had hitherto not known, it was
possible for Beethoven to infuse into it a tragic content which soars
far above the general coloration of the “Pathétique” and the brooding
naturalism of the “Recitative” Sonata. Here for the first time we
hear those trumpet-calls to the battle with Fate, those heavy rolling
waves at the return to the first theme, which later in Op. 111 found
so concentrated an expression. A monumental epic develops itself about
the conflict, which usually forms the content of first movements. This
mighty form represents a mighty picture.
What was thus given in the Waldstein was deepened and unified in the
Appassionata (Op. 57). The uniform colouring of the Pathétique is here
deepened by hints taken from the concerto. A sublime and rhythmical
theme, based upon the simplest harmony, a solemn unison, dominates
the first movement. The second theme, lyrical as it appears, is
really only fashioned out of the first. As the movement progresses,
we seem to hear mysterious winds, stormy seas, convulsions of nature.
A cadenza, straight from the heart, leads to the most colossal
_stretto_ ever written: a wild upheaving, a sudden down-sinking and
extinction. Its spiritual connection with the choral-like andante con
moto is obvious. The note of aspiration is heard throughout, first by
pauses, then by a clearer and clearer expression in those deeply-felt
variations, which finally repeat their theme. The despair of the final
movement is the last act--a giant melody, uttered in piercing cries,
sinking down panting in the middle, and at the end breaking out into
Bacchanalian revelry, in which laughter and ruin are inextricably
mingled.
This was the most comprehensive tragic picture ever drawn by Beethoven
on the piano; and it has therefore remained a unique composition. His
works tell us that he outgrew the epoch in which misery is enjoyed.
His tragic art leads us beyond despair not to Nirvana, but to the
Elysian fields. Hymns of joy sound around him. Strong joy, Dionysian
strength, was the aim of this Faust. What he once depicted in the
wonderful monologue of Op. 27, 1, becomes his life. In the Elysian
Fields the fugue of adolescence returns to him, giving him repose and
safety. In it he allows the tragedy of Op. 106 to tower heavenwards.
Or, ethereal, world-dissolving glories shine around him--these are the
bright, cheerful phrases of the E major or A flat major Sonatas, in
which they now give the theme, now the figuration, or in the scherzo,
grow up in flowery profusion. Into this serenity he allows the tragedy
of the last Sonata (Op. 111) to pass at last. After a movement of wild
outcry come the simply resigned variations, which finally mount from
dull earthly devotion to angelic harmonies, to end in the glitter of
their smile, in the bright sphere of their unearthliness.
[Illustration: From Beethoven’s A flat major Sonata, Op. 26. Royal
Musikbibliothek.]
To understand the joyous Beethoven of later years we must remember the
capricious Beethoven of youth. A strong leaven of cheerfulness lay in
him, a healthy will, which knew how to be humorous.
The sportive Beethoven lies in the lap of Nature. There he hears the
entrancing imitations of his Haydn Sonatas, the hurrying ghost-like
scherzo with its Schubert-like romantic middle movement (Op. 10,
2), the sparkling Rondo of the Variation Sonata. This we must hear
played by Risler in order to appreciate its inimitable humour and
poetry, which is based entirely on the soft touch of the contrary
motions. The most perfect of Nature prayers, a Pastoral Symphony on
the pianoforte, is the _Pastorale_ (Op. 28). Not only the second
movement with its bird-like middle part; nor only the third with its
extreme cheerfulness, nor the fourth with its outlook on the woods,
its delight in the chase, its joyous conclusion; but also, and in the
highest degree, the first movement, are confessions of Beethoven’s
natural symbolism. This work stands on that indefinable border-line
between the comic and the tragic, which is the unfailing mark of the
intensest poetry. It is a complete picture of the world. Beethoven’s
scherzi, his most peculiar form of art, which in the Sonata take the
place of the old minuets, stand on this ground, and might be termed
“secular,” in comparison with the dramatic embodiments of his first
movements, or the complete picturings of the last.
The Rondos exhibit a similar process of alteration. In them first, so
early as the time of Philip Emanuel Bach, had the capacity of tonic
art to “let a theme speak,” been exercised. They allowed a theme
its full expressive value. To Beethoven, accordingly, in his first
period, such rondos appealed with the strongest effect, and their
charming melodies throng in his earlier sonatas. But he was able to
give this form a still deeper meaning. In place of the melodies he
adopts genuine motives of pregnant brevity, which, as in Op. 10, 3, he
develops with characteristic reserve. These pieces, as contrasted with
the old melodic rondo, show a convincing naturalism. To the old rondo
they are related as his scherzo to the minuet. Equally significant is
his love for certain diatonically moving accompaniment figures, as in
Op. 14, 1, or Op. 28; he thus avoids the impression of a regularly
harmonised theme, and allows the naturalistic motive to predominate
over the formal melody.
In the treatment of form in general, the sonatas exhibit a series of
different experiments, which are of emotional interest. His other
chamber music--the Violin Sonatas, the Trios, and all the rest, to
which I now only allude--could not accomplish the suppression of form
like the free, pure piano-pieces. The great Fantasia for chorus,
orchestra, and piano (the latter treated in concerto fashion), which
we value as an anticipation of the Ninth Symphony, was unique in its
disregard of rule. Psychologically viewed, the sonata-form is much
richer in content, and unravels the most wonderful mazes. Here is the
history of the re-constituted sonata-form; a history which is too
complicated to run in a straight line.
Down to Op. 10 on the whole we stand on the classical ground of the
sonata. In the three Sonatas, Op. 10, appear the first important
irregularities. Both in the first and in the second Sonatas there is,
in the “free” part, a quite new theme introduced, which points to
a definite design; and in the third we find that wonderful D minor
movement, with its utter abandonment to melancholy, which by means
of a stretto[114] in the Largo raises itself absolutely out of the
contemporary style. Yet all this was new only in tone; it was no
more absolutely new in idea than the Grave of the Pathétique or the
Variation Sonata with its Marcia Funebre, where the middle section is
introduced by means of realistic drum-reverberations.
[Illustration: Lyser’s Sketch of Beethoven.]
An essential change is to be observed in the two sonatas Op. 27. We
are at the beginning of the nineteenth century, not far from the
time of the composition of the Eroica Symphony. Beethoven was fully
conscious of the freedom of these sonatas (E flat major and C sharp
minor): he inscribed both “Sonata quasi una fantasia.” In the E flat
major a dainty andante movement meets us, whose voices are strongly
interwoven. It develops itself slightly, in variation manner, but
it is interrupted, once by a sustained melody, again by a stormy
episode in C major. What has become of the rondo with its couplets?
There follows the apparition of a rolling, beating, gigantic scherzo,
beginning in C minor and ending in C major. The C (always _attacca
subito_) prepares us for the bright A flat major adagio, which gently
takes us up till the whole idea is exhausted. Finally we have the
wholesome, powerful, and busy E flat major movement, arranged in free
rondo-form, with its stirring reminiscences of the adagio. The twin
sonata in C sharp minor is the so-called Moonlight, with its classical
first movement, which was a unique expression of melancholy; and
which, only slightly interrupted by the episodic allegretto, breaks
out again into the despair of the presto agitato, which we have learnt
to know as one of the most deeply tragical of Beethoven’s outbursts.
Of a sonata as a regular composition there was here no further idea.
These were transcripts from experiences.
The experiences of Beethoven’s life in the following period, so far as
they are recorded in the diary of the piano-sonatas, exhibit a certain
archaic character. In this period from 1803-4 (the period of Op. 31)
to 1811 (Op. 81 a) lie the most varied tendencies in confusion. It is
a mighty attempt in all possible paths, but the reader will soon see
that every path leads to a definite goal. In all the paths there is
an attempt to grasp certain great elementary principles, which lie
outside the direct development, and which are made subservient to the
new spirit.
This archaism of form appears first as an application of old forms
to modern purposes. In the G major (Op. 31, 1) we are surprised by
strange retrogressions--which yet are not mere retrogressions. The
rosy coloration of the adagio draws past recollections into new
life. The third movement shows us Bach’s application of the pedal
bass, transfigured by passing through the mind of Beethoven. In Op.
31, 3 the minuet returns again, and in other passages, with their
simply-cut melodies on “Alberti” basses[115] we seem to have gone
back a generation. In the “easy” sonata (Op. 49) and the “Ländler”
(Op. 79) this tendency reaches its height. It is a return to nature;
a growth of simplicity, in all points, however trifling; the reaction
experienced by every mature genius. Beethoven never wholly lost this
tendency to reaction. He became in his later days more Mozartian than
he had been even in his youth, and more of a Bach than Bach himself.
The second path leads us back not to the form but to the essential
nature of Beethoven’s youthful period. The delicate work of the
porcelain age lives again in him; above all in the charming F
sharp major Sonata, of which he himself was so fond. It is quite
extraordinary how in Beethoven the spirit of a past time receives
life under astonishingly new forms. This graceful filigree-work,
with its sweeping unearthly conclusion in the first section,[116]
built entirely on delicate inspirations, piquant harmonies, dainty
modulations--has wonderfully shot up in such colour, as autumn
blossoms only can offer. Take next the famous Les Adieux, dedicated to
his pupil, the Archduke Rudolf (E flat major). It shows a delight in
the minute and the intimate, such as we meet in old Dutch pictures.
There is not a passing-note, not a modulation, which was not worked
under the magnifying glass. I should myself not like to omit the last
movement, known as the “Wiedersehen.”
The beautiful characteristics of the “Absence” Sonata are well known;
the various metamorphoses of the three descending notes, more or less
obvious, but always helping to enlarge the meaning of the first idea
[see, for instance, in the first Adagio, bar 7; also the bass of each
phrase from bar 10 (third quaver) to the first double bar; then in
the Allegro, bars 19-21, in the bass, and the semibreves just before
the repeat; also in the “free” part after the repeat mark; and 13
bars from the end of the movement, left hand, etc.], the meaning of
a dreary longing, which Beethoven tries to portray in the “Lebewohl”
movements. The tender expression of the Andante, the trembling joy and
almost overpowering delight of the “Wiedersehen,” the sweet charm of
the delicate prolongation of this movement at the _Poco andante_ near
the close, all these cannot but deserve mention here. Of course there
was nothing new in having three movements labelled with such names as
these. What _was_ new was the inner unity which was attained in this
piece, and which was only equalled by the delicacy of the workmanship
itself. To this (so to speak) archaic and delicate style was added
the world-embracing Art which found its proper field in the C major
(Waldstein, Op. 53) and the F minor (Appassionata, Op. 57) sonatas.
Thus was the proper foundation laid for the grandiose poems of the
last six Sonatas, which lead the three streams into one course.
The first of these (Op. 90) is in two movements, like the last: the
first, a thoughtful and restful movement without reprise, with a new
motive in its development; the second, a slow rondo, embracing the
parts of the theme fugally. It is a work which, like all these last
sonatas, is never thought of as a “piece,” but stands before us in one
transparency, laying bare the inmost fibres of the man.
In Op. 101 an unparalleled height of thematic development is attained.
Rhythmical motives are plentiful; the smoothly flowing six-eight time;
the same with accent completely displaced (as in bar 29, etc.); the
vigorous dotted quaver and semiquaver of the Vivace; the prominent
formula of the section in B flat in the same movement, etc. As before
in the Appassionata, the boundaries between first and second themes
fade away before the consciousness of their unity. The Sonata exhibits
thematic in all its forms. The fugue half changes into the rondo,
free in expression, lively in character. An unearthly sweep of music,
born tone by tone, rolls over us; the _e a_ of the motive is its
air-built scaffolding. It is the streaming forth of the most inward
intuition of tone; a special kind of absolute naturalism, which yet
enfolds in itself the future of music. We think of the “Bagatelles,”
which Beethoven wrote and published at this time, cabinet-pieces of
remarkably genuine character.
Then suddenly rises before us the “Grand Sonata” (Op. 106). We
recognise no longer the old well-known features. It has assumed
the forms of the giant-world; it laughs in its greatness, in its
childlikeness. Will it really permit itself to be played by human
hands? We are at the mysterious limits of piano-music. Rhythms marked
by sharp blows, modulations in thirds, enharmonics, narrow-cut
successions of chords[117]--these are the very hand of Beethoven. The
first movement works with its three themes--an Olympian poem--as far
as the _stretto_. Its development rests on a fugal foundation. The
scherzo is all rhythm; in the trio, it is all unrhythmical; mystical
colours, sliding passages from B flat minor to D flat major, as in
the Ninth Symphony from D minor to B flat major. The Adagio is so
to speak the last possibility of the old form, wide as life itself,
Michael Angelo-like in its strenuous longing for F sharp major. The
transitional passage, the Largo, which introduces the last movement,
like an old Toccata, tries this and that, prelude-wise, and striving
after fixed forms. The three-voiced giant-fugue is the deliverance,
in whose retardations the old storm, however, still conceals itself.
But there is a joy in the mighty straining of these dissonances, which
Bülow ought not to have tried to soften. Theme and counter-theme,
“cancrizans” canon,[118] lyrical episodes, dainty counter-motives,
inversions, new canonic motives, tied up again with the fugue,
contrary motions, diminutions. This old lofty tone speech remained
serious; it is the refuge of the anchorite who turns back to the
powers of Nature, and finds rest in the wise observation of the stars.
It is the utmost of art for art. Who is there whom it troubles?
* * * * *
Three flowers bloom in this late garden, three unique documents of
a pure masterdom: the “playing” sonata, the “landscape” sonata, the
“life” sonata. The first is on the heights of pure technique, the
second is a clarified objective picture, the third is pure subjective
inwardness.
Op. 109 opens with a graceful impromptu-like harp-play of broken
chords, which twice thicken themselves in recitative songs. A somewhat
hard sounding scherzo stands in the midst. It is closed by the
variations on that never-to-be-forgotten melody in E major, which,
through reflective romance, cheerful étude-like activity, sober
fugues, bright trill-heights, lead back to the captivating simplicity
of their theme. The freedom of the first movement and the confinement
of the second are both made use of by the third.
We have a landscape in the A flat major (Op. 110). Over the
sward rises the tender song. Butterflies and sun-glitter are the
accompaniment. A wholesome strength mounts up and cheerfully wings
its way. In a pause of meditation it comes to rest; and from the
contemplation rises the old eternal lamentation of man. From its last
breathed tones ascends the fugue, the great law of nature. Once again
the lament, broken, helpless, dashing itself blindly against fate--and
all the more dazzling is the fugue, embracing all, Truth with its
disregard of the individual.[119] Thus does Beethoven express his
pantheism.
But even this sonata seems feeble in comparison with the unheard-of
intensity and greatness of Op. 111. The master sits at the piano, and
his hands run preluding over the keys, in broad, piercing, dashing
chords, which become closer and intenser round the node-point of the
dominant. From the dominant grows a theme of savage grandeur, of
Titanic power, all-embracing in its widening grasp, its Medusa-locks
flying in the air, crushing out all sweetness and softness, till, as
it came, it sinks terribly to earth, in those helpless _diminuendo_
chords,[120] with no _ritardando_, such as Beethoven alone
experienced. In the elemental song of the Adagio comes the release. In
its variations it spreads itself out into a world-embracing grandeur,
till its wisdom attains the two extremes of deep internal ardour and
ethereal brightness, whose opposition is developed in the last pages
in broad lines. The earth remains below; the minor conclusions are
forgotten; the forms have become a twilight dream; only when _our_
soul meets the Master-Soul does man attain to these realms.
* * * * *
At this time the inventive composer-publisher Diabelli had a good
idea. He composed a childish waltz in C major, and invited fifty of
the most distinguished composers and virtuosos of Vienna and the
Austrian states to be kind enough to set variations to it. Beethoven
sent him thirty-three variations, which appeared as Op. 120. Diabelli
may well have been astonished. He had perhaps some dread of the “last”
Beethoven who was then so full of youth. But he had not expected
anything of this kind. Perhaps he did not quite know whether it was
all done in earnest. Even the name of Beethoven did not aid the
venture much. The world during many years troubled itself little
about it, and let the strange colossus alone. It was reserved for
Bülow, who had the keenest sense for the last efforts of Beethoven’s
genius, to penetrate deeply into the great mass. He observed that the
thirty-three variations are no co-ordinated series; they are an inner
drama, like one of the later sonatas. They rise from the explanatory
sections which lay out the theme, through a gentle minor group, by a
double fugue, into calmer regions; a minuet concludes, which is no
minuet, but one of those wonderful resurrections which were the old
Master’s special love. The variations are a testament, as the Goldberg
variations were those of Bach. From melody to canon, from gloom to
parody, from archaism to anticipations of the future, from popularity
to the philosophy of the hermit, from mysticism to dance, from
technical glitter to the mystery of enharmonics, they lead us along
three and thirty paths to different realms.
[Illustration:
Beethoven’s last Grand Piano, by Graf, Vienna, with four strings to
each note, on account of his deafness. ]
[110] _Pigtail and Tuft_, a combination of “Bigwig” and
“High and Mighty,” with “Sir Oracle.”
[111] Meaning the “leader” of the band, practically the
conductor in those days.
[112] The author here uses a term to describe Dussek, which
I remove to the foot of the page, viz. _Epigonus_, which
means “one born after,” in the sense of a descendant who
merely continues his father’s work. Often it is equivalent
to our “decadent.”
[113] The author may perhaps refer to the Scherzi of Op. 2,
No. 3, in C, or Op. 7 in E flat.
[114] The student is not likely to find the passage marked
with this word, but the author is none the less correct in
his description, for it must be played so.
[115] See Op. 31, No. 3, first movement in E flat, bar 46
and ff.
[116] Apparently the passage referred to is the 10 bars
which precede the second subject, in the first movement of
the F sharp major sonata.
[117] Things corresponding to these expressions, which
convey scarcely anything in themselves, will be found in
this order in bars 1-3; bars 5, 6, 9, 10; bars 25, 26; bar
18, et cetera, of the first movement; and will illustrate
the author’s system of description.
[118] “Cancrizans” (_cancer_, a crab), is an adjective
applied to a tune that is the _same_ whether you play it
from the beginning to the end, or the reverse way. Here it
is used to characterise some rather mild reversions of the
theme, _e.g._--first section with two sharps, bars 15-17.
[119] This appears to be a subtle reference to the
“inversion” of the subject when the fugue is resumed.
The “individual” must learn to see things right side up,
knowing they are upside down!
[120] Thirteen bars from the end of the movement. _N.B._--A
curious instance of “cribbing” on the part of Chopin stands
confessed in the following passage.
[Illustration: Viennese pianoforte players about 1800. Eberl. Gelinek.
Wölffl. ]
The Virtuosos
Beethoven’s playing was naturalistic. In him there were no tricks
of technique to be admired, no mere virtuosity to praise; but the
hearers were stirred to their hearts. In this storm and stress, this
whispering and listening, this awakening of the soul, they recognised
an original naturalism of piano-playing, standing by the side of the
naturalism of his creative art. Rhythm was the life of his playing. He
thought out all technique with a view to rhythm. In the Berlin Library
is a collection of Cramer’s Études, containing a series of annotations
by Schindler, the well-known biographer of Beethoven. The expressions
are so remarkable that the spirit of Beethoven has not unjustly been
detected in them. Shedlock, in fact, has published them simply as
Beethoven’s elucidations of Cramer, whose Études the Master is known
to have prized exceedingly. In every Étude the _melos_, or latent
melodic air, which lies at the base of the figurations, is brought
into prominence, and the rhythmical presentation of these figurations
is made as accurate as possible. The rest is for the most part left to
the time, the diligence, and the ability of the player. Thus could a
great creator look at Études. Of necessity he looked at them from a
totally different point of view from the virtuoso pure and simple. He
cared chiefly for the presentation of the idea, for the inwardness of
the piece. Everything that was written down in concrete notes served
to him but as a means for that expression, the mastery of which was
the mastery of interpretation. From this point of view Beethoven would
have written his “Klavierschule,” of which he often spoke in his
latter years. With mere fingering and wrist action he would have had
little indeed to do.
This great task was undertaken by a band of artists who must not
be undervalued. They stood in the first rank of virtuosos. It is
precisely at this time that technique first properly arises as an
art; and their zeal in the attempt to solve the new problem was great
indeed. They discover new possibilities of expression, they disclose
new effects in the capacities of the pianoforte, and they reveal an
inventive power in these new paths which offers the most surprising
beauties. We must consider them from the right side, and never forget
that the development of the piano could never have taken place so
naturally and organically unless its technical advance had gone on in
parallel lines with its spiritual progress.
I have here no other aim than to view things under a certain _species
aeternitatis_. What was done by Bird, Bull, Couperin, or Pasquini,
though to-day perhaps only one in a thousand piano-players knows their
names, was of more importance than a Polacca of Kalkbrenner or an
Étude of Ludwig Berger. We have a fixed horizon; what is not within
it remains outside it. Lives of entire and rich content, sorrows and
joys of extreme intensity, may sink into oblivion; they are in history
a mere grain in the quicksand. It is useless to look up in my index
the name of everybody who has composed a Rondo or given piano-lessons
in Moscow. We must content ourselves with those who, by the great
halting-places, have deserved a monument on the way: those only
without whom history would offer a distinct blank.
A very great work is represented by the theoretical piano-schools,
which followed one another at this time in close succession. If in
the little book of Philip Emanuel Bach there was the beginning of a
unifying system, on which the following age had only to build, yet,
in the face of the most varying theories of the first half of our
century, we can but recognise that piano-teaching, from mere excess of
zeal, never succeeded in developing a genuine system. It has always
been the tendency of the piano-teacher to keep in the past an ideal to
worship, while with the present he has such a poor understanding that
every new method of instruction makes a _tabula rasa_ of the preceding
method, begins all afresh, and allows the pupil salvation only
according to its private judgment. Piano-study has never enjoyed the
advantage possessed by other sciences, of building up from century to
century, each upon the last. In theory it has remained a mere mosaic;
and it has been saved only by practice.
It is practice also that gives a certain systematisation, not to the
teaching, but to the history of teaching. All the separate workers
at the great task, little as they admit the possibility of salvation
outside their own creed, are yet driven forward by the stream of time
and by the results of experience; and the law of averages brings about
a clear advance apart from their personal agency. If we compare the
systems of the eighteenth century, the schools of Philip Emanuel, of
Marpurg, and that of Daniel Gottlob Türk, which closes this series,
with the works of the epoch on which we have now entered, we see
clearly how practice has marked out the path for theory, always
reflecting upon itself, itself inducing its decomposition into its
constituent _à priori_ and empirical parts, and finally limiting
itself to a mere application of experience.
The Pianoforte School which was written by Adam was a kind of
pronunciamento of the Paris Conservatoire. This Conservatoire, founded
in the midst of the troubles of the Revolution, ultimately gave French
technique a position to which for a long time it had been a stranger.
Adam’s principle is to put the “manieren” more on one side, and to
avoid that too eager devotion to the teaching of general composition
with which the books of the eighteenth century had been occupied. In
its place he brings the study of touch more prominently forward. The
day of the spinet is over; the hammer-clavier now dominates the world,
and leads theorists to attempt methods of touch which may correspond
to its possibilities of delicate expression. The pedals also begin
to play their part. Adam recognises four pedals, of which one is our
damper-raiser, and three serve for soft effects. Gradually they have
been reduced to two, the damper-raiser and the so-called “soft” pedal.
* * * * *
A great opponent of all use of the pedal was Hummel. In our time
it is no longer necessary to point out that the pedal, an integral
part of the hammer-clavier, deserves not to be rejected, but simply
to be treated on its own artistic lines. But Hummel stands, in his
theoretic relations, so strongly on the foundations of tradition,
that his attitude can excite no surprise. His “Ausführliche
theoretisch-praktische Anweisung zum Pianofortespiel,” which appeared
in 1828, is the crown of the united exertions of piano theory. This
voluminous work, which gained with difficulty a circulation that
it soon lost for ever, is a system, carried out into the minutest
details, of all the technical capacities of the piano; so systematic,
indeed, that here theory, by deductive methods, discovered effects
which practice could not have attained alone. It is an unparalleled
example of theoretic speculation, and yet really nothing more than
the extension of Marpurg’s or Türk’s old-fashioned methods. These
countless headings in capital letters, each describing a different
class of “passage,” these numbered possibilities of fingering, these
pedantic elucidations, beginning always from the first over again,
are nothing but, as he calls them, an “Anweisung,” mere directions,
abstraction from reflection outward. Any one who has mastered the
first part has the second already at his fingers’ ends, but this
master of dissection troubles himself not a whit on that point, and
knows no economy in pupilage. He is opposed to learning by heart,
since the fingers, he says, ought to find the keys without sight: so
far is he from the modern view that only a complete mastery of a piece
renders adequate interpretation possible. He troubles himself little
about a science of touch. He introduces the “manieren”; but, contrary
to the method of the eighteenth century, he makes the trill begin
on the upper note. So far is a system of execution from his purpose
that he can actually write as follows: “Runs and notes going upwards
are executed crescendo, downwards diminuendo; but there are cases in
which the composer intends the reverse, or that they should be played
with even strength.” Hummel’s book is to-day a monument of misguided
diligence, great in its patient calculation of permutations, but a
dead curiosity.
[Illustration: The Brothers Pixis. 1800. Engraved by Sintzenich after
Schröder.]
If, on the other hand, we look at Kalkbrenner’s Paris Pianoforte
School, which he dedicated “to all the conservatoriums in Europe,” we
see--with no heavy artillery--advances of all kinds which in part
fill up the perspective of Adam. Where Hummel has ten main classes
of fingered passages, he has only six; five-finger exercises for the
unmoving hand; scales in all forms; thirds, sixths, and chord-forms;
octaves with the wrist; trills; overlapping of the hands. In this
there is more thrift, while there is no talk of absolute completeness.
The “manieren” slowly cease to occupy important chapters; the pedals
again come by their own; for Kalkbrenner as a Parisian hates the dry
tone of the Vienna pianoforte. Execution also begins to receive a
systematic treatment. Interesting references are made to punctuation
in order to illustrate musical phraseology; conclusions on the tonic
are a full stop; on the dominant a semicolon; while interrupted
cadences are a note of exclamation. This is naive enough, but it is at
any rate a beginning.
We are thus already standing at the point at which clavier theory
decomposes itself into its elements. If Hummel was the great
theoretician, Czerny was the great man of practice; a quite unique
person, the hero of all piano-teachers, whose practical eye runs
equally over all the possibilities of playing, and works them out in
separate parts; the genius of the Étude. He it was who discovered
the great secret that no separation of methods of fingering is of
any avail in practice, but that the perfection of the fingers must
be carried out solely on the basis of their mechanical gymnastic. It
is useless to try to apply my five fingers to so many theoretically
possible permutations; the important question is what practical use
can be made of my fingers according to their physical structure.
Czerny has no obsolete rules of practice, but a science of mechanism;
thus taking the very opposite pole to Hummel. Piano-study, which with
Couperin and Philip Emanuel was still a part of a musical training
with just the necessary amount of mechanics, became with him primarily
the gymnastic of the fingers with the addition of instruction in touch
and execution. Long past are the times when the good old clavier
was only used to “fill” the song, which was after all the essence
of music. From music we have come to the fingers. A science of
the fingers is constructed, and the fingers are trained as earlier
only the throat was trained. Technique has remembered her own ways,
and made the last first. The emancipation of finger-gymnastic was
an epoch-marking point in the treatment of the piano, the desired
answer of theory to practice, which for a long time had recognised
the specific art of the piano. It was perhaps the last important
stride in its emancipation when the results of practice were made the
groundwork of instruction. Czerny, in his great Pianoforte School,
his Opus 500, is almost entirely free from the _à priori_ theory. He
transfers mechanics to music. With good results he treats individual
cases, as for example, when he appends to the beginning of passages
a finger-exercise not given in the scale; he designs immediately to
return to the usual fingering in order to arrive duly at the extreme
notes with the extreme fingers, and to avoid unnecessary underpassing.
It was reserved for a later time not merely to bring the note-material
lying before us into harmony with economic fingering, but also to
make execution, which with Czerny has but a loose dependence on the
finger-exercise, re-act upon the fingers. Bülow, for example, is fond
of unusual fingering, in which the execution forbids any too easy
playing, and a too loose rendering is prevented by irregularities in
the succession of the fingers.
* * * * *
The mechanics of the fingers formed the first part of
piano-instruction; touch and execution were the second. Their
importance as means to the mechanism of music was fully seen; and
in the “Technical Studies” of Plaidy, or in Köhler’s “Methode für
Klavierspiel und Musik” (1857), they are as exhaustively handled
as before had been the “manieren” or the thorough-bass. The former
contents himself with the simple terms, Legato, Staccato, Legatissimo,
and Portamento; the latter gives a more mechanical division, always
according to the use of the fore-arm, the finger-joints, the wrist, or
the elbow. Neither is complete, neither supplies a systematic advance
on the lines of his predecessors; and we should be astonished at these
divergences if we set the numerous schools of these times, from a
theoretical point of view, over against one another. Practically
considered, however, they agree well enough. The holding of the
hand as enjoined by Philip Emanuel Bach has remained on the whole
unaltered down to the present day. With trifling differences, which
concern the relation of the extreme fingers to the middle finger,
and the profile of the back of the hand, Bach, Türk, Müller, Hummel,
Logier, Kalkbrenner and the rest, are at one as to the support of
the arm which carries the hand, and of the hand which carries the
fingers as they descend. In Paris Logier constructed an instrument to
hold the hand in practice, in shape like a bracket, which he named
“chiroplast.” Kalkbrenner, in his “Guide-mains,” introduced some
modifications on the chiroplast; but such mechanical contrivances
gained no general acceptance. Logier’s speciality was his prefatory
note that the finger must remain in continual touch with the key. With
this was allied that special kind of sensuously charming touch which
differentiated the Parisian school from the brilliant playing of the
Viennese and the emotional style of the English. That _carezzando_,
or stroking of the keys, was a favourite practice of Kalkbrenner and
Kontski in Paris. To-day Risler remains perhaps alone in this school
with his pure sensuous charm of touch.
If, in the whole great group of technical artists, which is bounded
on the one side by Wölffl, Wanhal, Kozeluch, Eberl, in Mozart’s
generation, and on the other by Thalberg and Liszt in ours, we should
look for truly pre-eminent spirits, then we should have remaining
Clementi, the father of all technique; Hummel, the inventor of the
modern piano-exercise; and Czerny, the genius of teaching. But if we
ask for the lines of the motion which runs through this epoch, we
observe the victory of a virtuoso impulse, which goes back to Hummel,
over a plainer and more intellectual tendency which has its rise in
Clementi. The school of Clementi prefers the English pianoforte with
its heavier but richer touch; that of Hummel the Viennese, with its
lighter tone, which lends itself more easily to effects.
[Illustration: Ludwig Berger. Pupil of Clementi; founder of a widely
influential piano-school at Berlin. Lithograph by Wildt.]
But it is not possible to draw a sharp line between the two groups.
A Moscheles serves not less the spirit of Clementi than that of
Hummel. The simplicity of Cramer, the counterpoint of Klengel, the
plainness of Ludwig Berger, the intensity of Field, belong to the
circle of Clementi’s influence. Berger’s pupils, Greulich, Heinrich
Dorn, Wilhelm Taubert, Albert Löschhorn, whose studies still live,
carry this style down to our own time. The teaching of Hummel lived
on in Ferdinand Hiller, Benedict, Wilmers, Baake, Ernst Pauer, the
Viennese Pixis. While Beethoven left behind him as actual pupils
only the Archduke Rudolf and Ferdinand Ries, a respectable imitator,
his temporary pupil Czerny passed over into the wake of Hummel, and
brought the Viennese style to a final victory. Kalkbrenner, Moscheles,
Weber, Liszt, Thalberg, Döhler, Madame Oury, Madame Pleyel, Theodore
Kullak, Pollini, of whom many belong externally to Clementi’s school,
passed as apostles of Viennese technique to all lands from St
Petersburg to London, from Paris to Milan.
