Master musicians; a book for players, singers and listeners

THE LIBRARY

OF
SANTA BARBARA

COLLEGE OF

THE UNIVERSITY

OF CALIFORNIA

PRESENTED BY

MRS. MACKINLEY HELM

HAROLD KCCVKS

Music and Musical Books

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LONDON. W C. 2

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V

MASTER MUSICIANS

MADAME SCHUMANN

HANFSIAENGL COLLECTION

a book for
Players,
Smgefsg,
Listener's

J.Cuthbert Haddcn

AUTHOR OF ' CHOPIN,' ' HAYDN,'
'THE OPERAS OF WAGNER,' ETC.

T. N. FOULIS

LONDON & EDINBURGH

1911

SANTA BA,.,^™^RY

//at

TO

MRS. STEWART

OF 23 BLACKET PLACE, EDINBURGH

I DEDICATE THIS BOOK
A TRIBUTE OF AFFECTION AND GRATITUDE

PREFACE

THE only thing requiring to be said by way of
preface to this book is, that it does not pretend to be
critical. Technicalities have been expressly avoided.
It is about the men themselves rather than about
their music that I have chosen to write. Further,
I have had in view the amateur rather than the
professional, and the young reader rather than the
adult ; though I would fain hope that the book may
interest all who love and practise the art of Bach

and Beethoven.

J. C. H.

EDINBURGH, September 1909.

vii

CONTENTS

WHEN Music, HEAVENLY MAID, WAS YOUNG . . I
GEORGE FREDERICK HANDEL : THE MAKER OF

THE MESSIAH . . . . -14

BACH, OLD FATHER OF FUGUE . . . . 32

PAPA AND MAMMA HAYDN . . . . 49

MOZART ! IMMORTAL MOZART ! . . . 69

THE DEAF BEETHOVEN .... . . . 89

FRANZ SCHUBERT : THE MASTER OF THE LIED . 1 1 1
ROBERT SCHUMANN : COMPOSER, EDITOR, AND

ESSAYIST . . 129

FELIX MENDELSSOHN : SINGER OF THE " SONGS

WITHOUT WORDS" . . . . .145

FREDERIC CHOPIN: THE POET OF THE PIANO . 162
RICHARD WAGNER : THE REVOLUTIONARY OF THE

Music DRAMA . . . . . .182

A CLUSTER FROM THE OPERATIC BRANCH —

GLUCK ........ 204

WEBER ........ 208

MEYERBEER . . . . . . .212

GOUNOD AND BIZET 215

x MASTER MUSICIANS

PAGE

A CLUSTER FROM THE OPERATIC BRANCH (contd.) —

ROSSINI

219

BELLINI AND DONIZETTI .

222

VERDI

224

STARS AMONG THE PLANETS —

CLEMENTI

. 229

PLEYEL

. 230

DUSSEK

• 231

CRAMER ......

. 231

HUMMEL . ....

• 232

CZERNY ......

• 233

MOSCHELES . "* .

• 234

CHERUBINI .

- 235

SPOHR

. 236

BERLIOZ

• 237

BRAHMS ......

. 242

GRIEG

• 247

TSCHAIKOWSKY

. 251

ILLUSTRATIONS

MADAME SCHUMANN
HANDEL

Frontispiece

PAGE
24

BACH
HAYDN

40

*

MOZART

72

BEETHOVEN ....

88

BEETHOVEN AND HIS FRIENDS

104

SCHUBERT ....

120

SCHUMANN ....

. . . 136

MENDELSSOHN.

. 152

CHOPIN .....

. 168

WAGNER .....

. 184

LISZT

- 200

VERDI

. 216

GRIEG

. 248

WHEN MUSIC, HEAVENLY MAID,
WAS YOUNG

The study of the history of music, seconded by hearing the
actual performance of the masterpieces of different epochs,
will prove the most rapid and effectual cure for conceit and
vanity.— SCHUMANN.

A CELEBRATED musician once declared that nobody
worth considering as a composer lived before the time
of Handel and Bach. Painting, sculpture, architecture,
decorative work of various kinds : all, he said, produced
masterpieces which we still value and admire, though
they are now more than two thousand years old. But
go back even two hundred and fifty years in music,
and we feel as if we were among things crude and in-
complete. That was the celebrated musician's verdict.
In his view, Music, heavenly maid, was born when
Handel and Bach were born — then, and not before.

In a sense it is true ; so true that Bach, who, like
Handel, was born in 1685, is often called "the father
of music." But it would never do to ignore entirely
Bach's and Handel's predecessors, unfamiliar though
most of their names are now. There are names of
old masters — composers and theorists — that every

* B

\)*»

x\5fc\ .

7

2 MASTER MUSICIANS

musical amateur ought to know, because of the services
they rendered towards the development of the art.
Art of all kinds is an evolution, and the beginnings of
musical composition carry us to a time a good long
way before that last decade of the seventeenth century
which produced Handel and Bach.

In the earlier days, before Handel and Bach, music
was chiefly in the hands of churchmen, which is readily
explained by the fact that the churchmen were then
almost the only people of education and culture. It
is ti1115 ^at St. Ambrose and St. Gregory have come
to be named and honoured in musical history. Am-
brose was Archbishop of Milan from 374 to 397. He
took a keen interest in church music, and did much
for its advancement. It was he who devised a general
system of chanting known from his name as the
Ambrosian Chant. When Ambrose died, church music
again deteriorated.

Two hundred years later, a reformer arose in the
person of Pope Gregory, surnamed the Great. Most
musical people have heard of "Gregorians," a mediaeval
medium of chanting the psalms which is still employed
in some churches where the ritual is "high." The
taste for Gregorians, like the taste for olives, has to
be cultivated. Many share the feeling of the American
who, when he was told that David himself sang his
psalms to Gregorians, said he understood for the first
time why Saul threw the javelin at him ! That, then,
is what we owe to Gregory the Great. It was during
his time also that the Romans reduced their nomen-

WHEN MUSIC, HEAVENLY MAID, WAS YOUNG 3

clature of music to the first seven letters of the alphabet
— a nomenclature which has been preserved intact
through the long intervening centuries. They had prac-
tically no musical notation as yet — only a system of
dots and scratches which look as mysterious to us as
the hieroglyphics on Cleopatra's Needle or the symbols
on a China tea-chest. The five-line staff was quite T ^^

.
the bosom of the future. &*

It was Guido of Arezzo, in Tuscany, a learned
monk of the eleventh century, and Franco of Cologne,
who flourished about the year 1 200, who, between them,
laid the foundations of our present system of musical
writing. Guido devised a four-line staff, and two of
the lines were coloured. One line was yellow (some-
times green), and its purpose was to fix the place of
the note C. Another line was red, and the red line
fixed the place of F. It is from this practice of the
old monk that our familiar treble and bass clefs are
derived. Nor did Guide's services to music end here.
We may fairly call him the inventor of sol-fa, for he
was the first to employ the syllables ut (now doh\
re, mi, fa, sol, la. These syllables he derived from the
following Latin lines, which he made his pupils sing
to a melody so arranged that each line began with the
note it was used to represent :

Ut queant laxis „ Famuli tuorum

Eesonare fibris Solve polluti

Mira gestorum Labii reatum.

The syllable si, for the seventh of the scale, was not

4 MASTER MUSICIANS

introduced till so late as the seventeenth century,
but it would never have been introduced, and probably
we would never have had a sol-fa notation at all,
except for Guide of Arezzo.

And what about Franco? Well, his part in the
musical advance applied mainly to the devising of
notes of different shapes to express different time
lengths. Before Franco's day there was no way of
clearly representing time in musical notation ; no way
of showing, for example, the difference between a note
which should be four beats long and one which should
be two beats. It is difficult to imagine such an incon-
venience now, and we have to thank Franco for saving
us from it. The breve (seldom seen) and the semibreve
come down to us from him, though he called them the
"brevis" and the "semibrevis." He invented "rests"
too ; and he was the first to divide time into what we
call " dual " and " triple." Dual time has two beats in
the bar, as in a polka ; and triple time has three beats,
as in a waltz. Franco made this distinction before
anybody else did ; and he had a quaint idea that all
church music should be written in triple time because
its three beats correspond with the Holy Trinity, three
persons in one God.

Thus, then, the world had arrived at a tolerably
clear and intelligible method of representing music to
the eye. Still, there had been, so far, no composers,
as we regard the term. It was not until the sp-called
Netherlands School arose in the fourteenth century
that anything significant was done in musical composi-

WHEN MUSIC, HEAVENLY MAID, WAS YOUNG 5

tion. We may think it curious now that Belgium and
Holland, and not Germany, which has given us nearly
all our really great composers, should have been the
first home of music the modern art. But the wind
bloweth where it listeth, and there were notable musi-
cians in other lands before Germany produced Handel
and Bach.

There was, first of all, Josquin des Pr6s, who, at
the height of his maturity, as much overtopped his
contemporaries as Beethoven overtopped all other com-
posers at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Des
PreYs music is even yet heard occasionally, and accord-
ing to an admirer is " still ravishing to the ear." He
was born at Conde" about 1450, and lived till 1521. He
enjoyed immense popularity in his day, first as a singer
in the Pope's Chapel at Rome, and later as chapel-
master to Louis XII. of France. It was complained
indeed that there was "only Josquin in Italy, only
Josquin in France, only Josquin in Germany ; in
Flanders, in Bohemia, in Hungary, in Spain, only
Josquin." Luther, the great Reformer, said, " Josquin
is a master of the notes ; they have to do as he wills,
while other composers must do as the notes will."
Some historians would have us accept him as "the
first composer of modern music." However that may
be, he was a real pioneer composer, and greatly in-
fluenced the trend and history of the art.

One of his pupils, a Belgian called Adrian Willaert
(1490-1563), is credited with the introduction of the
madrigal. The madrigal, a particular kind of part-

6 MASTER MUSICIANS

song, became exceedingly popular in England towards
the end of the sixteenth century. Nobody writes madri-
gals nowadays, for they are held to be old-fashioned.
But who has not heard of " Down in a flowery vale,"
" In going to my lonesome bed," and " Flora gave
me fairest flowers"? These are all madrigals, and
if we owe them indirectly to Adrian Willaert, then we
owe him a big debt. Willaert had a contemporary who
was much more distinguished. This was Orlando Lasso
(1520-1594), born at Mons, in Belgium. They called
him the " Prince of Music," and he was celebrated all
over Europe, employed and honoured by kings and
nobles. If it be true, as is said, that he wrote 2500
works, he was one of the most prolific composers who
ever lived. Barring one quaintly beautiful madrigal,
nothing of his is heard in public to-day. But he played
a considerable part in the advance of his art, for he
introduced the chromatic element into composition,
and it is from him that we have derived such indis-
pensable musical terms as Allegro and Adagio.

But the real glory of those early times was Palestrina
(1514-1594), who was born to effect a complete re-
volution in the style of musical composition for the
church. H e is the first composer who is treated seriously
by the musical historians, though he is rather a herald
of the really great composers than one of the greatest
in his own person. When quite young, he went by a
variety of names, but, as his fame gradually increased,
he began to be called after the little place near Rome
where he was born. Tourists go to Palestrina to-day

WHEN MUSIC, HEAVENLY MAID, WAS YOUNG 7

to see it just for his sake. It is the type of a hill-town
in the Sabine country. The traveller finds it difficult
of access, but it was meant to be so when it was built,
like so many neighbour cities, on a peak. It carries
Roman mosaics in perfect preservation in an amphi-
theatre on the top of its steep streets, whence you
might drop an apple, or almost, straight into the
Campagna at your feet. Seen thence, the dome of
St. Peter's looks like a dim, clouded pearl on the far
horizon, and you may nearly discern the statues on
the Lateran pricking into the sky. A recent visitor
tells that all the people are poor, most of them beauti-
ful, and the abounding children look as though they
must fall into the plain. Out of this nest of isolated
poverty came the greatest musical genius of his time,
the creator of the true religious style.

As a youth Palestrina had studied music in Rome,
and before he was thirty he was choirmaster in the
chapel of Julius II., the fiery Pope who figures so pro-
minently in the life-story of Michael Angelo. The
composer had married young and happily, yet it
turned out as if he should not have married at all.
" With his wife," says his biographer, " he suffered the
most strait penuries of his life, with her he sustained
the most cruel afflictions of his spirit, and with her
also he ate the hard crust of sorrow." The marriage
became a misfortune in this way : Pope Julius died,
and his successor, objecting to married men as singers
in the chapel, discharged Palestrina, who had to take
a poorly-paid post in another church.

8 MASTER MUSICIANS

But then, in 1 562, came the sittings of that famous
Council of Trent which determined so many points
in church procedure and polity. The Council ex-
pressed itself as dissatisfied with the prevailing style
of church music. It was too frivolous, too much tinged
with secularity, they said. In fact, they condemned
it root and branch, and proclaimed the need for a
higher and purer style. Now came Palestrina's oppor-
tunity. He had proved himself a master of music, and
the Pope suggested to him that he should produce
a Mass in the manner demanded by the Council.
Palestrina jumped at the idea, and by 1 565 had com-
pleted three Masses, which a Commission of Cardinals
declared to be the very thing that was wanted to save
church music from the utter degradation with which
it had been threatened. Casting aside the learned
yet puerile combinations which had been in vogue,
Palestrina wrote in a style pure and serene, free from
agitation or excitement, with no sentimentality and no
affectation. We who live in the strenuous atmosphere
of the twentieth century can hardly get into the con-
dition of mind to understand and feel the almost
angelic beauty and sweetness of his work, though
indeed there are few chances of hearing it. We must
be content to know that, though perhaps not actively
or directly, it continues to influence and correct the
art of all the more serious-minded church composers.
Palestrina died in the fulness of his fame in February
1 594, when Shakespeare was thirty years old, and was
just getting into print for the first time.

WHEN MUSIC, HEAVENLY MAID, WAS YOUNG 9

After Palestrina, and before Bach and Handel, there
are no Continental composers of sufficient note to de-
tain us ; though it was within this period that the great
forms of opera and oratorio sprang into being. Indeed,
the first opera ever written was produced in the very
year of Palestrina's death. This was Dafne> composed
by Jacopo Peri, one of a Florentine coterie of dilettanti.
It was a very primitive kind of work, with only four
instruments (harpsichord, viol di gamba, lute, and harp)
for accompaniment. But it proved a huge success, and
the result was a second opera, Eurydice, produced on
the occasion of the marriage of Mary de Medicis with
Henry IV. of France in 1600. Peri is described as
having " an aureole of notoriously ardent hair," what-
ever that may mean. He was a very avaricious person.
Of noble birth himself, he grew rich on the favour of the
Medicis, and added to his wealth by marrying a fine
lady who brought with her a very handsome dot.

Peri's operas were, of course, mere experiments.
It was left for Claudio Monteverde (1566-1650), a
Milanese musician, to give a pronounced form to the
opera. Monteverde has been glowingly described as
" the first opera composer by the grace of God, a real
musical genius, the father of instrumentation." Less
enthusiastically, we may call him the Wagner of his
time, since in his harmonies and general style he was
so daringly in advance of his age. Thus, in an opera
of 1624, he introduced instrumental effects which were
almost Wagnerian in their attempts to convey to
listeners an idea of the feelings animating the several

io MASTER MUSICIANS

characters. He indicates, for instance, the galloping of
horses and the fierceness of their riders pretty much as
Wagner does in his Ride of the Valkyries. Monteverde
had many competitors in opera, but he easily eclipsed
them all, and in a few years gave opera quite a new
complexion. It is said that he entered the church after
the death of his wife, when he was about sixty-five years
of age. By and by the Neapolitan Alessandro Scarlatti
(1659-1725) burst on the scene and established the
real Italian opera, which has now held sway for so
many years in so many different countries.

What Monteverde did for opera was done for
oratorio by Giacomo Carissimi (1582-1672), who often
wrote for the voices in that broad and simple style
which Handel popularised a whole century later. The
development of oratorio, in fact, progressed side by side
with the development of opera. But oratorio has had a
much shorter active existence than opera. The opera,
like Tennyson's brook, seems destined to go on for
ever, while the oratorio really lives only in the master-
pieces of Handel and Mendelssohn, with an occasional
spurt from Haydn. Practically, as regards its form,
Handel said the last word in oratorio ; whereas the
opera was in a state of evolution right up to the time
of Wagner, if it is not in a state of evolution even
now.

And what was England doing for music all this
time? Not very much that has proved permanent.
England had a host of composers of all kinds, but
their names are, for the most part, altogether unknown

WHEN MUSIC, HEAVENLY MAID, WAS YOUNG 1 1

in the great world of music. Some call this — the time
before Handel and Bach — the golden age of English
music ; reminding us that in those far-away days
flourished such composers as John Dunstable, Chris-
topher Tye, Thomas Tallis, William Byrde, Richard
Farrant, John Dowland, Orlando Gibbons, John Bull,
Henry Lawes, Jeremiah Clark, and William Croft,
among many more. These names, or some of them,
are interesting enough. Thus Tye was the music-
master of Queen Elizabeth, who prided herself upon
the playing of the virginals, a primitive precursor of
the piano. Byrde, also, was intimately connected with
the Queen, being one of the chief contributors to her
Virginal Book. Tallis survives in the common-metre
church tune bearing his name, as well as in the tune
of the evening hymn, " All praise to Thee, my God,
this night." To John Bull some are inclined to attribute
(and very properly, considering his name) the tune of
" God save the King." Dowland would be worth
mentioning if only because Shakespeare made a sonnet
about him — " If music and sweet poetry agree " ; and
Henry Lawes is interesting for a similar reason, namely,
that Milton celebrated him in the lines —

Harry, whose tuneful and well-measured notes
First taught our English music how to span
Words with just note and accent.

Jeremiah Clark wrote cathedral music which is still
performed, and William Croft some noble anthems
and some hymn-tunes, such as " Hanover " and " St.
Anne," that are heard regularly in all the churches.

iz MASTER MUSICIANS

Every one of these musicians was born before Handel,
and every one of them did something notable, each in
his own way, though, comparatively, it was a small
way.

There is, in truth, but one really great name in
English music before the days of Handel and Bach.
That is the name of Henry Purcell, who died ten years
after these masters were born. There are those who
contend that Purcell is the only real musical genius
Britain has ever produced. One recent writer calls
him "our last great musician," which is not compli-
mentary to later composers ! He was a sort of musical
Shakespeare of his time, and hardly more is known
of him than we know of the man who wrote Hamlet
and Macbeth. Born in 1658, he lived in the London
of Samuel Pepys, the diarist, and died in 1695, having
written complimentary odes to three Kings — Charles
II., James II., and William III. Besides these odes,
he wrote " piles of instrumental music, a fair heap of
anthems and songs, and interludes and overtures for
some forty odd plays." This is really all that we know
about Henry Purcell. But it is mildly interesting to
note that he was made organist of Westminster Abbey
(where he is buried) at the early age of eighteen, and that
he met his death at thirty-seven (such is the story) by his
wife shutting him out one cold winter night because he
came home late. Perhaps it was a feeling of remorse
that led the widow to collect her husband's composi-
tions and publish them with a highly laudatory dedica-
tion. The Abbey epitaph ought to have pleased her

WHEN MUSIC, HEAVENLY MAID, WAS YOUNG 13

at any rate : " Here lyes Henry Purcell, Esquire, who
left this life, and is gone to that blessed place where
only his harmony can be exceeded."

Purcell's works appeal mainly to musicians and musi-
cal antiquaries, for they are seldom performed. He
had a passion for expressing words in notes ; as when,
in his setting of the text, " They that go down to the
sea in ships," he plunges the bass down a couple of
octaves, and then at the words " up to heaven," keeps
him straining his voice on a high dotted crotchet. Com-
posers much greater than Purcell went in for musical
word-painting of that kind. The " plagues" in Handel's
Israel in Egypt are full of far-fetched musical word-
pictures ; Haydn's Creation has " a long and sinuous
worm " and a sportive leviathan ; Mendelssohn tries
to reproduce the bray of the donkey in his Midsummer
Night's Dream ; and even Beethoven introduces a real
cuckoo into his Pastoral Symphony. We should re-
gard this sort of thing as childish now. But Purcell
at least had no idea of being childish. He was per-
fectly serious, and though we cannot possibly agree
with Dr. Burney, the musical historian, that in passion
and expression his vocal music is "as superior to
Handel's as an original poem to a translation," we
must nevertheless admit that this man who was so
prematurely cut off was one of the greatest musicians
England has given birth to. And so, with that com-
forting statement to close our introductory survey, let
us turn to Handel and Bach and the line of masters
who came after them.

GEORGE FREDERICK HANDEL:
THE MAKER OF THE MESSIAH

Remember Handel ? Who, that was not born
Deaf as the dead to harmony, forgets,
Or can, the more than Homer of his age ?

COWPER.

HANDEL and Bach were the earliest of the great com-
posers whose works are regularly performed to-day.
Yet how little the average amateur knows about them !
This is especially curious in the case of Handel, for
Handel was English in everything but the accident of
his birth. He spent nearly all his working life in Eng-
land ; he had himself " naturalised " as an English-
man ; he wrote nearly every one of his notable works
in England and to English words ; and, gathering up
all that had gone before him in English music, he
embodied it in himself, and practically became the
father of modern English composition. His remains
rest with England's own great in Westminster Abbey,
and the recurrent Handel Festivals at the Crystal
Palace, to say nothing of repeated performances of
the Messiah by all the leading choral societies, keep
his name and his music green.

14

GEORGE FREDERICK HANDEL 15

George Frederick Handel was born at the quaint
little town of Halle, about an hour's ride from Leipzig,
in February 1685. His father, then sixty-three years
old, was one of those oft -mentioned barbers who
were at the same time surgeons and dentists. He
meant his George Frederick to be a lawyer, for music
seemed to him an undignified sort of amusement, fit
only for Italian fiddlers and French buffoons. Handel
himself had a reminder of this idea when at Oxford,
many years later, he and his company of fellow-
professionals were described by one of the papers as
" a lousy crew." Barber Handel showed himself very
determined on the point. When his boy evinced an
unmistakable bent for music, the barber did everything
he could to thwart it. All musical instruments were
put out of reach, and George was even kept from
school in case he should there learn something of the
tabooed art of St. Cecilia.

But George had managed to drag a rickety spinet
(a weak-sounding kind of piano) away up to the attic
where he slept, and when the rest of the household
were in bed he would creep quietly to the instrument
and exercise his tiny fingers until they ached and his
eyes blinked. In this way he succeeded in teaching
himself to play before any one knew anything about
it. The full discovery came about rather curiously.
Young Handel had a half-brother in the service of the
Duke of Saxe-Weissenfels, not far from Halle. One
day, in 1692, the father set off on a visit to the Duke's
place. He had not gone far when he found that his

1 6 MASTER MUSICIANS

seven-year-old George was running after the coach,
and having no heart to turn the boy back, he took
him along. The trifling circumstance formed the turn-
ing point in Handel's career. One day, at Saxe-Weis-
senfels, he stole unnoticed to the organ in the Duke's
chapel. He began playing. The Duke happened to
be near. He was a musical man, and he remarked the
unusual touch of the little fingers. That decided it.
He sent for Doctor Handel, told him he must not
think of making a lawyer of his son, and practically
gave orders that he should be set to the study of
music at once. So young Handel was put to work
with the cathedral organist at Halle. He laboured at
harmony and counterpoint, and canon and fugue, and
all the other dry bones of music ; perfected himself on
the organ and the harpsichord (another forerunner of
the piano) ; learnt the violin and the oboe ; and began
to compose.

Presently his father died, and having to get his
own living he went to Hamburg, at that time the
most musical city in Germany, as a violinist at the
opera. Here he drudged away for a while, always
looking for a better and more congenial appointment.
He had made friends with Johann Mattheson, a versatile
musician then singing as a tenor at the opera. One
day Mattheson and he started on what proved to be a
very amusing errand to Liibeck. An organist's post
had been declared vacant, and the pair determined to
try for it. Unfortunately, when they arrived at Liibeck,
they found that there was an impossible stipulation :

GEORGE FREDERICK HANDEL 17

the successful candidate had to marry the daughter
of the retiring organist ! One look at the lady was
enough. " She was not fair to see, and her years were
thirty-four," while Handel was only eighteen. A speedy
return to Hamburg was the result of the interview.
Handel, it may be said at once, remained a bachelor
to the end of his life. An Italian lady took his fancy
as a young man, and he became engaged to her, but
for some reason the match was broken off. Subse-
quently, he would have married an English lady of
large fortune if she had not insisted that he must give
up his profession. Perhaps it is as well that he re-
mained unmated. He was an irascible person, and he
might have done as Beethoven did with his cook, and
thrown the soup in his wife's face when something
went wrong with his temper.

It was at Hamburg that Handel produced his first
operas. But there is no occasion to talk of his operas,
for they are all completely forgotten now, though airs
from some of them are occasionally sung. One incident
of the Hamburg period must, however, be mentioned.
Mattheson and Handel were both crack harpsichordists,
and the harpsichord was an essential of the theatre
orchestra in those days. At the opera Handel usually
played the violin, while Mattheson played the harpsi-
chord. But Mattheson had written an opera, Cleopatra,
which was being staged at Hamburg. He was to sing
in it himself, so Handel took his place at the harpsi-
chord. But Mattheson, it appeared, sometimes did the
double duty of playing on the stage as well as in the

C

1 8 MASTER MUSICIANS

band ; and on this occasion, after the death of
Antony, he came down into the orchestra and de-
manded his accustomed seat there. Handel refused to
rise, and a quarrel immediately ensued. Nothing less
than a duel could be expected, and as soon as they
were outside the theatre, the rivals drew their swords
and began slashing at each other. Mattheson was the
better fencer, and Handel was only saved to posterity
by a big brass button on his coat, which broke the point
of Mattheson's sword.

Having put past some money, Handel now set off
on a pilgrimage to Italy, the "land of song." He arrived
in Florence in 1707, and he remained in Italy, studying
her native masters, composing operas and other works,
for about three years. Artistically this visit was of
great use to him, adding the grace of a refined, melo-
dious style to the bold, majestic, but somewhat rugged
strength of his work as a German of the somewhat
severe type. When he left Italy in 1709, it was for
Hanover. He had met the Elector of Hanover (the
future George I.) at Venice, and was invited to visit the
Court. On more intimate acquaintance, the Elector
conceived a strong liking for him, and made him his
kapellmeister at a salary of ^"300 a year. He would
allow Handel, he said, a year's holiday whenever he
asked for it. Handel asked for the holiday straight
away, and in the winter of 1710 he saw London, his
future home, for the first time. Little can he have
thought then of the English capital as the scene of his
greatest artistic triumphs, or of how the English people

GEORGE FREDERICK HANDEL 19

were to become the most ardent admirers of his genius.
Very likely he looked upon this first visit as a mere
pleasure-trip ; yet the ultimate outcome was a series of
masterpieces in oratorio without which Handel's genius
would never have been fully revealed, and in the ab-
sence of which his name would exist now only in the
dull pages of musical history.

When Handel came to England, Purcell had been
dead for fifteen years. Arne, the composer of " Rule,
Britannia!" was only just born, and the few good men
who were living and working were devoted almost
entirely to minor forms like the anthem, the glee, and
the madrigal. The time was therefore ripe for a genius
like Handel. Opera was in such a low state that one
work actually contained a part for a pig. Aaron Hill,
the manager of the Queen's Theatre in the Hay-
market, got hold of Handel at once and asked him
to write an opera for his establishment. Rinaldo was
chosen for a subject, and Handel went to work with
such eagerness that the poor librettist could not provide
him with the words fast enough. When the thing was
finished, the librettist made this plaintive appeal to the
public : " I implore you to consider the speed I have had
to work, and if my performance does not deserve your
praises, at all events do not refuse it your compassion ;
for Herr Handel, the Orpheus of our age, has scarcely
given me time to write while composing the music ;
and I have been stupefied to see an entire opera set
to harmony with the highest degree of perfection in no
more than a fortnight." We shall hear more of the

20 MASTER MUSICIANS

phenomenal rapidity with which Handel composed.
Rinaldo proved to be the finest opera that had ever
been produced in England, and its success was quite
brilliant. Walsh, the London music-seller, published it
soon after, and made so much more out of it than
Handel himself, that Handel observed to him : " You
shall compose the next opera and I will publish it."

By this single work Handel had fully established his
fame in London. But Handel himself was not estab-
lished there just yet. He was drawing the Hanover
salary, and he must return to his Hanover duties. In
reality, he remained only sixteen months at Hanover,
which he found excessively dull after London. He
asked a fresh leave of absence and came back to us in
1712. That year he was out with a new opera at the
Haymarket ; wrote an Ode for Queen Anne's Birthday
in 1713 ; and was commissioned by her Majesty to com-
pose a Te Deum and Jubilate to celebrate the Peace of
Utrecht the same year. Anne was so delighted that
she gave Handel a pension of £200 a year. Thus pro-
vided for, the composer stayed on in London, indifferent
about his Hanover engagement. He only realised the
awkwardness of his situation when Queen Anne died
and the Elector came over from Hanover to be crowned
as George I. He found himself persistently ignored at
Court, the King declining to have any intercourse with
him. A reconciliation was at length effected in this
way : Baron Kielmansegge, a mutual friend of King and
composer, having been invited to form one of the Court
party in an excursion on the Thames, advised Handel

GEORGE FREDERICK HANDEL 21

to prepare music for the occasion. Handel took
the hint and wrote what is known as his Water
Music, It was performe/d in a boat which followed the
royal barge, Handel himself conducting. George was
charmed with the effect, and inquiring as to the source
of the music, was told all about it by Kielmansegge,who
at the same time interceded on Handel's behalf. George
could hold out no longer. He took Handel metaphori-
cally to his arms, and bestowed on him a further
pension of £200 a year.

Handel made a visit to the Continent in 1716, but
he was back in London in 1717, and in London he
remained ever after. He secured an important appoint-
ment as musical director to the magnificent Duke of
Chandos, who had built himself a splendid mansion
at Cannons, in the suburbs. The Duke had a private
chapel where a daily musical service was performed by
" a choir of voices and instruments superior in excel-
lence and numbers to that of any sovereign potentate
in Europe." Handel's duty was to train and lead the
choir, to play the organ, and write music for the chapel.
It was here that he wrote Esther, the first of those great
oratorios (itself not of the great) upon which his fame
rests. The Duke paid him .£1000 for it, though it was
performed at Cannons only three or four times. It was
at Cannons, too, that Ads and Galatea was written.
And then there was the famous pianoforte piece known
as The Harmonious Blacksmith^ one of a suite des
pieces written for the harpsichord. There is a familiar
but rather questionable story connecting it with one

22 MASTER MUSICIANS

Powell, a blacksmith at Edgware in Handel's time.
The story is that one day, during a heavy shower,
Handel took shelter in the blacksmith's, and was so
charmed with the musical sound of the blacksmith's
hammer on the anvil that he went home and wrote the
air and its variations. But Handel's biographers tell us
that this particular piece was almost certainly written
before Handel went to Cannons at all ; and it is signi-
ficant that the title of Harmonious Blacksmith was
given to it, not by Handel himself, but by a music
publisher in Bath whose father was a blacksmith and
was fond of the tune. The anvil story is a pretty story,
and one hesitates to spoil it, but it has really no solid
foundation.

Handel's service with the Duke of Chandos con-
tinued until 1721, but two years before that he had
embarked on a gigantic operatic enterprise under the
title of the Royal Academy of Music. For this under-
taking he wrote a large number of operas, all long
since buried in oblivion, but the finances of the enter-
prise proved so disastrous that he twice became bank-
rupt. In any readable account of Handel's career, the
main interest of this period is the way he managed
his operatic vocal team. Singers are proverbially
touchy and troublesome ; none more so than operatic
singers, who are a continual thorn in the flesh of the
impresario. In Handel they found their match — and
more. His first encounter was with Francesca Cuzzoni,
a distinguished Italian vocalist, who, from being the
reigning star of her day, ended by making silk buttons

GEORGE FREDERICK HANDEL 23

tor a living. Handel had written an air expressly for
her, and she flatly refused to sing it. This was too much.
It was a case of Greek meeting Greek. "I know, madam,
that you are a very devil," roared Handel, " but I will
let you see that I am Beelzebub, the prince of devils."
And with that he seized her in his arms and was
preparing to throw her out of the window, when she
eagerly declared that she would sing.

Something of the same kind happened with Carestini,
who declined to sing an air which Handel had written
purposely to show off his voice. " You dog ! " he cried,
" don't I know better as yourself what is good for you
to sing? If you will not sing all the songs I give you,
I will not pay you ein stiver." And, as had happened
with Cuzzoni, that particular song was the one in which
Carestini produced his greatest effect.

Handel's characteristic boldness was further illus-
trated by his engagement of Faustina, who was
Cuzzoni's deadly rival — just as if Jenny Lind and
Madame Patti had been pitted against each other.
How Handel could have hoped to get the pair into the
same opera " cast " it is impossible to imagine. Horace
Walpole tells a very amusing story of his mother's
attempts to keep the peace bet ween them. On Sundays,
when Sir Robert Walpole was absent, she used to in-
vite them both to dinner, and by discreet diplomacy
obtained sufficient concession from both sides to ensure
a pleasant meeting. One evening, however, when all
the rank and fashion of London were present at one
of her receptions, she found it so difficult to settle the

H MASTER MUSICIANS

question of precedence between the rivals that she had
almost given up all hope of hearing them sing, when,
by a lucky inspiration, she spirited Faustina away to a
distant room under pretence of showing her some curious
china. Cuzzoni, assuming that her opponent had gone,
consented to sing ; and when her songs were finished,
Lady Walpole armed her away upon a similar pretext,
while the company listened to Faustina !

Of course at the opera there could be no expedients
of that kind, and Handel's trick was to compose duets
for the rivals, in which the voice parts were so nicely
balanced and crossed each other so frequently, for the
purpose of giving each singer the upper part by turns,
that nobody could tell which was singing first and
which second. Each of these stars received two thou-
sand guineas per annum for her services. It is recorded
that Cuzzoni took a solemn oath never to sing for less
than Faustina ; and that Handel, wishing to get rid of
her, offered her two thousand guineas and Faustina
two thousand and one, whereupon she retired. As a
matter of fact, Handel was never out of hot water with
his singers. There is a story of one getting into a
passion because the composer did not accompany him to
his taste. " If you do not change your style of accom-
paniment," cried the angry vocalist, " I will jump upon
the harpsichord and smash it." Handel looked up with
a twinkle in his eye. " Let me know when you will do
that," he replied, " and I will advertise it. I am sure
more people will come to see you jump than will come
to hear you sing."

HANDEL

HANFSTAENGL COLLECTION

GEORGE FREDERICK HANDEL 25

It is curious to reflect upon the consequences of
Handel's financial failures with opera. There was some-
thing in the form as well as in the subjects of oratorio
music especially appropriate to Handel's genius; yet
such were the force of habit and the tyranny of fashion
that if Handel had made money by his operas he would
probably have gone on writing operas and nothing
else to the end of his days. The Fates had happily
ordered it otherwise. Julius Caesar won all his great
victories after he was fifty. When the earlier of his
great oratorios were written, Handel had reached the
same epoch of life — a time when genius is supposed to
have lost some of its vigour, when both the mental and
the physical powers are at least not in the ascendant.
But Handel was a marvel.

He had written about forty operas, besides other
works, when, in 1738, he turned finally to oratorio,
and produced his Saul, composed in a little over two
months. Saul is never heard now, but everybody
knows its deeply impressive " Dead March," which
occurs towards the end, just after the news of the death
of Saul and Jonathan is brought to David. A year
later came Israel in Egypt (written in fifteen days),
which, after the Messiah and Judas Maccabceus, is
perhaps the most popular and the most frequently
performed of all Handel's oratorios. It was not a great
success when first given in London in 1739, but that
was due largely to the fact that the chorus-singing
of Handel's time was quite unequal to a work so
gigantic in conception and execution. Choruses were

26 MASTER MUSICIANS

comparatively small then, and were, besides, composed
entirely of male voices.

Handel was naturally disappointed with the London
reception of Israel ; and so, when he had completed
his Messiah, the greatest of all his oratorios, he carried
the score to Dublin, and had the work performed there
for the first time, in April 1742. The manuscript is
still in existence, and from dates inscribed on it we
gather that the entire work was begun and completed
within twenty-three days ! The Dublin audience had
been called together by the following advertisement :
" For the Relief of the Prisoners in the several Gaols,
and for the Support of Mercer's Hospital, in Stephen's
Street, and of the Charitable Infirmary on the Inn's
Quay, on Monday, the I3th of April, will be performed
at the Musick Hall at Fishamble Street, Mr. Handell's
new Grand Oratorio, called ' The Messiah,' in which
the Gentlemen of the Choirs of both Cathedrals will
assist, with some Concertos on the Organ by Mr.
Handell." The advertisement further requested the
ladies to come without their hoops and the gentlemen
without their swords, which would "enable the stewards
to seat seven hundred persons instead of six." Even
so late as Haydn's visits to London these impedimenta
of the ladies gave serious concern to concert makers.
Thus we are told that the royal Princesses wore hoops
so wide that the Court attendants had to hold up the
monstrosities in order to enable their wearers to pass
through the doorways. And yet we hear continual
talk about a proposed revival of the crinoline !

GEORGE FREDERICK HANDEL *y

" Mr. Handell's " oratorio was received with extra-
ordinary fervour by the Dublin people. A clergyman
in the audience is stated to have so far forgotten himself
as to exclaim at the close of one of Mrs. Gibber's airs,
"Woman, for this be all thy sins forgiven thee!"
Another enthusiast dropped into poetry and delivered
himself of the following couplet :

To harmony like his celestial power was given,

To exalt the soul from earth and make of hell a heaven.

A sum of ^"400 was realised by the performance, which,
deducting only £20 for expenses, was divided among
the three institutions named in the advertisement.
It was the most triumphant event in Handel's life.
Already he had lost a fortune by Italian opera ; the
colossal Israel in Egypt had been received with cold
indifference. But now all this was amply atoned for,
and Handel stood approved as the greatest composer
of the greatest oratorio that had ever been written.
The Messiah was not performed in London until
March 1743, when it was produced at Covent Garden.
It had at first nothing like the success it achieved in
Dublin, but gradually it got to be appreciated, and its
position now is known to all lovers of music.

Back in London in 1742, Handel went on with his
oratorio work, producing Samson, Judas Maccabceus,
Solomon, Theodora, and Jephtha. Although these are
not well known, certain portions of them are familiar
enough : such, for instance, as " Honour and Arms "
and " Let the bright Seraphim " from Samson ; the
beautiful soprano air " Angels, ever bright and fair,"

28 MASTER MUSICIANS

from Theodora; the equally beautiful "Waft her, angels,
to the skies," from Jephtha ; and " See, the conquering
hero comes," from Judas Maccabczus. Of this latter a
story may be told. Soon after Handel had completed
it, he played it to a friend and asked him how he liked
it. " Not so well as some other things of yours," was
the candid reply. " Nor I, either," said Handel, " but
you will live to see it a greater favourite with the people
than some of my finer things." The truth of which
forecast has been abundantly proved.

It was in 1751 that Jephtha, the last of the long line
of Handel oratorios (22 in all), was composed. By this
time the master's eyesight was seriously failing. Three
painful operations ended in total blindness, and Handel,
heartbroken over the misfortune, began to anticipate,
if not to wish for, his end. His powers gradually
weakened, and his thoughts continually reverted to
death. He said he would like to die on Good Friday,
that he might meet his Lord and Saviour on the day
of His crucifixion. His desire was granted, for it was
on the Good Friday of 1759 (April 13) that his spirit
fled. He had conducted his Messiah seven days before,
and the effort proved too much. His body was laid in
the Abbey, where a monument may be seen, represent-
ing him in the act of writing " I know that my
Redeemer liveth," one of the best-known solos in his
great oratorio. In spite of his repeated losses, he died
a rich man. He not only paid all his debts, but left
^"20,000, of which £1000 was bequeathed to the Royal
Society of Musicians.

GEORGE FREDERICK HANDEL 29

In person and character Handel was, like his music,
large and powerful. He was somewhat unwieldy in his
movements, but he had a countenance full of fire and
dignity. He was imperious in the extreme, with a
temper at times perfectly volcanic. In illustration of
this, one typical anecdote may be chosen from many.
Handel's nerves were too irritable to stand the sound
of tuning, and his players therefore tuned their instru-
ments before he arrived. One evening, when the Prince
of Wales was expected to be present, some wag, for a
piece of fun, untuned them all. When the Prince
arrived, Handel gave the signal to begin con spirtto,
but such was the horrible discord that the enraged
conductor started up from his seat, and, having over-
turned a double-bass that stood in the way, seized a
kettle-drum and threw it with such force at the leader
of the violins that he lost his wig in the effort. Without
waiting to replace it, he strode bareheaded to the front
of the orchestra, breathing vengeance, but so choked
with passion that he could hardly utter a word. In this
ridiculous attitude he stood staring and stamping for
some moments, amidst the general convulsion of
laughter. Nor could he be prevailed upon to resume
his seat until the Prince went in person and succeeded
in appeasing his wrath.

Prince or plebeian, it was all the same to Handel.
If anybody talked during a performance, he not only
swore but " called names." For all this, he was a deeply
religious man. When writing the Hallelujah Chorus
he said : " I did see all heaven open before me and the

jo MASTER MUSICIANS

great God Himself." He knew his Bible so well that for
several of his oratorios he was his own librettist. At
the coronation of George II., the Bishops chose the
words for the anthem and sent them to Handel to set
to music. " I have read my Bible very well, and shall
choose for myself," was the reply he returned with the
Bishops' manuscript.

