THE PIANOFORTE
AND ITS MUSIC *
BY HENRY EDWARD KREHBIEL
The Music Lover s Library
BOOKS BY HENRY EDWARD KREHBIEL
PUBLISHED BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'8 SONS
How to Listen to Music. Illustrated.
12mo net $1.25
Music and Manners in the Classical
Period. 12mo $1.60
The Pianoforte and Its Music. Illustrated.
[Music Lover's Library.] 12mo. net $1.25
The Music Lover's Library
The ^Pianoforte
and Its Music
By
Henry Edward Krehbiel
Author of "How to Listen to Music," "Music and Manners
in the Classical Period," "Studies in the IVagner-
ian Drama," "Chapters of Opera," "A
Book of Operas, " " The 'Philharmonic
Society of 'Mew York," etc., etc.
With Portraits and Illustrations
Charles Scribner's Sons
New York : : : : : 1911
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO
63 820
EDWAFri JOHNSON
.RY
Copyright, 1910, by H. E. Krehbul
Copyright, 1911, fy Charles Scribntr's Sons
Published January, xgii
TO
IGNAZ JAN PADEREWSKI
'Blue Hill, {Maine,
Summer of 1910.
Contents
PART 1
THE INSTRUMENT
PAGE
I. Principles and Primitive Prototypes . . 3
II. Mediaeval Precursors 17
III. The Pianoforte of To-Day 29
PART II
THE COMPOSERS
IV. The Earliest Clavier Music 53
V. The English Virginalists 62
VI. French and Italian Clavecinists ... 87
VII. The German School Bach and Handel . 100
VIII. Classicism and the Sonata 122
IX. Beethoven an Intermezzo 146
X. The Romantic School 180
XI. National Schools 229
PART III
THE PLAYERS
XII. Virtuosi and Their Development . . .261
Illustrations
A Pianoforte by Cristofori Frontispiece
In the Crosby Brown Collection, Metropolitan Museum of
Art. New York.
PAGE
Evolution of the Musical Bow .... Facing 12
Group of Clavichord Keys 18
A Harpischord Jack 18
Hammer-action of a Grand Pianoforte ... 45
Jean Philippe Rameau Facing 88
Domenico Scarlatti " 98
Franz Liszt " 144
After a drawing by S. Mlttag.
Francois Fre'deric Chopin " 200
Ignaz Jan Paderewski " 242
Carl Tausig . . , " 262
Part I
The Instrument
Principles and Primitive Prototypes
IN this book I have undertaken a study of the
origin and development of the pianoforte, the
music composed for it, and the performers who have
brought that music home to the understanding and
enjoyment of the people who have lived since the
instrument acquired the predominant influence
which it occupies in modern culture. There is that
in the title of the series of works to which this little
book belongs which justifies a trust in the gracious-
ness, gentleness, and serious-mindedness of those
who shall, haply, read it; and therefore I begin with
a warning that an earnest purpose lies at the bottom
of my undertaking: I am more desirous to instruct
than to entertain, though I would not assert that in
this instance instruction and entertainment need be
divorced. Nevertheless, it was this desire that de-
termined the method which I shall follow in the dis-
cussion and which I shall believe to be successful in
the degree that it excites the imagination and quick-
ens the perceptions of my readers without burden-
ing the faculty which historical study, as commonly
conducted, taxes most severely that is to say, the
3
The Instrument
faculty of memory. I shall care little for dates and
much for principles. Names shall not affright me,
and I shall not attempt to
distinguish and divide
A hair 'twixt south and south-west side
when it comes to enumerating or describing the in-
struments which some centuries ago filled the place
in musical practice now occupied by that instru-
ment universal the pianoforte. Yet I shall strive
to point out why and how the structural principles
of those instruments influenced the music which
they were called upon to utter, and pointed the way
to the art of to-day. It is one of the cheering and
amiable features of historical study pursued in this
manner that it refuses to be kept in the dusty road
tramped by date-mongers and takes into account the
utterances of poets, the testimony of ancient can--
ings and drawings, as well as the records of prosy
chroniclers. Many are the by-paths which lead
into the avenue of scientific fact varied and lovely
are the vistas which they open.
We are concerned in this portion of our study
with the story which shall tell us how the piano-
forte came into existence. As we know it, this in-
strument is practically a product of the nineteenth
century; yet poetical traditions which have come
down to us from the earliest civilizations are at one
with the conclusions of scientific research in telling
4
Principles and Primitive Prototypes
us what was the common origin of the instruments
to which the pianoforte has borne relationship since
music began. Let me, before showing this, classify
these instruments. They are known technically as
"stringed" instruments, because their tones are gen-
erated by the vibrations of tense strings, or chords.
Now:
(a) Instruments of the viol family yield tones when
their strings are rubbed;
(b) Those of the harp family when they are
twanged, plucked, or picked;
(c) Those of the dulcimer family when they are
struck.
All these instruments are interrelated, and at
one time or another in its long history the instru-
ment which we call the piano for short (but which
ought always to be called the pianoforte, for rea-
sons which shall appear presently) has embodied
the fundamental principle of each. There are dif-
ferences, however, which determine further divi-
sions. Thus, some stringed instruments yield many
more tones than they have strings through the
mediumship of a finger-board which enables a
player to shorten the vibrating segment of each
string by pressure upon it with the fingers "stop-
ping," as it is called by the musicians; some have
fewer tones than strings, the latter being doubled,
or even trebled, in unison for the sake of greater
sonority; some are plucked or twanged with the
5
The Instrument
bare fingers, some with a bit of metal, ivory, or
wood, anciently called a plectrum. The feature
which differentiates the pianoforte from its com-
panions is the keyboard. This is a mechanical
contrivance by which the blow against the strings
is not only delivered, but by means of which it can
also be regulated so as to produce gradations of
power and a considerable range of expression. It
is to the first of these capacities that the instrument
owes its name the "pianoforte" (piano e forte
as it was first called) is the "soft and loud." This
is very rudimentary talk, but its significance will
appear later.
If, now, I were asked to give a brief but com-
prehensive definition of the pianoforte, whose or-
igin, growth, and present status are to occupy
our attention in the first large subdivision of this
study, I should say that it is an instrument of
music the tones of which are generated by strings
set in vibration by blows delivered by hammers
controlled by a keyboard, the mechanism of which
is so adjusted that the force of the blow and the
dynamic intensity of the resultant tone are meas-
urably at the command of the player. Also that it
has a sound-board, or resonance-box, to augment
the tone after its creation.
The beginning of such an instrument may be
sought for in the legends of antiquity, the some-
what confusing records of mediaeval scholastics, and
6
Principles and Primitive Prototypes
the rude inventions of the savages who live to-day
to tell us something about things which antedate the
civilization of which our time has been so boastful.
Mediaeval records are equidistant between the im-
aginative and scientific periods. Now, imagination
not only
bodies forth
The forms of things unknown,
but also preserves a record of things forgotten. I
am, therefore, pleased first to invite its aid.
The god of music of the ancient Greeks was also
their archer-god. Recall the description of Apol-
lo's answer to the supplication of Chryses in the
first book of the " Iliad." The aged priest implores
the god to avenge the wrong done by Agamemnon.
Hear me, thou bearer of the silver bow,
he prays; and thus the poet describes the god's
answer to the appeal:
Phoebus Apollo hearkened. Down he came,
Down from the summit of the Olympian mount,
Wrathful in heart; his shoulder bore the bow
And hollow quiver; there the arrows rang
Upon the shoulders of the angry god
As on he moved. He came as comes the night,
And, seated from the ships aloof, sent forth
An arrow; terrible was heard the clang
Of that resplendent bow.
7
The Instrument
It was not a mere chance that the poet equipped
the god of music with a bow, nor yet a striving after
picturesque effect. A Homer would not have jug-
gled so with words and images. Apollo bore the
bow on this occasion because it fell to him to mete
out retribution; but he was the god of music be-
cause he bore the bow. I cannot recall where, but
I have seen somewhere another of these beautiful
old Greek legends which presents Apollo listen-
ing entranced to the musical twang of his bow-
string, which gave out sweet sounds even while
it sped the arrow on its errand of death. Also
there comes to mind the passage in the "Odyssey"
which describes Ulysses's trial of his own bow after
the suitors of Penelope had put it by in despair
when he drew the arrow to its head and the string
rang shrill and sweet as the note of a swallow as he
let it go. A version of an old legend given by Cen-
sorinus says that the use of the tense string of his
bow for musical purposes was suggested to Apollo
by the twang made by the bowstring of his huntress
sister Diana.
Tales like these preserve a record which ante-
dates history as commonly understood. The bow
was the first stringed instrument of music that is
what these tales tell us; and note how the old lesson
is illustrated in the life of to-day: There lives no
boy brought up where the bow is a plaything who
has not made Apollo's discovery for himself. For
8
Principles and Primitive Prototypes
all such boys it is a common amusement to pluck at
the bowstring and catch the faint musical tone
which results by putting the bow to the ear or be-
tween the teeth. The savage probably did the
same thing thousands of years ago; he certainly
does it now pretty much all the world over. In the
Smithsonian Institution at Washington there is a
musical instrument which used to be described in
the catalogue as a guitar of the Yaquima Indians
of Sonora, Mexico. It is nothing else than a bow
provided with a tuning peg. While picking the
string with his right hand the savage varied the
pitch of the tone by slipping the left along the
string. Travellers have found half a dozen tribes
in Africa whose principal instrument of music differs
but in little from the bow. Some savages, indeed,
use the same bow in their music-making that they
do in war and the chase. The n-kungu of the An-
gola negroes is a springy piece of wood bent by a
string of twisted fibre. Near one end another bit
of fibre is lashed around the bow, drawing the string
tighter, and a hollow gourd is fastened to the wood
to augment the sound. Here we have the primi-
tive resonator, or sound-box. The performer holds
his rude instrument upright in his left arm, the
gourd resting on his left hip, or his stomach, and
while he twangs the string with a splint of wood he
slips the fingers of his left hand along it to raise and
lower the tone. In the Crosby Brown collection of
9
The Instrument
musical instruments, housed at the Metropolitan
Museum of Art in New York, there is an instru-
ment from Brazil which has its counterpart in two
specimens from the Gaboon River, Africa, pre-
served in the National Museum at Washington. It
is made from the midrib of a large palm leaf. In
the Washington specimens strips of the outer skin
of the midrib are cut loose and raised up on a ver-
tical bridge, the ends being left attached. Around
the ends and the midrib are little bands of plaited
fibre by which the vibrating length of the strings
can be adjusted. As in the Angola instrument, a
gourd forms the resonator. The hunting-bow has
here grown into an instrument capable of giving
out eight tones. The instrument was introduced in
America by slaves who came from Africa; this, at
least, is the contention of Professor Mason, of the
National Museum.
The theory which finds the origin of all musical
instruments of the stringed tribe in the bow of the
savage has a triple commendation: the Hellenic
myths suggest it; reason approves it; the practice
of modern savages confirms it. Suppose primitive
man to conceive the desire to add to the number
of tones possible to his improvised musical instru-
ments so as to enjoy that sequence or combination
which, when pleasingly ordered, we call melody or
harmony how would he go about it ? Most natu-
rally by adding strings to his bow; and a bow with
10
Principles and Primitive Prototypes
more than one string is already a rudimentary harp.
As Homer came to our support in the first instance,
so the ancient sculptor helps us now. The oldest
rock pictures which archaeologists have found in
Egypt show us harps that retain enough of the bow
form plainly to suggest their origin. The body of
the instrument is still shaped like a bow; the single
string has received three fellows; the gourd of the
n-kungu has developed into a sound-box of wood.