Certain traditions of musical coteries and centres of instruction
exhibit with this international character some more or less important
local groups. In Prague men adored Tomaschek, the composer of
Eclogues and Rhapsodies; Dionysius Weber, the first director of a
Conservatorium there; and his successor Kittl. From Tomaschek’s school
proceeded Alexander Dreyschock, the specialist of the left hand; Ignaz
Tedesco, the “Hannibal of octaves”; and Schulhoff, the fashionable
composer. In the middle of the century the Prague tradition was upheld
by Proksch.
In Frankfort lived Vollweiler, who enjoyed a widespread renown as a
teacher, and later went to St Petersburg; and Aloys Schmitt, whose
delicate Études have been taken up by Bülow into his great collection
of educational pieces.
Vienna alternates, but never loses in wealth. Berlin and St Petersburg
as yet produced no fixed or permanent school. Leipzig takes its
colour from the foundation of the Conservatorium with Mendelssohn and
Moscheles and their fellow-citizen Schumann. England, from Clementi
to Moscheles, imported a constant succession of Continental artists.
The influence of the Conservatorium runs far and wide. A Strassburger
named Hüllmandel, who took up his abode in Paris in 1776, had started
clavier-instruction there. His pupil Jadin was director of the piano
at the new Conservatoire. For forty-six years after 1797, Adam, whose
name we remember because of his improved piano-school, carried on
his labours in Paris. He was a tasteful professor, and brought the
Parisian renown to its height. Kalkbrenner, the acrobat, succeeded
him. Adam’s colleague, Pradher, was the teacher of those worst of
fashionable composers, Herz, Hünten, Rosellen, shallowest and emptiest
of musicians. Within the same walls was a Chopin!
The life of the great virtuosos is a reflection of the unrest
inseparable from their calling. It is indeed no longer a life of
adventure, as with Marchand and Froberger; there is method in the
madness. The life of the executant, no less than the execution,
has found its form. The concert-campaigns are the foundation; the
warrior returns to his home at greater and greater intervals; until
at last, when delight in recitals has waned along with the pliancy
of the fingers, some resting-place or other is found--a share in
a piano-manufactory or a steady round of instruction. During the
campaigns instruction also takes a kind of locomotive form; devoted
pupils follow the master, and leave him at fitting places, to pitch
their tents there and make room for other peregrinating pupils. Or,
on the other hand, pupils swarm from all parts of the earth to a
place which the Master is always leaving, but to which he constantly
returns--like the summer students of German universities--a type of
professional existence of which Liszt’s Weimar period gives perhaps
the most famous exemplification.
[Illustration: John Field, 1782-1837. Steel engraving by C. Mayer.]
Muzio Clementi (1752-1832) was the first to exhibit this form of
virtuoso-life on the great scale. Born in Italy, he found a home in
London through the support of a wealthy Englishman; but he was far
from showing the sedentary character of a Bach, a Couperin, or a
Beethoven. Virtuosity impels to travel, as composition keeps a man at
home. The difference which we observed between the sensitive anchorite
Bach and the cosmopolitan popularity-hunter Handel, appears again
between Beethoven and these executants. Mozart was too many-sided,
and besides he died too young, to become a universal teacher of the
piano; but Clementi lived almost three generations, during which half
Europe grouped itself round him and his pupils. Down to 1780 he was
still “cembalist” at the London Italian opera; during the next ten
years he undertook two great tours, one to Vienna, the other to Paris.
Meanwhile he became partner in an English piano-firm, which failed,
whereupon he founded one of his own along with Collard. He set out for
St Petersburg with his pupil Field; left him there; but on the way
gained two new pupils, Berger and Klengel, whom also he established
in St Petersburg. On one of his tours at Berlin he married, only to
lose his wife shortly after. In 1810 he made another circular tour
through Vienna and Italy. He spent another whole winter in Leipzig,
and married a second time. His last years, when the world had outgrown
him, he spent quietly in London.
In the life of Hummel (1778-1837), the favourite pupil of Mozart,
posts as kapellmeister with Esterhazy, in Stuttgart and in Weimar,
with a longer, unattached residence at Vienna, regulated the
varying domiciles at which he lived. Weimar, as a great resting
place, enjoyed through him its first musical renown, which reached
half through the period of Goethe. In the intervals he took his
concert-tours to Dresden, Paris, Holland, Berlin, Belgium, England,
Scotland, and St Petersburg. These, as far as the furloughs of a
kapellmeister permitted, recurred with a certain regularity, till they
gradually ceased entirely.
[Illustration: Marcelline Czartoryska, _née_ Princess Radziwill, pupil
of Czerny. Engraved by Marchi.]
Cramer (1771-1858) had two long stays in London, in the midst of which
a sojourn at Paris occupied the years from 1832 to 1845. He found a
secondary occupation in a London musical house, in which he was a
partner from 1828 to 1842. Kalkbrenner (1784-1849), on the contrary,
lived in Paris, but his residence there was interrupted by a nine
years’ stay in London (1814-1823). He too had secondary interests. He
was concerned with Logier in a company for the exploitation of the
“Chiroplast,” and he had also a share in a piano-factory. Moscheles
(1794-1870) had no business. His external life was made up of his
youthful time in Vienna with Beethoven and Meyerbeer, his sensational
Parisian recitals of 1820, his glorious stay in London from 1821
to 1846, and his professoriate at the Leipzig Conservatorium. At
intervals, of course, he made Continental concert-tours.
Among all the great virtuosos and teachers only Czerny had a really
fixed abode (1791-1857). As a boy of fifteen he was already a teacher
in Vienna, and as such he died there; his tours also being few and far
between.
[Illustration: Prince Louis Ferdinand. Engraved by Geiger after
Grassy.]
But Czerny is in this respect an exception. Otherwise the
international play of virtuosity led to an exchange and co-operation,
to the mutual curiosity and desire to learn, which mark the
concert-life of that age. Duet-playing by great executants, in private
or in the concert-hall, is nothing unusual throughout this time. But
the genuine interpreter does not as yet exist. The player has mostly
a personal interest in the piece performed, and the friends assist at
the christening. It is the time of the Hexameron. Exchange is often
even too self-abnegatory. Moscheles composed for Cramer (with whom,
as also with Ries and Kalkbrenner, he often played duets) a last
movement for Cramer’s own sonata for two pianofortes. Later on he
took the piece back again and tacked it on to his well-known piece,
“Hommage à Haendel!” We need not then be surprised at such gruesome
pasticcios as the programme of a London Philharmonic concert under
Weber,[121] when were played the C sharp minor concerto of Ries, the E
flat major of Beethoven, and the Hungarian Rondo of Pixis.
The two volumes of “Recollections of the life of Moscheles,” which
his wife compiled from diaries and letters, give a clear view of the
rich international concert-life of this age. Year by year we follow
the kaleidoscopic existence of these artists, who see each other
constantly and constantly part. Triumphs of virtuosity fill the winter
seasons, followed by recreation in the country and preparations for
an enlarged repertoire. The halls echo with jubilation and applause;
and the audiences, especially the easily-kindled Viennese, are
enthusiastic in their cheers. Music has become so popular and the
compositions are so extraordinarily banal that it certainly did not
often occur that they were rejected for shallowness--although, on
the other hand, Kalkbrenner’s experience with a Beethoven symphony
at a Paris Conservatoire concert was a sad warning to those who try
to improve the public taste. The dilettantes push forward the more,
the circle of instruction widens the cheaper and better the pianos
become. They push themselves into rivalry with the artists in great
concerts; as Moscheles relates of the celloist Sir William Curtis and
the pianists Oom and Mrs Fleming. “I have to hear so much insipid
music.” “Musique mise à la portée de tout le monde.” From professional
piano-playing--and they often played at two places in an evening--the
artists took recreation with the good temper which never failed in
those years. The great singer Malibran would sit down to the piano and
sing the Rataplan and the Spanish songs, to which she would imitate
the guitar on the keyboard. Then she would imitate famous colleagues,
and a Duchess greeting her, and a Lady So-and-so singing “Home Sweet
Home” with the most cracked and nasal voice in the world. Thalberg
would then take his seat and play Viennese songs and waltzes with
“obligato snaps.” Moscheles himself would play with hand turned round,
or with the fist; perhaps under the fist disguising the thumb, which
in Moscheles’ peculiar way of playing used to take the thirds under
the palm of the hand.
[Illustration: Marie Charlotte Antoine Josephe, Countess of
Questenberg.]
These players preferred to play their own compositions. The separation
between composer and virtuoso was not yet complete. Of course, when
Ferdinand Hiller in his “Life of an Artist” says that he had never
heard either Hummel or Chopin, Thalberg or Moscheles, play a piece
by another composer, his experience was at least unique. Moscheles,
for example, even played Scarlatti on the old harpsichord. But, as a
rule, they abode by the old custom, so far at least as amateurs were
not concerned. These latter were in their instruction-books liberally
provided with historical material.
Improvisation also flourished in concerts and soirées; and playing and
composing, which in improvisation form a true union, can only with
difficulty be severed in an age of creative virtuosos. Kalkbrenner
composed while playing, and played while composing, so that no one
could tell the difference between the two; and Czerny used to invent
the necessary étude in the midst of the lesson. Thus it happened--a
state of things unparalleled to-day--that the beloved duet-playing
could be combined with the equally beloved improvisation--mutually
contradictory as they appear. Moscheles speaks of an improvised duet
with Mendelssohn. The latter played in the bass some English songs in
ballad-style; the former interwove in the treble the scherzo of his
friend’s A minor symphony.
Slight as was the advance yet made in division of labour between
player and composer, there was equally little comprehensive division
between the species of music. We do not hear of chamber-music
evenings, pianoforte evenings, orchestral concerts. All was mingled
in one; and chamber-music finds the same audience as the symphony. A
piano-recital without orchestra was a rarity; and the concerto-form
is almost _de règle_ in all the greater performances. This is seen in
the compositions of this period, which, as a rule, so far as they are
specially adapted to public performance, were written for orchestral
accompaniment. By their side were editions for private use, including
the important orchestral portions. This concerto-piece could not
greatly or permanently aid in the advance of a delicate or intimate
piano-music. Through the rarity of special piano recitals it was
not so easy to get pianos when they were wanted. In Frankfort there
lived a well-known old lady who had absolutely the only piano store
in the city. People had to praise her playing, to blow the trumpet of
advertisement for her wares (they were Streicher’s), to court her and
cringe to her in order to get an instrument for a concert.[122]
In 1837 Moscheles ventured to introduce piano-evenings without
orchestra. This was an important step. But even yet the evening was
not wholly devoted to the piano. A soprano or contralto filled the
gap between one performance and the next. How long was it before the
serious nature of a concert was universally acknowledged! Possibly
here the production of dubious works of the performer’s own led to a
low, acrobatic conception of the true state of affairs; and it was
only the interpretation of good works by others, which were more
serious, that saved taste from complete degeneration. The public
gradually became quiet, and felt itself turned from educator into
educated. The court ceases to take its supper during the playing;[123]
the cantatrice no longer concludes her _roulades_ with a smile worthy
of the circus; and a singer is no longer hissed off the stage if he
forgets to give his hand by way of thanks to his fair partner. Slowly
it is realised that the concert is not a place for showing off, nor a
mere form of social amusement, but a religious service.
This composite structure of virtuosity carried to the extent of
vapidity, and of interpretation carried into historical research,
is reflected in the compositions of the period. On the one side the
tradition was exactly carried on; people began to view the existing
classical works--Mozart’s and Beethoven’s Sonatas, or all kinds of
pieces by Scarlatti, Bach, and Handel, as material for study; they
republished half-forgotten or badly edited authors like Scarlatti;
they even wrote sonatas “in the style of Scarlatti”; they arranged for
the piano great quantities of the most various chamber or orchestral
music. Alongside of the historical tendency stands, as so often, the
international. Spanish, Irish, Russian, Italian, Polish national airs
and rhythms are taken _en_ _masse_ into the circle of salon music;
the air swarms with Polonaises, Boleros, Gipsy airs, Ecossaises,
Tarantelles. But this quite cosmopolitan music was stamped by a
_fade_ enthusiasm for beauty; and there is bound up with the pieces
an empty sentimental greeting or a hypocritical reminiscence. The
mythological titles of the seventeenth century, and the realistic
ones of the eighteenth, yield to the sentimental ones[124] of the
bourgeois empire. But never was this system of naming pieces on a
lower level; and never did it so corrupt the taste of the believing
multitude. Even to-day we are not yet freed from its traces. Then
there are the “Hommages à Beethoven” or “à Händel” corresponding
to the old “Tombeaux,” but with less sincerity of intention. Then
there are the “Fire pieces”--a whole collection of dedications to
fire brigades--the “Burning of Mariazell,” and the “Ruins of Wien
Neustadt,” figure among the salon-music of Czerny. Then follow the
geographical recollections--the innumerable souvenirs of all possible
towns, rivers, mountains, and people, such as the “Souvenir de mon
premier voyage,” “les Charmes de Paris,” “le Retour à Londres,” etc.
By their side are genuine characteristic titles chiefly employed
to gild the pill of the “study.” Most objectionable of all are the
favourite opera-fantasias, which are specially in vogue in the
Parisian school. These tear the airs almost from the very mouths of
the singers, and the composer’s completed melodies from his work, and
stuff the _pot pourri_ with passages, figurations, and fragments of
études, with spurious slow introductions and sentimental passages, so
that finally absolutely nothing of the essence of the original airs is
left. These are perhaps the worst examples of want of style and taste
to be found in the history of art. Here the curse of popularity came
home to roost; here was reached the extreme point, in the publicity
of the concert and of society, which the clavier had to pass through
since the development of the hammer-mechanism. Any harshness in an
artistic work was sufficient to condemn it; invention was tabooed;
smoothness and the tickling of the ear were the only law. What in
Paris was done by Herz, Hünten, Karr, Rosellen, Kontski, and their
fellows, made a great sensation, and quickly vanished. Hünten received
for a moderate-sized work from fifteen hundred to two thousand francs;
to-day he is banished even from the salon. Karr wrote to order
hundreds of pieces; to-day no amateur knows a single one out of the
huge mass. And the days in which Kontski’s “Reveil du lion” was put in
the hands of pupils appear to be past for ever.
The interdependence of piano and opera was not merely external. In
Paris the opera, with its world-ruling influence, not merely forms a
musical centre to which everything gravitates; it is itself subjected
to the great law of this period--the law of mosaic work and of the
aim to please. In the thirties and forties the world had thus reached
hollow ostentation in the grand opera, and in the comic opera mere
ballet-dancing. “Where,” wrote Wagner at that time, “where has the
grace of Méhul, of Isouard, of Boieldieu, and of the young Auber
gone, chased out of sight by the abject quadrille rhythms, which
to-day rattle through the theatre of the opera comique and keep
everything else out?” What was seen there was like what was heard
on the pianoforte--pointless situations, introduced for the sake of
the “business,” tirades which seem to be closed with the smile of
the acrobat when he has finished his trick--technique, and nothing
but technique. A librettist like Scribe is loaded with commissions,
surrounded by Parisian or foreign composers--even Wagner in his youth
having once written to him. He understands how to manufacture the
proper substratum for the musical triflings. Read from this point
of view Auber’s later operas, as the “La Part du Diable,” or those
overtures whose whole structure depends on the fact that they are
skilfully adapted to dances; or that daub-work in the musical setting
with the jaundiced transition passages, where a proper modulation
would be almost out of place; or those boleros, which people sing
in circumstances of the utmost grief, without being able to raise
themselves to the height of the irony; or those étude colourations,
introduced in the most indifferent places provided they pay, and
developing themselves vigorously about a single vowel; or those
scores, which are so miserably transparent that one can see the author
first rapidly composing them at the piano and then putting in the
instrumentation slap-dash. It is the first, and let us hope, the last
time, that the piano reaches its hand to the opera--a most unfruitful
elective affinity. Opera and piano are necessarily and essentially
hostile. In the Paris of that day, when absolute music, as well that
of Berlioz as that of Chopin, is still a modest retiring flower, the
crowd ran after the gentle titillation of the opera, and the mass of
piano music moves in the operatic humdrum path. Among the Parisians
as among the Italians there was assuredly not an operatic composer
who did not invent at the piano and transfer his inventions from the
piano to the opera. Donizetti has left an interesting letter to his
brother-in-law Vesselli, which was fastened as an inscription on his
piano: “Do not sell this piano at any price, for it contains my whole
artistic life from 1822 onwards. Its tone lingers in my ears. In it
murmur Anna, Maria, Fausta, Lucia. Let it live as long as I live! I
lived with it my years of hope, of wedded happiness, of loneliness.
It heard my cries of joy, it saw my tears, my disenchantments, my
honours. It shared with me my toils and the sweat of my brow. In it
dwells my genius, every section of my path. It saw your father, your
brother, all of us; we all have tortured it; it was a true comrade to
us all, and may it always be a comrade to your daughter as a dowry of
a thousand sad and happy thoughts.”
There seems so much that is contemptible in this technical school
that it would almost appear, at least from the artistic point of
view, to have lived in vain. And yet it was at this time that a form
sprang into existence which, born from technical necessities, became
a custom, and from a custom a style, and so emphatically a style that
it was able to enter into effective rivalry with the older styles--the
contrapuntal, the thematic, the _leit-motif_. We are still under its
dominion. This form is the _Étude_.
The Étude was not the invention of the technists. It existed in germ
in Bach; it half grew out of thematic; only the visual angle altered
with time. In an invention or symphony of Bach a motive is treated
according to the free laws of imitation; it is used up in all the
voices, for all fingers. In a Prelude on some thematic ground-subject,
in a fugue with its stern code of canonic succession, the same is the
case: the motive is expended on itself. But between the broken chords
of Bach’s C sharp Prelude and those of Chopin’s C sharp Étude there
is a vast difference in the treatment. What in the one is used with a
view to the motive is here expended with a view to the technique. Bach
sets before him the artistic possibilities of the theme: Chopin the
mechanical. Bach wrote many of his preludes with educational purposes;
but he did not compose them with a sole view to their full practical
value. As in theory the musical and the mechanical cannot be sharply
severed, so the pieces are half for the purpose of supplying music,
half means of instruction. The mechanical part was obliged first to
emancipate itself before the conception of the Étude could be fully
grasped. On the straight line leading from the old thematic to the
Étude style, the conception of the motive altered itself. Motives
were now found which could be arranged according to their technical
productiveness. We see perhaps even the same motive, considered first
contrapuntally or as a fixed idea, but afterwards according to its
mechanical value.
There are motives whose interest lies in the size of the hand; or
in the playing of a legato passage simultaneously with the chords
in the same hand;[125] or again, contrary motion of chords in both
hands has to be carried out; or, yet further, attention is paid to
an easy gliding of the hand over great stretches; or finger-changing
on the same key is the ground-idea. The piece may aim at _cantabile_
or at the perfect legato in a _fugato_ movement, or at the practice
of octaves, pearl-like scales, pianissimo touch, the freedom of
the left hand, a double melody, or any of the hundred technical
possibilities. There are dry and insipid methods of thus working
out academically a technical idea; but it is also possible to see in
delicate and ingenious ways, slumbering germs of great fruitfulness
in the technical motive, and to develop powers of unexpected beauty.
The one way sees in a broken chord only the means of using it in major
or minor modes, or in the seventh, or in some unusual successions,
first for the right hand, then for the left, then for both, and
perhaps finally with sustained notes. Theory is satisfied, a practical
object provided, the academic conscience laid to rest. But the other
way sees in the broken chords their elementary character, the germ
of the Rheingold or of the Götterdämmerung. It permits them first
to sound slightly, then to grow further and further, to assume a
daemonic grandeur; like eternal signs, to stretch over the heavens
and embrace the worlds. Thus, no less than the other, it presents all
the _nuances_ of major, minor, seventh, right, left, up and down;
but it covers these technical variations so perfectly with the sense
of the inner meaning that they become identified, and can never be
separated: the technical and the characteristic content have, in the
mind of a genius like this, involuntarily become a unity. Such a
master, for example, takes the neat finger-changing on one note as
the means for a rococo-sketch, the pianissimo leaps for a dance of
the elves, the rolling passages in the left hand for the roar of the
sea with elemental upper parts; the rhythmical varieties in left and
right for graceful fetters of the dance; the scurrying glide over the
black keys for a picture of homely pleasures. Here reveals itself
the entire fruitfulness of the technical setting, which--who could
believe it?--precisely by the limitation of the motive, approaches
very near to characteristic art and realism of presentation. Here is
a rich field opened to technical subjectivity. Personality is very
variously displayed in the setting of a technical idea. Contrast with
Clementi, who scarcely ever shows any specific sense of character in a
motive, such a man as Hummel, who on theoretic grounds calculates out
the utmost technical possibilities of a motive; or Czerny, who in a
practical manner attains the same many-sidedness; or Cramer, who was
the first to find his way back to music from technique; or Moscheles,
Chopin, Schumann, who cannot think technique without feeling character.
Deep and mysterious is this connection between the Étude and its
musical setting. Like the fugue the simplest Étude goes back to those
elemental foundations which cannot fail of their impression, even
if practically nothing is composed upon them. I hear some simple
scale-étude of Bertini played, with the smooth harmonies on which it
is built. There is nothing in the piece, no soul reveals itself to
me, and yet there is a weird charm in these eternal ground-motives of
all music, and in their tonics and dominants which are so to speak
anchored in eternity. The dull man is soon wearied by them, but the
sensitive man instantly responds. At this point the Étude sinks down
to the great mother of all music: like the fugue it springs directly
out of Nature. With the consciousness of character the Étude grows
tuneful. In the studies of Moscheles, in the Symphonic Études of
Schumann, in Chopin’s studies, art creates what Nature created. From
the technical theme rises a certain spiritual aroma, reminding us of
a tune, a scene, a landscape; the tune condenses itself in the return
of the technical motive; it collects itself all the more narrowly and
closely, in proportion as all contrasts and secondary tunes keep their
distance. It is a spiritual melody, set in a firm frame, as condensed
as neither the free fantasia form, nor the thematic sonata, nor the
canonic fugue, had ever presented it. The tune is so concentrated
that it cannot dispense with the frame, or it would fly to pieces. It
has no capacity of transference; it prefers to exist as a fragment
ready-made.
It is thus that the Étude fixes the form. It favours fixed and
limited technical models, which fit mosaic-wise into each other. It
is opposed to huge, Beethoven-like emotions and their expression; its
horizon does not pass beyond two pages. It is still further removed
from Bach’s method, which depended on plain thematic development; it
loves the speedy and the limited, and confines itself entirely to the
practical. It penetrates into all works in which technical brilliance
gives a false impression of the contents, or in which the greatness of
the contents only finds its last expression by technique.
The technical setting of the form, and the technical expression, pass
over entirely into the consciousness of the time, and create new works
in chamber-music, opera, and orchestra.
Compare the development of a sonata by Weber with that of one by
Beethoven; for example, Weber’s fourth in E minor with Beethoven’s
Op. 28--two sonatas which in original idea, a soft melodic tune, were
not so unlike as they turned out to be. In Beethoven the first melody
develops itself on a 3/4 rhythm, which begins and ends naturally;
the second theme is an unforced contrast to the first; gradually
figurations attach themselves, which are natural offshoots of them,
intertwining themselves without losing their original dependence; all
grows logically out of itself; the end is given in the beginning,
and the progress in the variation. In Weber, on the contrary, each
piece is carried through by itself: the whole is no organism but a
mere pasticcio. The sensitive first subject is treated in its naked
melodic beauty; a semiquaver passage is attached to it; a bald
enharmonic study leads on to the second theme, which treats its
soothing character from many sides; and only the “free” section brings
the whole a little closer together. And we know how even in the best
men of this period the great creative organism, in which every part
conditions its own subordinate part, gives place to a mere isolation
and to total want of system. In the concertos, after the traditional
mutual compliments of orchestra and piano, the solo instrument starts,
with surprising suddenness, on its passages, which are strung together
from étude-pieces, selected haphazard. At the conventional places the
curtain is withdrawn, and the whole glitter of technique is displayed.
The harsh transitions, the quick returns, the jostling fugues, are not
only a peculiarity, say, of Schumann--they are the style of the time.
They are the _framing_ style of a time which does not care for the
want of restraint that attends great emotions.
Its preference is for constructive logic in detail. More genuine piano
music than the Étude there cannot be. The essence of the piano has in
it become music. Matter and aim here alone determine the form, which
no longer speaks merely in a universal musical language.
The piano follows the lines of the time, which pursues technical
purity in all things. In the representative arts certain styles were
long seen to predominate, which for limited periods were indifferently
transferred to all objects without respect to matter or aim.
Renaissance, Gothic, antique, exhibit their churches, their tombs,
their doors, their tables, their cupboards, their keys, whether they
are bosses or reliefs, marbles or bronzes. In our century technique
begins to speak its first word: a chair is to be a chair; a carpet
shall be constructed with a view to the aim of carpets; a vase must
speak in accordance with the material of vases; and painting must
in the first instance be painting. A cupboard is not an entrance to
a temple; a table leg not a statue. These are intrusions which art
has not often experienced in its history. With music the case was
not dissimilar. The fugal style ruled once so mightily that it drew
church, dance, salon, fantasia, tune, all indifferently, under its
sway. The good fugue was a good tune, and the best tune could only
be expressed in contrapuntal form. Now, however, the emancipation
had taken place. The organ no longer worked necessarily along with
the piano, nor the song with the violin; and the orchestra became
conscious of its power as a totality. What the Venetians had once
timidly begun was now carried into actual fact; and the artistic
form of the étude was the seal of this individualising process. The
much-praised Paganini had no longer, like Corelli, to prompt the
piano, as far as its content was concerned, from the violin outwardly.
Paganini-études, by Schumann, were strict piano-pieces, which as far
as form went borrowed nothing from Paganini, and in matter only a
groundwork of notes. They strive towards the brilliancy of Paganini’s
execution--that astonishing, spiritual technique, which aroused so
wonderfully the emulation of a Liszt. And in turn there passed from
the piano the brilliancy of a technique which inspired the orchestra
to its own special triumphs. The “Queen Mab,” the “Mephistopheles,”
the “Feuer-Zauber,” and the “Valkyries’ Ride” did not need to envy the
piano. Yet without the fame of the Étude they would never have been so
brilliant.
[Illustration: Clementi. Engraved by Neidl after Hardy.]
We are now coming nearer the personalities themselves. It is no
long stride from the virtuosos to the romantic writers; the latter
are only to be explained by reference to the former. We pass slowly
from the domain of pure virtuosity to that of compositions of deeper
meaning; from the realm of the teacher to that of the poet; from piano
purism to the longing after poetic interdependence; from the noise of
concerts to the intimate retirement of the home.
In Clementi these signs appeared first. What he had to say was
little; but what he had to teach was only the more in consequence. He
collected, he tested, he drew out his experiences, and never willingly
abandoned the historical attitude. This was the first recoil on the
classical period. Clementi’s Studies were so fruitful that even a
Beethoven was not unmoved by them; although of course there were many
who opposed themselves to his speciality, the passages in thirds and
sixths for one hand. Mozart hated this unrest; he aimed at a graceful
and easy style. But the growth of technique soon shook off this
old-fashioned rococo method; it aimed at universal conquest.
As Clementi still lives in what we may call his “_grand-pupils_,” so
his Gradus ad Parnassum has remained the father of all Étude-works,
often reprinted, often re-edited. It is easy to recognise in it its
antiquated constituent parts. No principle of distinction is adopted
between the fingering of diatonic and chromatic scales. In his
directions Clementi begins his chromatics with _E_. The Études move in
a peculiar middle region between compositions and exercises. Single
Études, like the splendid Presto in F sharp minor, reach the heights
of a Cramer (Simrock, 24). He even provides genuine fugues in order
that the fugal style may also be practised. In one Étude (Simrock, 38)
cantabile and triplets are mingled as exercises. Often again three
pieces appear together as a suite--a patriarchal retention of old
customs. Others again are mere dry and insipid instruction-exercises.
We follow with pleasure the process by which fixed technical problems
gained in content as time went on. For example, the change of finger
on one key is in Clementi a mere tedious motive with three notes only
(Simrock, 20). In Cramer (Pauer, 41 ff) is already perceived the charm
which short held notes may introduce into this monotonous exercise;
and the drollery which a change of fingers as the characteristic
motive carries concealed in itself, gives the character to the piece.
Chopin, in his well-known C major study (Op. 10, 7), gives us a good
example of this scheme of fingering, which is carried out strictly,
the alternation of thumb and first finger never being interfered
with, even on the black keys, in spite of the various awkward chords
that occur. Thus he gives perfect freedom to the piquant turns and
droll character of the piece without to any extent spoiling its
effectiveness as an Étude.
Over against the Gradus of Clementi, as a remarkable collection of the
most varied pieces, stand certain smaller studies of a more defined
physiognomy. The well-known “Préludes et Exercices” are written in
all the keys, and keep on the whole to the scale-motive. The “Méthode
du Pianoforte,” with its fifty lessons, collects all kinds of airs
and old pieces, provided with marks of fingering--which, however, are
very much behind those of Czerny. The book is noteworthy as one of
the first important attempts to make use of already existing pieces,
not the work of the collector, as material for studies. Very soon
the sonatas of Beethoven appear in these collections, where they are
arranged according to their difficulty. Here are Handel, Corelli,
Mozart, Couperin, Scarlatti, Pleyel, Dussek, Haydn, Paradies, and the
Bachs.
Clementi sowed his wild oats in a series of preludes and cadenzas
which he published (Op. 19) under the title of “Characteristic
Music.” These were written in the styles of certain masters and
other famous clavier-teachers, such as Haydn, Kozeluch, Vanhall,
Mozart, Sterkel, and Clementi himself. It was half a jest, and a very
moderately successful one; but it is worth noticing as a sign of an
interpretative and compiling tendency.
Among the hundred sonatas and sonatinas, for one or two players, which
Clementi left behind, there is not a single one without interest
or utility from the standpoint of instruction; but from that of
content there is at most only one which can to-day attract us by its
originality or genius. This is the so-called Dido sonata, dedicated
to Cherubini; and even in it the genius is cold. In the other sonatas
we see the body of a Beethoven without the soul. It is Scarlatti once
again--trivial and soul-less; but unlike Scarlatti, who cut short what
had a short life, it is pretentious in its eternal repetitions. It is
a manufacture of music, nourished by the didactic spirit: compared
with the full effects of Hummel it is an empty style.
[Illustration: J. N. Hummel.
Engraved by Fr. Wrenk (1766-1830), after the portrait by Catherine von
Escherich (beginning of 19th century)]
The index to Cramer’s works does not look promising. The Variations,
Impromptus, Rondos, Divertissements; the Victory of Kutusoff; the
Two Styles, ancient and modern; the Rendezvous à la Chasse; un
jour de Printemps; Hors d’œuvre, grande sonate dans le style de
Clementi; or the combined composition, in the fashion of the time,
by Cramer, Hummel, Kalkbrenner and Moscheles, of variations on Rule
Britannia--all these are equally unattractive. The hundred and
five sonatas are almost unknown. Cramer’s importance lies entirely
in his Études, which have been frequently reprinted and arranged.
Of the various editions the finest is Pauer’s English “édition de
luxe,” which is adorned with a fine engraving of Cramer. Here he is
all genius and sensibility. The somewhat highly-coloured nose, on
which he himself used to jest, attracts no notice in the portrait.
“It was Bacchus who put his thumb there,” he would say; “ce diable
de Bacchus!” The whole delicate spirit of Cramer breathes in these
Études, which to-day are unforgotten and unsurpassed in their kind.