Many stories have been told of Handel's almost
unappeasable appetite, some of them certainly exagger-
ated. There is a caricature of his time representing
him with the head of a hog, seated at the organ, while
the instrument is garnished with hams, sausages, and
other coarse foods. The most familiar anecdote is that
which tells of him going to a tavern and ordering dinner
for three. Having sat a long time without any signs
of the dinner, he called the landlord. The landlord said
he was waiting till the company arrived. " Then bring
the dinner prestissimo" replied Handel, " for I am the
company." There is another story of a social evening
at his house in Brook Street, Hanover Square. During
supper, Handel frequently called out, " Oh ! I have a
thought," and retired to another room on pretence of
writing it down. At last some suspicious guest had the
curiosity to peep through the keyhole into the adjoin-
ing apartment. What he discovered was that Handel's
" thoughts " were being bestowed on a fresh hamper of
Burgundy which had been sent him in a present by one
of his admirers !

There is little need to sum up Handel as a composer.
Sir Hubert Parry puts it very well when he says that

GEORGE FREDERICK HANDEL 31

his style has suited the English nation better than any
other, owing to its directness and vigour and robustness ;
and also, no doubt, because the nation has always had
a great love for choral music, of which he is one of
the greatest masters. Beethoven's judgment on him
was perfectly sound. " Handel," said he, " is the
unapproachable master of all masters. Go to him
and learn to produce great effects with little means."
Similarly, Haydn, in reference to Handel's choral work,
exclaimed, " He is the master of us all ! " No composer
has ever understood so well how to extract from a body
of voices such grand results by means so simple and
yet so skilfully conceived. In oratorio at least Handel
is the people's composer, and such he must remain so
long as oratorio holds its place with the public.

BACH, OLD FATHER OF FUGUES

There is only one Bach ! only one Bach !

FREDERICK THE GREAT.

JOHN SEBASTIAN BACH was Handel's greatest con-
temporary. Curiously enough, they never met nor even
corresponded, though more than once they just missed
meeting. On one occasion Bach went to Halle, hearing
that Handel was there and expecting to greet him, but
Handel had left for England an hour or two before his
brother composer arrived. The two, Handel and Bach,
are often spoken of as if they were a sort of Siamese
twins of music. They were both Germans, and they
were born within a month of each other. Both, again,
were fine organists, both gave great religious works to
the world, and both were stricken blind in their later
years. Beyond that, they had not much in common.
Handel, as we have seen, enjoyed a prominent place
as a popular composer, and died rich after a residence
of more than forty years in London. Bach, a quiet,
stay-at-home man, who married twice and had a family
of twenty sons and daughters, laboured with small
resources in the little town of Leipzig for the last
twenty-four years of his life, and outside a rather limited

32

BACH, OLD FATHER OF FUGUES 33

public in Germany he was hardly known at all. Never-
theless, of all the works of that period, the ones which
have real influence on art at the present time are those
of Bach.

Handel's influence was felt almost solely in oratorio
and in England alone ; whereas Bach had a real and
lasting influence on all the great composers who
followed him. All looked up to him, and took, as it
were, their cuefrom his seriousness and his calm dignity.
Beethoven was enthralled by his stupendous Mass in
B minor, the chief monument of his genius. Mozart by
chance heard some of his compositions and came away
" deeply impressed and wondering." The first time he
heard one of Bach's hymns he said, " Thank God ! I
have learnt something absolutely new." Schumann
exclaimed, " Only from one might all composers find
ever-new creative power — from John Sebastian Bach."
Mendelssohn, Brahms, Wagner — all revered Bach as
their godfather in music. And that position is in
nowise changed to-day. In spite of modern develop-
ments, " old Bach " remains the musician for musicians,
just as Spenser remains the poet for poets. Still he
commands the attention of the musical world, whether
in church, in concert-room, or in study. Of him, more
than of any of the other great composers, it may be
said that he is " not for an age but for all time."

Bach is the best example that we have of the de-
gree to which music may sometimes be inherited. He
bore the name of a Thuringian family, in which the
pursuit of music was uniquely hereditary and carefully

D

34

nourished from childhood. In course of time the family
held practically all the musical posts in Thuringia.
With its numerous branches, and many members in
each branch, all dwelling in the same province, they
spread in every direction, and it was a queer place
where one did not find a Bach as cantor or organist
or town musician. The whole family lived on the most
affectionate terms with each other. They intermarried
freely, and one day in the year was set apart for a
grand Bach gathering, after the manner of the nobility.
In Erfurt, Eisenach, Arnstadt, Gotha, Miihlhausen,
Bachs were established as organists ; and still, at the
end of the eighteenth century, the town pipers in Erfurt
were called "the Bachs," although not one amongst
them was a Bach ! Not that the musical Bachs had
ceased to exist. It was not until as late as 1846 that
the great line, the most honourable in the history of
music, became extinct, when Wilhelm F. E. Bach died.
Even now the name of Bach is quite common in Ger-
many. In 1 899 no fewer than thirteen families of Bachs
were living in Erfurt alone, and there were others else-
where.

The genealogy of the Bachs has naturally given
some trouble to the biographers, but it is now clearly
proved that the root of the great tree was a certain
Veit Bach, a miller and baker, who, after being chased
from Germany to Hungary and back again on account
of his Protestant faith, finally settled near the German
frontier. According to our composer, " Veit's greatest
pleasure was to play on a guitar which he brought

BACH, OLD FATHER OF FUGUES 35

back with him from his travels. This he was in the
habit of playing while the mill was in motion, and,
notwithstanding the noise of the mill, he kept strictly
to time, and this, I think, may be looked upon as the
beginning of the musical feeling of his descendants."
About the year 1580 there was born to Veit a son,
Hans, who inherited so much of the family gift that
he threw up the mill and became a musician. Hans
married and gave his name to three more Bachs — John,
Christopher, and Henry — who also took up the pro-
fession of music. Christopher was our composer's grand-
father. This Christopher had twin sons, who were so
like each other that even their wives could not tell
them apart ! Nay, they " were exceedingly alike in
temperament as well, so that when one suffered from
any disorder, the other was almost sure to be afflicted
in the same way." One of the twins, Johann Ambrosius,
became Court and town musician at Eisenach, and it
was at Eisenach that his famous son was born, on the
2ist of March 1685, just a month after Handel.

The little Johann did not long enjoy the protec-
tion of his parents, for he was left an orphan when
only ten years old. But already he had received in-
delible musical impressions from hearing his father play
on the violin, an instrument which he himself learnt
very early. When the father died, Sebastian was taken
under the care of his elder brother, John Christopher,
who was organist at a small village near Eisenach. The
brother, a hard and stern specimen, gave the boy lessons
in music until he began to realise that the boy would

36 MASTER MUSICIANS

soon outstrip himself, and then, with jealousy most
contemptible in a brother, began to put all the
obstacles in his way that he could think of. There
was one particular volume of music in the brother's
collection that Sebastian eagerly desired to get hold
of for the purpose of study. But the book was kept
under lock and key, and it was a long time before he
could lay his hands on it. Then, at night, whenever
there was sufficient moonlight for the purpose, he
managed by degrees to copy out its contents. The
task took him six months, and when the monster of
a brother discovered what he had been up to he at once
robbed the boy of his precious copy. It was no doubt
to this moonlight labour that Bach partly owed the
blindness which came upon him in later life.

The main thing to be noted from the incident is,
however, the zeal with which young Sebastian pursued
his studies. That zeal may be said to have continued
with him to the end. Some years later, when the ogre of
a brother was dead, and when he had begun to make a
little money as a choir boy (for he had a lovely soprano
voice), he saved every trifle in order to get to Hamburg
to hear the great Reinken, then the leading organist
in the country. Sometimes he travelled on foot. He
certainly did so when, later, he was at Llineberg, which
is about thirty miles from Hamburg. In his old age
he was fond of telling a curious story connected with
one of these trips. He was half-way home after a feast
of Reinken playing, and nearly all his money was spent.
He arrived at a country inn where the savoury odour

BACH, OLD FATHER OF FUGUES 37

of cooking made him hungrier than he already was.
He sat down by the road, musing on his hard fate.
Suddenly a window was opened and two herring-heads
were flung at him. He picked them up and found a
Danish ducat in each of them. Some kindly disposed
stranger had observed him, and guessing the cause of
his despondency, played this trick on him. It enabled
him to get a good dinner, and he resumed his way
rejoicing. Bach went, in 1720, a last time to hear
Reinken, who was still at his post, though then ninety-
seven. The young man played to the veteran for
two hours, and Reinken was so overcome that he
shed tears of joy while he tenderly embraced Bach.
" I did think," he said, " that this art would die with
me, but I see that you will keep it alive." Here he
referred especially to the young player's gifts of
extemporisation.

Bach was eighteen years old when he received his
first musical appointment. It was as a violinist in the
band of the Duke of Weimar. But Bach had never
taken very kindly to the violin. The organ was his
favourite instrument, first and last, and so we are not
surprised to find him installed a year later as organist
at Arnstadt. Here he put in a quiet life of steady
work for two years, writing some of his early church
cantatas for his choir, and toiling at the organ like a
galley slave. He made long excursions to hear famous
organists, and on one notable occasion he obtained
leave of absence for a month that he might go to
Liibeck and listen to Buxtehude, the greatest organist

38 MASTER MUSICIANS

in that part of the country. Lubeck was fifty miles
from Arnstadt, but Bach cheerfully performed the
journey on foot. His month of leave passed all too
quickly, and he found himself so infatuated by Buxte-
hude's playing that he resolved to extend his holiday
at the risk of losing his place.

It was not, in fact, until he had been four months
away that he took the road for Arnstadt. Naturally
on his return he was severely reprimanded for his be-
haviour. It seems that the church authorities had not
been entirely satisfied with his performance of the
duties before he left, and this too was now made a
matter of complaint. A formal examination was held,
and the local magnates reported : " We charge him
with having hitherto been in the habit of making sur-
prising variations in the chorales, and intermixing
divers strange sounds, so that thereby the congrega-
tion were confounded." Bach, one fears, lost his
temper with these would-be dictators, for we find that
his answers, eight months delayed, though short, were
not submissive.

By and by there arose a fresh ground for com-
plaint against the young organist. In one of the re-
ports it is thus written : " We further remonstrate with
him on his having allowed the stranger maiden to show
herself and to make music in the choir." Which means
simply that Bach, who was described by Mattheson
as " a constant admirer of the fair sex," had given his
sweetheart a place among his singers. This was very
wrong of him. In the older church cantatas women

BACH, OLD FATHER OF FUGUES 39

did not sing ; so that Bach committed almost as great
an indiscretion as the organists of Westminster Abbey
and St. Paul's Cathedral would commit if they allowed
a woman's voice to be heard in their choirs.

Bach's answer to the Arnstadt authorities was that
he had " mentioned the matter to the parson." Per-
haps when he spoke to the parson he confessed his
love and his betrothal. At any rate, he was married a
year later to this " stranger maiden," who bore his own
name, and was indeed a cousin from a neighbouring
town. Cousins, they tell us, should not marry. But it
is worth remarking that the most distinguished of
Bach's sons were all the children of his first marriage.
It was the " stranger maiden " who was the mother of
Wilhelm Friedemann, the father's favourite, and of
Philipp Emanuel, whom the musical world long pre-
ferred to Sebastian himself. There is an amusing
entry of the composer's marriage in the parish register.
"On October 17, 1707," it reads, "the respectable
Herr Johann Sebastian Bach, a bachelor, the surviv-
ing lawful son of the late most respectable Herr Am-
brosius Bach, the famous town organist and musician
of Eisenach, was married to the virtuous maiden, Maria
Barbara Bach, the youngest surviving unmarried
daughter of the late very respectable and famous artist,
Johann Michael Bach, organist at Gehren," and so on.
Only in Germany have the registrars time to cultivate
such flowers of rhetoric. Yet how we like to read it
all of Sebastian, after these two hundred years have
elapsed !

40 MASTER MUSICIANS

It was not at Arnstadt but at Miihlhausen that
Bach was married. Perhaps he found Arnstadt
uncomfortable after the above -recorded incidents.
Even now, Arnstadt does not seem to be sufficiently
appreciative of her greatest organist. Quite recently
the chief music-seller there told a well-known English
musician that Bach's music is out of date. " No one
has now any interest in such old-fashioned stuff," hesaid.
Bach seems to have had no trouble at Miihlhausen,
but he stayed there only long enough to set up house.
His salary was about £7 a year, with certain et ceteras,
including "three pounds of fish a year." A paltry
inheritance of £4. presently came to him. But alas !
" modest as is my way of life," he wrote, " with the
payment of house rent and other indispensable articles
of consumption, I can with difficulty live." Thus, to
better himself, he was soon on the move again — this
time to Weimar, as organist, of course.

We read now of his reputation as an executant, as
a composer, and as an extemporiser spreading all over
Germany. There was no need for him making tiresome
journeys to hear great organists any more, for he was
now among the greatest himself, and lesser men were
soon coming to hear him. By and by he removed to
Cb'then as kapellmeister and organist to the Prince of
Anhalt. Here was produced what is perhaps the most
generally known of all his works, the collection bearing
the title of the Forty-eight Preludes and Fugues. Bach
called it The Well- Tempered Clavier \ well-tempered
being a synonym for well or correctly tuned. The

BACH

HANFSTABNGL COLLECTION

BACH, OLD FATHER OF FUGUES 41

title requires some explanation. In olden times, when
fewer keys were used in composition than now, it was
considered enough if a key-board instrument had one
or two keys in tune. Keys with several flats and sharps
were never in strict tune. In this way, owing to a
curious scientific fact, the few keys could be " better
in tune and sound better in some ways than if all the
keys were equally considered." Gradually, however,
composers desired to use more keys, and it came to
be a question whether it were better to endure some
keys which were out of tune for the sake of the few
which were in perfect tune, or to make all the keys alike.
Bach foresaw clearly that the time must come when
composers would write in every possible key, and so
he made himself a beginning in this Well-Tempered
Clavier. The famous work has not only been "the
constant source of happiness and content and comfort
to most of the musicians of any standing in the world
since the beginning of last century, but it has all the ele-
ments of the most lasting value imaginable. In it men
find almost all the shades of feeling they can desire,
except such as are tainted with coarseness or levity.
The very depths of pathos and sadness are sounded in
some numbers, in others there is joy and lightness, in
others humour and merriment, in others the sublimest
dignity, and in others that serenity of beauty which
seems to lift man above himself, and to make him free
for the time from the shadows and darker places of his
nature, and all pieces alike are cast in a form of most
perfect art, and in that scale which can be realised

42 MASTER MUSICIANS

completely at home with no more elaborate resources
than one little keyed instrument." Every virtuoso of
the piano knows the value of the matchless " Forty-
eight." When Chopin was to give a recital, he never
practised the pieces he was to play, but shut himself
up for a fortnight and played Bach. " Let the Well-
Tempered Clavier be thy daily bread," said Schumann ;
and better advice could not be given. Whether for
technical practice, intellectual enjoyment, or spiritual
nourishment, the " Forty-eight " are of priceless worth.
They are perfect little cameos of art, and if Bach had
written nothing else, he would still have endeared him-
self to us.

But there is more to be said in this connection.
We must never forget Bach's reforms in the matter
of key-board fingering. Before his day players hardly
used the thumb and fourth finger at all. Scales used
to be played by turning the second and third fingers
over one another, and only now and again would the
fourth finger be used, to get over peculiar difficulties.
Bach changed all this, and so we may, in a sense,
regard him as the father of modern piano playing. Of
his own style of fingering an early biographer says :
" He played with so easy and small a motion of the
fingers that it was hardly perceptible. Only the first
joints of his fingers were in motion ; his hand retained,
even in the most difficult passages, its rounded form ;
his fingers rose very little from the keys, hardly more
than in a shake, and when one was employed, the
others remained still in their positions."

BACH, OLD FATHER OF FUGUES 43

At Cothen one of Bach's most serious domestic
calamities befell him. He had been from home, and
when he returned to get, as he expected, the glad
greetings of his wife, he found that she was already
dead and buried. Bach was a man of deep emotions
and few words, and he suffered keenly from this bereave-
ment. But he was essentially a family man, and it
was not long before he married again, this time a lady
of musical taste and accomplishment, who helped him
appreciably in his professional work. She sang and
played well, and she had, besides, a beautiful hand for
copying music. Bach taught her the harpsichord, and
a good deal of his music was expressly written for her.
The new wife, who bore her husband thirteen children,
made the Bach home a little musical paradise. Seven
years after the marriage the composer wrote of his
family : " They are one and all born musicians, and I
assure you that I can already form a concert, both
vocal and instrumental, of my own family, particularly
as my wife sings a clear soprano, and my eldest daughter
joins in bravely." A pretty picture that is, to think of!

In course of time Bach got tired of Cothen, and the
office of cantor to the school of St. Thomas in Leipzig
falling in his way, he accepted it, and settled down to
what was his last appointment. This was in 1723. He
now turned his attention chiefly to church music, and
produced those magnificent settings of the Passion
which have given him a place as a religious composer
beside Handel himself. To the end his life went on in
the same placid and uneventful way in which his earlier

44 MASTER MUSICIANS

years had been spent. True, his post at St. Thomas
did not prove a bed of roses. It is recorded in a Leipzig
paper of 1749 that the officials had then actually chosen
a successor, "when Kapellmeister and Cantor Herr
Sebastian Bach should die." It was also contrived to
perform an elegy over Bach ere he vacated the post,
in the shape of a cantata entitled " The rich man died
and was buried." There were other annoyances. But
Bach took them all calmly and philosophically. He
loved his own fireside and his art, his friends and his
family better than anything else in the world, and these
were his consolation amid all the troubles and vexa-
tions of his career.

He seldom went from home, and the limits of his
journeyings hardly exceeded a small portion of his
native country at any time. One of his excursions
deserves special mention. Bach lived in the time of
Frederick the Great. Now Frederick was musical (he
played the flute), and he had engaged Bach's son,
Philipp Emanuel, as accompanist. He had heard much
of Bach's musical powers, and he took a notion to have
a visit from the great organist. So Bach, now an old
man over sixty, set out on the journey. The King was at
supper when his arrival was announced. Springing from
the table, Frederick broke up the meal with the words :
" Gentlemen, Bach is here ! " and took him, weary as
he was with travel, through the palace. Bach played
upon the new Silbermann pianos, of which Frederick
was very proud, and improvised upon a bit of melody
given him by Frederick himself. " There's only one

BACH, OLD FATHER OF FUGUES 45

Bach ! only one Bach ! " exclaimed Frederick, in a
transport of delight. And then Bach frankly told
Frederick that he preferred the organ to his pianos —
that the piano seemed fitted only for light rondos or
variations ! It is said that the King sent Bach a
substantial sum of money after this visit, which was
embezzled before it reached the composer.

This journey seems to have laid the foundation of
Bach's last illness. He was feeble before he started,
and his return brought grave anxiety to his house-
hold. He had to undergo a dangerous operation on
his eyes, too. For several years before, his sight had
been affected, and now, like Handel, he found that
the operation led only to total blindness. It was a
short struggle at the last. Bach's sight most unex-
pectedly returned, but he became frenzied with such
joy at this that an apoplectic seizure followed, and he
suddenly expired on the evening of July 28, 1750.
He was laid to rest, with sincere and general mourn-
ing, near the church of St. John, in Leipzig. A strange
fate has attended the remains of certain of the great
musicians. Bach did not escape. No record marked
the place where he was buried, though it was known
that he had been buried in an oak coffin and in a
single grave. " One evening," says Schumann, "I went
to the Leipzig churchyard to find the grave of a great
man. Many hours I searched around and about. I
found no J. S. Bach, and when I asked the sexton
about it, he shook his head over the man's obscurity
and remarked 'there were many Bachs.'" In 1894,

46 MASTER MUSICIANS

when the old church was being demolished for re-
building, somebody suggested that an effort should be
made to recover Bach's remains. The skeleton of an
elderly man was found, which, by a process of reason-
ing, was supposed to be Bach's. It was accordingly
taken to an anatomical museum, " cleaned up," and
clothed with a semblance of flesh to show how Bach
looked in life. One can only hope that it wasn't Bach's
skeleton after all.

Bach left no will, and his children, some of whom
suffered dire straits in later years, seized his MSS.
What little money remained from his miserable salary
of £13 a year they divided with the widow, the gentle,
talented Anna Magdalena. What were all her brave
sons doing that, ten years later, when she died, it should
be as an inmate of the poorhouse ? They all went away
to other towns, some of them to considerable success.
Mother and three daughters were left to shift for them-
selves, which meant the selling of Bach's musical re-
mains and an appeal to charity. It was a disgrace to
Leipzig that this should come to pass, though it must
be remembered that Germany did not then recognise
the greatness of Bach as we do now. When Anna
Magdalena died in 1760, her only mourners were a
daughter and some of the public-school children, who,
according to custom, had to follow the very poor to
the grave. In 1801 Bach's daughter, Regina, was still
living, a " good old woman," who would have starved
but for a public subscription, to which Beethoven
contributed.

BACH, OLD FATHER OF FUGUES 47

Something of Bach's character as a man will have
been gathered from what has preceded. As a rule he
was genial and kindly, but his temper would occasion-
ally show itself. Thus at a rehearsal, when the organist
had made a very bad blunder, he flew into a towering
rage, tore his wig from his head, and threw it at the
offender, shouting that "he had better have been a
cobbler." He was very modest about his own abilities
as a player. When some one applauded his wonderful
dexterity he said : " There is nothing wonderful about
it ; you have only to hit the right notes at the right
time and the instrument plays of itself." He would
say to his pupils when they complained of difficulties :
" You have five as good fingers on each hand as I have."
As an organist he was himself without rival in his own
time. It was written of him that " with his two feet he
could perform on the pedals passages which would be
enough to provoke many a skilled clavier player with
ten fingers." There is a story, legendary, no doubt, that
he would go into churches disguised as a poor country
schoolmaster, and, asking the organist to let him play,
would improvise in such a wonderful manner that the
listeners exclaimed : " This must be either Bach or the
devil." And yet this great master of the organ at no time
possessed an instrument really worthy of his powers.

Bach can never be what is called a " popular " com-
poser. The " popular " musical mind does not under-
stand him or appreciate him. The popular musical
mind is here in the same case as the lady who, at the
close of a concert at which John L. Hatton, the

48 MASTER MUSICIANS

composer of the famous song " To Anthea," had played
two of Bach's finest fugues, described Hatton as " the
man who came in between the parts to tune the piano."
Sir Walter Parratt, master of the King's Band, has an
ideal composer in Bach, but does not get everybody
to agree with him. He once asked a young lady why
she had not attended a certain performance of Bach's
music. In a moment of stupendous honesty she re-
plied : " Because I did not care about it." Sir Walter
gazed in sorrowful silence, and then quietly said :
"You're a little donkey." Mendelssohn had better
luck with a pretty girl to whom he gave lessons at
Diisseldorf. He converted his young pupil from Herz
to Bach, and the grateful father, who loved Bach him-
self, rewarded Mendelssohn with a parcel of cloth. " I
could scarcely believe it at first, but the parcel really
contained enough of the finest black cloth to make an
entire suit. This savours of the Middle Ages," wrote
Mendelssohn. These anecdotes are significant.

But Bach has his following even among the
amateurs, and the following will be greater as time
goes on. Then will be fully understood the meaning of
that remark of Schumann, that Bach was a man to
whom music owes almost as great a debt as religion
owes to its founder. " To me," said Goethe, " it is
with Bach as if the eternal harmonies discoursed
with one another." So it has been, and so it will be,
to multitudes besides.

PAPA AND MAMMA HAYDN

Sound— immortal Music sound !
Bid the golden Words go round !
Every heart and tongue proclaim
Haydn's power, and Haydn's fame !

BARRY CORNWALL.

So much for the first pair of great composers. They
can be followed chronologically and conveniently by
another pair — Haydn and Mozart. Though Bach and
Handel never met, Haydn and Mozart often did. They
had a sincere regard for each other too. It was Mozart
who, recognising his brother composer as his foster-
father in music, called him by the fond title of " Papa
Haydn," which sticks to him yet. We also, though
for other reasons, may well call him " Papa." He was
the father of most of the instrumental forms of music
which are regarded as fixed forms to-day — the sym-
phony, the sonata, the string quartet, and the like.
That is to say, he wrote works in these departments
which every composer feels to be the right sort of
models to follow ; just as in writing a novel one might
follow the model of Scott, or Dickens, or Thackeray.
Haydn came into the world exactly at the right time.
Music, before he began to write, had descended to the

49 E

50 MASTER MUSICIANS

dead level of the commonplace, for the best days of
Bach and Handel were over, and the other living com-
posers were but pigmies by comparison. It was Haydn's
province to give music a fresh direction, and to raise up
from the old foundation a new style at once pleasing
and ennobling.

Francis Joseph Haydn began his career, to use his
own phrase, as " a poor devil," lived to enjoy a comfort-
able competency, and died heavy alike with years and
honours. He was born at Rohrau, a village on the
confines of Austria and Hungary, on the 3ist of March
1732. The home was a humble thatched structure of
one story, with a barn attached. Though rebuilt (for
it had been swept away by a flood), it still stands,
much the same as it did when Haydn, then a celebrity,
returned to Rohrau in 1795, and knelt down on its
threshold and kissed the ground. Beethoven was
shown a picture of it when lying on his deathbed.
" Strange," he said, " that so great a man should have
had so lowly an origin." Haydn was proud of his
lowly origin because he had, as he put it, " made some-
thing out of nothing." His people were certainly poor
enough. The father was a wheelwright, and the mother
had been a nobleman's cook. But both, luckily, were
musical. The father was village organist : " a great
lover of music," his famous son said, " and played the
harp without knowing a note of music."

By and by the little Joseph, to give the composer
the Christian name he usually bore, began, in his own
childish fashion, to assist in the domestic concerts by

PAPA AND MAMMA HAYDN 51

pretending to play the fiddle with two pieces of stick.
These " wooden " performances were not thrown away.
One day a neighbouring schoolmaster named Frankh
happened to look in, and seeing the boy sawing bravely
with his sham fiddle, offered to take him into his house
and educate him. The wheelwright was delighted,
and the mother gave her reluctant consent.

Frankh did fairly well by the boy, teaching him to
read and write and to play on a real violin and several
other instruments besides. Stories are told of his getting
flogged when he should have got fed. But he was a
cheerful fellow, and in play hours he revenged himself
by transferring the master's blows to a big drum on
which he practised a lot. There is a funny story told
in illustration of his expertness with this same instru-
ment. A drummer was wanted for a procession, and
Frankh fixed on Haydn. Haydn did not mind, but he
was so small that the drum had to be carried before
him on the back of another boy, who happened to be a
hunchback. The effect must have been comical enough.
Haydn retained his early skill on the drum. When
rehearsing a concert during his second visit to London,
the regular drummer was found to be absent. " Can
any one here play the drum ? " Haydn asked. " I
can," promptly replied young George (afterwards Sir
George) Smart, who was sitting among the violinists.
But Smart somehow failed to satisfy the conductor,
who, in fact, took the drumsticks from him, and after a
practical illustration remarked, " That is how we use
the drumsticks in Germany." " Oh, very well," replied

52 MASTER MUSICIANS

the unabashed Smart, " if you like it better that way,
we can also do it so in London."

When Haydn was nearly nine he had a second piece
of luck. The choirmaster of St. Stephen's, Vienna,
came to see schoolmaster Frankh. The musical prodigy
was of course produced. He sang a song, and when it
was finished the pleased visitor cried " Bravo ! " as he
flung a handful of cherries into Haydn's cap. " But,
my little man," he asked, " how is it you cannot do
the shake ? " for there was a trill in the song which
Haydn had ignored. " How can you expect me to
shake when Herr Frankh himself cannot shake ? " was
the bold reply. The result of this interview was
Haydn's being carried away to Vienna as a chorister
in St. Stephen's, where he was to spend the remaining
years of such formal study as he ever passed through.

He tells us that he " learnt singing, the clavier, and
the violin from good masters," besides writing and
ciphering, and a little Latin and theology. His instinct
for composition now began to assert itself, and he
covered every scrap of music paper he could lay hands
on. He would write for twelve voices as readily as for
two, innocently believing that " it must be all right if
the paper be nice and full." His masters seem really
to have paid little attention to him, but he had the art
of picking up things quickly, and by dint of hard work
he managed to get on. " When my comrades were
playing," he says, " I used to take my little clavier
under my arm, and go out where I would be undis-
turbed so as to practise by myself."

PAPA AND MAMMA HAYDN 53

It must not, however, be supposed that he was un-
like other boys in the matter of fun and mischief. Thus
we find him scrambling about the scaffolding when some
additions were being made to the Imperial Chapel.
The Empress had caught the St. Stephen's choristers
at this game more than once, but the boys paid no heed
to her threats and prohibitions. One day when Haydn
was balancing himself aloft, far above his schoolfellows,
the Empress saw him from her windows and sent a
Court official to "give that fair-haired blockhead a
good thrashing." Many years afterwards, when he
was bandmaster to Prince Esterhazy, the fair -haired
blockhead had an opportunity of thanking the Empress
for this mark of royal favour.

Haydn got on very well at St. Stephen's until his
voice began to break. So far the Empress had been
pleased with his singing, but now she declared that
" young Haydn sings like a crow." As if he could help
his voice breaking ! The opinion of the Empress was
law to the choirmaster ; so he began to look for an
opportunity of getting rid of the boy. It came soon
enough, and unfortunately it was Haydn himself who
provided it. Always fond of practical joking, he one
day tried a pair of new scissors on the pig-tail of a
fellow chorister. The pig-tail was clean removed, and
the joker was condemned to be caned. In vain Haydn
begged to be let off, declaring he would rather leave
than submit to the indignity. The choirmaster said
he would have to leave in any case, but he must first
be caned. So it was : at the age of sixteen Haydn

54 MASTER MUSICIANS

was thrown out on the world, with "three wretched
shirts and a worn-out coat," an empty purse, a keen
appetite, and practically no friends.

He got himself housed in a miserable garret with an
acquaintance named Spangler, and looked about for
any and every means of earning a living. " For eight
long years," he says, " I was forced to knock about
wretchedly, giving lessons to the young." He did more
than that. He sang in choirs, played at balls and wed-
dings and baptisms, made arrangements of musical
works for anybody who would employ him, and even
took part in street serenades by playing the violin.
Presently he gathered about him a few pupils, who
provided him with at least the bare necessaries of life.
Every spare moment he devoted to the study of com-
position. To his dingy attic he brought, one by one, as
he could afford them, all the known theoretical works,
and thoroughly mastered them without help. Ulti-
mately he did get some assistance when he became
accompanist to Niccolo Porpora, a famous singing-
master of the time, whom Handel, who had some rivalry
with him, used to call " Old Borbora." It is odd to read
of Haydn acting as a lackey to Porpora : blacking his
boots and trimming his wig and brushing his coat and
running his errands and — playing his accompaniments.
But Haydn apparently thought nothing of it. He
wanted to fit himself for his profession, and he had to
get his instruction as he went along, at whatever cost
to his dignity.

Luckily his pecuniary affairs soon improved greatly.

PAPA AND MAMMA HAYDN 5$

He raised his terms for pupils, and was fortunate
enough to be appointed music director to the Bohemian
Count Morzin, who kept an orchestra at his country-
house. His salary from the Count amounted to about
£20, with board and lodgings. It made in reality his
only fixed and assured income. But he must have a
wife, whatever his income ! Up to this time he had not
seemed to be " built for love." It is told of him that he
got wildly agitated when he was accompanying a young
Countess whose neckerchief became disarranged for a
moment. But Haydn had several love affairs. For the
present his fate was sealed. He had been giving lessons
to the youngest daughter of a wig-maker named Keller.
As often happens in similar circumstances (Mozart was
a victim), he fell in love with his pupil, but for some
unexplained reason she decided to wear, not a bride's
but a nun's veil. " Never mind," said the wig-maker to
Haydn, "you shall have my other daughter." And
Haydn did have the other daughter, though she was
three years his senior.

Her name was Anna Maria, and he married her, in
November 1760, not for better but for worse. Frau
Haydn, as some one has described her, was " a regular
Xantippe ; heartless, unsociable, quarrelsome, extrava-
gant, and bigoted." Carpani says she was " not pretty
nor yet ugly." Her manners, he adds, " were immacu-
late, but she had a wooden head, and when she had
fixed on a caprice there was no way to change it." She
had an excess of religious piety which took forms that
greatly disturbed her husband in his work. For she had

56 MASTER MUSICIANS

the house always full of priests, and gave them grand
dinners and suppers and luncheons, to which Haydn's
thrifty soul objected. Haydn said she did not care a
straw whether he were an artist or a shoemaker. She
used his music manuscripts as curling-papers and
underlays for the pastry ; and once when he was away
from home she wrote to him that if he should die there
was not enough money in the house to bury him.
She even told him when he was in London that she
had seen a charming house which would make her
"such a nice widow's residence," and asked him to
send the cash to buy it. Frau Haydn saw out her
seventy years without getting a taste of the widowhood
she longed for. Haydn survived her nine years. He
bought the house she had coveted, "and now," he
wrote in 1806, "it is I who am living in it — as a
widower." That house (it stands in a suburb of Vienna)
has been preserved by Haydn's admirers almost as it
was, and has been turned into a kind of museum con-
taining portraits and mementos of the master, the
original manuscript of the Creation, and other inter-
esting relics. What would Frau Haydn have thought
if she could have foreseen all this ?

For a long time Haydn tried making the best of it
with her ; but there came a day when he realised that
to live entirely apart was the only solution of the
problem. He made his wife a sufficient allowance, and
he had the approval of his own conscience, which is
all a man need think about. His was a childless union,
and that no doubt embittered the situation. After the

HAYDN

HANFSTAEN<;L COLLECTION

PAPA AND MAMMA HAYDN 57

separation he fell in love with a married woman, an
Italian singer named Polzelli, aged nineteen. She was
not happy with her husband, and he had found his
wife impossible ; and they confided their sorrows to
each other, and solaced themselves with flirtation.
Haydn wrote to Polzelli that " if only four eyes were
closed" they would get married. But the four eyes
were long in closing, and by that time Haydn was
disillusioned and too old to marry.

The composer's engagement with Count Morzin
soon came to an end, but he was almost immediately
secured as musical director to the Esterhazy family,
in whose service he remained for thirty years. Great
families kept a band of their own in those days, and
the Esterhazys were able by their wealth and vast
possessions to maintain a sort of regal magnificence.
The Esterhazy whom Haydn was engaged to serve
was a man of extravagant tastes, who went about in a
diamond-embroidered coat. He had an opera-house
and a concert-room attached to his palace, and he
gathered about him a large company of first-class per-
formers, over whom Haydn was now set in command.
To some natures the post would have proved tedious
and irksome. But Haydn was a man of philosophic
contentment, inclined to look rather at the advantages
than the disadvantages of his situation. " As con-
ductor of the orchestra," he says, " I could make
experiments and observe effects, and was thus in a
position to improve, alter, add, or omit as I pleased.
It is true that I was cut off from the world, but I was

$8 MASTER MUSICIANS

safe from intrusion, and thus was I forced to become
original."

At any rate, there was always plenty for the band-
master to do. Royalties, nobles, and aristocrats were
constantly at Esterhaz, and the band was daily in
request. The Prince was very proud of his musical
establishment, and would have it regarded as the best
of its kind in Europe. This meant for Haydn un-
tiring rehearsal and drilling, besides arranging works
and writing original compositions. During his tenure
of office he composed a large number of symphonies,
operas, masses, concertos, trios, quartets, and other
vocal and instrumental works. Gradually his music
got to be known far and wide, and publishers were
ready to bring out his compositions almost as fast as
he could put them on paper. Invitations came to him
to visit Paris and London, but for a long time he
would not be drawn from his seclusion.

At last, in 1790, a violinist named Salomon made
him promise to visit London. " My name is Salomon,"
he bluntly announced, as he was shown into Haydn's
room one morning. " I have come from London to
fetch you. We will settle terms to-morrow." Three
years before -this, a London music publisher named
Bland had gone over to Vienna to try and coax him.
When he called, Bland found him shaving, and com-
plaining loudly of the bluntness of his razor. " I would
give my best quartet for a good razor," he exclaimed
impatiently. Bland took the hint and hurried off to
fetch a better tool. Haydn was as good as his word.

PAPA AND MAMMA HAYDN 59

He presented Bland with his latest quartet, which is
still commonly known as the Razor Quartet.

Well, Salomon succeeded where Bland had failed :
Haydn agreed to go to London. The arrangement
was that he should have £300 for six symphonies and
£200 for their copyright ; £200 for twenty new com-
positions to be produced by himself at the same
number of concerts ; and £200 from a benefit concert.
This was tempting, yet Haydn was not quite happy
about going. A long journey was not to be lightly
^undertaken in those pre-railway days, and Haydn was
nearly threescore. Moreover, he felt parting with his
friends, especially with Mozart, " a man very dear to
me," as he said. It was a beautiful thing, this regard
of the two greatest composers of their time for each
other. Haydn called Mozart " the most comprehensive,
original, extraordinary musical genius ever known in
this or any age or nation." Once he wrote : " I only
wish I could impress upon every friend of mine, and
on great men in particular, the same deep musical
sympathy and profound appreciation which I myself
feel for Mozart's inimitable music ; then nations would
vie with each other to possess such a jewel within their
frontiers. . . . Forgive my excitement ! I love the man
so dearly." And Mozart loved him. A new string
quartet of Haydn's was being rehearsed, when Kozeluch,
a popular composer who was jealous of Haydn, leaned
forward to Mozart at a certain bold passage and
whispered : " I would not have done that." " Nor I,"
promptly rejoined Mozart ; " and do you know why ?

60 MASTER MUSICIANS

Because neither you nor I would have had such an
idea." And now, when Mozart thought of parting with
Haydn, he was sadly concerned. " Oh Papa," he said,
" you have had no education for the wide, wide world,
and you speak too few languages." When it came to
the actual farewell, the tears sprang to his eyes, and
he said affectingly : " This is good-bye ; we shall never
meet again." The words proved true. A year later
Mozart was lying in a pauper's grave. Haydn was in-
consolable at the loss. When he started for home at
the end of his London visit, his saddest reflection was
that there would be no Mozart to meet him. His
shrewish wife had tried to poison his mind against his
friend by writing that Mozart had been disparaging
his genius. " I cannot believe it," he cried ; " if it is
true, I will forgive him." As late as 1807, he burst into
tears when Mozart's name was mentioned, and then,
recovering himself, remarked : " Pardon me ! I must
ever weep at the name of my Mozart."

Haydn did not like London so well as Handel
and Mendelssohn did. His landlord charged him too
much. Everything was " terribly dear." The fogs
gave him rheumatism and made him wrap up in flannel
from head to foot. The street noises worried him ;
and so on. But London made up for all this by its
flattering reception of the visitor. He received so many
invitations that he wrote home : " I could dine out
every day." Poets praised him in doubtful verse ;
musical societies of all kinds made him their guest.
He was introduced to no end of notabilities. One was

PAPA AND MAMMA HAYDN 61

Herschel, the great astronomer, who had been a poor
musician before a lucky marriage put him in the way
of fame. " His landlady was a widow," Haydn tells.
" She fell in love with him, married him, and gave him
a dowry of £ 100,000." Haydn was surprised at the idea
of a man sitting out of doors to study the stars " in
the most intense cold for five or six hours at a time."
More interesting to him was Mrs. Billington. There
is no more familiar anecdote than that which connects
Haydn with Sir Joshua Reynolds's portrait of this
distinguished vocalist. Haydn one day found Mrs.
Billington sitting to Reynolds, who was painting her
as St. Cecilia listening to the angels. " It is like," said
Haydn, " but there is a strange mistake. You have
painted her listening to the angels, whereas you ought
to have represented the angels as listening to her."
Could compliment be more charming ? At St. Paul's
Cathedral the visitor heard 4000 Charity Children sing,
and was " more touched by this innocent and reverent
music than by any I ever heard in my life." He went
to Oxford to be made a Doctor of music, and grumbled
at having to walk about for three days in his gorgeous
robe of cherry and cream coloured silk. These excite-
ments contrasted strangely with the quiet drowsy life
of Esterhaz ; and although Haydn evidently felt
flattered, he often expressed a wish to escape from so
much attention in order to get peace for work.

His concerts were a great success, though he was
not altogether pleased with his audiences. Fresh from
the dinner-table, they sometimes fell asleep during the

62 MASTER MUSICIANS

slow movements of his symphonies, and naturally he
did not like it. He had a keen sense of humour, and
he thought of a little joke, which resulted in the well-
known Surprise symphony. The slow movement of
this symphony opens and proceeds in the most sub-
dued manner, and just at the moment when the audi-
ence may be imagined to have comfortably settled for
their nap, a sudden crashing fortissimo chord is intro-
duced. " There all the women will scream," chuckled
Haydn. It certainly gave them a " surprise ! " If
Haydn's audiences occasionally fell asleep, they at least
paid their money ; and, on the whole, he was perfectly
satisfied. After his benefit concert, on May 16, 1791,
he made the following graceful acknowledgment in the
Morning Chronicle : " Mr. Haydn, extremely flattered
with his reception in a country which he had long been
ambitious of visiting, and penetrated with the patronage
with which he has been honoured by its animated and
generous inhabitants, should think himself guilty of
the greatest ingratitude if he did not take the earliest
opportunity of making his most grateful acknowledg-
ments to the English Public in general, as well as
to his particular friends, for the zeal which they have
manifested at his concert, which has been supported
by such distinguished marks of favour and approbation
as will be remembered by him with infinite delight as
long as he lives."