The instrument was carried on the left shoulder
and its strings were plucked with the fingers. The
mural paintings and sculptures of Egypt discover
many varieties of harps, some showing a marvellous
degree of perfection, but even the largest and finest
lacks the pole which completes the triangular form
of the modern harp and is essential to its strength
and rigidity.
There is no relic of the bow in the shapes of the
harps and lyres of the Greeks and Romans, but,
instead, suggestions of the tortoise-shell which, ac-
cording to the familiar legend told by Apollodorus,
gave Mercury the idea exemplified in the classic
lyre. According to this story, the god one day ac-
cidentally kicked a tortoise-shell stretched in the
interior of which there remained some cartilages
after the flesh had been dried out by the sun. These
chords gave forth a sound, and Mercury at once
conceived the idea of the lyre, made the instrument
in the shape of a tortoise-shell and strung it with the
The Instrument
dried sinews of animals. This legend originates the
two principles of a vibrating string and a resonator
simultaneously, and is obviously of a later date than
the myth which made Apollo
The lord of the unerring bow,
The god of life, and poetry, and light.
But we ought now to look away from all the
ancient instruments whose strings were twanged
or plucked, whether with the unarmed fingers or
with plectra of various kinds, and seek for the
earliest form of an instrument embodying the prin-
ciple of a struck string. The oldest illustrations of
this manner of producing musical sounds that have
been discovered are Assyrian. Among the bas-
relief sculptures taken from the tumuli which mark
the places where Nineveh, Nimroud, Khorsabad,
and Kuijundschik once stood (they are now safely
housed in the British Museum, to the great glory
of the English people) is one representing a portion
of a triumphal procession in honor of Saos-du-Khin,
an Assyrian king whose reign began 667 years before
Christ. In this group there is what I have vent-
ured to look upon as an Assyrian dulcimer player.
The instrument, apparently a sound-box with
strings stretched across the top (though they are
depicted as bending over each other in the air in
agreement with ancient notions of art, which made
perspective wait upon delineation of actualities),
12
EVOLUTION OF THE MUSICAL BOW.
Principles and Primitive Prototypes
was suspended in front of the player by a band from
the neck, since both hands are occupied in playing
upon it the right hand striking the strings with an
instrument apparently about a foot long, the left
seemingly checking the vibrations of the strings.
If this instrument was really a dulcimer, it may
stand as the true prototype among the civilized an-
cients of the modern pianoforte. Varied in shape,
with many names, it has lived till to-day. It is still
popular in the Orient. It is the Persian santir; it
was the Greek psalterion, and its use was general
throughout Europe as early as the sixth century.
The Italians called it the dolcimelo, compounding
the word out of the Latin duke and the Greek
melos. The ruder Germans, taking a suggestion,
probably, from the motion of the players' hands,
which suggested that of the butchers' in the prepa-
ration of their favorite viand, called it Hackbrett
that is, chopping board. By this time the instru-
ment had attained its present form, a box of thin
boards pierced on the top with sound holes, having
wire strings stretched over bridges, played upon
with two hammers with slender handles and cork
heads. Once it was played upon with two sticks
slightly bent at one end, making an elongated head,
one side of which was covered with cloth. By
striking the wires with the cloth-covered surface soft
effects were obtained a noteworthy device in this
history, for it suggested the pianoforte to the mind
The Instrument
of one of its inventors. The capabilities of the
dulcimer may be studied to-day in the music of
the ubiquitous gypsy band.
We have now seen something of the origin and
growth of two of the vital principles of the modern
pianoforte the principle of a vibrating string as a
medium of tone generation and of a blow against
the string as a means of tone production. For a
third distinguishing principle, that by which the
two media are brought into mutual service, the
journey of discovery must again be into the classic
past. The keyboard was borrowed from instru-
ments of the organ kind, and its antiquity cannot
clearly be determined. Organs were the possession
of both Greeks and Hebrews before the Christian
era, and their existence in anything beyond the sim-
plest forms, as exemplified in the syrinx, presup-
poses some contrivance for admitting and exclud-
ing wind from the pipes at the will of the player.
At first, and even after the instrument got into
literature, this contrivance may have been a series
of rods which could be drawn forth and pushed
back under the mouths of the pipes, but in the
sixth century A.D. Cassiodorus, in a commentary
on Psalm cl., wrote a description of a. pneumatic
organ which leaves no doubt that the commentator
was familiar with something like our key-action.
He mentions the presence in the interior of the in-
strument of " movements of wood which are pressed
14
Principles and Primitive Prototypes
down by the fingers of the player" in order to "ex-
press agreeable melodies." We do not know when
the keyboard was invented, but certain it seems
that the organ keyboard was too cumbersome a con-
trivance to be applied to a stringed instrument for
several centuries after the beginning of the Christian
era. This application, in the form of interest to us,
took place about the eleventh century, and the in-
strument to which keys were then applied was a
scientific rather than a musical instrument. It was
the monochord, which had been used in the mathe-
matical determination of the relation of tones ever
since the time of Pythagoras that is, ever since the
sixth century before Christ. As its name indicates,
the monochord had but a single string. This was
stretched over two bridges, on a sound-box. By
stopping this string in the middle the octave of its
fundamental tone was produced; two-thirds gave
the fifth, three-fourths the fourth, and so on, the
harmonic interval being perfect in proportion to
the simplicity of the numerical ratio. It was a sim-
ple matter to add strings to the monochord to facili-
tate its manipulation in the comparison of intervals,
and two theoretical writers in the second century
A.D., Aristides Quintilian and Claudius Ptolemy,
refer to an instrument having four strings tuned in
unison which was used in the study of tonal ratios.
It was once customary to attribute nearly all in-
ventions in music to Guido d'Arezzo, the monk to
The Instrument
whom we are indebted for our sol-fa syllables. He
is credited, too, with having applied keys to the
monochord which, on being pressed down, lifted a
bridge against the string from below, simultaneously
making it sound and dividing off the portion whose
tone it was desired to hear. Whether or not he made
this discovery is not proved, but that he was fa-
miliar with a keyed instrument is plain, from the
fact that he left a writing for his pupils, counselling
them to practise their hands in the use of the
monochord.
16
II
Mediaeval Precursors
WE have now before us the primary form of
the instrument which, despite its simplicity,
contested longest for supremacy with the piano-
forte after the latter had entered the arena. The
mechanism of the monochord of the eleventh cen-
tury was to all intents and purposes the mechanism
of the clavichord (davis, key; chorda, a string),
which might still have been seen occasionally in the
music-loving houses of Germany in the middle of
the nineteenth century.
The key was a simple lever, one end of which
received the pressure of the finger, while the other,
extending under the strings of the instrument, was
armed with a bit of metal placed upright and at
right angles with the string. When the key was
pressed down the blow dealt by this bit of metal,
called a "tangent," set the string to vibrating, and
at the same time measured off the segment of the
string which had to vibrate to produce the desired
tone. The tangent also acted as a bridge, and had
to be held against the string so long as the tone was
to continue. On its release the tone was imme-
17
The Instrument
diately muffled, or damped, by strips of cloth which
were intertwined with the wires at one end.
Down to the end of the sixteenth century, though
the strings were multiplied, the name monochord
was still used, and, though the range of the instru-
OiuU ...
TonfM
I
A Group of Clavichord Keys
(From an instrument owned by the author)
A Harpsichord Jack
ment had reached twenty-four notes, the strings
were still tuned in unison. Gradually, however,
the strings for the acuter tones were shortened by
a bridge placed diagonally across the sound-board,
this contrivance being borrowed, it is said, from
another keyed instrument, called the clavicymbal,
z8
Mediaeval Precursors
which was, in effect, a triangular system of strings
to which a mechanical device had been applied
which plucked or snapped the strings, somewhat
in imitation of a harp player.
It is to instruments of this class that I now address
myself, for it was for them that the earliest music
was written which has survived in the repertory of
the pianist, and it was upon them that the predeces-
sors of the great virtuosi about whom I shall speak
played. But it would be idle to attempt to explain
all the differences between them. They were a
numerous tribe and the members bore numerous
names, of which those that have endured longest in
the literature of music, and which, indeed, were
spoken by our grandparents as glibly as we say
piano now, were spinet and harpsichord. We shall
be spared a lot of curious and vain brain-cudgelling
if we look upon these names, as also clavicytherium,
clavicembalo, gravicembalo, dpinette, and virginal,
as no more than designations in vogue at different
times or in different countries, or at the most as
names standing for variations in shape or structure
of the instrument which filled the place before the
nineteenth century that the pianoforte does now.
In all the instruments of this class the strings
were picked with tiny points of quills (generally,
though the material varied) held in bits of wood
called "jacks," which moved freely in slots piercing
the sound-board, and rested upon one end of the
19
The Instrument
key levers. The quill was a tiny thing, not more
than a third of an inch in length, thrust through a
narrow tongue which moved on a pivot through a
slot in the upper part of the jack. When at rest the
quill point lay a trifle below the string and at a
slightly acute angle with it. The key pressed down,
the jack sprang upward, and the quill in passing
twanged the string. When the key was released the
jack dropped back to its place and the quill slipped
under the string, ready for a repetition of the move-
ment. To enable it to do this was the mission of
the little tongue in which it was set. This was
held in place flush with the front face of the jack
by a delicate spring of wire or hog's bristle. The
tongue could move backward, but not forward, but,
the quill being pointed a little upward, when it fell
back upon the string the spring gave way, the tongue
moved back a bit, and the quill regained its position
below the string. If you will read Shakespeare's
1 28th sonnet it will help you to keep in mind the
action of these jacks, though at times the poet's
description seems to confound them with the keys.
Two hundred years ago the perfection of instru-
ments of the clavier class that is, instruments with
strings played upon by manipulation of keys was
thought to have been reached. This, at least, is the
recorded judgment of writers of that period. From
a mechanical point of view, indeed, some of these
instruments were marvels; but as music became
ao
Mediaeval Precursors
less and less mere pretty play of sounds, and gave
voice more and more to the feelings of composer
and player, the deficiencies of virginal, spinet, and
harpsichord became manifest. Even the most
elaborate and perfect of the quilled instruments,
the harpsichord, was a soulless thing. It was im-
possible to vary the quantity and quality of its tone
sufficiently to make it an expressive instrument, and
it is very significant to this study in all its aspects
that the greatest musicians of two centuries ago,
while they were obliged to compose for the harpsi-
chord and give it their preference in the concert-
room, nevertheless, as we know from Bach's ex-
ample (but of that more anon), used the crude and
simpler clavichord as the medium of their private
communings with the muse.
Imperfect and weak as it was, the clavichord had
yet the capacity in some degree to augment and
diminish the tone at the will of the player. The
tone of the other instruments was not ineptly de-
scribed as "a scratch with a note at the end of it."
Efforts unceasing were made to increase and give
variety to the tone, but in vain. The defect was
fundamental. The earliest attempts at improve-
ment seem to have been directed to the jacks. The
quill-points had an unfortunate habit of wearing
out rapidly, and when a player sat down to his in-
strument in a fine frenzy of inspiration he sometimes
had to stop and put in new quills as well as tune
21
The Instrument
it. So substitutes for goose and crow quills were
sought for, and fish bone, stiff cloth, leather, metal,
and other materials were tried. The principle,
however, always remained the same, and the defect
was never remedied: the jacks twanged the strings,
and twanged them with uniform loudness. For the
sake of variety in tonal effects dampers of various
kinds were also invented to check and modify the
vibration of the strings after they had been twanged;
and, later, strings were added which could be
plucked simultaneously with the original set by an
additional row of jacks. These added strings were
first tuned in unison with the others, so that just
twice the amount of tone resulted from their use,
but Ruckers, of Antwerp, the most famous harpsi-
chord builder of his time, conceived the idea of
adding an extra system of strings tuned in the octave
above, which could be coupled to the original sys-
tem at will. The front of the harpsichord, which
was the instrument to which most of these improve-
ments were attached, came in time to look something
like the console of an organ, with its draw-stops,
pedals, and knee-swells.