Their instructive value lies in the isolation of the technical
exercise, which is made less exacting by skilful introduction of
contrary motion at the proper point, while the most noble musical
forms mount up from them. They are pieces full of character, and
without titles, to be heartily reverenced. On the other hand “Cramer’s
Pianoforte School,” which went through countless editions in his own
time, has now become useless. The most noteworthy thing we find in it
is a preface on preludes and codas, which, unlike Clementi’s, does
not simply copy the approved models, but sets forth theoretically a
series of “styles” in such improvisations, from the simplest chords
to melodic development. In the period of public improvisations such
instructions were not without their use. Preluding is still a “style”
with us; codas we excuse ourselves. But in those days a player saw
nothing out of place in the direct connection of such free inventions
with the piece before him. And Cramer was still old-fashioned enough
not to object to interweave with pieces of Mozart all kinds of
flourishes--often, as Moscheles assures us, trivial indeed.
Over against Clementi, the genius of teaching, and Cramer, the
genius of technique, stands Hummel as the inventor of the modern
piano-exercise. Dussek had already, by his unusually full collection
of exercises, accustomed the public ear to the new state of things;
but Hummel brought the charm of the pianoforte and the effects of the
seven octaves within the reach of all. What our amateurs, from the
days of Chopin, know so well, that full and satisfying tone, that
blazing colouration, is all in Hummel.
In his huge Piano School a combination in Hummel of the old master
and the modern player is very visible. He systematises fingering into
the following divisions: (1) advancing with simple finger-order in
easy figure-successions; (2) passing the thumb under other fingers or
other fingers over the thumb; (3) leaving out one or more fingers;
(4) changing a finger with another on the same key; (5) stretches
and leaps; (6) thumb and fourth finger on the black notes; (7) the
passing of a long finger over a shorter, or of a short under a long;
(8) change of different fingers on a key, with repeated or not
repeated touch, and often the repeated use of the same finger on
several keys; (9) alternation, interweaving, or crossing of the hands;
and, finally (10), the legato style. A stupendous work indeed; and
for every head of the fingering, for every technical possibility, a
number of examples are introduced, with the completest calculation
of permutations ever seen. There are in all two thousand two hundred
examples, and more than a hundred exercises develop the possibilities
of playing between C and G. Before every exercise stand the harmonic
ground-chords. And thus comes to pass the great miracle, that by
means of the utmost conceivable combinations, by means of the hundred
chromatic subtleties, musical figures are formed which no composer
had previously invented, and which lead on to sound-effects never
before suspected. In the examples of an exercise-book lay undreamed-of
novelties in piano-composition.
Hummel himself had a very modest opinion of his own compositions.
He knew that he had made no advance in the path of Beethoven; and
that no greatness was possible outside of it. “It was a serious
moment for me,” he said once at Weimar to Ferdinand Hiller, “when
Beethoven appeared. Was I to try to follow in the footsteps of such
a genius? For a while I did not know what I stood on; but finally I
said to myself that it was best to remain true to myself and my own
nature.” With this determination Hummel founded the new, rich school
of piano-playing, delighting in sound, and revelling in execution,
in which even seriousness and passion are expressed with pomp and
circumstance. Brilliancy has expelled grace, and the pompous the
lightness of the dance.
Like most of his contemporaries he composed at the piano, making
pencil-notes the while. But he heard it as though he were his own
audience. “When I sit at the piano,” he said, “I am standing at the
same time in yonder corner as a listener, and what does not appeal
to me there is not written.” This was not Beethoven’s method. Such
a conscious striving after effect was not consistent with absolute
sincerity. The concerto was the mainspring of Hummel’s creativeness.
The innumerable concertos and concert-fantasias take the first rank
among Hummel’s works. They appeared also with quartet-accompaniment,
and also with a second piano, or arranged for one piano. He wrote,
unlike Clementi, far more concerto-pieces than sonatas. All kinds
of Variations, Rondos, Capriccios, and “Amusements,” gratified his
publishers. He wrote dances in the profusion characteristic of the
time. The Sonata in A flat for two pianos is precisely in harmony with
the age. It is only in the second half of the century that original
works of this kind begin to lose vogue, while the duet confines itself
to the drawing-room. The Duet attained its highest point in Schubert.
[Illustration: Hummel in his later years. From a steel engraving by C.
Mayer.]
Hummel’s works bristle with sound-effects. We observe many full
chords, as in the orchestra, when all the groups of single instruments
are employed in full harmony. The treble of the instrument is for the
first time properly used in the grand style, a noble contrast to the
melodic, burlesque, dæmonic, firework style of Steibelt and the rest.
We meet the genuine pianoforte charm of sharp chromatic successions,
where a Bacchanalian tumult of colour appears to sound a rattling
fire of sensuous effects. Even modulations are conceived from the
side of technical effectiveness; and chromatic insertions or sudden
third-passages, charming us in the vigorous voice of the piano, are
of common occurrence. The various registers of the piano, the bass,
the middle, and the treble, are applied to surprising effects; a note
of one register suddenly thrown into the other gives a colour of its
own. Passages rapidly gliding through the various registers give a
glittering spectrum. Take, for example, such a development as that
of the second solo conclusion in the last movement of the A minor
concerto. Here, starting at the _con dolcezza_, we find the pianoforte
bringing into play most of the effective methods of the concerto
style. The simply-harmonised cantabile, for the solo instrument alone;
the repetition of the melodic phrases by the clarinet, etc., with an
arpeggio accompaniment on the pianoforte; the ornamentation of the
phrase by delicate scale-passages; the closing lines of bravura for
the right hand; the showy chromatic scales, accented by superimposed
thirds on the first of every group of four semiquavers; the sequences
of semiquavers descending chromatically; the string of shakes for both
hands which introduce the final _point d’orgue_ (four bars in strict
tempo); all these are commonplaces of Hummel’s style, and are of
interest as an illustration of the fashionable music of the time.
[Illustration: A Canonic Impromptu, by J. N. Hummel, from the original
edition of his Pianoforte School.]
The concerto pieces of Hummel stand in respect of intrinsic value
below the solo pieces. His great concerto fantasia, “Oberon’s Magic
Horn,” is a banal piece of bravura with artistic references to Oberon.
The part of it demanding most execution is the great storm with its
thunder and lightning on the piano--a somewhat different performance
from the tame storm in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book. But the solo
pieces also are of unequal merit. Fashionable compositions, like the
Polonaise “La Bella Capricciosa,” which was then eagerly heard, are no
longer tolerated. Hummel at his best, as we know him in his immortal
Sextet, lives in certain delicate turns, such as are common enough in
Wagner’s earlier operas, but were then a style of the time, making use
of the melody both of Mozart and of modern days. The better Hummel
is also seen in certain Schumann-like movements, full of fire and
feeling, such as the fresh pulsating Scherzo “all’antico” of Sonata
Op. 106, or the concluding movement of Fantasia Op. 18. Perhaps the
Bagatelles (Op. 107) are his most interesting clavier-piece. Even
to-day they show no sign of age; there is not a dead note in them.
In them the pupil of Mozart is seen in the dainty melodic lines, such
as an Audran has revived in our day; but the forerunner of Liszt is
equally visible. In the last Bagatelle, the “Rondo all’Ongarese,”
he stands precisely between the two epochs. The true spirit of
nationality, as Dussek so happily applied it in his sonatas, mingles
with classical reminiscences, as the concluding phrase clearly
shows. Fugato episodes, derived from tradition, are interwoven with
surprising anticipations of that method of variation which works
by diatonic movement--a method very familiar to us from Liszt’s
Rhapsodies. Hummel then is a kind of Janus.
[Illustration: Czerny. Lithograph by Kriehuber, 1833.]
Much more simple was Czerny, king among teachers, whose life and
work were taken up with the enforcement of one great principle.
Every piece must be played in that manner which is most natural and
applicable to the case in hand, and which is fixed partly by the notes
before us and partly by the execution. His genius for teaching was
so cultivated that in a moment he could devise the right study for
a student who exhibited any defect. How precisely he worked in such
matters a glance at his “Higher Steps in Virtuosity” will show. The
themes of the Études in the third volume are called: (1) seven notes
against two or three; (2) five against three; (3) five against three
in another manner; (4) passing of the fingers over the thumb; (5)
passing under of the thumb with a quick alternation of the stretching
and retraction of the fingers; (6) motion of certain fingers while the
others remain stationary; (7) broken octaves legato. This is not the
grammar of Hummel with its theoretical chess-play of possibilities;
it is the method of Toussaint-Langenscheidt, which invents its
exercises from the data of experience. In the great Piano School the
exercises are always continued in the course of the instruction.
The scales are recommended for daily preliminary practice, and
duet-playing is drawn into the circle of regular exercise. It is, of
course, impossible to review the whole enormous crowd of his works.
In addition to the numerous general practice-pieces, which appeared
in manifold combinations, there are the special pieces also: the
school of velocity, of legato and staccato, of ornaments, of the
left hand, of fugue-playing, of virtuoso-performance; the art of
preluding, the introduction to fantasia playing, octave-studies, the
practice of the full common chord and of the chord of the seventh
in broken figures; and everything besides. It is a mighty arsenal
of mechanical appliances. His works are numbered up to Op. 856;
but all except the Studies are lost in oblivion; they are mere
hack-work. Even the greater Studies are, in musical value, inferior
to Cramer’s. Czerny’s great collections from previous masters are
the work of a practical historian. Such are the arrangement of the
Wohltemperiertes Klavier, the edition of Scarlatti, the arrangements
of Beethoven, Mozart, or Mendelssohn for two or four hands; and
the innumerable selections of the most brilliant passages from the
works of masters from Scarlatti and Bach to Thalberg and Liszt. His
practical History of Piano-playing--the first that ever appeared--was
thrown into a didactic form and appended to the great “Art of
Execution.” Every composer is treated from the point of view of
playing, under six heads. Clementi is to be played with a steady
hand, firm touch and tone, distinct and flowing execution, precise
declamation; Cramer and Dussek _cantabilmente_, without glaring
effects, with gentle legato and the due use of the pedal; Mozart with
less pedal, clearly, staccato, with spirit and vigour; Beethoven and
Ries characteristically, passionately, melodiously, with a view to
the _tout ensemble_; Hummel, Meyerbeer, and Moscheles brilliantly,
rapidly, and gracefully, with definition in the proper parts, and
intelligent but elegant declamation. Thalberg, Liszt, and Chopin, the
great innovators, form a class apart. Czerny’s astonishing genius for
instruction embraces the whole field of the clavier, with a many-sided
capacity that seems almost more than human. A greater teacher there
never was than he. He gathers all into his net, even the works of his
own pupils; he practises everything, even setting it for three or
four pianos; he arranges everything, even isolated passages of great
masters; he composes everything, even penny variations and Chinese
rondos.
In Kalkbrenner we see the lowest type of the time. Externally a fine
gentleman and artistic man of the world, he is inwardly hollow and
vapid. It is hard even to give an idea of this extreme emptiness; but
it is well illustrated in such a piece as the “Charmes de Berlin.”
This great virtuoso won his triumphs in the worst kinds of salon-music
as well as with all sorts of Études, Concertos, and Sonatas. Le Rêve,
Le Fou, La Solitude, Dernières Pensées Musicales, La Mélancolie et La
Gaité, La Brigantine, are some of these detestable compositions. But
his opera fantasias touch the very nadir. Here a sort of sanction is
given to an utter want of taste. After largo introductions, full of
feeling, he slices favourite melodies into passages, till the contour
of the air is utterly destroyed, and the commonest cadenzas are flung
higgledy-piggledy into their artistic forms, and so we rush off into
a sweep-dance. The fantasia, once the freest outcome of the musical
soul, becomes a wretched conglomeration of fragments of Études.
Kalkbrenner once remarked, as Ferdinand Hiller tells us, “Ze Tance is
a tream, a referie; it begins with lofe, _passion_, despair, and it
ends wid a military march.” The story is true enough.
[Illustration: Lithograph by Eichens, after Vogel, 1825.]
To imagine that with Weber we already pass over into the fairy-land
of romance is, alas, a mistake. He would doubtless have made the
transit had not an early death overtaken him in the midst of the
uprising of genius that began in 1820. But, as it is, his piano
music belongs to the technically rich but spiritually empty style
of the time. If he did not still live as operatic composer and
orchestral poet, his piano-compositions would be forgotten. His
technique, successful as it was, is never so rich as that of the
majority of the virtuosos of his time. It is not hard to perceive
that he recurs again and again to certain motives. The ornamentation
which was earlier called “Anschlag”--the preparatory striking of the
under and over note before the main note, which is seen brilliantly
exemplified in the Rondo in E flat major--the S-curves of the
melody, which are a simple re-arrangement of this “anschlag”--the
“pizzicato” notes over embellishing or broken accompaniments--held
notes over struck chords--broken combinations of three notes, ranging
themselves chain-like after one another--these are his somewhat
limited repertoire. In the Polonaises in E flat major and in E major,
in numerous operatic variations, in Écossaises and popular national
dances, he pays his tribute to the time. But there is no local
colouring in the variations on the Russian “Schöne Minka,” or on a
Gipsy song. Dussek and Hummel were in this point his superiors. The
intellectual themes, like the second of the C major concerto, show
the greatness of Weber as behind a mask. The favourite concerto Op.
79, if judged by a severe standard, is only a fashionable if very
clever and successful mosaic of neat Études with the requisite melody.
The daintiest mosaic piece, the March, is given to orchestra alone,
as if Weber had felt compelled to enter his proper abode. Liszt
perceived this when he played in the concerto, and played the _tutti_
brilliantly with the instruments, and thus exhibited a remarkable
_tour de force_. The four sonatas, often utterly trivial, are in
the main a congeries which perishes by its eclecticism. As with all
his contemporaries, the first movements, those touchstones of the
inner meaning, are the weakest. The subjects are thin, the framework
is that of the drawing-room; and the other movements have a higher
stylistic value. The powerful rhythm of the second movement in the C
major, the excellent minuet-scherzo, the stirring perpetuum mobile as
last movement are admirable single ideas. But the importance rises
only slowly; the fourth sonata has, not inner meaning, but a certain
majesty. Yet what is this romance, this octave-scherzo with its rapid
waltz-trio, this masquerade of elves, to Chopin, to Schumann, or even
to Mendelssohn? Weber’s most popular piece is also his purest--the
Invitation to the Dance. It is a _pot-pourri_, such as the age loved;
and the very title is _à la mode_. But the conception of forming the
introductory adagio as a dialogue, the brilliant advance from the
ravishing waltz to Bacchanalian tumult the pure and not virtuoso-like
colouring, which rests on this happy invention, raise the work far
above all that is merely fashionable.
[Illustration: Moscheles in his youth.]
The true man of the transition is Moscheles--double-souled, with his
concessions to modishness on the one side, and on the other his wealth
of invention and his musical intensity. He was born out of due time.
He ought to have left virtuosity behind him, in order to be able to
give full play to his characteristic, not undramatic, and broad-lined
art. To-day he is almost forgotten; no opera, as in Weber’s case,
preserved his fame to our times. But his works more than repay study;
if our pianists would once again take up his C major concerto, they
would be amazed.
[Illustration: Moscheles, later, 1859.]
In his youth he composed Variations on the Alexander March, with which
he was compelled, much against his will, when a ripe composer, to
dazzle the world. It was one of the most popular of concert pieces.
It is not true that in later years he altered his style and wrote
more soberly. His very sober Melancholy Sonata (Op. 49), written
fairly early, in one movement, with its charming accompaniment figure,
reminds us of the Parsifal tremoli. And on the other hand, a later
work, the Danish, Scotch, and Irish Fantasias (this latter on the Last
Rose of Summer), are _pot-pourris_ in full modish style. What would
the Virginal Book composers of English and Scotch folk-songs have said
to these variations? In order to avoid the fashionable appearance,
several movements are even written in various tempi, as in a sonata.
In his A flat minor Ballade, on the contrary, he has with astonishing
dramatic force struck the legendary tone in a free and genuine manner,
in a sort of romantic rondo.
Moscheles, who was the first master to arrange for piano an orchestral
score by another writer (that of the Fidelio, by commission from
Beethoven), was unable to escape the operatic rechauffées of the
time. His speciality was the putting together of different operatic
airs, which formed the favourite repertoire of a singer. He wrote
such fantasias on the favourite pieces of Pasta, Henriette Sonntag,
Jenny Lind, and Malibran. They are commonplace enough. Yet this same
Malibran, after her sudden death, he honoured in an “Hommage,” which
was one of his finest pieces. There is in it an unearthly power
of invention, a dramatic life, as if drawn from the stage; spirit
breathes in every bar; and the interest is sustained to the final
sorrowfully rising cross-passages, which strangely forebode the
longings of Tristan for the sea.
He wrote many drawing-room pieces, which bore the usual significant
titles--Charmes de Paris, La Tenerezza, Jadis et aujourd’hui, la
Petite Babillarde. Similar titles he superscribed to his Études, such
as his three Allegri di Bravura and his characteristic Studies (Op.
95). Among the former are La Forza and Il Capriccio; among the latter
are Juno, Terpsichore, Moonlight at Sea, Dream, and Anguish. In these
the seeker after mode will be disappointed. They are pieces worthy of
Schumann in power of form; half exercises, half characteristic pieces,
reaching that height of technique where air and étude unite in the
closest bonds. The work which Cramer began has reached the height of
artistic achievement. For here, where meet knowledge, technical sense
of form, and poetic conception, the peculiar musical vein of the age
is found. The fugal “Widerspruch” [contradiction] is an artistic
construction that stands alone; “Anguish” is a penetrating tuneful
picture, which once more reminds us of Wagner; it is a foretaste of
Siegmund’s flight or of the Valkyrie Prologue.
The untitled Études Op. 70, which rank as his best work, stand out
as the forerunners of the Studies Op. 95. There is the same delicate
characteristic sense; they are a gallery of tone pictures, among
which the twelfth Étude in B flat minor is never to be forgotten.
It is a Night-Piece in the style of Schumann. But all is calculated
for human fingers, not for those of Liszt, like Op. 95. And here we
feel patiently after the essential nature of the musical Étude. We
observe the inner relation between mechanical and spiritual motion.
Expression and difficulty grow alongside; the straining of the fingers
is involuntarily the straining of the soul; their smooth gliding is
the gliding of emotion, and the stress of mind is loosened in the
muscles of the fingers as they move over the keys. It is thus that the
irreconcilable at last meet.
[Illustration: Parisian and London Pianists at the beginning of the
19th century.
L. Adam. Kalkbrenner. Cramer.]
[121] Weber conducted the Philharmonic in 1826, in which
year he died.
[122] This sort of thing is by no means without example
in our own time. The difficulty is very commonly solved
in English towns even of the size of Frankfort, by having
pianos sent from London.
[123] But the best bred evening party still (in London
at least) shouts at the top of its voice when it “hears
a master play.” See “Punch,” and Du Maurier, _passim_. A
striking illustration of the vulgarity of modern manners.
[124] The author means “Pearls of the Ocean,” “Fairy
Revels,” “Convent Bells,” and such like.
[125] It is convenient to refer these descriptions to
Chopin’s Studies, though of course they can be paralleled
elsewhere. Cf. Chopin’s Studies in C, in A minor, in F, etc.
[Illustration: Waltz by Schubert. Berlin Royal Bibliothek.]
The Romantics
Where definitions fail, the word appears at the right time. The
word proves the existence of things, even if they cannot be sharply
defined. The word is the artistic form of a transient emotion; it was
made for things which were nameless till its creation; it was girded
with associations which fastened themselves on to this conception.
Such a word is Romance. Romance is not a return to the popular, to
nature, nor to the mediæval, it is no love for the legendary or the
symbolic or the most delicate forms of the most delicate stirrings of
the soul. It was indeed the one of these things to one set of persons
and another for others; but in reality it is none of these and all of
these. If I say it is an _oppositum_ to _synthesis_, or intimateness
from the point of view of all possibilities, I have defined it very
coldly. But its essential point seems to be its reactionary character.
It aims not at raising structures, but at reading souls, and it finds
a thousand ways of so doing. These thousand ways cannot be crammed
into one definition. We strike only gently the chord of the word, so
symbolic, so harmoniously chiming. It is a feeling whose value is not
to be analysed.
Near the great architect Beethoven lived the first musical Romantic,
the well-beloved Franz Schubert. He felt the burden of existence as
only musicians can feel it. But he had inexhaustible fountains of
consolation, which sang to him melodies almost more profusely than
to Mozart, and he did his utmost to throw the melodies, without too
much pedantry or Titan-pride, into songs, symphonies, quartets,
and impromptus, as the inspiration took him. He had no long life
for working, but he used his time well. It is now many, many years
since his death, and still numbers of his works are unpublished.
His best teacher was the people, and their songs and dances. The
unsophisticated musical feeling, which came to light in this popular
song and national dance--the simple natural phrases, the speaking
soul, the genuine sense for drama--these were the formative principles
of his immortal songs, and these gave the character to his piano music
also. Men have been studying his numerous national dances as in a
Bible of the dance for fifty years. There are still rare and beautiful
flowers to be found among them; others have been picked out by the
virtuosos, and transformed to hothouse plants in many forms, not
always so stylish as Liszt’s Soirées de Vienne. The case has been the
same with his four-hand Marches, whether Caractéristique, Héroique, or
Militaire. If we return to their original forms, a surprising air as
from country meadows meets us.
He lives entirely in music. From the far land of invention float the
melodies, eternally varying, giving colour to the harmonies, and
pouring themselves out to their very last note. The ear cannot have
enough of them, and, full of the holiest delight, pursues them to the
end of their heavenly course. In Paradise there is no time; and these
melodies are a prologue to eternity. Schubert died at thirty-one.
His D minor quartet, one of the loveliest compositions ever written,
leads us to imagine that he would have been the greatest musician
of the century. But he has left us only the works of his youth--a
youth of intellectual intimateness and smiling sunshine. In delicacy
of musical feeling we put no one above him. He stands before us in
the small band of original and delicate minds, whose secret can make
the life of higher emotions happy. Let not him who has not delicate
fingers touch Schubert. To play him means to have a dainty touch. The
keyboard appears unmaterialised: only so much of the mechanism seems
to remain as is necessary to render living the conception of this
beauty. In peaceful hours we enjoy him most, and confess that there is
no tone-poet whom we love so deeply from the heart as Schubert.
In this, those things of their own accord are separated out, in which
Schubert did not follow only his natural impulse to the popular
song. He was in the first place no master or teacher of musical
construction. His scores are simple, and even in his four-handed duets
(he has left behind him duets of surpassing beauty) whole passages
could often be rendered as they stand by a single player.
Schubert never appears a slave to the arrangement he adopts; but the
movement flows so naturally from his pen that there is no want of
harmony between his idea and its realisation. He is just as little a
special artist of the form. He has written many sonatas--four-handed
and two-handed; but he cares little for the form. Where he can subject
his dainty ideas to this mould, as in the first three movements of
the duet in B flat major, he is interesting to us. When he cannot
easily do so, he has recourse to variations in the style of the time
or to all kinds of academic free fantasias. In this case he speedily
becomes antiquated. But we must again remember that he has left us
only youthful works. His latest sonatas, particularly those in A major
and in B flat major; his latest chamber-music and symphonies, the
wonderful Schumann-like F minor fantasia, and the Beethoven-like duet
“Lebensstürme” in rondo form, are more weighty in structure and show
him on the way to throw his great conceptions into more recognised
forms: in this style he would have grown into a great artist.
The “Wanderer” Fantasia stands on the boundary line. The method of
writing a free fantasia on a song-motive--on this occasion one of his
own--by which the ordinary four movements are preserved, was then _à
la mode_. That the last movement should begin with a fugato, which
soon passes over into more general virtuosity, was equally common. In
the more purely virtuoso passages, specially in the quite conventional
coda, Schubert is the very child of the Viennese school. The free
fantasias are rather in Hummel’s than in Beethoven’s style--preserving
a middle path between the two. The form is so free that from the waltz
movement of the scherzo to the weighty fugue, from the song of the
adagio to the conventional conclusion, almost all the styles of piano
music that exist are packed in. But if a song or a waltz rhythm or a
special tone expression appears, then we observe with what alacrity
Schubert sets about his work. He prepares it beforehand with a certain
effort. He caresses the new theme; for example, on the entrance of the
melodic E flat major theme in the first movement, in the dramatic deep
tremolo in the adagio, and in the pianissimo D flat major waltz in the
third movement.
Nothing is more distinctive of Schubert than the development of the
Fantasia Sonata Op. 78. The first movement hardly hangs together.
A wonderful theme, depending on delicate touch, is mingled with
empty technical intermediate passages. The Andante is a Volkslied,
arranged as in sonatas; as a whole treated somewhat feebly, but with
sudden small intermezzos, at first in F sharp major (bar 47), where
suspensions in Schubert’s true style sound in softest pianissimo in
the middle voices. In the third movement a ravishing minuet meets
us, running in cheerful rhythms, with a waltz-like conclusion which
anticipates one side of Schumann, and with a dainty trio in B major,
in bell-like tones and magical retardations such as Schubert himself
hardly surpassed. Thus a G sharp[126] in the chord of the dominant
seventh, with which the melodic chain is ornamentally interwoven, was
a discovery rich in wonders. And the last movement with its original
popular dance, which he overheard directly from the heart of the
people where the basses rumble below and the fiddle-bows spring on
the strings; with the two laughing trios, in which Johann Strauss
is entirely anticipated; national dances with a dainty melody,
which conclude so lingeringly in the spiritual chorale-tone (in C
major)--pictures like these music had not hitherto known. All kinds
of foreign national airs had, of course, been dealt with in artistic
style; and Schubert himself, in his brilliant Hungarian Divertissement
for four hands, has painted a gipsy picture with all his dexterity
in rhythm; but the German national airs had received but scanty
attention. Here, at last, we find the German folk-music, which found
in the Viennese dance-composers its popular embellishment, and in
Schumann its artistic treatment.
With his Impromptus and Moments Musicals, those small impressionist
forms, Schubert placed piano-literature upon a new basis. Here is
found that form of chamber music which is most peculiar to the piano
as a solo instrument with full harmony. It is not a sonata, which is
founded by the great laws of universal tonic art; nor a concerto,
which drags the piano before a many-headed multitude which delights in
distraction; nor an operatic fantasia or variation on an air, which
forbids the charm of free improvisation; no technical elaborated
étude, nor a scientifically constructed fugato;--but a piece which
brings single selected musical thoughts into a short artistic form,
no longer in extent than the tone-colour of the instrument permits;
yet, with all infelt genuineness, informed with the best effects of
the piano, which the player, as he composes in solitude, feels in
full intensity. Almost all Schubert’s pieces retain something of the
spirit of the time. Some are a kind of variations; others études, a
third class dances; but they are constantly more than mere echoes
of the time; they are founded on an inner genuineness, and much too
full in expression to permit of being included under any category
of the external. In Beethoven’s life we witnessed the way in which
a world-embracing genius gradually threw off the traditional form;
in Schubert we see how an intimate spirit gradually rises above the
style of the time. This development is included between the Sonatas
and the Wanderer Fantasia on the one hand, and the Moments Musicals
on the other. At the same period in which the technical musicians
accomplished the outward emancipation of the clavier, these short
pieces (Kurze Geschichten) made it inwardly free.
[Illustration: Lithograph of 1846, by J. Kriehuber (1801-1876).]
As Impromptus the two groups, Op. 90 and Op. 142, were published.
Those of the first group have all penetrated deeply into our musical
consciousness. All roads lead us back again to the first Impromptu
with its simple popular melody in two sections, which is varied in
so many extraordinary ways; and with that melodious middle-movement,
more joyous and ethereal, than any that had ever been heard before on
the pianoforte. Who can forget the second with the light étude-like
triplet-swinging in E flat major and the mighty B minor middle
section; or the third with its wonderful G flat major melody, its
divine modulations and its captivatingly simple conclusion, revealing
unexpected melodic wonders in a broken chord of the seventh; or the
fourth, a light floating figure with its short Volkslied intermezzi
and the long drawn out melody of the trio in C♯ minor--Schumann all
over!
The second group of Impromptus (Op. 142) stands below the first
in importance. It was with Schubert as with Mozart; good and bad
inspirations came to him alike, and he could not discriminate them.
Yet they contain the dainty A flat major piece, which demands nothing
but a gentle touch; and in the variations of the third Impromptu
(which is therefore no impromptu) the likeness to Schumann is once
more astonishing. It is a peculiar pleasure to detect Schumann in
Schubert, and it is a piece of historic justice which has often been
neglected.
More successful, indeed Schubert’s greatest achievement, was the
“Moments Musicals,” which appeared in 1828, the year of his death.
The first of these is a naturalistic free musical expatiation; the
second a gentle movement in A flat major; the third the well-known F
minor dance--in which a dance became a penetrating and sorrow-laden
tongue--the fourth the Bach-like C sharp minor moderato, with its
placid middle section in D flat major; the fifth a fantastic march
with a sharply cut rhythm; and the sixth, perhaps Schubert’s most
profound piano-piece, that reverie in still chords, which only once
are more violently shaken in order to lull us to sleep with its
pensive and dainty sorrow, its delicate connections, its singing
imitations, its magic enharmonics, and its sweet melodies rising
like flowers from the soft ground. The conclusion of the trio, in
the style of a popular chorale, with its harmonisation in thirds, is
(like many of his harmonic passages in octaves or sixths) exceedingly
characteristic of the popular nature of Schubert’s music.
We have been turning over the leaves of a book from which Schumann
and Chopin might have found matter to fill years of their lives. In
form and colour, melody and movement, the model was before them. This
modest man, who in his Vienna solitude wrote such things as these
for himself, loved a few good friends, but publicity he hated. A
composer who never appeared in public--was the like ever seen before?
In the aged Beethoven the world understood it; but in this young man
it could only reward it with indifference. He remained willingly
unknown, like so many of his companions in sorrow who wished to be
artists in themselves without relation to others, and without the
encumbrance of patronage. The times were altering in music as in
painting. The patronage of the State or of the Prince is disappearing;
the commissions the artist receives become fewer and more distasteful;
he becomes more intimate and is constrained to offer his works to the
public, and to supply what it will purchase. Supply and demand rule
art as well as anything else: but nowhere is the severance so painful.
Pensions are irksome, and official posts are not to be had otherwise
than indirectly. The struggle after the ideal which is the life of the
artist is purer than it ever was. The type which Feuerbach and Böcklin
represent in painting, that new type of artist who can be happy
without commissions and without honorarium, is first clearly exhibited
by Schubert in the musical world. Publicity, to which Beethoven at
first had recourse, and which he would have carried further had fate
not opposed, was impossible to Schubert. He had to live on a pension,
his applications for posts were rejected, publishers were timid, and
very slowly indeed did his songs win their way to favour. Goethe
never answered him on receiving his songs; and Beethoven, to whom he
shyly dedicated his Variations (Op. 10) as “admirer and worshipper,”
only learnt to know him in the last days. As he began, so he died. The
publishers had still to work through the whole century in order to
bring out his works, which they dedicated in very stylish manner to
Liszt, Mendelssohn, or Schumann: as Schubert closed his eyes he knew
as little as the world that his simple integrity had won a new realm
for art.
Some years after Schubert’s death, in November 1831, a certain Robert
Schumann published as his first work some Variations, whose theme
was formed on the name Abegg (A B E G G). It was easy to see that
the Countess Abegg, to whom they were dedicated, was a pseudonym for
a good lady, whom the author had once admired as a beauty without
otherwise troubling himself much about her. The theme was worked out
a little too painfully, and the Variations moved in eclectic style
among influences derived from Beethoven, Weber, and the contemporary
virtuosos; but their originality was nevertheless unmistakable. It
was not the worn-out contemporary style of variations; and many sound
traces of that naive dilettantism, which always stands at the cradle
of the new, were easily to be detected. Sudden pianissimo effects,
single selected technical motives, an original melodic gift for
singing with contrapuntal voice-parts and new forms of accompaniment,
rapid harmonic changes by the chord of the seventh, legendary romance
in the finale alla fantasia, the successive release of the notes of
a chord, from the lowest to the highest--all this led men to wait
eagerly for Schumann’s next work.