Thus ended the composer's first visit to London.
He came again in 1794, when a series of pre-arranged
concerts brought him something like £2000, which

PAPA AND MAMMA HAYDN 63

made him comfortable for the rest of his days. During
this visit the Prince of Wales, afterwards George IV.,
"commanded" his attendance at Carlton House no
fewer than twenty-six times. At one concert George
III. and Queen Caroline attended, and Haydn was
presented to the King. " You have written a great
deal, Dr. Haydn," said George. " Yes, sire, more than
is good for me," was the reply. " Certainly not ! "
rejoined his Majesty. He was then presented to the
Queen, and asked to sing some German songs. " My
voice," he said, pointing to the tip of his little finger,
" is now no bigger than that " ; but he sat down to
the piano and sang one of his own songs. He was re-
peatedly invited by the Queen to Buckingham Palace,
and she tried to persuade him to settle in England.
" You shall have a house at Windsor during the
summer months," she said ; and then, looking towards
the King, she added : "We can sometimes make music
t$te-a-tete" " Oh, I am not jealous of Haydn," inter-
posed the King ; " he is a good, honourable German."
These pleasantries were all very well, but Haydn was
not inclined to give his professional services even to
royalty for nothing. He sent in a bill for a hundred
guineas for his appearances at Carlton House and
Buckingham Palace, and Parliament thought it ex-
pedient to pay the bill and say nothing. Among the
other favours bestowed upon him during this visit,
mention should be made of the present of a fine talk-
ing parrot, which was sold for £140 after his death.
When he went back to Vienna this time, in 1795,

64 MASTER MUSICIANS

it was practically to retire from professional and public
life. He had made money, and he could rest on his
laurels. Yet it was after this, when he was sixty-six
years old, that he composed the tuneful and brilliant
oratorio of the Creation, a work which, perhaps, more
than any other, has kept his name before the musical
masses. It seems to have been directly prompted by
the hearing of Handel's oratorios in London. He had
attended the Handel Commemoration in Westminster
Abbey in 1791, and was much impressed with the
grandeur of the performances. When the Hallelujah
Chorus was sung he wept like a child. " Handel is
the master of us all," he said. " Never was I so pious,"
he afterwards wrote, " as when I was composing the
Creation. I knelt down every day and prayed God to
strengthen me for my work." The new oratorio made
an extraordinary effect when first performed in 1798.
The whole audience was deeply moved, and Haydn
confessed that he could not describe his own sensa-
tions. " One moment," he said, " I was as cold as ice,
the next I seemed on fire. More than once I was
afraid I should have a stroke." It is recorded that
Beethoven, alluding to the oratorio, once remarked to
Haydn : " Oh ! dear master, it is far from being a
creation" But the story is very likely an invention.

The success of the Creation led Haydn to try an-
other work somewhat on the same lines, and the result
was the Seasons, a setting of Thomson's poem, which
has been performed by our choral societies times with-
out number. It shows no trace of the " failing power "

PAPA AND MAMMA HAYDN 65

of which Haydn had now begun to complain. But the
strain of its composition proved too much for him.
Indeed he always said himself that the Seasons gave
him the finishing stroke. His last years were a con-
stant struggle with the infirmities of age ; and when
his presence was specially desired at a performance of
the Creation in 1808, he had to be carried in an arm-
chair to his place in the concert hall. At the words
" And there was light " he was completely overcome,
and pointing upwards exclaimed, " It came from
thence." He became more and more agitated as the
performance went on, and at last had to be carried out.
People of the highest rank crowded around to take
leave of him, and Beethoven fervently stooped and
kissed his forehead, a pretty act of homage, in view of
certain circumstances of which we shall learn later.

In the following year Vienna was occupied by the
French, thanks to Napoleon's rampage, and one day
while the city was being bombarded a round-shot fell
into Haydn's garden. At the same time Beethoven
was buried away in a cellar, his ears stuffed with
cotton -wool, for he feared that the booming of the
cannon might make his deafness worse. The French
domination was a grief to the patriot Haydn, but he
had no personal fear. Art is independent of nationality.
Haydn's music was well known and appreciated in
France, and the conquerors paid every possible respect
to the dying composer. The pleasing story of the
French officer visiting him and singing " In native
worth" at his bedside is familiar. On the 26th of

F

66 MASTER MUSICIANS

May he called his household around him for the last
time, and having been carried to the piano, played his
own Austrian Hymn three times over in the midst of
the weeping listeners. Five days afterwards, on the 3 1 st
of May 1809, Francis Joseph Haydn passed to his rest.
Not long before, he had said regretfully : " I have only
just learnt how to use the wind instruments, and now
that I do understand them, I must leave the world."

They buried him in a churchyard not far from his
house, and the grave remained unmarked for five years,
when one of Haydn's pupils raised a handsome stone
over it. Then, in 1820, Prince Esterhazy ordered the
exhumation of the remains for re-interment near the
scene of Haydn's long labours at Esterhaz. When the
coffin was opened, the startling discovery was made that
the skull was missing. Inquiries were instituted, and
it was proved that the desecration had taken place two
days after the funeral. A wretched " student of phren-
ology " named Peter had conceived the idea of making
a collection of skulls for study. He bribed the sexton
and got Haydn's skull. When he was done with it he
passed it to another person, who buried it in his back-
garden. Then, when he was dying, he ordered it to be
restored to Peter, who in turn bequeathed it to a Dr.
Haller, from whose keeping it subsequently found its
way to the Anatomical Museum at Vienna, where it
still is, and where in fact it formed the subject of a
lecture in the spring of 1909. Its proper place is, of
course, in Haydn's grave.

There have been too many desecrations of this kind.

PAPA AND MAMMA HAYDN 67

We have already heard aboutthe alleged Bach skeleton.
When Beethoven's grave was opened in 1863, a medical
man was actually allowed to cut away the ear passages
of the corpse to investigate the cause of the composer's
deafness, while some ghoulish person bolted with two of
the teeth. Donizetti's skull was stolen before the funeral,
and was afterwards sold to a pork-butcher, who used it
as a money-bowl ! Fortunately in these later days we
are more reverential in regard to memorials of the
great dead.

Haydn's figure does not seem to have been prepos-
sessing. His complexion was so dark that one called
him a Moor and another a nigger. He was unusually
pitted with smallpox, a universal disfigurement in those
pre-vaccination times. His legs were short, and he had
a long beaked nose, with nostrils of different shape. But
who does not know Papa Haydn by his portraits?
From these we can almost read his character. That
face is, as Mr. Haweis says, notable quite as much for
what it does not as for what it does express. No soar-
ing ambition, no avarice, no impatience, very little
excitability, no malice. On the other hand, it indicates
a flow of even health, an exceeding good-humour, com-
bined with a vivacity which seems to say : " I must
lose my temper sometimes, but I cannot lose it for
long"; a geniality which it took much to disturb, a diges-
tion which it took more to impair ; a power of work
steady and uninterrupted ; a healthy, devotional feeling
(he was a devout Catholic) ; a strong sense of humour ;
a capacity for enjoying all the world's good things,

68 MASTER MUSICIANS

without any morbid craving for irregular indulgence ;
affections warm but intense ; a presence accepted and
beloved ; a mind contented almost anywhere, attaching
supreme importance to one thing, and one thing only
— the composing of music, and pursuing this object
with the steady instinct of one who believed himself to
have been sent into the world for that purpose alone.
Such was Francis Joseph Haydn.

He told Carpani that at the thought of God his
heart leaped for joy, and that he could not help his
music, even his church music, doing the same. " I
know," he said, " that God has bestowed a talent upon
me, and I thank Him for it. I think I have done my
duty and been of use in my generation ; let others do
the same." He was fond of dress, always liked to com-
pose in his best clothes, and if he meant to do anything
particularly well, he put on a ring which had been pre-
sented to him by the King of Prussia. An entirely
lovable man ; and his music, though some superior
persons would fain call it old-fashioned, is just as
lovable.

MOZART! IMMORTAL MOZART!

When I was very young, I used to say " I " ; later on, I said
" I and Mozart " ; then " Mozart and I." Now I say " Mozart."
— GOUNOD.

IT is now more than a hundred years since Mozart,
once the pet of all the crowned heads of Europe, once
the idol of the common people, expired, penniless, and
almost neglected, and was laid to rest in a nameless
grave, not one soul whom he had known in life standing
by to see the coffin lowered. The records of musical
history tell of no deathbed scene which leaves so deep
an impression as that of Mozart. He had been com-
missioned to compose a Requiem and it was still un-
completed. His last afternoon on earth had come.
Supported by pillows, though already exhausted by
fits of coughing, he made painful efforts to join his
pupil Sussmayer and one or two other acquaintances
in singing the chorus parts of the unfinished work. The
most vivid imagination cannot picture a more distress-
ing scene than the dying man, unable to speak, extend-
ing his cheeks to indicate to Sussmayer the places at
which the wind instruments should be employed. The
evening wore on slowly enough for the sad, wearied

69

70 MASTER MUSICIANS *

watchers, and as midnight drew near the dying com-
poser with difficulty raised himself from his bed, opened
his eyes wide, and then, turning his face to the wall,
seemed to fall asleep. It was the last sleep : an hour
later and the perturbed spirit was at rest for ever.

The body lay for the usual time, and as the days of
the old year were slowly dying, Mozart took his last
long journey. A poor, scanty, straggling procession is
observed wending its way from the house to the Cathe-
dral, where a short service is to be held prior to the
interment in the burial-ground of St. Mark, then lying
in the suburbs of Vienna, but now a veritable oasis in
the desert of the enlarged city. As the coffin emerges
from the Cathedral in the pouring rain, some who have
been at the service disappear round the angles of the
building, and are seen no more. Others shelter them-
selves as best they can, and trudge with the remains
along the muddy streets. But even these cannot hold
out to the end. " They all forsook him and fled." And
so, unattended except by hirelings, the body was borne
away into the dismal country, there to be laid with
paupers in a common grave, the exact site of which no
one was to know in the course of a few years. In 1809
some admirers wished to visit the grave, but they were
told that the ashes of the poor were often exhumed to
make room for others, and Mozart was as unknown at
the cemetery as the other fifteen friendless unfortunates
who had been buried the same week. To-day, in that
great necropolis, the monument to Mozart stands over
an empty grave.

MOZART ! IMMORTAL MOZART ! 71

Let us see what manner of life was lived by this
immortal master of music, who laid it down under cir-
cumstances so painful before he was thirty-five. If he
had not a long life, he had a long name, for they
christened him John Chrysostom Wolfgang Theophilus
Mozart. The Theophilus was early dropped for the
more euphonious name of Amadeus, and more lately
the John Chrysostom was, in common usage, cut away
entirely. Leopold Mozart, the father, was himself a
professional musician : an excellent violinist and organ-
ist, and Court composer to the Archbishop of Salzburg.
He is pictured with his "old threadbare coat and oaken
stick, a God-fearing, sensible, but somewhat narrow-
minded man." He and his wife, the very model of a
thrifty hausfrau, are said to have been the handsomest
couple in that beautiful old town of Salzburg.

It was at Salzburg, in a very unpretentious dwelling,
that Mozart was born, on the 27th of January 1756.
The parents had seven children, but they all died in
infancy except Wolfgang and Anna Maria, familiarly
called Nannerl, who was to share some of her brother's
triumphs as a musical prodigy. Wolfgang's talent dis-
covered itself at the early age of three, when he would
fix his attention on the harpsichord lessons being given
to the seven-year old Nannerl. Even then, he would
puzzle out little tunes on the instrument. Papa was,
of course, overjoyed, and soon he had Wolfgang shar-
ing Nannerl's lessons. He made special arrangements
of little pieces for him, and wrote them out in a book.
The book remains to this day, with the proud father's

72 MASTER MUSICIANS

notes about his prodigy's progress. Thus : " Wolfgang
learnt this minuet when he was four," "This minuet
and trio were learnt by Wolfgang in half-an-hour, at
half-past nine at night, on January 26, 1761, one day
before his fifth year." And so on.

The boy must try his hand at composition, too. He
wrote a concerto, and when he was told it was good
but too difficult, he said : " Well, it must be practised
till it is mastered," and then he showed the elders the
way it should be played. Many years later, a young
man asked Mozart to tell him how to compose. The
gentle Wolfgang replied that the questioner was too
young to be thinking of such a serious occupation.
" But you were much younger when you began," pro-
tested the aspirant. " Ah, yes, that is true," Mozart
said, with a smile ; " but then, you see, I did not ask
anybody how to compose." No ! What was the use
of lessons to a boy who would improvise fugues and
then ride-a-cock-horse on his father's walking-stick ?

Well, these wonder-children created such a sensation
in local circles that Papa Mozart began to think he
might make some money out of them. So, when Wolf-
gang was only six, the three started away on a concert
tour. They went to Munich, where the youngsters
astonished the Bavarian Court by their performances.
Then they went to Vienna, where the boy, on their
arrival, "squared" the Custom House officer by playing
him a minuet on the violin. The trio were commanded
to appear at Court, and Wolfgang immediately became
a great pet there. He would jump into the Empress'

MOZART

HAMFSTAENUL COLLECTII

MOZART ! IMMORTAL MOZART ! 73

lap, throw his arms round her neck, and cover her with
kisses. The future unhappy Queen of France, Marie
Antoinette, was particularly charmed with him, and one
day, when she helped him up after a fall, he innocently
said : " You are good, and when I am a man I will
marry you." It was a pity he didn't !

All this was very gratifying to Papa Mozart, but
he complained that there was no money in it. " If the
kisses bestowed upon Wolfgang could be transformed
into good louis d'or, we should have nothing to grumble
at. The misfortune is that the hotel-keepers have no
desire to be paid in kisses." At another time he wrote :
" We have swords, laces, mantillas, snuff-boxes, gold
cases, sufficient to furnish a shop ; but as for money,
it is a scarce article, and I am positively poor." It was
only when they came to London in 1764, after being
in Paris, that the Mozarts seem to have put money in
their purse.

Here they played before George III. and his Queen,
who gave them twenty-four guineas for each perform-
ance. Wolfgang, too, got fifty guineas for a set of
six sonatas composed and dedicated to the Queen.
There were public concerts also, the advertisements of
which read quaintly enough to-day. Thus one concert
is announced : " For the benefit of Miss Mozart, of
eleven, and Master Mozart, of seven, prodigies of nature.
Everybody will be astonished to hear a child of such
tender age playing the harpsichord in such perfection.
It surmounts all fantasy and imagination, and it is hard
to express which is more astonishing, his execution

74 MASTER MUSICIANS

upon the harpsichord, playing at sight, or his own
composition." In another advertisement, " ladies and
gentlemen who chuse to come " are told they will find
the wonderful boy at home every day from twelve till
two, and " have an opportunity of putting his talents
to a more particular proof by giving him anything to
play at sight, or any music without a bass, which he
will write upon the spot without recurring to his harpsi-
chord." In a third advertisement it was intimated that
" the two children will play together with four hands
upon the same harpsichord, and put upon it a hand-
kerchief without seeing the keys."

Mozart had been over a year in London when he left
it in July 1765, never to return. The scholastic side of
his training had yet to be seen to, and the boy, making
his way through Holland and France, playing as he
went, now returned to Salzburg, and settled down to
serious theoretical study. It is a matter of debate
among his biographers whether the feverish excitement
of these prodigy exhibitions did not undermine his con-
stitution and help to bring about his early death. It is
likely enough. The precious days of youth should be
devoted primarily to the storing up of health, without
which lasting success is impossible. Nothing is more
harmful to sound physical development and mental
growth than the strain of extensive tours ; and it can
hardly be doubted that Mozart's health suffered a
serious check by the unnatural way in which his talent
was stimulated in his earlier years. Still, it would be
unfair to blame his father entirely, as some writers have

MOZART ! IMMORTAL MOZARTJ 75

A

done. Leopold Mozart's after life sufficiently proves
that his desire was unselfish, and that his heart was set
on the welfare of his offspring. " God," he said, " has
endowed my children with such genius that, laying
aside my duty as a father, my ambition urges me to
sacrifice all else to their education."

After the tours, then, the education began in real
earnest. By the time he was fourteen, Mozart was gene-
rally considered to have mastered the whole technique
of his art, and to himself nothing seemed necessary by
way of finishing touch but a journey to Italy. Every
young composer had that ambition in the old days.
Some never realised it ; Mozart did. When he got to
Rome his first consideration was to hear the music in
the Pope's chapel. And here an interesting incident has
to be recorded. Twice a year a celebrated Misereri by
Allegri, an early seventeenth-century composer, was
performed by the choir, but the work, which existed
only in MS., was so highly esteemed that to copy it was
a crime visited with excommunication. Young Mozart
nevertheless determined that he would secure a copy,
and after two hearings he had the whole thing so per-
fectly on paper that next year Dr. Burney, the musical
historian, was able to publish it in London. All the
great composers had wonderful memories, but Mozart
stood pre-eminent. He had a constant habit of playing
his concertos in public without a " bit " of music. In
a concert at Leipzig, some three years before his death,
he performed his concerto in C. The band all in readi-
ness, Mozart sat down to the piano to begin the com-

76 MASTER MUSICIANS

position. What was the surprise of the audience, how-
ever, to see him place on the desk, not his part, but a
small piece of paper scribbled with a few notes to re-
mind him how some of the passages began. " Oh," he
replied, upon being questioned by a friend, "the piano
part is safely locked up in my desk at Vienna. I am
obliged to take this precaution when travelling, other-
wise people contrive somehow or other to get copies of
my scores and print them — while I starve." Of course
all the virtuosi play from memory now, but the accom-
plishment was rarer in Mozart's day.

The young composer's progress through the Italian
cities was a continued triumph. The Pope decorated
him, looking upon his surreptitious copying of the
jealously -guarded Miser eri as too wonderful to be
condemned. Poets made rhymes about him ; medals
were struck in his honour. When he was playing at
Naples, the audience took it into their heads that a ring
which he wore on his ringer was a talisman, and inter-
rupted the performance until he removed it, when he
played more brilliantly than before. Everywhere the
same enthusiasm was manifested. In fact it would
only be wasting valuable space to dwell further on
Mozart's youthful triumphs. The record might be ex-
tended to portentous length, but, as one biographer has
said, apart from the proof which these successes furnish
of his extraordinary precocity, they are of little vital
significance in the great problem of his career, except
so far as they stimulated the marvellous boy to lay a
deep foundation for his greater future.

MOZART! IMMORTAL MOZART! 77

We may, therefore, pass over a year or two and pick
him up at 1777, when he went to Paris with his mother,
half intending to make Paris his future residence. Un-
happily, soon after their arrival his mother died. Then
he found he could not get on with the French. " The
French are, and always will be, downright donkeys,"
he said. " They cannot sing ; they scream." He de-
clared that their language had been invented by the
devil. He objected also to their coarseness and their
frivolity. " The ungodly arch-villain, Voltaire, has died
like a dog," he wrote. Mozart was deeply religious, and
Voltaire's atheism shocked him. " I have always had
God before my eyes," he once wrote. " Friends who
have no religion cannot long be my friends." And we
recognise the loving unspoiled heart of a boy in the
young man's words, " Next to God comes papa." In
this matter of religious feeling he was like his friend
Haydn. He returned to Germany in 1779, thoroughly
disgusted with French music and musicians. This was
the dawn of his classical period as a composer. And
what hardships he had to endure ! At Mannheim,
where he had settled, lack of money pinched him close.
"J I have only one room," he told his father ; " it is quite
crammed with a piano, a table, a bed, and a chest of
drawers." Yet he, too, like Haydn in similar circum-
stances, proposed to marry ! He had fallen in love, and
the episode makes a very pretty story. At Mannheim
there lived a certain orchestral copyist and stage
prompter named Weber, an uncle, by the way, of the
composer of Der Frei$chtttz. Weber had a daughter,

78 MASTER MUSICIANS

Aloysia, a girl of fifteen, pretty and musical. Mozart
was engaged to teach her singing, and she engaged her-
self to him — temporarily. Mozart was only twenty-
three at this time, and he was still largely dependent on
his father, who advised him to " get the great folks on
your side " before thinking of marriage. But Mozart
would listen to no warning. He even proposed to take
Aloysia to Salzburg "to make the acquaintance of dear
papa " ; hoping, of course, that papa would give way
when he discovered the lady's charms and accomplish-
ments.

But papa would have nothing to do with Aloysia,
even when told that she sang divinely and played
sonatas at first sight. In the meanwhile Aloysia had
obtained an engagement at the Munich Theatre. There
she achieved a success, and the success turned her little
head. An impecunious musician for a husband was now
quite out of the question, and she frankly said so.
Mozart bore the trial very well for a sensitive, emotional
young man of twenty -four. He even wrote to his
father : " I was a fool about Aloysia, I own ; but what
is a man not when in love ? " Aye, what not, indeed !

Mozart was not long in making a fool of himself
again. Aloysia had married an actor by this time ; but
copyist Weber had three daughters still on his hands,
and one of them took Mozart's fancy. He could not
help himself. Constance Weber had " a pair of bright,
black eyes and a pretty figure"; she was "kind-hearted,
clever, modest, good-tempered, economical, neat." It
was utterly untrue, as Mozart pere had asserted, that

MOZART! IMMORTAL MOZART! 79

she was extravagant. On the contrary, she dressed
her own hair, understood housekeeping, and had the
best heart in the world. Mozart loved her with his
" whole soul," and she loved him. Mozart wanted a
wife to look after his linen, and because he could not
live like the fast young men around him. What more
was to be said ? A good deal, at any rate by " dear
papa," who took the common-sense view that Wolf-
gang should wait until he could afford to keep a wife.
Wolfgang, like the wayward son in the novel, held a
different opinion. " Constance," he wrote to his father,
" is a well-conducted, good girl, of respectable parent-
age, and I am in a position to earn at least daily bread
for her. We love each other and are resolved to marry.
All that you have written, or may possibly write, on
this subject can be nothing but well-meant advice,
which, however good and sensible, can no longer apply
to a man who has gone so far with a girl. There can
therefore be no question of further delay." This was
emphatic enough. The letter was followed immedi-
ately by another, asking consent to an early marriage.
As no reply came, Mozart took silence for consent,
and, in the summer of 1782, celebrated a quiet wedding
at St. Stephen's, Vienna (where Haydn had been
married twenty-two years before), his bride being
eighteen and himself twenty-six.

Was it, then, a happy wedded life upon which Mozart
thus entered? So far as can be gathered from his
letters, it was — for him. Indeed, if we look at Frau
Mozart with her husband's loving eyes, we shall see no

8o MASTER MUSICIANS

fault in. her from first to last. But unfortunately Con-
stance knew next to nothing about housekeeping ; and
as Mozart himself soared far above such mundane
things, the home was too often the scene of untidiness
and disorder, to which the perpetual worry of pecuniary
embarrassments added anything but a pleasing flavour.
There is a pathetically significant story to the effect
that a friend called one winter day, and found Mozart
and his wife waltzing round the room. " We were cold,"
they explained, " and we have no wood to make a fire."
Think of that, and then think of the glorious works
Mozart produced under such depressing conditions !
And, to whatever extent his wife may have been to
blame for the irregularities and shortcomings of the
household, he at least never grumbled. His devotion
to her was of that simple and childlike nature which
makes sunshine in the house, even when the prospect
seems darkest. When he went travelling he carried the
portrait of his Constance in his breast, and sent her
a daily letter, couched in the most endearing terms.
In one letter he "encloses" her 1,095,060,437,082
kisses ! And so the chequered, yet withal happy, life
went on to the end. Almost his last written words
were addressed by Mozart to his wife : " The hour
strikes. Farewell ! We shall meet again."

Within the nine years of the composer's married
life four sons and two daughters were born to him.
Only two of the sons, Karl and Wolfgang Amadeus,
survived. The latter adopted his father's profession,
and died at Carlsbad in 1844. Karl was a modest

MOZART! IMMORTAL MOZART! 81

Austrian official, " a book-keeper of some kind," and
died at Milan in 1858. Neither of the two married,
and so there is not a single descendant of Mozart alive
to-day. His beloved sister, the prodigy Nannerl, be-
came a handsome woman ; married (in 1784) a widower
with several children ; and died in 1829, twenty-eight
years after her husband. She was all her life devoted
to music. She even composed a few pieces, and was
an excellent teacher as well as performer. Mozart's
widow, it may be convenient to add here, remarried
and long outlived her husband, dying as late as 1842.
She had inspired her new consort (his name was
Nissen) with such devotion to Mozart's fame that he
wrote a eulogistic biography of the composer. There
cannot be many instances of a second husband doing
that sort of thing for the first.

Mozart's marriage was very nearly coincident with
his serious start as a composer. With a wife and a
young family growing up around him, he was spurred
to endeavour in their interests. He settled in Vienna,
where Haydn already was, and where Beethoven and
Schubert would soon be ; and there he burnt himself
out, like a torch expending its light in the wind. As
an American writer has said, poverty and increasing
expense pricked him into intense, restless energy. His
life now had no lull in its creative industry. His
splendid genius, unsatiable and tireless, broke down his
body, like a sword wearing out its scabbard. He poured
out symphonies (forty-nine in all), operas, and sonatas
with a prodigality positively staggering, even when

G

82 MASTER MUSICIANS

we recollect how fertile musical genius has often been.
Alike as artist and composer, he never ceased his
labours. Day after day and night after night he hardly
snatched an hour's rest. We can almost fancy he
foreboded how short his life was to be, and felt im-
pelled to crowd into its brief compass its largest
measure of results.

His greatest works of these years — nay, the greatest
works of his life — are the operas of Figaro, Don
Giovanni, and // Flauto Magico, a trio that have main-
tained their artistic supremacy despite the many
changes occurring in musical taste during a century.
Of the three, perhaps the greatest is Don Giovanni.
The story has often been told how Mozart began the
composition with his usual energy, appeared to get
indifferent, and put off the work till near the time
fixed for its production at Prague. To Prague he
journeyed to finish the score ; and it is said that he
wrote a considerable part of the work in a summer-
house while he kept up a conversation with some
gentlemen playing bowls near by. The overture, at any
rate, was entirely written after midnight, the day before
it was required for the first performance, and there
was barely time for the copyist to write out the parts
before the beginning of the opera, which, indeed, was
somewhat delayed on that account. And yet, all that
Mozart received for this immortal work was £20.
A present-day copyist would get more than that for
merely transcribing it. The prices paid to Mozart for
some of his operas were incredibly and ridiculously

MOZART ! IMMORTAL MOZART ! 83

small. In those days nobody seemed to think of the
productions of musical genius as a marketable com-
modity. Even literary men were not paid at so much
per thousand words then.

And, alas ! there was little money to be obtained
by other means. Mozart tried frequent tours to recruit
his finances, but the returns were so small that, to
purchase a meal, he would often pawn the gifts
showered on him. There is an authentic story of his
pawning his plate in order to get to Frankfort for the
coronation of the Emperor. Audiences would carry
him to his hotel on their shoulders and — leave him to
beg for his dinner. So he struggled on through his last
years, with the wolf constantly at the door, and with
an invalid wife, whom he passionately loved, yet must
needs see suffer, not only from the lack of alleviating
medicines, but from the lack of the common necessaries
of life. Mr. Haweis says it is difficult to account for
all this. But let us remember that Mozart's purse was
always open to his friends, and that he was obliged
to mix on equal terms with his superiors in rank. He
was open-handed almost to criminality, as when he
once, in the course of a tour, lent a total stranger a
hundred francs. There may have been bad manage-
ment in the home, but we cannot read Mozart's letters
and accuse him of wanton extravagance. He had the
social character and the failings of his time and en-
vironment— that was all. And then he was such a
poor business man. He lost a golden chance of better-
ing his fortunes under the patronage of the King of

84 MASTER MUSICIANS

Prussia. He had almost made up his mind to accept
the King's offer, and came to the Emperor Leopold,
more than half prepared to resign a small post he
held. " What ! do you mean to forsake me, Mozart ? "
ejaculated the Emperor. Emotionally touched, Mozart
replied : " May it please your Majesty, I will stay."
When friends asked him afterwards if he had not
thought of obtaining some little piece of imperial
favour by way of compensation at the time, and with
such a powerful lever in his hand, he answered inno-
cently, " Who would have thought of that on such an
occasion ? " This shows the character of the man. Who
would not have thought of it ?

In 1791 the composer entered upon his thirty-sixth
and last year. His wife had been at Baden for her
health, and when she returned she noticed with alarm
a pallor more fatal than her own upon her husband's
face. Mozart, weak and ill, had grown silent and
melancholy. And that Requiem commission, referred
to at the outset, had been preying on his mind. It is a
weird story, and may be told as recorded by Dr. Nohl.
One day an unknown messenger appeared at Mozart's
door : a tall, haggard man, dressed in grey, with a
sombre expression of countenance : a most singular
figure, quite calculated to make an uncanny expression.
This man brought Mozart an anonymous letter, in
which he was asked to name the sum he would take
to write a Mass for the dead. Mozart accepted the com-
mission, and fixed the price at fifty ducats. Shortly
afterwards the messenger returned, paid the money,

MOZART! IMMORTAL MOZART! 85

and promised an additional honorarium when the
Requiem was completed. Mozart was told at the same
time to spare himself the trouble of trying to find out
the name of his employer, as that must remain a secret.

Mozart began the composition at once. But he
could not get rid of the uncomfortable idea suggested
by the mystery of the commission, and the fact that the
work was for the dead. It soon preyed on his mind ;
and one day, after he had been toiling at it, he said,
with tears in his eyes : " I well know that I am writ-
ing this Requiem for myself." So it proved, as we
have already seen. Enough has been said on that
point. But who was the mysterious person who com-
missioned this fateful work ? He was a certain Count
Walsegg, who wanted to pose as a composer, and who,
having at length got the Requiem as completed by
Mozart's pupil, Sussmayer, had a transcript made, and
performed the work as his own. The fraud was ulti-
mately discovered, but not before the conceited Count
had gained a measure of fame by decking himself out
in the borrowed plumes of the dead master.

Mozart's death took place on December 5, 1791.
Success was just about to come to him, as it was about
to come to Schubert when he was called away. As he
lay there, with swollen limbs and burning head, Vienna
was ringing with the fame of his last opera. They
brought him, too, thewell-paid appointment of organist
of St. Stephen's Cathedral, where Haydn had sung as
a choir boy ; where he and Mozart had been married.
Managers besieged his door with handfuls of gold

86 MASTER MUSICIANS

pleading with him to compose something for them.
Too late ' too late now ! Mozart had answered another
call. One cannot help moralising on the sad fate of
genius cut off while its powers are still in the ascendant.
Schubert died at thirty-one, Mozart at thirty-five,
Purcell and Bizet (the composer of Carmen] at thirty-
seven, Mendelssohn at thirty-eight, Chopin at thirty-
nine, and Schumann at forty-six. Think if Mozart had
seen Bach's sixty-five summers ; if Schubert, born with
Mercadante in 1797, had died with Mercadante in
1870! What grand creations might we not have had
to add to the world's heritage of music !

Mozart might be described as a sort of Peter Pan
who never grew up. He was always the sublime child.
All his adult life he suffered from abnormal restiveness.
His barber has told what a trouble it was to shave
him. No sooner was he seated, his neck encircled with
a cloth, than he became lost in thought and oblivious
of all around him. Then, without a word, he would
jump up, move about the room, pass often into the
adjoining one, while, comb or razor in hand, the hair-
dresser followed him. At table it was frequently
necessary to recall him to a sense of his surroundings,
for his fits of abstraction would recur continually, and
directly an inspiration seized him he forgot everything
else. He would twist and untwist a corner of his
dinner napkin, pass it mechanically under his nose,
making at the same time the most extraordinary and
grotesque grimaces. Musical geniuses are apt to be-
have in that way. Wagner sometimes stood on his

MOZART ! IMMORTAL MOZART ! 87

head, and Beethoven washed his hands in the middle
of the room and emptied the basin on the floor.

As a man, barring perhaps his improvidence, Mozart
was wholly admirable, though, along with Schubert,
he has suffered from the charge of being dissipated.
Considering that in his short life he produced the
prodigious total of 769 compositions, ranging from the
very largest to the simplest song forms, his failings in
this direction must have been very venial. His por-
traits show him to have been a handsome man, though
of slight build, with an ample forehead, regular features,
cleft chin, dreamy eyes, and well-arched brows. His
hair, of which he was rather vain, is of course powdered
and in a tie ; and he wears the high-collared, large-
buttoned coat, plain neckcloth, and wide-frilled shirt
of the period. He was always pale, and he had a
pleasant though not striking face. Under excitement
his eyes lost their languid look. One who was present
at the rehearsal of Figaro wrote : " I shall never for-
get Mozart's little countenance when lighted up with
the glowing rays of genius. It is as impossible to
describe it as it would be to paint sunbeams." In some
reminiscences his widow said that he " loved all the
arts and possessed a taste for most of them. He could
draw, and was an excellent dancer. His voice was a
light tenor ; his speaking tone gentle, unless when
directing music, when he became loud and energetic
— would even stamp with his feet and might be heard
at a considerable distance. His hands were very small
and delicate. His favourite amusements were bowls

88 MASTER MUSICIANS

and billiards." To all this the enthusiastic widow
added : " He was an angel, and is one in heaven now."
Mozart was very particular about his clothes, and wore
a good deal of embroidery and jewelry. On the whole
he was perhaps insignificant-looking, but he did not
like to be made aware of the fact, or to have his small
stature commented on. It should perhaps be stated
that he had a peculiarly -shaped ear passage, much
smaller than usual, which may or may not have had
a bearing on his musical sensibility. The lobe of the
left ear was thicker than that of the right, a peculiarity
also possessed by Haydn.

Mozart's musical greatness has been acknowledged
by all his fellow composers. Weber, Mendelssohn and
Wagner praised him in enthusiastic terms. Meyerbeer's
eyes became moist when speaking of him. " Who is
your favourite among the great masters ? " Rossini was
once asked. " Beethoven," he replied, " I take twice a
week, Haydn four times, and Mozart every day." Once
he put it even more pointedly than this. He had been
speaking to a friend about Beethoven, whom he called
the greatest of all musicians. "What, then, of Mozart?"
he was asked. " Oh," returned the sprightly Rossini,
" Mozart is not the greatest, he is the only musician
in the world." Ferdinand David said finely that
" Mozart was music made man." And finally we
may quote Schubert. " O Mozart ! " said he, " im-
mortal Mozart ! how many and what countless images
of a brighter, better world hast thou stamped on our
souls."

BEETHOVEN

HANFSTAENGL COLLECTION

THE DEAF BEETHOVEN

For years I have avoided almost all society, because I cannot
tell people / am deaf, I have to appear as a misanthrope ; I,
who am so little of one. — BEETHOVEN.

WHAT musician, going up the Rhine, would fail to
make a call at the pretty university town of Bonn,
where Ludwig van Beethoven was born in the December
of 1770? There, to-day, stands a memorial monument,
on the pedestal of which is engraved, in all its rugged
simplicity and appropriateness, the one word " BEET-
HOVEN." And there, too, in a side street known as the
Bonngasse, one may see the identical house whose
lowly walls echoed to the infant cries of this musical
giant who bound the eighteenth to the nineteenth
century. For many years the house was given over
to common and even ignoble uses ; but at last, in 1889,
it was purchased (for nearly £3000) by a number of
Beethoven enthusiasts, and now it is filled with relics
of Beethoven interest, which every admirer of the great
master loves to see.

Beethoven came of a musical family, for his grand-
father was a kapellmeister, while his father, a tenor
singer, filled a small musical post in the establishment

89

90 MASTER MUSICIANS

of the Elector of Cologne. The grandfather was born
in Antwerp, but he quarrelled with his parents there,
and went off to Bonn in 1732. His wife, Beethoven's
grandmother, took to drink, and Beethoven's father did
the same. The father was, in fact, a confirmed sot, loaf-
ing about the beer-houses, and boasting to his muddled
companions about his boy's gifts and his bright future.
He had heard of the prodigy Mozart and the money
he brought to his parents, and he conceived the idea
of exploiting his own son for the same purpose.

True, his son was no prodigy : on the contrary, he
early showed a positive dislike for music. Nevertheless,
the father kept him slaving away at the piano, and
would often give him a beating when he evinced a dis-
inclination to practise. We read of the little fellow
being dragged from bed and set down to the instru-
ment when the drunken father would come home late
at night. The parent's conduct cast a deep gloom over
Beethoven's youth ; and it can hardly be doubted that
the drudgery he imposed and the misery he caused in
the house formed the germs of suspicion and mis-
anthropy which afterwards so markedly showed them-
selves in Beethoven's character. The miserable toper
ended his life at last by his own hand, but not before
Beethoven, at the age of nineteen, had been officially
appointed head of the family.

In process of time the future composer's musical
sensibilities awakened, and having been sent to the
Court organist for lessons, he made such progress that
before he was twelve he was deputising for his master

THE DEAF BEETHOVEN 91

at the Court chapel. At thirteen he became a " cem-
balist"— a pianist, as we would say — in the theatre
orchestra. And thereby hangs a tale. One of the
singers, a man named Keller, had been boasting of
his correct ear, and declaring that Beethoven could not
"throw him out." A wager was ultimately accepted on
the point. During an interlude in one piece, Beethoven
modulated to a key so remote that, though he struck
the note which Keller should have taken up, Keller
was defeated, and came to a dead stand. Exasperated
by the laughter of the audience, he complained of
Beethoven to the Elector, who gave the cembalist " a
most gracious reprimand," and told him not to play
any more clever tricks of that sort.

Beethoven seems to have had no regular course of
theoretical instruction in his native town ; but when he
was seventeen he managed to get to Vienna, where he
met Mozart and had some lessons from him. "Mind,
you will hear that boy talked of," said Mozart to a
friend after Beethoven had played to him. Beethoven
subsequently met Haydn, who first encouraged him
to persevere with his studies, and then took him for
a pupil. Beethoven refused to describe himself as
Haydn's pupil on the title-pages of his early works
because, as he said, " I never learnt anything from
him." But this was mere perversity. The truth was
that he and Haydn did not pull well together. How
could they ? Their natures were totally different ;
and Beethoven, self-willed and passionate, must have
been an unmanageable pupil with any master. Besides,

92 MASTER MUSICIANS

Haydn was now an old man, and he may not have
had time or inclination to attend to his pupil as the
pupil thought necessary. At any rate, Beethoven left
Haydn and put himself under Albrechtsberger, then
organist of Vienna Cathedral, who conducted him
through the " arid wastes of ingenuity," and made him
write as many exercises as would have served for a
generation of young composers.

In the meantime Beethoven had lost his sweet,
patient mother, who died of consumption at the age of
forty-one, leaving the young musician, on his return to
Bonn, to manage as best he could his dissipated father
and the domestic concerns of the family. Happily he
made friends of several influential people, who helped
him in his home struggles, and did kindly offices of
various kinds for him. And Bonn soon saw him for
the last time. He left it when he was twenty-two, and
he never went back. There were no family ties to
recall him, and the fulfilment of his manifest destiny
required that he should live in Vienna.

So, then, to Vienna we go with him. There he
gradually made name and fame for himself among
the dilettante aristocracy, in whose houses he was a
frequent and favoured guest. As a player he never
showed any extraordinary facility and dexterity, but
his style was arresting, and as an extemporiser he was
unrivalled. When he played, his muscles swelled and
his eyes rolled wildly. He " seemed like a magician
overmastered by the spirits that he conjured up." He
began to appear in public ; and in 1796 he got as far

THE DEAF BEETHOVEN 93

as Berlin, where he played before the King and was
treated with appreciative distinction.

So far, he had not composed much ; and indeed it
was not till close on thirty that he produced his first
symphony, the great C major. Nearly all his earlier
works were roundly abused by the critics. One spoke
of a certain composition as " the confused explosions
of a talented young man's overweening conceit." An-
other compared the second symphony with a monster,
" a dragon wounded to death and unable to die, thresh-
ing around with its tail in impotent rage." Of the
seventh symphony even Weber declared that " the
extravagances of this genius have reached the ne plus
ultra, and Beethoven is quite ripe for the madhouse."
It is really amusing to turn up some of the old news-
paper notices and read them now. This, for example :
" Mr. Van Beethoven goes his own path, and a dreary,
eccentric, and tiresome path it is : learning, learning,
and nothing but learning, but not a bit of nature or
melody. And, after all, it is but a crude and undigested
learning, without method or arrangement, a seeking
after curious modulations, a hatred of ordinary pro-
gressions, a heaping up of difficulties, until all the plea-
sure and patience are lost." That was how Beethoven's
contemporaries regarded his earlier works. Then, of
course, when deafness came upon him, they turned still
more sarcastic. He could not hear, they said : how
could he understand what horrors of sound he was
evolving ? When his Fidelio was first performed in
1805, they declared that never before had anything so

9+ MASTER MUSICIANS

incoherent, coarse, wild, and ear-splitting been heard ;
and they attributed it largely to his physical defect.
They had not yet learnt, apparently, that the really
great composer is always in advance of his time.

Once having got the rush, Beethoven's musical in-
spirations came so profusely that he soon had several
works going on at the same time, and had no little
difficulty in keeping separate the several developments.
His ideas poured forth like volcanic eruptions. His
usual practice was to jot them down roughly, as they
came into his head, in little sketch books, which were
filled up in a most eccentric way — notes scribbled down
as often as not without any stave at all, and at certain
distances apart, which were evidently intended as vague
substitutes for lines and spaces. In his younger days
he spent much time in the woods and the open country,
and it was there that the " raptus " would most gener-
ally find him. " No man on earth can love the country
as I do," he said. But the country was not the
same to him when he could not hear the birds. Then
he would stamp and stride about his room like a
caged lion, singing and shouting the themes that
were coursing through his brain, and thrashing them
out in a wild way on the piano.