The builders also used different kinds of metal
in their strings for the sake of added effects, and
since the quantity of tone could not be varied by the
touch of the player, the swell-box idea was bor-
rowed from the organ, the entire sound-board of
the instrument being covered with a series of shut-
23
Mediaeval Precursors
ters like the so-called Venetian blinds, which could
be opened and closed by the player by pressure of
his foot. All these mechanical contrivances were
little better than makeshifts. They did not go to
the real seat of the difficulty, and the inventive in-
genuity which prompted them spent itself largely in
the creation of fantastic contrivances whose worth-
lessness is demonstrated by the fact that they have
long since ceased to occupy the attention of mu-
sicians. Devices which enabled the harpsichord
player to imitate the voices of the flute, trumpet,
bagpipe, bassoon, oboe, and fife, the rattle of drums
and castanets, and even the noises of a rain-storm,
were admired by the idle and curious, but to the
serious musician they were mere mechanical curi-
osities only.
Several of the contrivances, however, were after-
ward utilized in the pianoforte for nobler ends.
The shifting of the keyboard by means of a pedal,
which is now used in the grand pianoforte to divert
the blow of the hammer from one or two of the
unison strings (una corda, or the "soft pedal," as
it is commonly called), was first applied to the harp-
sichord for the purpose of transposition. Cloth
dampers which were used to modify the tone of the
harpsichord are interposed between the hammers
and the strings of a square pianoforte for soft
effects.
For many decades builders of spinets and harpsi-
23
The Instrument
chords strove their successors, indeed, are still
striving to overcome a deficiency which is inher-
ent in the nature of the instrument. As I have said
elsewhere, 1 despite all the skill, learning, and in-
genuity which have been spent on its perfection
the pianoforte can be made only feebly to approxi-
mate that sustained style of musical utterance which
is the soul of melody and finds its loftiest exempli-
fication in singing.
To give out a melody perfectly presupposes the
capacity to sustain tones without loss in power or
quality, to bind them together at will and sometimes
to intensify their dynamic, or expressive, force while
they sound. The tone of the pianoforte, like that
of all its precursors, begins to die the moment it is
created. The discoveries in the field of acoustics
which have been made within the last century, and
the introduction of the hammer-action in place of
the jacks, have wrought an improvement in this
respect, but the difficulty has not been obviated,
and cannot be within the family to which the keyed
instruments which we have been considering belong.
A string plucked or struck in order to produce a
sound is at once beyond the control of the player.
To keep it within control the string must be rubbed.
It is because of the importance which this truth
assumed in the mind of one of the inventors of the
pianoforte, and his experiments with an instru-
1 See "How to Listen to Music," p. 158.
24
Mediaeval Precursors
ment which combined the dulcimer and harp prin-
ciples, that I shall tell the story of the German
inventor, Schroter, at greater length than that of
the Frenchman, Marius, or the Italian, Cristofori.
To each of these I purpose to leave the credit of
being an isolated inventor, though they worked at
different times and brought forth their inventions in
the reverse order of that in which I have presented
their names.
One of the devices invented for the purpose of
prolonging the tone of the harpsichord was incor-
porated in an instrument called Geigenwerk, which
came from Nuremberg, famous for its inventions
through many centuries. Properly speaking, it did
not belong to the instruments of the clavier class
at all, for, though it utilized tense strings, a sound-
board, and keys, its fundamental principle was bor-
rowed from the viol. It was, in fact, a highly
developed and aristocratic hurdy-gurdy. In it, by
means of treadles, wheels covered with leather and
coated with powdered resin were made to revolve,
and while revolving were pressed against the strings
by manipulation of the keys.
Christopher Gottlieb Schroter was a musician and
teacher in Dresden who became dissatisfied with
the harpsichord because of the inability of his pupils
to play on that instrument with the taste and ex-
pression which they exhibited when they practised
on the clavichord. He went with a lamentation to
25
The Instrument
the Saxon court chapelmaster, who advised him to
get one of the Nuremberg hurdy-gurdy claviers.
He did so, and the fact that it was possible to sus-
tain the tones in a singing manner on the instru-
ment pleased him much. But there was still a fly
in the ointment. He was unwilling while making
music to work with both his feet "like a linen-
weaver," as he expressed it. While in this frame
of mind he heard the performance of a famous
virtuoso on the dulcimer, and from this perform-
ance conceived the idea of constructing an instru-
ment on which, if it should not be able to sustain
the tone like the Geigenwerk, should at least make
it possible to play forte or piano at will. He went
to work himself in a joiner's shop during the resting
hours of the workmen, and succeeded in construct-
ing two models for a hammer mechanism to be ap-
plied to the harpsichord. These, in February, 1721,
he submitted to the King of Saxony, by whom the
invention was heartily approved, as well as by the
court chapelmaster. He had no means to build an
instrument or exploit his invention, and though the
king ordered one built it was never done. Soon
thereafter Schroter left Saxony. Many years later,
finding that every pianoforte builder in Germany
was claiming the invention of the instrument, he
printed his story, giving all the dates with the
greatest care. He could do this because he had
kept a diary all his life, and he even mentioned the
26
Mediaeval Precursors
time of day at which he carried his models to the
royal palace.
The merit of having suggested the German in-
vention of the pianoforte was due to a player on
the dulcimer, and since we are concerned with a
study of principles rather than mechanics it may
be profitable to consider what it was in the perform-
ance of this man which so powerfully excited the
imagination of Schroter. The player was Panta-
leon Hebenstreit, for many years a chamber musi-
cian at the Saxon court. Although an excellent
violinist, his favorite instrument was the dulcimer,
on which he had acquired great proficiency as a
boy. Not content with the simple form of the in-
strument as he found it, he increased its size,
strung it with a double system of strings one of
brass and one of gut and tuned it in equal tempera-
ment, so that it might be used in all the major and
minor keys, following in this the way pointed out
by the great Bach. He played it in the primitive
fashion with a pair of hammers, and his music
excited the liveliest interest wherever he went. He
played before Louis XIV. in 1705, and the Grand
Monarch honored him by giving the name "Pan-
taleon" to his dulcimer. A year later he became
director of the orchestra and court dancing-master
at Eisenach, and later still chamber musician in
Dresden, at an annual salary of 2,000 thalers and
an allowance of 200 thalers for strings.
27
The Instrument
It is in Hebenstreit's dulcimer that we are priv-
ileged to see the first instrument with some of the
expressive capacity of the modem pianoforte.
The interest created by his performances was not
due alone to the effects of piano said forte which he
produced by graduating the force of the hammer-
blows and utilizing the two kinds of strings. Dis-
cerning musicians heard in his playing for the first
time an effect whose scientific study of late years
has done more to perfect the tone of the instru-
ment and to influence composers and players than
anything else in pianoforte construction. Kuhnau,
who was Bach's predecessor as choirmaster of the
Church of St. Thomas, in Leipsic, praised the great
beauty of the tone of the pantaleon, the bass notes
of which, he said, sounded like those of the organ;
but, more significantly, he recorded the fact that
on sounding a note its over-tones could be heard
simultaneously up to the sixth. Helmholtz's deter-
minations as to the influence of partials on the tim-
bre of musical instruments have been of the utmost
importance in pianoforte construction.
Ill
The Pianoforte of To-day
'"PHE story of the German invention of the piano-
1 forte cannot make for the glory of Schroter
as against the credit due to Cristofori, the earliest
inventor of the instrument. It has been told only
because it illustrates so luminously the principles
which we are trying to keep in view in this chapter
of musical evolution. Discoveries and inventions
of all kinds are growths; there was never anything
jiew under the sun.
The three men to whom I have left the honor of
being independent inventors of the pianoforte are
the Italian, Bartolommeo Cristofori; the French-
man, Marius, and the German, Christopher Gottlieb
Schroter. It is in the highest degree probable that
efforts had been made in the direction in which
these men labored a long time before they came
forward with their inventions. The earliest use of
the word pianoforte (or, literally, piano e forte) as
applied to an instrument of music antedates the
earliest of these inventions by one hundred and
eleven years, but the reference is exceedingly vague
and chiefly valuable as indicative of how early the
29
The Instrument
minds of inventors were occupied with means for
obtaining soft and loud effects from keyed instru-
ments. Cristofori's invention takes precedence of
the others in time. This has been established, after
much controversy, beyond further dispute. In
1709 he exhibited specimens of harpsichords, with
hammer-action, capable of producing piano and
forte effects, to Prince Ferdinando dei Medici, of
whose instruments of music he was custodian at
Florence, and two years later that is, in 1711
his invention was fully described and the descrip-
tion printed, not only in Italy, but also in Germany.
It embraces the essential features of the piano-
forte action as we have it to-day a row of hammers,
controlled by keys, which struck the strings from
below. In the description, written by Scipione,
Maffei, the instrument is designated as a "New
Invention of a Harpsichord, with the Piano and
Forte" (Nuova Invenzione d'un Gravicembalo col
Piano e Forte). In February, 1716, the Frenchman,
Marius, submitted two models for a "Harpsichord
with Hammers" (Clavecin a Mallets) to the Aca-
d6mie Royale des Sciences; one illustrated a device
for hitting the strings from above, the other from
below. It was a much cruder invention than Cris-
tofori's, but it contained the vital principle which
differentiates the pianoforte from its mediaeval and
later precursors. Marius's confessed purpose in
devising the new mechanism was economy. He
30
The Pianoforte of To-day
wanted to save musicians the constant trouble and
cost of requilling the harpsichord jacks. Schroter's
models also struck the strings from above and below.
There are only two pianofortes made by Cris-
tofori known to be in existence. The older, made
in 1720, was bought by Mrs. John Crosby Brown
in 1895 and is now housed in the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, in New York. 1 The other is the
property of the Commendatore Allessandro Kraus
and is preserved in his museum in Florence; it is
pictured in Mr. A. J. Hipkins's "History of the
Pianoforte." 2 The instrument bought by Mrs.
Brown was long the property of Signora Ernesta
Mocenni Martelli, of Florence, whose father bought
it (according to family tradition) in 1819 or 1820 at
a public sale of supposedly worthless furniture in
the Grand Ducal palace at Siena. A sentimental
feeling on the part of the Signora Martelli led to
its preservation by her until her death. A father
whose memory she revered had bought it, and she
had learned to play upon it as a child. That it had
value as an historical relic was not suspected until
1872, when Signer Cosimo Conti, a scholar and
intimate friend of the Martelli family, discovered,
on the board which serves as a hammer beam, an
inscription as follows: " Bartholomceus di Chris-
tophorus Patavinus, Inventor, faciebat, Florentia,
1 See Frontispiece.
8 Novello, Ewer & Co., London and New York, 1896
The Instrument
MDCCXX" He communicated the fact to the
Cavaliere L. Puliti, whose investigation finally and
definitely established priority of invention for Cris-
tofori. Puliti confirmed the authenticity of the
instrument, which was restored in 1875 by Cesare
Ponsicchi, of Florence, and described and pictured
it in his monograph on the origin and evolution of
the pianoforte, published in 1876.