This next work bore the title of “Papillons”--a title not unknown
in contemporary drawing-room music. But here there was nothing of
the drawing-room style. These butterflies seemed to come from the
regions where Schubert had found his flowers. Thence they brought
a breath of short lyrical songs--a concentrated breath of severe
and restrained beauty. A wonderfully penetrating heart-felt tone
breathed through them. The world had now to do with a reflective,
deeply musical nature, far removed from all the merely brilliant
virtuosity of the time: it was a romantic spirit. After the short
slow introduction came the waltz, whose outlines inevitably recalled
Schubert; but its emotions were personally felt. There were melodic
passages in octaves for alternate hands, dying away in the aria
with the “nachschlagbegleitung”[127] down to pianissimo, a splendid
fugato-march in spirited style, episodes of popular songs, sportive
whisperings, sparkling polonaise rhythms, melodious effects working
out of very gentle full chords, canonic melodies in lively motion,
repetitions of earlier bars in later sections to represent the
external unity of these little stories, and as a conclusion the
“Grossvater” song. The whole is united contrapuntally with the first
waltz. The carnival is silenced--this appears suddenly in words--the
tower-clock strikes six (and high enough on the upper A); a full chord
of the seventh piles itself up gradually and closes the piece.
No one knew what was the chief impulse which led Schumann to write
these “Papillons.” Those who corresponded with him alone knew that he
was thinking of the “Flegeljahre”[128] of Jean Paul. From Jean Paul
he received his spiritual nourishment, and those to whom his letters
came could tell that he hardly sent off one without including in them
a rhapsody for the Bayreuth poet. In this intermediate world between
the highest earnestness and endless laughter he preferred to live in
ironic love and loving irony. To reflect deeply on immortality, and at
the same time to drink in comfortably the sweet odour of the girdle
cake which the goodwife is cooking in the kitchen--it is in this
mixed light that the poet stands, who has so characterised himself.
The fantastic boundaries of the real and the imaginary world, of the
most insipid flatness of the animal nature and of the most ethereal
heavenly flights, alike attract him. His delicate soul flies to
Nature, and Nature is to him--so he writes to his mother--the great
outspread handkerchief of God, embroidered with His eternal name, on
which man can wipe away all his tears of sorrow. But the tears of
joy too--and when every tear falls into a rapture of weeping--whence
came these tones in the soul of a musician? The world had never yet
understood them. It knew them in literary circles, which busied
themselves with romantic new creations, where unknown regions seemed
suddenly to open themselves between the everyday and the legendary,
and which demanded new, painfully twisted words for the wild tumult of
their representations. Where pure music had long wandered alone, the
poets and the æsthetics had now penetrated; and was now a musician to
give them a hand to speak in their tongue? This was a surprising turn.
Upon the musical poet came the literary musician. The one could only
gain; had the other anything to lose? No; Schumann seemed musician
enough to prove that nothing was lost. None of his friends, to whom he
recommended the perusal of the conclusion of the “Flegeljahre”--whose
masked dance, he said, the Papillons were intended to transform into
tones--would have expected this pure and genuine music from him. I
imagine they all puzzled their heads to know what the wild Jean Paul
had to do with these dainty musical butterflies. And it is to-day even
harder for us.
A delicate musician read Jean Paul, and the grotesque figures of
this “Walt und Vult” combined in him with a world of tone, which
slumbered within him, in those deep regions of associated ideas which
stand at the basis of artistic creation. They there formed a special
union with their musical counterpart, the simplest, most natural, and
least academical creations which the art of tone ever saw--those of
Schubert. So early as 1829 Schumann, who was then a student, wrote to
Frederick Wieck from Heidelberg: “When I play Schubert, it is as if
I were reading a Romance of Jean Paul set to music.” Jean Paul and
Schubert are the gods in Schumann’s first letters and other writings.
He cannot shake off the ethereal melancholy, the “suppressed” lyrical
tone, in Schubert’s four-handed A major Rondo: he sees Schubert, as
it were, in bodily shape, _experiencing_ his own piece. No music,
he said, is so psychologically remarkable in the progress of its
ideas and in its apparently logical leaps. There is a rare fire in
him when he speaks of Schubert. How eager is he for new publications
from Schubert’s remains! Yet, while he is devouring a volume of his
national dances, he is weeping for Jean Paul. In the Papillons, we
hear, there was Jean Paul; and what we find in them, is Schubert. What
was to come of this conjunction?
This question was very satisfactorily answered in the next work (Op.
3). This was a collection of Études with a textual introduction on
motives after Paganini, but adapted to the piano. Considered as a
whole it was technical to a degree, yet without disguising the real
Schumann. And what was the meaning of the Introduction? Every great
pianist had already written his “School” or wanted to write it. Did
these barren finger-directions speak for the virtuoso Schumann?
The Intermezzi (Op. 4) answered in the negative. These were genuine
pure music without any external pretensions. It was possible already
to recognise the true style of Schumann: the characteristic features
were repeated. Dotted motives, built up in fugato style; delicate
melodies with the “nachschlag” accompaniment and with other melodies
superimposed; reflective repose in chords; syncopated rhythm;
parallelisms of the air in octaves; all these were as before. In
the slurred thirds and the sequences, and especially the diatonic
runs, which seem to gather their strength as they go, the model was
not Schubert but Sebastian Bach. There was something in this not
merely of his absolute, self-contained music, but even of his means
of expression. At this time of course this could do no harm. In the
fifth and sixth intermezzos Schumann’s personality would seem to
have entirely ripened. This marked propensity to “anticipations,”
those pianissimo unisons, those sharp detonations of C and C sharp,
D and D sharp; the singing legato middle voices developing in the
canonic manner, the absolute transference of whole passages by means
of a single note foreign to the scale, generally effected by an
anticipation; all this had grown into a definite musical picture,
extraordinarily sympathetic, in which soul and technique were united.
With stern sadness the hands grip one within another, to bring out the
“suppressed lyric” of the piano; and a delicate noble spirit guides
them, which delights to express strange things in strange forms. With
stern sadness, as in the style of Jean Paul, and right in the midst of
the music, where an answering voice intrudes itself, Schumann writes
over the notes the words, “Meine Ruh ist hin”--my peace has departed.
This is not as text, but merely as a comment by the way.
Then came Op. 5, free variations in romantic style, on a theme by
Clara Wieck; and Op. 6, called “Davidsbündlertänze.” They were
dedicated to Walther von Goethe, and bore as motto the old proverb:--
“In all’ und jeder Zeit verknüpft sich Lust und Leid;
Bleibt fromm in Lust, und seyd dem Leid mit Mut bereit.”
[In all and every time, our joy and sorrow meet:
Gird up thy loins and go, bravely thy fate to greet.]
In the later revised edition Schumann cut out this good old saying,
as he omitted so much of the first and heartfelt edition. “Two
readings may often be of equal value,” says Eusebius once in the
aphorisms. “The original one is usually the best,” adds Raro. Why did
not Schumann follow his own Raro? Raro was the most delicate of the
“Davidsbündler.” He was in his irony, which had drunk deep of worldly
wisdom, raised far above the storm and stress of Florestan and the
gentle, simple complaisance of Eusebius. In Florestan there was much
of Beethoven, in Eusebius an echo of Schubert. Raro was to surpass and
combine them in a higher unity. But Raro is just--rare.
The “Davidsbündler” declare war on the Philistines, and of an evening
bring their dances together, which are then published in a single
volume. Florestan contributes the stormy ones, Eusebius the gentle
ones; while Raro puts in his word as seldom as in actual life. Such
bands of Romanticists we have heard of before; we think of Hoffmann’s
Serapion Brothers, and their zeal against the Philistines. Herz and
Hünten, and all the musical lions of the drawing-room were to be put
aside. There was still music after Beethoven. David’s companions
meant, like their prototype, to put the Philistines under a harrow.
Even the explanatory notes of his “Bündler” were cut out by Schumann
in his later revised edition. He smiled perhaps at the beautiful
fancies of his youth, when he seemed to carry three temperaments
warring in his soul. And yet this fictitious society was the truest
expression of his romantic soul, in which living music and literary
reflection met together. They were his fellow-workers in his life’s
work, whom he could never renounce.
The moment had come when the world busied itself with Schumann in
somewhat wider circles. It asked after his private circumstances,
and gained the answer--surprising, and yet no longer utterly
surprising--that here an academically educated man had become a
musician--a phenomenon long unknown, and only possible in this new
era of art, in which one could give oneself up to composition without
having to wait for a commission for each single work.
[Illustration: Engraving by M. Lämmel]
Schumann had attended the Zwickau Gymnasium in due course; and at
eighteen, in 1828, he entered the legal profession at Leipzig. His
piano-lessons under Frederick Wieck of course attracted him far more
than jurisprudence; and when, after an interval spent at Heidelberg,
he returned to Leipzig, the die was cast. The letter to his mother in
which he announces his decision is to-day interesting for the light
it throws on his intentions. Naturally, he thought of the career of
a virtuoso; and, in order to make his fingers supple, he hung one
of them in a sling while practising, with the result that first the
finger and then the whole hand was maimed, and Schumann was saved
for pure composition. Composition is soon intimately knit with love
for Clara Wieck, the daughter of his teacher, whose great talent
was to compensate him for his own lost power. We cannot forget his
youthful letters to Clara, which form the conclusion of the edition
of “Schumann’s Letters,” which she issued. Never were more lyrical
letters written. He dedicates to Clara his whole power of creation;
it is she that lives in all his pieces, and to create was to think of
her. Before this he tells her legends and supernatural tales. “Look
now at your old Robert; is he not still the frivolous ghost-tale
teller and terrifier? But now I can be very serious too, often the
whole day long--but don’t trouble about that--they are generally
processes in my soul, thoughts on music and compositions. Everything
touches me that goes on in the world--politics, literature, people.
I think after my own fashion of everything that can express itself
through music, or can escape by means of it. This is why many of my
compositions are so hard to understand, because they are bound up with
very remote associations, and often very much so because everything
of importance in the time takes hold of me and I must express it in
musical form. And this, too, is why so few compositions satisfy my
mind, because, apart from all defect in craftsmanship, the ideas
themselves are often on a low plane, and their expression is often
commonplace. The highest that is here attained scarcely reaches to the
beginning of what is aimed at in my music. The former may be a flower,
the latter is the poem, so much the more spiritual; the one is an
impulse of raw nature; the other the work of poetical consciousness.”
In these words Schumann penetrated into his own heart; and there is
nothing to be added to this characterisation of his literary music.
The new type existed in its purity; namely, the musician, standing
on the height of the representative art of the time, of which type
Wagner was the best expression. There is a strange likeness in these
two opposed natures. What in Wagner passed over into the external, in
Schumann passed into the intimate. Where the one carries us along with
him in an intoxicating rush, the latter is a personal enjoyment for
retiring souls. The one lives in the orchestra, and plays the piano
badly; the other dreamed first for the piano, then for the chorus, and
never was able to express himself tolerably through the orchestra.
Wagner never burst into tears, like Schumann, when he before his
wanderings played for the last time on the beloved instrument which
had heard all the sorrows and joys of his youth. And Wagner never
wrote to Madame Cosima as Schumann wrote to Clara: “You speak in your
last of a cosy place where you would like to have me--do not aim too
high--I ask no better surroundings than a piano and you close by. You
will never be a kapellmeisterin in your life; but inwardly we are a
match for any pair of kapellmeisters, are we not? You understand me.”
This man of delicate feeling, who wished to reduce piano-culture to
a system, was editor of a paper, which he founded at Leipzig in the
year 1834, along with certain friends and men of like tastes, of
whom he seems to have valued most Schunke, who died very soon. This
“New Magazine of Music” was Schumann’s special medium, and in it he
published his splendid and very spirited criticisms and aphorisms;
later, when Brendel purchased it from him, it was of equal use to
Wagner, his exact opposite. Till 1844 Schumann edited it for the most
part personally; and his position aided the spread of his works,
which laid themselves out so little for popular success. Still more
effective was the career of his betrothed, who because of certain
awkward obstacles only became his wife in 1840. This was his most
productive year. It saw the appearance of a hundred and thirty-eight
songs, and of the cycle of Heine’s lyrics (Op. 24). If the betrothed
Clara and the piano were spiritually united, the married Clara and the
song were equally so. Thus the songs stand precisely midway between
his youthful piano-writings and the orchestral and choral efforts of
his later years. And indeed the piano succeeds better in them than in
any song hitherto written. The accompaniments of “Du, meine Seele” or
of the F sharp major “Ueberm Garten durch die Lüfte,” are minute and
scrupulous pieces of artistic work.
The eighteen “Davidsbündler,” Schumann’s first complete piano-work,
were composed in 1837. Clara contributed the first bars--a cheerful
musical motto. Schumann was fond of accepting his first bars as
gifts from friends. The Romancist was fond of these incursions into
actuality, this poetry in the real. As the letters A B E G G had once
taken his fancy, so later did A S C H. And once he wrote in Gade’s
family album a piece on “Gade, Ade” (Gade, farewell).
[Illustration: Clara Schumann, née Wieck.]
Schumann’s music is characterised in few strokes; it is never
hard to recognise its features. The interwoven melodies, the love
of “anticipations,” the rollicking humour, which might almost be
borrowed from old drinking songs, the contrapuntal collisions of the
bass on which the light waltz flutters down, the cheerfully pensive
codas, the restlessness of his syncopated rhythms, the sweet lulling
romantic tone mingled with wild and vigorous march-motives, the full
effect of broken chord passages of mounting fifths, the conclusions
of the sections abruptly broken off by a staccato chord--all these
were to be seen in spring-like freshness in the “Davidsbündler.” We
have there the “einfaches stück” of Eusebius, the free recitative
in No. 7 beginning with arpeggiando chords for the left hand. Next,
“Florestan’s lips quiver.” Then follow the extraordinarily beautiful
E flat major (No. 14) with its airy melancholy; the staccato, passing
humorously over into the “Wie aus der Ferne,” and finally “Happiness
speaks out of his eyes.” Nothing so wonderfully simple, so old-new,
so true, so German, had been painted on the piano since Schubert. And
here was a yet more modern spirit--a mind whose depths were not merely
over-flowed by the streams of music, but were pictured in delicate
musical emotion. The construction is clean and simple; the language
refined and lofty; the whole the consolidated improvisation of a mind
standing at the highest point of representative art. More perfect
improvisations it did not lie in the nature of the piano to produce.
It was the high-water mark of piano literature.
I pass rapidly over Op. 7, one of his earliest composed pieces,
the toccata, brilliant in colouring, delicately chased, bold in
construction, wonderful in technique; and Op. 8, a concert allegro,
in which he, certainly in an unusual way compared with the literature
of the time, sacrifices a little to popularity, and thereby crushes
out certain beauties. I pass on to Op. 9, the “Scenes Mignonnes” of
the carnival, in which neither technical nor concert problems were to
be mastered. The motive of the carnival is A S C H, which is the name
of the home of one of his musical lady friends and which contains all
the letters of Schumann’s name which are adapted to the stave.[129] A
bustling ball-play develops itself, Pierrot and Harlequin appear, a
Valse Noble unites the parties, the mask of Eusebius is seen through,
and the gentleness of Florestan is resumed, the Coquette frisks by,
Papillons flutter round, and the letters A S C H dance a rapid waltz.
Chiarina and Estrella, not unknown characters, are represented; and
Chopin appears in person between them. A short recognition scene in
the time of the Polonaise, in which we hear the dainty causeries
among the marching rhythms--the miniature ballet of Pantaloon and
Columbine--a comfortable allemande, into which Paganini suddenly darts
with his most extravagant leaps; in the distance a gentle confession
of love;--all comes again together in the polite and festal promenade
of the couples. There is a pause; and then reminiscences run through
the memory; one melody restlessly pursues another; room is made; the
final effect comes; the “Davidsbündler” begin an abusive march against
the Philistines; they roar out the Grandfather song--“Grandfather
wedded my Grandmother dear, so Grandfather then was a bridegroom, I
fear”--and the people enjoy it, till they all, with a “Down with the
Philistines,” join in, and a galloping stretto finishes the boisterous
amusement.
The inscriptions Schumann inserted later. He took a literary delight
in putting in an “Estrella,” as it is seen in old copper engravings.
It was the pleasure of the delicate man of taste in labelling. But he
laid no stress on this nomenclature; the relations indicated were as
wide as before, when there were none of these labels. We are reminded
of Couperin, whose miniature porcelain pictures were ticketed just
like this moving panorama of tunes, and in surprisingly similar
style. In both the titles were nothing but a halt in the midst of
full musical representation; they involved no limitation, no point of
departure. Under like tickets, works came into the world which were
separated in time and in tone by whole centuries. Schumann himself
almost thought the titles a trifle too theatrical. The Davidsbündler,
he said, are related to the carnival like faces to masks.
Among the works that followed, technical and purely musical gifts
alternated. As Op. 10 we have further Paganini Études, with wide
stretches, contrapuntal, transformed in the spirit of Schumann.
Here, as before, the order of publication did not correspond to
that of composition. The F sharp minor sonata (Op. 11) was begun
contemporaneously with the Impromptus. It was dedicated to Clara.
It is a romantic deepening of the sonata form, cast throughout in
these small lyrical sections which are peculiar to the time, but here
are held together by an internal unity. We must feel this unity in
order not to cut up the work into mere fragments. An oceanic vastness
spreads over it, whose tone is struck in the broad introduction. It
has a first theme, contrapuntal in style, and a second of full-voiced
melody; the working-out attaching new ideas half in imitative, half
in étude fashion. On the third, the A, which drags itself over, the
aria begins its deep-felt lament, in three melodies with the genuine
Schumann-like coda, sighing itself away under the final slurs. The
fresh staccato canon work of the scherzo carries us with it. Two
wonderful trios introduce themselves, the second with the remarkable
recitative. The conclusion is formed by a modest movement which is put
together like a mosaic out of a stormy quaver theme, two cantabiles,
a syncopated motive, a section in full chords and a stretto. We shall
only feel the unity if we give our playing a touch of improvisation.
In a word the case is this; in a sonata of Schumann what most charms
us is the movements regarded separately; and in the movements, the
separate passages. This Sonata, like the others of his works, must be
considered as a volume of lyrical poems.
The “Fantasie-stücke” were the next work. These again are a
completed picture, for the most part broader in conception than the
Davidsbündler, with which they were contemporaneous in composition.
They were the ideal of delicate piano composition, and have remained
so down to the present day. The sweet “Abendruhe,” the stormy
“Aufschwung,” the dainty “Warum,” the capricious “Grillen,” the gloomy
“Nachtscene,” in which Schumann was thinking of Hero and Leander, the
“Fabel,” alternating in Ritornell and Staccato; the “Traumeswirren,”
and the beautiful “Ende vom Lied,” whose humour sounds again
wonderfully in the intellectual augmentation at the conclusion--all
this formed an extraordinary picture-gallery. The height of art was
attained in the “Nacht,” where the dark rolling accompaniment, the
solitary sighs in the gloomy air, the deep returns to darkness, the
gently sounding and wild shrieking cries and emotional songs, over the
gurgling accompanying figure which runs through the whole, made one of
the immortal piano-pieces.
A more purely technical work was the Études Symphoniques, written in
1834 simultaneously with the Carnival, on a theme of Fricken’s. These
variations are as significant for Schumann as the Goldberg variations
for Bach or the Diabelli variations for Beethoven. They are a breviary
of all specialities in expression. All Schumann’s characteristics
were here: the strongly accented fugue, the tied notes with repeated
chord accompaniment, the cantabile with broken chords, the staccato
chords in canon, the dotted rhythms of Var. IV., the complicated
syncopations of Var. V., the bold phrasing of Var. VI., the Bach-like
style of Var. VII., the hurrying rush of semiquavers in Étude IX., the
duet of voices with tremolo accompaniment in Var. IX., the march with
contrapuntal treatment on pedal points which concludes the work--all
was here; and all was made into a delicate étude in which that union
of technique and poetry was constantly completing itself in fresh form.
In the Sonata (or concerto) “without orchestra” (Op. 14) which he
recast later without introducing much warmth of feeling, we observe
chiefly the strong influence of Bach, which informs the last movement.
If we look closely, indeed, we shall be often reminded of Bach
in the last works, particularly in the Symphonic Études. Certain
slurred ornamental figures, certain tricks of accompaniment, the
play of dotted and triplet rhythms, the canonic carrying-out of the
theme, left no doubt that Schumann had been trained on Bach, and
that he had strengthened his musical consciousness by the study of
a music in which there is not a superfluous line. The Letters make
this certain. In 1832 he sat over the Wohltemperiertes Klavier, his
Grammar, and occupied himself in analysing the fugues down to their
minutest ramifications. “The use of such a process is great, and has
a morally strengthening influence upon the whole man; for Bach was
a man, through and through; in him there is nothing half-finished,
nothing halting; all is written for eternity.” All this has a special
and peculiar influence on Schumann. The abstract music of a Bach is
mingled with the concrete representative secondary aims of romance,
which find an entrance all the more easily as this absolute art,
free from all words and all that is ephemeral, is by far the most
expressive to the profoundly musical spirit. Bach’s art expresses
every phase of feeling, and the emotions are so wide-embracing that
they never find a boundary in the domain of reality. This art is the
original realm of all transcendental desires. “The profound power of
combination, poetry and humour in the new music,” wrote Schumann in
1846, “has its origin for the most part in Bach. Mendelssohn, Bennett,
Chopin, Hiller, the so-called Romantics, as a whole, stand far nearer
to Bach than to Mozart; for as a whole they know Bach through and
through. I myself daily confess to this high power, to purify myself,
and to strengthen myself through him.”
Along with Bach was mingled in his mind the author Hoffmann. There
was a remarkable elective affinity in the sympathies of his nature.
The “profoundly-combining” Bach took the place of Jean Paul, and the
story-teller Hoffmann took the place of Schubert. The twists and
turns of a writer, whose style might be called “contrapuntal,” found
their continuation in the musician who brought all counterpoint into
a wonderful “incommensurable” harmony; and the popular simplicity of
a musician found its complement in the dreamy lyricism of a genius
who had formed perhaps a more beautiful anticipation of the whole
music of our century than its actual state has realised. This poet,
himself a musician, valued the most romantic of all arts, “one might
almost say, the only genuine romantic art; for its subject-matter is
the eternal: music opens to man an unknown realm which has nothing
in common with the external world of sense, and in which he leaves
behind all defined feelings in order to give himself up to an
inexpressible longing.” And the poet leads us into a realm of magic.
In the “Kreisleriana,” the garden into which the author leads us is
full of tone and song. The stranger comes up to the young squire and
tells him of many distant and unknown lands, and strange men and
animals; and his speech dies away into a wonderful tone, in which he
expresses unknown and mysterious things, intelligibly, yet without
words. But the castle maiden follows his enticements, and they meet
every midnight at the old tree, none venturing to approach too near
the strange melodies that sound therefrom. Then the castle maiden lies
pierced through under the tree, and the lute is broken; but from her
blood grow mosses of wonderful colour over the stone, and the young
Chrysostom hears the nightingale, which since then makes its nest and
sings its song in the tree. At home his father is accompanying his old
songs on the clavicymbal, and songs, mosses, and castle-maiden, are
all fused in his mind into one. In the garden of tone and song all
sorts of internal melodies rise in his heart, and the murmur of the
words gives them their breath. He tries to set them to the clavier,
but they refuse to come forth from their hiding-places. He closes the
instrument, and listens to see whether the songs will not now sound
forth more clearly and brightly; for--“I knew well that the tones must
dwell there as if enchanted.”
Out of a world like this floated all sorts of compositions into
Schumann’s mind, as once from the “Flegeljahre” of Jean Paul. Thence
came the “Scenes of Childhood,” where we listen to tales of foreign
lands and men, and dream by the hearth, and play Blind-Man’s Buff,
and then bend forward to hear, for the Poet is speaking. They are his
miniature painting; of a gentle ineffable grace. Only a “Romantic” can
love children thus. Schumann himself had a particular fondness for
these little pieces, whose smallness was their very essence.
[Illustration: Louis Böhner, the original of Hoffmann’s Kreisler.
Engraved by Freytag.]
From Hoffmann also came the inspiration of the “Kreisleriana,” so
called after Hoffmann’s tale of the eccentric Kapellmeister Kreisler.
In 1834 Ludwig Böhner, the original of Kreisler, met Schumann. Once
“as famous as Beethoven,” he jeered at men till they now jeer at him.
In his Improvisations, here and there, we catch a glimpse of the old
brilliancy; but elsewhere it is all dark and waste. “Had I time,” says
Schumann, “I should like to write _ana_ of Böhner to the papers. He
himself has given me plenty of material. In his life there has been
too much both of joy and of sorrow.” Here was a happy conjuncture for
Schumann’s genius. A suggestive bit of life, and its poetic setting
by Hoffmann, which had first appeared to him as literature, was
transformed into music, and a work was born whose title, as so often,
he borrowed from a fiction with whose contents it had but little
connection, except as suggesting the groundwork. The “Kreisleriana”
was his greatest work. The artist who brings life itself, gently
transfigured by literary art, into musical emotion, never before or
since became so clear a personality. The piano has advanced into the
midst of a life-culture. A thousand threads run from all sides into
this intimate web in which the whole lyrical devotion of a musical
soul is interwoven. The piano is the orchestra of the heart. The joys
and sorrows which are expressed in these pieces were never put into
form with more sovereign power. For the external form Bach gave the
impulse; for the content, Hoffmann. The garlanded roses of the middle
section of No. 1, the shimmering blossoms of the “inverted” passage in
the “Langsamer” of No. 2, the immeasurable depth of the emotions in
the slow pieces (4 and 6), the bass unfettered by accent, in the final
bars of No. 8, leading down to the final whisperings, are all among
the happiest of inspirations.
[Illustration: The last piece in Schumann’s “Kreisleriana,” main
movement. After the autograph in the possession of Baroness Wilhelm
von Rothschild, Frankfort a.M. Differs from the printed edition, being
simpler and more massive.]
The Kreisleriana are dedicated to Chopin; the Fantasia Op. 17 to
Liszt. We are on the height on which the first artists of the piano
are greeting each other; on which breathes the purest atmosphere of
this intimate music; we are on the heights of a culture which has
become the dominating power of the world. The Fantasia is, so to
speak, a confession of this devotion. In its first movement there
is an undefinable romantic feeling as of the words woven round a
legendary theme (he called it first the “Ruin”), with mysterious
passages, answering voice-parts, mystic ghostly calls. In the
second there is the grand triumph, a panegyric on technique and
toil--he called it the “Gate of Victory.” In the third is the
poetic transfiguration (at first called “Star-picture”), with its
ethereal dances and the dying sound of harps, and the sweeping
mist, broken chords with pedal, resolved in rubato, over which
descend the mournful melodies.[130] The first movement is not free
from the variation-technique of the time; the second is a tribute
to virtuosity; the third, a half Schubert. Contrasted with the
Kreisleriana of 1838 we recognise an earlier style of 1836, and we
wonder at the strong power of progressive development in Schumann--a
power, which, strange to say, some would deny to him. But the Fantasia
was so happily _felt_ that it despised time and still to-day stands
in the forefront. As there are Études which seem to hold out a hand
to Romance, so here Romance held out a hand to technique; and the
Fantasia, in its three forms, remained a classic monument of all the
contemporary tendencies. When Schumann published it he cut out the
old inscriptions, its profits being devoted to assisting in erecting
the Beethoven monument at Bonn, and wrote above the first movement
this motto from Schlegel: “Through every tone there passes, to him who
deigns to list, in varied earthly dreaming, a tone of gentleness.”
In the productive year 1838, before the Scenes of Childhood, Schumann
had written three books of “Novellettes,” which were now published for
the first time and dedicated to Henselt. Springing from his happiest
period the music flows as if of its own accord, and its framework
is admirable. They are the most subtle pieces conceivable for the
piano, and the most popular of his compositions, neat and regular
music. Their construction is transparent; the sections arranged
for contrasted effects. In the first piece we have the March, the
Cantabile, and the Canon; in the second the glitter of semiquavers and
the delicate rocking Intermezzo; in the third the humorous Staccato
and the wild B minor section; in the fourth the dance and the song
mingle with the staccatos of the sequences; in the fifth a Polonaise,
in a style approached by few, and Intermezzi in legato, cantabile,
and staccato; in the sixth and seventh the effective contrasts of
scherzo, canon, and cantabile; in the eighth an air in duet alternates
with several trios; all kinds of sections are attached, a voice from
afar, and free repetitions, as if everything left over had been thrown
into it. They are unsurpassed, wonderfully dainty pieces; but the
Kreisleriana were an experience.
The charming smoothness of the Novellettes was no longer alien to
Schumann’s feelings. The older he grew the more he strove to attain
a “dry light,” which might easily prove dangerous to his romantic
temperament. He began to despise the exuberance of his youthful works.
We cannot, in reading the last piano works of Schumann, restrain a
certain feeling of pain. Where once the stream bubbled and sparkled,
it now flowed too evenly; where before the music was _felt_, it
is now constructed. A new ideal comes slowly into the circle of
Schumann’s sympathies, and that was Mendelssohn. He not only admired
Mendelssohn’s greatness, placing him perhaps even above Chopin, but,
as his works show, he envied his constraining plastic art, which
possibly he mistook for monumental calm.
In piano-literature Mendelssohn is the composer for young girls, the
elegant romancist of the drawing-room. From the sphere of polite
literature, where passion must be trimmed and neat, and where there is
no sentence passed without amiability, and a smiling _laissez-faire_
rules the day, there penetrates into glowing romance the limitation
of this neatness, and a formality well adapted to the drawing-room.
The old Volkslieder, the simple Ritornells, the tones of aspiration in
forgotten old airs, the dances of elves, the moonlight love-scenes,
are all brought on to a parquet for the delectation of comfortable
people. It is a gilt-edged lyricism, without any unbefitting
exhibition of unseemly feeling; a mere art of perfumery compared
with Bach and Schubert. The development of the pieces shall exhibit
nothing to shock; it shall run on in the most intelligible manner. A
dainty accompaniment-figure is formed, which plays some bars alone;
then follows the melodious and soothing theme, which moves in certain
sequences and delights to rock itself to and fro on related degrees
of the scale. The strophic divisions are clearly defined; small
cadenzas mark the main sections; and at the conclusion there appears
a miniature canon or a vigorous episode, which leaves behind a good
impression on the mind of the satisfied listener.
At the head of this enormous branch of piano-literature stands
Mendelssohn. His “Songs without words,” of which six books appeared
in his life and two more after his death, gave the decisive form to
this class of Short Story in music. All the technical devices of the
time, the wide stretches, the broken accompaniments, the multiplicity
of rhythms, are here adapted to the drawing-room. The Volkslieder are
put, as it were, into evening dress. That in A minor is surrounded
towards the conclusion with octaves, which are merely technical, and
without emotional significance. The Funeral March, compared with that
of a Beethoven, is as if it were written for a set of marionettes. The
Spring Song is, so to speak, set on wires. And all is so beautiful, so
objectionably beautiful! It tells us all through that it is beautiful,
and the composer moves his head to and fro with the music, and says,
“How beautiful it is!” Until at last, when we have grown to man’s
estate, we can endure it all no longer; or at most we take up once
again from time to time this or that song, preferably one in quick
time--perhaps the Spinning-Song, the best of all.[131]
From these drawing-room romances of Mendelssohn one piece is to be
taken apart, as equally pleasing both to young and to old. This
is the Elf-music. Such music, with its gay dancing of gnomes,
intermingled with a slightly sentimental air, was wonderfully suited
to Mendelssohn’s genius. He never surpassed his overture to the
Midsummer-Night’s Dream, written at seventeen. There are four of
these “Elf” or “Kobold” pieces for the piano. The first, in the
Character-Pieces, Op. 7, begins in E major, shoots rapidly past,
and ends very daintily in the minor. The second, Op. 16, 2, begins
on the contrary in E minor, and concludes in a very spirited fashion
in the major--a very poetical little Battle of the Mice, with tiny
fanfares and dances, all kinds of squeaks, and runnings to and fro
of a captivating grace. The third is the Rondo Capriccioso (Op. 14),
for which all piano-players have a deadly hatred, but which is much
prettier than we are inclined to think to-day, when it is worn out.