And this brings us to the great tragic fact of Beet-
hoven's career — his deafness, which came upon him in
1800, after he had published the thirty-two sonatas,
three concertos, two symphonies, nine trios, and numer-
ous smaller works. In all musical biography there is
nothing so terrible to read about as the deafness of

THE DEAF BEETHOVEN 95

Beethoven. For a musician to lose his sight is calamity
enough, and several musicians besides Bach and Handel
have suffered it. But the blind musician can still hear
his own creations. The deaf musician may write, as
Beethoven wrote, some of the grandest inspirations
ever given to the world, but while others are hearing
these inspirations, he cannot hear. Such was Beet-
hoven's painful experience. It is staggering to reflect
that he never himself felt the thrill of that noble music
of his own, produced in his later years.

Yet it is thus, and ever thus —

The glory is in giving ;
Those monarchs taste a deathless joy

That agonised while living.

This distressing affliction of Beethoven's life had
begun to show itself as early as 1778, but it was two
years later before it became acute. When he awoke to
his danger, a cry of woe went forth that touched the
hearts of all his friends, who, alas ! with the most
skilful aurists, were powerless to help.

" How miserable my future life will be," he exclaims,
— "to have to shun all that is most dear to me! Oh, how
happy I should be if I had my perfect hearing ; but as
it is, my best years will fly away without my being able
to do all that my talent and power would have bid
me do. I can say that I spend a most miserable life ;
for two years I have been shunning all society, because
I find it impossible to tell the people ' I am deaf.' If I
were of any other profession, this deficiency would not
be felt, but with my music, it is a terrible condition to

96 MASTER MUSICIANS

be in. Add to this, my enemies — not a few in number
— what will they say to it ? "

In the theatre he had to lay his ears close to the
orchestra in order to understand the actors ; and the
higher notes of the instruments and voices he could not
hear at all when only a little distance away. " When
in conversation," he says, " I often wonder that some
people never get acquainted with my state, but, having
much amusement, their attention is drawn away. Some-
times I can scarcely hear a soft speaker — I hear some
sounds but no words ; however, as soon as some one
screams out to me — this is unbearable." Who can gauge
the mental anguish of a musician thus tortured. Read
this : " He softly struck a full chord. Never will another
so woefully, with such a melancholy effect, pierce my
soul. With his right hand he held the chord of C major,
and in the bass he struck B, looking at me and repeating
— in order to let the sweet tone of his piano fully come
out — the wrong chord — and the greatest musician in
the world did not hear the dissonance ! " These are the
words of an eye-witness, written in the year 1825. The
" greatest musician in the world " struck a wrong chord,
and he had no hearing to acquaint him with the fact !

Several efforts were made by the surgeons to allevi-
ate the malady, but while some of these gave a little
temporary relief, the clouds gathered thicker and darker
than ever, and in the end every ray of hope became
obscured. Need we be surprised that Beethoven took
to debating with himself whether life was really worth
living ? He did indeed discuss the question seriously

THE DEAF BEETHOVEN 97

in his own mind, and it was only after a keen struggle
that virtue and art prevailed. " I will meet my fate
fearlessly, and it shall not wholly overwhelm me," he
said. It was about this time that he wrote that pitiful
letter to his brothers which was to be opened only
after his death. It begins : " Oh, ye who think or
declare me to be hostile, morose, and misanthropical,
how unjust you are, and how little you know the secret
cause of what appears to you ! My heart and mind
were ever from childhood prone to the most tender feel-
ings of affection, and I was always disposed to accom-
plish something great. But you must remember that
six years ago I was attacked by an incurable malady,
aggravated by unskilful physicians, deluded from year
to year, too, by the hope of relief, and at length forced
to the conviction of a lasting affliction."

Proceeding to detail, he says : " Alas ! how could I
proclaim the deficiency of a sense which ought to have
been more perfect with me than with other men ? Alas !
I cannot do this. Forgive me, therefore, when you see
me withdraw from you with whom I would so gladly
mingle. Completely isolated, I only enter society when
compelled to do so. I must live like an exile." In the
country he was thrown into the deepest melancholy.
" What humiliation when any one beside me heard a
flute in the far distance, and I heard nothing ; or when
others heard a shepherd singing, and I heard nothing.
Such things brought me to the verge of desperation,
and well-nigh caused me to put an end to my life.
Art, art alone deterred me." Was there ever such a

H

98 MASTER MUSICIANS

wail of despair ? " I joyfully hasten to meet death," he
writes at another time. " If death come before I have
had the opportunity of developing my artistic powers,
then, notwithstanding my cruel fate, he will come too
early for me, and I should wish for him at a more distant
period. But even then I shall be content, for his advent
will release me from a state of endless suffering."

In that birth-house museum at Bonn we have the
most melancholy signs of Beethoven's deafness. There
are the ear-trumpets and the pianoforte by whose help
he strove so long and so hopelessly to remain in com-
munion with the world of sound. The piano was made
specially for him, with extra strings. So long as he could
hear a tone, Beethoven used this instrument. Then
Maelzel, the metronome man, who invented and made
the ear-trumpets for him, built a resonator for the piano.
It was fixed on the instrument so that it covered a
portion of the sounding-board and projected over the
keys. " Seated before the piano, his head all but inside
the wooden shell, one of the ear-trumpets held in place
by an encircling brass band, Beethoven would pound
upon the keys till the strings jangled discordantly with
the violence of the percussion, or flew asunder with
shrieks as of mortal despair." Though the ear-trumpets
had been useless for five years, they were kept in Beet-
hoven's study till his death. Then they found their way
into the Royal Library at Berlin, where they remained
until Emperor William II. presented them to the Bonn
collection.

The deafness affected Beethoven in other than pro-

THE DEAF BEETHOVEN 99

fessional affairs. Directly or indirectly, it prevented
him marrying, as he had wished to do. As a young
man he had been very sensible to the charms of female
society. Ladies would knit him comforters, and make
him light puddings, and he would even condescend to
lie on their sofas after dinner while they played his
sonatas. His early friend Wegeler says that he was
never without a love affair ; and these affairs took, in
more than one case, the serious form of an offer of
marriage. But no bride was Beethoven destined to
bring to the altar. Writing to his pupil Ries in 1816
he says : " My best wishes to your wife. Unfortunately
I have none. I found One only, and her I have no
chance of ever calling mine." The "one only" was
most likely the " immortal beloved " of the passionate
letters found in the composer's desk after his death
— the beautiful Giulietta, Countess Guicciardi, to whom
the so-called " Moonlight " sonata is dedicated. The
Countess married a Count Gallenberg, and Beethoven
said of the marriage : " Heaven forgive her, for she
did not know what she was doing ! " He wrote further :
" I was much loved by her — far better than she ever
loved her husband." But Beethoven was poor, in bad
health, and — deaf; and marriage in his case was out
of the question. One does not fancy that he would
commend himself as a possible husband. A man who
afterwards threw books and even chairs at the head of
a stupid, dishonest servant, was a trifle too tempestuous
for a domestic companion. And, indeed, he came to
realise this himself, for he said he was " excessively

ioo MASTER MUSICIANS

glad that not one of the girls had become his wife,
whom he had passionately loved in former days, and
thought at the time it would be the highest joy on
earth to possess." Alas ! poor Beethoven.

And this may serve us as a suggestion for intro-
ducing some details of Beethoven's character as a man,
and of his general relations towards life and his fellows.
In his younger years he was rather particular about
his appearance. Before he left Bonn, we find him
wearing a sea-green dress coat, green short-clothes
with buckles, silk stockings, white flowered waistcoat
with gold lace, white cravat, frizzed hair tied in a queue
behind, and a sword. When he went first to Vienna
he dressed in the height of fashion, sported a seal ring,
and carried a double eyeglass. Later, he became ex-
tremely negligent about his person. An artist who
painted his portrait in 1815 described him as wearing
a pale-blue dress coat with yellow buttons, white waist-
coat and necktie, but his whole aspect bespeaking
disorder. Even if he did dress neatly, nothing could
prevent him removing his coat if it were warm, not even
in the presence of princes or ladies. Geniuses are gener-
ally Bohemian, often outr&. Beethoven was no excep-
tion. He began by disdaining to have his hair cut. He
wanted a servant, and one applicant mentioned the
accomplishment of hair-dressing. " It is no object to
me to have my hair dressed," growled Beethoven.
Remembering the characteristic portraits, one agrees
with him. Fancy a portrait of Beethoven with those
fine Jupiter Olympus locks reduced to order 1

THE DEAF BEETHOVEN 101

But it was not his hair only that he refrained from
dressing : he hardly even, as we would say, dressed
himself. When Czerny first saw him in his rooms, he
found him clad in a loose, hairy stuff, which made him
rather more like Robinson Crusoe than the leading
musician in Europe. His ears were filled with wool,
which he had soaked in some yellow substance ; his
beard showed more than half an inch of growth ; and
his hair stood up in a thick shock that betokened an
unacquaintance with comb and brush for many a day.
Moscheles tells that he could not be made to under-
stand clearly why he should not stand in his night-
shirt at the open window ; and when he attracted a
crowd of juveniles by this eccentricity, he inquired with
perfect simplicity " what those confounded boys were
hooting at."

He seems to have been rather fond of the open
window, for he generally shaved there. He " cut him-
self horribly," according to one biographer, and doing it
at the window he enabled the people in the street to
share in the diversion. He had none of the graces of
deportment which we expect from the modern artist.
It was dangerous for him to touch anything fragile,
for he was sure to break it. More than once, in a fit
of passion, he flung his inkstand among the wires of
the piano. He had a habit, when composing, of pour-
ing cold water over his hands, and the people below
him often suffered from a miniature flood in conse-
quence. When he first arrived in Vienna he took
dancing lessons, but, curiously enough in a musician,

loz MASTER MUSICIANS

could never dance in time. He was absent-minded to
the point of insanity. Whether he dined or not was
immaterial to him, and there is one authentic instance
of his having urged on the waiter payment for a meal
which he had neither ordered nor eaten. Somebody
once presented him with a horse, but he forgot all
about the animal, and had its existence recalled to him
only when the bill for its keep was sent in. At one
time he forgot his own name and the date of his birth !
A friend, not having seen him for days, asked if he
had been ill. " No," he said, " but my boots have, and
as I have only one pair, I was condemned to house
arrest." As a matter of fact he had a pair for every
day of the week, though he forgot all about that too.
He was in perpetual trouble about his rooms and
his servants. He would flit on the merest pretext, and
usually it was himself who was in fault. He had
no patience with any sort of conventional etiquette ;
and thus it often happened that he would prefer
the discomforts of a bachelor's apartments to the free
and luxurious housing offered him by more than one
noble family. Baron Pronay prevailed upon him one
summer to stay with him at Hetzendorf. But the
Baron persisted in raising his hat to him whenever
they met, and Beethoven was so annoyed by this that
he took up his lodgings with a poor clockmaker near
by. He seems to have been specially opposed to this
act of courtesy. Once when he was walking along the
street, he met a group of society notables, among
whom he observed a particular friend of his own ; but

THE DEAF BEETHOVEN 103

the revulsion against empty formalities was so strong
in him that he kept his hat tight on his head and
passed by on the other side.

Every lodging turned out worse than its pre-
decessor. Either the chimneys smoked, or the rain
came through the roof, or the chairs were rickety, or
the doors creaked on their hinges, or something else
interfered with the comfort of the occupant. And
then the servants — oh, the servants ! But really Beet-
hoven was over-exacting here. Nancy might indeed
be " too uneducated for a housekeeper," but surely the
fact of her telling a lie did not imply, as Beethoven
said it implied, that she could not make good soup.
"The cook's off again," he tells one of his corre-
spondents, who could hardly be surprised at the news
when he learned that Beethoven had punished the
cook for the staleness of the eggs by throwing the
whole batch, one by one, at her head. This habit of
throwing the dishes at the heads of domestics who
displeased him had its comic aspect for the onlookers,
but it cannot have been pleasant for the domestics.
And the waiters suffered too. On one occasion when
he was dining at a restaurant the waiter brought him
a wrong dish. Beethoven had no sooner uttered some
words of reproof (to which the offender retorted in no
very polite fashion) than he took the dish of stewed
beef and gravy and discharged it at the waiter's head.
The poor man was heavily loaded with plates full of
different viands, so that he could not move his arms.
The gravy meanwhile trickled down his face. Both he

104 MASTER MUSICIANS

and Beethoven swore and shouted, while the rest of
the party roared with laughter. At last Beethoven
himself joined in the merriment at the sight of the
waiter, who was hindered from uttering any more in-
vectives by the streams of gravy that found their way
into his mouth.

It was probably after the cook went " off again "
that Beethoven determined to try cooking for himself.
Early in the morning he went off to the market, and
the astonished neighbours saw him return home with
a loaf of bread and a piece of meat, while greens and
other vegetables peeped out of the pockets of his over-
coat. Now for a time he left off playing and writing
music, and devoted himself to the study of a popular
cookery book. One day, when he thought himself
sufficiently advanced in his new studies, he took it into
his head to invite his best friends to a dinner prepared
by himself. Everybody was naturally curious as to the
result, and the guests were punctual to the minute.
They found Beethoven busy in the kitchen with a
nightcap on his head and a white apron before him.

After considerable waiting, they at length sat down
to table. The composer himself was the waiter, but it
is impossible to picture the dismay of the visitors and
the horrors of that meal. A soup not unlike the famous
black porridge of the Spartans, in which floated some
shapeless and nondescript substances, a piece of boiled
beef as tough as shoe-leather, half-cooked vegetables,
a roast joint burnt to a cinder, and pudding like a lump
of soapstone swimming in train oil — such was the

BEETHOVEN AND HIS FRIENDS

HANFSTAENGL COLLECTION

THE DEAF BEETHOVEN 105

Beethoven dinner. The guests were unable to swallow
a morsel. Beethoven alone ate with a keen appetite,
praised every dish, and declared that the whole thing
was a gigantic success. When they got into the street
two hours afterwards with empty stomachs, his friends
gave vent to their hilarity, and never, we may be sure,
did they forget that Beethoven dinner.

The composer's behaviour to his pupils, even to
ladies, was often atrocious. He would sometimes tear
the music in shreds, and scatter it on the floor, or even
smash the furniture. Once when an aristocratic pupil
struck a wrong note he fled into the street without
taking his hat from the hall. If he did consent to play
in company he must have perfect silence and atten-
tion. On one occasion when this was denied him, he
rose from the keyboard declaring that he would no
longer play for " such hogs." He called Prince Lob-
kowitz an ass, and he called Hummel a " false dog."
In Mme. Ertmann's drawing-room he took up the
snuffers and used it as a tooth-pick.

As a conductor he was little more use than to raise
a laugh. We read that " now he would vehemently
spread out his arms ; then when he wanted to indicate
soft passages, he would bend down lower and lower
until he disappeared from sight. Then as the music
grew louder he would emerge, and at the fortissimo
he would spring up into the air." One time when play-
ing a concerto he forgot himself, jumped from his seat,
and began to conduct. At the very outset he knocked
the two candles from the piano. The audience roared.

106 MASTER MUSICIANS

Beethoven, quite beside himself, began the piece again.
The director now stationed a boy on each side of the
piano to hold the candles. The same scene was re-
enacted. One of the boys dodged the outstretched arm ;
the other, interested in the music, did not notice, and
received the full blow in the face, falling in a heap,
candle and all ! " The audience," says Siegfried, who
conducted, " broke out into a truly bacchanal howl of
delight, and Beethoven was so enraged that when he
started again, he smashed half a dozen strings at a
single chord." Such was this Colossus of music when
he lost his temper.

But he had a sense of humour, too, and now and
again would indulge in the most boyish of horse-play
and practical jokes. He could even make fun of his
troubles with servants. Writing to Holz a note of in-
vitation to dinner, he says : " Friday is the only day
on which the old witch, who certainly would have
burned two hundred years ago, can cook decently,
because on that day the devil has no power over her."
In one letter he has a sly dig at the Vienna musicians
when he tells of having made a certain set of variations
" rather difficult to play," that he may " puzzle some
of the pianoforte teachers here," who, he feels sure, will
occasionally be asked to play the said variations ! He
was often sarcastic to brother artists of a lesser order.
One day he found himself in the company of Himmel,
when he asked Himmel to extemporise on the piano.
After Himmel had played for some time, Beethoven
suddenly exclaimed: " Well, when are you going to

THE DEAF BEETHOVEN 107

begin in good earnest?" Himmel, who had no mean
opinion of his own powers, naturally started up in a
rage ; but Beethoven only added to his offence by
remarking to those present : " I thought Himmel
had just been preluding." In revenge for this insult,
Himmel shortly after played Beethoven a trick. Beet-
hoven was always eager to have the latest news from
Berlin, and Himmel took advantage of this curiosity
to write to him : " The latest piece of news is the in-
vention of a lantern for the blind." Beethoven was com-
pletely taken in by the childish joke, repeated it to his
acquaintances, and wrote to Himmel to demand full
particulars of the remarkable invention. The answer
received was such as to bring both the correspondence
and the friendship to a close. Beethoven never enjoyed
a joke at his own expense.

In this respect he did not always do to others as he
would have others do to him. A certain lady admirer
was very anxious to have a lock of Beethoven's hair.
A common friend undertook to approach the master
on the subject, and the result was that Beethoven sent
a tuft of hair cut from a goat's beard ! The lady was
overjoyed at possessing her treasure, but, unfortun-
ately, the secret soon leaked out. Her husband wrote
a letter of expostulation to Beethoven, who, conscious
of his offence, at once cut off a lock of his own hair,
and enclosed it in a note in which he asked the lady's
forgiveness for what had occurred. Even when he was
dying his sense of humour did not forsake him. When
he had to be " tapped," he remarked to the doctor :

io8 MASTER MUSICIANS

" Better water from the body than from the pen." Two
days before his death, Schindler, one of his biographers,
who was then with him, wrote to a friend : " He feels
that his end is near, for yesterday he said to Breuning
and me : ' Clap your hands, friends ; the play is over.'
He advances towards death with really Socratic wisdom
and unexampled equanimity."

And what a weary, tragic advance it had been, all
these years ! From the time of his deafness onwards,
he was constantly adding to the world's stores of the
highest and best in music, and the legacy we now
enjoy as the result of his genius is the most universal
gift of music that has ever come from human hand
and human head. The years, as they passed, brought
nothing very eventful ; and in December 1 826 Beet-
hoven found himself on a sick-bed, in great poverty,
and unable to compose a single line. On the afternoon
of March 26, 1827, he was seized with his last mortal
faintness. " Thick clouds were hanging about the sky ;
outside, the snow lay on the ground ; towards evening
the wind rose ; at nightfall a terrific thunderstorm
burst over Vienna, and whilst the storm was still raging,
the spirit of the sublime master departed." He died in
his fifty-seventh year, and was buried in the cemetery
of Wahring, near Vienna.

It was generally felt that a man of the most power-
ful character and of unique genius had been lost to the
world. And yet, to the public of that day, his music
was not a tithe of what it is to us now. Nay, we
can say more than that, for Beethoven is one of the

THE DEAF BEETHOVEN 109

few creators of art whom one, ever so blessed with
musical intelligence, may study for a lifetime and never
exhaust. Beethoven speaks a language no composer
before him had spoken, and treats of things no one had
dreamt of before. Yet it seems as if he were speaking
of matters long familiar in one's mother tongue — as
though he touched upon emotions one had lived
through in some former existence. The warmth and
depth of his ethical sentiment is now felt all the world
over, and it will ere long be universally recognised that
he has leavened and widened the sphere of human
emotions in a manner akin to that in which the con-
ceptions of great philosophers and poets have widened
the sphere of men's intellectual activity.

Beethoven might be described as the Carlyle of
music. Wagner said of him that he faced the world
with a defiant temperament, and kept an almost savage
independence. Like Carlyle, he detested sham, and
humbug, and conventionality above all things. He
believed that " a man's a man for a' that," whether he
be prince or plebeian, so that he be honest, and true,
and good. There is a capital story of him in connection
with the visit of a bumptious, ignorant brother who had
amassed a fortune and purchased a fine estate. The
brother had called when Beethoven was from home, and
had left a card inscribed " Johann van Beethoven, Land
Proprietor." This enraged the composer, who simply
wrote on the other side, "Ludwig van Beethoven, Brain
Proprietor," and returned the card without comment.

Of Beethoven's personal appearance we have several

i io MASTER MUSICIANS

descriptions. Thayer, his leading biographer, says he
was small and insignificant-looking, dark-complex-
ioned, pock-marked, black-eyed, and black-haired.
The hair was luxuriant, and when he walked in the
wind it gave him "a truly Ossianic and demoniac
appearance." His fingers were short and nearly all
of the same length. One lady said his forehead was
"heavenly." Another once pointed to it and exclaimed :
" How beautiful, how noble, how spiritual that brow ! "
Beethoven was silent for a moment and then said :
" Well, then, kiss this brow." Which she did. But per-
haps the best description is that of Sir Julius Benedict,
who met Beethoven in 1823. Sir Julius writes : " Who
could ever forget those striking features ? The lofty
vaulted forehead, with thick grey and white hair en-
circling it in the most picturesque disorder ; that square
lion's nose, that broad chin, that noble and soft mouth.
Over the cheeks, seamed with scars from the smallpox,
was spread high colour. From under the bushy, closely-
compressed eyebrows flashed a pair of piercing eyes.
His thick-set Cyclopean figure told of a powerful frame."
But who does not know that rugged-looking figure,
which reminded Weber of King Lear ? Truly a noble
face, with " a certain severe integrity and passionate
power and lofty sadness about it, seeming in its eleva-
tion and wideness of expression to claim kindred with
a world of ideas out of all proportion to our own." In
the world's portraiture of great men there is nothing
exactly like it

FRANZ SCHUBERT:
THE MASTER OF THE LIED

Schubert, too, wrote for silence ; half his work
Lay like a frozen Rhine till summers came
That warmed the grass above him. Even so
His music lives now with a mighty youth.

GEORGE ELIOT.

LlSZT called Schubert " the most poetical musician
that ever was." Schumann was equally complimentary.
He said that " Schubert's pencil was dipped in moon-
beams and in the flame of the sun." Further, that
" Schubert has tones for the most delicate shades of
feeling, thoughts, even accidents and occurrences of life.
Manifold though the passions and acts of men may be,
manifold is Schubert's music. That which his eye sees,
his hand touches, becomes transformed to music."
These tributes are the more significant that musicians
are so seldom complimentary to each other.

The tributes are not exaggerated either. And that
makes us think the more how pitiful it is that Schubert,
like Mozart, should have such a pathetic biography.
" My music," he once said, " is the product of my genius
and my poverty, and that which I have written in my
greatest distress is what the world seems to like the

ii2 MASTER MUSICIANS

best." Alas ! that is too often the case. As the poet
has said, " the anguish of the singer makes the beauty
of the strain." No doubt if Schubert had ordered his
life more regularly, if he had not been the incorrigible
Bohemian that he was, he would have fared better in
every way. But in that case we might not have had all
that glorious music from him.

It is not without meaning that he is put into this
book after Beethoven. When Schubert was in his
teens, he sighed and said : " Who can do anything
after Beethoven ? " Beethoven is usually spoken of as
Schubert's contemporary, but he was Schubert's senior
by twenty-seven years. Beethoven had achieved fame
before Schubert began to compose at all. It would have
been no wonder, then, if a mere lad, however gifted,
had felt somewhat despairing, especially as he lived in
the same town with the great master, and was always
hearinghis praises sounded. Butto Schubert Beethoven
really acted as a stimulus. A sight of him at a concert
seems to have made a great and lasting impression on
the younger man, who not long after dedicated a set
of pianoforte variations to his hero. It is said that, shy
as he was, he took this piece to Beethoven's lodgings,
hoping for an interview, but whether he saw Beethoven
at that time is uncertain. We know at any rate that
during Beethoven's last illness a collection of Schubert's
songs was placed in his hands, and that Beethoven,
after examining them, exclaimed : " Truly, Schubert
possesses the divine fire. Some day he will make a
noise in the world." When Beethoven's death was just

FRANZ SCHUBERT 113

at hand, Schubert stood with others for a long while
round his bed. The invalid was told the names of his
visitors, and made feeble signs to them with his hands.
Of Schubert he said : " Franz has my soul." At this
Schubert left the room overcome with emotion, for his
veneration of Beethoven amounted to something like
worship. Then, at the funeral, Schubert was one of the
thirty-eight torchbearers who stood around the grave.
After the interment, he adjourned with friends to a
tavern, where he filled two glasses of wine, drinking the
first to the memory of Beethoven, and the second to the
memory of him who should soonest follow Beethoven
to the grave. " Heaven from all creatures hides the
book of Fate," says the poet. It was to the departure
of his own spirit, little as he can have suspected it, that
Schubert thus drank, for in less than two years he was
laid in that same cemetery with Beethoven, the two
separated by only three graves.

It is almost superfluous to say that Franz Schubert
came of a lowly stock, for genius seldom flowers in high
places. His grandfather was a Moravian peasant, and
his father was an assistant in a village school when he
married at nineteen. He married a cook, as the fathers
of Haydn and Beethoven had done. There were four-
teen children of the marriage, but nine of them died,
leaving four sons and one daughter. The sons all
became teachers, like their father, and the daughter
married a teacher.

Franz Schubert, the fourth son who survived, was
born on January 31, 1797. His father was then parish

I

114 MASTER MUSICIANS

schoolmaster at Lichtenthal, a suburb of Vienna. He
was a poor man, and could give his boy nothing more
than a good education. " When Franz was five years
old," he wrote, " I prepared him for elementary instruc-
tion, and at six I sent him to school. He was always
the first among his fellow-students." Franz showed the
ruling passion very early, and his father was able to help
him here too. He ground him in the elements of music
and taught him the violin so well that at eight he could
take his part in easy duets.

But Franz Schubert was one of those rare and lucky
individuals who seem to attain without any effort what
costs others much toil and trouble. No instructor could
keep pace with him. Holzer, the parish choirmaster,
to whom he was sent for singing lessons, declared many
times, with tears in his eyes, that he never before had
such a pupil. When he prepared to teach him anything,
he found that he had already mastered it. " He has
harmony in his little finger," he said. " I cannot claim
to have given him any lessons. I simply talked with
him and looked at him in silent amazement." One of
his brothers started to teach him the piano, and was
himself outstripped within a month. All the same,
Schubert was never a good pianist, any more than
Wagner. His short, stubby fingers were not made for
great dexterity on the keyboard. He once attempted
to play his own Fantaisie (Op. 15) to some friends.
After breaking down twice, he jumped from the piano
in a towering rage, exclaiming : " The devil himself
couldn't play such stuff." When he did play, however,

FRANZ SCHUBERT 115

he played with wonderful expression — made the piano
sing like a bird, as some one said.

There could be only one future for such a boy. He
had a lovely treble voice, and so gained an easy entry
into the parish church choir, where, at the age of eleven,
he was both solo singer and solo violin. Then, in 1808,
his father got him a place in the choir school of the
Imperial Chapel, where he received a general as well as
a musical education. The other boy candidates, seeing
the fat, awkward little fellow, in his light-grey homespun
suit, took him for a miller's son and made fun of him.
But they repented of their impertinence when the
examiners called him up, and his clear pure voice rang
out in the well-known tunes.

Schubert's musical opportunities were now im-
mensely improved. There was a small orchestra in
the choir school, and by its performances he gradually
became acquainted with the works of the great masters.
At the very first practice he attracted the notice of the
leader, Von Spaun. Spaun heard behind him a violin
being played with unusual distinction, and on turning
round saw a little chap in spectacles. The two had a
talk at the end of the rehearsal. " I sometimes compose
music, but I cannot afford to buy paper ; do you think
you could help me ? " said Schubert to Spaun. Spaun
brought him some paper next day, and promised him
more. He little thought what he was letting himself
in for. At this time, and indeed all through his brief
career, Schubert's consumption of music paper was
something perfectly phenomenal.

u6 MASTER MUSICIANS

Just now he badly needed other things besides
music paper. A boys' school was not a paradise in
those days, even if the uniform was decorated with
gold lace. The youths were poorly fed, and Schubert
had a hearty appetite, with no money to supplement
the school fare. It is pathetically amusing to read his
plaints. Look, for instance, at the following letter to
his brother Ferdinand : " You know by experience
that a fellow would like at times a roll and an apple or
two, especially if, after a frugal dinner, he has to wait
for a meagre supper for eight hours and a half. The
few groschen that I receive from my father are always
gone to the devil the first day, and what am I to do
afterwards ? ' Those who hope will not be confounded,'
says the Bible, and I firmly believe it. Suppose, for
instance, you send me a couple of kreutzer a month ;
I don't think you would notice the difference in your
own purse, and I should live quite content and happy
in my cloister. St. Matthew says also that, ' Whoso-
ever hath two coats shall give one to the poor.' In the
meantime I trust you will lend your ear to the voice
crying to you incessantly to remember your poor
brother Franz, who loves and confides in you." Let
us hope that Ferdinand, who was a good fellow, gave
him what he asked for.

If Schubert was suffering physical hunger, he was
at least getting his musical hunger fairly appeased.
Very soon the school concert programmes were being
made up almost entirely of his works. Recitals of his
music were frequently given in his home, too, for

FRANZ SCHUBERT 117

brothers and father all played. His ear was quick to
detect an error, and he would say, with a modest
smile : " Herr Vater, you must be making a mistake
there." He was sent for harmony lessons to a musician
named Rucziszka. But here again the old story was
repeated. Rucziszka soon discovered that his pupil
knew more than himself. " God has been his teacher,"
he said. Then he went to Salieri, an Italian musician
who conducted the Imperial choir. Salieri had been
intimate with Mozart, and was falsely accused of
poisoning him. Schubert continued his lessons with
Salieri for a long time. But Salieri, too, was astounded
at his natural cleverness. " Schubert can do every-
thing," he exclaimed. " He is a genius. He composes
songs, masses, operas, string quartets, in fact anything
you like." And so he did.

At the choir school he neglected his general educa-
tion altogether in favour of music. His voice broke in
1813, and then, refusing an offer of further instruction
in the higher branches of learning, he left the school,
and faced the world, a youth of sixteen, with an income
to make for himself. Music was not to be thought
of as a profession just yet, for Schubert wanted to be
a composer, and publishers would not pay for works
by an untried hand. So Schubert went back to his
father's house and became his father's assistant —
another Schubert schoolmaster. Perhaps in taking
this course he desired to escape service in the army,
from which the teaching profession was exempt. In
any case, three years of school work sufficed for

u8 MASTER MUSICIANS

Schubert. He performed his duties regularly and con-
scientiously, but the drudgery was unspeakably irk-
some to him. He was a nervous, irritable teacher, and
dull or obstinate children suffered severely at his hands.
Even for teaching music he was not suited by either
temperament or training, but at least he did not break
up the chairs as Beethoven did, or, like Chopin, when
things went wrong, start up and ask if a dog had been
barking.

Circumstances like those we have been considering
would not seem highly favourable for the fertilising
of musical inspiration. But it is a fact that as a com-
poser Schubert was as prolific when he was toiling
away in his father's school as at any period of his life.
It was then that he wrote some of his finest songs, and
there were also dramatic works, masses, symphonies,
and miscellaneous pieces in sufficient number to have
served as the life work of any ordinary artist. It was
now that he composed the song which first made his
name famous — the " Erl King." Schubert had a per-
fect passion for German poetry, and set Schiller and
Goethe with a prodigality truly marvellous. Somebody
once said of him that if he had lived longer he would
have set the whole of German literature to music.

The story of the " Erl King " is worth telling.
Seated one afternoon in his little room, Schubert found
himself deep in the study of a volume of Goethe. He
came to the " Erl King," and as he read, every line
of the words seemed to flow into strange unearthly
music. The rushing sound of the wind and the terrors

FRANZ SCHUBERT 119

of the enchanted forest were instantly changed for
him into realities, and seizing a pen he dashed down
the song, as we have it now, in less time than an
expert would take to make a " fair " copy of it. And
here is as fitting a place as any other to say that
Schubert was prodigiously quick at composition.
Handel, Bach, Mozart, and Haydn wrote with ex-
treme rapidity, but nothing like Schubert. His ideas
flowed faster than he could set them down. He had
to read a poem only once or twice and its appropriate
musical expression came to him without further effort.
The biographers cite his record for 1815 in illustration.
That year he wrote half a dozen dramatic works, two
masses, two symphonies, a quantity of church and
chamber music, and nearly 150 songs. In one day
alone he composed seven songs. Think of the mere
labour of transferring all that to music paper. No
wonder Schubert sometimes failed to recognise his
own work. There is a story about a vocalist who once
tried over a Schubert song in the composer's presence.
" H'm ! pretty good song ; who wrote it ? " he asked.
And he wrote anywhere, too. Thus, he wrote his
beautiful morning song, " Hark ! hark ! the lark," on
the back of a bill of fare, amid all the stir and clatter
of a Viennese outdoor restaurant.

The " Erl King " was sung for the first time in
public in February 1819. Schubert had been trying
to get a publisher for it, but the publishers would not
look at it. The accompaniment was too difficult, they
said, and the composer was almost unknown. At

120 MASTER MUSICIANS

length the song was printed by subscription and pub-
lished on commission. A hundred copies were sub-
scribed for beforehand, and in nine months 800 copies
were sold.

This success proved the "entering wedge" for
Schubert. Publishers now began to have some faith
in the composer. He went on writing, and several of
his songs sold well. Had he been wise, he might now
have laid in a little fortune for himself. But he foolishly
parted with his compositions for the most trivial sums.
He gave one publisher over seventy songs, including
" The Wanderer," for 800 florins, and the firm, between
1822 and 1861, realised over 2700 florins from "The
Wanderer" alone. Some of the glorious songs in the
" Winterreise," composed in 1826, were actually thrown
away for less than a shilling apiece. In 1828 he got
only thirty florins for a piano quintet, and only twenty-
one florins for his splendid Trio in E flat.

There is a well-known anecdote bearing on this
Mozart-like helplessness and carelessness in business
matters. One of Schubert's boon companions was
Franz Lachner, afterwards music director at the Court
of Munich. Lachner took advantage of a fine summer
morning to ask Schubert to join a party of friends who
were going to make a trip into the country. Schubert
wished very much to accept, but having no money,
had to refuse. Lachner being also hard up, it made
the case very embarrassing. So Schubert gave Lachner
a portfolio of manuscript songs, asking him to sell
them ; for, he added, he had been so often to the pub-

SCHUBERT

HANKSTABNGL COLLECTION

FRANZ SCHUBERT 121

lisher that he dared not go again. The publisher proved
very angry, exclaiming, "More of Schubert's stuff!"
and stating very seriously that no one would buy
Schubert's songs. Finally, however, he gave way, and
bought all the manuscripts for five florins ! Very
happy, the two friends went on their trip, and finding
a spinet at the inn at which they stopped, Schubert
improvised some more songs, of which he received
the inspiration on the road. This was Franz Schubert
all over.

But we must get back to our narrative. We are to
consider Schubert liberated from school drudgery. This
he owed directly to a young Swede of some means,
Franz von Schober, who invited Schubert to come and
live with him, and pursue his art freely and uninter-
ruptedly. Schober was the best and most useful patron
he ever had. How happy he felt himself now may be
gathered from a letter he addressed to his brother
Ignaz, who was chafing under his toils as a teacher.
Ignaz wrote in reply : " You fortunate man ! How
you are to be envied ! You live in a sweet golden
freedom ; can give your musical genius free rein, can
express your thoughts as you please ; are loved, ad-
mired, idolized, while the rest of us are devoted, like
so many wretched beasts of burden, to all the brutalities
of a pack of wild youth, and, moreover, must be sub-
servient to a thankless public, and under the thumb
of a stupid priest."

Schober was able to introduce Schubert to several
influential artists, who were likely to be of use to him

122 MASTER MUSICIANS

in bringing his compositions before the world. Most
notable among them was the baritone singer Vogl,
who did much to popularise his lieder. Another help-
ful friend was the poet Mayrhofer, who wrote the words
of several of his songs. Mayrhofer and Schubert lived
together for two years, and it is the poet (who, by the
way, became insane, and committed suicide) who tells
us how they lived. " It was in a gloomy street. House
and room had suffered from the tooth of time ; the
roof was somewhat sunken, the light cut off by a great
building opposite ; a played-out piano, a small book-
case— such was the room which, with the hours we
spent there, can never pass from my memory."

Schubert was quite happy, even under these seem-
ingly uncongenial conditions. Still, he was not making
money; so when, in 1818, he was offered the post of
music-master in the house of Count John Esterhazy,
of the family whom Haydn had served, he eagerly
accepted it. This meant a winter home in Vienna and
a summer home in Hungary. But Schubert was a town
man, and he liked being away from Vienna as little
as Dr. Johnson liked being away from Fleet Street.
However, he found compensations even in the country.
Thus he writes of the household in which he is en-
gaged : "The cook is rather jolly; the ladies'-maid
is thirty ; the housemaid very pretty, often quite social ;
the nurse a good old soul ; the butler my rival. The
Count is rather rough ; the Countess haughty, yet with
a kind heart ; the Countesses nice girls." The Count-
esses were his young pupils. It is said that he cherished

FRANZ SCHUBERT 123

a hidden passion for the youngest, Caroline, a girl of
eleven when he first knew her.

Schubert was never a ladies' man, and this is the
only affair of the heart in which he was concerned. It
is rather curious, considering that he had the poetic and
imaginative qualities so profusely developed. But then
he was so awkward and so shy ; and, besides that, he
was not personally attractive. His leading biographer
says he was under the average height, round-backed
and round-shouldered, with plump arms and hands.
He had a round and puffy face, low forehead, thick
lips, bushy eyebrows, and a short, turned -up nose.
His eyes were fine, but they were hidden by spectacles,
which he wore even in bed. What hope could such a
man have of winning fair lady, and a Countess, too,
no less ? Of course Caroline Esterhazy could not marry
a poor musician in any case. But it is clear that, as
she grew up, she came to realise something of Schu-
bert's feelings toward her. She once asked him why
he did not dedicate one of his compositions to her.
" What would be the use ? " he said. " All that I do is
dedicated to you." The old flame kept burning in his
heart to the last, but Caroline Esterhazy soon forgot.

Schubert's connection with the Esterhazys continued
intermittently for several years. His material needs
were fairly satisfied ; but his professional prospects
somehow refused to brighten. True, his songs were
making an impression ; but he wanted to do bigger
things — operas, and symphonies, and the like — and mer-
cenary managers and publishers would venture nothing

124 MASTER MUSICIANS

unless assured of a substantial profit. Naturally jovial
and optimistic, Schubert was not easily cast down, but
ill-luck, combined with a monotonous existence, at
length weighed on his spirits and hurt his health. " I
feel myself the most unhappy, the most miserable man
on earth," he writes ; " a man whose most brilliant
hopes have come to nothing ; whose enthusiasm for
the beautiful threatens to vanish altogether." He de-
clares that he goes to sleep every night, hoping never
to waken again. In one letter he says : " Picture to
yourself a man whose health can never be re-established,
who from sheer despair makes matters worse instead
of better ; picture to yourself, I say, a man whose most
brilliant hopes have come to nothing, to whom the happi-
ness of proffered love and friendship is but anguish,
whose enthusiasm for the beautiful (an inspired feel-
ing at least) threatens to vanish altogether, and then
ask yourself if such a condition does not represent a
miserable and unhappy man?" Beethoven used to
write like that, too, but though his condition was more
pitiable, he bore his misfortunes with more dignity. He
still retained faith in his art, and that sustained him.

Nothing occurred for a time to mark the course of
Schubert's life beyond the appearance of fresh com-
positions. He made applications for several fixed
appointments, but was always defeated. Even if he had
been successful, it is doubtful if his inherent love of
change, his independent spirit, and his free untutored
manner would have allowed him to keep a routine post
for any length of time. In any case, it mattered little

FRANZ SCHUBERT 125

now, for the end was approaching. The old experience
was about to be repeated. Publishers were becoming
more pleasant and encouraging, and money was com-
ing in a little more freely. But it was too late.

In 1827 Beethoven died, and we have seen what
was Schubert's part in that connection. One evening
in the October of 1828, when supping with some friends
at a tavern, he suddenly threw down his knife and fork,
protesting that the food tasted like poison. His nerves
had become overstrained, the constitution was under-
mined. They got him home, and he took to his bed,
feeling, as he said, no actual pain, but great weakness
and depression. Shortly after, he wrote to his kind
friend Schober : " I am ill. I have neither eaten nor
drunk anything for eleven days, and shift, weak and
weary, from my chair to my bed and back again."
This could not last. The illness assumed a graver
form, and there was a consultation of doctors. " What
is going to happen to me ? " he plaintively asked his
brother Ferdinand. Delirium set in. He imagined that
Beethoven was in the room ; then he imagined that his
quarters were changed, and he was miserable because
Beethoven was not there. Then, temporarily recover-
ing his senses, he turned to the doctor and said, slowly
and earnestly, " Here is my end." With that he shifted
in bed, turning his face to the wall. And so, on the ipth
of November 1828, this greatest of lyric geniuses went
out into the Eternal Silence, dead at the early age of
thirty-one.