The case of the instrument, which preserves the
shape of the old-fashioned harpsichords, is seven feet
and one-quarter inches long, three feet and three
inches wide, and three feet high. It has a compass
of four and a half octaves (fifty-four notes) from the
second leger line below the bass staff to the fourth
space above the treble staff. Its longest string is
six feet and two inches; its shortest two inches. Its
thickest string is seven-tenths of a millimetre in
diameter; its thinnest four-tenths of a millimetre.
There are only three thicknesses of strings, and
those of the lowest six tones are uniform in length
and thickness, the variation in pitch being occa-
sioned by difference in tension. 1
1 "The strings of the pianoforte were originally of very thin
wire. The difference between them and those now in use is very
striking. As an illustration we may remark that the smallest wire
formerly used for the C in the third space of the treble staff was
No. 7; that now used for the same note is No. 16. The weight
of the striking length of the first is five and a half grains; of that
of the second, twenty-one grains. This is sufficient to account
for the increased bracing in the modern pianoforte." ("The
The Pianoforte of To-day
The frame is of hard wood and the case rim is
only half an inch thick. The sounding board is
strengthened by belly-bars, and, unlike those of
the modern pianoforte, the dampers extend through
the entire register of the instrument. New ham-
mers have been put in the action, which are modern
in shape, though very light; but the action itself is
Cristofori's, albeit showing improvements on the
mechanism described in the account of Scipione
Maffei printed in the "Giornale de' Litterati
d'ltalia," of Venice, in 1711. It is a marvel of
ingenuity compared with the actions of half a cen-
tury later. It allows repetition of the blow, though
it lacks what is called the "double escapement."
Since I am not writing an exhaustive history of
the pianoforte, nor a treatise on its construction,
it will not be expected of me that I trace the devel-
opment of the instrument through all its steps, or
describe all its parts in technical phrase. 1 It will
Pianoforte," by Edward F. Rimbault, LL.D., London, 1860,
p. 178.)
The contrast between old and modern stringing will be illus-
trated even more vividly when at the end of this chapter I bring
the features of the Cristofori instrument into juxtaposition with
those of a Steinway Grand.
1 To those interested in the subject I would recommend the
study of "The Pianoforte, Its Origin, Progress, and Construc-
tion, etc.," by Edward F. Rimbault, LL.D. (London: Robert
Cocks & Co., 1860); "Geschichte des Claviers vom Ursprunge
bis zu den modernsten Formen dieses Instrumentes," by Dr.
Oscar Paul (Leipsic: A. H. Payne, 1868); and especially "A
33
The Instrument
suffice if I point out the changes which have taken
place in the instrument from the time of its inven-
tion up to the present, in order to show, as I shall
hope to do later, how these changes, in connection
with other things, influenced the style of piano-
forte composition and the manner of pianoforte
playing. Also how the desires of composer and
performer influenced the manufacturer. This is
the kind of knowledge, it seems to me, which is of
practical value to the music-lovers for whom this
book is intended.
Speaking in round terms, the pianoforte had to
reach the age allotted by the Psalmist to man before
it achieved recognition from musicians as a suc-
cessful rival of the harpsichord as an instrument
for public performance. During this time it was,
indeed, but a rudimentary affair, a mongrel;
neither a harpsichord nor a pianoforte in the
modern sense. It long remained, in fact, what its
French and Italian inventors called it in the de-
scriptions of their inventions: a harpsichord with
hammers and, in consequence of these, possessing
the capability to give out tones piano and forte.
Up to 1820 wood only entered into the construction
of its frame. The introduction of metal was a slow
growth and, to judge by the printed record of the
Description and History of the Pianoforte and of the Older Key-
board Stringed Instruments," by A. J. Hipkins (London and New
York: Novello, Ewer & Co., 1896).
34
The Pianoforte of To-day
patent offices and books, the causes which led to
it were mechanical merely; manufacturers wanted
to utilize some of the space taken up by the wooden
beams and trusses necessary to enable the frame to
stand the strain imposed by the strings for silly con-
trivances, such as drums, cymbals, etc., which had
won a large popularity as attachments to harpsi-
chords; also to compensate for the expansion and
contraction of the metal strings, and finally, and
chiefly, to gain the greater strength and rigidity
necessitated by a steady increase in the diameter
and tension of the strings.
It appears to me, however, that a purely artistic
influence must also have played its part in the in-
troduction of a reform which in a few decades grew
into a revolution. It is easy to imagine that the
change from plucking the strings with quill-points
to striking them with hammers would soon bring
in a change in finger-action. In the music of the
quilled instruments there was neither accent nor
dynamic variety beyond that which could be
achieved by such mechanical means as I have
described in my account of the devices applied to
the harpsichord for the purpose of mitigating its
inherent imperfections. The effect of a slow pres-
sure on the keys was much the same as that of a
quick blow. Very different, indeed, was the effect
in the manipulation of the hammer-action. A gen-
tle blow a caress produced a soft tone, a sharp
35
The Instrument
blow a loud one; and there were left at the com-
mand of the player all the gradations between. The
fingers no longer walked monotonously over the
keys "with gentle gait" like those of the dark lady
apostrophized by Shakespeare in his sonnet, but
pounced upon them smartly, and the weight of the
hand came to play its part. Now it is not the
weight of the hand alone, but the energy of the
muscles of the wrist and forearm as well. We shall
see, presently, when we come to review the develop-
ment of pianoforte technique, how gradually this
change in the style of playing took place, but there
is little doubt in my mind that the emotionalism
which strove against aesthetic conservatism from the
earliest times down to Beethoven exerted a steady
pressure along the line which has ended in the stu-
pendous instrument and the Samson ian players of
to-day.
With an increase in the weight and tension of
the strings, due in part on the mechanical side to
improvement in the manufacture of steel wire, there
grew the need of greater solidity and strength in the
parts of the instrument called upon to endure the
strain of the strings. The frame was ingeniously
trussed in various ways, but as the strain increased
it was found that in spite of everything the fierce
pull of the strings from the piece of timber holding
the pins to which the further end of the strings was
fastened, the wrest plank, into which the tuning-
36
The Pianoforte of To-day
pegs were driven, warped the wooden structure so
that in a comparatively short time it became dis-
torted and so disorganized that the instrument
would not stand in tune. It was a common thing
two generations ago to interrupt a concert with
an intermission, not so much to enable the player
to rest and the listeners to unbend and refresh
themselves with chatter, as is the case now, as
to allow the tuner time to reset the tuning-pegs.
This was due to three defects which have been
largely remedied since namely, want of rigidity in
the frame, lack of elasticity in the strings and of
firmness in the wrest pins. I have known pianists
to render a pianoforte discordant in our own day,
but this was not so much because of the vehemence
with which they belabored the instrument as a mal-
treatment of the pedals shifting the hammer by
means of the left pedal from one of each set of
unison strings, and then pounding upon the others.
Naturally the struck strings were stretched by the
process, while the untouched unisons remained at
the original tension.
The idea of obviating the defects due to an all-
wood frame by the employment of metal seems to
have haunted the minds of pianoforte makers long
before it found realization. Prejudice, doubtless,
played a role here. For a quarter of a century or
more after its introduction metal was looked upon
as a necessary evil. William Pole, quite as good an
37
The Instrument
authority on music as on whist, in a book on "The
Musical Instruments in the Great Industrial Ex-
hibition of 1851," and Dr. Rimbault after him, ex-
pressed the opinion that the tendency to the use of
too much metal in the construction of pianofortes
threatened injury to the quality of the tone. Mr.
Hipkins, a later and greater authority, writing
thirty years after Pole and Rimbault, was not at all
fearful of the modem steel frame, for he says:
The greater elasticity of iron as compared with wood does
not allow the lesser vibrating sections or upper partial tones
of a string to die away as soon as they would with the less
elastic wood. The consequence is that in instruments where
iron or steel preponderates in the framing there is a longer
soslenente or singing tone, and increasingly so as there is a
higher tension or strain on the wire. Where wood pre-
ponderates, these vibrating sections die out sooner. The ex-
tremes of these conditions are a metallic whizzing or tinkling
and a dull "woody" tone. The middle way, as so often
happens, is to be preferred.
.
The three large steps from the all-wood frame to
the modern frame of cast-steel, which now takes up
in itself all the strain of the strings, were the use
of bars and tubes between the hitching and wrest-
planks, the addition of an iron hitching-plate, and
the casting of an iron frame with all its parts in one
piece. As in the case of the action, three men of
three nationalities seem to have marked the steps
independently of each other. They were John
38
The Pianoforte of To-day
Isaac Hawkins, an Englishman, who came to the
United States toward the close of the eighteenth
century and patented the upright pianoforte in
1800; William Allen, a Scotchman, who while
working in London in 1820 introduced tubular
braces of metal, and Alpheus Babcock, who pat-
ented an iron frame in a single casting in Boston
in 1825. The application of the system to the three
styles of the instrument, square (now practically
obsolete), upright (Cottage, Cabinet, Piccolo, etc.),
and grand, was only a matter of time, but it was
again an American, Jonas Chickering, of Boston,
who invented the complete iron frame for the con-
cert grand. The structure, which three-quarters of
a century ago buckled under the pull of the puny
strings then in use, can now resist a strain of thirty
tons.
The changes which have taken place in the string-
ing of piano-fortes have been quite as radical and
extensive as those in the construction of the frame
which they were chiefly instrumental in bringing
about. The makers of the pianoforte's precur-
sors were diligent in the search for metals which
might ennoble the wiry, tinkling tone of their in-
struments. As the old organ builders sometimes
mixed precious metals in the composition of their
pipes, so the makers of clavichord and harpsichord
wire sometimes turned fo silver and gold. In the
catalogue of the court orchestra of Philip II., 1602,
39
The Instrument
mention is made of a clavichord of ebony, with
cover of cypress, keys of ivory, and strings of gold.
Experiments were made with gut, silk, and latten.
Gold and silver compounded [says Dr. Rimbault] and ren-
dered elastic would undoubtedly produce beautiful tones. A
gold string or wire will sound stronger than a silver one; those
of brass and steel give feebler sounds than those of gold and
silver. Silk strings were made of the single threads of the
silkworm, a sufficient number of them being taken to form a
chord of the required thickness; these were smeared over with
the white of eggs, which was rendered consistent by passing
the threads through heated oil. The string was exceedingly
uniform in its thickness, but produced a tone which the per-
former called tubby.
The earliest pianofortes were strung with brass
wire for the lower tones and steel for the upper.
Seven or eight thicknesses of strings were used in
the clavichords, spinets, and harpsichords of the
seventeenth century, but the Cristofori pianoforte
discloses but three diameters. The evidence ad-
duced by this instrument, however, is not unim-
peachable in this respect, since Signer Ponsicchi
may have found it necessary, or thought it wise, to
alter the stringing so far as diameters were con-
cerned, when he restored it in 1875. In the modem
instrument all the strings are of steel, though those
for the lowest twenty tones (taking the Steinway
Grand as a model) consist of a steel core wrapped
about closely (like the G-string of a violin) with wire
40
The Pianoforte of To-day
of a compound metal to give them greater weight
and compensate for their disproportionate vibrating
length. Irrespective of this covering, eighteen dif-
ferent sizes of wire are used, the development dur-
ing the last century having been not only along the
lines of elasticity, tenacity, and tension, but also
diameter. The lowest eight bass tones are pro-
duced by single strings, covered; the next five, by
double unisons, covered; the next seven by triple
unisons, covered, and the remaining sixty-eight by
triple unisons, of simple wire. In all 243 strings are
employed to produce the eighty-eight tones of the
concert grand. The average strain on each string
may be set down in round numbers at 176 pounds.