Finally we have the F sharp minor Scherzo, which was written for the
“Album des Pianistes,” with dotted, staccato, and singing themes, and
stands out among his pieces.
[Illustration: Head of Mendelssohn, after Hildebrand.]
Mendelssohn was one of the few great musicians, whose whole life,
from cradle to the grave, was lived in sunshine and happiness. From
his joyous youth to his European renown as head of the Leipzig
Conservatorium his life was a round of serenity, and at its zenith he
might well die. Sunshine and happiness are in his works; storm never
breaks in, no sigh moves to tears. His storms and sighings never
forget their artistic calm. His pieces cast friendly glances on all
sides, and are quite conscious of the friendly glances they receive in
return. As beautifully as their author played--he played rarely but
willingly in concerts--they present their technique, so popular, so
charming; sounding more difficult to play than they are. The technical
content is chiefly rapid staccato, whether of single notes or chords;
the ornamentation of melodies in arpeggio; brilliant repetitions
obtained by rapid alternation of the two hands; free obligato use of
the pedal; and a showy use of a facile right hand.
These find their most popular expression in the conclusion of the
Serenade, in the first movement of the D minor Concerto, and in the E
minor Prelude. Popular even ad nauseam are the Concert-pieces, the B
minor capriccio (the favourite fantasia with march-conclusion), and
the two piano concertos, all of which are practically in one movement,
with partial repeats. In technique these appear to owe an obligation
to Weber, for whom Mendelssohn had a heartfelt admiration.
The third group of Mendelssohn’s piano works, along with the “Short
Stories” and the concertos, are the “Bachiana,” or, more properly,
“Handeliana.” An æsthetic historic sense is a rooted characteristic
of the romantic spirit. Mendelssohn’s studies in Bach and Handel had
a great influence on his development, and are plainly shown in some
of the “Seven Character-Pieces,” with their soft, gentle, old-world
conduct of the melodies, and the clever fugal movement which seems
to set an ancient counterpoint on to Mendelssohnian harmonies. Here
belongs the Fantasia, Op. 28, with its three contrapuntal movements;
also the famous E minor fugue and its companions in Op. 35, with the
appended chorale and the pompously smooth partwriting, fall into
this place. It is constructed entirely differently from the fugue
of Bach, which grows up from within; it is a grafting of a fugato on
the trunk of a drawing-room piece. Finally, we recall the “Variations
sérieuses,” composed in 1841, the purest, most solid, most massive
work that Mendelssohn ever wrote for the piano, without a suspicion of
triviality, filled full with intellectual outlines and harmonies, a
splendid erection, but--throughout dependent on Schumann.
We have thus returned to Schumann, whom Mendelssohn so nobly repaid
for his admiration. This elegant composer, who, whether as poet, as
concertist, or as a follower of Bach, was always equally clear and
plastic, might well appear to Schumann the fulfilment of his own aims.
He had not wavered as to whether he was called to be a musician,
though he had perhaps regarded business as the easier course. At his
pieces he had toiled as Heine toiled at one of those smooth-flowing
poems of his. The doubt may well have often recurred to him whether
the flow was checked. But from this Mendelssohn the music flowed so
easily from the fingers, and stood so clear and transparent before
him. At one time he believes that the stream is clear, and he rejoices
over the speed with which he finishes twelve sheets in a week. This
work was the “Humoreske,” which entirely puts aside the earlier
fragmentary romance, and throws all, joy and sorrow, into the same
crucible. Thus we gain a piece bearing all the marks of decadent
imitation of Bach’s traditions, and even of those of Schumann himself,
in spite of isolated, delicate, lyrical traits, which occur specially
in the G minor section (Einfach und Zart). We are now in March 1839.
Schumann writes to Clara, asking her why she chooses the Carnival to
introduce him to people who do not know him. Why not rather choose the
Fantasie Stücke, in which one does not nullify the other, and in which
there is a comfortable breadth? “You like best storm and lightning
at once, and always something new that has never been.” Then also
he put his “Arabesque” and his “Blumen-stück” together, which has
nothing but the title in common with Jean Paul. As a matter of fact,
nothing was new, and everything had been. It had become a question
whether the limits of the possibilities of the piano had not already
been overpassed. As Op. 22 he brought out the Sonata in G minor,
which he had composed earlier; a piece, compared with the F sharp
minor, rounded and of satisfying content. The final pithy movement
he replaced by one of neater and smoother character. It is sad to
hear him, in his letters, speaking with great _empressement_ of the
Nacht-stücke (Op. 23) and then to find that there is nothing special
in them. As Op. 26 appeared the “Carnival Jest” (Faschings-schwank)
which brought back his old style of the “short story,” but forced
into a sort of sonata-arrangement. The vigorous “Reveillé” in F
sharp major, the fine painting of the restless bustle, the beautiful
Romance, the delicate simplicity of the Scherzino, with its canonic
conclusion, the singing Intermezzo, which in breadth and value on
the whole surpassed Mendelssohn--all these have ill prepared us for
the great falling off in the Finale. This piece was Schumann’s last
great utterance on the “subjective” piano. In the meanwhile the Song
had taken him captive, and dominated his whole nature. In Schumann
development proceeded almost according to classes. After the Song came
chamber-music, then chorus, then the symphony.
Among his later piano-pieces we find all sorts in various
styles--partly interesting as showing an advance upon himself,
partly, alas, mere decadent imitations of himself. The fulness of
ideas and of titles is quite astonishing in his “Jugendalbum,” in his
“Albumblätter” containing the dainty Slumber Song, and in the “Bunte
Blätter” containing the Geschwind-marsch. The most delicate aftermath
of Romance proper was the “Waldscenen” in which the “Eintritt” and the
“Verrufene Stelle” are worthy of a musical Hoffmann. The Hunting Song
is in the style of Mendelssohn. As late fruits of the intimate piano
lyric appear the sweet variations for two pianos, which we cannot
choose but love, the four-handed Eastern Pictures (Bilder aus dem
Osten), in which Chopin plays a part, and the Songs of Early Morning,
and to Bettina, which show a beautiful touch of a later style, often
reaching the borders of motives from Parsifal. But most important
were certain concertos. Of these the limpid A minor, dedicated to
Hiller--the first movement of which was composed earlier--in its
freedom and colouring recalling Beethoven, and finally showing traces
of Chopin’s influence, is a perfect work. Finally, we must not omit
the Concert Allegro (Op. 134) dedicated to Brahms, a brilliant
creation, often recalling Bach, with a theme very much in the style
of Brahms, and many interesting repetitions of earlier figures of
Schumann’s own. Why has it been almost forgotten?
Like Schubert throughout his music, so has Schumann in his
chamber-music left us his youth. He broke off the regular practice
of it at about the same time of life as that at which Schubert
died. During the next fourteen years a slow decline in the artistic
freshness of his works made itself noticeable; and finally, alas, his
genius deserted him.
* * * * *
At this time some one wrote: “Thalberg is a king, Liszt a prophet,
Chopin a poet, Herz a lawyer, Kalkbrenner a troubadour, Madame Pleyel
a sibyl, Döhler a pianist.” The reader will observe that Schumann
is not even mentioned in this list. In Paris, as yet, he did not
count. There was an utter absence of the frivolous in his music, and
it had none of the qualities which were likely to conquer the great
world. Chopin scarcely ever required his pupils to play the works of
Schumann, and would seem to have had very little taste for them. On
the other hand, it was Schumann who gave an impulse to the popularity
of Chopin’s works in his magazine, as early as the appearance of the
Variations on the theme “Reich’ mir die Hand” (Op. 2). Indeed, the
rapid and enduring fame in Germany of Schumann’s only true rival was
due to Schumann himself.
“Chopin a poet.” It has become a very bad habit to place this poet
in the hands of our youth. The concertos and polonaises being put
aside, no one lends himself worse to youthful instruction than
Chopin. Because his delicate touches inevitably seem perverse to the
youthful mind, he has gained the name of a morbid genius. The grown
man who understands how to play Chopin, whose music begins where
that of another leaves off, whose tones show the supremest mastery
in the tongue of music,--such a man will discover nothing morbid in
him. Chopin, a Pole, strikes sorrowful chords, which do not occur
frequently to healthy normal persons. But why is a Pole to receive
less justice than a German? We know that the extreme of culture is
closely allied to decay; for perfect ripeness is but the foreboding of
corruption. Children, of course, do not know this. And Chopin himself
would have been much too noble ever to lay bare his mental sickness to
the world. And his greatness lies precisely in this, that he preserves
the mean between immaturity and decay.
His greatness is his aristocracy. He stands among musicians in his
faultless vesture, a noble from head to foot. The sublimest emotions,
towards whose refinement whole generations had tended, the last things
in our soul, whose foreboding is interwoven with the mystery of the
Judgment Day, have in his music found their form. At this Judgment
Day appears to be expressed what man kept dark within himself, and
shuddering sought to hide from the light. Now it has become free
without becoming plebeian; it has been uttered without becoming
trivial. This miracle is sung by geniuses, who are not cold as marble,
nor of such unreal beauty that we, to our horror, are constrained to
believe that there is an anti-human classicism. No; the angels bear
those delicate features as they weave nobility and joy into one.
These are Polish piquancies, tender and shining eyes of inner fire,
with happy heavy lids, and gently curved outlines, in which pride and
spirit blend together; speaking lips, which have something sweet to
say, and gentle, melting contours.
[Illustration: Chopin. Anonymous Lithograph, after portrait by Ary
Scheffer (1795-1858).]
Chopin gave recitals but rarely. In his youth--who was ever, as a
youth, without visions of a virtuoso-life?--he sometimes did so;
but even then with little enthusiasm. If he was heard in Paris, it
was at very select matinées at the Pleyel salon, to which only with
difficulty was admission to be obtained. The exiled aristocracy of
Poland, the world of Parisian art and letters, and ladies, sat
around and listened. _Réunions intimes_, _concerts de fashion_, as
Liszt called them, were the purest piano-recitals ever given. The
artist knew his audience; and in that small circle there was free
play for the isolated poesy which sounded from the instrument. A
delicate genius had won back for the piano its reserved nobility.
There was here no _fracas pianistique_, no noisy circus-scene before
a many-headed, unknown, indeterminate public; but courtly culture
without the court. When in 1834 Chopin gave a great recital in the
Italian Opera, he was undeceived by the want of response which he
found, and necessarily found, in those great halls, which only
dissipated his dainty playing. He said to Liszt, “I am not fitted for
public playing. The public frightens me, its breath chokes me, I am
paralysed by its inquisitive gaze, and affrighted at these strange
faces; but you, you are meant for it. If you can’t win the love of the
public, you can astonish it and deafen it.”
Chopin once said of himself that he was in this world like the E
string of a violin on a contrabass. His finely-strung nature sought
retirement, and fate had given him precisely that longing for rest
and harmony which of necessity made the contrabass of this world
excessively painful to him. He ran restlessly from one abode to
another, till he found in the Place de Vendôme the best for dying
in; he became more and more retiring, called for peaceful pearl-gray
carpets, and gave full play to all his decorative emotions, which are
the external proof of a harmonic soul. The art of his life was driven
into isolation, into inclusion in the sacred recesses of his musical
poems; and he knew well how so to level his life to the external
observer, that the biographers--apart from his one great passion--had
never so uneventful a life to record. The well-known description of
an evening with the master, which Liszt gives in his fanciful but yet
so true biography of Chopin, is so rich in character that reality
itself could hardly have done it better. A melting twilight in the
room, the dark corners seeming to produce themselves into infinity,
the furniture covered with white hangings, no candle except by the
piano and by the fireside. We distinguish Heine, Meyerbeer, the tenor
Nourrit, Hiller Delacroix, the unemotional Minkiewicz, the gray-haired
Niemcewicz, and George Sand with propped arm leaning back in a chair.
The people stand round Chopin in the twilight, and hardly know whence
these magic tones come. [The English reader will recall the exquisite
description of Chopin’s playing in Crawford’s romance “With the
Immortals.”]
We can easily see why Chopin could never compose duets. Not only
did he devote himself exclusively to the piano--he wrote nothing in
which the piano does not bear a part--but he broke with the custom of
writing duets for one or two pianos. A single Rondo for two pianos,
of the year 1828, was found among his remains. How he smiled once
at Czerny, who “had composed another overture for eight pianos and
sixteen persons, and was very happy over it.” Chopin opened to the two
hands a wider world than Czerny could give to thirty-two. And further,
he selects and rejects with great care before publishing. He prints
nothing which does not absolutely satisfy his mind both as a whole and
in its details.
Between his youth in Poland--which was soon closed to him on political
grounds--and his last journey through England and Scotland, his stay
in France stretches like a peaceful background of exclusively artistic
activity. A thousand anecdotes cluster round him, but only a few of
them have stood the test of criticism and comparison. In his “Life of
Chopin”--and there are few musical biographies equally good--Niecks
has collected everything that is told, and all the arguments against
the authenticity of the various tales. Even upon that famous scene,
in which the Countess Potocka sings the dying Chopin to his eternal
slumber, the traditions are contradictory. There are few letters to
help us. Chopin was too reserved to write them. It was said that he
would rather go right through Paris to decline an invitation by word
of mouth than write his excuse. And of the few letters he actually
did write, the best appear to have been burnt in the sack of Warsaw.
Nevertheless there is a certain charm in being thus obliged, as it
were, to see him in shadow.
[Illustration: George Sand, in man’s dress. Lithograph by Cecilia
Brandt.]
A sweet tie bound him to his native country. The fundamental
characteristic of the Poles, who united the merits of the Gaul and of
the Slav, that character of modesty and resignation, of sadness and of
reminiscence, flowed all the purer into the works of the artist. It
was easy to see that almost every one of Chopin’s compositions, even
if it was _not_ a Mazurka, sprang from the rhythm and sentiment of
the Mazur (Magyar) music; but it had been all steeped in the spirit
of the Parisian life. A _milieu_ of his own was here, of a charming
and cultivated kind, of which there are but few; the _milieu_ of fair
Polish ladies, who in Paris lived for their aspirations and their
temperaments. As Liszt said, the French alone saw in the daughters of
Poland a yet unknown ideal: the other nations had not the slightest
suspicion that there was anything worthy of admiration in these
elusive sylphs of the dance, who smiled so happily of an evening,
and in the morning lay sobbing at the foot of the altar; in these
apparently distracted travellers, who, if they journeyed through
Switzerland, drew the curtains of their carriages lest the sight
of the mountain-landscape should erase the memory of the limitless
horizon of their own native plains. Is not this a paraphrase of
Chopin’s music?
That enigmatical daemon, whom fate had allowed to grow up within the
walls of Paris--George Sand--was Chopin’s one grand passion. This was
his one overmastering emotion--but its influence never faded. The
beginning and the end of their association were varied a hundredfold.
His love for her seems to have begun in hate and to have ended in it;
hers began in dreaming, and ended with emotion; and, as she carried
through the episode in actual life with _bel esprit_, so she clothed
it poetically with the same. Who can reproach a Don Juan nature with
wickedness? George Sand must have been wicked to play her vampire-part
to the end. But there was nothing petty about the style in which she
played it.
The Powers were cruel who brought these two persons together. Now in
Paris, now at George Sand’s country place at Nohant, now in travel,
Fate compelled them to play this fearful comedy, in which, at bottom,
neither truly knew or comprehended the other. The woman remained a
_bel esprit_, and the artist remained a dreamer. And in the midst of
the comedy stands the ridiculous idyll of Majorca, in which these
two persons live near each other, in a prison of their souls. The
man delicate and pining, with agile limbs, slight hands, slight
feet, silky-brown hair, transparent complexion, finely-curved nose,
quiet smile, voice muffled “like a creeper whose calyx rocks on the
delicate stem, dressed in wonderful colours, but of such airy texture
that it tears at the slightest motion.” The woman, with an ideal
Greek countenance on a somewhat thick-set body; a face that might
seem to have come down from earlier ages, as Heine describes it, but
softened by a surprising gentleness--Musset’s “femme à l’œil sombre.”
They sit in the midst of the cypresses, oranges, and myrtles in the
deserted monastery of Valdemosa with its chapels, churches, carved
statues, and moss-grown stonework. In the evening the populace come
out and dance ghostlike boleros with castanets, or at other times the
wind howls as if possessed and the rain falls without intermission.
Eating is impossible; ships cannot come through the storm. A Pleyel
piano, brought there with difficulty, stands in the deserted halls,
and Chopin sits at it and shivers. He longs for home; and she is soon
compelled to recognise that nothing increased his chest-complaint so
much as this winter in Majorca, which she had aided him in planning.
This winter in Majorca was that of 1838 and 1839. It has long been
believed that it gave rise to Chopin’s Preludes. Some have even
fancied they recognised in the dropping motives of some of them,
especially the E minor, the B minor, and the D flat major, the effect
of the constant rain of Majorca. The truth is that a large part of the
Preludes were written, or half written, before this, and that only the
last touches were given to them in Majorca. Nay, it is even possible
that the mighty and fiery A major Polonaise was conceived and finished
under the gloomy sky of Majorca. Dates are difficult to obtain, and
also of very little importance. Chopin writes his works so entirely
from the heart that they have very little dependence on the moment of
their composition. The single case of an impulse of this kind would
seem to be the news of the sack of Warsaw, upon which he is said to
have written the stormy C minor Étude. Poetic influences, also, Polish
or French, move him only as it were on the circumference. He is a
delicately emotional nature, but far from a literary one.
Chopin’s habit of conceiving his pieces as great wholes is precisely
what renders an analysis of his works impossible. Chopin, with all the
charms we know so well, with all his wide embracing harmonies, his
spirited voice-outlines, is but one, and one whole: and this single
Chopin takes now one, now another, isolated form, in which, from the
original motives, ever fresh creations are fused together. In every
piece he is entirely present. There are, it is true, a few weaker
pieces of his youth; and Fontana has published a large stock from
his remains (these are numbered from Op. 66 on)--a thing to which he
would have objected; he hated this stirring of dead bones. But these
pieces have now vanished even from the practising repertoire of the
following generations. Certain lines can always be drawn over his
general work. We see him, at first, plainly dominated by his only
true forerunner, Hummel, for whom he felt a passionate admiration,
and whose method of execution he has only further enlarged; so that
in Chopin’s daintiest colourations a keen observer can detect the
relics of the old “manieren” and ornamental flourishes. The E flat
major Rondo, the Concert-Polonaise, and, above all, the two Concertos
in E minor and F minor, show clearly the influence of Hummel, notably
in their jerky insertion of étude-like murmuring motives, their
simply broken accompaniment to the cantilena, their brilliant effects
in the high registers, their easy drawing-room phrases, and their
surprisingly Mozart-like charm in melodic line. But the concertos,
the most fairy-like in the whole range of that class of literature,
already point to regions so far out of the reach of Hummel that they
cannot be exhaustively summed up under that category. Scarcely to
be separated chronologically from them are the pure commencements
of the genuine art of Chopin, which is clearly visible in the first
Mazurkas, and stretches far into the forties. Even those remarkable
spirited variations in B flat minor, dated 1833, on an operatic theme
of Herold, in which Chopin seemed to make a concession to fashion,
are not removed a hair’s breadth from the distinction of his best
style. In 1840, a year so fruitful for Schumann also, appeared Op. 35
to 50. Chopin was thirty-one, the age at which Schubert died. At last
a certain later style has been marked off; restrained, contrapuntal,
and yet unfettered. His most brightly-coloured examples he gave in the
wildly poetical Barcarolle, the spiritual B major Nocturne, and the
full-bodied Fantasia-Polonaise.
Chopin’s work shows but few departures from his regular lines.
Of these we may mention the beautiful pasticcio of the F minor
Fantasia, which should be played with a sort of extempore laxity; the
Barcarolle; the Tarantelle; the Bolero; and the refined Berceuse,
in which, over the uniform accompaniment, a splendid succession
of motives ascends or descends; which form an epitome of Chopin’s
“manieren,” as the Goldberg Variations were of Bach’s, the Diabelli
of Beethoven’s, or the C sharp minor of Schumann’s. Apart from these
his pieces fall into symmetrical groups, each of which has its own
pronounced character.
His sonatas remain most strange to us; they are sonatas in the strict
sense as little as the other sonatas by the Romantics. Chopin cares so
little for form that he avoids the recurrence to the first theme. The
whole falls into fragments: the B flat minor has its wild first theme
and its dainty second; the capricious Scherzo, the Funeral March,
which, alas! has become so popular (it was introduced into the Sonata
only by an afterthought), and the spirited unisono storm of the last
Presto, right on to the fortissimo concluding bar. But from the B
minor Sonata, the sultry Largo, and the last movement, a kind of giant
boating-piece, strike us as most remarkable.
Chopin finds his true form in the Ballades and Scherzi. This is the
extempore form, which even in the Impromptus has for long not been so
unfettered. The dividing lines of the sections are drawn from free
invention, and the thought is constrained by no scheme. An artistic
order introduces the rhythm of the arrangement with which the moment
would have been obliged to dispense. It is naturalism lifted into the
sphere of discrete art.
The improvised form is shown in the Preludes still more purely, but
with less pretension. They are a succession of musical aphorisms, from
the sketch to the finished piece, running through the gamut of all
forms.
In these Ballades, Scherzi and Preludes, we reach again one of those
solitary peaks of piano literature in which improvisatorial invention
and artistic construction meet again in a higher unity.
The Études crown the efforts of this period, to bring technique
and tune into the friendly relation peculiar to them. While we
admire their mechanical value in point of polyrhythmical effects,
wide stretches, double trills, independence of the left hand, airy
piano-effects, freedom of the wrist, and quickness of finger-change,
we praise their poetry, the grace of the C major or the magic of the A
flat major, the solemnity of the C sharp minor, or the intoxication of
the G flat major, the Titanic force of the C minor, or the melancholy
of the E flat minor.
The Nocturnes--with the silken web of the D flat major in their
midst--are the high songs of melody which Chopin nowhere else has
framed with such entrancing aspiration or such broad exclamatory
sighs. But the dances are the high songs of rhythm, to which never yet
was so intellectual a homage paid. The Polonaises have the _galant_
and knightly features of the old Polish nobility; and Chopin’s head
rears itself in them more proudly than one would have expected from
his feminine nature. But the Mazurkas are bourgeois little joys,
half bathed in sorrow, half crushing their pain in the jubilation of
the rhythm--an unparalleled series of intellectual inspirations. In
the Waltzes we have only a higher kind of Mazurkas, with less of the
national spirit, like Poles in the Parisian drawing-room. The slow
Waltz in A minor, not without reason, was dearest to Chopin’s own
heart.
Chopin’s playing was the rapture of his contemporaries. All agree that
his individuality could only be made intelligible by himself. How long
did Moscheles torment himself with the remarkable harmonic transitions
which he found in Chopin’s compositions! But when he heard the master
himself, all doubt vanished; what had seemed violent now became
self-intelligible. Chopin’s playing was dainty and airy; his fingers
seemed to glide sideways, as if all technique were a glissando; even
the Forte was in him not an absolute but a relative forte--relative,
that is, to the gentle voice of the rest; and it rises, the older
he grew, so much the less by force than by a subtle play of touch.
All execution has made way for a certain free extempore poesy; the
_rubato_ softens the harshness of bar-accent. Liszt’s definition of
the rubato is well known--“You see that tree; its leaves move to and
fro in the wind and follow the gentlest motion of the air; but its
trunk stands there, immovable in its form.” Chopin seems never to have
carried the rubato so far that this trunk itself would have stirred.
Once already had a player arisen who cultivated this graceful and
airy kind of execution. Field, a Scot by birth, Clementi’s pupil,
a pale and dreamy man, had anticipated the delicate breadth of
Chopin’s touch; and the world had been enraptured with his melancholy
renderings by means of apparently motionless hands. Alongside of not
very important sonatas, concertos, and rondos, he had published a
series of song-like pieces, which he called “Nocturnes,” and in which
he put to special use his longing melodies, his dreamy _portamenti_,
his rose-chains of airy colourations. Compared with Chopin’s
Nocturnes, these must necessarily appear pale and even monotonous; but
in his whole essence, in the form of his pieces, and the delicacy of
his touch, Field was a prelude to Chopin--as Dussek or Louis Ferdinand
were in their kind. When Chopin once played before Alexander Klengel,
Clementi’s pupil, the latter was strongly reminded of Field. And when
Chopin, after his arrival in Paris, conceived the idea of taking
further lessons under Kalkbrenner, whose delicate playing he admired
above everything, the latter likewise thought that the style reminded
him of Cramer, but the playing of Field. “Were you Field’s pupil?” he
asked. Chopin’s true teacher, the forgotten Elsner of Warsaw, had had
no share in it. Chopin had formed his own playing, as he formed his
own style. In early years he had a mania for width of stretch, and
even invented a device for stretching the fingers. The experiment was
fortunately more successful than Schumann’s attempt to increase the
independence of the fingers by means of a sling. The difference is
noteworthy: Chopin aimed at a richer impression of voluptuous fullness
in the chords; Schumann at increased independence of part playing.
Chopin, as a sensitive artist, laid special stress on the kind of
instrument he used. In his youth he would only willingly play on
Graf’s pianos; in Paris only on those of Pleyel, whose silvern muffled
tone was specially attractive to him. In those of Erard he thought
the tone too insistent. “If I am in a bad humour I play an Erard, and
easily find there the tone ready-made. But if I am in the humour, and
strong enough to make my own tone, I use a Pleyel.” The fingering,
also, he regulates for himself. For the sake of a better execution
he never objects to put his thumb on a black key in suitable places,
or to glide with one finger over two keys, or to let longer fingers
pass over the shorter without using the thumb. In his Études he has
expressly written marks for many such naturalistic fingerings.
The special character of Chopin’s method, which in this literature
created an epoch, consisted in an effective use of three voices. Of
course it is not meant that he constantly writes strictly in three
parts; quite on the other hand, he has made a quite unique use of the
unison in the B flat minor Sonata, in the fourteenth and eighteenth
Preludes, and in the second movement of the F minor Concerto; and
there are plenty of examples in him of the simple accompaniment of a
simple melody. But the peculiar charm of his technique begins only
in the parallel application of three voices (I am not using this
term in the contrapuntal sense), in the laying alongside of three
motived systems, three musical thoughts, three principal paths. In
the Berceuse, for example, upon the heels of the one voice over the
accompaniment treads instantly a second, and the threefold combination
of accompaniment and two overparts is carried through in all possible
variations. The two overparts are no less present in several passages,
which appear on paper merely as zigzag runs, which bind together
continuously the two melodic lines. In favourable cases, as in the
boldly accented chords toward the conclusion of the B flat minor
Scherzo, this peculiar line-counterpoint is carried to an extreme.
The fusion of unfusable things in melody, rhythm, and harmony is
the new synthesis by means of which this art advances. The charm of
certain melodies of Chopin is increased by their taking up intervals
foreign to the key, which affect us half with Eastern, half with
ecclesiastical associations, but on closer inspection these are seen
to be merely due to the collision of two melodic lines.[132] There
are, for example, resolutions of suspensions, which are postponed
for the moment; the main melody of the First Ballade, the whispering
second Intermezzo of the famous B flat major Mazurka, the D in the C
sharp minor Nocturne, the A in the B minor Prelude, are instances.
It is a _rubato_ of melody: a musical, not a rhythmical rubato. If
a section of a Mazurka in Op. 30, 3 is repeated pianissimo, it does
not shock us, if certain notes already played reappear a semitone
lower, precisely as if the dynamic weakening had a musical weakening
as its result. It is an effect of intellectual naturalistic charm.
Everywhere the straight line is by preference avoided. Suspensions
(retardations) are boldly prolonged at the conclusion of a bar, as in
the B flat major Mazurka or in the stretto of the G minor Ballade. The
melodies wind themselves round invisible axles, and the _fioriture_
play in turn round the supports of the melodies. The time is ignored,
incommensurable passages can only be worked in by the _feel_, triplets
and duplets are mingled with each other, or a wonderful pseudo-rhythm,
as in the F major theme of the A flat major Ballade, makes us
waver pleasantly between two time-emotions. There is constantly a
combination, by the two independent hands, or by the independent
movement of an upper or under group of fingers in one hand: this is
the extreme attainment of artistic finger-mechanism on a harmonic
instrument.
The sensuous charm of sound in Chopin’s music rests essentially on
this _use_ of the individualisation of the fingers. Formerly the
fingers had only been tools, which rendered on the piano the general
many-voiced piece. Now, however, a music had arisen from the essence
of the fingers which was quite peculiar to the piano. The pedal held
the dissected music again together. The left hand continues its own
melodic lines under the right, as we find in the E minor Prelude, in
the C sharp minor Étude, in the middle movement of the C sharp minor
Polonaise, and the Scherzo of the B flat minor Sonata, in the F sharp
major Impromptu, in the G minor Ballade, in the A flat major Waltz
(Op. 34, 1), or in so many Études with characteristic full figuration
in the left hand. Or in passages which run swiftly enough to allow
this little acoustic deception to grow into a charm, the two melodic
passages or one melody unite with their retardation notes into those
zig-zag contours which became Chopin’s distinguishing mark. There is
a long spirited series from the first Hummel-like pieces in the E
minor Concerto, through the ethereal sounds in the middle movement of
the third Scherzo, to the B minor Scherzo which forms its wild main
movement entirely by means of this mannerism. The concluding trills
of the concertos, the arpeggios of wide chords; the ornamentations
in the middle of the chords, take a share in the using-up of the
polyphony for sound effects; until at last we meet the threefold or
fourfold web in the concluding sections of the Barcarolle.
We have, in these last phrases of Chopin been reminded of the
influences of Bach, and in fact, the extreme individualisation of the
fingers leads us of necessity back to Bach, in whose works the fingers
are called upon to perform the last possibilities of many-voiced
music. Throughout it all Chopin knew that Bach is nature in music.
When he was practising for his recitals, he played, not Chopin but
Bach.
* * * * *
[The English pianist and composer, William Sterndale Bennett,
contemporary and friend of Mendelssohn, equally popular as a musician
both in Germany and his own country, demands notice in this place.
If England has not succeeded in forming a definite musical style
for itself in the nineteenth century, at least it can take credit
for having possessed one composer who may be called “unique” in the
true sense of the word. As far as his powers extended, Sterndale
Bennett achieved the highest distinction. There is no one _like_
him--his pianoforte music (on which alone he can afford to take his
stand) ranks quite by itself in expression, character, and technical
difficulty. Those who class him with Mendelssohn look merely on the
surface, and show themselves incapable of making a worthy distinction.
Sterndale Bennett’s music is never _weak_, although for the most part
cast in a delicate mould. On the other hand, he seems to have felt
that the “grand” style was out of his reach, and that it was no part
of his business to act the strong man. Accordingly, he seldom shows
any inclination to venture too high a flight. This alone suffices to
distinguish him from Mendelssohn.