What followed is almost too sad to tell. It is cal-

iz6 MASTER MUSICIANS

culated that Schubert had never made more than £100
a year. At any rate, he died leaving not enough to pay
the expenses of his funeral. His father and the rest of
the family were poor enough too. It cost seventy florins
to remove the body to Wahring cemetery — "a large
sum, a very large sum," said brother Ferdinand, " but
very little for the honour of Franz's resting-place."
Yes, the honour ! But the official inventory of poor
Schubert's possessions may be quoted as showing how
Vienna and the world had repaid him for his priceless
creations. Here it is : Three dress coats, three walk-
ing coats, ten pairs of trousers, nine waistcoats, one hat,
five pairs of shoes, three pairs of boots, four shirts, nine
neckties and pocket handkerchiefs, thirteen pairs of
socks, one towel, one sheet, two bed cases, one mattress,
one bolster, one quilt. At the end of the inventory
was put " a quantity of old music " — and the total
value was set down at fifty shillings.

It is suggestive, as Mr. Joseph Bennett has said, to
contrast this beggarly account with the honours since
laid upon Schubert's tomb and hung around his
memory. Looking at the large space now filled in the
world by the man who died worth only fifty shillings,
and with a fame that scarcely extended beyond Vienna,
we see how small and insignificant a part of the real
life of genius is that which we call life. And the moral
of the whole is this :

We live in deeds, not years, in thoughts, not breaths,
In feelings, not in figures on a dial.
We should count time by heart throbs. He most lives
Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best !

FRANZ SCHUBERT 127

Over Schubert's grave are inscribed the words :
" Here lies buried a rich treasure, but still fairer hopes '
— a sentiment only half true. As Schumann said, it
was enough to make the first declaration without adding
the second. For some reason or other Schubert's re-
mains were afterwards disturbed, the Musical Society
having obtained permission to take up the bones of both
masters — Schubert and Beethoven — to measure them,
and phrenologists were called in to feel the bumps.
The remains were afterwards with all honour carried
through the streets of Vienna in pompous procession
— that poor man who could not afford 8d. to buy a
dinner when he was alive — and buried with those ot
Beethoven and quite a constellation of great masters
in the Central Cemetery.

Franz Schubert was the most lovable of men, and
made heaps of friends in his own class. To outsiders
his manner was shy and retiring, awkward almost to
clownishness. He did not invite notice, and he received
little. In reply to a lady's apology for neglect on one
occasion, he said : " It is nothing, madame, I am used
to it." However unattractive his exterior may have
been, the spiritual and hidden part of the man was
nobly and abundantly endowed. There was in him a
total absence of jealousy ; he had a sweet temper, was
high-minded, and an enthusiastic worshipper of nature
and the art which was sacred to him. He had some-
thing of the boyishness of Mozart, and indulged in
many juvenile buffooneries. For instance, he would
often "sing" the " Erl King" through a fine-toothed

iz8 MASTER MUSICIANS

comb. There is a general impression that he drank to
excess, but the world is too prone to exaggerate a
failing of that kind. That Schubert was devoted to
the beer jug there is no use denying. But he could
never be called a drunkard. The weakness was entirely
the result of his liking for genial society ; and it can-
not have been so pronounced after all, otherwise he
could never, in his short life, have produced the enor-
mous number of compositions that he did.

Assuming that he began writing when he was six-
teen or seventeen, while he died at thirty-one : during
that time he filled what now, in his complete published
works, make up forty-one folio volumes, including the
extraordinary total of 605 songs. He wrote songs by
the sheaf, as one would gather corn in harvest. But he
spread himself over the whole range of his art — operas,
cantatas, masses, symphonies, quartets, chamber music
of all kinds. Verily, as Schumann said, " he has done
enough." He is, beyond all question, the most fertile
and original melodist that ever lived, and he is the
first of the great song-writers in rank as well as in
time. The German folk-song found in him its highest
and finest ennoblement ; through him, the genuine
German native singer, came the ancient folk-song into
life again, purified and transfigured by art.

ROBERT SCHUMANN:
COMPOSER, EDITOR, AND ESSAYIST

Endeavour to play easy pieces well and beautifully ; that is
better than to play difficult pieces indifferently well. When you
play, never mind who listens to you. Play always as if in the
presence of a master. — SCHUMANN.

THE year 1809 has been called a wonderful birth year.
And so it was, for it gave us Tennyson and Mendels-
sohn and Darwin and Edgar Allan Poe and Oliver
Wendell Holmes and Mrs. Browning and Gladstone
and Abraham Lincoln. But the years 1810 and 1811
were not less remarkable, in the history of music at
least. During that period, Chopin, Liszt, Heller,
Thalberg, and Henselt were all born. And Robert
Alexander Schumann, with very good judgment, made
himself one of the distinguished company by coming
into the world on the 8th of June 1810.

The birthplace was Zwickau, a quaint little town
in Saxony, with tall, picturesque houses, and broad,
grass-grown streets. The father was a bookseller and
publisher there. He was, by the composer's descrip-
tion, " a very active and intelligent man, noted for his
pocket edition of foreign classics ; for many important

129 K

130 MASTER MUSICIANS

business works ; and for a translation of several of
Byron's poems, published shortly before his death."
He educated his boy, as the boy himself puts it,
" lovingly and carefully." But unfortunately he and
the mother — the mother especially — had set their hearts
on making a lawyer of him. Thus, though Schumann
early showed a love for music, his studies were
checked not only by lack of home sympathy, but by
actual hindrance. Music was regarded by these people
as " a precarious living." Schumann had a very tender
regard for his mother, and the knowledge that the
exercise of his musical talent to any serious purpose
was against her wish proved the reverse of inspiring.
Moreover, such law studies as he undertook bent his
mind somewhat into the groove which studies of that
kind create. He could not be wholly uninfluenced by
their narrowing effect, and much as he hated them,
they contributed to the suppression of his emotional
capabilities. This much he realised himself when he
wrote that the law turns its devotee " into gristle and
freezes him into ice, so that no follower of fancy will
any longer yearn for the springtime of the world."

It was in pursuance of bookseller Schumann's
idea that the future composer was sent in 1828 to
study law at Leipzig University. The intention was
that he should later complete his course at Heidelberg.
But before this could be fully carried out, the book-
seller died, and the embryo lawyer, who had been
scribbling music more or less from his twelfth year,
began to take to it more seriously. Like Wagner, he

ROBERT SCHUMANN 131

had shown a strong tendency towards literature, and
wrote blood and thunder plays, which were produced
by his chums under his direction. He wrote poems,
too, some of which he subsequently set to music.
Further, when only fourteen, he helped his father to
prepare a "Picture Gallery of the most Famous Men of
all Nations and Times." In all this we already see the
future editor, essayist, and letter-writer ; for Schumann
was all that, in addition to being a composer.

At any rate, he would have nothing more to do with
the law, with " chilling jurisprudence " and its " ice-cold
definitions." That was his final decision, arrived at while
he was still in Leipzig. He hated Leipzig. " Leipzig
is a horrid hole, where one cannot enjoy life," he said.
" It is far easier to make progress in the art of spending
money than in the lecture-rooms." Apparently money
was scarce with him about this time, though later on
he fell heir to a modest competency, which relieved
him from total dependence on his earnings by music.
" For two weeks I have not had a shilling," he wrote
one November day to his mother. " I owe Wieck 20
thalers, and Liihe 30, and I am actually living like a
dog." His hair was " a yard long," yet he could not
afford to have it cut. For a fortnight he had been
obliged to wear white cravats, his black ones were so
shabby. His piano is unbearably out of tune. He
cannot even shoot himself, because he has no money
to buy pistols.

The reference to Wieck is a trifle " previous."
Schumann had just abandoned the law when he fell

132 MASTER MUSICIANS

in with Heinrich Dorn and with Friedrich Wieck. The
first, who was conductor of the opera and a notable
figure in musical Leipzig, he immortalised by studying
composition with him ; and the second he honoured, as
we shall see, by marrying his daughter Clara. Wieck
was the leading piano professor in Leipzig, and
Schumann had now determined upon being a virtuoso
of the keyboard. Even when pretending to study law,
he would often practise the piano for seven hours a
day. Now he placed himself under Wieck's tuition.
Unluckily, the obstinate stiffness of that third finger
which gives trouble to all pianists, set Schumann un-
loosening and developing the sinews by a mechanical
invention of his own. The contrivance was simple
enough — a cord through a pulley fastened to the ceil-
ing of his room. By this means he could draw back
his finger at will, and prevent it moving while the
other fingers played. As Ambros remarks, the device
was a good illustration of the saying that a man is
liable to break his neck if he jumps through a window
in order to get down quicker than by the stairway. It
was not only unsuccessful : it caused permanent injury
to the hand, so that in the end Schumann had to
abandon altogether the idea of being a great pianist.

The disappointment arising from this unexpected
shattering of his ambitions must have been intense.
But we, who know the after history, know that music
gained in a higher walk what it lost in a lower. The
player leaves behind him, after all, little more than a
memory amongst those who may have heard him ;

ROBERT SCHUMANN 133

the great composer is remembered not alone by the
age in which he writes but by all time. Still, one can-
not help sympathising with Schumann in his dis-
comfiture. Nor was it the only thing that seriously dis-
turbed him about this date. He had fallen passionately
in love with Clara Wieck, " one of the most glorious
girls the world has ever seen " (so, in his rapture, he
described her); but Clara's father, while willing to
retain him as a pupil, would not hear of him for a
son-in-law. He had higher ambitions for his prodigy
daughter. Imagine the prosaic fellow writing thus
to Schumann : " I don't quite know what I mean to do
with Clara, but, — hearts ! what do I care about hearts ? "
Aye, but hearts have a way of asserting themselves !

Clara Wieck had already, as a child of ten, made a
sensation as a pianist, and we can readily understand
how Schumann would be drawn to her while he was
himself hopeful of posing as a player. In the Auto-
biography of Moscheles there are frequent references
to meetings with Schumann at the house of the Wiecks,
and Clara's playing is spoken of as " superb, and void
of all affectation." It was lucky for Schumann that
Clara Wieck was as much in love with him as he was
with her. In the meantime they resolved to wait,
hoping that old Wieck would relent. He did not re-
lent. At first Schumann took it philosophically, re-
marking that the delay had at least this advantage,
that they would gain a better knowledge of each other
— a knowledge that to most people usually came after
marriage.

134 MASTER MUSICIANS

Two years went by, and Wieck still remained un-
yielding. Then, as a last resource, Schumann called
in the aid of the law ; for in Germany, if a father
refuses to let his daughter marry, he can be forced to
say why. The case dragged on for a whole year, but
at length the courts decided that Wieck's objections
were trivial, and the marriage took place in September
1840, when the bride was twenty-one and the bride-
groom thirty. Schumann felt perfectly justified in the
step he had taken. " We are young," he wrote ; " we
have our fingers, power, reputation. I have, moreover,
a modest property, which brings me 300 thalers a year ;
the profits of the Journal are almost as much, and my
compositions are well paid for." Happy man among
great composers, to be able to begin married life under
such rosy auspices !

Robert Schumann and Clara Wieck are not only
the ideal lovers of musical history, but their story is
worthy of a high place in the love literature of the
world. There is nothing more earnest and noble, from
Heloise and Abelard to Paul and Virginia. A more
satisfactory union has seldom been recorded. During
the courtship, Schumann told his fiancee that "we will
lead a life of poetry and blossom, and we will play
and compose together like angels, and bring gladness
to mankind." That was pretty much what they did
— until the shadow fell. Schumann said to Mendels-
sohn that his wife was "a gift from heaven." And
such she proved herself. The loftiness of her character
was never more clearly shown than when she took up

ROBERT SCHUMANN 135

the burden of life after the great tragedy which sent
her husband with clouded mind into confinement, leav-
ing her with the cares of a young family. While they
were together they lived for one another, and for their
children, of whom there were eight in all. He created
and wrote for his wife and in accordance with her
temperament, while she looked upon it as her highest
privilege to give to the world the most perfect interpreta-
tion of his works for the piano. She had a long widow-
hood of forty years, and during all that time she devoted
herself to the popularising of her husband's works.

To return from this anticipation of events. Dis-
appointed in his hopes of becoming a great pianist,
Schumann took to composition as a congenial alterna-
tive. During the courtship period his imaginative mind
received many happy inspirations, which found an out-
let mostly in vocal pieces. In the year of his marriage
alone, he wrote no fewer than 1 30 songs, some of them
the finest things he ever did in that line. Larger works,
such as symphonies and concertos, he also tried at
this time ; but only the lesser works of the period for
piano have survived. It was but natural that his first
successes should be for the instrument which he knew
best. As a matter of fact, his sympathy for the piano
continued to the end, and much of his best music is
in the form of highly imaginative pieces for it. Most of
them belong to the same order as Mendelssohn's "Songs
without Words," but they are far more characteristic
and original, and more poetical and romantic. The
standard of his ideas was so high, and his treatment

136 MASTER MUSICIANS

of the instrument so rich in colour, that he raised this
branch of art to a point which it had never attained
before, and left a mass of genuine lyrics, the most
enduring and enjoyable of all the thousands of such
works which the nineteenth century produced.

Early in his career as a composer, Schumann was
drawn into literary work on behalf of music. Musicians
are seldom good writers, but Schumann, like Wagner
and Berlioz, was a brilliant exception. In fact we must
regard him always in the double character of composer
and writer. He had been much impressed with the low-
ness of public taste in music, as well as by the badness
of musical criticism ; and with the view of remedying
matters he started the New Journal of Music, which
came to be mainly instrumental in bringing into notice
Chopin, Berlioz, Weber, Brahms, Henselt, and other
rising musicians of the time. As editor of this publica-
tion, which by the way still lives, Schumann exercised
a very powerful influence, and established himself as
a keen and incisive thinker and a master of literary
style.

Editing a journal is hard work under any circum-
stances, but it is doubly hard when a man's whole soul
and most of his time are given to it. Schumann was in
this position during all the ten years of his editorship,
with the consequence that he composed very little. In-
deed he was so absorbed in his writing that Mendels-
sohn is declared to have scarcely thought of him as a
composer at all, but only as a literary man. By and
by, however, a flood of works for the piano came forth,

SCHUMANN

HANFSTAENGL COLLECTION

ROBERT SCHUMANN 137

many of them among his finest compositions — such as
the great Fantasia in C, the Humoreske, Novelletten,
Fantasiestiicke^ and other pieces. Immediately after
this he took to symphony writing, and in one year
produced three of his most important works in that
department, notably the Symphony in B flat which he
wrote with a pen he had found lying on Beethoven's
grave. It was his fancy to imagine that the pen had
been accidentally dropped by Schubert. Then he took
up chamber music, and wrote the famous Quintet for
piano and strings and the Quartet for a similar com-
bination, both of which have gained an enviable popu-
larity. Afterwards he struck out in yet another line,
and tried choral composition. Taking Moore's " Lallah
Rookh " as the basis of his text, he produced a delight-
ful cantata, Paradise and the Peri, which is not so well
known as it should be.

It was about this time that his health began to give
way. He had overtaxed his strength ; for besides com-
position and literary work he had been acting as
Mendelssohn's coadjutor in the new Conservatorium
at Leipzig. His professorship here greatly worried him,
for, like most geniuses, he had no aptitude for teach-
ing, and the continual listening to music indifferently
performed worked on his nerves. The trouble began
to manifest itself rather seriously in loss of musical
memory, sleeplessness, and strange, uncanny imagin-
ings. " Everything affects and exhausts me," he said.
There was a vein of hypochondria in his family, and
a sister had died at twenty of an incurable melancholy.

138 MASTER MUSICIANS

He moved to Dresden for quiet, but the quiet only
made his habits of silence and abstraction more pro-
nounced, and his health never fully returned. He got
a little better about 1 846, and began to compose again
with something of his old ardour. The great Symphony
in C, and the famous Concerto for piano both belong
to this period, and the opera of Genoveva followed
somewhat later. The stay at Dresden (where he met
Wagner) continued until 1849, when political disturb-
ances necessitated a removal. Presently we find him
in Diisseldorf as conductor of an important orchestra.
But this post proved equally intractable with the
Leipzig professorship. Schumann was too shy, if not too
morose, to make a satisfactory conductor. At rehearsals
he often praised when he should have blamed ; and
if mistakes happened after repeated trials, he simply
got angry without explaining the cause of his temper.

Although a faithful friend, Schumann was eminently
unsociable, and his reserve became more and more
marked as the years went on. He knew this himself.
Once when an old acquaintance wrote that he meant
to call on him, Schumann answered : " I shall be
delighted to see you, but there is not much to be had
from me. I hardly speak at all — in the evening more,
and most at the piano." He once asked another friend
to go with him for lunch to a restaurant in the suburbs,
and during the walk there and back, about a mile each
way, the only remark he made was about the fine
weather. Henriette Voigt, an amateur friend, tells
how, after she and the composer had been enjoying

ROBERT SCHUMANN 139

music together one lovely evening, they went out in
a boat. And there they sat, side by side, for over
an hour, without either speaking a word. When they
parted, Schumann said, with a pressure of the hand
that betokened his feelings : "To-day we have perfectly
understood one another." Still another incident in
illustration is reported by Dr. Hanslick, who writes :
"Wagner expressed himself thus to me in 1846:
Schumann is a highly gifted musician but an impossible
man. When I came from Paris I went to see him. I
related my Parisian experiences, spoke of the state
of music in France, then of that in Germany ; spoke
of literature and politics, but he remained as good
as dumb for over an hour. One cannot go on talk-
ing quite alone." It is only fair, however, to give
Schumann's version of the same interview : " I have
seldom met Wagner, but he is a man of education
and spirit ; he talks, however, unceasingly, and that
one cannot endure for very long together." In other
words, Wagner talked so incessantly as to give
Schumann no chance of speaking.

Meanwhile, there were ominous signs of returning
mental disturbance. At Diisseldorf things became so
unsatisfactory that Schumann's engagement was ter-
minated, and in a way that left a painful impression
on his mind. A concert tour in Holland, which he
undertook with his wife, brought back some of the old
pleasure in life, but hallucinations of a strange kind
continued to haunt him at intervals to such an extent
that he even wished to be taken to an asylum. He

140 MASTER MUSICIANS

was afraid to live above the ground floor, or to go to
a height in any building, in case he might suddenly be
tempted to throw himself down.

In 1853 the darkness further deepened. " He began
to attend spiritualistic stances, and imagined that
Beethoven was trying to communicate with him by
four knocks on the table. He fancied himself haunted
by Schubert, who begged him to finish the ' Unfinished
Symphony ' ; he imagined that the note ' A ' was
always sounding in his ears, and gradually whole com-
positions seemed to grow above this continual organ
point." Curiously enough, it was this same delusion
about hearing a single note that drove the Bohemian
composer Smetana mad, after making the note the
foundation of one of his compositions. Schumann
thought that spirits brought him musical themes ;
and in February 1854 he wrote down one of these
themes, which Brahms afterwards "set " as piano varia-
tions, ending with a funeral march. Then came one
of those dreadful lucid intervals, in which he realised
that he was going crazy. His malady became more
and more serious, and during a severe attack he tried
to commit suicide by throwing himself into the Rhine.
He was rescued just in time by some passing boat-
men, but the shock was too severe, and he had to be
placed in a private asylum at Endenich, near Bonn.

He made occasional improvements, and was able
to see friends and enjoy their company. Sad to say,
however, his wife was forbidden to visit him, for it
seemed to excite his emotions too greatly to see her.

ROBERT SCHUMANN 141

Yet it was in the arms of that noble, loving wife that
he breathed his last, after two mournful years of seclu-
sion, on the 29th of July 1856. He was buried at Bonn,
the birthplace of Beethoven, and over his grave stands
a superb monument, subscribed for by a wide circle of
friends and admirers. His old intimate, Ferdinand
Hiller, inconsolable for his loss, wrote a panegyric
which may fittingly be transcribed :

Thou didst rule with a golden sceptre over a splendid
world of tones, and thou didst work therein with power and
freedom. And many of the best gathered round thee, in-
trusted themselves to thee, inspired thee with their inspiration,
and rewarded thee with their deep affection. And what a
love adorned thy life ! A wife, gifted with a radiant crown of
genius, stood at thy side, and thou wert to her as the father
to daughter, as bridegroom to bride, and as master to
disciple, and as saint to the elect. And when she could not
be with thee and remove every stone from before thy feet,
then didst thou feel, in the midst of dreams and sorrows,
her protecting hand from the distance ; and when the Angel
of Death had pity on thee, and drew nigh to thy anguished
soul, in order to help it again toward light and freedom, in
thy last hours thy glance met hers ; and reading the love in
her eyes, thy weary spirit fled.

It is said that Schumann's mental disease was
chiefly attributable to the formation of bony masses in
the brain. There is an affecting story of Brahms going
to see him at Endenich, when he heard him ask for a
Bible. The physicians refused his request, choosing to
read it as a convincing evidence of brain trouble !
" Those fellows," said Brahms, " did not know that
we North Germans want the Bible every day, and
never let a day pass without it."

142 MASTER MUSICIANS

Schumann's personal appearance is familiar through
his portraits. One of his biographers gives this descrip-
tion of him towards the close of his life :

Robert Schumann was of middling stature, almost tall,
and slightly corpulent. His bearing, while in health, was
haughty, distinguished, dignified, and calm ; his gait slow,
soft, and a little slovenly. He often paced the room on tip-
toe, apparently without cause. His eyes were generally
downcast, half-closed, and only brightened in intercourse
with intimate friends, but then most pleasantly. His counte-
nance produced an agreeable, kindly impression ; it was
without regular beauty, and not particularly intellectual.
The fine-cut mouth, usually puckered as if to whistle, was,
next to the eyes, the most attractive feature of his round,
full, ruddy face. Above the heavy nose rose a high, bold,
arched brow, which broadened visibly at the temples. His
head, covered with long, thick, dark-brown hair, was firm,
and intensely powerful — one might say square.

This is not very flattering, to say the least. Sir Stern-
dale Bennett, who had met him in Leipzig, was more
amusing, if less particular as to detail, when he wrote :

Herr Schumann is a first-rate man,
He smokes as ne'er another can ;
A man of thirty, I suppose,
Short is his hair, and short his nose.

As a man, Schumann was kind-hearted and gener-
ous and devoid of all professional jealousy. It was
only his fits of excessive depression and gloomy fore-
boding, his reserve and his extreme irritability — all
born of the brain trouble — that prevented him from
making friends more readily than he did. He once
wrote to Clara Wieck : " I am often very leathery, dry,
and disagreeable, and laugh much inwardly." And

ROBERT SCHUMANN 143

again : " Inwardly I acknowledge the most trifling
favour, understand every hint, every subtle trait in
another's heart, and yet I so often blunder in what I
say and do." One of the best features in his character
was his fondness for young people, as indeed his
famous Album for the Young would suggest. There is a
pretty story of a little piece of funning he practised on
his own children when, meeting them one day on the
street, he pretended not to know who they were.
Whatever his outward manner, his heart was in the
right place.

It is only within comparatively recent years that
Schumann has attained anything like world -wide
recognition. He said of his own time that if he had
not made himself feared as an editor he would never
have got his works published. They were considered
" dry, eccentric, heavy, out of rule." We look upon
them rather differently now. Schumann's music, to use
a common phrase, is of the kind that grows upon one.
From its sheer originality, it is mostly difficult, some-
times even impossible, to grasp its full meaning at
first. Not only are the passages so novel and unusual
as to render the task of sight-playing more than
ordinarily hard ; but even when the notes are mastered,
the whole beauty of the thought does not always strike
the player. The music must be studied carefully and
heard repeatedly to be fully appreciated. Wagner
sneeringly said that " Schumann has a tendency to-
wards greatness." But in his own line Schumann is just
as great as Wagner is in his line. Liszt may have

144 MASTER MUSICIANS

exaggerated when he called him " the greatest music-
thinker since Beethoven " ; but we can all agree with
Liszt when he says : " The more closely we examine
Schumann's ideas, the more power and life do we dis-
cover in them ; and the more we study them, the more
we are amazed at the wealth and fertility which had
before escaped us." Schumann has now gained a secure
hold among music-lovers, and it is probable that he
will live when some of his contemporaries who passed
him on the road to popular favour have been all but
forgotten.

FELIX MENDELSSOHN : SINGER OF THE
"SONGS WITHOUT WORDS"

Few instances can be found in history of a man so amply gifted
with every good quality of mind and heart ; so carefully brought
up amongst good influences ; endowed with every circumstance
that would make him happy ; and so thoroughly fulfilling his
mission. Never perhaps could any man be found in whose life
there were so few things to conceal and to regret. — SIR GEORGE
GROVE.

IT is a proverb that names go by contraries. But
proverbs are not always true. Mendelssohn's Christian
name was Felix, and what Berlioz said of Mendelssohn's
godson, Felix Moscheles, might truly be said of Men-
delssohn himself : " So long as thou art Felix, that is,
happy, thou shalt reckon on many friends." Mendels-
sohn stands as the type of the fortunate composer :
" rich, talented, courted, petted, loved, even adored."
His path was practically " roses, roses all the way."
He never knew the cares that beset the lives of
Beethoven, Mozart, Schubert, Wagner, and Schumann.
The fires of adversity never touched him.

Whom the gods love, die young, it is said. That
distinction Mendelssohn also enjoyed, and it gives an
additional glamour to his personality. He was one of
the most blameless characters in the whole history of

145 L

146 MASTER MUSICIANS

music. His aunt declared that during his whole careei
she failed to recall a word or deed that could be
criticised. Lampadius, one of his biographers, em-
phasises this. He says : " Living in loose capitals and
surrounded by unprincipled people, he was true to all
moral obligations, and perfect in all the relations of
son, brother, lover, husband, and father. Surrounded
by intriguers, he stood above them all, and was frank,
transparent, honourable, noble ; tempted by his sunny,
enthusiastic, alert nature to do simply bright and
genial things in music, he was thorough, studious,
earnest, religious, and steadfastly consecrated to the
highest and the best." Such was Felix Mendelssohn,
the composer of Elijah^ the man who conceived the
" Songs without Words."

Mendelssohn's father used to say : " Formerly 1
was the son of my father : now I am the father of my
son." This meant that he was himself of no account,
whereas his father and his son were famous. And that
was true. For Mendelssohn's grandfather was the
once distinguished scholar and philosopher, Moses
Mendelssohn. Moses was a Jew, and suffered all the
disabilities which the Jews suffered at that time. He was
small and hump-backed, too. And he was very poor ;
so poor that at one time his sole food was a weekly
loaf, on which he carefully marked off his day's allow-
ance, in case he should be tempted to forestall to-
morrow's meal. But he had pluck and perseverance,
and he rose to a high position. Here is a story of him.
He had applied for the post of Court chaplain, and

FELIX MENDELSSOHN 147

the Emperor told him that his success would depend
upon the extempore sermon he should preach from a
text given him when he was in the pulpit. At the
critical moment Moses found that he had got a blank
sheet of paper, but he did not lose his presence of mind,
and very soon warmed up to an eloquent discourse on
the creation of the world from nothing !

This, then, was the composer's grandfather. His
father, Abraham Mendelssohn, was a banker who had
improved his already good position in Hamburg by
marrying a lady of property. The first fruit of the
union was a daughter named Fanny ; the second was
the future musician, Jakob Ludwig Felix, born at
Hamburg on the 3rd of February 1809. Shortly after
his birth, Hamburg fell into the hands of the French,
and the family fled to Berlin, where the banking busi-
ness was continued. By this date Abraham Mendels-
sohn had realised the practical inconveniences of
being a Jew ; so he decided to bring up his family as
Protestant Christians. At the same time he added
the name of his wife's family, Bartholdy, to his own,
desiring to be known by that rather than by so obvi-
ously Jewish a name as Mendelssohn. He tried to get
his son to call himself Felix M. Bartholdy, that is, to
drop the Mendelssohn altogether. The son declined,
but he compromised by writing the full name, Felix
Mendelssohn-Bartholdy. To-day no one thinks of
using the double-barrelled name. Mendelssohn does
not belong to Judaism, but to the world.

Felix and Fanny, most loving of brothers and sisters,

148 MASTER MUSICIANS

were both musical. They remind one of Mozart and
his sister. The mother was their first instructor, and it
is delightful to read of her sitting beside them while
they practised, and wondering at what she called their
" Bach-fugue fingers." Fanny at first showed gifts equal
to her brother, and Mendelssohn used to say that she
played better than himself. But, like most girls, she
" wentand got married,"and music lost what might have
been a modestly rich inheritance. When the mother's
teaching limits were reached, a couple of masters were
called in, one for piano, another for theory. The theory
master was Zelter, who had been a pupil of Bach. But
so far, Mendelssohn, like his sister, was simply taking
music as one of the adjuncts of a liberal education.
There was as yet no idea of his making a profession
of it. Abraham Mendelssohn only wanted to clothe
his children with the essentials of general culture, and
music had to be included.

In course of time, however, the boy declared em-
phatically for music as a profession. The father hesi-
tated, though he had really been encouraging Felix
all along, especially with music-makings in the home,
when the boy would conduct the improvised orchestra.
He would not rely on his own judgment, anyway. He
would take the boy to Paris, and consult Cherubini
about him. This was in 1825. "The lad is rich," said
Cherubini ; " he will do well in music. I myself will
talk to him, and then he will do well." The " and then "
is delectable, and just expresses the character of Cheru-
bini, whom Mendelssohn compared with an extinct vol-

FELIX MENDELSSOHN 149

cano covered with ashes and occasionally belching forth
flames. However, it settled the matter for Mendelssohn.
Very soon the stream of composition was running freely,
and the young artist was working away at the pro-
fession of his life. The first really notable work that
came from his pen was the overture to the Midsummer
Nighfs Dream, written when he was only seventeen.
For neatness of expression, freshness of invention,
management of form, and delicacy and finish of orches-
tration, Mendelssohn never surpassed this early work.
It took him the best part of a year to write it, but
surely it was a year well spent.

His life went on somewhat uneventfully for years
after this ; and when 1829 came his parents sent him
off to England on the beginning of a "grand tour,"
which was to extend through most of the countries of
Europe. Landing in London, he had his Midsummer
Night's Dream overture performed, and the effect was
electrical. All at once, and when least expected, the
great gap left by the death of Beethoven seemed likely
to be filled up. The story is told that after the per-
formance the full score of the overture was left in a
cab and entirely disappeared ; but Mendelssohn wrote
it all out again from memory, and it was found to
be almost perfectly exact when compared with the
separate orchestral parts.

Mendelssohn had a great affection for London. He
called it "the grandest and the most complicated
monster on the face of the earth." He came to it again
and again, and was never tired of praising the " smoky

ijo MASTER MUSICIANS

nest." Amid the glories of a Naples spring he could write
that " My heart swells when I even think of London.'
On this first visit he lodged with a Mr. Heinke, a German
ironmonger, at 103 (now 79) Great Portland Street. Mrs.
Heinke made capital bread-and-butter puddings, and
Mendelssohn was so fond of them that he asked her
to keep a reserve in the cupboard of his sitting-room,
so that he might help himself when he came in late at
night. The cup supporting a pie-crust was a novelty
to him, and he was always much amused when it was
lifted and the juice bubbled out. He had the simple
enjoyments of an overgrown boy. An incident of this
same visit may be told in his own words. He says :
" The other day we three walked home from a highly
diplomatic party, having had our fill of fashionable
dishes, sayings, and doings. We passed a very enticing
sausage shop, in which ' German Sausages, twopence
each,1 were laid out for show. Patriotism overcame
us ; each bought a long sausage. We turned into where
it was quieter, Portland Street, and there consumed our
purchases, Rosen and I being hardly able, for laughing,
to join in the three-part songs of which Miihlenfelds
would sing the bass." Mendelssohn had a rich apprecia-
tion of a joke. One English story vastly amused him.
It was this : At a country funeral the parish clerk, or
sexton, appeared in a red waistcoat. When the clergy-
man remonstrated with him upon the unseemly colour,
the clerk replied : " Well, what does it matter, youi
reverence, so long as the heart is black ? "

Mendelssohn had two grand pianos in his rooms at

FELIX MENDELSSOHN 151

the Heinkes', and he was constantly practising. More-
over, he practised on a dumb keyboard while sitting
up in bed. His public appearances were greeted with
wild enthusiasm. The best account of them is in his
own letters, for he was a charming letter-writter. " Old
John Cramer led me to the piano like a young lady,"
he says, " and I was received with immense applause."
At a morning concert he played Weber's Concertstuck,
when he was dressed in "very long white trousers, brown
silk waistcoat, black necktie, and blue dress coat." Of
another concert he tells, with consummate amusement,
how a lady accidentally sat on a kettledrum.

The season closed, and at the end of July he set off
for Edinburgh. He wanted to see Scotland, he said,
because of the Waverley Novels ta\\ of which he had read.
For companion he took with him his friend Carl Klinge-
mann, then secretary to the Hanoverian Embassy in
London. He was enraptured with Edinburgh, and the
Highland soldiers marching from the church to the
Castle specially took his attention. He even got a
Scots piper to play to him at his hotel. He was in a
mood to be pleased with everything and everybody.
" How kind the people are in Edinburgh, and how
generous is the good God ! " he wrote home. " The
Scotch ladies," he naively observes, " deserve notice."
The last evening of the visit was devoted to Holyrood,
"where Queen Mary lived and loved." The chapel,
he writes, " is now roofless ; grass and ivy grow there " ;
and he adds : " I believe I found to-day, in that old
chapel, the beginning of my Scotch Symphony" The

152 MASTER MUSICIANS

Scotch Symphony was indeed a direct result of this visit,
as was also the Hebrides overture.

For Mendelssohn was not satisfied with seeing Edin-
burgh. By way of Stirling and Perth, he and Klinge-
mann proceeded to the Highlands, with Highland
weather accompanying them till they reached Glasgow.
Earth and sky, in Mendelssohn's phrase, were " wet
through." At Bridge of Tummel they were housed in
an inn where they had " Scotch wooden shoes " for
slippers, " tea with honey and potato cakes," and —
whisky. The little boys, "with their kilts and bare knees
and gay-coloured bonnets, the waiter in his tartan, old
people with pigtails, all talk helter-skelter in their un-
intelligible Gaelic." No wonder the travellers thought
they had " stumbled on a bit of culture " when they
struck Fort-William ! Later on, at Tobermory, they
found everything " perfectly charming." Klingemann
had somehow confounded the Hebrides with the Hes-
perides, and was disappointed (so he says) to find the
oranges in the toddy instead of on the trees ! But both
Germans were getting used to "good Scots drink."
A visit to Staffa and lona proved that they were not
getting used to Atlantic weather. Mendelssohn was a
bad sailor, and was most unromantically sea-sick. To
make matters worse, it rained all the time, until he
exclaimed in despair that the Highlands appeared to
brew nothing but whisky and bad weather. It was a
constant matter of dispute between him and Klinge-
mann whether the wet should be called rain or mist.
There were no beds on the boat, and the passengers lay

MENDELSSOHN

HANFSTAENGL COLLECTION

FELIX MENDELSSOHN 153

about like herrings. Klingemann tells that when half
asleep he tried to drive away the flies from his face and
found that he was tearing at the grizzly locks of an old
Highlander. Discomforts of various kinds attended
them till they got to Glasgow, but in spite of it all,
Mendelssohn hugely enjoyed himself. In one of his
Glasgow letters he says : " It is no wonder that the
Highlands have been called melancholy. But two
fellows have wandered merrily about them, laughed
at every opportunity, rhymed and sketched together,
growled at one another and at the world when they
happened to be vexed or did not find anything to eat ;
devoured everything eatable when they did find it, and
slept twelve hours every night. These two were we,
who will not forget it as long as we live." Nor has the
musical world forgotten it, for if it had not been for that
tour of 1829, we should not, as already indicated, have
had the Scotch Symphony and the Hebrides overture.

The Scottish tour was almost immediately followed
by a tour in Italy. There were other wanderings, in-
cluding a visit to Paris, where, to use his own expres-
sion, Mendelssohn " cast himself thoroughly into the
vortex." He was never in love with Paris and its musical
ways, any more than Mozart. Parisians, he complained,
were ignorant of Beethoven, and " believed Bach to be
a mere old-fashioned wig stuffed with learning." When
he met Chopin in 1834 his criticism was that Chopin
"laboured a little under the Parisian love for effect
and strong contrasts, and often lost sight of time, and
calmness, and real musical feeling." It was, however,

154 MASTER MUSICIANS

in Paris that Chopin, Berlioz, Hiller, and Mendelssohn
all of similar age, might have been seen arm-in-arm,
promenading, and enjoying life to the full.

This period of Mendelssohn's career produced the
Walpurgis Night, the great Symphony in A major, the
Melusine overture, and the first of those famous " Songs
without Words" which have been the companions
of all lovers of classical piano music since they were
first published. Piano music, when Mendelssohn began
writing them, was mostly given over to mechanical
dexterity. Musical claptraps, skips from one end of
the keyboard to the other, endless shakes and arpeggios
— that was the kind of thing in vogue. Mendelssohn's
aim in these Lieder ohm Worte was to restore the ill-
treated piano to its dignity and rank ; and with what
success he carried out his purpose, every pianist knows.
The name, Lieder ohne Worte, was Mendelssohn's own.
The English equivalent was not settled without diffi-
culty. The first book was published in 1832, with the
title of Original Melodies for the Pianoforte. It is
astonishing to recall the fact that this first book took
four years to reach a sale of 1 14 copies. It was Mos-
cheles who found a publisher for it, and, foreseeing
its value, arranged for a royalty for the composer.
Mendelssohn, a year later, feared that his share would
not amount to sixpence, but the publisher's books a
few weeks after this time show that he received £4 : i6s.
as royalty on forty-eight copies sold.

In 1833 Mendelssohn was appointed "Municipal
Music Director" at Dusseldorf, and it was there that

FELIX MENDELSSOHN 155

he began his oratorio St. Paul, a work which has been
quite eclipsed in popularity by the companion Elijah.
The Diisseldorf engagement formed really the starting-
point in his professional career. Hitherto home influ-
ences had prevailed ; now he was to be dependent on
himself. Unfortunately he did not find the Diisseldorf
duties agreeable. He complained that by four in the
afternoon half the town was drunk, so that he had to
do all his business in the morning. And the band was
far from being to his mind. " I assure you," he wrote
to Hiller, " that, at the beat, they all come in separ-
ately, not one with any decision, and in the piano the
flute is always too loud ; and not a single Diisseldorfer
can play a triplet clearly, but all play a quaver and two
semiquavers, and every allegro leaves off twice as fast
as it began, and they carry their fiddles under their
coats when it rains, and when it is fine they don't
cover them at all. If you once heard me conduct this
orchestra, not even four horses could bring you there
a second time." This takes a very humorous view of
the situation, but Mendelssohn found it anything but
humorous ; and it was a great relief to him when he
was appointed conductor of the famous Gewandhaus
concerts at Leipzig. Here the conditions were entirely
congenial, and he went on with his work in the best
of spirits, the musical idol of the town.

Still, there was something wanting to complete
his happiness. He wanted a wife. In 1836 he went
to Frankfort on a professional engagement, and an
engagement of another kind soon followed. It was by

156 MASTER MUSICIANS

the merest chance that he met C£cile Jeanrenaud, who
was the daughter of a clergyman of the French Re-
formed Church ; and the fact that he had fallen in love
at first sight suggested caution to his prudent mind.
He would test his feelings by going away for a month.
If he were then still in love, he would propose. The
result of the test we can gather from the following
letter of September 1836, addressed to his mother : " I
have only this moment returned to my home, but I can
settle to nothing till I have written to tell you that I
have just been accepted by C£cile. My head is quite
giddy ; it is already late at night, and I have nothing
else to say ; but I must write to you, I feel so rich and
happy. To-morrow I will, if I can, write a long letter,
and so, if possible, will my dear betrothed."

Mendelssohn nearly lost his head with blissful ex-
citement. The marriage took place in March 1837, and
during the honeymoon Mendelssohn expressed himself
as more ecstatic than ever. As bad luck would have it,
he had to tear himself away from his wife and start for
England to conduct his St. Paul at the Birmingham
Festival. And this is how he growls, writing to Hiller
from London : " Here I sit in the fog, very cross, with-
out my wife, writing you because your letter of the day
before yesterday requires it, otherwise I should hardly
do so, for I am much too cross and melancholy to-day.
I must be a little fond of my wife, because I find that
England and the fog, and beef and porter, have such
a horribly bitter taste this time, and I used to like them
so much."

FELIX MENDELSSOHN 157

Mendelssohn's married life was supremely happy.
His beautiful, gentle, sensible wife spread a charm over
the whole household, which enabled him to throw off
such professional outside worries as beset him during
his short, strenuous career. Everybody who met her
praised Frau Mendelssohn. When Moscheles paid his
first visit to the pair, he wrote : " Mendelssohn's wife
is very charming, very unassuming and child-like, but
not in my judgment a perfect beauty, because she is
a blonde." So many men, so many ideas of female
beauty ! The Leipzig home looked out upon the St.
Thomas school and church, once the scene of Bach's
labours. This was probably no accident, for Mendels-
sohn's reverence for Bach was profound. He revived
the Matthew Passion at Berlin when he was only
twenty. During his visits to London, he was con-
stantly preaching, playing, or talking about Bach. His
performances of the organ preludes andfugues at various
London churches, and at the Birmingham Festival,
aroused great interest. It was he, too, who was chiefly
instrumental in raising the Leipzig monument to the
memory of Bach. Mendelssohn, in fact, "restored
Bach to a world that had forgotten him for a hundred
years," and this service alone was an immortality.