It was much higher before an agreement was reached
some fifteen years ago among the principal piano-
forte manufacturers of the United States to adopt a
lower pitch than the old London Philharmonic,
which had long been standard, and which many
makers gave up grudgingly because of a belief that
it was more brilliant than the French diapason
normal. 1 Before the change a Steinway Concert
Grand endured a strain of nearly 60,000 pounds;
now the pull is the equivalent of 43,000 pounds.
The Cristofori pianoforte has a compass of four
and one-half octaves, from C on the second leger
line below the bass staff to F in the fourth space
1 The exact Steinway pitch is still a trifle more acute than the
diapason normal, viz.: A =4385^ as against A =43 5.
41
The Instrument
above the treble. Very early the keys were ex-
tended downward to F, on the fourth leger line be-
low the bass staff, so as to give the instrument five
octaves. At the time of Haydn and Mozart five
and five and a half octaves were in use, Clementi
having added the half octave in 1793. The piano-
forte which Broadwood, the English manufacturer,
sent to Beethoven in 1817 had a compass of six
octaves, but six and a half had already been reached
in 1811, and the practical extreme of seven octaves
in 1836. I say the "practical extreme" because
the three notes which have been added since are
of no artistic value. This, I venture to say, will not
be disputed by any honest maker, but commercial
considerations have led to their preservation. Bo-
sendorfer, in Vienna, however, has made an "Im-
perial Concert Grand" with a compass of eight
octaves, from sub-contra F, in the eighth space
below the bass staff, to E in altississimo, in the
eleventh space above the treble.
Pianoforte strings increase in thickness as the
tones proceed down the scale in obedience to a law
of acoustics which teaches that when strings have
the same length and tension, but differ in weight
(that is, thickness), their vibrations are in inverse
proportion to their weight. Two other canons of
the stretched string are also of validity, one of
which teaches that as a string is lengthened it vi-
brates more slowly, as it is shortened more rapidly,
42
The Pianoforte of To-day
the tension remaining the same; in the former case
the tone produced is graver (lower is the popular
definition); in the latter more acute (higher) than
the fundamental. According to the second canon
the tighter a string is drawn the higher the tone;
the looser the slower its vibrations and the lower
the tone, the length remaining equal. All three
canons find their application in the stringing of
pianofortes. The old rule, still prevailing in some
houses, like that of Erard, in Paris, and their imi-
tators, is to dispose the strings parallel with each
other. The majority of manufacturers the world
over, however, have taken a leaf out of the book of
American practice and carry the overspun bass
strings of the lowest octave across a number of the
strings immediately adjoining. The disposition is
thus fan-shaped and greater length is obtained for
the strings of the lowest octave. This is the so-
called overstrung scale, the combination of which
with the solid steel or iron frame is the distinguish-
ing feature of the American pianoforte, a feature
that has been extensively adopted in European
countries.
The principle exemplified in the overstrung scale,
like the other features of construction the invention
of which has been discusssed, had long been in the
air before it was successfully applied. The device
was employed in clavichords of the eighteenth cent-
ury, and it seems likely that the idea was fermenting
43
The Instrument
simultaneously in the minds of the American in-
ventor of the solid iron frame for a square piano-
forte, Alpheus Babcock, and Theobald Boehm,
the German who revolutionized the flute by his new
boring and system of keys. Cabinet and square
pianofortes are now made in London after Boehm's
design in 1835, but overstrung squares were ex-
hibited in New York two years before, and the
patent of Babcock for "cross-stringing piano-
fortes" (his meaning is vague and the original
record is lost) was taken out in 1830. In 1859
Henry Engelhard Steinway, grandfather of the
present president of the corporation of Steinway &
Sons, combined an overstrung scale with a solid
metal frame, thus taking the last really radical step
in the development of the American pianoforte.
What has been done since is in the way of develop-
ment of the system in details.
The mechanism by means of jvhich the hammer
is made to strike the string and set it to vibrating
is a marvel of ingenuity. Its simplest form was
that shown in the tangent of the clavichord by de-
pressing the key a short tongue of metal was thrust
against the string. The key was a simple lever,
and the metal tongue, the tangent, had to be held
against the string as long as it was desired that the
tone should sound. The next step in the way of
improvement was to hitch the handle of a small
hammer to a rail with leather hinges and to replace
44
The Pianoforte of To-day
the tangent with a bit of stiff wire with a leather
button at the end, placed upright on the further
end of the key. A slow pressure on the key lifted
the hammer-head to within a short distance of the
string; a blow impelled the hammer away from
the key with its metal spine and against the string,
from which it fell by its own weight. This device
was imperfect, in that the blow necessary to the
Hammer-Action of a Grand Pianoforte
production of a tone had to be so strong that very
soft playing was impossible. Then came the de-
vice which in various forms and modifications has
remained in use till now. The key raises a hopper
which exerts a thrust against the hammer-shank
with an energy corresponding to that exerted by
the finger of the player. The hammer is thrown
against the string, and on its recoil is caught by a
check which prevents its rebounding and holds it
in readiness for a repetition.
45
The Instrument
The fact that the hammer does not need to travel
over the entire distance from its resting place to
the string makes extremely rapid repetitions of the
blow possible. As the key acts upon the hopper
it also raises a damper of wood lined with felt,
which in its normal position lies against the string
from above. The release of the key brings this
damper back to its place of rest and checks the
vibrations of the string, thus preventing the dis-
cordant confusion of tones which would be heard if
they were permitted to die by the gradual cessation
of the vibrations. When it is desired that the tones
shall continue through a series of arpeggios or a
repeated harmony all the dampers are raised si-
multaneously by means of a pedal, the one to the
right the damper pedal, commonly spoken of as
the loud pedal, though its use for the purpose of
increasing the volume of tone is the cheapest to
which it can be put. The left pedal shifts the action
sidewise so that the hammers strike only one of the
double and two of the triple unisons, leaving the
others untouched to vibrate sympathetically. This is
the action of the left pedal in the grand pianoforte;
in the upright it moves the hammer-action nearer
to the strings so that the hammer describes a smaller
arc in reaching the strings and its force is lessened;
in the obsolete square it interposed a strip of felt
between the hammers and the strings and thus
softened the tone.
46
The Pianoforte of To-day
The soft pedal movement of the grand does more
than diminish the volume of tone; the tone emitted
by the strings which have not felt the impact of
the hammer but vibrate sympathetically that is to
say, in response to atmospheric waves sent forth
by their unisons is of an aeolian sweetness and
lends a color of wonderful charm to the music. It
is the desire to combine this tint with sonority that
tempts pianists to the abuse of the instrument dis-
cussed in connection with the difficulty of keeping
pianofortes in tune before the introduction of the
metal frame. On some pianofortes there is a third
pedal between the other two, called the Tone Sus-
taining Pedal, the action of which is to withhold
the dampers from the string or strings struck just
before the depression of the pedal.
The actions which have been in use for many
decades are modifications of three models: the
English perfected by Broadwood, the French repe-
tition invented by Sebastian Erard, and the Viennese
invented and perfected in Vienna. These models
have been modified in particulars but not in prin-
ciples by different manufacturers to suit the re-
quirements of their instruments.
A comparison of some of the details of the Cris-
tofori pianoforte in the Crosby Brown collection
at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York,
and a modern concert grand made by Steinway &
Sons will help to illustrate the tremendous progress
47
The Instrument
made in the art of pianoforte construction from the
time of the invention of the instrument till now.
The Steinway concert grand pianoforte is 8 feet
and 10 inches long and 5 feet wide. The weight of
its metal plate is 320 pounds, which probably is
more than the weight of the Cristofori instrument
in its entirety. The total weight of the Steinway
is 1,040 pounds. It has a compass of seven and
a quarter octaves (eighty-eight keys), against the
Cristofori's four and a half octaves (fifty-four keys),
its range extending nineteen keys above the top
note of the Cristofori instrument and fifteen below
the bottom note. The longest string of the Stein-
way is six feet seven and one-half inches in length,
its shortest two inches; the longest string of the
Cristofori is six feet two inches, the shortest four
and one-half inches; but the longest string of the
Steinway consists of a steel core two millimetres
thick, wound with wire thicker than the thickest
strings of the Cristofori, so that the Steinway string
is in all five millimetres thick. One or two octaves
of these bass strings contain enough metal to string
the Cristofori pianoforte throughout. The thickest
string on the Cristofori is smaller in diameter than
the thinnest string on the Steinway. The triple
unisons on the Steinway which produce the lowest
note of the Cristofori are wound and two milli-
metres thick. The highest note of the Cristofori
has a string five and one-half inches long on the
48
The Pianoforte of To-day
Steinway and exerts a strain of 170 pounds for each
of its three unisons. A few such strains would
crush the frame of the Cristofori pianoforte like
an eggshell, but it is not much more than the hun-
dredth part of what the Steinway frame is called
upon to endure. 1
1 For assistance in making this comparison I am much beholden
to Mr. Henry Ziegler.
49
Part II
The Composers
IV
The Earliest Clavier Music
THE period of musical composition which falls
naturally and properly within the scope of
this book is coextensive with the period within
which stringed instruments with keyboards were
developing into significant factors in the economy
of music. If we were to confine ourselves strictly
to the period which has elapsed since the invention
of the pianoforte we should not be able to extend
our inquiries further back than the earliest known
publication embracing the name or a description of
the instrument in its title. This publication, ac-
cording to Mr. Hipkins, is a set of sonatas (the word
sonata used in a sense less determinate than it pos-
sesses now, as will presently appear in this study)
composed by D. Lodovico Giustini di Pistoia, and
printed in Florence in 1732. The pieces are de-
scribed on the title page as being Da Cimbalo di
piano e forte detto volgarmente di Martellatti that
is, "for the harpsichord, with soft and loud, com-
monly called with little hammers." The repertory
of the modern pianist extends back of the date of
this publication more than a century, however, and
in its earlier portion shows so interesting a phase
S3
The Composers
of musical evolution that it would be a grievous
error to omit it from consideration.
I cannot include in this part of my study, how-
ever, such a genesis of principles as I allowed my-
self in the promenade toward the avenue in the
first part. Speculation, the study of poets' utter-
ances and the legends of ancient peoples, the in-
spection of ancient sculptures and mural paintings,
may help us to conceptions of the appearance and
even capacity of early instruments, but they can
teach us nothing of the music practised during the
eras in which they arose. For us the history of
instrumenal music does not begin until the four-
teenth century, and it is a fact of profoundest sig-
nificance that we find the instrumental art still in
its dawn when the vocal art reaches its meridian.
The reasons are not far to seek. Though more in-
struments were used in the secular practice than
now, most of them were scarcely more developed
than their precursors which are to be found in a
state of arrested development in the Far East to-
day. The influence of the taboo which the church
had placed on the instrumental art while the musi-
cal law-givers were exclusively churchmen had not
yet worn off. As late as the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries secular musicians were vagabonds in the
eye of the law. Like strolling players
Beggars they were with one consent,
And rogues by act of Parliament.
54
The Earliest Clavier Music
The organist enjoyed an honorable exception, but
it was not until the mechanism of the organ key-
board had been developed so as to permit of some-
thing like the modern facility of manipulation that
music more fluent than the mediaeval church chants
could be performed upon the instrument. In the
preceding centuries the key-mechanism was so cum-
bersome that a heavy pressure of the hand or a
blow of the fist was required to force a key down.
For a long time in Germany organists were called
Orgelschldger that is, "organ beaters" because
of the action of their hands in playing. The simi-
larity between the keyboards of the organ, clavi-
chord, and the various quilled instruments (which I
shall frequently allude to generically as claviers)
turned the attention of organists to them as soon
as the effect of the ecclesiastical taboo began to
wear off, and other than ecclesiastical music began
to be admitted to polite habitations; but there was
a long controversy between the artistic and the
popular practice. Even after compositions for key-
board stringed instruments began to appear in
print it was not uncommon to find them described
as pieces translated from "music" to notation for
instruments organ, lute, and clavier sometimes
being specified, sometimes not. "Music" was still
so dignified a term that it had to be protected from
association with the agencies which had no employ-
ment in the service of the church.