Probably most pianists, when speaking of Sterndale Bennett, would
naturally think first of the Three Sketches (Op. 10, Nos. 1, 2, 3),
“The Lake,” “The Millstream,” and “The Fountain.” And it would be
difficult to better this as a specimen list--the first as a perfect
expression of natural tranquillity, the second as an example of
Sterndale Bennett’s peculiar technical difficulties, and the last as a
complete imitative picture.
The “Six Studies” (Op. 11) are quite characteristic. Their musical
value is very evident to the hearer; it is only the player who can
appreciate the perfection of execution they demand. No. 3, in B flat,
is the gem of the set. No. 6, the octave study in G minor, approaches
real power in the first section. The _cantabile_ second subject is
an exemplification of the quite inimitable style of the composer.
Amongst other miscellaneous pieces the following must be named--the
Fantasia in A, Op. 16, dedicated to Schumann, especially the first
movement, with its lovely melody on arpeggiando accompaniment--the
Caprice in E (with orchestra), Op. 22, an excellent proof of Sterndale
Bennett’s mastery of the “concerto” manner--the Rondo piacevole in E,
Op. 25, where one notes the wonderful grace of the first subject, the
expressive power of the second.
Sterndale Bennett comparatively seldom rises to emotional heights;
however, see his Op, 28, No. 1, the Introduction and Pastorale in A,
particularly the early bars of the Introduction, where, if he does
not attain the seventh heaven of a man or an archangel, he at least
reaches the clear empyrean of the happy skylark. He touches the same
high level towards the close of the Pastorale itself. For other
examples of his capacity for the expression of deep feeling compare
also the third and fourth movements of the “Maid of Orleans” Sonata,
Op. 46, an idyllic work, almost unknown, and scarcely ever played.
Description of this Sonata would be useless: it should be studied.
It shows Sterndale Bennett at his best and worst--it shows all his
strength, and some of his peculiar weaknesses.
Space prevents more than the mere mention of other works in which the
pianoforte takes a prominent part:--The Concerto in F minor, Op. 19
(played by Sterndale Bennett himself “at the concerts of Leipsic”);
the violoncello and piano duet, Op. 32; the Sextett for two violins,
viola, violoncello and contrabasso, with pianoforte, Op. 8; the
pianoforte Trio in A, Op. 26; and, not least important, from the point
of view of this book, the twelve songs, the accompaniments of which
are of ideal beauty.]
[Illustration: Chopin’s Hand. From a marble in the National Museum at
Budapest.]
[126] Cx (C double sharp), bar 11 of Trio.
[127] See Papillons, No. 2, bar 5. The phrase
(“after-stroke accompaniment”) is untranslateable; and the
rhythmical formula referred to, though quite common, is not
to be described in words.
[128] “Flail-years” = “wild oats time.”
[129] S = E flat or A flat.
[130] This sentence refers to the marvellous and perfectly
inexpressible passage in the Fantasia Op. 17, beginning
forty-one bars before the “Mässig, durchaus energisch.”
[131] These remarks, though severe, are just, if they are
not allowed to apply themselves to _all_ of Mendelssohn’s
work without proper discrimination. Many of his pianoforte
works and songs are abundantly feeble; but we, in England
at least, must always owe Mendelssohn a debt for having
provided an easy path by which amateurs have been led, now
for many years, towards the high and true romance of men
like Schubert, Bach, and the others. But it is necessary,
and indeed the special duty of an Englishman, to advise
young persons who read this book, that Mendelssohn _at his
best_ is what they should get to know, and that unless
they have “Elijah” and “St Paul” by heart, the adverse
criticism of the composer of those works is denied them.
Even in these two great oratorios it requires no practised
Diabolus to find their weaknesses--but what shall an honest
man say of “Yet doth the Lord see it not,” or “The nations
are now the Lord’s,” in spite of the wretched weakness of
counterpoint in the fugal parts of the latter movement? The
man who could write such things is a great man and a true
“romantic.”
[132] Cases of this kind are common in Purcell and Bach.
Examples are easily quoted. One of the commonest with
Purcell is the collision of ♮7 and ♭7 in perfect cadences.
[Illustration: An Afternoon with Liszt. Lithograph by Kriehuber.
Kriehuber. Berlioz. Czerny. Liszt. The violinist Ernst. ]
Liszt and the Present Time
At the beginning of the era of present-day piano-art, perhaps also at
the culmination of all independent and advancing piano-art, stands
Franz Liszt. The artistic phenomenon of Liszt is yet so near to us,
that it is still misunderstood. Even to-day he has fanatical friends
and bitter foes: blind assailants and diplomatic defenders. And
through it all, the whole world of piano-playing stands under his
influence.
[Illustration: Photograph of Liszt, taken in Budapest.]
This was possible because Liszt was a developed artistic nature,
who did not fall in with the established scheme, was by everybody
differently understood, differently loved, differently hated. We can
distinguish three types of artists. The one is the rapid composer,
whose new thoughts readily find their new suitable form. The second
class is that of the artists of the will--great innovators, like Manet
and Degas among the painters, who worked not so much by their visible
productiveness, as by their personal influence, exerted from day to
day; an influence which after their death seems almost inconceivable.
The third consists of the compilers, classics in the historical
sense, who form a synthesis of all the constituent parts, a unity of
opposites, into which history continually diverges, a conjunction
of all begun and severed paths, the complete culture of a time made
living. Liszt belongs to none of these types; he belongs to the last
two _together_. The union of the innovator and the classic forms his
essence; and in understanding this lies the complete comprehension of
him. He possessed a double power, which influenced the world as it
did, because the world never saw the one half of his nature before the
other.
Liszt the revolutionary cast his seed wide into the world. His system
of patronage, founded on artistic feeling, not merely smoothed the
way for Wagner and Berlioz, but assured to every suppliant the
preservation of a modicum of self-respect and a modicum of hope.
He pointed out to the modern musical development, in a kind of
theoretical praxis peculiar to himself, the paths which led from the
revolutionary principles of Berlioz to the popular musical realism
of to-day. He scattered over both hemispheres the seeds of intimate
personal instructions, of great and small disclosures; so that even
now eternal gratitude to this most kind-hearted of all artists is felt
over the world.
[Illustration: Title-page of Hofmeister’s Edition of Liszt’s Op. 1.]
Liszt the compiler is a new Liszt. Here the revolutionary remained
apart, and the new Liszt came forth, who rushed in undreamed-of
splendour through real and imagined worlds. He gathers cultures, a
princely collector, with the crown of rare desert upon his head.
The world did not know that this same man could pass through times of
quiet creation and thought. He is a man of the world of the highest
_savoir faire_, a writer of bewitching elegance, a conqueror who makes
nought of the boundaries of peoples, a king despising kings, a demigod
as conductor of tumultuous musical festivals, and in his works,
which seem to appear daily in countless, uncontrollable numbers,
a classical combiner of that which is and that which has been. It
was he who united composition and interpretation, music and poetry,
romance and virtuosity, Olympian and Titan, Beethoven and Paganini.
Everything that the piano had experienced, the mystic longings of
the old counterpoint, the love of variation of Bird and Bull, the
ornamentation of Couperin and Rameau, the sensuous delight in sound
of Scarlatti, the absolute art of Bach, the charm and formal beauty
of Mozart, the pain of Beethoven crying for release, the intellectual
confessions of the unique triumvirate, Schubert, Schumann, and
Chopin--the rays of all met in him. A true combiner, he did not jumble
these cultures in a learned and academic fashion together in himself,
but he developed their common medium, in which they could test their
mutual effects, with ever new charms.
[Illustration: Liszt in his youth. Lithograph by Kriehuber.]
The life of Liszt necessarily prepared him for this mighty
combination. It is a co-ordination of cultures, each of which, singly
experienced, might have sufficed for an ordinary mortal. He passed
through six such lives in the various parts of his existence. As
“petit Litz” he lived the life of a precocious much-loved child; then
in Paris he penetrated to the depths of a romantic idealism, which
drew closely together the men of that fruitful epoch; next, with the
Comtesse d’Agoult he lived for five years the free and productive
life of a wandering artist: then he experienced the glories of
European renown as a virtuoso; next, he exerted himself in Weimar as
the pioneer of the modern style; and finally, in Rome, Buda-Pest,
and Weimar, he lived the peaceful life of a ruler, having attained
the heights of worldly honour and equally those of that conquest
of the world which found its symbol in his priestly robe. Lina
Ramann had the courage to make three volumes of biography out of this
unparalleled life, in which the unique material is spoilt by doubtful
German and uncritical enthusiasm. Liszt is in her books not the
subject but the hero of the tale; and the wickedness of women is the
theme. The Comtesse d’Agoult receives the same measure as George Sand
in Niecks’ “Life of Chopin.” It is remarkable, how in the archives
which are arranged after the death of great men, so little is said
of humanity and so much of abstract right. Is the moral order of the
world so inexorable that even its fairest opponents must be docketed
and ticketed in accordance with it?[133]
[Illustration: After Dantan’s Caricature of Thalberg.]
In the romantic Thirties, and in Paris, men thought otherwise. In
the freedom of that society Liszt’s personality received its stamp.
In Paris he remained after the tour of the world which he made in
childhood, on which Beethoven had kissed him; and in Paris he learned
the elegance of a man of the world, and a depth of pantheistic
thought. These were his two opposite poles. And very soon this
mental culture raised him far above all his contemporaries in his
profession; Chopin alone was worthy to be placed at his side. It was
a good preparation for those triumphs of virtuosity that were soon
to come, which were to transform him from a delicate Parisian into a
European citizen. The splendour of virtuosity lay like the eternal
sun over Paris. From time to time something would happen to cast even
that splendour into the shade. In the twenties came Moscheles; then
the wonders of the little Liszt; and now the appearance of Thalberg.
Thalberg, the natural son of a prince, a ravishing and brilliant
person, a cavalier through and through, came to Paris in 1835 and
took her by storm. He had a luxuriant, fascinating execution, in
which the silken glitter was that of the _fontaine lumineuse_; and he
had besides the peculiarity of holding the middle melody supported
by the pedal, both hands taking part, while they enfolded it in
arabesques of chords. In the rivalry with him Liszt was the complete
and foursquare man: no longer the “petit Litz,” standing on the height
of the time, but the mature Liszt, with his “profil d’ivoire,” who
left the time far behind. Liszt and Thalberg were both _gentlemen_.
They never showed such animosity as their respective partisans, who
split Paris as once it had been split by the Gluckists and the
Piccinists. But their rivalry had nevertheless something dramatic
in it, and in it lay a regard for piano-culture never yet seen. The
crisis of the struggle was reached on the 31st of March 1837, when
the Princess Belgioso ventured to invite both Liszt and Thalberg to
a benefit-concert, at which the price of the tickets, forty francs,
was proportioned to the character of the company. Hitherto each had
performed on his own account; and each had been applauded for himself.
Both came; and both played. The following conversation gives the
decision of the audience--“Thalberg est le premier pianiste du monde!”
“Et Liszt?” “Liszt, Liszt est--le seul!” It seemed a drawn match.
But meanwhile the depth of Liszt’s artistic character was conquering
though unobserved. Liszt had in an article severely censured the empty
compositions of Thalberg. Fétis, the musical historian, took the
other side, and maintained strongly that not Liszt but Thalberg was
the man of the new school. A few years only had to pass, when people
grew sick of playing Thalberg. The broader humanity of Liszt’s art
had won the victory over external glitter in popular dress--a victory
which Liszt’s personality could not gain over that of Thalberg.
Thenceforward Liszt’s supremacy was uncontested.
[Illustration: Lithograph of 1835 by Staub.]
[Illustration: After Dantan’s Caricature of Liszt. From the
Nicolas-Manskopf collection, Frankfort-on-Main.]
[Illustration: Facsimile of Liszt’s Hungarian Storm-March.]
[Illustration: Facsimile of Liszt’s Hungarian Storm-March.]
[Illustration: The “jeune école” of Parisian Pianists. Lithographed
by Maurin. _Standing_--J. Rosenhain, Döhler, Chopin, A. Dreyschock,
Thalberg. _Sitting_--Edward Wolff, Henselt, Liszt.]
[Illustration: Liszt in his youth. Engraved on steel by Carl Mayer.]
In the same year, 1837, Liszt made a confession, in an essay written
for the _Gazette Musicale_, which was the greatest flattery that ever
the piano received from one of its masters. Liszt refuses to go nearer
to the orchestra or to the opera. “My piano is to me what his boat
is to the seaman, what his horse is to the Arab: nay, more, it has
been till now my eye, my speech, my life. Its strings have vibrated
under my passions, and its yielding keys have obeyed my every caprice.
Perhaps the secret tie which holds me so closely to it is a delusion;
but I hold the piano very high. In my view it takes the first place in
the hierarchy of instruments; it is the oftenest used and the widest
spread.... In the circumference of its seven octaves it embraces the
whole circumference of an orchestra; and a man’s ten fingers are
enough to render the harmonies which in an orchestra are only brought
out by the combination of hundreds of musicians.... We can give broken
chords like the harp, long sustained notes like the wind, staccati and
a thousand passages which before it seemed only possible to produce on
this or that instrument.... The piano has on the one side the capacity
of assimilation; the capacity of taking into itself the life of all
(instruments); on the other it has its own life, its own growth, its
individual development.... It is a microcosm, a micro-theus.... My
highest ambition is to leave to piano players after me some useful
instructions, the footprints of attained advance, in fact a work which
may some day provide a worthy witness of the labour and study of my
youth. I remember the greedy dog in La Fontaine, which let the juicy
bone fall from its mouth in order to grasp a shadow. Let me gnaw in
peace at my bone. The hour will come, perhaps all too soon, in which I
shall lose myself and hunt after a monstrous intangible shadow.”
[Illustration: Cartoon representing Liszt and his Works. 1842.]
It is due in very great measure to the example of Paganini’s
violin-playing that Liszt at this time, with slow, deliberate toil,
created modern piano-playing. The world was struck dumb by the
enchantment of the Genoese violinist; men did not trust their ears;
something uncanny, inexplicable, ran with this demon of music through
the halls. The wonder reached Liszt; he ventured on _his_ instrument
to give sound to the unheard of: leaps which none before him had
ventured to make, “disjunctions” which no one had hitherto thought
could be acoustically united: deep tremolos of fifths, like a dozen
kettle-drums, which rushed forth into wild chords; a polyphony which
almost employed as a rhythmical element the overtones which destroy
harmony; the utmost possible use of the seven octaves in chords set
sharply one over another; resolutions of tied notes in unceasing
octave graces with harmonies thrown in the midst; an employment
hitherto unknown of the interval of the tenth to increase the fulness
of tone-colour; a regardless interweaving of highest and lowest
notes for purposes of light and shade; the most manifold application
of the tone-colours of different octaves for the coloration of the
tone-effect; the entirely naturalistic use of the tremolo and the
glissando; and above all a perfect systematization of the method of
interlacing the hands, partly for the management of runs so as to
bring out the colour, partly to gain a doubled power by the division,
and partly to attain, by the use of contractions and extensions in
the figures, a fulness of orchestral chord-power never hitherto
practised. This is the last step possible for the piano in the process
of individualisation begun by Hummel and continued by Chopin. The
three systems of notes, instead of two, appear more frequently; in
fact the two hands appear for the most part to play a group of notes
which seem to be conceived for three. And precisely by this means
the two hands run inside and through one another, as if they were
only a single tool of ten fingers. The music appears again to become
a corporate unity of tone, as it had already once been in its first
beginnings. But, it has now become, out of a universal music, a music
for the piano. An historic mission is fulfilled.
[Illustration: Der General Bass wird durch List in seinen festen
Linien überrumpelt u überwunden. “General” Bass surprised and overcome
in his fortress by Liszt. (_List_ means craft, or stratagem. Observe
Liszt’s wings, _flügel_, which word also means grand piano. General or
“thorough” Bass is a personification of the “classical” school.)]
[Illustration: Liszt and Stavenhagen.]
Liszt invents a fingering for his purposes which has no other
principle than that of the most absolute opportunism. Scales, struck
by one finger, trills played with changing fingers, strenuous parallel
octave passages, heavy fingering in order to drag out parts which
otherwise glide too lightly--everywhere, in place of the academic
rule, there is an attempt to grasp the effect of the moment, a
moulding after the impulses of the expression. And thence arises a
soul-giving power even down to the most trifling passing-note, until
the man and the playing are one. Liszt did the miracles of a prophet
in his recitals, tumultuous assemblies, in which it actually happened
that the people did not stir from the place till one o’clock in the
morning.
So early as 1839 he was able to venture on the first pure
piano-recital ever given, after Moscheles had paved the way with
his mixed piano-recital without orchestra. Not only could he fill
up a whole evening with performances on this instrument alone; he
was able to fill with his performances twenty-one evenings in the
short space between December 27, 1841, and March 2, 1842. This was
the brilliant period of his virtuoso-years; twenty-one recitals in
Berlin within this short space! In the history of piano-playing
they are festival weeks, holy days, in which by the greatest of all
pianists a world-literature was made living on the keys, so that all
Europe resounded. At that time we hear of a critic wondering how this
marvellous man could actually improvise along with an orchestra! So
little were people accustomed to playing by heart, which since Liszt’s
time has become the universal rule.
Liszt’s innumerable compositions for the piano, which were first
completely named in Ramann’s book, remind us again of the three
types of artists of which we spoke above. We find in them Liszt the
compiler, who makes use of the experiences of centuries; and we find
Liszt the innovator, who points out new ways in motives which we
might think were only seen in Wagner, in naturalisms which developed
music, and in technical means of expression; but we do not find in
him a composer of genius, who can hardly hold himself back from his
inspirations, and who with unforced ease, creates new forms for the
new ideas. We shall, as time advances, suffer less and less from
illusions on this point. And Liszt himself was content to be an
innovator without being a creator. He was a clever artist who knew his
own limitations accurately. He invents a theme which is spirited, new,
and characteristic; and when he has invented the theme he sits down
and arranges it according to all the powers of technical expression;
and varies it in forms whose technique is their content, so that
technique and content become identical. This is the last effect of
the Étude-principle, in which an idea finds, not its form, but its
technical expression.
[Illustration: Plaster Cast of Liszt’s Hand. Weimar.]
This special method of Liszt is preserved at its best in the twenty
Rhapsodies. The Magyar _Dallok_ had appeared already as studies.
But these Rhapsodies far surpass them in polish. Hungarian national
airs, with their rushing rhythmical and unrhythmical _verve_, were
here for the first time taken up into the circle of art, and supplied
the motives from which he poured forth a pyrotechnic display of
brilliant variations, whose technique has not a single useless note,
and whose working-out is indescribably delicate and harmonically
interesting. Nos. 2, 6, 9 (Pester Karneval), 12 (to Joachim), and 14
(to Bülow), are not unjustly preferred to the rest. No 14, with its
astounding development from the funeral march to the joyous stretto,
has remained one of the most marvellous piano-pieces on record. In it
an unparalleled technique is revealed, while the piece is not thereby
rendered hollow or superfluous.
[Illustration: Liszt lying in state. Bayreuth. 1886.]
The charming Spanish Rhapsody, the Chopin-like “Consolations,” the
wonderfully impromptu-like “Apparitions” and “Harmonies Poétiques et
Religieuses,” that grand congeries of various differently arranged
and differently put together Études and drawing-room pieces, the
“Années de Pélerinage” (three volumes) with the Tarantelle, the
Paganini Études with the Campanella, further collections of Études
till we reach the Twelve Études d’exécution transcendente, the
“Dream Nocturnes,” the “Mephisto Waltzes and Polkas,” the “Caprice
Valses,” the “Chromatic Galop”--I will only refer to a few pieces
which possess a special historic or artistic interest. In 1834, as
his first romantic production, appeared the “Pensée des Morts,” in
mixed time, _senza tempo_, with mottos from Lamartine, for whom, with
Chateaubriand, he felt the highest literary admiration. In the same
year came out “Lyon,” a realistic piece on the uprising of the Lyons
working-classes, and one of the few piano-compositions relating to
contemporary events. “Sposalizio” and “Il Penseroso” (1838, 1839) are
notable as pieces inspired by the impressions of the representative
arts, as the somewhat feeble “Fantasia quasi Sonata” (1837) arose
from the perusal of Dante. The whole of these are romantic confessions
in which the arts greet each other in friendly wise. In importance,
however, they are far surpassed by the later piano works; above all by
the five best original pieces, the Legends, the Concertos, and the B
minor Sonata.
[Illustration: Music-room in the “Altenburg” at Weimar, with Liszt’s
giant piano by Alexandre, Paris. In the background a clavier of
Mozart’s.]
The Legends of 1866 are in honour of his patron saint, St Francis.
The first shews him in an ecclesiastical theme, sweeping over the
waves, which are represented by the usual variation. In the other he
is preaching to the birds. It is a wonderful free impromptu, in which
a church air is set over against the twitter of the birds, which
is marked by masterly technique. The birds seem to be listening to
the saint; their twittering seems likely to give way to his pious
harmonies; but at the conclusion we see them again in a cheerfulness
which leads on to a ravishing cry of birds. It is the most poetical
piece that Liszt ever wrote for the piano.
The Sonata in B minor (1854) dedicated to Schumann, has one movement
but many themes. Six motives of varied colouring are knitted into one
web, which unfolds itself into a splendid picture. A royal brilliancy
lies over the whole. More free and lively are the two single-movement
Concertos. The one in A major has its characteristic line C sharp B C
B, which is to be followed out into the cadenzas; a main theme with
all kinds of subordinate themes, in a natural threefold quickening
from slower reflective sections. The E flat major is constructed on
the opposite model--its characteristic line is E flat, D, E flat; D E
flat, D, D flat. This work is probably the most frequently heard of
Liszt’s concerted pieces. It is more _giusto_ in essence, with slower
by-themes--especially the beautiful Adagio with the Tristan-like
motive and the Pastorale middle-section--swinging up in Bacchic
style. On the return to the main theme all the motives alter into a
more cheerful strain; the adagio gives way to a martial movement, and
the Pastorale is taken up by the piano with increased ornamentation.
In the place of the old formal scheme a psychological process had
entered; an inward conversation of the piano with the orchestra and
its instruments.
[Illustration: Liszt at Weimar, 1884. From a Photograph.]
From the point of view of number, still greater than the original
pieces are the arrangements, which embrace a whole world, from
variations to complete transformations of themes, from the “Dance
of the Dead” on the Cantus of the Dies Irae to the Rhapsodies,
from his arrangements of Bach to his Paraphrases of Wagner, from
the innumerable songs and waltzes of Schubert to the settings of
Beethoven’s symphonies, and the symphonic poems of Liszt’s own. Here
was a huge mass of material, which was transmitted spiritually and
artistically to the public by means of the piano. And in the hither
and thither of the arrangements we trace the most labyrinthine paths.
Schubert’s Marches, for example, were first transcribed for four
hands, then arranged for orchestra, and finally re-transcribed from
the orchestral setting for the pianoforte. Liszt’s arrangements are no
mere transcriptions; they are poetical re-settings, seen through the
medium of the piano. He assimilates the composition before him into
himself, and reproduces it on the piano as if he had conceived it,
with all its special peculiarities, for the piano alone. Such things
seemed often to be the very best expression of his genius. This
great series begins with the transcriptions of Paganini’s Capriccios,
and that of the “Symphonie fantastique” of Berlioz; and it reaches
its height in the two-handed settings of Beethoven’s symphonies. The
pieces have become genuine piano-compositions, in which a full score
is reproduced by specific fulness of chord, and a sweeping chord by
broken harmonies sustained by the pedal. The piano is no longer merely
one pillar of the musical structure; it has become the architect of
an art of its own. This art of its own becomes yet more visible when
it deals, not with the transcription of ready-made works, but with
paraphrases of given sections, which were to be released from their
surroundings. Liszt made many operatic fantasias of this kind, and did
not always utterly oppose the taste of the time, which did not object
to dissolve a characteristic melody into flourishes, or to make a
sad and trembling motive tower into unexpected heights. Of this his
Tannhäuser March and his Don Giovanni Fantasia are proofs. But the
rule, nevertheless, is that he never undertakes anything contrary to
the character of the passage to be paraphrased, and that--as he does
most successfully in the Rienzi Fantasia--he does not overlay the
melody with cadenzas and ornamentations from without, but extracts
them, as it were, from the substance of the piece itself.
[Illustration: Döhler. Lithograph by Mittag, after the picture of
Count Pfeil.]
[Illustration: Sophie Menter in her youth.]
Only those parts of the opera does he bind together in his
paraphrase, which stand in an inward relation to each other. It is
now entirely drawn from a leading idea, and is related to the earlier
externally-connected operatic fantasia as the symphonic poem to the
symphony.
[Illustration: Clotilde Kleeberg, 1888.]
The immense difficulties of Liszt’s compositions retarded their
popularity for many years. Clara Schumann and Sophie Menter were
amongst the first brave performers to introduce them into their
repertoires. To-day they almost overburden the recitals, and include
much of little value, which would hardly survive except as the
_disjecta membra gigantis_. His influence was of a kind never seen
before. He created a type of recital in which his imitators often copy
the Master down to his very hair. His missionaries travelled over
the whole world from the circle which he gathered round himself at
Weimar in the summer months. Their ideal is his creation; the perfect,
memoriter, technically and stylistically adjusted mastery of the great
and many-sided piano literature, without regard for century or nation.
[Illustration: Madame de Belleville, 1808-1880. Pupil of Czerny.
Well-known pianist. After the picture by Agricola.]
[Illustration: Carl Filtsch, infant prodigy. Pupil of Chopin. Died
very young.]
[Illustration: “Anton Rubinstein, pupil of Mr A. Villoing, Moscow.
To Dr. Aloys Fuchs, as a souvenir from the young Anton Rubinstein,
Moscow. Vienna, April 5, 1842.”]
Liszt’s contemporaries in piano-virtuosity are almost forgotten.
Their name vanishes like a dream. Others succeed in their place;
generations press eagerly on each other’s heels. There was the wild
and headstrong Mortier de Fontaine, who was the first to venture on
playing Beethoven’s Op. 106 in public. Döhler, Dreyschock, Rosenhain,
Jaell and his wife, Wilhelmina Clauss-Savardy, Sophie Menter, like her
in objectivity, the more vigorous Annette Essipoff, afterwards the
wife of Leschetizki, who now holds the very centre of piano-teaching
in Vienna. In our time are Madame Carreño, so masculine in her
convincing interpretations, and Clotilde Kleeberg, her opposite, so
sympathetic and delicate, the truly womanly executant of Schumann
and Chopin. Madame Essipoff was a pupil of Anton Rubinstein, from whom
a by-stream ran out alongside of the world-embracing school of Liszt.
Rubinstein’s and Bülow’s playing represented the difference which was
bound to arise between the classical and the spiritual interpretation
of piano-works. Rubinstein was the great subjective artist, who gave
way entirely to the mood of the moment, and could rush on in an
instant in such a way as to leave no room for the cool criticism of
a later hour. But Bülow was the great objective artist, the teacher
and unfolder of all mysteries, the unraveller of the knottiest points
in Beethoven’s latest works, which he understood to their innermost
details. In his playing the intellect had the gratification of
clear-cut sharpness, while the heart retained the emotion long after
the artist left the platform. Both artists were in their kind finished
and complete, and both were of incalculable influence on whole
generations. The impressionist Rubinstein and the draughtsman Bülow
had each the technique which suited him. The one rushed and raved, and
a slight want of polish was the natural result of his impressionist
temperament; the other drew carefully the threads from the keys,
occasionally showing them with a smile to his audience, while every
tone and every tempo stood in ironbound firmness, and every line was
there before it was drawn.
[Illustration: Hans von Bülow. Taken in the year 1879.]
[Illustration: Last Portrait of Rubinstein.]
[Illustration: Bülow on his deathbed. Cairo, 1894.]
Rubinstein and Bülow were both interpretative natures. Rubinstein
composed much, Bülow little; and Rubinstein’s compositions are hollow
while Bülow’s are fragmentary. In their compositions the two men are
at their worst; the pathos of Rubinstein became maudlin, and the
severity of Bülow became simple harshness. The best that Bülow ever
wrote for the piano was the piano-arrangement of Tristan, which is
unparalleled in its expression of pain; but his best work of all was
his annotations to Beethoven’s Sonatas and Variations. Rubinstein’s
innumerable Dances and National Airs are played indeed, but they are
practically forgotten; his Tarantelles, Serenades, Sonatas, Concertos,
get nearer to sinking every year. Rubinstein’s experiences, his
activity in St Petersburg, his final stay in a pension at Dresden,
were rather external than internal changes. Later in his life he
was able to spend more money on his gigantic plans. In a cycle of
seven piano-recitals he undertook to give a complete picture of
the historical development of his art. It is well known with what
self-sacrifice he gave these recitals, and how nobly he followed the
unique principle which great virtuosos should set before themselves,
namely that those who have should pay for the art, in order that those
who have not should receive it gratuitously. Bülow’s experiences,
on the other hand, were internal. His change from Wagner to Brahms
will be regarded by every student of great souls, not as a desertion
of his colours, but as a mental phenomenon. In Bülow’s nature there
was at bottom nothing in common with Wagner; and it may well be that
he never saw Wagner except through the glasses of the concert, of
execution, of display, not of the stage, or of sensuous perception.
Bülow was not stage-bitten, nor was he even a man with a head full of
the philosophy of the stage; he was a downright worker, a teacher, to
whom indeed teaching came so natural that he for a considerable time
gave lessons with Raff in Frankfort and Klindworth in Berlin. When he
gave public recitals he did not, like Rubinstein, crowd a history of
the piano into a few evenings. He took by preference a single author,
like Beethoven, and played only the five last Sonatas, or he unfolded
the whole of Beethoven historically in four evenings. He would have
preferred to play every piece twice. Great draughtsman as he was, he
hated all half-lights and colourations; he pointed his pencil very
finely, and his paper was very white. If he laid his pencil down, it
was only for a short time; and if he played any work, the composer
was a made man. Over the variations of Tschaïkowski could be read,
“Joué par M. Bülow dans ses concerts.”
[Illustration: Reinecke in his youth. Most famous of modern Mozart
players, afterwards Director of the Leipsic Conservatorium. After the
picture by Seel.]
[Illustration: Portrait by H. Katsch.]
[Illustration]
Teacher and virtuoso--these mark great pianists into two groups, or
at least into two temperaments; and it was this marked difference
which was signalised by the appearance of Bülow and of Rubinstein.
In all, the severance is perfected according to the natural aptitude
and inner development. Of course over every virtuoso at a certain
time there comes the wish to busy himself with teaching, but only in
a small circle; but on the other hand we observe that the decision
to follow the teaching profession is instantly taken by those
artists who have no turn for publicity, or do not like to face the
competition which to-day is more keen than ever. The extreme of the
virtuoso type is seen in certain international geniuses, who continued
rather the tradition of Thalberg than that of Liszt. Thalberg, in
the fifties, like Henri Herz in the forties, toured in America and
Brazil. Rubinstein also, in the sixties, visited America. The most
travelled of all was the Irish pianist and composer Wallace, who, for
the sake of his health, toured and gave concerts through Australia,
New Zealand, India, South America, the United States and Mexico--long
before Thalberg’s Brazilian journey. To-day a tour in America is
almost a matter of course in the life of every virtuoso. Countries
like France and Italy are shut off from a great international
intercourse of this kind, since their concert-life, and especially
their cultivation of the piano, has never duly unfolded itself. The
opera is there all powerful. But England, as a hundred years ago,
invites to her shores the great men of the Continent, and sends
them back loaded with treasures. As London pianists Hartvigson,
the pupil of Bülow, Borwick, and Dawson, stand in the front rank.