Leipzig remained Mendelssohn's home until 1841,
when, at the instance of the recently -crowned Frederick
William IV., he went to Berlin as prospective musical
director of an Academy of Arts. Prospective, for the
thing was still in the air ; where, so far as Mendelssohn
was concerned, it remained. He had never liked Berlin ;

i $8 MASTER MUSICIANS

and as the Academy arrangements were still in a state
of chaos, he returned to Leipzig after a year's waiting.
About this time the King bestowed on him the Order
of Merit, a distinction which he valued very lightly.
One day he was walking with some friends across the
bridge at Offenbach. One of them stayed behind to
pay toll for the rest. " Is not that the Mr. Mendelssohn
whose music we sing at our Society ? " asked the toll-
keeper. " It is." " Then, if you please, I will pay the
toll for him myself." When Mendelssohn was informed
of the incident, he said : " H'm ! I like that much better
than the King's Order." The composer made one more
attempt to create a home in Berlin, when, by the death
of his father and mother, the old family house became
his property. But again he found it would not work.
" The first step out of Berlin is the first step towards
happiness," he wrote, after trying it for a reasonable
time. The prophet was without honour where his
youth had been spent.

Shortly after his return to Leipzig — the date was
April 1843 — Mendelssohn was able to realise his long-
cherished project of founding a Conservatorium for the
town. He did not live to see the full results of his in-
ception, but the fame of the Leipzig Conservatorium
has long been known to musical Europe and to America
as well. Mendelssohn had plenty to do at the institu-
tion, for he was its virtual head, as well as one of the
professors. Yet, all the time he was going on with
his compositions — with the Lobgesang, and the Festge-
sang, from which is derived the tune for " Hark ! the

FELIX MENDELSSOHN 159

herald angels sing"; with the music for the Midsummer
Nigh?sDream,viiih. its ever-popular " Wedding March " ;
with Athalie and its famous " War March of the
Priests," and with many other things besides. At the
date we have reached, the great oratorio of Elijah was
approaching completion. It was written specially for
the Birmingham Musical Festival, where the composer
conducted the first performance in August 1846. How
it was received we learn from Mendelssohn himself.
" No work of mine," he wrote to his brother, " ever
went so admirably the first time, or was received with
such enthusiasm by both the musicians and the audi-
ence." When the Festival was over he returned to
London, " on purpose for a fish dinner at Lovegrove's";
spent a few days at Ramsgate " to eat crabs," and was
back in Leipzig about the middle of September.

Elijah was Mendelssohn's last work : it killed him,
just as the Creation killed Haydn. He had overworked
his never too robust frame, and in his exhausted state
the death of his beloved sister Fanny came to add to
his prostration. He conducted a few of the Leipzig
concerts, but his doctor forbade him to play any more
in public. He fell into a profound melancholy, roaming
about the fields for hours alone, or writing letters to
friends bewailing his lot. Everybody saw how it must
end. One evening, while accompanying a lady at the
piano, he became insensible, and was carried home to
his family. A cerebral attack followed, and on the
4th of November 1847 ne breathed his last, in the
presence of his disconsolate wife and children (five had

160 MASTER MUSICIANS

been born to him) and a few cherished friends. Thus
was another great musician cut off in the meridian ot
life.

Mendelssohn was one ot the most lovable of men,
gentle as his music, pure as the mountain stream. He
had nothing Bohemian about him. Weaknesses he
had, no doubt, but they were lovable too. He had
little coaxing ways with his friends, which made them
love him with something of a child's love. When in
company with Edward Devrient, he would sometimes
pronounce his name with an affectionate and lingering
drawl, " Ed-e-ward," Apropos of nothing in particular.
He retained through life something of the impulsive-
ness and the simplicity of a child. He had a passion
for cake and sweetmeats. Next to his own country-
men, he loved the English. Her Majesty the late
Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were among his
warmest admirers ; and the story is told of how the
Queen once sang some songs to his accompaniment
at Buckingham Palace. She was not satisfied with her
performance, and said to Mendelssohn : " I can do
better — ask Lablache [her singing master] if I can't.
But I am afraid of you." She asked Mendelssohn how
she was to thank him for accompanying her. He said
he would like to see her sleeping children, and when
this was granted, he kissed them, thinking, we may be
sure, of his own children at home.

In person Mendelssohn was small, but was counted
handsome. His look is described as " dark and very
Jewish." He had strikingly large dark -brown eyes,

FELIX MENDELSSOHN 161

which became extraordinarily bright and expressive
when he was animated. He was perhaps the most
versatile of all the composers, for he was an adept at
painting, billiards, chess, riding, swimming, and general
athletics.

Schumann called Mendelssohn the Mozart of the
nineteenth century. " I look upon Mendelssohn," he
said, " as the first musician of his time, and pay him
the homage due to a master." The musical world is
not so enthusiastic about Mendelssohn now. The
pendulum has swung to the other side : he was praised
too much in his lifetime, and now he is praised too
little. It has become the fashion to decry his music as
lacking in depth. That is not surprising in an age
which puts Wagner above Beethoven and prefers the
pessimism of Tschaikowsky to the optimistic clarity
of Haydn and Mozart. A modern young lady said
she never played Mendelssohn " because there were no
wrong notes " ! But there are still some who do not
like their composers to be eternally rushing through
the thorn bush of dissonance, and to such Mendelssohn
is ever welcome. As Sir George Grove said, there is
surely enough of conflict and violence in life and in
art without demanding more of it from Mendelssohn.
When we want to be made unhappy by music, we can
turn to others. In Mendelssohn we shall find nothing
that is not at once manly and refined, clever and pure,
brilliant and solid.

FREDERIC CHOPIN:
THE POET OF THE PIANO

He came not with an orchestral army, as great geniuses are
wont to come. He possesses only a little cohort, but it belongs
to him wholly and entirely, even to the last hero. — SCHUMANN.

FREDERIC CHOPIN is one of the most romantic figures
in musical biography. He was dreamy, tender, woman-
ish, elusive, and (what most excited sympathetic in-
terest in him while alive), he was a consumptive with
a bad cough. And just what he was as a man, that
he was as a composer. In his works are clearly mirrored
his own daintiness and sensitiveness ; his own feeling
for the romantic and the beautiful and the triste. We
see in them something of his modest, retiring nature ;
something of his ardent patriotism as a Pole ; some-
thing of his disregard for the plaudits of the public.

Nothing of the sombre, religious earnestness of
Bach is there ; nothing of the fiery, robust vigour of
Handel ; nothing of the stately, heroic nobility of
Beethoven. It is all like the beauty of the starry
heavens, that cast their glitter upon the earth with a
radiant yet somewhat chastened joy which speaks of
the eternal. To admire Chopin's compositions bespeaks

162

FREDERIC CHOPIN 163

a keen appreciation of forms of strange and wondrous
loveliness, like the forms of Fairyland. The player
who would do him anything like justice must, of course,
have executive ability of the very highest order. But
Chopin requires much more than this. To play him
and not to sympathise with him — not to have some-
thing of that spirit of romance that shines out in his
compositions — is to court certain failure ; and that is
why so many players whose talent is chiefly executive
have had to give him up and leave him to the apprecia-
tion of the far-seeing few.

Frederic Francis Chopin was born at a village near
Warsaw, in Poland, on the 22nd of February 1810.
He was an only son, but he had three sisters, one of
whom, the youngest, and Chopin's favourite, was cut
off when only fourteen. For consumption was at work
in this little family. Chopin's father was of French
extraction, but he had thrown in his lot with the Poles
long before he fell in love with Justina Krzyzanowska,
whom he married in 1806. He was very poor, though
gifted with a certain native distinction ; a man of
education and refinement. To him, therefore, the com-
poser owed some of his essential characteristics, to
say nothing of his delicate health. Frederic Chopin
was a weakly child from the first. His mother, whom
he once called his " only love," used to be continually
pleading with him to wrap up carefully. He was, in
fact, a constant anxiety to his parents ; but he was a
quiet and thoughtful boy, with the sweetest of disposi-
tions, and if he suffered he seldom complained.

1 64 MASTER MUSICIANS

In his early years he showed himself so sensitive to
music that his father confided him to the care of one
Zwyny, a passionate disciple of the great Bach, who
so advanced his pupil's progress at the piano that
before long he became the wonder of the drawing-
rooms of Warsaw. He was only nine when he made his
first public appearance and played a concerto. It was
characteristic of him that on this occasion he thought
more of his personal appearance than of his pianism.
His mother had rigged him out to the best advantage ;
and when, on his return, she asked him what the
public liked best, he replied innocently : " Oh, mamma,
everybody was looking at my lace collar." His sue
cess at this concert was, however, so marked that his
parents felt they must prepare him for music as a pro-
fession ; and their decision was presently supported by
Madame Catalani, the great vocalist, who gave the boy
a watch with a flattering inscription in praise of his
talent.

The piano was Chopin's favourite instrument from
the first. He took to it, we might say, as a duck takes
to the water. To overcome its technical difficulties he
laboured incessantly. He had a curious delight in ex-
tended arpeggios, and to render them easy he used
a stretching contrivance of his own which he kept
between his fingers during the night. He was more
fortunate than Schumann, for the experiment evidently
served him well. Though he was such a frail, delicate
elf of a boy, he never lacked vivacity. The tricks he
played on his sisters and his school -fellows were

FREDERIC CHOPIN 165

innumerable. He would improvise romances for them
too ; and he was such a good mimic that some family
friends thought he should be an actor.

A piano stood in his room, and often during the
night he would get up and start playing, much to the
wonder of the maid, who concluded that he must be
silly. Of course he began to compose. But he had
received no lessons in composition ; so his father now
sent him to Joseph Eisner, the director of Warsaw
Conservatoire, to have him drilled in the theoretical
side of his art. Eisner proved just the right man.
Most teachers of that period were pedantic old fossils,
who pinned their pupils, talented and untalented alike,
down to the stereotyped rules, and chillingly checked
all attempts at originality. Eisner was not a teacher
of that kind. When somebody observed to him that
his pupil was not strict in his observance of the rules,
Eisner replied : " Leave him alone ; he does not follow
the common way because his talents are uncommon.
He has a method of his own, and his works will
reveal an originality hitherto unknown." Discerning
prophet ! And happy Chopin, to have had such a
liberal-minded instructor !

Chopin had been studying with Eisner for some
time when his father thought it would be good for
him to have a little tour before settling down to the
active practice of his profession. Warsaw was a small
place after all, and could never afford Frederic the
opportunity of becoming acquainted with celebrated
artists or of hearing the best performances of the

1 66 MASTER MUSICIANS

classics. Thus a tour was arranged. Berlin was the
first place visited. There the young artist heard a lot
of music, including Handel's Ode on St. Cecilia's Day,
which he said most nearly approached his idea of the
sublime. Remember he was a very young man then.
At a public meeting he sat close to Mendelssohn, but
was too shy to speak to him. Later, when Mendels-
sohn made his acquaintance, he bestowed on him the
significant name of " Chopinetto."

After Berlin, several places were visited, though
their musical interests were not absorbing. In the
course of his travels by diligence Chopin landed one
day at an inn to find a piano there. It was in tune
too (a rare thing for an inn piano), and Chopin had
been itching to get at an instrument. He now attacked
the keyboard with such enthusiasm (and skill) that
soon he had all the travellers and all the people of the
inn around him. He played on and on, oblivious of
everything and everybody. Presently the driver of the
coach came to announce that time was up. " Confound
the disturber," roared the innkeeper, who had never
heard his piano so played before. " Let the coach
wait," said some of the travellers ; and Chopin con-
tinued his improvisation. When he had exhausted
himself, they brought him wine and cakes, and lady
admirers " filled the pockets of the carriage with the
best eatables that the house contained." Long years
after, Chopin would recall this episode with the keenest
pleasure. He said that the highest praise bestowed on
him by the press was nothing to the homage of the

FREDERIC CHOPIN 167

German traveller at the inn, who, in his eagerness to
listen, had let his pipe go out.

It was about this time that Chopin met Hummel,
one of the older classics of the piano, and himself a
virtuoso of front rank. Hummel had been a pupil of
Mozart, and was for some time Beethoven's rival in
love. He had naturally much interest for Chopin,
whose style was influenced by him in a mild way.
Paganini, the wizard violinist, he heard about the same
date, but Paganini was not much in Chopin's " line."
And then came an important visit to " the beautiful
musical Vienna." There he was besieged with requests
to play in public — a thing which evidently surprised
him in a city " which can boast of having heard a
Haydn, a Mozart, and a Beethoven." But play he did.
The best accounts of the performances are given by
himself in his letters home. Some, he tells, objected
that he played too softly; some, on the other hand,
were "quite enthusiastic about the delicacy and
elegance of my execution. My manner of playing
pleases the ladies." It always did. One Vienna lady
was, however, overheard remarking that it was a pity
the youth had so little presence. Perhaps she would
rather have had a tall, fine, officer-looking man at the
piano. Chopin gave a second recital, partly because
he was asked, but partly also for the curious reason
that people might say in Warsaw : " He gave only one
concert in Vienna, so he could not have been much
liked." At any rate, Vienna swelled its voice into a
full chorus of approval, and Chopin was enraptured.

1 68 MASTER MUSICIANS

Before he left the city he made the acquaintance of
Carl Czerny, whose "exercises" for the piano have
tried young fingers for so many generations. Of the
parting Chopin meaningly said that Czerny was
" warmer than all his compositions." At Prague and
at Dresden he met more musical celebrities, but
declined to play for fear of forfeiting the renown
he had won in Vienna. And so the little tour, the
Wander jahre^ ended. Chopin had tasted of the tree of
knowledge : Warsaw he could no longer think of as
a permanent home.

Before he left it a circumstance very usual with
young people occurred : Chopin fell in love. Though
he never married, he was often enough in love. Some-
body says he could fall in and out of love in an
evening ; and that a crumpled rose-leaf was sufficient
to induce frowns and capricious flights. This is an
exaggeration ; but undoubtedly Chopin did find, like
Sterne, that it " harmonised the soul " to be in love.
And perhaps it was good for his music too. Goethe's
flirtations contributed something to his artistic develop-
ment; and if Burns had not been so frequently
" smitten," we should have been without some of his
finest songs.

Chopin's first love was a student at the Warsaw
Conservatoire, a certain Constantia Gladowska. Liszt
(an authority on women) describes her as " sweet and
beautiful " ; and Chopin himself, when he got her to
sing at one of his recitals, told that she " wore a white
dress, and roses in her hair, and was charmingly beauti-

CHOPIN

HANKSTAENGI. COLLECTION

FREDERIC CHOPIN 169

ful." For a long time Chopin sighed in silence. " Six
months have passed," he says in a letter, " and I have
not yet exchanged a word with her of whom I nightly
dream." And yet he admits that she inspired the
Waltz (Op. 70) in D flat, as well as the Adagio of the
F minor concerto. Chopin, in fact, loved but lacked
the courage to speak out. Instead, he put his passion
on music paper and played it. He bids somebody else
tell Constantia that " so long as my heart beats I shall
not cease to adore her " ; that, " even after death, my
ashes shall be strewn beneath her feet."

Alas ! the course of this love did not go smoothly.
Liszt gushes thus over the affair : " The tempest,
which in one of its gusts tore Chopin from his native
soil, like a bird dreamy and abstracted, surprised by a
storm upon the branches of a foreign tree, sundered
the ties of this first love, and robbed the exile of a
faithful and devoted wife, as well as disinherited him
of a country." The plain English of which is, that
Constantia gave her heart to another ; that Warsaw,
in consequence, became to Chopin quite impossible ;
and that, in the November of 1830, he left it never to
return. Rivers of ink have been spilt over this episode
in his early career, but many of the details are obscure.
The regrettable thing is that it should have affected
Chopin's health. Stephen Heller, passing through
Warsaw, found him thin and sunken, and told that
already the Warsaw people had marked him out for an
early death. Concealment of his love had, like a worm
i' the bud, as Shakespeare says, fed on his pale cheeks.

170 MASTER MUSICIANS

" I am going out into the wide world," Chopin wrote,
just before saying good-bye to his home for ever — going
out " with the keyboard and a brain full of beautiful
music as his only weapons." The parting with his
family was sad enough. The father he saw once more
in life ; the mother he never saw, though she outlived
him by ten years. At Wola, a village beyond Warsaw,
a romantic incident occurred. His old master Eisner,
with all the pupils of the Warsaw Conservatoire, met
him, sang a cantata composed for the occasion, and
presented him with a silver goblet filled with Polish
soil. That same soil was, after a few short years, to be
strewn on his coffin in the cemetery of Pere la Chaise,
at Paris.

It was Paris that Chopin now settled in, though he
had no definite idea of his destination when he left
Warsaw. As a matter of fact, he made visits to Breslau
and Dresden and Vienna and other places before finally
deciding for Paris. He was in Vienna when Warsaw
rose in revolt against the Russians, and his patriotism
prompted a shouldering of arms on behalf of his
country. Writing from Vienna, he appeals to a friend :
" Shall I go to Paris ? Shall I return home ? Shall I
stay here? Shall I kill myself?" It was just like
Chopin to be so undecided. But the Fates had decided
for him. In the September of 1831 Warsaw was
captured by the Russians ; and in October Chopin
was in Paris, a youth still under twenty-two, lament-
ing his country's downfall, and wondering what had
happened to the beloved Constantia. How he felt

FREDERIC CHOPIN 171

about Poland's fate he has expressed, so far as music
can express such feelings, in the magnificent fitude in
C minor (Op. 10, No. 12), which has been well described
as one of the truest and saddest utterances of despair-
ing patriotism.

But what was Chopin to do in Paris, now that he
was there ? Well, first of all he had to prove himself
as a pianist, and to perfect his technique. Kalkbrenner,
whose works nobody plays now, was at that time the
leading teacher of the piano in Paris, and to him Chopin
went to consult about lessons. Kalkbrenner heard him
play, and then said he must study with him for three
years. He objected, it seems, to such " unconstitutional
effects " as Chopin was in the habit of producing by
using his third finger for his thumb, and other equally
trifling matters of technique. These old masters found,
one suspects, that they could not play Chopin, and so
they decried him. Moscheles, another virtuoso of the
period, says in one of his letters : " I am a sincere
admirer of Chopin's originality ; he produces the
newest and most attractive piano work. But personally
I object to his artificial and often forced modulations ;
my fingers stick and stumble at such passages, and
practise them as I will, I never play them fluently."
That last remark lets us into the secret, for Moscheles
admitted when he heard Chopin himself that what his
fingers could not master ceased to offend when Chopin's
own delicate hands manipulated the keys.

At any rate, three years was too long a time for
Chopin to give up to Kalkbrenner. He had his living

172 MASTER MUSICIANS

to make, and he decided to perfect his technique by
himself. Meanwhile, he would give Paris a taste of
his powers by a public recital. The recital came off in
February 1832, and though the audience was small the
artistic success was great. Mendelssohn was present
and " applauded furiously." Chopin made no money
by the concert, but he made a reputation — a reputation
which was further enhanced by a second recital in May.
Still, his path was far from being clear. Fame was all
very well, but fame would not feed and clothe him.
His finances were running low, and his spirits went
down with them. " My health," he wrote, " is very bad.
I appear, indeed, merry, especially when I am among
my fellow-countrymen ; but inwardly something tor-
ments me — a gloomy presentiment, unrest, bad dreams,
sleeplessness, yearning, indifference to everything,
to the desire to live and the desire to die." In this
melancholy mood, he conceived the mad idea of
emigrating to America. Imagine Chopin, the musical
dreamer, in dollar-land ! Then a fortunate incident
happened which turned the tide in his affairs.

Prince Radziwill took him to a soiree at the
Rothschilds'. He was asked to play, as a matter
of course, and he played so superbly that he was not
only overwhelmed with compliments, but was promised
several good-paying pupils on the spot. After that, he
speedily came to the front, both in society and as a
teacher. Pupils flocked to him ; he had invitations from
all the grandees ; distinguished people called at his
rooms ; and concert managers struggled for his services.

FREDERIC CHOPIN 173

" All the Frenchwomen dote on him," said one. " He is
the fashion, and we shall no doubt shortly have gloves
a la Chopin" Chopin himself wrote : " I move in the
highest circles and I don't know how I got there."
Thus was the young Pole launched on his career of
popularity in Paris. The popularity never waned, and
he had as much teaching as he could get through :
up at least to the time of the Revolution, when the
Parisians had something else to think of than music
lessons.

Chopin would fain have lived quietly, if that had
been possible, which it was not. His friends and
admirers would not leave him in peace, and would
often invade his rooms in a body. The mere fact of
his being a Pole brought him irksome and uninvited
attentions, for Paris was greatly in sympathy with the
Poles at this time. " Vivent les Polonais ! " the mob
would cry when they identified a prominent Pole on
the streets. Chopin was already beginning to show
unmistakable signs of the chest trouble which ulti-
mately cut him off, and this made him more than ever
an object of tender interest to the fair sex. Of passing
fancies he had several, and we need not dwell on them.
But one fancy which was more than passing we must
dwell on. Chopin's connection with Madame Dudevant,
the French novelist, better known as " George Sand,"
was, in some respects, romantic enough. George Sand
was already a wife and a mother, living in Paris apart
from her husband, when Chopin met her. One would
have said there could be no attraction between these

i74 MASTER MUSICIANS

two, their tastes and temperaments being so different.
We know what Chopin was : dainty, neurotic, tender as
a woman, dreamy, slim of frame ; a man whose whole
appearance made those who saw him think of the
convolvuli, which, on the slenderest of stems, balance
divinely-coloured chalices of such vaporous tissues that
the slightest touch destroys them. Contrast this with
George Sand. To begin with, she was not pretty.
Liszt speaks of her "masculine countenance." De
Musset says she was "brown, pale, and dull com-
plexioned." Others describe her as short and stout,
dark and swarthy, with " a thick and unshapely nose
of the Hebraic cast, a coarse mouth, and a small chin."
Balzac, the novelist, wrote that her dominant character-
istics were those of a man ; that she was " not to be
regarded as a woman." We know that she often wore
men's clothes, and as often smoked " enormously thick
Trabucco cigars." Chopin was very doubtful about
her when first introduced. " What a repellent woman
that Sand is ! " he remarked to Ferdinand Hiller. "But
is she really a woman? I am inclined to doubt it.'*
Writing to a friend, he said : " Yesterday I met George
Sand. She made a very disagreeable impression on
me." Yet this was the woman who, according to most
of the biographers, broke Chopin's heart and directly
caused his early death. As Liszt puts it, she " inspired
the frail and delicate Chopin with an intensity of ad-
miration which consumed him, as a wine too spirituous
shatters the fragile vase."

It would take a long time to tell the story in full.

FREDERIC CHOPIN 175

It must suffice to say that George Sand, falling in love
with her hero, pretended to the world that she was
only looking after him in a motherly way; nursing
him through the winter, when his malady was most
troublesome, and relieving him from the worries of
business and household affairs, against which his artistic
nature rebelled. She carried him off, contrary to
medical advice, to an island in the Mediterranean,
where he was nearly brought to death's door, and where
the fatigue of tending him became so much more pro-
nounced than the pleasure of flirting, that her attach-
ment began to wane. Back in Paris, she complained
more and more of the tiresomeness of her self-imposed
task ; and in the end there was a complete rupture,
after eight years of what she called " maternal devo-
tion." Unfortunately the love had burnt itself out on
one side only: to the very last Chopin would have
died for this woman who had been the unworthy object
of one of the most consuming passions which nine-
teenth-century romance gave birth to. " All the cords
that bound me to life are broken," he would pensively
remark.

After the separation, the grief and agitation of his
mind, combined with his physical weakness, brought
him almost to the gates of death. But he got a little
better for a time, and when the Revolution broke
out, in 1848, he was able to start for England, where
he hoped to make some much-needed money. Still,
he was in a wretched state of health. People were
positively pained to see him. At Lord Falmouth's

1 76 MASTER MUSICIANS

he "came into the room bent double, and with a
distressing cough. He looked like a revived corpse."
At Broadwood's piano saloons he had to be carried
upstairs, being unequal to the exertion. For all this,
when he sat down to the instrument he played, as we
are told, " with extraordinary strength and animation."
He gave some public recitals, and played at Court
after being presented to the Queen.

He went to Scotland for recitals in Edinburgh and
Glasgow (he played in Manchester too), but the climate
was too severe for him, and the kindly-meaning people
gave him no rest. In one letter he writes : " I have
played at a concert in Glasgow before all the haute
voile. To-day I feel very much depressed — oh, this
fog ! Although the window at which I am writing
commands the most splendid view in Scotland, I can
see nothing except when the sun breaks momentarily
through the mist. I feel weaker and weaker, and can-
not compose, not from want of inclination, but from
physical causes ; and besides, I am in a different place
every week. But what am I to do ? I must at least
lay by something for the winter." Pathetic it is to
think of this " revived corpse " dragging himself about
to play for a fee that any of the great recital pianists
nowadays would scorn. At Glasgow and at Man-
chester Chopin was paid just £60.

Tired, ill, distracted, hopeless about the future, he
was soon on his way to Paris, resolved that he would
appear no more in public. Alas ! it was a needless re-
solve. The seeds of consumption had lain too long in

FREDERIC CHOPIN 177

his frail frame, and in a few months he was stretched
on the bed from which he was never more to rise.
As his last hour approached he asked the Countess
Potocka to sing something. Mastering her emotion,
she sang Stradella's Hymn to the Virgin. " Oh, how
beautiful ! My God, how beautiful ! Again ! again ! "
exclaimed the dying composer. Evening closed in,
and the next morning, feeling a little better, he asked
the last Sacrament and confessed to a Polish priest.
To those around him he gave his blessing, and with
one sigh closed his eyes on the world. Many a tear
was shed when his death became known, for he was
beloved by a wide circle of friends. According to an
old custom, he was laid in the grave in the clothes he
wore at his recitals, and over his coffin was emptied
the goblet of Polish earth which he had brought with
him from that parting scene outside Warsaw. Thus
passed away, at the early age of thirty-nine, the greatest
c^ative musician that Poland has ever given to the
world. He was laid to rest in Pere la Chaise. Near
by is the splendid mausoleum of Rossini, inscribed in
gold letters with the simple name of the composer.
Higher up is the musicians' corner, where lie Cherubini,
Heiold, and Boieldieu. Chopin has a white marble
statue bearing the inscription: "Frederic Chopin.
Erected by his Friends." He sleeps, but his works will
live for ever.

Those who have read thus far will already know
Chopin the man. He was, let it be repeated, exactly
like his compositions. Pauer says truly that he never

N

1 78 MASTER MUSICIANS

in his life wrote a bar of music that contained a vulgar
idea. And there was nothing vulgar about himself.
That same sense of refinement and delicacy that we
experience in listening to a sympathetic rendering of
his best works is just what every one who met him
seems to have found to be his characteristics as a
man. He liked having fine, neat clothes ; he liked
flowers always in his rooms ; he disliked smoking.
These are details upon which we may found. Nobody
knew him better than George Sand, and her descrip-
tion is therefore worth quoting. She says :

Gentle, sensitive, and very lovely, he united the
charm of adolescence with the suavity of a more mature
age ; through the want of muscular development he re-
tained a peculiar beauty, and exceptional physiognomy,
which, if we may venture so to speak, belonged to neither
age nor sex. It was like the ideal creations with which
the poetry of the Middle Ages adorned the Christian
temples. The delicacy of his constitution rendered him
interesting in the eyes of women. The full yet grateful
cultivation of his mind, the sweet and captivating originality
of his conversation, gained for him the attention of the
most enlightened men, whilst those less highly cultivated
liked him for the exquisite courtesy of his manners.

To this may be added the picture drawn of him by
Liszt, who knew him well, and did much to help him
forward in his early public career : "His blue eyes
were more spiritual than dreamy ; his bland smile
never writhed into bitterness. The transparent deli-
cacy of his complexion pleased the eye ; his fair hair
was soft and silky ; his nose slightly aquiline ; his
bearing so distinguished, and his manners stamped

FREDERIC CHOPIN 179

with such high breeding, that involuntarily he was
always treated like a prince. His gestures were many
and graceful ; the tones of his voice veiled, often
stifled. His stature was low, his limbs were slight."

These quotations not only help us to understand
the nature of the man : they show us also how intimate
is the connection between what may be called the
external Chopin and the internal as exhibited in his
works.

As a player Chopin was always heard to best ad-
vantage in a small room or building, and he knew
this so well that he had a life-long aversion to appear-
ing in large concert halls. His touch, to say nothing
of the style of his music, was too delicate for anything
but a small and select company, who could appreciate
the poetical refinement of what Liszt called his "cabinet
pictures." " I am not suited for concert-giving," he
once said to Liszt. " I feel timid in presence of the
public ; their breath stifles me ; their curious gaze
paralyses me." When asked if he studied much before
giving a concert, he would reply : " It is a dreadful
time for me ; I do not like public life, but it is part of
my profession." Schumann said that Chopin knew
the piano as no one else did. Some called him the
Ariel of the piano ; some said his playing reminded
them of the warbling of linnets. George Sand had a
pet name for him, and it was " Velvet Fingers." Such
was Chopin the man and the player.

About Chopin the composer, as seen in his works,
a whole book might be written, and indeed more than

i8o MASTER MUSICIANS

one book has been written. His compositions are
absolutely unique of their kind, for Chopin is the poet
of the ^i&nQ par excellence, and has had neither imitators
nor rivals. His finest works are to be found in the
smallest forms, such as the Nocturne, the Mazurka,
the Ballade, and the Study. They are all so thoroughly
tinged with the native sentiment that they seem to be
suggested by thoughts of that country of his which
has presented so many different phases of character,
like every other country struggling for its freedom.
His originality is very remarkable ; he not only in-
vented new chords and modes of treatment, but also
new forms. He was fond of blending the major and
minor keys — that is, he applied unreservedly to pieces
written in major keys chords belonging of right to the
minor keys, and vice versa ; and the amalgamation
offered to him many new and surprising harmonic
effects. The Impromptu, the Ballade, and the Valse
de Salon are all his creations. In his eighteen Noc-
turnes he gives us music of great charm, and of a
nobility of feeling rarely met with. His twenty-four
grand Studies are standard works, of great beauty and
lasting value, and have not been surpassed.

But why labour a point which every musical amateur
recognises ? Rubinstein said finely, and with finality :
" The piano bard, the piano rhapsodist, the piano mind,
the piano soul is Chopin. Tragic, romantic, lyric, heroic,
dramatic, fantastic, soulful, sweet, dreamy, brilliant
grand, simple : all possible expressions are found in his
compositions, and all are sung by him upon his instru-

FREDERIC CHOPIN 181

ment." This is the sum and substance of Frederic
Chopin. He lived his life, gave what was in him, and
died with a name destined, like the name of Mary
Stuart, to exert over unborn generations a witchery and
a charm unique in the history of his art.

RICHARD WAGNER: THE REVOLUTION-
ARY OF THE MUSIC DRAMA

There must be a beyond. In Wagner there is none. He is too
perfect. Never since the world began did an artist realise him-
self so perfectly. He achieved all he desired. — GEORGE MOORE.

IN a fit of morbid despair at the apathy of the public,
Wagner once declared his music to be " the music of
the future." At that time it was emphatically so ; now
it is just as emphatically the music of the present.
Fifty years ago Wagner was looked upon as practically
a musical madman, a charlatan who had arisen to throw
all established art forms and traditions to the winds, to
trample under his feet the hitherto accepted great gods
of the divine art. The pendulum has swung to the
other side, and perhaps we are making too much of
Wagner now. But at least we have arrived at the point
of accepting him as a colossal genius in his own domain,
the domain of music drama. And whereas his con-
temporaries, for the most part, imagined that he would
have no place in musical history, we are all perfectly
assured now that the future of music can no more
ignore him than it can ignore Beethoven or Bach.
Wagner altered the whole course of modern opera, and

182

RICHARD WAGNER 183

founded a musical system which it is practically im-
possible for later composers to set aside.

Richard Wagner was the youngest of a family of
nine children, and was born at Leipzig on May 22,
1813. His father, a man of good education, occupied
some minor official post in connection with the police.
But Wagner never knew his father. Around his cradle,
as some one has put it, was fought the battle of the
nations. One hundred and twenty thousand Germans
and Frenchmen lay dead or dying in the fields near
Leipzig when the baby Richard was snuggling peace-
fully in his cot ; and the epidemic fever which came
stalking abroad to finish the grim work of carnage
rendered the future composer fatherless when only five
months old. Frau Wagner, left thus with a big charge
and little means, could hardly do better than marry
again. The second husband was a certain Ludwig
Geyer, a writer of plays and an actor at the Dresden
Theatre ; and to Dresden therefore the Wagners re-
moved. Geyer proved a very good step-father. But he,
too, was cut off before he could have any real influence
on the boy, for he died when Richard was only ten.
Still, as Sir Hubert Parry says, it is probable that
Geyer's profession added strength to the already strong
theatrical influences which were present in the Wagner
family, and thereby helped towards those favourable
conditions which were necessary for the achievement of
the special work the boy was to do in the world.

Most of the great composers have been prodigies,
as we have seen. Wagner ripened late, like Schumann.

1 84 MASTER MUSICIANS

It was literature that interested him first, rather than
music. Thus at school he took a fancy for Greek, and
made great progress in it. He conceived also a vast
admiration for Shakespeare, and under that influence
wrote a tragedy himself when he was fourteen. A
wonderful effort it was : a sort of mixture of " Hamlet "
and "Lear" and "Titus Andronicus." Forty -two
persons were killed one after the other long before the
end ; and in order to have anybody on the stage some
of the characters were brought back as ghosts ! All
this time his musical leanings had shown themselves
only in a very faint way. As a child of seven he used
to strum on the piano, upon which, later on, his Latin
tutor gave him some lessons, only to predict that
musically he would " come to nothing." It should be
remarked, however, that Wagner always hated the
piano, and never could play it well. " He could never
fondle a piano without making it howl," says one. There
is a curious story in illustration, and it introduces us to
Wagner's first love, a Jewish beauty called Leah David.
In adult life Wagner had a fierce hatred for the Jewish
race, but Jewish youth and beauty bewitched him in
his teens. Leah had a Dutchman cousin who was a
pianist, and Wagner, jealous, criticised his playing. He
was invited to do better, and did so badly that he rushed
from the room vowing vengeance on the Dutchman.
This put him out with the pretty Jewess, who of course
married her cousin. "It was my first love sorrow, and I
thought I should never forget it," said Wagner.

When his step-father was dying, he was heard to

WAGNER

HANFSTAENGL COLLECTION

RICHARD WAGNER 185

mutter that " something worth while might be made
of Richard." Wagner used to repeat this with pride,
adding : " I remember how I long imagined that some-
thing would be made of me." But what was the " some-
thing " to be ? That remained uncertain for many a
day. It was a hearing of one of Beethoven's sym-
phonies that practically brought about the decision.
" I fell ill of a fever," says Wagner, speaking of this
turning-point in his career, " and when I recovered I
was — a musician." He set to the study of Beethoven's
works in dead earnest, and it is stated that he knew
them all familiarly before he was twenty. Early in his
teens he heard Goethe's Egmont with Beethoven's
incidental music. This inspired him with the idea
of writing incidental music for his own portentous
tragedy, mentioned above. And so the die was cast :
Richard would be a composer.

He sought out a music master, who, however, was
"not successful in controlling and directing his
energies." Richard experimented with various large
works, which, of course, did not fit in with the master's
views, and as Richard would not brook adverse
criticism, the two parted company. Richard had no
liking for moderate experiments : he must try his hand
at works on a grand scale. He wrote overtures, for
example, and one of them he carried to Dorn, the
conductor at the Dresden Theatre Royal. It was set
down in ink of three different colours — red for the
string parts, green for the wood-winds, and black for
the brass. Dorn was kind enough to put the thing

1 86 MASTER MUSICIANS

in performance, "much to the bewilderment of the
audience," says the biographer.

Meanwhile, in 1828, Wagner went back to Leipzig,
to enter the University there. Music was temporarily
laid aside in favour of classical studies. But only
temporarily. He took more lessons, this time from
an excellent musician called Weinlich, cantor of that
same Thomas School with which Bach was con-
nected. The lessons went on for six months, and then
Weinlich told his pupil that he had arrived at technical
independence, and might be left to himself. This was
indeed the case, for Wagner had no more formal in-
struction in his art. But he was one of those men
who develop slowly. His aims were very high, and he
had to go through an immense amount of experiment
before he found out how to express himself fully.

It would be of no use to speak at any length of his
early efforts at composition, for they are all forgotten
now. An opera was produced in 1832, but it was a
failure. Then Wagner went to Wiirzburg to fill the
post of chorus-master at the theatre there. His next
attempt was a three-act opera called Die Feen (The
Fairies), but neither the libretto (described by a critic
as "clotted nonsense") nor the music could make
the thing " go." These experiences rather sickened
Wagner of Wiirzburg; and in 1834 he moved to
Magdeburg, where he was engaged in a similar capa-
city at the theatre.

In 1836 he "billed" Magdeburg with a new opera
for performance, but the audience were so disappointed

RICHARD WAGNER 187

with it on the first night that the second representa-
tion had to be stopped half-way through in deference to
the empty benches. Soon after this, Wagner got an
engagement as conductor at Konigsberg. He had fallen
in love some time before, and his attraction to Konigs-
berg is explained by the fact that the lady was now
fulfilling an engagement at the theatre there. For
Minna Planer was an actress : described as pretty by
some, and as of a " pleasing appearance " by others.
One painter said she was " pretty as a picture " but had
a sober, unimaginative soul. The wedding followed,
but it soon became apparent that Minna was not the
kind of mate Wagner wanted. " I was in love," he said
afterwards, " and I persisted in getting married, thus
involving myself and another in unhappiness." This is
hardly the sort of book in which to discuss Wagner's
or any other composer's matrimonial affairs in detail.
But much has been written in direct condemnation of
Minna Planer, and a feeling of chivalry dictates a mild
protest.

When Wagner married, he was a young man strug-
gling with poverty and beaten down by disappointed
hopes. By and by, as his genius developed and ex-
panded, he found that he could not get on with Minna,
and a separation was the ultimate result. But Minna
was not solely to blame. Wagner's biographers have
nothing worse to say of her than that she failed to
recognise her husband's genius. But how many much
better instructed and more discerning people than a
popular actress was likely to be, recognised Wagner's

1 88 MASTER MUSICIANS

genius at that time ? When Wagner married he was
totally unknown to the great world of music. How
should Minna Planer know that she was giving her
hand to a man who, though at present obscure and
impecunious, would successfully fight against all diffi-
culties, and whose works would, in the distant future,
become not only celebrated but even popular ?

Let us be fair to Minna Wagner. That she had not
the perception which the Wagner biographers demand
of her was her misfortune rather than her fault. And
there is this to be remembered to her credit, that she
suffered bravely and even gladly all those terrible hard-
ships which beset her husband during the changeful
years after the marriage. It is recorded that she
pawned her jewelry under some domestic distress.
Wagner's diary reveals that in Paris, when he invited
a sick and starving German to breakfast, his wife
told him there could be no breakfast as there was no
money in the house. Wagner used to recount with
moist eyes these stories of his wife's self-denial, and of
" the cheerfulness with which she, the pretty actress
of former days, cooked what meals there were to
cook, and scrubbed what clothes there were to scrub."
For those who know all the facts it is impossible
to refrain from sympathising with Minna Wagner,
thrown out at last upon a cold world, to live isolated,
to die with a shadow upon her name as a wife.

But to return to the date of the marriage, the year
1836. Wagner's life at this period was necessarily
Bohemian. He had grand ideas, but no means of

RICHARD WAGNER 189

turning them into remunerative realities. And now,
anchored to a wife, he found his difficulties greater
than ever. Always on the move, we hear of him next
at Riga, where he filled another miserable post at the
theatre. But he had already begun to look towards
Paris, and was indeed now composing the kind of
opera which he supposed would bring him success
there. He had read Bulwer Lytton's Rienzi> and had
been taken with the subject. The Parisians, he saw,
were fond of glitter and noise, and Rienzi would be
exactly the thing for them.

In the summer of 1839 this new plan came to
maturity, and Wagner, with his wife and a big New-
foundland dog (he had a fancy for dogs), started on
board a sailing vessel for London, intending to make
his way from thence to Paris. The voyage lasted
nearly a month, for there was a terrific storm on the
North Sea. Wagner wrote afterwards : " The only
time I ever went to sea, I barely escaped shipwreck.
Should I go to America, I am sure the Atlantic would
receive me with a cyclone." However, the delay
proved of ultimate advantage to Wagner, for, to re-
lieve the tedium, he got into talk with the sailors, and
they recalled to him the story of the Flying Dutch-
man, which was to bear fruit later. " Three times,"
he says, " we suffered from the effects of heavy storms.
The passage through the Narrows made a wondrous
impression on my fancy. The legend of the Flying
Dutchman was confirmed by the sailors, and the cir-
cumstances gave it a distinct and characteristic colour

190 MASTER MUSICIANS

in my mind." We shall say nothing of the London
visit, further than to note that Wagner lost his dog
the day he landed. In great distress, he ran about
asking everybody in broken English if they had seen
the animal. Next day he started off to the Docks in
search of the favourite, but in vain. On his return
to the " King's Arms," Soho, his step was recognised
on the stairs, when, to Wagner's delight, the dog
" burst into barkter."

Wagner reached Paris in the autumn, with the MS.
of Rienzi in his pocket, full of hope, but empty in
purse. He had expected to get Rienzi staged, and
thereby to win fame and fortune. Alas ! the managers
of the Grand Opera would have nothing to do with
Rienzi) and the despairing composer was left face to
face with a struggle for bare existence. First he tried
to get a post as a singer in a small theatre, and was
told that he could not sing. Next he wrote articles
for a musical paper ; wrote even a couple of novelettes.
A music publisher proved kindly, and engaged him
in " making arrangements for every conceivable
instrument, even the cornet." In spite of all this
drudgery, Wagner clung to Paris with a kind of
desperate hope. Professing to believe that his non-
success with Rienzi was due to the libretto, he started
on a new opera having less of a romantic story and
less of mere theatrical show. This was the Flying
Dutchman, completed in seven weeks. Unfortunately,
the Dutchman was no more wanted in Paris than
Rienzi; and the latter having by this time been

RICHARD WAGNER 191

accepted at Dresden, where its composer was better
known, Wagner bade farewell to Paris, and in the
spring of 1842 saw the German Rhine for the first
time, and swore eternal fealty to the Fatherland.