55
The Composers
It was the organ that played the part of interceder
and advocate of the instrumental company for their
admission into the province of art, and it was in
Venice that instrumental music began to flourish in
the fourteenth century. The skill of a long line
of organists in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and six-
teenth centuries shone pre-eminently among the
contemporaneous glories and magnificence of the
City of the Doges. The Cathedral of St. Mark
was the magnet that drew organ players to Venice,
as the Sistine Chapel drew composers and singers
to Rome. These organists gave pomp and brill-
iancy to the services, to which kneeling thousands
listened, by their improvisations upon church melo-
dies and the set pieces which they played at times
when the choir was silent. There were two organs
in St. Mark's, each generally in the hands of one
of the world's greatest masters, and they were em-
ployed antiphonally at times for preludes, inter-
ludes, and postludes before, between, and after
portions of the choral service. The service (such
is the force of conservatism) remained exclusively
vocal for the two hundred years in which the
musical glory of Venice was most resplendent. It
was not until a new era had been ushered in by
purely secular activities that the organ was per-
mitted to lift its voice along with the voices of the
singers.
During these two hundred years the organists of
56
The Earliest Clavier Music
Venice and other art capitals gradually worked for
the emancipation of instrumental music from the
thraldom of the church. Of the pioneers of this
movement in Italy we know little more than their
names, preserved for us in the stories of their fame.
Francesco Landini, the hey-day of whose celebrity
fell in the seventh decade of the fourteenth century,
was poet as well as organist. He was a Florentine,
and blind, yet one of the brightest ornaments in the
festivities given by the doge in honor of the King
of Cyprus and the Archduke of Austria. Petrarch
stood by at one of these festivities and saw the
Florentine Homer crowned with laurel for some of
his poetic effusions. Nevertheless, the laureate
suffered defeat on the organ bench at the hands of
Francesco da Pesaro, an organist of St. Mark's.
Almost simultaneously another blind man brought
glory to Munich and won tributes from royalty by
his marvellous skill. This was Conrad Paulmann,
or Paumann, a native of Nuremberg, born sightless,
yet a sort of universal genius in music. Of him, it
is recorded that the Emperor Frederick III. gave
him a sword with blade of gold and a golden chain.
He died in Munich in 1473, and was buried in the
Church of Our Lady. His tomb shows him in
effigy seated at the organ, and the inscription pro-
claims him to have been Der Kunstreichest alter In-
strumentisten und der Musika Maister. So, too, a
bust in the cathedral at Florence testifies to the
57
The Composers
fame of Antonio Squarcialupi, organist of the cathe-
dral about 1450.
Of other Italian musicians distinguished in the
instrumental field in the fourteenth century the
names, but not the works, of Nicolo del Proposto
and Jacopo di Bologna are preserved; of the six-
teenth, a long list culminating in men of the highest
importance in the development of the science and
art of music Claudio Merulo, Andrea Gabrieli,
and Cipriano di Rore. To this list I add the names
of a few men who, though not of Italian birth, were
yet instrumental in the development of Italian
music, viz., a German whose name was obviously
Bernhard Stephan Miirer, but who was called
Bernardo Stefanio Murer (and also Bernard the
German) by the Italians; Jacques Buus, who was
organist of St. Mark's for ten years, from 1541 to
1551 (in which latter year he left Venice), and
Adrien Willaert, founder of the Venetian school
and chapelmaster of St. Mark's for a period begin-
ning in 1527. To Bernard is credited the invention
of the pedal keyboard for the organ. Willaert and
Buus were Netherlanders.
Instrumental music, having begun after the unac-
companied style of vocal music had been perfected,
was, naturally enough, written in the contrapuntal
style of the church. Monophonic music that is,
a melody supported by harmonies in solid or broken
chords being all but unknown till toward the end
58
The Earliest Clavier Music
of the sixteenth century, solo music except that in
the church service (i. e., the chanting of the priest
at the altar) was also unknown. When various
instruments were grouped so as to form a band,
each instrument sang its part precisely as the in-
dividual singer in the choir sang his. All these
parts were melodies, and all were equally important
in the musical fabric. There was no subordina-
tion of three or more of the contrapuntal voices to
one to bring out the beauty or sentiment of the
tune carried by that voice. Strictly speaking, there
was no tune in the modern sense any more than
there was harmony in the modern sense. Compo-
sitions were built up on Gregorian melodies, and
the melody, which became the cantus firmus of a
piece, was allotted to one voice (generally that called
the tenor) ; but it was not importunate in the man-
ner of the modern melody. On the contrary, it was
frequently less assertive than the voices consorted
with it, being merely a stalking-horse on which the
ingenious fabric of interwoven melodies was hung.
It is a mistaken impression on this point which has
led to the wholesale and irrational condemnation of
mediaeval composers for using secular tunes in their
masses. The popular notion, created and nour-
ished by the vast majority of writers on musical his-
tory, is that when the old Netherlandish composers
wrote masses on the melody of "L'Homme arme'"
(an extremely popular subject), or "Dieu quel
59
The Composers
mariage," the effect upon the hearers was something
like the effect would be upon worshippers of to-day
if Credo in unum Deum or Gloria in excelsis Deo
were to be sung to the tune of the first of the " Beau-
tiful Blue Danube" waltzes. Nothing could be
further from the truth. Many a critic who writes
glibly about the "secularization of the mass" in
the fifteenth century would be hard put to it to
write out the theme of a "L'Homme arme"" mass
from an old score even if it were laid before him
in modern notation, while to distinguish by ear the
naughty secular tune moving through the contra-
puntal mass would tax the ability of many of our
professional musicians.
When the orchestra took its rise the music set
down for the different instruments differed in noth-
ing from vocal music. Compositions were pub-
lished with titles indicating that they were to be
sung or played as one wished. Equally vague dur-
ing this period was the terminology of the instru-
mental art. There were Sonate, Canzone, Ricer-
care, Toccati, Contrapunti, Fantasie, and so on ; but
the names were but obscure indices to the form and
contents of the compositions. Willaert seems to
have distinguished between hi&fanlasie and ricercare
on the one hand and his contrapunti on the other by
employing themes of his own invention for the for-
mer and church melodies for the latter. The only
difference between a sonata the term originally
60
The Earliest Clavier Music
meant no more than a "sound piece" as dis-
tinguished from a "song piece" and a canzona per
sonar, which Michael Praetorius could point out
in his "Syntagma musicum," published in 1620,
was that sonatas were grave and majestic in the
style of the motet, while canzonas were written in
notes of shorter duration, and therefore fresh, lively,
merry. The themes, whether original or borrowed
from the church chants, were varied in the different
compositions, no matter what they were called.
They were worked fugally, bedecked with orna-
mental passages, transferred from part to part, and
motives drawn from them were treated in imitation.
The composers for the church having sought for
basic melodies in secular fields, it is not to be won-
dered at that the composers for instruments did the
same. The songs and dances of the people were
now taken as themes, and in Italy there appeared
Canzone Villanesche, Canzone Napolitane, and Can-
zone Francese, which were varied in like manner as
the church melodies. Dance tunes (galliards, co-
rantos, and chaconnes) also came into use, and
when the jig (giga] was consorted with them the
time was ripe for their combination into a partita,
or suite a form which pointed the way to the
cyclical compositions culminating in the modern
sonata and symphony. The employment of folk-
tunes stimulated accompaniments in chords, and
under the inspiration of the reformatory movement
61
The Composers
begun by a group of amateur musicians in Florence
as a protest against the artificiality and lifelessness
of the church style, also dominant in the theatre
a movement which brought about the invention of
the opera instrumental music was slowly emanci-
pated from the vocal yoke.
62
The English Virginalists
A LREADY in the sixteenth century England
JT\ had taken the lead in the creation, and prob-
ably also in the performance of clavier music. In
view of her comparative sterility since, it would be
interesting in many ways to know where to go to
find the explanation of England's pre-eminence in
one department of music before and during the
reign of Queen Elizabeth. There are evidences
enough that England drew her fashions in music as
in other forms of artistic culture from Italy and
France; but in her handling of the borrowed forms
she was as forward, fresh, vigorous, and energetic
as in the fields in which she created her own models,
namely, poetry, the drama, and that higher type of
statecraft which makes for human liberty. Per-
haps the explanation of any one phenomenon which
shone luminous in England's Golden Age is also
the explanation of the other, and may not lie hidden
any deeper than in the moral, physical, and intel-
lectual amalgam which resulted from blending the
rugged virtues of Briton, Saxon, Norman, and Dane
with the gentler graces lent by Latin culture.
63
The Composers
To my readers who are more desirous to know
something of the musical culture growth of England
at this time than to follow the growth of the techni-
cal elements in composition, I advise a course at
once more profitable and more pleasurable than that
prescribed in the handbooks. It is to look at the
musical taste and practices of Shakespeare's people
through the eyes of Shakespeare. The poet wrote
for all the people of his day and nation, and his use
of words and phrases appertaining to music be-
comes an index to the state of musical culture dur-
ing the reign of Henry VIII., Elizabeth, and
James I., which is frequently luminous. In this
respect as in so many others, he shows "the very
age and body of the time, his form and pressure."
As he wrote for the whole people and made copious
use in his dramas of the popular music of the day
by introduction as well as allusion, it is to be as-
sumed that the people who were called upon to
understand and enjoy his many fleeting allusions to
the art and the songs which he took out of their
mouths were near to him in musical taste and
knowledge. Like him they were nimble-minded,
up-to-date, and fearless of anachronisms. There
was nothing to give pause to the fancy or judgment
of the patrons of the Globe Theatre in the circum-
stance that the poet's Frenchmen, Italians, Greeks,
and ancient Britons were all sixteenth century Eng-
lishmen; that they thought, talked, sang, acted,
64
The English Virginalists
and danced like the people of Elizabeth's court or
her simpler subjects.
What manner of people, then, were they to whom
Shakespeare could talk blithely, without need of
oral gloss or foot-note, of "discords," "stops,"
"rests," "dumps," "diapasons," "burdens," "des-
cant," "divisions," "frets," "concords," "base,"
"sharps," "pricksong," "broken music," "gamut,"
"A-re" (and so on through the notes of the medi-
aeval scale), "plainsong," "minims," "means,"
"virginalling," "jacks," and a score or more of
similar terms belonging to the vocabulary of music ?
Without calling for evidence outside of the fact that
Shakespeare did so write we must conclude that
they were not a commonplace people; else there
would have been no Shakespeare to write for them.