Russia, formerly a colony of foreign emigrants, has now, by Anton
Rubinstein’s foundations in St Petersburg, and by the like activity
of his highly-esteemed brother Nicholas in Moscow, awaked to a noble
concert-life, in which the rivalry of the two capitals is remarkably
balanced. It was inevitable that in nearer and further states ever
more numerous pupils of German or Parisian masters should settle and
labour as teachers. In America, so early as the sixties and seventies,
a great number of naturalised teachers was known, among whom Wolfsohn
is perhaps most distinguished. His eighteen evenings of historically
arranged piano-music, which he gave so early as 1877 in Chicago, are
deservedly famous.
[Illustration]
Tausig, the pupil of Liszt, who by his brilliant technique and his
extraordinary sense for style was the wonder of his contemporaries,
left behind him various good arrangements and compositions perhaps
too obvious in their virtuosity. He was born in Warsaw and died at
thirty. He would have meant to our time a teaching power of the
first magnitude. The crown of piano-playing in our time has been won
by Eugene d’Albert, born in 1864, a small man with giant power, a
loveable person of astonishing artistic seriousness. He was a pupil of
Liszt, and on him the mantle of Liszt has fallen in our generation.
His greatest virtue is his classic temperament. In his memory rest
safely stored the greatest works from Bach to Tausig. If he takes one
out, he takes with it the sphere in which it stayed unspoilt--the
style of its execution. The piece stands fast in its construction; not
a phrase appears inorganic, not a rhythm accidental. The seriousness
of Brahms’s Concertos, the murmuring of Chopin’s Berceuse, the Titanic
power of his A minor Étude, the grace of Liszt’s Soirées de Vienne,
the solemnity of Bach, move under his hand in the concert, without
one taking the least from another. It is objectivity, but we do not
cry out for subjectivity; it is personality, but we do not miss the
_rapport_ with eternity.
[Illustration]
Liszt’s pupils Reisenauer and Stavenhagen endeavoured on a similar
ground to play a part as more general interpreters. But chance and
change played them many tricks. Others, again, had and have their
special excellencies. Paderewski, idolised in England and America,
is the delicate, emotional, drawing-room player; Sauer, the bravura
pianist; Siloti, the interpreter of Russian piano-music; Friedheim,
the Liszt-player; Karl Heymann, the graceful. Barth, the pupil of
Bülow, is severe; Rosenthal, an amazing technician; Ansorge, one
of the most intellectual; Gabrilowitsch, who drives the horses of
Rubinstein; Vladimir von Pachmann, with all his extravagancy, at least
plays Chopin’s Mazurkas with absolute faithfulness to their national
character; Busoni shows great passion; Lütschg has an extraordinarily
strong wrist; the miraculous child Paula Szalit transposes fugues
on the spot; Josef Hofmann, once an “infant prodigy,” is now an
astonishingly individualistic artist; and Eduard Risler has an
inimitable soft touch. Since the triumphs of Planté, indeed, Risler
is the first French pianist to achieve a universal renown. He is a
pupil of the eminent Parisian master Diémer. He has discovered those
last delicate _nuances_ which lie precisely between tone and silence.
His tones seem not to begin and not to cease; they are woven out of
ethereal gossamer. While d’Albert plays with the whole upper body,
seeks the keys and rivets them fast, breaks the sforzatos, and soothes
the pianissimos; Risler is a statue at the piano, externally a Stoic;
but his gliding and crossing fingers, so soon as they have struck the
first chord, become the most sensitive agents of an emotional soul.
Under Risler’s treatment the commonplace becomes a novelty. Out of
Liszt’s sermon of St Francis to the birds he draws the last poetical
breath; Beethoven he bathes in a warm brilliancy of his own; and,
not to be charged with too much sweetness, he flings himself loose
with the overture to the Meistersinger, so that we fancy the whole
orchestra to be playing, and we have an assurance that it is not
weakness, but an active artistic restraint which gives to his touch
its never-to-be-forgotten delicate profundity.
[Illustration]
Piano-playing, in such an unparalleled advance, became of necessity a
profession, which at one time enticed to deceive, at another rewarded
abundantly. It is a profession which on one side leads to royal
wealth, on the other to that extreme of misery which is the half
of all art. The collision, which in our age is inevitable between
industry and art, revealed the terrible abysses which yawn between the
claims of a profession and those of art. While in a Frankfort paper we
can read advertisements in which a young lady teacher offers two piano
lessons a week in return for the daily four o’clock coffee with the
family, young Hofmann, at nine years of age, gave, in New York alone,
within three months, thirty-five recitals, from which his impresario,
out of a gross receipt of over twenty-five thousand pounds, took at
least ten thousand for himself.
[Illustration: Madame Carreño.]
The piano has become an essential part of life. Those who cannot play
it stand outside a great company which cultivates it as an engine of
social and home intercourse. In households where there is no piano
we seem to breathe a foreign atmosphere. To-day we need no longer
explain the piano from the church or the theatre, from the ballet or
the volkslied, from the artistic song or the violin; it has on the
contrary become an active centre, which has given its form to our
whole musical culture; nay, more, which has even given the stamp to
our whole conception of music, not only in the minds of all amateurs,
but in the minds of many professionals. Whether the young girl spends
her time with Chopin’s E flat major Nocturne, or whether a false
sentiment attaches itself to the “Maiden’s Prayer” or the “Cloister
Bell”; whether the waltzes of Lanner delight a quiet mind or Strauss
calls to the dance; whether the eager pupil plies her healthy sport
in Cramer’s, Schmitt’s, or Czerny’s Studies, or the rising virtuoso
exercises himself mechanically in scales after d’Albert’s fashion,
while he simultaneously reads new notes, or as Henselt plays Bach
while he reads his Bible; whether amateurs enjoy themselves with
the piano-abstracts of operatic fragments; or whether artists like
the Kapellmeisters Fischer and Sucher, offer those Fantasias from
Wagner over which they have spent their lives; whether the professor
allows himself the enjoyment of private piano-literature, or performs
standard works before thousands in the concert hall;--all these are
accidents of culture, they are phenomena which offer a picture of that
intimate interdependence of music and actual life which has developed
so fruitfully since the art ceased to be the private possession of a
clique, and which has established it on an absolutely new foundation.
Of course, the more general piano culture has become, the more has it
been in turn used up as a profession, and the more easily were its
wings fettered. Our chief men also have ceased to improvise during
a recital. Only our “comic artists” do so at the present day. And
of a power of magical improvisation, exercised in private such as
Beethoven and Liszt so often displayed, we now hear less and less. The
recitals, in great part, deal with the interpretation of known works,
which often--like Beethoven’s E flat major concerto--are repeated _ad
nauseam_. We have learning, we have playing, but we never see the
enthusiasm which can be evoked by the stress of immediate creation.
Piano-playing is a universal business even to the extremest limits
of an amateurism which cannot strike a single chord instantaneously,
nor dot a single note correctly. It is a long line from the little
yawning schoolgirl, through the teacher running up and down stairs,
to the virtuosos who play in the winter and give instruction in the
summer. With excess of zeal comes sin. Nowhere in an art is a sin
so often committed as in the choice of masters popular to-day. From
false economy, musical culture, which is so profound and so difficult,
is intrusted to the most incompetent, and fortunes are squandered
in ruining the music in a child. In a paper once was to be read a
somewhat humorous satire, entitled, “Directions for use,” in which the
teachers were thus handled: “For beginners the choice of a master is
recommended--there are masters at all prices--very good lessons can be
had for sixpence; but masters with long hair charge three shillings
and upwards--for male adults the choice of a mistress is recommended,
because pleasure and love are thus excited together.”
In order to put a check on amateur teaching a movement has of late
years been set on foot to forbid untried teachers to occupy any
position. As yet, however, the movement wants legal enforcement.
Kullack and Klauwell in Cologne, Breslaur in Berlin, publisher
of the _Piano-teacher_ (a paper now twenty-one years old), have
founded seminaries for intending teachers. In 1896, in Cologne,
out of four hundred students only thirty received a diploma of
teaching capacity--but no means at present exists of forbidding the
others to teach. Consider the enormous crowds that pass out of our
music-schools. An infinitesimal proportion may perhaps decide for a
virtuoso career. Of the rest half remain amateur, the other half go in
to the teaching profession. The overcrowding may easily be imagined.
The largest music-school in the world, the English “Guildhall School”
of Music, had till lately 140 professors, 42 teaching-rooms, 2700
students; and will shortly be enlarged till it has 69 rooms and 5000
students. I have made special inquiries at the Berlin Conservatorium
of Klindworth and Scharwenka. My numbers are I think exact to a few
figures. In 1895-6, out of 387 students, 41 men and 208 women took
piano only; 8 men and 15 women took piano with some other subject. In
1896-7, out of 383 pupils, 40 men and 239 women learnt piano alone,
and 4 men and 8 women learnt piano with something else. Of these
247 women, besides, about 43 are English or Americans. Since on the
average we reckon two years for a course, there go from this school
alone, every year, more than fifty women-teachers into the world. Some
of them perhaps may win a doubtful testimonial in a dearly-bought
Berlin concert; others, who aimed at virtuosity, may, after a pitiful
experience, themselves sink into teachers. Of the frequency of
piano-performances in concerts the following figures may give some
notion. I have counted the more important Berlin concerts in nine
weeks taken at random--159 in all. Among them are 58 piano-concerts,
partly combined with performances on other instruments, partly
interesting through the personality of the pianist; mere accompanying
of songs being of course not reckoned.
[Illustration]
The number of music-schools has increased specially in the capital
cities. In France the Parisian High School has a great repute; in
Russia the Moscow and St Petersburg Conservatoriums; in Belgium the
Brussels Conservatoire, under the guidance of Dupont, who is also
distinguished as the editor of old piano-works; in London the Royal
Academy of Music [and the Royal College of Music]. In Germany we have
in Frankfort the Hoch Conservatorium under Bernhard Scholz, and the
Raff under Max Schwarz; Stuttgart has somewhat declined through the
deaths of Lebert and Starck, the editors of the great Theoretical
and Practical School; but Cologne has greatly gained in importance
under Wüllner. In Leipzig under Mendelssohn, Moscheles and Plaidy,
piano-playing took the first place; new technical devices like the
pedal-clavier--that is, with organ pedals for the low notes--were
freely admitted, as in our days the Janko-keyboard. But with the
inevitable reaction, this school has decayed, and its importance in
piano-art is not what it was. In Berlin the Royal “Hochschule” with
Barth, Raif, Rudorff, and others, at its head, experienced a like
fate. Private institutions have come to the front. Tausig’s School
for higher piano-playing (1866-1870), was very distinguished. From it
went Joseffy to New York and Robert Freund to Zürich. The New Academy,
founded by Theodor Kullak, was also famous. It was afterwards replaced
by another Institute founded by his son. The Stern Conservatorium, now
directed by Gustav Holländer along with Jedliczka; the Klindworth,
at which for a time Bülow and Moszkowski laboured; and that of
Scharwenka, which, after Xaver Scharwenka’s departure for America, was
for a time united with the Klindworth;--are known to all.
Like the practical “schools,” the theoretical have also become
innumerable. I take as a few of the most important works the
following: Adolph Kullak’s “Aesthetic of Piano-playing,” re-edited
by Bischoff, a unique and profound work on the theory of the art,
as a hundred years’ experience and the careful observations of the
author have enlarged it; Hugo Riemann’s “Comparative Theoretical and
Practical Piano School, presenting system, method, and materials, in a
historic and organic connection”; and, among the innumerable “schools”
and volumes of exercises, the various thoughtful works of Germer. Two
main principles have come to occupy the first place in the newest
school-practice. First, the systematic carrying out--not merely of a
musical mechanic of the hand, but its thorough gymnastic. This was the
natural advance, which carried yet further the teaching of Czerny.
The hand is adapted for piano-playing--as in the systems of Thilo,
Virgil, and others--by gymnastics of the fingers, and stretching of
the muscles. Thus a great part of the gymnastic cultivation is got
over before actual musical practice begins. In this work the dumb
keyboards, which to-day are constructed with great delicacy, have
borne a great part. They now admit of legato playing and of different
degrees of strength in touch.
[Illustration: Hand of Eugene d’Albert. Röntgen ray photograph by
Spies.]
The second great principle is to take into account in instruction
the peculiarities of the pupil’s hand. It stands to reason that the
same exercises will not do for all hands. One hand demands this, the
other that. This method is carried out with the utmost precision by
the greatest of teachers, Leschetizky. A similar principle prevails
in modern teaching of singing. We no longer endeavour to base
voice-cultivation on the universal vowel A, but on that vowel which
comes most natural to the organ of the pupil.
* * * * *
The arrangement of the keys is the sacred tradition of centuries. It
presents the tone-system, as it were, lengthways, and is the natural
expression of a melodic musical concept. The separation of the black
and the white keys has been introduced in accordance with a certain
theoretical principle, which allows the difference of position in our
scales over the black and white keys to appear somewhat complicated.
Our keyboards are constructed entirely on the C major scale; the tones
outside this scale are thrown into the black keys, and thus appear
in a subordinate position: thus all other scales have a strange form
and often a somewhat difficult fingering. But since the seventeenth
century our conception of music has gradually, from melodic, become
harmonic; we hear vertically as well as horizontally; we hear the
beauty of all chords as sounded together, and, unconsciously, we fill
in the harmonies to every melody we hear. It would have been natural
if the keyed instruments had adapted themselves to this altered
musical conception, and had resigned the original conception of the
scale to make way for harmonic conveniences. Nothing, however, is
slower to be reached than the determination to revolutionise from the
foundation a technique adopted in the schools, since no one is willing
to make the sudden break with the old and the sudden start with the
new.
Attempts had already been made to break the monopoly of the C major
scale, and to form a regular chromatic scale of twelve similar keys.
In our own day Paul von Janko has improved this system by repeating
every regular chromatic series three times in terrace-style one
above another, so that not only wider stretches, but also, without
much movement of the hand, a surprising control of full chords and
of rapid passages is attained. The tones are thus brought more
narrowly together as the monopoly of the C major key is destroyed;
and the result betokens a decisive advance in the conception of
modern music. This conception still embodies a compromise between the
old scale-keyboard and an arrangement of the keys, which, founded
on harmonic ideas, has promise for the future. Janko’s keyboard is
slowly gaining converts. Great houses, like those of Ibach, Duysen,
Kaps, and Blüthner, are taking it up. Hausmann in Berlin, and Wendling
in Leipzig, are the chief supporters of the scheme. In America we
hear stories of remarkable results. Only by the development of such
a new keyboard, which will have to answer the demands of the modern
conception of music, will it be possible to draw new tone-effects
from the piano. Its utmost capacities, in its present form, have been
exhausted, it would seem, by Liszt.
Meanwhile the construction of the instruments has advanced to an
unexampled perfection. It is only a hundred years since Stein began
his laborious attempts on the new pianoforte. To-day a network of
factories is spread over the whole world, in which innumerable
faultless instruments are made, which put to use all the results of
experience in the treatment of wood and wires. The modern pianos have
already attained so completely the ideal of the hammer-mechanism that
we are beginning to hark back to the forgotten tones of the cembalo.
In Paris these aims have their strongest support in Diémer, who plays
his Couperin on clavecins, and at the same time wins new renown for
the oboe d’amour and the viol da gamba in the chamber-concert. Already
quill-claviers are being more frequently constructed, and the reaction
against the predominance of the pianoforte finds its satisfaction in
their sweet and thrilling sounds.
It is impossible to review all the piano-factories of both
hemispheres, or to register all their innovations. I must content
myself with mentioning the system of “overstringing,” invented
simultaneously by several persons; the felting of the hammers,
introduced by Pape; the third pedal of Steinway which holds on single
tones without affecting the others; the use of a cast-iron frame
and of cast-steel strings; and the vertical stringing of the upright
“cottage” piano, which is developed out of older forms. Bechstein’s
factory in Berlin stands at the head of German manufacture; but
there are also Duysen, Blüthner, Schiedmayer, Irmler, Westermayer,
Kaps, Ibach, and innumerable others; Bösendorfer in Vienna, Knabe
in Baltimore, and Steinway in New York, who have succeeded to the
renown of Chickering; besides the many other older-established firms.
Bechstein, so fundamentally sound; and Steinway, with his patent
fulness of tone, are the two rivals for the laurel at the end of the
century.
Henry Engelhard Steinway, born in Brunswick, began, in the fifties,
his New York business in very small circumstances. A three-storied
house was the factory, and one piano a week was the output. In 1859,
however, the firm was in a position to build a great establishment,
which now, after several enlargements, covers more than four acres.
The output advanced with giant strides: numerous patents were taken
out for the improvement of the resonance and the fulness of tone: in
1872 the Emperor Alexander bought the twenty-five thousandth piano,
and in 1883 Baron Nathaniel de Rothschild of Vienna bought the fifty
thousandth. Besides the factory, the firm possesses in Astoria great
estates, the timber of which covers not less than a hundred and
fifty acres. There they have their yards, saw-mills, turning-mills,
foundries, metal-workshops, and mechanical wood-bending and carving
apparatus. The parts are sent from Astoria to New York to be fitted
together. When completed, the pianos are exhibited in Steinway Hall
(14th Street) with a view to sale. More than ninety thousand have been
completed up to date, of which a large proportion has been transmitted
to Europe through the London and Hamburg branches.
[Illustration]
Bechstein has adopted a similar division of his work. He has two
factories, the one in the suburbs, for the preparation of the parts
and the drying of the wood, the other in the town for the fitting
together of the pieces. This latter is in close connection with the
shop. Karl Bechstein, like Steinway, began in the fifties on a very
small scale, and in 1860 founded his great house in Johannisstrasse.
In 1880 he acquired the first portion of the suburban estate, on
which to-day four factories stand. The victorious brilliancy of
modern ingenuity is to be seen in the whole establishment. The
probation through which the wood has to pass in the yards, then in
the dry-rooms, in the store-cellars, and finally when sized in the
store-houses of the factories, before it can be used, is a grand
guarantee of its suitability. Two important rooms are devoted to
steam-power. The one is the planing-room, where sides and lid are
planed together by machines of such extraordinary power that the
shavings hum about under centrifugal force, and are carried off by an
exhaust apparatus. The other is the foundry, where all the metal work
is carried on, from the boring of the cast frame to the preparation of
the screws. Next, in the upper storeys, in the more distant factories,
begins the process of fitting the piano together from the rough
parts. The action is provided by a separate factory, the Nürnberg
wires are spun, the walls of the grand pianos are glued together in
from twelve to twenty thicknesses, the frame is bronzed, the wood
inlaid, the ornaments put on, every tiny screw, every spindle is
touched up with rare attention, till the instrument gains its speech,
and is tested, for the last refinements, in separate rooms. Since the
completion of the last building, they reckon on a yearly output of not
less than three thousand five hundred pianos, on which eight hundred
workers are employed. The proportion of grands to cottages is as
three to four, a proof of the enormous popularity of the cottage, for
which as a piece of furniture it is so easy to find room, but which,
even in its best specimens, can never give to the musician the fulness
of tone and the resonance of a grand. The demand for Bechsteins is
greater than their factories can meet. It is remarkable that half
of them go to England and the English colonies through the London
branches; while Germany, Austria, Russia, Italy, Spain, and South
America, share the other half. In a business of such magnitude it is
no mere ostentation to record these figures, which simply supply the
necessary statistics of the general trade.
[Illustration: Upright Hammerclavier (pianoforte), Italian, beginning
of 19th century. Two pedals, one to raise the dampers, the other a
“jalousie schwellung” (_i.e._ Venetian shutters, like an organ swell
or the harmonium “forte” action). Richly inlaid. Engraved crowns on
the fronts of the keys. De Wit collection. ]
[Illustration: Bechstein Cottage Piano, “English style.”]
So long as the piano was merely an instrument for more or less gifted
musicians, it was unnecessary to consider the question which to-day,
when it has become a general means of social pleasure, stands in
the foreground--namely its treatment as a piece of furniture. The
“square” instrument has only certain parts, particularly the lower
extremities, in which the style of the time could be expressed. The
legs and the feet were, in the time of the Ruckers, _baroque_; as
in the time of the Streichers they adopted the style of the Empire,
and in our day that of the Renaissance. The rest of the body was
fixed in its main lines by the given natural forms; and has altered
very little in architectural relations in the course of centuries.
The piano was in the fortunate position, even in the times when as
yet little attention was paid to constructive logic, of being a
construction, which, from its very aim, gained the most beautiful
form. With its gracefully-bending walls, and its natural and yet
characteristic shape, the grand piano, in many furnishing schemes of
the insipid fifties or the glaring eighties, in many a jerry-built
and cheaply appointed house, stood as the single solid and carefully
wrought article in the place. The cottage, on the other hand, which
too often is meant to be nothing but a piece of furniture, and
which with its encasing wood-walls offers only too much opportunity
to fashionable taste, has sunk deep into the domestic style, and
even to-day has hardly freed itself from these false influences. It
would seem that the cottage piano was invented in 1739 by the priest
Don Domenico of Mela in Gagliano. Only at the commencement of this
century did it begin to spread on this side of the Alps. It offered
a grand field for dubious artistic experiments. Now it was treated
merely as a sideboard, now as an Egyptian pyramid, now as an altar
with figurative paintings, now as the _corpus vile_ for all kinds of
marqueterie-experiments. I know only one cottage piano that expresses
its essence in characteristic style, and develops its form without
grimaces: this is the “English” type, plain and unadorned, introduced
into the trade by Bechstein, a principal feature of which is that the
legs are continued above the keyboard in a very graceful style, as
candle-brackets.
[Illustration: Bechstein Grand Piano _de luxe_, “Rheingold.” 1896.]
When the grand piano is used as an object for decoration, the result
is usually unsatisfactory. The contradiction between its plain form
and gaudy ornamentation becomes very marked. Earlier ages saw clearly
that the walls of the piano and its lid are best left plain, and
adorned with paintings. But to-day the cases are more frequent in
which specially magnificent pianos are so carefully fitted up with
plastic ornamentation in all styles with pillars, reliefs, and other
descriptions of carving, that one can only smile at the waste of
labour. In the over-rich rococo adornment, which was presented by a
piano built by Bechstein some time ago for the Empress Frederick for a
particular apartment, a trained eye can to-day find no pleasure. More
tolerable are the splendid grands, richly adorned with paintings, in
which, in Germany, Max Koch is chiefly concerned. The Wagner piano
for the Prince of Anhalt-Dessau, or the Rheingold piano, both by
Bechstein, are also worth noticing. The latter has the daughters of
the Rhine for legs, a waving ornamentation on the walls, and carved
bulrushes on the lid; it is one of the most interesting monster-pianos
built in our time. In England Alma Tadema is the piano-painter most
in request. For Henry Marquand of New York he prepared an instrument,
adorned with precious stones and with painting, which was priced at
£15,000. His own piano is also extraordinary. The ornamentation
chosen is in the style of mediæval mosaics, with expensive surface
ornamentations. Under the lid are framed and adorned parchment strips,
on which Liszt, Tschaïkowski, Gounod, and others, inscribed their
names. This was appraised at £2500. A piano built in London for Carmen
Sylva had ivory legs. Perhaps a varied ebony and ivory ornamentation,
which springs from the appearance of the keys, taking advantage of the
splendid surface provided by these materials, would be more promising
than any kind of rococo or Gothic design. Ivory is still in strong
demand for pianos. Ninety thousand instruments are yearly issued from
the hundred and seventy London houses; and these take ten thousand
tusks.
Ever since composers began to write easier pieces the demand for
pianos has been greater. The market has of course been well supplied.
In 1896 appeared over 2500 “books”[134] of piano solos, 2000 songs
with piano accompaniment, more than 250 books of duets, and 300 pieces
for piano and violin. Among these figure many new editions of old
works, which to-day form a literature by themselves. The arrangement
of historical material, as it gives its character to the calling
of the modern pianist, is also reflected in it. We have excellent
editions, like the Berlin “Original Texts” (Urtexte), “Bischoff’s
Bach,” published by Steingräber, “Klindworth’s Chopin,” published by
Bote and Bock, “Bischoff and Neitzel’s Schumann,” “Bülow’s Beethoven’s
Sonatas.” Breitkopf and Härtel have extended their Popular Library
over the widest area. They have arranged their piano-publications into
a uniform piano-library, which soon will embrace 10,000 numbers. Nay,
the “Moonlight Sonata” is already to be purchased for a penny. And
yet we must confess that really beautiful editions of bibliographical
value are not to be found. An edition in artistic binding, on thick
paper, in elegant engraving, following the best original copy, with
none of those instructive but unornamental marks of fingering or
phrasing, and at the same time well adapted for opening out without
injury, and calculated for perfect typographical pictures on every
page--why is there no such edition of Beethoven, when people can be
found who will pay ten or twelve thousand pounds for a piano?
[Illustration]
Where the historic tendency is so well marked, creativeness has
degenerated. Since the middle of the century plenty of good sound
stuff has been written for the piano; but it must be confessed
that piano-music has shown no tendency to strike out a new path.
No commanding or revolutionary personality, like Schumann, Chopin,
or Liszt, has arisen. Almost all modern production is but the
popularisation of Liszt, or a respectable mean between Chopin and
Schumann.
Ferdinand Hiller began the endless succession of these eclectic
musicians. But the last of the solid old style was Alkan, a solitary,
eccentric, misanthropic, but withal interesting old man. He was born
in Paris in 1813, and remained there. He was one of the many pupils of
Zimmermann, that modest but most influential teacher. Alkan’s pieces
were highly esteemed by Bülow, who gave him a place in his list of
Étude-masters. In his works, which are chiefly Études and Preludes,
there speaks a Berlioz, with an elemental and realistic power. He
stands in his kind half-way between Chopin and Liszt. Some pieces,
like the highly original Op. 39, 1, do not easily fade out of the
memory. The seventh of the twelve Études, dedicated to Fétis, is a
remarkably significant Chopin-like Ballade in Berlioz’ style, with
kettle-drum rolls, and other most peculiar harmonic and orchestral
effects. In the “Allegro Barbaro” of the fifth Étude he gives full
play to his propensity to exotic phrases of foreign colouring.
He works with uncanny, lengthy unisons, or with cutting climbing
ninths. An out-and-out romantic, he delights not merely to rush into
the middle of his pieces with explanatory words--“Mors” is one of
these--but he has hit upon the most original titles that ever an
association of ideas led a composer to adopt: “Pseudo-naïveté,” “Fais
Dodo,” “Heraclitus and Democritus,” “Railroad,” “Odi profanum vulgus,”
“Morituri te salutant.” To play his pieces is as difficult as to
construe the Talmud.
[Illustration:
Stephen Heller. Ferdinand Hiller. Adolf Henselt.]
A constant succession of romantic writers of Études or small pieces
stretches from that era to our own. First stands the intellectual
Volkmann; next, the somewhat too dainty Kirchner, a regular
album-writer, who went so far in his admiration for Schumann as to
publish “New Davidsbündler” and “The New Florestan and Eusebius.”
Adolf Henselt, who lived at St Petersburg, practised an extraordinary
longdrawn legato technique. He is still esteemed for his tolerable F
minor Concerto, and for his second and fifth Études, especially the
well-known “Si oiseau j’étais.” Stephen Heller, who lived in Paris,
wrote a hundred and forty-nine works, almost exclusively for the
piano. He is a combination of Schumann, Chopin, Mendelssohn, and
water; but we light occasionally on passages of some inspiration.
His well-known Saltarellos and Tarantelles, his effective “Forellen”
(Trout) Fantasia, and his excellent “Danses Bois,” are in the taste
of the time. More important was his pretty idea, in the Freischütz
Studies, of uniting operatic motives and étude-practice in an organic
and poetic combination.
[Illustration: Tschaïkowski.]
The lesser Romantics and Romanticists were meanwhile working
diligently in Paris. A group of successful piano-composers of this
class reaches down to our own day. The chief names are Fauré, Widor,
Vincent d’Indy, Chabrier, César Franck, Dubois, Cécile Chaminade, Paul
Lacombe. The drawing-room romance, which in Chaminade unfortunately
tends too often to shallowness, exhibits often a Mendelssohnian
classicism, of which dainty specimens are given in Lacombe’s
Toccatina, and in the Toccata of Chaminade herself. The literature
for two pianos is well illustrated in Chabrier’s Romantic Waltzes,
which are unusually spirited. César Franck’s symphonic variations,
serious and academic, and St Saens’ Concertos, more interesting in
their effective technique than in content, stand out from the mass of
orchestral piano-work.
[Illustration: From painting by Fritz Erler.]
An equally important group is that of the Russians, headed by the
emotional and highly-strung Tschaïkowski, whom Bülow, not without
justice, honoured with his special admiration. Tschaïkowski’s
variations are one of the soundest and most genuine of modern piano
works; and the B flat minor concerto has a swing and rush that
carries us away. His Sonata, not only by its application of national
themes, but specially by the national colouring of the episodic
parts, down to the light and shade of the figurations, is unique
among piano pieces. He was simpler and more popular in his numerous
drawing-room pieces, which constantly reward study by a spirited
phrase or unusual harmony. The school of older and younger Russians
has worked on the same popular lines. To this school belong Borodin,
Cui, Liadoff, Rimsky-Korsakoff, Mussorgsky, Glazounow, Naprawnik.
A third group is that of the Scandinavians, who gained importance
in Europe about the middle of the century, not merely in fiction
and painting, but in music also. But they were rather inspired than
inspirers. Their leader is Grieg, whose well-known concerto Op.
16, in spite of certain eccentricities, has a very flowing course
suggesting the united influence of many predecessors. His themes are
good specimens of a music which is not the product of experience,
but of invention. Scores of variations and dainty isolated pieces
keep the same happy and attractive medium between the shallow and
the interesting. They are in any case more important than Gade’s
Mendelssohniana. For a long time less known, but far deeper and
more genuine than Grieg, is Halfdan Kjerulf, whose works have been
republished by Arno Kleffel (Simon). Humorous little pieces in the
post-romantic style, but of concentrative ability, deserve the highest
praise a Romantic can receive; they are like Schubert in spirit. Among
the later Scandinavians, Schytte and Sinding have tried no new paths;
Stenhammer, also of importance as a virtuoso, has given us works of
pith and character, which may rank among the first.
[Illustration]
In England and America, in later times, Graham Moore and Macdowell
may claim notice as lesser Romantics. The former is not free from
triviality; the latter invents with more delicate genius, and has
written a very respectable piano-concerto. But Germany may still boast
that she retains the supremacy.
From the group of German post-Romantics, which found in Franz Brendel
a very fertile composer of programme tone-pictures, two great
personalities drew apart. Adolf Jensen was the inheritor of Schumann’s
emotion, Johannes Brahms of Schumann’s musical character. Jensen,
whose character is the mean between Chopin and Schumann, has left
behind him music which will not die, in his clear-cut and splendidly
worked-out Suites, in his emotional “Wanderbilder” and Idylls, in
the unique Eroticon, which characterises the different forms of love
in separate movements, and in the four-handed wedding music, which
is lovely and full of power. But Brahms inherited from his patron
Schumann, not youth, not this simple thinking and inventing, but
manhood, in which music became an absolute self-supported world.
He worked in the world of tone, with no trace of virtuosity, with
not a suspicion of a concession to the understanding of the mere
amateur. His Sonatas and Concertos, the sparkling Scherzo Op. 4, the
Variations, the Études, even the four-handed waltzes and the unique
“Liebes-lieder” waltzes--for four hands with voices--there has, in our
time, been no music written so free from the slightest condescension.
Stubborn, at times repellent, even in her smiles not very gracious,
this music seeks to make no proselytes; but whomsoever she wins as a
friend, she holds fast and allows that rarest of pleasures--the
pursuit of lofty aims, and the quiet rapture of a student.
[Illustration: Johannes Brahms. Photograph from life by Marie
Fellinger, Vienna.]
[Illustration]
Over against these two originals stands Joachim Raff, the eclectic.