The Dresden performance of Rienzi duly came off.
It was so successful that the Flying Dutchman was
immediately accepted, and the composer himself made
conductor of the Dresden Opera, at the comfortable
salary of ^250 a year. This was in 1842, and Wagner
remained at Dresden till 1848. It might have been
supposed that his troubles were now practically ended.
But in reality they were only beginning. When the
Dutchman was performed at Dresden its reception
was lukewarm and hesitating. The public could neither
understand it nor appreciate it. It was too serious for
them, accustomed as they were to the then prevailing
style of Italian opera, with its " glittering processions,
splendid scenery and groupings, and imposing action
coupled with brilliant music." Berlin tried it in 1844,
but with what success may be gathered from the fact
that not for ten years after was it once heard anywhere
else. Wagner was dismayed. " I was in sufficiently
ill-humour to remain silent," he said.

He did not remain silent, for it was in 1845 tnat
Tannhauser was given for the first time, again at
Dresden. But that, too, failed to bring him the suc-
cess it should have brought. The intellectual ttite of
Dresden showed little sympathy towards the work,
which, besides, provoked a storm of newspaper con-
troversy. Critics complained that Tannhauser was

192 MASTER MUSICIANS

totally destitute of melody, and musicians thought that
the breaches of technical rule made by the composer
were outrageous. A prominent London musical writer
ridiculed it as a chaos of absurdities. Prosper Me'rime'e
declared that he could compose something as good
after hearing his cat walk over the piano keys. Rossini
went to a performance, and when asked his opinion
replied : " It is too important and too elaborate a work
to be judged after a single hearing ; but so far as I am
concerned, I shall not give it a second." Even when the
now popular Overture was first performed by the
London Philharmonic in 1855, the Times printed this
amazing criticism : " A more inflated display of ex-
travagance and noise has rarely been submitted to
an audience, and it was a pity to hear so magnificent
an orchestra engaged in almost fruitless attempts at
accomplishing things which, even if really practicable,
would lead to nothing." Verily, the whirligig of time
does bring in its revenges. For some years past, Tann-
hduser has been one of the greatest draws in the
operatic repertoire.

But Wagner could not foresee this in 1845. Re-
garding his then state of mind he wrote : " A feeling
of complete isolation came over me. It was not my
vanity. I saw a simple possibility before me, namely,
to induce the public to understand and participate in
my aims as an artist." A possibility, indeed, but hardly
a probability ; for Wagner was already far away from
the familiar and accepted operatic path, and as con-
cession and compromise were not in his nature, he was

RICHARD WAGNER 193

again left with his old companions of defeat and despair.
Still, he worked on. Lohengrin was completed in 1848,
and without staying to consider as to its future, he began
to give his mind to its successor. Meanwhile, the poli-
tical troubles of the country were occupying the atten-
tion of the people. The poor were crying out against
the oppressions of the rich, and revolutionary clubs were
being formed everywhere. Wagner was, as Liszt de-
scribed him, a born reformer, undaunted by blood or fire;
and no sense of discretion or expediency would restrain
him at this juncture. He made red-hot Republican
speeches, and even, it is said, fought at the barricades.

Ultimately, in 1849, a warrant was issued for his
apprehension, which was renewed in 1853, calling
upon all German officials to " arrest Richard Wagner,
one of the most prominent adherents of the Revolu-
tionary party, and to deliver him up to the Royal
Court of Justice." The police description gives us a
fair idea of what the man Wagner was like. It ran :
" Wagner is 37 to 38 years old, of middle height, has
brown hair, wears glasses ; open forehead ; eyebrows
brown ; eyes grey blue ; nose and mouth well pro-
portioned ; chin round. Particulars : in speaking and
moving he is hasty." The " particulars " are slight, but
essential. Animation, says a biographer, marked all
his ways, and at times he revelled in the wildest spirits.
Periods of deep depression occurred to him, but his
nervous energy seldom deserted him.

Wagner luckily escaped arrest. Mainly by the
help of Liszt, he got safely out of the country and

O

194 MASTER MUSICIANS

soon found himself once more in Paris. Liszt, to his
everlasting credit, never failed to answer his appeals
for help. It was during these early days of exile (in
1850) that this loyal friend, to whom the score was dedi-
cated, brought Lohengrin to a hearing at Weimar. " At
the end of my stay in Paris," wrote Wagner, referring
to 1850, "when, ill, miserable, and despairing, I sat
brooding over my fate, my eye fell on the score of my
Lohengrin, totally forgotten by me. Suddenly I felt
something like compassion that this music should
never sound from off the death-pale paper. Two words
I wrote to Liszt ; his answer was that preparations
were made for the performance on the largest scale
the limited means of Weimar would permit." It is
pathetic to note that Wagner himself was afraid to go
to Weimar, even secretly, to hear his own work. He
used to say that for many years he was the only
German who had not heard it ; for he did not hear it
till 1 86 1. At first, and indeed for many years,
Lokengrin was regarded with the utmost indifference,
if not aversion. It did not reach London till 1875,
when a leading critic described it as an opera without
music. Even Germany failed to appreciate its beauties.
Gustav Engel said it seemed like " blubbering baby-
talk " ; while Dr. Hanslick, the great Viennese critic,
remarked that "the simplest song of Mendelssohn
appeals more to heart and soul than ten Wagnerian
operas." How ashamed these purblind critics would
feel now if they could rise from the dead to learn of
the hold that Lohengrin has gained on the public !

RICHARD WAGNER 195

Well, poor Wagner was an exile, and could not go
to Weimar to hear this his own work. The isolation
and banishment told severely on his health and spirits,
and for a time he did nothing new. During a temporary
residence at Zurich he wrote a great deal on the theory
and philosophy of his art. But his hopes always drifted
back, as he did himself, to Paris. He thought now
of influencing directors and managers of theatres by
a series of concerts at which extracts from his operas
should be given. But here again he was mistaken, and
once more he had to give up the campaign after a
heavy expenditure of time and money. In 1861 the
edict that had so long separated him from his native
country was removed, and he returned to Germany.
During the late years of his exile he had been working
at the stupendous drama of The Ring. He had
been induced to start it by a cheerful message sent
him by Liszt just after the Weimar performance of
Lohengrin. " Behold ! we have come so far," wrote
Liszt ; " now create us a new work, that we may go
still further." The new work was created, but the
plan which Wagner had mapped out for himself as
early as 1851 was not realised until 1875, when
Bayreuth first heard the Rhinegold, the Valkyrie,
Siegfried ', and the Dusk of the Gods — the four great
music dramas which compose The Ring.

When he returned to Germany after his exile, he
had little better than begun the gigantic creation, and
he saw no hope of ever completing it. He was poor
and unhappy, and the lack of general appreciation of

196 MASTER MUSICIANS

his former music dramas chilled his incentive if not
also his inspiration. But in man's affairs, as in the
natural world, the darkest hour is often before the dawn.
Wagner's deliverance was at hand. Everybody has
heard of the mad Kings of Bavaria. Well, it was one
of these tragically pathetic monarchs, Ludwig II., who,
mad as he was, saved Wagner to the world. When
Ludwig mounted the throne of Bavaria, he was a youth
of nineteen, fond of music, and with ample means of
indulging any whim in that direction. He had taken
a fancy for Wagner, and he now offered the composer
a substantial income, besides a handsome villa in the
vicinity of the palace. The story is familiar, how
Ludwig sent Adjutant Sauer to seek the composer.
Sauer went first to Vienna and then to Switzerland,
without success. Then one told him : " Wagner is in
Stuttgart, hiding from his creditors." So it turned out,
and the statement has frequently been repeated that
Wagner was just about to put an end to his life when
Ludwig's welcome emissary arrived. Ludwig, he wrote
shortly after, "wants me to be always with him, to
work, to rest, and to produce my music dramas. He
will give me all I need. I am to finish The Ring, and
everything shall be as I wish." So it was ; and let ui
thank the poor mad king for it. Ludwig was in a
sense the discoverer of Wagner. He was a poet who
tried to make the dreams of poetry the realities of
daily life. He lived in remote and marvellously
beautiful castles which he had erected upon the crests
of mountains, and was seen by his people only in fitful

RICHARD WAGNER 197

glances, dashing along through the night on a white
horse, or glittering with gold-inlaid armour in the
moonlight like a second Lohengrin. In time it was
obvious that his mind had altogether failed. He was
put under the charge of physicians, but escaped from
them and cast himself into the lake. This was in
1886, three years after Wagner himself had gone to
the great Beyond.

It would be superfluous to follow up the remaining
details of the composer's career. Though comfortably
settled, as we have just seen, a certain storm and stress
accompanied him to the end. Three great works were
still to emerge from his brain : Tristan und Isolde,
the Meistersingers, and Parsifal. The first named
came to him as a veritable inspiration, embittered
though he then was with debts and disappointments,
by a nervous illness, and by the imminent rupture of
his home life. When he was sketching out the text,
he wrote to Liszt : " As I have never in life felt the
real bliss of love, I must erect a monument to the
most beautiful of all my dreams, in which, from
beginning to end, that love shall be thoroughly
satiated." And Tristan was the result, the magnificent
result, of this conception. Completed in 1859, it was
not heard until 1865, when King Ludwig had it pro-
duced at Munich under Von Billow's direction. It
was received, the reports tell us, with "applause of
the most vigorous kind " : the first genuine success
that had so far fallen to Wagner's lot.

Then followed the now familiar Meister singers,

198 MASTER MUSICIANS

which was also produced at Munich (in June 1868),
and again under the direction of Hans von Biilow —
he whose divorced wife, a daughter of Liszt, was
presently to become Frau Wagner. For poor Minna
had now been dead two years, separated from her
husband since 1861. The mother of Cosima Liszt was
that Comtesse d'Agoult who wrote under the pen
name of " Daniel Stern." Liszt lived with the Comtesse
for a few years. Cosima married Biilow in 1857, and
to Biilow Wagner was a god. Think, then, of the
bitter joke which the Fates played on Biilow ! Wagner
had got Ludwig to make Biilow Court pianist and
conductor at Munich, and here was the result. Biilow
magnanimously forgave Wagner, but caustically ex-
pressed the wish that he had been another so that he
might have shot him. The marriage took place in
1870, and proved entirely happy. Wagner himself
wrote of Cosima as " her who was destined to show
that I could well be helped, and that the axiom of
many of my friends that I could not be helped was
false. She knew that I could be helped, and she helped
me. She has defied every disapprobation and taken
upon herself every condemnation." Frau Wagner
still (1909) lives, a sort of second Madame Schumann
for her husband's interests.

In 1872 Wagner moved to Bayreuth, which was
destined to be the home of his later years, the scene
of such triumphs as he was to achieve during his life,
and the last resting-place When all was over. Here
a theatre was built solely for the performance of his

RICHARD WAGNER 199

works, in which one of his ideals was carried out of
having the orchestra sunk below the stage level, and so
invisible to the audience. The first performances given
in this magnificent house were on a colossal scale,
and the debt remaining over was equally colossal. To
get in money a grand Wagner Festival, the composer
himself conducting, was tried in London. The cult
caught on, and Wagner returned with some solid cash
in his pocket. But his work was almost done. Parsifal
has been called his musical will. It was completed at
Palermo in January 1882, only thirteen months before
his death.

The call came to him very suddenly. In the autumn
of 1882 he and his family (a son, Siegfried, had been
born to him) went to Venice for a holiday. Wagner
had been in poor health, and was suffering from a
heart affection. He was perfectly careless about exer-
tion, and he fell faint several times. On February
13, 1883, he rested till late. At noon he sent for the
maid and ordered a light luncheon. Soon after it had
been brought the maid heard Wagner call for her in a
faint voice, and running into the room she found him
in agony. " Get my wife and the doctor," he said.
The wife reached his side in time to witness his last
struggle ; when the doctor came he was dead. Thus
passed into the Eternal Silence the most stupendous
musical genius of the last half of the nineteenth century.
He lies where his faithful dog " Russ " had been laid,
in the garden of his own house at Bayreuth — that
Bayreuth which he declared to be the art centre of

200 MASTER MUSICIANS

the world. His wife cut off her long blonde tresses,
which he had so admired, and buried them with him
as a final sacrifice. He died a disappointed man,
though he died rich at last, with an income of £5000,
and the ability to travel to Italy in a private car.
What a change from the early days in Paris !

About Wagner the man there would be a great
deal to say if there were space for it. One thing
should be remarked, that he was probably himself
largely to blame for the opposition and non-success
which marked his career. He spared no one's feelings.
He was vain of his own powers, and affected to be
indifferent to the powers of some of his predecessors.
He had no talent or patience for compromise ; and
he had few of those social qualities and graces that
go to the making of friends and the conciliation of
enemies. For the public, even the applauding public,
he had little consideration, and sometimes scant
courtesy. During the performance of Parsifal he
interrupted the applause to point out that the work
was not meant to rouse excited enthusiasm, and at
the close, when acknowledging the plaudits of the
house, he turned his back on the people and addressed
a long speech to the performers.

To his friends and intimates he was no doubt
different ; but to the outside world he was arrogant,
aggressive, contemptuous, sometimes positively rude.
He was selfish too ; and protested that the world should
give him a gratuitous living " without asking anything
in return beyond what I am actually doing " — that is,

LISZT

HANFSTAENGL COLLECTION

RICHARD WAGNER 201

composing. When the world declined this high honour,
he threatened to buy a pistol and put a stop to his
existence. He certainly required money to keep him
going, for he had the most expensive tastes. In a letter
to Praeger he said : " By nature I am luxurious,
prodigal, and extravagant, much more than Sardana-
palus and all the other old emperors put together."
Here he spoke the sober truth. His voluptuous tastes
went far beyond a fondness for rich colours, for
harmonious decorations, for out-of-the-way furniture,
for well-bound books, and so on. He wore silken under-
wear at all times, and he employed a high-priced
Viennese dressmaker to make the rich garments which
he felt indispensable for composition. There is a story
about him wanting some flamingo feathers before he
could obtain sufficient inspiration to finish the flower-
maiden scene in Parsifal. Any caller who had not seen
him before was likely to suffer a mild shock ; for on
entering the room where his visitor was seated, Wagner
would throw the door wide open before him, as if it
were fit that his approach should be heralded like that
of a king, and he would stand for a moment on the
threshold, a curious mediaeval figure in a frame. The
mystified visitor, rising from his seat, would behold a
man richly clad in a costume of velvet and satin, like
those of the early Tudor period, and wearing a bonnet
such as is seen in portraits of Henry VI. — his compos-
ing costume. He made " a veritable rainbow of himself,
and even wore many-coloured trousers," says one.
Alexandre Dumas, calling upon him, made some

202 MASTER MUSICIANS

good-humoured remark about his own ignorance oi
music ; but his pleasantries were listened to with such
a smileless stolidity that he went home in a huff, and
wrote his contemptuous protest against " Wagnerian
din — inspired by the riot of cats scampering in the dark
about an ironmonger's shop." On the day before this
protest was printed Wagner returned Dumas's visit,
and was kept waiting half an hour in an ante-room.
Then the author of the Three Guardsmen marched in,
superbly attired in a plumed helmet, a cork life-belt, and
a flowered dressing-gown. " Excuse me for appearing
in my working dress," he said majestically. " Half my
ideas are lodged in this helmet, and the other half in
a pair of jack-boots which I put on to compose love
scenes."

Wagner admitted frankly that his tastes were
luxurious, but he held that luxury was a necessity to
him as an aid to work. " I cannot live like a dog," he
wrote. " I cannot sleep on straw and drink bad whisky.
I must be coaxed in one way or another if my mind is to
accomplish the terribly difficult task of creating a non-
existent world." There is something unmanly about
this perhaps, especially when we think of how little
luxury Mozart and Beethoven and Bach and Schubert
could afford themselves. But the individual is a law
unto himself in matters of that kind ; and if Wagner
had not been able to indulge his expensive tastes we
should probably have been without some of his greatest
music-dramas to-day.

A CLUSTER FROM THE OPERATIC
BRANCH

What love is to man, music is to the arts and to mankind.
Music is love itself — it is the purest, most ethereal language of
passion, showing in a thousand ways all possible changes of colour
and feeling ; and though only true in a single instance, it yet can
be understood by thousands of men — who all feel differently. —
WEBER.

OPERA has a sort of separate history of its own. Certain
composers have a " vein " for it, as we say, and practi-
cally confine themselves to it ; other composers never
touch it, or if they do, make no success of it. Bach did
not meddle with the form at all. Beethoven made just
one attempt with his Fidelio ; Schumann also one
attempt with his Genoveva. Schubert tried opera, but
to little purpose. Handel and Haydn wrote operas
which are completely forgotten. Mendelssohn made
no effort in this direction (for the unfinished Loreley
hardly counts) ; nor Chopin ; nor Brahms. Wagner
stands alone as the only really great composer who
confined himself to opera — to music-drama, as he
called it. And then there were the lesser lights, some
of whom wrote opera only, while some took it as a by-
path in the great field of musical form. To these lesser
lights we shall give some attention now, ranging them

203

204 MASTER MUSICIANS

conveniently under their nationality as German, French,
and Italian. England does not claim any striking re-
presentative of opera, for though Balfe's Bohemian Girl
remains as popular as ever, no one would dream of
calling Balfe a great composer. Of course there is Sir
Arthur Sullivan, but then it was comic operas, and very
good ones, that he wrote.

GLUCK

In point of chronology, Christoph Willibald Gluck,
the son of a German forester, was the first composer
who really influenced modern opera, for he was born
in 1714, and had begun to write before Handel gave
up opera for oratorio. Gluck indeed came into direct
conflict with Handel when he encroached on Handel's
preserves in London in 1745. Handel, then at the
height of his popularity, detested both Gluck and his
music, exclaiming, " he knows no more counterpoint
than my cook." As if counterpoint were essential in
opera ! Doubtless, as Elson says, Handel would have
been surprised to learn that the later work of this
intruder was destined to banish wholly from opera the
intricate artificialities of his own contrapuntal writing.

But Gluck had no success in London in 1745, so he
took his wounded vanity across the Channel. He had
been thinking a great deal about opera, and gradually
he arrived at the conclusion that the recognised Italian
opera of the day was cast on totally wrong lines. It
was " nothing but a more or less miscellaneous concert,
with a thread of plot running through it." Gluck was

A CLUSTER FROM THE OPERATIC BRANCH 205

a long time in putting his ideas into practice, but at
last, in 1762, he brought out that history-making work,
Orfeo ed Euridice, the principles of which were so well
founded that it survives in active life even to the present
Wagnerian days. " The story," to quote an authority,
" is written in a broad and dignified manner, and the
music rests on no artificial law, but is the natural
expression of the emotions and situations found in the
poem." Here is the significance of Gluck's reform in
the evolution of opera. He was in reality the forerunner
of Wagner in treating the opera as an integral whole ;
though Wagner had again to break the fetters that
bound opera within the formal rules and conventions
of the Italian school. This was due chiefly to the
temporary eclipse of Gluck's reform by the " baleful
genius" of Rossini, who "set back the hands of the clock
of operatic progress by about half-a-century."

The reformer's way is hard, and Gluck suffered some
bitter experiences by his bold defiance of tradition.
He had been settled in Vienna for a time. From there
he went to Paris, buoyed up by the expressed approval
of his old pupil Marie Antoinette. Paris welcomed him
at first : called him the Hercules of music, dogged his
footsteps in the streets, and loudly applauded him at
public assemblies. But this did not last. Paris was tied
to the old operatic convention. A powerful opposition
arose, and they imported the Italian Piccini, who, after
a fortnight's downpour of rain, plaintively asked if the
sun never shone in France. Piccini came as an ex-
ponent of the current style of Italian opera ; and soon

206 MASTER MUSICIANS

after his advent musical Paris was split up into two
powerful factions, the Gluckists and the Piccinists.
They fought with each other both by tongue and pen.
Marie Antoinette was for Gluck, while Madame du
Barri, the King's mistress, glad of an opportunity of
piquing the Queen, was for Piccini.

" Women and men alike entered into the fray," says
the Baroness Oberkirch. " Then were such passions
and furies raised, that people had to be separated ;
many friends, and even lovers, quarrelled on account of
this." Gluck said he knew one who would give dinners
and suppers to three-fourths of Paris, to gain proselytes
for Piccini. The quarrel even extended to the boards
of the Opera. Then, when Mile. Levasseur, as Alceste
in Gluck's opera of that name, reached the words
" You break my heart," one of the Piccini party cried,
•' You break my ears," to which a Gluckist promptly
replied, " What luck ! for you can get a better pair."
Gluck went on in the path of progress undismayed by
all this ; and when, in 1779, he produced his Iphigenie
en Tauride, it created such a furore of enthusiasm in
Paris that the rival composition of Piccini on the same
subject, two years later, was consigned to oblivion.
It is fair, however, to say that the ultimate failure of
Piccini's opera was largely due to the prima donna
appearing intoxicated at the second performance.
About which incident Sophie Arnould, a rival singer,
wittily observed : " This is not Iphig£nie en Tauride,
but Iphig£nie en Champagne."

The triumph of Iphigenie practically closed Gluck's

A CLUSTER FROM THE OPERATIC BRANCH 207

career. He was a wealthy man by this time, for he
had made money by his operas, and had been hand-
somely pensioned by both Marie Antoinette and Maria
Theresa. He retired to Vienna, to live a life of ease
and — intemperance. He had always been fond of
wine, and now his wife had constant anxiety about
keeping the bottle from him. One day a friend came
to dine, and liqueurs were placed on the table. The
temptation was too strong. Gluck seized the bottle
of brandy, and before his .wife could stop him he had
drained its contents. That night he fell down in an
apoplectic fit, and he died November 25, 1787, aged
seventy-three.

In his early days Gluck was handsome, vivacious,
and witty, but as he grew older he changed consider-
ably. His face was badly pitted with smallpox.
Burney described him as " very coarse in figure and
look " ; but he was dressed, nevertheless, magnificently
in a grey suit embroidered with silver, and carrying a
heavy gold-headed cane. His nature was kindly, and
there is a pleasant story of his asking young Mozart
and his wife to dinner after applauding one of Mozart's
symphonies in public. His method of composing has
been described by Me"hul, a brother musician, who
watched him one day through an opening in a screen.
Me"hul says :

" He had on a black velvet cap of the German
fashion. He was in slippers ; and his stockings were
negligently pulled over his drawers. As for the re-
mainder of his dress, he had on an Indian jacket of

208 MASTER MUSICIANS

a large flower pattern, which came no lower than his
waist. I thought him superb in this accoutrement.
All the pomp of Louis the Fourteenth's toilette would
not have excited my admiration like the deshabille of
Gluck.

" Suddenly I saw him dart from his seat, seize the
chairs, range them about the room to represent the
wings of a scene, return to his harpsichord to give the
air, and there was my man holding in each hand the
corner of his jacket, humming an air de ballet,
curtseying like a young dancer, making glissades
round the chairs, cutting capers, describing the atti-
tudes, and acting all the tricks and pretty allurements
of an opera nymph. He then appeared to wish to
manoeuvre the whole corps de ballet ; but space fail-
ing him, he desired to enlarge his stage, and for this
purpose came with a bang of his fist against the first
wing of the screen, which suddenly opened — and lo !
I was discovered."

WEBER

After Gluck comes Carl Maria von Weber, who
was born at Eutin, a small town of Oldenburg, in 1786,
and died in 1826. His father was a travelling actor,
once a man of wealth and good social position, and it
was his cousin, Constance, who married Mozart.
Weber was an invalid from birth, and suffered all his
life from disease of the hipbone, which lamed him badly.
He could not walk till he was four years old. His
chief teacher was that same Abb£ Vogler who is the

A CLUSTER FROM THE OPERATIC BRANCH 209

subject of Browning's fine poem. Mozart called Vogler
a quack. He boasted himself that he could make a
composer in three weeks and a singer in six months.
He taught Meyerbeer, and he exclaimed more than
once : " Oh how sorry I should have been had I died
before I formed these two" — Weber and Meyerbeer.
He certainly did well for both.

Weber wandered about a good deal in his youth,
and at Breslau nearly destroyed his beautiful voice by
accidentally drinking a glass of nitric acid. A curious
episode in his life was his connection with the royal
family of Wiirtemberg, where he found a dissolute
Court, and a whimsical, arrogant, half-crazy king.
Here he remained for four years, in a semi-official
musical position, his nominal duty being that of
secretary to the king's brother. He hated the king
himself, who was so enormously fat that a space had
to be cut in the dining-table to allow him to get near
enough to feed. One day he had a stormy interview
with his majesty, and revenged himself by ushering
into the royal presence an elderly female whom he
found inquiring for the Court laundress. The king,
who hated old women, sent poor Weber to prison for
this trick ; and it is said that while there he got access
to a wretched piano, tuned it with a door-key, and
composed one of his best-known songs at it.

He settled down at Dresden in 1816, and it was
there that he wrote Der Freischiitz> the opera which
brought him fame. When it was first produced in
1821 the entire German nation was "carried by storm,

P

2io MASTER MUSICIANS

and the learned pundits of music looked on in amaze-
ment at the demonstration of popular feeling." Soon
the opera was the rage everywhere. When it was at
the height of its popularity in London, a gentleman
advertised for a servant who should be unable to
whistle its airs. Something of the same kind happened
when Oberon was staged for the first time in London
in 1826. Charles Kemble, the lessee of Covent
Garden, had commissioned this opera (at £1000, too),
and had given Weber three months to complete it.
" Three months ! " exclaimed Weber, who wrote
slowly ; " that will only afford me time to read the
piece and design the plan." He took in reality eight-
een months, and then he came to London to conduct
the opera himself. The performance proved a great
triumph. Weber wrote to his wife that the overture
was encored, and every air interrupted twice or thrice
with bursts of applause.

An interesting anecdote connected with the pro-
duction was related some years ago by Mrs. Keeley,
who, as Miss Coward, sang the well-known "Mermaid's
Song " at the performance. The song was successively
declined by two other vocalists ; then Sir George
Smart said : " Little Coward will sing it." And she
did. The Mermaid had to sing at the back of the
stage, where it was very difficult to hear the extremely
soft accompaniment. At the first general rehearsal the
effect was not quite satisfactory, and the stage-manager
impatiently exclaimed : " That must come out ; it
won't go." Weber was standing in the pit, leaning

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on the back of the orchestra, and he shouted, " Where-
fore shall it not go ? " Then, leaping over the parti-
tion like a boy, he took the place of Sir George Smart,
who was temporarily conducting, and thus saved the
excision of this favourite song.

Schumann once begged an admiring correspondent
not to place him between Beethoven and Weber, but
somewhere near them, so that he might continue to
learn from them. The conjunction of names sounds
strange enough to-day ; but Oberon and Der Freischutz
attained a success that Beethoven never attained with
his Fidelia. This was due largely to the fact that
Weber caught the spirit of the romantic movement
that was stirring Germany in his time, and gave it
fitting expression in his music. The strongest feature
of his works is their melodic flow, though his melodies
are at times weak, sugary, and affected. The man
himself is described as small and narrow-chested, with
long arms and large hands ; thin, pale, irregular face,
with brilliant blue eyes ; a " mighty forehead, fringed
by a few straggling locks " ; awkward and clumsy, but
charming in spite of all. As opera director at Dresden,
he wore a blue frock-coat with metal buttons, tight
trousers, Hessian boots with tassels, a cloak with
several capes, and a broad round hat — a truly operatic
figure, one would say.

Weber's death was very tragic. It took place sud-
denly in London, after that first performance of Oberon.
Like Chopin, he had long suffered from consumption,
and like Chopin on his last London visit, he had often

212 MASTER MUSICIANS

to be carried upstairs. People were so distressed by his
coughing that they sent him presents of jellies, lozenges,
and all sorts of chest remedies. He took it himself with
a sort of grim humour. Thus he wrote to his wife that
" Mr. Cough is very capricious, coming and going with-
out any reason, but is a right good aid to early rising."
His mother married when only sixteen, and died of
consumption, so that the trouble was hereditary. Two
days before his intended departure for Dresden, he
went to bed at Sir George Smart's house, 103 Great
Portland Street. He was very ill, and when he had
wound up his watch he said to a friend : " Now let
me sleep." Next morning he was found to have passed
into his last sleep. They buried him in London ; but
two years later, mainly upon the initiative of Wagner,
his remains were exhumed and carried for re-interment
to Dresden.

MEYERBEER

And now follows Jacob Meyerbeer. Meyerbeer was
disliked by Wagner because he was a Jew, and by
Schumann because he wrote, not for art, but to curry
favour with the public. In // Crociato Schumann said
he was inclined to place Meyerbeer among musicians ;
in Robert le Diable he began to doubt whether he had
not made a mistake in so doing ; in Les Huguenots he
found that the music was best fitted for circus people !
And yet Les Huguenots and Robert le Diable had both
a long run of popularity, while // Crociato was speedily
forgotten. Le Prophete had less favour than its two

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companions just named ; but the two efforts in the
field of opera comique, L'£toile du Nordy and Dinorah,
were great favourites with a former generation.

Meyerbeer was born in Berlin in 1791, the son of
a rich father, who had been in the sugar-refining busi-
ness. There is here a parallel with Mendelssohn, the
son of another moneyed Jew. Meyerbeer made large
sums by his operas, and was probably the wealthiest
of German composers. His mother used to say,
apologetically : " He is a musician, but not of
necessity." Mendelssohn's teacher, Zelter, gave him
some lessons, and then he went to Darmstadt to study
with Abb6 Vogler. He gained his first distinctions as
a pianist, but he took to opera, and achieved one or
two triumphs in Italy in direct rivalry with Rossini.
Rossini and he were good friends, all the same ; in
fact, when Rossini heard of his death he fainted away.
There is a story to the effect that shortly after this
event an amateur called to show Rossini an elegy he
had written on Meyerbeer. " Well," said Rossini,
after looking it through, " I think it would have been
better if you had died, and Meyerbeer had written the
elegy." It was Rossini's joke to say that he and
Meyerbeer could never agree, because Meyerbeer liked
sauer-kraut better than macaroni. Rossini, let it be
understood, was prouder of his manner of cooking
macaroni than of his compositions.

Meyerbeer settled in Paris after marrying his
cousin, Minna Mosson. Here, though possessed of
millions, he lived in an almost miserly style, with only

2i4 MASTER MUSICIANS

one servant. If he had no need to be a musician he
did not show it by his labours, which were as industrious
as if he had been poor. " I am above all an artist,"
he said, " and it gives me satisfaction to think that I
might have supported myself with my music from the
time I was seven. I have no desire to stand aloof
from my associates and play the rich amateur."
Meyerbeer of course met Chopin in Paris. And he
had good reason to like Chopin's music. He had one
day a quarrel with his wife, a cousin, "sweet as she
was fair." He sat down to the piano and played a
Nocturne sent him by Chopin ; the wife was so much
taken with the piece that she went and kissed the
player. Then Meyerbeer wrote to Chopin, telling him
of the incident, and inviting him to come and witness
the domestic calm after the storm. Meyerbeer died in
Paris in May 1863. He was curiously afraid of being
buried alive. In his pocket-book after his death was
found a paper giving directions that small bells should
be attached to his hands and feet, and that his body
should be carefully watched for four days, after which it
should be sent to Berlin, to be interred by the side
of his mother.

No composer's works have been more diversely
criticised than Meyerbeer's. Berlioz called Les Hugue-
nots a musical encyclopaedia, with material enough for
twenty ordinary operas. Another called it " banker's
music " — luxury music for la haute finance. Wagner
cried out against the blatant vulgarity of Meyerbeer's
style, and described him as " a most miserable music-

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maker." But Wagner's antipathy to the Jews led him
to the wildest exaggerations of criticism. After all is
said and done, there is no denying that Meyerbeer's
operas contain many passages of supreme beauty, and
the best of them would well bear revival.

GOUNOD AND BIZET

Now we come to the Frenchmen. Here the great
names, so far as surviving popularity is concerned,
are Gounod and Bizet, the composers respectively of
Faust and Carmen. But a word or two may be said
about one or two of their predecessors. There was
BOIELDIEU, for instance (1775-1834), whose La Dame
Blanche not so long ago held a leading place in the
operatic repertoire, and is still popular in France.
Boieldieu was the son of a Norman family, but in
Paris was obliged to tune pianos for a living, and was
glad to sell his brilliant chansons for a few francs apiece.
Then there was DANIEL AUBER (1784-1871), for
many years director of the Paris Conservatoire. He
devoted himself principally to opera, and had a big
run of luck with Fra Diavolo, Masaniello, and Le
Domino Noir. Rossini had a very poor opinion of his
work. " You know what pretty dance tunes Auber has
always written," he sarcastically said, the fact being
that Auber never wrote any dance tunes. On the
other hand, Wagner — even Wagner — highly praised
Masaniello, especially its instrumentation and its
dramatic choral effects. Auber was unique in never
attending the performance of his own works. He was

2i6 MASTER MUSICIANS

noted for wit, and many of his bons mots are recorded.
While directing a musical soiree when over 80, a
gentleman having taken a white hair from his shoulder,
he said : " This hair must belong to some old fellow
who passed near me." Then, still later, came AMBROISE
THOMAS (1811-1896), who began by imitating Auber,
but soon struck out a style of his own, as we see in
the popular Mignon, the only one of his baker's dozen
of operas which has survived. The dainty gavotte
from Mignon is as familiar as anything of its kind.
These and other opera composers of lesser note lead
us directly up to Gounod.

Ignaz Moscheles, the great pianist, wrote in 1861 :
"In Gounod I hail a real composer. I have heard
his Faust both at Leipzig and Dresden, and am
charmed with that refined, piquant music. Critics
may rave if they like against the mutilation of Goethe's
masterpiece ; the opera is sure to attract, for it is
fresh, interesting work, with a copious flow of melody
and lovely instrumentation." It is close on fifty years
since that was written, yet Faust is to-day the only
serious rival to Tannhauser, Lohengrin, and Carmen.
Gounod wrote in all departments of music, but it is
by his Faust that he will live. His other operas, with
the single exception of Romeo and Juliet, have not
enjoyed any measure of popularity.

Charles Francois Gounod was born in Paris in 1818,
and died there in 1893. Like Bizet and Berlioz, he
carried off the Prix de Rome at the Conservatoire,
and his three years' stay in Rome fostered in him a

VERDI

HANFSTAENGL COLLECTION

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powerful religious sentiment. In fact he came very
near entering upon a monastic life. The religious
fervour returned to him in his old age, when he pro-
duced the oratorios The Redemption (for which a
London firm paid him £1000) and Mors et Vita.
His first operas failed completely, and this temporarily
drove him back to sacred music. Faust, however,
written when he was forty, changed all that. Strange
to say, no manager would at first produce it, and no
publisher would bring out the score. A publisher was
found at last who bought it for 10,000 francs, and by so
doing laid the foundation of the fortunes of his house.
In thirty years the modest sum he timidly advanced
brought in nearly three million francs. The manager
who did finally agree to stage the opera was less fortu-
nate. He had faith in its final triumph, and pushed
it on to a fifty-seventh performance, at which point
he failed and the theatre was closed. It is staggering
to think that the public of that time were so long in
waking up to the fact that here was a work of beauty
and charm, destined to live. But what could be ex-
pected of the public when Berlioz (jealous, of course)
declared that Gounod had not the smallest conception
of the subject he sought to treat? One music critic
cynically said that Faust had only a waltz and a chorus ;
another hoped that Gounod would never repeat the
experiment. We wish he had !

Of later years the greatest French name in opera is
that of Bizet. Everybody who knows anything about
opera knows Carmen. It is one of the surest " draws "

218 MASTER MUSICIANS

in the manager's list. And the sad thing is that Bizet
died only a few months after its successful production,
and while it was still impossible to forecast the brilliant
career in store for it. Though Bizet had written a great
deal before he wrote Carmen, he had never really tasted
the sweets of success ; and he went to his grave much
as Keats went — his end hastened by the rebuffs and
disappointments which he had experienced.

Georges Bizet, who came of a musical family, was
born in Paris in 1838. He could distinguish the degrees
of the scale before he knew the alphabet. His father
wanted to send him to the Conservatoire, but the rules
would not admit one so young. Rubinstein and Liszt
had both been refused admission when Cherubini was
head, because Cherubini detested prodigies. However,
Bizet's father resolved to interview the director on the
subject. " Your child is very young," said the official,
casting a supercilious glance at the boy. " That's true,"
replied the parent, " but if he is small by measurement,
he is great in knowledge." " Really ! And what can he
do ? " " Place yourself at the piano, strike chords, and
he will name them all without a mistake." Georges
Bizet did, and the rules of the Conservatoire were
relaxed for once.

He made a brilliant student and carried off prize
after prize. He played the piano so well that even
Liszt praised him. He won the coveted Prix de Rome,
and that took him to the Eternal City for three years.
When the time was up, he had to get his living, and he
did it very much as Wagner had done in that same gay

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Paris. He composed " pot-boilers" of all kinds. "Be
assured," he wrote to a friend, " that it is aggravating
to interrupt my cherished work for two days to write
solos for the cornet. One must live." Again he tells
that he is working fifteen or sixteen hours a day ; more
sometimes, for he has lessons to give, proofs to correct.
Once he says he has not slept for three nights. Such
was the hard fate of the composer of Carmen. Alas !
he fell just when victory was within his grasp. Carmen
had been produced at the Ope"ra Comique, Paris, on the
3rd of March 1875 ; and on the 3rd of June Bizet lay
dead. The hour of midnight sounded when his heart
ceased to beat, far away in the country ; and in Paris
they were lowering the curtain on the thirty-third per-
formance of the dead man's masterpiece.

ROSSINI

So much for the Germans and the Frenchmen.
Three popular masters of Italian opera were all work-
ing about the same time : Rossini (1792-1868), Doni-
zetti (1797-1848), and Bellini (1802-1831). The most
distinguished of the trio was, of course, Rossini. He
had a tremendous vogue at one period, and even over-
shadowed Beethoven. His first great success was with
II Tancredi, which took Venice by storm in 1813.
This was followed by many other operas, notably by
The Barber of Seville and William Tell. Rossini had
a fatal facility of composition, and the number of his
operas, mostly forgotten now, is prodigious. His music
is brilliant, but often devoid of dramatic significance.

220 MASTER MUSICIANS

The man himself was more interesting. He was of low
parentage — the son of a village inspector of slaughter-
houses. The father got into prison for some political
offence, and young Rossini was given over to the care
of a pork-butcher. He was born on February 29, in
leap year. This meant a birthday only once in four
years, and when he was seventy-two he facetiously
invited his friends to celebrate his eighteenth birthday.
He was a great humorist, and hundreds of good stories
are told about him. Prince Poniatowski, the composer
of the popular " Yeoman's Wedding Song," had written
two operas, and wanted very much to have Rossini's
opinion as to which of the two he should choose for
production. Rossini reluctantly consented to hear the
composer play them through. He settled himself in his
easy-chair and placed a huge handkerchief over his
eyes. Poniatowski sat down to the piano and worked
away lustily for an hour or so. When he was about to
begin on the second opera, Rossini awoke from a doze
into which he had fallen, and touched him lightly on
the shoulder so as to arrest his progress. " Now, my
friend, I can advise you," he said sleepily : " have the
other performed." A kindred joke was tried on Liszt.
Liszt had just played one of his so-called " symphonic
poems " to Rossini. " I prefer the other," said Rossini
laconically. Liszt naturally inquired which "other."
" The chaos in Haydn's Creation," was the withering
reply. Rossini had scant respect for amateur com-
posers. One such sent him the manuscript of his latest
composition, accompanied by a Stilton cheese. The

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composer hoped, of course, for a letter praising his
work. The letter came, but all it said was : " Thanks !
I like the cheese very much." An amateur drummer
once came to Rossini pleading for an engagement at
the Opera. He had brought his instrument with him,
and Rossini said he would hear him "play." It chanced
that the piece selected had a rest of seventy-eight bars,
and the drummer naturally proposed to skip these.
" Oh no," said Rossini ; " by all means count the
seventy-eight bars ; I particularly wish to hear them"
There are many stories connected with William Tell.
It was always too long, and even in Paris, soon after
its production, the management began to perform only
one act at a time. " I hope you won't be annoyed," said
the manager one morning to Rossini, " but to-night we
propose to perform the second act." "What, the whole
of it ? " Rossini asked in reply. He was altogether an
original character. Sir Arthur Sullivan once found him
writing a piece for his dog's birthday. Like Ruskin,
he was opposed to railways, and used to transport him-
self about in a caravan. He was as fat as Falstaff
himself, and was a prodigious snuffer. All his life he
had a dread of the number thirteen, as well as of
Fridays. He would never invite more than twelve
guests to dinner, and when once he had fourteen,
he made sure of an "understudy" who would at a
moment's notice have been ready to come should one
guest have failed him. And, though this was a double
superstition, he died on Friday, November 13 (1868).

zzz MASTER MUSICIANS

BELLINI AND DONIZETTI

After the production of William Tell at Paris in
1829, Rossini ceased to write for the stage ; practically
ceased, in fact, to write music at all. That he should
suddenly retire from public life before he had reached
his prime and when his fame was at its zenith, is a pheno-
menon difficult to explain except by his own statement
that he had " a passion for idleness." His withdrawal
was, however, a boon to Bellini, and also to Donizetti.
It gave them both a chance, of which they made the
best use. Bellini and Donizetti were very minor stars
compared with Rossini, but they shared much of his
popularity. Only twenty-five years ago it was written
in a certain dictionary of music : " Of the masterpieces
of Bellini and Donizetti it is surely unnecessary to
speak, since they still hold firm possession of the stage,
and are not likely to be soon replaced by newer favour-
ites." It is never safe to prophesy unless one knows.
Wagner has cut into Bellini and Donizetti, as into
others of their school, and neither managers nor public
at present show any great enthusiasm for Bellini's
Norma, La Sonnambula, and / Puritani ; or for Doni-
zetti's Lucia di Lammermoor, La Favorita, and La Fille
du Regiment. Other times, other music.