He sprang from their loins. From many sources we
know that they were a strong people. Rather rude;
having those physical, mental, and moral qualities
dominant which marked out a large portion of the
world for their possession. Stout eaters and most
courageous drinkers. Contentious. Fond of show,
and fickle of taste in dress as the devotees of fashion
are to-day. Somewhat given to swashbuckling, I
fear. Heedful of the laws of courtesy and gallant-
ry, yet plain-spoken. Not tender-hearted. Kindli-
ness and pity held possession of only a small por-
tion of their souls; even the Virgin Queen delighted
in bear-baiting. The women not prudish, either in
65
The Composers
the playhouse or at home, but frank in their recog-
nition of natural appetites. Frank, too, and ami-
able in the exercise of the social amenities. The
hostess or her daughter might greet the gentleman
visitor with a kiss "a custom never to be suffi-
ciently commended," said the gentle Erasmus; and
the gentleman might ask the tribute from his fair
partner after each dance or even before, to judge
by King Henry VIII. 's remark on first seeing Anne
Bullen:
Sweetheart,
I were unmannerly to take you out
And not to kiss you. 1
Foreigners were amazed at the beauty of the
women and their learning. "The English chal-
lenge the prerogative of having the handsomest
women, of keeping the best table, and of being
the most accomplished in the skill of music of any
people," wrote the same Erasmus. 2
Many of the gentlewomen had "sound knowl-
edge of Greek and Latin and were skilful in Spanish,
Italian, and French." The ladies of Elizabeth's
court translated foreign works into Latin or Eng-
lish, and for recreation practised "lutes, citherns,
pricksong, and all kinds of music." "Argal" the
people were familiar with and fond of music. The
1 King Henry VIII., Act i, Scene 4.
1 Britanni, prccter alia, forman, musicam, et lautas mensas pro*
prie sibi vindkent. (Erasmus, Enconium tdoria.)
66
The English Virginalists
professional practitioners outside of the church
were still looked upon as vagabonds, more or less,
but all classes, from royalty down to mendicancy,
were devoted to music. Henry VIII., being a
younger son, was first set apart for holy orders (his
youthful eye already on the see of Canterbury), and
in the course of study which he pursued music was
obligatory. Nevertheless, his inclinations carried
him far beyond training in church music merely.
He played the recorder, flute, and virginal, and com-
posed songs, ballads, and church services. Anne
Bullen "doted" on the compositions of Josquin des
Pres, whom Luther, no mean authority, esteemed
higher than all the composers that had ever lived.
Edward VI. made personal record of the fact that
he had played upon the lute in order to display his
accomplishments to the French ambassador in
1551. Elizabeth was so vain of her skill as a per-
former upon the virginal that she planned to be
overheard by Mary Stuart's ambassador, Sir James
Melvil, in order that he might carry the news to the
Scottish queen. She played "excellently well,"
says Sir James but read the pretty and ingenuous
story in his memoirs.
Gentlemen with a polite education were expected
not only to be able to sing pricksong (i. e., printed
or written music) at sight, but also to extemporize
a part in harmony with a printed melody or bass.
This was the art of descant. A bass viol, like the
67
The Composers
"viol de gamboys" on which Sir Toby boasted that
his friend Aguecheek could play, hung in the draw-
ing room for gentlemen visitors to entertain them-
selves withal; and, if called upon, they, too, must
play divisions to the pricksong which my lady played
upon the virginal. The cithern and gittern hung
on the walls of the barber shops, and the virginal
stood in the corner, so that customers might pass the
time with them while waiting, or the barber find
solace in his idle moments. " Tinkers sang catches,"
says Chappell, "milkmaids sang ballads, carters
whistled; each trade and even the beggars had their
special songs." In his "Sylva Sylvarum" Bacon
left a scientific discussion of music, its psychological
effects, the nature of dissonance and consonance,
and the character of the instruments most in use in
his day; Michael D r ayton gave a complete list of
the instruments in use at the time in his "Poly-
Olbion" (1613); Shakespeare did nothing so pro-
saic, but having the whole field of musical culture
before him the practice of the people as well as
the art and science of the professional musicians
he opened up a much wider and clearer vista than
did my Lord Verulam or the cataloguing poet.
The era in question was the most brilliant in the
history of England, but Shakespeare has preserved
no tribute to the polite art of the day comparable
with that which he pays to the popular art in the
introduction of allusions to the people's songs and
68
The English Virginalists
dances in his plays or the songs and dances them-
selves. These songs and dances were the staple
of the group of organists and virginalists who form
the brightest gem in England's musical crown.
Though clavier music was composed on the conti-
nent as early as it was in England the historical
record going much further back, indeed it was
nevertheless in England that the earliest known
collections of compositions for keyboard-stringed
instruments were made. These compositions were
nominally written for the virginal, and I have, there-
fore, called the men who wrote them virginalists
rather than harpsichordists. It may have been
only an amiable affectation which made the Eng-
lish composers of the sixteenth century name the
virginal as the instrument for which their music was
intended, but since their music makes no demand
for the mechanical contrivances applied to the harp-
sichord to increase its expressive capacity, it seems
likely that the composers really had in mind the in-
strument which was most widely diffused among
the people. In Pepys's diary, under date Septem-
ber 2, 1666, one may read, in his description of the
scenes attending the Great Fire: "I observed that
hardly one lighter or boat in three that had the
goods of a house in but there was a paire of virginals
in it." Plainly, in proportion to population, vir-
ginals were as plentiful in London two hundred and
fifty years ago as pianofortes are to-day.
69
The Composers
This would be in harmony with the belief that I
have expressed in the universality of musical culture
in England during Shakespeare's time and also with
the sentimental inclination which led some writers
to suppose that the virginal had received its name
from the circumstance that it was the favorite in-
strument of the Virgin Queen. Unhappily for this
pretty theory the virginal, commonly spoken of at
the time as "virginals" or "a pair of virginals," was
known by the name before Elizabeth was born.
It is only within a recent period that study of a
large body of English virginal music has been open
to students. Until the publication of the "Fitz-
william Virginal Book," in 1899, students were re-
stricted practically to the few pieces printed in the
histories and the collection edited by E. Pauer and
published under the title of "Old English Com-
posers." The scholarship of Mr. J. A, Fuller Mait-
land and Mr. W. Barclay Squire has now given one
of the most famous of musical MSS. to the world in
modern notation. The manuscript figured in mu-
sical literature for a century as " Queen Elizabeth's
Virginal Book," this title having been given to it
under the belief that it had once been the property
of the Virgin Queen. Historical investigation, how-
ever, dealt harshly with this amiable delusion, and
since its publication it has borne the name of the
Fitzwilliam Museum, in which it has long been
housed. It is a veritable thesaurus of the best
70
The English Virginalists
clavier music that the world produced in the six-
teenth and the first quarter of the seventeenth cent-
uries. The manuscript is a small folio volume of
418 pages, gilt edged and bound in red morocco,
elaborately tooled, ornamented with fleurs-de-lis,
and otherwise embellished. It contains 219 com-
positions copied by the same hand. The editors
are inclined to the belief that the compiler and trans-
criber was one Francis Tregian, who did the work
between the years 1608 and 1619, while an inmate
of Fleet Prison, to which he had been committed
for recusancy. He was a Papist, like his father,
who sat in prison twenty-four years on account of
his religious beliefs. It was the discovery that some
of the compositions in the book were not composed
until seventeen years after Elizabeth's death which
spoiled the pretty story that the book had belonged
to that queen. Among the composers whose works
figure in the book are Dr. John Bull, William Byrd,
Thomas Morley, John Munday, Giles Farnaby,
William Blitheman, Richard Farnaby, Orlando
Gibbons, and Thomas Tallis.
Other valuable manuscripts collated by Dr. Rim-
bault with the Fitzwilliam manuscript in the prepa-
ration of his "Collection of Specimens Illustrating
the Progress of Music for Keyed-Stringed Instru-
ments," printed in his history of the pianoforte,
are the Mulliner Virginal Book, the Earl of Lei-
cester's Virginal Book, Lady Neville's Virginal
The Composers
Book, and two manuscript collections which I judge
to belong to the latter part of the seventeenth cen-
tury, now preserved in the New York Public Libra-
ry, Lenox Foundation, having been bought by the
late Joseph W. Drexel at the sale of Dr. Rimbault's
library in London in 1877. The music in these
manuscripts is written on staves of six lines, like
that of the Fitzwilliam book. Among the com-
posers repesented are Orlando Gibbons, Christo-
pher Gibbons, Dr. Bull, Dr. Rogers, Albert Byrne,
Matthew Locke, Thomas Tomkins, J. Cobb, and
P. Phillips. The chief source of knowledge touch-
ing English virginal music outside of the manu-
script collections in the seventeenth century was a
work printed in 1611, entitled "Parthenia." It
contained music written by Byrd, Bull, and Or-
lando Gibbons, and went through six editions within
forty-eight years, during which time (according to
Anthony a Wood) it was " the prime book used by
Masters in Musick." In 1847 it was reprinted
under the auspices of the Musical Antiquarian
Society, Dr. Rimbault being the editor.
The variation form was almost exclusively cul-
tivated by the English virginalists, though there are
evidences of novel strivings in manner as well as
content in some of the pieces called fantasias. Thus,
the first composition of John Munday (died 1630)
in the Fitzwilliam book is a fantasia in which an
effort is made to delineate a series of meteorological
73
The English Virginalists
changes. Its sections, rhythmically varied and
without thematic connection, bear the inscriptions
"Fair Weather," "Lightning," "Thunder," three
times; finally there comes a slow concluding move-
ment section marked "A Clear Day." 1
So, too, there is an early specimen of another
style of programmatic composition, once so admired
1 It may interest the curious to note that the device with which
Munday attempts to suggest lightning is not unlike in idea that
which Wagner invented for the same purpose more than two
centuries later, as will appear from a comparison of the two
phrases:
Musical Lightning in Munday's Fantasia.
Musical Lightning in Wagner's " Walkure."
73
The Composers
that the echoes of it have come down quite to our
own day, in a piece by William Byrd, which is
found transcribed in Lady Neville's virginal book
and twice in one of the manuscripts in the New
York Public Library, where it is annotated (evi-
dently by Dr. Rimbault) as having been collated
with Dr. Burney's MS. This, which seems to have
been as popular a piece in its day as its successor,
Kotzwara's " Battle of Prague," was a century and
a half later, was called " A Battaille," sometimes also
" Mr. Byrd's Battle." It is a compages of separate
pieces bearing descriptive titles, as follows: "The
Soldiers' Summons," "The March of Footmen,"
"The March of Horsemen," "The Trumpets,"
"The Irish March," "The Bagpipes' Drone,"
"The Drums and Flutes," "The March to the
Fight," "The Battles Joined," "The Retreat,"
"The Victory," and "The Burying of the Dead."
Melodies from the popular songs of France and
Italy (corresponding to the canzone Napolitane and
canzone Francese of the Venetian organists) were
also utilized by the English virginalists, as well as
church melodies; but the bulk of their thematic
material was drawn from the popular songs and
dances of the day. In the Fitzwilliam book we find
that peculiarly winsome song sung by the clown
in the roistering scene in Shakespeare's "Twelfth
Night" (Act III., Scene 3), beginning "O Mistress
Mine," set by Byrd; the tune called "Hanskin" to
74
The English Virginalists
which Autolycus sings "Jog on, jog on," in "A
Winter's Tale" (Act IV., Scene 2), set by Richard
Farnaby; and "Bonny Sweet Robin," one line of
which poor, distraught Ophelia sings to Laertes
before going to the brook, where she was pulled
from her melodious lay
To muddy death,
set by Giles Farnaby. There, also, is Byrd's set-
ting of "The Carman's Whistle," the song which,
in all likelihood, was in Shakespeare's mind when,
in having Falstaff descant on the early life of Jus-
tice Shallow, he made the knight say:
He always came in the rearward of the fashion; and sung
those tunes to the over-scutched huswifes that he heard the
carmen whistle and sware they were his "fancies" or "his
"good nights." 1
1 Scant justice has been done to this music by the German
historians, as a rule, and it is therefore the greater pleasure to note
the laudable exception made by Dr. Oscar Bie, who waxes en-
thusiastic over Byrd's setting of "The Carman's Whistle" and
"Bellinger's Round":
" 'The Carman's Whistle,'" says Dr. Bie, "is a perfected popu-
lar melody, one of those tunes which will linger for days in our
ears. At the beginning of the third and fourth bars Byrd sets the
first and second bars in canon, in the simplest and most straight-
forward style. Next come harmonies worthy of a Rameau, with
the most delicate passing notes. In the variations certain figures
are inserted which are easily worked into the canonic form, now
legato with the charm of the introduction of related notes, now
diatonic scales most gracefully introduced, now staccato passages
which draw the melody along with them like the singing of a bird.