We have grown accustomed to count his eclecticism no reproach, for
never did man more bitterly experience the sorrow of art. His great
legacy of piano-pieces will at least give a good picture of the time.
In them the most commonplace demands of art are mingled with the most
heart-felt lamentations--as they never mingled except in our age. They
are a long catalogue of virtues and vices, from the hapless Polka de
la Reine to the Sonatas, in which, whether for piano alone, or more
especially for piano and violin, he attained astonishing heights; from
the ravishingly graceful suite-movements to the romanticism of his
lyrical songs. And over all broods the unrest of the time.
Among living Germans the same two main groups are in general to be
distinguished: the artists of the serious, self-sufficient music, and
the poets of the lighter, post-romantic _genre_. Rheinberger’s sound
and solid Sonatas and smaller pieces are the purest representatives of
the more absolute conception of music, and they deserve the highest
praise. Richard Strauss, also, in his earlier years, came out with
some remarkably original piano-pieces, which betrayed a strong sense
for absolute music. I would mention particularly the pithy Burlesque
for Orchestra and Piano. In such serious and solid endeavour Wilhelm
Berger stands out among the younger masters. But--as in the middle
section of his great variations for two pianos--he must beware of
a too great fluency, which is the stumbling-block of all absolute
musical emotion.
Eugene d’Albert, in spirit, resembles Brahms. This appears most
clearly in the eight massive Piano-pieces of his Op. 5, which live by
their infelt music, and are in that respect to be numbered amongst
the noblest fruits of modern piano-literature. This inclination to
absolute music appeared even in his first work, a very interesting
Suite, and has received further active expression in certain
arrangements of Bach, which take a front rank along with those of
Busoni. Among his piano-concertos, the second, which is included in
a single movement, is without serious rival, at least among works
that have appeared since Liszt, in wealth of invention and variety
of colour. His secular turn will probably continue itself in his
later works, which, in consequence of his devotion to opera, will
necessarily cease to be influenced by Bach and Brahms.
Paderewski stands perhaps on the dividing line between the severer
absolute musicians, in whose style he composed his Variations and
Humoresques à l’antique, and the daintier drawing-room romantics, with
whom he associates himself specially in numerous fiery Polish dances.
His Concerto in A minor is absolutely bathed in this national spirit.
Xaver Scharwenka strikes a similar note. Something of Chopin at his
best still lives in him; and his Concertos, above all, have given him
a name as a composer. His brother Philip renounces the virtuoso, and
appears rather as a teacher and former of taste. He has created a
rich piano-literature, which prefers to deal in graceful and _galant_
forms, and holds itself utterly aloof from storm and revolution.
Scharwenka has the rare merit of having successfully cultivated
four-handed piano music; and his “Herbstbilder” and “Abendmusik”
belong to the most tasteful productions of this class. Among his
multiform “Jugendstücke” the “Kinderspiele,” in several volumes, are
the most successful. A similar activity has been shown by Wilhelm
Kienzl, who has been able to work the light romantic _genre_ in all
its aspects. Kienzl is one of our most fertile piano-composers.
His pieces are all occasional, thought out for delicate orchestral
effects, and thus are extremely unassuming. His “Boat-Scene” gained
the special approval of Liszt, while his Dance Airs and Dance Pictures
belong to the most popular class of piano-works. His illustrated cycle
“Child-love and Life,” which appeared with text in four languages,
seeks to apply to the piano the method of intuitive instruction. The
cycle “From my Diary” is the best example of the specially subtle and
suggestive touch, by which Kienzl attains his detailed orchestral
effects; while the two volumes, “A Poet’s Journey,” are to be regarded
as his ripest work.
[Illustration]
Moritz Moszkowski, who has not yet laid aside his career as a
virtuoso, and only the other day appeared with a new piano-concerto,
is among the most remarkable in the band of modern piano-poets. A
delicate and polished virtuosity, as it appears in the Etincelles and
the Tarantelle, is allied with a characteristic force in form, which
has made his four-handed Spanish dances, and his “From Foreign Parts,”
so popular.
History shows that the piano only flourishes in a pronounced
opposition to the opera, which is the other extreme, the triumph
of all arts united. The opera seeks to realise the impossible; it
calls into requisition a whole world of forces in order to grasp in
a sensuous manner the heights of life. It forms a Titanic resolve
to build mountains out of sand; an intoxication, an extraordinary
consciousness of victory, gives wings to this most daring of
experiments. A great man once appeared, who made Dionysus his lord,
and sought to win from the stage a mirror of the world and worldly
honour. We stand on the fair ruins of his splendid failure. We have
been instructed, we have been elevated; but the tragedy of the
theatre is too deep. Then come the hours in which we flee to the
household-ingle of chamber-music, and strive to disentangle its
enlacing lines, in which we see the whole of life included, since it
depicts itself without the need of foreign aid. The piano will further
be the central point of this introspection. Let us have no concertos,
in which this delicate instrument is dragged before the crowd and
has to fight a duel with the orchestra. All beautiful compositions
notwithstanding, the piano is no concerto-instrument. In concertos
the delicate ear is outraged. The piano will not adapt itself for
new ideas in the hall, in the midst of virtuosity, or against the
orchestra. It must become chaste; it must turn in faith to Bach’s
Wohltemperiertes Klavier, the Old Testament, as Bülow called it, of
the musician’s creed, and to Beethoven’s Sonatas, the New.
It is noteworthy that in Schytte’s “Silhouettes,” or Variations on
the same theme in the different styles of various Masters, he nowhere
fails so badly as with Bach, who is marked by retardations in the
middle voices, or with Beethoven, who is characterised by gloomy
rhythm. The true path seems to have been lost. The line through Bach,
Beethoven, Schumann, and Brahms, is the only safe line for the piano;
and it is the line in music furthest removed from the opera. In those
great natures, whether they knew it or not, was a strong repugnance
to the opera; and Brahms, whose eulogists said he was the last of his
race, will perhaps one day be viewed as the connecting link between
the old and a new musical culture.
It is in chamber-music alone that we have the right to look for
great triumphs in the immediate future; triumphs of which Klinger’s
“Radierungen,” Brahms’s “Clarinet Quintet” or Smetana’s “Aus Meinem
Leben,” are at once the anticipation and the guarantee.
It is for our children to see to it that the great traditions of the
past are not forgotten; and that the building which it will fall to
them to erect is not unworthy of its foundation.
[Illustration]
[133] Some of us would be inclined to follow this train
of thought in another direction. The question would not
be--May great artists break the law and be blameless? (the
Pope practically held that they might; if Benvenuto Cellini
does not lie about his own case) but--What right has the
public to obtain a full account of any man’s private life?
Vulgar curiosity, and an unacknowledged desire on the part
of the reader to find that the great man is “even such
a one as himself,” have more to do with the popularity
of certain biographies than their writers would care to
acknowledge.
The “Life” of a great man should be a faithful report of
his Greatness. His weakness and folly, often exceeding
that of commonplace people simply because of the vastly
greater range of his temptations, is no business of ours,
and should never be printed, except in so far as it is
necessary to make clear the plain story of his career.
[134] Meaning separate publications--ranging from single
pieces to large collections in one volume.
Postscript
Prosniz’s “Handbuch der Klavier-litteratur,” which goes down to 1830,
and the new edition of Weitzmann’s “History of Piano-playing and
Piano-literature,” now in preparation, supply a complete apparatus of
all the sources of information necessary to the student. Thus I have
been able in this work, to the exclusion of all dryasdust references
to authorities, to present the development of piano-literature from
the point of view of culture and of human interest. For procuring the
material which lies in the works themselves and contemporary writings,
I am indebted to the labours of Dr Kopfermann, Director of The Royal
Library of Music at Berlin. I am enabled to give the illustrations by
the extreme kindness of Mr Otto Lessmann, the Baroness Wilhelm von
Rothschild, Mr Nicolas Manskopf, Mr Edwin Bechstein, Mr de Wit, Madame
Bülow, Madame Marie Fellinger, and others.
Errata
P. 43. The note on Agricola is a mistake. M. Agricola is of the
early 16th century. Bach’s pupil was J. F. Agricola, for whom
see p. 122, _note_.
P. 48. _For_ “Tielman Sufato” _read_ “Sufato Tielman.”
P. 63, line 2. _For_ “brown” _read_ “yellow.”
P. 63, line 2. _For_ “dark grey” _read_ “gris de Maure.”
P. 70, line 27. According to the latest investigations Scarlatti
died in _Naples_ in 1757; thus he must have returned from Spain
to Italy. (_Cf._ “Gazette Musicale,” Napoli, 15th Sept. 1898.)
P. 114, line 19. _For_ “Hezekiah’s” _read_ “Gideon’s.”
Addendum
P. 16. _Note_. That one of the earliest indications of the 18th
century suite is to be seen in the Elizabethan “Parthenia,”
viz., in the association of Prelude, Pavan, Galliard.
Index of Names and Matters
Accompagnato--style, 95
Adam, L., 160, 186, 192
Agricola, M., 43 (_see_ Erratum)
Alkan, 317
Ansorge, 301
Arcadelt, 8 _note_
Aria, 72
Arne, T. A., 38
Aston, 27
Attaignant, 42
Baake, 191
Bach, Friedemann, 138
Bach, John Christian, 94, 148, 159
Bach, John Sebastian, 91 ff.
Life, 93
His contrapuntal method, 94
Accompagnato, 95
Style of work, 96
Construction of his pieces, 96
Technique, 116
Clavier method, 118
Bach and the Hammer-clavier, 122
Original editions of, 102
Toccatas, 98
Symphonies and Inventions, 97
Fugues, 100
“Art of Fugue,” 103
Wohltemperiertes Klavier, 102, 112, 113, 116, 119
Chromatic Fantasia, 103
Other Fantasias, 109, 110
Partitas, 104
English Suites, 106
Overture in French Style, 120
Italian Concerto, 109
Preludes, 112
Programme-music, 114
Goldberg Variations, 117
Other mentions, 148, 163, 326
Bach, Philip Emanuel, 128 ff.
Life, 138
The “Versuch,” 139
“Manieren,” 140
Harmonies, 144
Melody, 144
Works, 143
Amalia-sonatas, 145
Barth, 306
“Bebung,” 20, 119
Bechstein, 310
Beethoven, 157 ff.
Reformer, 158
Tragedy in Music of, 169
Concertos, 170
Scherzi, 169
Forms, 171
Style of playing, 183
Sonatas in detail, 175 ff.
Bembo, Pietro, 77
Benedict, 191
Bennett, Sterndale, 268
Berger, Ludwig, 184, 191, 193
Berger, Wilhelm, 323
Bertini, 205
Besardus, 12
Bird, William, 27-31
Carman’s Whistle, 31
Bischoff, 307, 316
Blow, John, 38
Blüthner, 310
Böhner, 245
Bösendorfer, 310
Bononcini, 74
Borodin, 320
Borwick, 300
Brahms, 322
Brendel, Franz, 322
Breslaur, 304
Broadwood, 133, 169
Bülow, Hans von, 296
Bull, John, 32, 34, 36, 71 _note_
King’s Hunt, 35
Busoni, 301
Buxtehude, 92
Caccini, 75
Carissimi, 78
Carreño, Madame, 303
Cavalieri, 77
Cavalli, 75
Chabrier, 319
Chambonnières, 52
Chaminade, Cécile, 319
Chopin, 256 ff.
Etudes, 203, 263
Chopin and Hummel, 261
Life, 258
Works, 262
Playing, 257
Clavichord, the, 19, 20, 89, 91, 124
Clavicymbal, 23, 81
Clauss-Savardy, 293
Clementi, 190, 208
Group of his followers, 191, 193
Collard, 193
Compass of clavier, etc., 19-22, 24, 211
Concertos, 109, 151, 170, 319, etc.
Contests, musical, 91, 161, 163
Corelli, 78, 82
Counterpoint, 9, 79, 84, 85
Couperin, François, 53 ff.
Content of his pieces, 56
Forms, 55
L’art de toucher le clavécin, 63, 64
Couperin, Louise, 59
Couplet in Rondo, 55, 147 _note_
Cramer, 194, 210
Cristofori, 121, 122, 133
Cui, 320
Czerny, 190, 216
Da Capo, 84
D’Agoult, 276
D’Albert, Eugene, 307, 324
Dance
Old English, 18
First instrumental dances, 15, 42
French _danseuses_, 43 ff.
Oldest books of dances, 52
Old dance forms, 55
Allemand, etc.
Dandrieu, 49, 65
D’Anglebert, 40, 65
Dawson, 300
Diémer, 302, 309
D’Indy, Vincent, 319
Diruta, 24, 80
Döhler, 291, 293
Donizetti, 202
Dorn, H., 191
Dreyschock, 293
Dubois, 319
Dumont, 65
Dupont, 306
Durante, 89
Dussek, 159, 163 ff.
Duysen, 310
Eberl, 183, 190
Eckard, Joh., 48
Eckard (Paris), 160
Elizabeth, Queen, 3, 4
Elsner, 265
English Music, 6, 14, 16, 27-39, 38 _note_, 82 _note_
English relations to French music, 15, 41
Erard, 133
Ertmann, Baroness, 160
Essipoff, Madame, 293
Étude, 203 ff.
Fantasia, Old English, 16, 82 _note_, 101 _note_
Fantasia, Italian, 80
Fantasia, free, 145
_F. senza tempo_, 143
Farnaby, 37
Farrenc, 52
Fauré, 319
Field, 159, 193, 265
Fingering, in old times, 26, 81, 116
Fischer, 303
Fleischer, Oskar, 41
Fortbien, 133
Franck, C., 319
French Characteristic Pieces, 132, 148
Frescobaldi, 73, 79, 80, 92
Freund, 306
Friederici, 133
Friedheim, 301
Froberger, 92
Gabrieli, 15, 26, 79, 92
Gabrilowitsch, 301
Gade, 321
Galilei, Vincenzio, 77
Gallot, 51
Galuppi, 89
Gasparini, 70
Gaultier, 41, 50
Gelinek, 161, 183
General Bass (see Thorough Bass), 284
Germer, 307
Gibbons, 7, 16, 37
Glasounow, 320
Gorlier, 15
Graf Pianos, 182
Gravicymbel, 133
Greulich, 191
Grieg, 321
Guicciardi, Julia, 160
Hackebrett (dulcimer), 121
Handel, 74, 138
Hässler, 159
Hammer-klavier, 121, 312
Harpsichord, 22, 24, 78 _note_
Hartvigson, 300
Hasler, 92
Hasse, 14
Hausmann, 309
Haydn, 149, 159
Hebenstreit, 121, 122
Heller, Stephen, 318, 319
Henselt, 318
Herz, 201
Heymann, 301
Hiller, Ferdinand, 191, 317
Hofmann, Jos., 301
Hüllmandel, 192
Hummel, 190, 193, 211, 212 ff.
Hünten, 201
Hurdy-gurdy, 21
Ibach, 310
Improvisation, 161, 162 (Mozart), 198
In Bach’s time, 130
In 1800, 161, 198, 211
Irmler, 310
Isaac, 92
Italian Forms, 78-80
Chamber Music, 78
Jadin, 192
Jaell, 293
Janko, 308
Jannequin, 48, 49, 50, 61
Jedliczka, 306
Jensen, Adolf, 322
Joseffy, 306
Judenkunig, 11
Kalkbrenner, 190, 192, 198, 218
Kaps, 310
Karr, 201
“Kenner und Liebhaber,” 143
Keyboard, 24 _note_
Kienzl, 323, 324
Kirchner, 318
Kirnberger, 131
Kittl, 191
Kjerulf, 322
Klauwell, 304
Klavier (see Pianoforte), 18, 21, 23, 121
“Klavierlehrer,” paper, 305
Kleeberg, 293
Klengel, 193
Klindworth, 306
Knabe, 310
Koch, 315
Köhler, 189
Kontski, 190, 201
Kozeluch, 190, 210
Krebs, 145
Kuhnau, 92
“Quacksalver,” 129
“Biblical Stories,” 119
Kullak, Ad., 306
Kullak, Franz, 306
Kullak, Th., 191, 304, 306
Lacombe, 319
Lasso, Orlando, 26, 37
Le Begue, 65
Lebert, 306
Leschetizki, 308
Liadoff, 320
Lipawsky, 161
Liszt, 193, 264, 271, 287 ff.
Locatelli, 82
Loeilly, 65
Löschhorn, 191
Logier, 190
Louis Ferdinand, Prince, 164
Lully, 44
Lütschg, 301
Lute in Middle Ages, 11, 77
Madrigal, 8, 15, 37 _note_
Marcello, 76
Marchand, 91
Marius, 122
Marpurg, 130
M’Dowell, 322
Mela, Domenico des, 314
Mendelssohn, 152, 198, 249 ff., 250 _note_
Menter, Sophie, 293
Merulo, 79 and _note_
Meyerbeer, 194
Monochord, 19, 42 _note_, 77
Monteverde, 79
Moore, Graham, 322
Morley, Thomas, 37
Mortier de Fontaine, 293
Moscheles 152, 196, 198, 221
Moskowski, 306, 325 f.
Mozart, 151
Mozart and the piano, 135
Clavier concerts, 151
Sonatas, 153 ff.
Miscellaneous, 161
Müller, A. E., 190
Mulliner Book, 27
Munday, John, 36, 93
Mussorgsky, 320
Naprawnik, 320
Neitzel, 316
Octave, “short”, 24 _note_
Opera, Italian, 13, 74 ff.
Operatic Fantasias, 200
Organ, in Middle Ages, 10 ff.
Ornamentations, 12, 20, 34, 41, 57 and _note_, 83 and _note_
In Bull and Byrd, 29
Couperin, 57
Bach, 108
P. E. Bach, 140 ff.
End of 18th cent., 150
Oury, Madame, 191
Pachelbel, 92
Pachmann, 301
Paderewski, 301, 324
Paganini, 207, 282
Pape, 133
Paradies, 89
“Parthenia” (also see Addendum, p. 328), 16
Pasquini, 70, 81
Pauer, Ernst, 191
Paul, Oskar, 18
Pedal, 136, 188, (156, picture)
With Dussek, 164
Adam, 186
Hummel, 186
Pedal Clavier, 120
Penna, Lorenzo, 24
Peri, 75, 79
Periodicals, musical, 131
Phillipps, Peter, 37 and _note_
Pianoforte
Modern factories, 309 ff.
History of the instrument, 121, 122, 136
Viennese and English mechanism, 134, 136, 190
Socially, 134, 303
As furniture, 313 f.
Pianos _de luxe_, 315
Piano and Opera, 201, 326
Piano and Orchestra, 150, 199
Prices of pianos, 135, 137, 316
Piano instruction, 190, 304
Conservatoriums, 305
Hammerclavier, invention of, 121
“Cottage” Piano, 314 (156, 312, 313, pictures)
Pièce Croisée, 58, 61
Pixis, 187, 191
Plaidy, 189, 306
Planté, 301
Pleyel, 133, 159
Pleyel, Madame, 191
Pollini, 191
Porpora, 89
Pradher, 192
Programme-Music, old, 49, 92, 93, 132
Proksch, 191
Prosniz, 28, 328
Purcell, 82 _note_
Raff, 323
Raif, 306
Rameau, 65, 66, 86, 92
Reading, the Monk of, 15
Rebel, 45
Registers or “stops” of Clavier, 23
Reincke, 92
Reisenauer, 301
Repetition, principle of, 72
Rheinberger, 323
Richardson, Ferdinand, 37
Riemann, 307
Ries, 191
Rimsky-Korsakoff, 320
Risler, 190, 301
Romantic School, 224
Rondo, Old French, 147 _note_
In Philip Emm. Bach, 147
In Beethoven, 174
Rondo and Sonata, 145
Rosellen, 201
Rosenhain, 293
Rosenthal, 301
Rossi, Michael Angelo, 82
Rubinstein, Anton, 294 ff.
Rubinstein, Nicolas, 300
Ruckers, 23, 137, 314
Rudolf, Archduke, 191
Rudorff, 306
Rust, F. W., 163
Saint-Saëns, 319
Sand, George, 260
Sauer, 301
Scarlatti, Alessandro, 76, 88
Scarlatti, Domenico, 69 ff.
Sonatas, 86
Technique, 88, 89
Cat’s Fugue, 89
Scharwenka, Xaver and Philip, 306, 324
Schiedmayer, 310
Schmitt, Aloys, 191, 192
Schobert, 160
Scholz, Bernhard, 306
Schröter, 122
Schubert, 225
Miscellaneous, 226
“Wanderer” Fantasia, 226
Op. 78, 227
Impromptus and “Moments,” 228, 229
Schulhoff, 191
Schumann, 231
Schumann and Schubert, 229 ff.
Jean Paul, 232
Bach, 243
E. T. A. Hoffmann, 245
Life, 236
Clara, 236, 237
“Zeitschrift,” 238
Works, 231 ff., 238 ff.
Miscellaneous, 249
Schwarz, Max, 306
Schytte, 322, 326
Senfl, 92
Shakespeare and Music, 5, 6, 7
Silbermann, 122, 134, 137
Siloti, 301
Sinding, 322
Sonata
Sonata “da camera” and “da chiesa,” 78 _note_, 84
Old Italian, 86
Scarlatti, 86 and _note_
Kuhnau, 92
Sonata and Suite, 107
18th century, 110
Sonata and Rondo, 145
Philip Emm. Bach, 143 ff.
Haydn, 150
Mozart, 153
Beethoven, 170 ff.
Spath, 135
Spinet, 6, 24, 90
Spitta, 102, 116
Starck, 306
Stavenhagen, 301
Steibelt, 162
Stein, 137
Steinway, 310
Stenhammer, 322
Sterkel, 210
Strauss, Richard, 323
Streicher, 134
Streicher, Nanette, 160
Sucher, 303
Suite, (_see_ Dance) 106, etc., and _see_ Addendum
Suspensions in Couperin, 57
Sweelinck, virginal pieces, 26, 37
Swietens, Van, 163
Szalit, Paula, 301
Tadema, Alma, 315
Tallis, 27, 32
Taubert, 191
Tausig, 300, 306
Technique, (_see under_), 187-190, 209
Couperin, 64
Ph. Emm. Bach, 143
Fingering, 116
Keyboard, etc., 24, 26
Tedesco, 191
Temperament, equal and unequal, 101 _note_, 102
Thalberg, 197
Thilo, 307
Thoroughbass, 78, 79
Thumb, technique of, 139 ff.
Tielmann, Sufato, 48
Tinctoris, 14
Tischer, 128
Titles of drawing-room pieces, 59, 200
Titles (allegorical, etc.) of old pieces, 42, 51, 59 ff.
Tomaschek, 191
Tschaïkowski, 319
Türk, D. G., 185
Turini, the elder, 86
Turini, the younger, 89
Variations, Old English, 33, etc.
Venetian instrumental music, 13, 26
Viadana, 78
Viennese musical life, 160
Villoing, 190 (line 8; _omitted_)
Vinci, L., 76
Virdung, 20
Virgil, 307
Virginal, 6, 18, 81
Virginal Books, 15, 16, 27, 28
Virtuoso and Teacher, 64, 192, 305
Life of, 193.
Virtuosos playing together, 198
Virtuosos and Concerts, 299
Vivaldi, 82
Volkmann, 318
Volkslied in Masses and Motets, 8
Vollweiler, 191
Wagner (instruments), 137
Wallace, 299
Wanhal-Vanhall, 190
Weber, Dionysius, 191
Weber, C. M., 206, 218
Weitzmann, 28, 328
Wendling, 309
Westermayer, 310
Widor, 319
Willaert, 79
Wilmers, 191
Wölffl, 161, 183, 190
Wolfsohn, 300
Wüllner, 306
Zimmermann, 317
Zumpe, 133
List of Full-page Engravings
PAGE
Title-page. Portrait of Franz Liszt. Pastel by F. von
Lenbach, of the year 1881, in the possession of
Madame Cosima Wagner in Bayreuth _Frontispiece_
Young scholar and his wife. Painting by Gonzales
(1614-1684), in the Royal Gallery at Cassel 8
Lady at the clavier. Painting by Dirk Hals, ✝ 1656,
in the Rijksmuseum at Amsterdam 14
Le Maître de Musique, painting by Jan Steen, 1626-1679, in
the National Gallery, London 44
Concert. Painting by Gerard Terborch, 1617-1681, in the
Royal Museum at Berlin 56
J. Ph. Rameau. Engraving by J. G. Sturm (Nürnberg,
1742-1793) 62
A clavier lesson. Painting by an unknown Dutch Master,
17th century, in the Royal Gallery at Dresden 78
Domenico Scarlatti. Lithograph by Anon 86
J. S. Bach. Bust by Carl Seffner. Modelled on the actual
skull. After His, J. S. Bach (Vogel, Leipsic) 100
Facsimile of title-page of Bach’s Manuscript of the
Wohltemperiertes Klavier, in the Royal Musikbibliothek,
Berlin 110
George Frederick Handel, engraved by Thomson 136
Joseph Haydn, engraved by Quenedey 148
W. A. Mozart, engraved in 1793 by C. Kohl (1754-1807) 150
Mozart at the age of seven with his father and sister.
Engraved 1764, by J. B. Delafosse (b. 1721) after L. C. de
Carmontelle (✝ about 1790) 154
L. van Beethoven. Lithograph by C. Fischer, after the
original portrait of 1817, by A. Kloeber (1793-1864) 168
J. N. Hummel. Engraved by Fr. Wrenk (1766-1830), after the
portrait by Catherine von Escherich (beginning of 19th
century) 210
Franz Schubert. Lithograph of 1846, by J. Kriehuber
(1801-1876) 228
Robert Schumann. Engraving by M. Lämmel 236
Chopin. Anonymous Lithograph, after portrait by Ary
Scheffer (1795-1858) 256
Thalberg. Lithograph of 1835 by Staub 276
Liszt at Weimar, 1884, from a Photograph 290
Eugene d’Albert, portrait by H. Katsch 298
Johannes Brahms. Photograph from life by Marie Fellinger,
Vienna 322
List of other Illustrations and Facsimiles
PAGE
Guido of Arezzo and his protector, Bishop Theodal, playing on a
Monochord 1
Orlando Gibbons. After Grignon’s engraving in Hawkins 7
Title-page of the first English engraved Clavier Music, 1611 17
From the Weimar “Wunderbuch,” a Clavichord of about 1440 20
From the Weimar “Wunderbuch,” Primitive Spinet, of about 1440 21
A Concerted Performance 25
Page from “Parthenia,” the first English engraved Clavier Music,
1611 29
John Bull, at the age of 26 33
Henry Purcell, 1658-1695 36
The so-called “Hand” of Guido of Arezzo 38
D’Anglebert, Chamber Musician to Louis XIV., after Mignard 40
François Couperin, “Le Grand” 54
Portrait of Louis Marchand 66
Rameau, out walking 67
Old engraving after Wagniger’s design 68
Adrian Willaert, of Venice 72
Frescobaldi 73
Virginal in shape of a work-box 81
The same opened 81
The instrument taken out 81
Italian cembalo, from a monastery, of the 18th century 83
Old engraving representing Scarlatti playing a Harpsichord with
two rows of keys 85
An Octave Spinet 90
German Clavichord, 17th century, “gebunden” 91
Konrad Pau(l)mann, the first German writer for keyed instruments 95
Skull of Sebastian Bach 98
The Fifteenth Sinfonia of John Sebastian Bach, from the Royal
Musikbibliothek, Berlin 105
John Mattheson, at the age of 37 115
Pedal-clavichord 120
“Bundfrei” Clavichord 124
Philip Emanuel Bach 126
F. W. Marpurg, Theoretician and Clavier Teacher. 1718-1795 130
Streicher’s Pianoforte and Concert Saloon 135
Mary Coswey with the Orphica 146
Beginning of Mozart’s A minor Sonata 153
Upright Hammer-clavier, called the “Giraffe” 156
Beethoven at the age of 31 157
Dussek (portrait) 165
Cast of Beethoven’s living face, 1812 167
Specimen from Beethoven’s A flat major Sonata, Op. 26 173
Lyser’s Sketch of Beethoven 176
Beethoven’s last Grand Piano, by Graf, Vienna 182
Viennese pianoforte players about 1800. Eberl, Gelinek, Wölffl 183
The Brothers Pixis. 1800 187
Ludwig Berger. Pupil of Clementi 191
John Field, 1782-1837. Steel engraving by C. Mayer 193
Marcelline Czartoryska, _née_ Princess Radziwill 194
Prince Louis Ferdinand 195
Marie Charlotte Antoine Josephe, Countess of Questenberg 197
Clementi (portrait) 208
Hummel in his later years 213
A Canonic Impromptu, by J. N. Hummel 215
Czerny. Lithograph by Kriehuber, 1833 217
Carl Maria von Weber. Lithograph by Eichens, after Vogel, 1825 219
Moscheles in his youth 220
Moscheles, later, 1859 221
Parisian and London Pianists at the beginning of the 19th century.
L. Adam, Kalkbrenner, Cramer 223
Waltz by Schubert 224
Clara Schumann, _née_ Wieck 239
Louis Böhner, the original of Hoffmann’s Kreisler 246
The last piece in Schumann’s “Kreisleriana,” main movement 247
Head of Mendelssohn, after Hildebrand 251
George Sand, in man’s dress 259
Chopin’s Hand. From a marble in the National Museum at Budapest 270
An afternoon with Liszt. Kriehuber, Berlioz, Czerny, Liszt, the
violinist Ernst 271
Photograph of Liszt, taken in Budapest 271
Title-page of Hofmeister’s Edition of Liszt’s Op. 1. 273
Liszt in his youth 275
After Dantan’s Caricature of Thalberg 276
After Dantan’s Caricature of Liszt 277
Facsimile of Liszt’s Hungarian Storm-March 279
The “jeune école” of Parisian Pianists 280
Liszt in his youth 281
Cartoon representing Liszt and his Works. 1842 283
“General” Bass surprised and overcome in his fortress by Liszt 284
Liszt and Stavenhagen 285
Plaster Cast of Liszt’s Hand 287
Liszt lying in state 288
Music-room in the “Altenburg” at Weimar 289
Döhler. Lithograph by Mittag 291
Sophie Menter in her youth 292
Clotilde Kleeberg, 1888 292
Madame de Belleville 293
Carl Filtsch 293
Rubinstein at twelve 294
Hans von Bülow 295
Last Portrait of Rubinstein 296
Bülow on his deathbed 297
Reinecke in his youth 298
Carl Tausig 299
Paula Szalit 300
Eduard Risler 301
Josef Hofmann 302
Madame Carreño 303
Ferruscio B. Busoni 305
Hand of Eugene d’Albert 307
J. G. Paderewski 311
Upright Hammerclavier 312
Bechstein Cottage piano 313
Bechstein Grand Piano _de luxe_ 315
Joachim Raff 317
Stephen Heller 318
Ferdinand Hiller 318
Adolf Henselt 318
Tschaïkowski 319
Richard Strauss 320
Philip Scharwenka 321
Dr Wilhelm Kienzl 323
Maurice Moskowski 325
TURNBULL AND SPEARS, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.
Transcriber’s Note:
This book was written in a period when many words and names had
not become standardized in their spelling. Words may have multiple
spelling variations or inconsistent use of diacriticals and
hyphenation in the text. These have been left unchanged. Dialect,
obsolete and alternative spellings were left unchanged. Words and
phrases in italics are surrounded by underscores, _like this_.
Obvious printing errors, such as letters in the wrong order,
backwards, upside down, missing or partially printed, were corrected.
Unprinted punctuation and final stops missing at the end of
abbreviations and sentences were added.
Footnotes were numbered in order and moved to the end of the chapter
in which the related anchors occur. Footnote [4] has two anchors.
Changes:
Phantasie to Fantasie
obligato to obbligato
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