Yet it is very curious to recall the fact that Wagner
praised Bellini's Norma, and selected it for his benefit
at Riga in 1837. On the playbill he wrote this : " Of
all Bellini's creations Norma is that which unites the
richest flow of melody with the deepest glow of truth,

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and even the most determined opponents of the new
Italian school of music do this composition the justice
of admitting that, speaking to the heart, it shows an
inner earnestness of aim." Rossini also liked Norma.
Bellini had a pathetically brief career. He died when
he was only thirty-three, while a brother, a fourth-rate
church composer, lived to be eighty-two.

Though born at Bergamo, Donizetti was of Scottish
descent. His grandfather was a native of Perthshire,
named Izett. The young Scot was beguiled by the
fascinating tongue of a recruiting-sergeant into His
Britannic Majesty's service, and was taken prisoner
by General La Hoche during the latter's invasion of
Ireland. Already tired of a private's life, he accepted
the situation, and was induced to become the French
general's private secretary. Subsequently he drifted
to Italy, and married an Italian lady of some rank,
denationalising his own name into Donizetti. No com-
poser except Mozart had a more remarkable musical
memory than Donizetti. Wishing to procure for
Mayer a copy of an opera which was being performed
at Bologna, and which the impresario refused to lend,
Donizetti had such a lively recollection of the music
after hearing it two or three times that he was able to
put it down on paper from beginning to end. When
composing he always kept a small ivory scraper near
his hand, though he never used it. It was given him
by his father when he began his career, with the in-
junction to write as little rubbish as possible. The
scraper was meant, no doubt, for making frequent cor-

224 MASTER MUSICIANS

rections. But Donizetti seldom bothered about correc-
tions. He was one of the rapid composers. Some
merry friends were spending an evening with him at
Rome in 1833. Suddenly he withdrew from the room,
but returned in half an hour. " Why did you leave us?"
he was asked. " I have composed the finale of the first
act," was the reply. Luciat which Rossini considered
his masterpiece, was written in six weeks.

Great composers become attached to their pianos,
instruments which more or less help them in their
creations. Donizetti was no exception. In 1844,
having gone to live in Vienna, he made arrangements
to sell off the furniture in his house at Naples. " But
do not at any price," he writes, " sell the piano, which
contains in it my whole artistic life. It has sounded
in my ears since 1822. Oh let it live so that I may
live ! With it I passed through the period of hope, of
conjugal life, of solitude. It has witnessed my joys,
my tears, my illusions, honours ; it has shared with
me my toils and fatigues ; in it lives every epoch of
my career." This belauded instrument, it may be
added, is now in the care of the municipality of
Bergamo. Donizetti, like Schumann, fell into melan-
choly. In fact symptoms of dementia appeared, and
he died from a second shock of paralysis.

VERDI

It is a far cry from Bellini and Donizetti to
Giuseppe Verdi, who was, nevertheless, their legitimate
successor in opera. Verdi used to be called the Grand

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Old Man of music, and such indeed he was, for he
lived to be eighty-eight. Born at the village of Roncole,
near Parma, within a few months of Wagner, he sur-
vived Wagner for eighteen years. His operatic career
was divided broadly into two great periods, with an
interregnum, during which he wrote nothing. And
here is the phenomenon : that he blossomed out in
his old age with a style of opera so totally different
from the works of his first period, so much grander
and more artistic, as to make us almost regard him
as two different composers. // Trovatore and La
Traviata were among the early works which received
the applause of the public and held their own, the
first especially, until quite recent years. Then, when
Wagner's influence began to be felt in opera, Verdi
regenerated his style and produced Aida, which re-
places the meaningless trivialities and vocal fireworks
of the first Verdi operas by a dignity, a power, and a
majesty that still procure it the favour of cultivated
musical people.

It was after Aida (for which he received ,£3000)
that Verdi took his long rest. Sixteen years passed,
and then he began to sound the depths of his genius.
First, in 1887, when he was seventy-four, came Othello ;
and next, in 1893, when he was eighty, Falstaff. Just
think of it — the very finest of a long line of operas pro-
duced when the composer was fourscore ! It was even
said that Verdi would have written still another
Shakespearean opera but for the awful labour of
putting so many notes on paper. He used to work

Q

226 MASTER MUSICIANS

eight hours at a stretch and feel all the better for it.
but at eighty an hour tired him.

His vitality was no doubt due to the simple life he
had always lived. His people were poor — the father
kept a small inn — and for long he was poor himself.
He played the organ in the village church for six
years, and his salary was less than £5. He married
very early, and after five years was bereft of wife and
family almost at a single stroke. His bambino fell ill
first, and died in the arms of his mother, who was
beside herself with grief and despair. That was not all.
A few days after, his little daughter sickened, and her
complaint also terminated fatally. But this even was
not all. A few weeks later the composer's young life-
companion was attacked by acute brain fever, and
soon a third coffin was carried from the house. " I
was alone ! alone ! " wrote Verdi. " In the space of
about two months, three loved ones had disappeared
for ever." And in the midst of this terrible anguish,
to avoid breaking an engagement, he was compelled
to write and finish a comic opera !

Fortunately Verdi's finances prospered. His operas
paid him from the first, and with // Trovatore his
fortune was made. Theatre after theatre produced it
after it was first heard in Rome. At Naples three
houses were giving it at the same time. The composer
bought a fine country estate in 1849, and there he
continued to live in almost complete seclusion. He
was not, one gathers, a very genial person. At a
rehearsal of Falstaff the artists gave him an ovation

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when he entered. " I thank you all," he said, " but
will thank you more if you do better in your perform-
ances than last time." He was not enthusiastic over
his fellow-composers of the younger school. Mascagni
ventured to ask if he would attend the first performance
of his Ratcliffe. " No," he replied. " If I did, every-
body would want to know next day what I thought
of it, and I really shouldn't know what to say." An
experience of Leoncavallo was not much happier.
Verdi did go to a rehearsal of one of Leoncavallo's
operas, but all he said was, when the composer was
pointed out to him : " Oh, so Leoncavallo is the young
fellow in the light overcoat."

There are stories which show Verdi in a better
light. This one, for instance, connected with the pro-
duction of Aida at Milan : A certain person named
Bertoni went from a neighbouring village to hear the
opera. His outing, including supper, cost him 15
francs 19 centimes. He happened not to like Aida.
However, next day, finding it praised on all hands, he
resolved to give it another trial. This time he spent
20 francs, and was more dissatisfied than ever. Full
of anger, he wrote to Verdi telling him that the opera
was a failure, doomed to early oblivion, and asking
for the return of 35 francs 90 centimes, which sum,
he alleged, he had wasted in going to hear it. Verdi
was not offended in the least ; in fact, he sided with
the aggrieved one. Taking a pen in hand, he authorised
his publisher to send Bertoni 31 francs 50 centimes,
adding : " It is not quite so much as the gentleman

228 MASTER MUSICIANS

demands, but then he could have had his supper at
home." The story may not be true, but, as a witty
Frenchman once said of a similar tale, St non e Verdi
I ben Trovatore. Verdi is charged with having been
very parsimonious ; but if that were really the case,
he has the thanks of his own class, for he left his
fortune, £120,000, to the home for aged and indigent
musicians which he had already founded at Milan.

STARS AMONG THE PLANETS

Music, oh how faint, how weak,

Language fades before thy spell !
Why should Feeling ever speak,

When thou canst breathe her soul so well ?

MOORE.

OF the great composers who have been dealt with
in separate chapters, the nineteenth century gave us
Wagner, Schumann, Chopin, and Mendelssohn. But
these names by no means exhaust the list of that
century's notables to whom music owes debts in
various degrees and kinds. There were other stars, of
lesser magnitude to be sure, but still stars. Perhaps
among them we should reckon a few of the men who
linked the eighteenth century with the nineteenth.
Curiously enough, these were nearly all associated
with the piano.

Clementi. — Taking them in their order of birth,
there was first Muzio Clementi (1752-1832), author
of the famous Gradus ad Parnassum, and of so many
studies that it was jokingly asserted not long ago
that the commission appointed to count them had not
yet arrived at the total. Upon the Gradus to this day
the art of solo piano-playing rests ; while the twelve

229

230 MASTER MUSICIANS

Clement! Sonatinas are as well known to young
pianists as anything ever written for the instrument,
dementi lived through the most memorable period in
the history of music. At his birth Handel was alive,
and before he died Beethoven, Schubert, and Weber
were buried. One writer says he was " chiefly notable
for his miserly qualities, by which he rendered miser-
able three successive wives." Anyway, he was a prince
among teachers, and during his long stay in England
he greatly influenced the art of piano-playing in the
country. His grave is in Westminster Abbey.

Pleyel. — The name of Ignaz Pleyel (1757-1831) is
also familiar to the piano student. He was born near
Vienna, the twenty-fourth child of a poor schoolmaster,
and for five years he resided with Haydn, who gave him
board and instruction. In 1795 he went to Paris and
established first a music firm (Kalkbrenner, who pro-
posed to teach Chopin, was a partner) and then a piano
factory. The Pleyel pianos became quite celebrated.
Chopin had one in his rooms. At one time Pleyel's
works took complete possession of the public ear ; in
fact, for ten years at least, " only for them was there
a market." It was very funny, but to stem the tide of
Haydn's popularity, the Italian faction in London
imported Pleyel to conduct rival concerts. Haydn
kept his temper, and wrote : " Pleyel behaves him-
self with great modesty. I go to all his concerts and
applaud him, but his presumption is a public laughing-
stock." Far different were the amenities that passed
between Haydn and Giardini, another imported rival.

STARS AMONG THE PLANETS 231

" I won't know the German hound," exclaimed
Giardini. " I attended his concert at Ranelagh, and
he played the riddle like a hog," said Haydn.

Dussek. — Then, still following chronological order,
there was J. L. Dussek (1761-1812), who takes a still
higher position in the classical piano school. After
many wanderings on the Continent, he, too, tried
publishing in London, but the business failed and
plunged him into debt. At last, in 1808, he entered
the service of Prince Talleyrand, in Paris, and re-
established his finances. Dussek, as Riemann says,
was one of the first, if not the first, to make the piano
" sing." Though they are not often heard in the con-
cert room, his piano compositions have life in them
yet, and are distinguished by their noble, pleasant
character. It is interesting to know that most of the
music of Don Giovanni was composed when Mozart
was on a visit to Dussek, whose house was a scene of
great resort and revelry while Mozart was his guest.

Cramer. — Yet another name connected with music
publishing. The firm of Cramer and Co. still flourishes.
It was founded by that J. B. Cramer (1771-1858)
whose Studies have achieved immortality and made
his name a household word. He was a German, a
pupil of Clementi, but he established himself in London
after gaining Continental fame as a pianist. He wrote
many things for the piano, but nothing to match the
Studies, the poetical spirit of which has always made
them agreeable to both pupils and teachers. There
is a very good story of Cramer. Once, when filling

232 MASTER MUSICIANS

a professional engagement at Manchester, he went
to dine with a friend and greatly praised a dish of
turnips on the table. Not long after, Cramer received
a letter from his host saying that he had sent by
waggon a present of "a few turnips." The present
arrived — a whole hogshead of turnips — and Cramer
had the felicity of paying two guineas for the carriage.
Hummel. — Cramer had a rival as a pianist, and
his name was J. N. Hummel (1778-1837). Hummel
received his early lessons from Mozart, and was, like
Mozart, a prodigy at the keyboard. Later on he
came into contact with Beethoven, whom he was con-
sidered to excel as an extemporiser. As has been
mentioned, he was also for some time Beethoven's
rival in love, having married a sister of the singer
Roeckel, to whom Beethoven was greatly attached.
Latterly, he renounced playing in public, and devoted
himself almost entirely to composition and teaching.
It is recorded of him that he was in the habit of
wearing a small velvet cap when in his study compos-
ing. One day a gentleman called on him to inquire
his terms for teaching composition, and after being
satisfied on that point, asked Hummel why he con-
tinually wore his velvet cap. Hummel, a bit of a wag,
having, we may suppose, already taken his visitor's
measure, said that he could not compose a bar without
it, for he never felt inspired until he had donned his
cap. Next morning the gentleman came, according to
arrangement, for his first lesson. Hummel provided
him with ruled paper and pen and ink, and was just

STARS AMONG THE PLANETS 233

about to begin his instructions, when the pupil drew
from his pocket a handsome velvet cap, a long gold
tassel depending therefrom. Popping this on, he ex-
claimed, " Now for it ! " with great energy. Hummel
smiled, but allowed his pupil to enjoy his imaginary
inspiration throughout the lesson. Whether the pupil
came again history sayeth not. One or two of
Hummel's compositions survive, but his style is rather
old-fashioned and lacking in passion.

Czerny. — Of Carl Czerny (1791-1857) what shall be
said ? Pianists innumerable, amateur and professional,
have been tortured by Czerny's Exercises or his School
of Velocity. There never was such a man for writing
exercises and studies. It is said he wrote one every
day. But the best of them are very good indeed, for
Czerny "understood better than any one else the
simple primitive forms from which all piano passage-
writing is evolved." He had himself been taught by
Beethoven ; and in his turn he helped to make such
giants of piano technique as Liszt and Thalberg. Liszt
used his studies until the very last for technical
purposes. Leschetizky, Paderewski's teacher, also uses
Czerny almost exclusively with his pupils. The last
time Liszt visited Vienna before his death, he was at
Leschetizky's villa. His playing even then was wonder-
ful, and Leschetizky took occasion to ask him how he
kept his technique. " I will tell you," he said : " I
practise the Czerny exercises a good half-hour every
day." Czerny lived practically all his days in Vienna,
teaching and composing.

234 MASTER MUSICIANS

Moscheles. — Finally among the piano -virtuose
composers comes Ignaz Moscheles (1794-1870), whose
Studies (Op. 70) remain to this day a standard work,
though his piano pieces and concertos have mostly
gone to oblivion. As a juvenile, Moscheles played so
well that he was noticed by Beethoven, but he was
twenty-six before he made a sensation on his recital
tours. He settled for a time in London, where he was
much sought after as a teacher ; but when Mendels-
sohn established the Leipzig Conservatorium he
tempted Moscheles to take a professorship, and he
continued in this post to the end of his life. He was
one of Mendelssohn's most intimate friends. They
would often extemporise together, " throwing a theme
to right and left as if it were a shuttlecock ; here hold-
ing it in bonds, there developing it on classical lines ;
now causing each other merriment by the conflicting
harmonies, and again playing with four hands, but only
one soul." There is an amusing story of their hiring
some chairs for a village concert. Mendelssohn said
they were for the great pianist Moscheles ; but the
mercenary inn-keeper said that great pianists had a
way of giving concerts, pocketing the money, and dis-
appearing. Cash down was demanded and paid, and
the loading up of a cab with chairs made a sufficiently
diverting picture. Moscheles and Chopin were friendly,
and the two were once invited to play before Louis
Philippe. The king sent Chopin a gold cup and
saucer, and to Moscheles a travelling-case, " the sooner
to get rid of him," Chopin jocularly said.

STARS AMONG THE PLANETS 235

Cherubini. — Such were the notable pianist com-
posers who bridged the two centuries. If we add to
the list the names of Cherubini (1760-1842), often
mentioned in former chapters, and Spohr (1784-1859),
we shall be ready to take up the nineteenth-century
men proper. Cherubini had the distinction of being
described by Beethoven as " the most estimable of liv-
ing musicians," but he was a somewhat pedantic person,
and we associate his name chiefly with church music
and with his theoretical treatises, though his opera
Les Deux Journtes once had some vogue. Chopin
described him as a mummy. He had pride and
dignity, and could snub even the mighty Napoleon.
The pair were once seated in the same box, listening
to one of Cherubini's operas. Napoleon's taste was
for the suave and sensuous style, and at the close
of the performance he turned to Cherubini and said :
" My dear Cherubini, you are certainly an excellent
musician ; but really your music is so noisy and com-
plicated that I can make nothing of it." To which
Cherubini replied : " My dear General, you are cer-
tainly an excellent soldier ; but in regard to music,
you must excuse me if I don't think it necessary to
adapt my music to your comprehension." This was
almost as bold as Liszt's declining to continue his
piano-playing before the Czar, because the Czar had
dared to talk while the great man was at the keyboard.
But the proud Cherubini never learned to " crook the
pregnant hinges of his knee " to the man who made
Europe tremble.

236 MASTER MUSICIANS

Spohr. — Ludwig Spohr, a native of Brunswick,
was a great violinist rather than a great composer,
though his two violin concertos are sometimes chosen
by virtuosi for the display of their skill, and his
oratorio, The Last Judgment, is occasionally per-
formed. He travelled about a good deal, and paid a
visit to England at the invitation of the Philharmonic
Society in 1820. It was on the occasion of this visit
that he made the first use in England of the now
familiar conductor's baton. He was anxious to make
an impression on the Londoners, so before he set out
for the concert he put on a bright red waistcoat.
" Scarcely had I appeared in it in the street," he says,
"than I attracted the attention of all who passed
The grown-up people contented themselves with gaz-
ing at me with looks of surprise ; but the urchins were
loud in their remarks, which unfortunately I did not
understand, and therefore could not imagine what it
was in me that so much displeased them. By degrees,
however, they formed a regular tail behind me, which
grew constantly louder in speech and more and more
unruly. A passer-by addressed me, and probably
gave me some explanation, but as it was in English I
derived no benefit from it." Poor Spohr, thus perse-
cuted, made for the house of his friend Ferdinand
Ries, when Mrs. Ries explained to him that a general
mourning had been officially ordered for George III.,
whose death had recently taken place, and therefore
that the red waistcoat had acted as a red rag to
sorrowing John Bull !

STARS AMONG THE PLANETS 237

Now we will take a quartet of stars, and once more,
with one exception, in the order of their birth.

BERLIOZ

Hector Berlioz had a curious and indeed a tragic
career. He was an innovator, and he was never under-
stood. His operas were kept off the stage by Wagner's
music dramas, while his symphonies and his religious
works suffered under the double misfortune of difficulty
and eccentricity. He made himself enemies all along
the line. As a student, he was wayward, pugnacious,
and cursed with that sardonic humour which makes
foes among fools. He did not reverence his professors
at the Conservatoire, and he had a poor opinion of
contemporary French and Italian composers. Open
enemies and secret ill-wishers surrounded him on
every hand. He said many things that music had not
said before ; and he, and he alone, brought French
music at a bound into line with all the new work that
was being done elsewhere in poetry, in prose, and in
art.

But he threw away almost his last chance by the
enormous demands he made upon players and con-
ductors. It is this which specially characterises Berlioz
as a composer. Big things, and particularly big,
horrible things, had a fatal fascination for him. The
ordinary orchestra, the ordinary chorus, the ordinary
concert room, would never do for him ; everything
must be magnified, as it were, beyond life-size. He
once talked of an opera in which a wicked King was

238 MASTER MUSICIANS

to arrange a burlesque of the Day of Judgment, only
to have his performance interrupted by the real com-
ing of Christ and the blast of angel trumpeters. He
heard children singing in St. Paul's Cathedral, and
had a vision of devils burlesquing the scene in hell !
His mind seemed steeped in horrors. Wagner said of
him : " He lies buried beneath the ruins of his own
machines." Heine's estimate of him is well worth
quoting : " A colossal nightingale, a lark the size of an
eagle, such as once existed, they say, in the primitive
world. Yes, the music of Berlioz in general has for
me something primitive, almost antediluvian ; it sets
me dreaming of gigantic species of extinct animals, of
mammoths, of fabulous empires with fabulous sins, of
all kinds of impossibilities piled one on top of the
other ; these magic accents recall to us Babylon, the
hanging gardens of Semiramis, the marvels of Nineveh,
the audacious edifices of Mizra'fm." After all, Berlioz
was one of the big men who compel not only admira-
tion in what they achieve, but sympathy in what they
aim at and fail to compass. His very exaggerations
dispose one to like him, he was so desperately in
earnest, and often where he fails he commands the
respect due to an intrepid voyager in strange lands.

Hector Berlioz was born at C6te St.-Andre" in
December 1803. His father was a doctor and an opium
eater, and the general opinion is that to the opium-
eating should be attributed much that was unbalanced
and morbid in the son. The father wanted him to
be a doctor, but he rebelled. " Become a physician ! "

STARS AMONG THE PLANETS 239

he cried ; " study anatomy ; dissect ; take part in
horrible operations ? No ! no ! that would be a total
subversion of the natural course of my life." So, much
against his parents' wishes, he went to Paris, and,
amid many trials and privations, studied at the Con-
servatoire. Later on, like so many more composers,
he went to Italy to complete his training. From
Rome he was recalled in a very amusing way. It was
almost a necessity of Berlioz's nature that he should
be in love, and his passions were of such heat and
fervour that they rarely failed to carry him beyond all
bounds of reason.

It was so now. He heard that a frivolous and un-
scrupulous Parisian beauty, who had bled his not over-
filled purse rather freely, was about to be married.
The news should have given him joy, but, instead of
that, it set up a spirit of revenge, and he hurried off
to Paris with loaded pistols, not even waiting for pass-
ports. He attempted to cross the frontier in women's
clothes, and was arrested. A variety of contretemps
occurred before he reached the capital, and by that
time his rage had cooled and the pistols were thrown
aside. The incident is thoroughly characteristic of
Berlioz.

It was shortly after this that he saw a pretty Irish
actress on the stage, and fell hopelessly in love with her.
A romantic passion it was, and it dominated Berlioz's
life. Harriet Smithson was playing Shakespeare, and
for Berlioz she became a celestial divinity, a lovely
ideal of art and beauty, a personification of the trans-

240 MASTER MUSICIANS

cendent genius of the dramatist. To win her for him-
self became the end and aim of Berlioz's existence.
His first step was to give a concert, at great expense,
at which he hoped she would be present. But, alas !
the concert turned out a fiasco, and the adored one
was not there. Berlioz was in utter despair. But luck
was yet to favour him, and in a most unexpected
way. Miss Smithson became involved in pecuniary
difficulties ; and, to make matters worse, she met with
an accident which prevented her again appearing on
the stage. Now was the composer's chance. He had
no great means of his own, yet he at once offered to
pay all the lady's debts, and, of course, to marry her
as well. She accepted him ; but, alas ! with the
marriage came the end of the romance. She who had
once been an angel now turned out a shrew. She had
a vile temper, was fretful and peevish, and by and by
became obsessed by an ungovernable jealousy, for
which there was no cause. At last, unable to endure
the torture any longer, Berlioz arranged a separation,
and to the end provided for her wants with scrupulous
fidelity.

Two of Berlioz's greatest works — the Symphonic
Fantastique and the Romeo and Juliet symphony — were
directly inspired by his passion for Harriet Smithson.
The first won him his wife. It also won him the
handsome pecuniary reward of 20,000 francs, paid him
out of sheer admiration by the weird, gaunt, demon
fiddler Paganini, of whose "dark flowing hair" Leigh
Hunt sings. He wrote in almost every branch of com-

STARS AMONG THE PLANETS 241

position, but his skill lay in the marvellous way in
which he developed the resources of the orchestra. In
number of parts and instruments employed, his
Requiem is the most ambitious score in existence.

Writing of his life in Paris in 1837, the late Sir
Charles Hall6 gives this little sketch of Berlioz, then
a young man of thirty-four : " There never lived a
musician who adored his art more than did Berlioz ;
he was, indeed, ' enthusiasm personified.' To hear him
speak of, or rave about, a real chef-cCceuvre such as
Armida, Iphigenie> or the C minor symphony, the
pitch of his voice rising higher and higher as he talked,
was worth any performance of the same. And what
a picture he was at the head of his orchestra, with his
eagle face, his bushy hair, his air of command, and
glowing with enthusiasm. He was the most perfect
conductor I ever set eyes upon, one who held absolute
sway over his troops, and played upon them as a
pianist upon the keyboard."

For a genius of his rank, Berlioz had extraordinary
limitations. He was no executant upon any instrument
(for being able to strum a few chords on the guitar
does not count), and he was painfully aware how much
this was a hindrance to him and to his knowledge of
musical literature, which indeed was limited. Halle
was often astonished to find that works familiar to
every pianist were unknown to him — not merely works
written for the piano, such as Beethoven's sonatas, of
which he knew but few, but also orchestral works,
oratorios, etc., known to pianists through arrange-

R

242 MASTER MUSICIANS

ments. Perhaps many undoubted crudities in his work
would have been eliminated had he been able to hear
them before committing them to paper, for the eye
alone was not sufficient to give him a clear idea of
the effect of his musical combinations. Berlioz died in
1869. He had married a second time, but he outlived
his wife, and latterly had to be taken care of by his
mother-in-law.

BRAHMS

Writing from Diisseldorf in 1853, Schumann said:
" We are now living in a very musical age. A young
man has appeared here who has impressed us most
deeply with his wonderful music, and who will, I am
quite convinced, make a great sensation in the musical
world." And in a letter to Joachim, bearing the same
date, he writes : " I do think that if I were younger I
might indite a few polymeters on the young eagle who
has flown across from the Alps to Diisseldorf so un-
expectedly. Or he might be compared to a splendid
river which, like Niagara, is at its grandest when
thundering down from the heights as a waterfall, bear-
ing the rainbow in its waves, its banks courted by
butterflies, and accompanied by nightingales' songs.
Well, I think Johannes is the true apostle, who will
write revelations which many Pharisees will be unable
to explain, even after centuries." Five days later
follows another letter to Dr. Hartel, dwelling on the
genius displayed in Brahms' compositions, and adding
" he is also an extraordinary player."

STARS AMONG THE PLANETS 24.3

All this about a composer who is now looked upon
by many earnest musical students as the only legitimate
successor of Beethoven. And certainly if any one can
fairly claim to have taken up music where Beethoven
laid it down, it is Johannes Brahms. He was bred, in
a musical sense, upon Bach and Beethoven, with whom
Von Billow coupled him to make a holy trinity of music,
"the three B's." But the worst of it is that he lacked
the appealing emotional sense of both Bach and Beet-
hoven. His music, fine and solid as it is, somehow fails
to inspire us. He is at least not welcome to the coteries
of whom it has been sung that they,

Fast bound at their suburban level,

Still suffer qualms because of Brahms,

And wish all Wagner at the devil.

Some of his admirers put his piano pieces above even
those of Chopin ; but it would be easy to show that
Chopin is not only more artistic but more scientific in
his harmonies — that Brahms violates not only art and
taste, but acoustics as well. His antiquated chord
groupings might have been tolerable on the old harpsi-
chords, but on the sonorous modern piano they are too
often clashing and discordant Much of his piano music
sounds muddy, and some of it is positively ugly. Even
his orchestral music is austere and "grey." One of his
biographers extols him for his superiority in never
worrying about trifles of composition, " often cutting
knots which might better have been untied." This
evidently refers to the slovenly modulations and the
juxtaposition of incongruous keys, which, if found in

244 MASTER MUSICIANS

another composer, would be instantly condemned.
Nevertheless Brahms was a great composer, and it is
just possible that in not fully appreciating him now,
we are in the position of the poor blind people who
did not appreciate " Mr. Van Beethoven." Only time
can tell.

Brahms' biography need not detain us long, for his
career was one of the least eventful that the history of
music can show. He was born at Hamburg in 1833,
and died at Vienna in 1897, having lived there very
quietly for thirty years. He made a very successful
public appearance when he was fourteen, but after that
he went into retirement and studied hard for five years
more. Then he toured, as a pianist, with Remenyi,
the eccentric Hungarian violinist. Early in the tour
Remenyi took him to see Liszt. Liszt sat down to play
some of his own works, and turning round after a time,
he beheld Brahms comfortably asleep in an armchair !

It was at Gottingen in 1853, during this tour, that
a turning-point in Brahms' career occurred. He was
to have played Beethoven's Kreutzer sonata with
Remenyi, when it was discovered, to the latter's horror,
that the pianoforte was a semitone below pitch and
that he would have to tune his fiddle down. Brahms,
however, came to the rescue and offered to play the
pianoforte part in B flat, the original key being A. This
he did without book, and it was a feat that none but
a musician of extraordinary ability could have accom-
plished. Joachim, who was present, was so impressed
with the promise of the young man, two years his

STARS AMONG THE PLANETS 245

junior, that he wrote to a friend : " Brahms has an
altogether exceptional talent for composition, a gift
that is enhanced by the unaffected modesty of his
character. His playing, too, gives every presage of a
great artistic career, full of fire and energy, yet, if I
may say so, unerring in its precision and certainty of
touch. In brief, he is the most considerable musician of
his age that I have ever met." Brahms did not, how-
ever, make any great mark as a pianist, the fact being
that his retiring nature made him averse to playing in
public.

Brahms never touched opera, which he might so
well have done with his great gifts as a song writer
and his vast knowledge of the resources of the modern
orchestra. His own favourite opera was Carmen, but
he disliked opera on principle, and when he went to
hear one, generally left after the first act. He told
Hanslick that it would be as hard for him to marry as
to write an opera. In passing, it may be noted that
Brahms admitted he might have married when he was
a young man if his compositions had not then been re-
ceived with such frigid indifference. He said he could
not bear to have a wife pity him for his non-success.
Some wealthy Viennese women set their caps at him,
but he remained obdurate. In his later years he was
lonely and without blood relations of any kind.

As man and musician Brahms had many of the
characteristics of Beethoven. He was "arbitrary in
musical matters, rough in his ways, furiously severe
with any who trifled with music." With almost clumsy

246 MASTER MUSICIANS

modesty he approached the piano or the conductor's
desk ; unwillingly and shyly he responded to the stormy
recalls, and could not disappear again quickly enough.
He had a holy horror of functions and formality, and
hated getting into a dress-coat. Even friends some-
times complained of his coldness. Once at a soiree he
took leave of the guests with the words : " I beg pardon
if perchance I have offended nobody to-day." Again,
when an importunate hostess who had been pestering
him to play had at last induced him to sit down at the
piano, he struck a C sharp in the treble, and a C natural
in the bass, and after hammering them together several
times, exclaimed with pretended indignation : " How
can you expect me to play on a pianoforte so terribly
out of tune ? " At the same time, when he chose, no
one could excel him in the art of graceful compliments.
Thus he inscribed on Madame Strauss' fan a bar or
two of her husband's Blue Danube waltz, with the words :
" Unfortunately, not by Johannes Brahms."

In appearance Brahms, like Beethoven and Wagner,
was short of stature, with a stout and stumpy figure,
which led a French visitor to compare him with a barrel.
But the ungainliness of his figure was redeemed by a
splendid head and commanding features, stamped in
every line with force and character. He lies at rest in
a grave of honour between the tombs of Beethoven and
Schubert, and not far from where Mozart must lie. He
was one of the very few composers who, beginning life
with nothing, died rich, having left the comfortable
fortune of .£14,000.

GRIEG

To the musical amateur of to-day, no recent com-
poser is better known than Edvard Grieg. Every school
girl plays his smaller piano pieces ; young violinists
study his melodious sonatas ; and few concert numbers
are more popular than the Peer Gynt suite. These, with
his songs and his romantic pianoforte concerto, are so
well known and admired that there is no need to dwell
on their merits. It was at the suggestion of Ibsen him-
self that Grieg wrote the incidental music for the pro-
duction of Peer Gynt at the Christiania Theatre ; and
from it he selected portions for the popular suite.
" Write how you like, only put devilry into the music,"
said the author to the composer. Ibsen was so pleased
with the result that, in 1876, he arranged with Grieg
for the setting of a libretto which had been lying by
him for several years, but the project was never carried
through.

It is a remarkable fact that both Grieg and Ibsen,
the most prominent men in latter-day Norwegian music
and letters, traced their descent from Scottish ancestors.
Ibsen's remote ancestors came from Fifeshire ; and in
Mr. Finck's recent volume on Grieg it is shown that
the composer's grandfather, Alexander Greig, was an
Aberdeen merchant. Alexander Greig was concerned
in the "bonriie Prince Charlie" business of 1745, but
managed to escape to Bergen, in Norway, as other
rebels did. He changed the spelling of his name
to Grieg, to suit the Norwegian pronunciation, and

248 MASTER MUSICIANS

became a Bergen merchant. His son John took up
the business, and was made British Consul at Bergen.
John's son, Alexander, was also merchant and Consul,
and was the father of the composer. Grieg knew all
about his Scottish ancestry, and he was deeply inter-
ested in Scottish national music, in which he traced
many of the characteristics of that of his beloved
Norway.

Grieg was born at Bergen in 1843. He desired to
become a painter, but the famous Norwegian violinist,
Ole Bull, recommended that he should be sent to
Leipzig Conservatoire to study music, for which he had
shown an aptitude. Shortly before his death he wrote
an account of his early days, in which he said : " I could
go very far back, back to the earliest years of my child-
hood. Why should I not go right back ? What should
hinder me from recalling the wonderful mysterious
satisfaction with which my arms stretched out to the
piano to discover — not a melody ; that was far off ; —
no ; it must be a harmony, first a third, then a chord
of three notes, then a full chord of four ; ending at last,
with both hands, — O joy ! a combination of five, the
chord of the ninth. When I found that out my happi-
ness knew no bounds. That was indeed a success ! No
later success ever stirred me like that. I was about
five years old." These juvenile attempts at harmony
are of special interest in the case of Grieg, for next
to his gift of melodic invention are the romantic har-
monies with which he clothes and delicately colours

<

his musical thoughts.

GRIEG

HANFSTAKNGL COLLECTION

STARS AMONG THE PLANETS 249

He says himself that he got little professional good
at Leipzig. But this was probably his modesty. Even
in his last year he wrote : " What I have accomplished
in large and small works signifies for me personally
a continual development, and yet, unfortunately, I am
conscious never to have reached what I have striven
for. So to-day I cannot name a single work as truly
a first composition. What remains to me is to con-
template the wandering through art and life as the
prelude to that true first-work, of which, on earth, I am
only able to dream." In 1867 Grieg married his cousin,
Nina Hagerup, a gifted vocalist, with whom he gave
concerts in Christiania while yet a struggling musician.
Shortly afterwards he made the acquaintance of Liszt,
who did much to bring his genius the recognition it
deserved. Grieg soon became known in Germany,
France, Britain, and America, and to-day he occupies
the highest position among Norwegian composers.

His death occurred so recently as September 1907,
just as he was making preparations for a professional
visit to England. The last evening he said to his nurse:
" I am not able to sleep : I shall have another restless
night." Later on, feeling that he was dying, he said to
his wife, who for thirty years had been his faithful and
sympathetic companion : " So this is the end." Men
and women of all classes in Bergen felt his loss as a
personal one. He had long suffered from poor health,
and had lived for thirty years with one lung. He would
have travelled much more as an artist, but he could not
stand climatic changes, and the sea was a terror to him.

250 MASTER MUSICIANS

Once he crossed from Bergen to Aberdeen to see the
home of his ancestors. " I shall never forget that night
of horrors," he said. To get to England from Bergen,
he travelled through seven countries and crossed at
Calais to have as little of the sea as possible. But he
came to London more than once, and was always
received with great cordiality. He was a man of very
simple tastes and habits, with a trace of superstition
which made him always keep a mascot in the shape of
a doll on his writing-desk. The best description of his
appearance is that set down by Tschaikowsky, who
met him in 1888, when he was forty -five. During
a rehearsal which Tschaikowsky was conducting —
"There entered the room a very short, middle-aged
man, exceedingly fragile in appearance, with shoulders
of unequal height, fair hair brushed back from his fore-
head, and a very slight, almost boyish beard and mous-
tache. There was nothing very striking about the
features of this man, whose exterior at once attracted
my sympathy, for it would be impossible to call them
handsome or regular ; but he had an uncommon
charm, and blue eyes not very large, but irresistibly
fascinating. I rejoiced in the depths of my heart when
we were introduced to each other and it turned out
that this personality which was so inexplicably sym-
pathetic to me belonged to a musician whose warmly
emotional music had long ago won my heart. He
proved to be the Norwegian composer, Edvard Grieg."
Thus Tschaikowsky ; and Tschaikowsky is the last of
our quartet.

STARS AMONG THE PLANETS 251

TSCHAIKOWSKY

It is not without design that we bring our record to
a close with his name. We hear it continually said —
not with much truth, so far as one can see — that melan-
choly is the maladie du siecle ; and the contention is
that Tschaikowsky's music is popular because it ex-
presses, as no other music does, this pessimism of the
age. Certainly Tschaikowsky is a master of grief, of
what Ossian calls " the luxury of woe." He supremely
recognised that his art was the expression of emotion ;
and " since he was oftenest sad, 'twas oftenest that he
spoke sad things." His flight was towards the west,
towards the darkling things, the day's death, the com-
ing of night, the mystical interlude between the life
that was and the life that is to be. In his final utter-
ance, it may be said of him that his wing lingered in
the night-time, and when the arrows of the sun shot
shyly over the edge of the eastern sea Tschaikowsky
was gone : his day was done in an ultimate utterance
of musical grief.

Practically speaking, though he wrote many more
things, and some very fine things too, Tschaikowsky is
known, and will probably always be known, almost
solely by his Pathetic symphony ; just as Gray is
known solely by the Elegy in a Country Churchyard.
And considering the present popularity of the Pathetic,
it is curious to reflect that it is not so long since
Tschaikowsky was only a name in England. He had
visited England twice or three times ; but, as a cynical

252 MASTER MUSICIANS

critic puts it, he had not written any piece without
which no orchestral programme could be considered
complete. However, when his fame became great,
and spread on the Continent, he assumed such an
importance in the eyes of English musicians that
Cambridge University honoured itself by making him
a Doctor of Music. The bestowing of this distinction
served a useful purpose by calling public attention to
the fact that there was living a man who had written
music that was fresh, a trifle strange perhaps, but full
of vitality, and containing a new throb, a new thrill.
Since 1893 his reputation has steadily grown ; but if
he had not written the Pathetic symphony he would
have been no better known now than he was then.
That great work caught the public fancy, and the
public fancy still upholds it.

Peter Ilyitch Tschaikowsky was born in a small
Russian town in 1840, the son of a well-to-do mining
and military engineer. He took to music late, like
Wagner, and was twenty -three before he began to
study instrumentation. All through his youth he was
" indolent, popular, fond of society, a graceful amateur
who played salon pieces at evening parties." But once
embarked on his musical career, he attacked his studies
with even furious ardour. He often worked all night ;
and Rubinstein, who taught him composition at the
St. Petersburg Conservatoire, tells how, on one occa-
sion, he submitted no fewer than 200 variations on a
single theme. He made such progress, indeed, that
when only twenty-six he was appointed a professor

STARS AMONG THE PLANETS 253

at the Moscow Conservatoire. But none of his com-
positions obtained any success until he was well over
thirty.

Then, in 1877, came his mysterious and unhappy
marriage. A young woman, very poor, declared her
love for him; and in a mood of Quixotic chivalry,
purely out of sympathy, he married her, though he
did not love her. He tried to argue the girl out of
her infatuation by describing minutely his character,
his irritability, his diffidence, the unevenness of his
temperament, and so on. It was all in vain. Tschai-
kowsky was in despair. "To live," he said, " for thirty-
seven years in congenital antipathy to marriage, and
then suddenly to be made a bridegroom through sheer
force of circumstances, without being in the least
charmed by the bride — that is something horrible."
Truly ! And the result was horrible. After the mar-
riage the pair returned home only to part. Tschai-
kowsky stayed away for a month, and then tried the
life h deux again. The attempt lasted only for a week.
He determined to kill himself, and stood up to his chin
in the river one frosty night, " in the hope of literally
catching his death of cold, and getting rid of his
troubles without scandal." He fled to St. Petersburg,
where his brother stood by him for forty-eight hours
while he lay unconscious. The doctor said travel was
necessary. The wife was provided for, and leaving her
for ever, Tschaikowsky fled to foreign countries, barely
in time to save his sanity. That is all that we know,
so far, of the strange story. There must be more to tell

254 MASTER MUSICIANS

in explanation of a freak so wild and apparently un-
natural, but we must wait.

In course of time Tschaikowsky pulled himself to-
gether, and it is to the fruitfulness of his quiet, later
years that we owe such of his works, in addition to the
Pathetic, as have the slightest chance of surviving.
After his period of travel he lived almost a hermit.
His end, humanly speaking, was as sad as his career.
During the cholera season in St. Petersburg, when the
water was more or less contaminated, he drank a glass
of unfiltered water, and very soon thereafter was struck
down with the disease. When he was dying, in terrible
agony, he thanked all about his bedside for the con-
sideration they showed him. He turned to his nephews,
after an unusually severe attack of nausea, with the
exclamation : " What a condition I am in ! You will
have but little respect for your uncle when you think of
him in such a state as this." So Charles II., with his
historical "I am afraid, gentlemen, I am an unconscion-
able time a-dying."

Thus passed away, in the October of 1893, the
most characteristic of the moderns of musical com-
position. The beauty of much of his work is seductive,
but better perhaps is the more equable beauty of
Bach and Mozart

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