75
The Composers
Among other songs I mention the following as
figuring more or less extensively in the writings of
the poets, dramatists, and essayists of the time, the
melodies of which are preserved for us in the music
of the virginalists, viz.: " Walsingham," "Quod-
ling's Delight," " Packington's Pound," "Malt's
Come Down," "Why Ask You?" "Go from My
Window," "John, Come Kiss Me Now," "All in a
Garden Green," "Fain Would I Wed," "Peascod
Time," "Tell Me, Daphne," "Mall Sims," and
"Rowland." The popularity won on the conti-
nent by the last tune is quite irreconcilable with the
notion of the historians, a notion shared with his
Finally fuller chords appear, gently changing the direction of the
theme. From first to last there is not a turn foreign to the modern
ear.
"The 'Bellinger's Round' is more stirring. Its theme is in a
swinging 6-8 rhythm, running easily through the harmonies of the
tonic, the super-dominant and the sub-dominant. It strikes one
like an old legend, as in the first part of Chopin's Ballade in F
major, of which this piece is a prototype. The first variation re-
tains the rhythm and only breaks the harmonies. Its gentle fugali-
zation is more distinctly marked in the third variation, which at
the conclusion adopts running semi-quavers, after Byrd's favorite
manner, anticipating at the conclusion of the one variation the
motive of the next. The semi-quavers go up and down in thirds,
or are interwoven by both hands, while melody and accompani-
ment continue their dotted 6-8, in a fashion reminding us of a
Schumann. In the later variations the quaver movement is again
taken up, but more florid and more varied, with runs which pursue
each other in canon. This piece, perhaps the first perfect clavier
piece on record, which had left its time far behind, was written in
1580."
76
The English Virginalists
predecessors, even by Dr. Bie, that the influence
of the English school of virginalists was short lived
and confined to England. Not only did the Eng-
lish comedians who introduced farces sung to popu-
lar tunes in Germany and Holland set the fashion
which created the German Singspiel, they also ha-
bilitated there the melodies of their native land.
"Rowland," which is called "Lord Willoughby's
Welcome Home" in Lady Neville's virginal book,
became the Rolandston to which scores, probably
hundreds, of erotic, historical, and religious songs
were written in Germany and the Netherlands. So
the "Cobbler's Jig," "Fortune My Foe" ("The
Merry Wives of Windsor," Act III., Scene 3),
"Greensleeves" ("The Merry Wives," Act II.,
Scene i, and Act V., Scene 5), " Packington's
Pound," "Mall Sims," and other English tunes
were known all over the continent, where in the
seventeenth century a dozen or more English mu-
sicians were employed in high positions at different
courts. Richard Machin was at the court of the
Landgrave of Hesse; Thomas Simpson at that of
Count Ernest III. of Schaumburg; Walter Rowe,
and after him Walter Rowe, his son, were in the
service of the Elector of Brandenburg; Valentine
Flood was active in Berlin and Dantzic; William
Brade in Berlin and Hamburg; John Stanley in
Berlin, and John Price in Dresden. All these men
published their compositions in Germany.
77
Part of a page from " Parthenia." (See page 72.)
The English Virginalists
The English school was known and respected
on the continent and its influence felt. Dr. John
Bull (born about 1563, died 1628) amazed the
cognoscenti by his playing at the courts of France,
Spain, and Austria, and died in service as organist
of the Cathedral of Notre Dame at Antwerp. In
the course of his career, which began when he was
nineteen years old, he was organist of Hereford Ca-
thedral, member of the Chapel Royal, recipient of
the degree of Mus. Doc. from both Oxford and Cam-
bridge universities, processor of music at Gresham
College (for which post he was recommended by
Queen Elizabeth herself and by special dispensa-
tion was permitted to read his lectures in English
instead of Latin), travelling virtuoso and court
musician on the continent, and organist at Ant-
werp. He was unquestionably the greatest of the
musicians who extended the repute of England
abroad, but he was not without companions. Evi-
dence of his digital fluency, which may be looked
upon as the equivalent in that day of technical pro-
ficiency in this, is found in his proneness to write
difficult passages for both hands and to indulge in
profuse ornamentation. He was considered a mar-
vel of learning, and of skill in composition also, as
is illustrated by the tale that he added forty new
parts to a composition already containing forty.
The tale sounds fantastic and mythical to modern
ears, but it must be remembered that though the
79
The Composers
infancy of the instrumental art failed to show the
fact in anything like the measure disclosed by the
vocal, the age was an ingenious and scholastic
one when, as William Mason, precentor of York
Cathedral and biographer of the poet Gray, has
said
there were Schoolmen in Music as well as in Letters; and
when, if learning had its Aquinas and Smeglecius, music had
its Master Giles and its Dr. Bull, who could split the seven
notes of music into as many divisions as the others could split
the ten Categories of Aristotle.
We are as little concerned with the works which
Dr. Bull wrote for the church as with like compo-
sitions by his great predecessor, Tallis; but if we
wish to observe him in a wholly amiable mood we
need only hear his " King's Hunting Jigg," a com-
position in which, with the jubilant vitality of its
first part paired with the jocund, out-doorsy flourish
of its second, I find more of the modern spirit than
in any score of the programmatic and characteristic
pieces written by the French masters who came a
hundred years after him. Harsh and crude are
many of the progressions in some of these English
pieces, monotonous the repetition of rudimentary
passage-work in the variations, but their value as
clavier music becomes luminous when compared
with the bulk of the music written for the harpsi-
chord in the same period on the continent.
80
The English Virginalists
Thomas Tallis (perhaps more properly Tallys,
1527-1585) plays his most important role as "the
father of English cathedral music" and the teacher
(and business associate in a monopoly of music print-
ing and the sale of music paper) of William Byrd
(1544 or 1546-1623). Orlando Gibbons (1583-
1625) was one of three brothers who were eminent
in. their day in the cathedral service, and the father
of Dr. Christopher Gibbons (1615-1676), who was
organist of Winchester Cathedral, the Chapel
Royal, Westminster Abbey, and private organist to
Charles II. Byrd seems to have been the most
popular writer of virginal music in his time, and
his pieces outnumber those of any of his associates
in the "Fitzwilliam Virginal Book." His closest
competitor, as evidenced by that standard, was Giles
Farnaby, who bridged over the sixteenth and seven-
teenth centuries, but of whom next to nothing is
known. Giles Farnaby is represented in the col-
lection by fifty-one pieces to Byrd's sixty-eight;
Dr. Bull follows with forty-four, Tallis with twenty-
two, and then comes Peter Phillips with nineteen.
Phillips was a Catholic cleric of English birth, evi-
dence of whose sojourn in Italy and on the conti-
nent is found in his arrangements of melodies by
such Italian masters as Orlando Lassus, Luca Ma-
renzio, Alessandro Striggio, and Giulio Romano.
With Dr. John Blow (1658-1708) and Henry Pur-
cell (1658-1695) the list of epoch-making English
81
The Composers
composers may be said to have ended, though
Mr. Pauer has included pieces by Dr. T. A. Arne
(1710-1778), in his "Old English Composers."
The finest fruit of Purcell's creative genius, itself
the finest product of England's capacity, was given
to the church and stage. By the time that Pur-
cell won the headship the element which gave the
English school of virginalists its most national and
striking characteristic that is, English folksong
melody had been abandoned and the suite of
dance forms had taken its place. John Playford,
in his " Introduction to the Skill of Musick," said:
Our late and Solemn Musick, both Vocal and Instru-
mental, is now justled out of Esteem by the New Corants
and Jigs of Foreigners, to the grief of all sober and judicious
Understanders of that formerly solid and good Musick: nor
must we expect Harmony in People's minds, so long as Pride,
Vanity, Faction, and Discords are so predominant in their
lives.
This deprecatory comparison of the present with
the past is a familiar phenomenon in the history of
music. It can easily be traced back as far as the
time of Aristotle, whose pupil Aristoxenus could
find little or no merit in the music of his age, when
he pondered on what music had been when the
popular taste was reflected in the compositions of
^Eschylus, Pindar, and Simonides; and I shall not
be surprised if this review, too, runs out into plaints
against the hollo wness of composers of this latter
82
The English Virginalists
day. In the case of Playford, however, it marks the
transfer of the sceptre of supremacy from his peo-
ple to another, and this change seemed to him as
woful in its consequences to music as did the change
in the style of dancing (which not only accompanied
but conditioned it) to morals and decorum to John
Selden. In his "Table Talk" that political moral-
ist found time to deplore the change which had come
over court dancing when he remembered how the
gravity and stateliness which had prevailed during
an earlier generation had given way to the boister-
ousness of "Trenchmore" (which, according to Bur-
ton, went "over tables, stoves, and chairs") and the
"Cushion Dance," which might best be likened to
a rural kissing game of the present day. 1
The dance music written down in the books of
the old English virginalists belongs to the period
when the court dance, at least, was still full of
"state and ancientry." It consisted chiefly of
pavans, galliards, and allemands. The form and
movement of these stately dances invited the florid
figuration and canonic imitations which had been
invented for the ricercare and toccati of the Venetian
organists. The pavan in melody and movement
was as solemn and even lugubrious as a covenant-
1 "So in our court," says Selden, "in Queen Elizabeth's time,
gravity and state were kept up. In King James's time things were
pretty well. But in King Charles's time there has been nothing
but Trenchmore and the Cushion Dance, omnium gatherum, totty
potty, hoite cum toity." ("King of England.")
83
The Composers
er's psalm or a Chorale of the German church. The
favorite dance tune of Charles IX. of France was
the melody to which Psalm cxxix. was sung. Full
court dress, with hat, cloak, and sword, was de
rigueur with men, long trains with women. The
dance was executed as a majestic procession, like
the courtly Polonaise or Fackeltanz of a later pe-
riod. It was a display of haughty carriage and
gorgeous raiment. The solemn music changed
from double to triple rhythm and, quickened in
tempo, became a galliard, in which there was less
show of dignity and composure and more of skill
and agility. The galliard permitted, if, indeed, it
did not require, more or less vigorous and fantastic
caperings. 1
"Every pavan has its galliard," says a Spanish
proverb. In "Parthenia" and the manuscripts to
which I have referred this intimate association of
the two dances is illustrated in a melody for each
1 A few lines from Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night" as an
illustration :
Sir Toby. What is thy excellence in a galliard, knight ?
Sir Andrew. Faith, I can cut a caper . . . and I think I have
the back trick as strong as any man in Illyria.
Sir Toby. Wherefore are these things hid ? . . . I did think,
by the excellent constitution of thy leg, it was formed under the
star of a galliard.
Sir Andrew. Ay, 'tis strong, and it does indifferent well in a
flame colored stock. Shall we set about some revels ?
Sir Toby. . . . Let me see thee caper; ha! higher! ha! ha!
excellent! (Act I., Scene 3.)
84
The English Virginalists
galliard, which is itself only a variation in triple
time of the tune of the preceding pavan. "Pa van;
Galliard to the Pavan" this is the common for-
mula. When Playford wrote, these solemn meas-
ures with their variations had given place to the
suite consisting of a number of dance melodies,
some stately as a saraband, some lively as a jig.
In Purcell's music we find suites composed of a
prelude, alman (the alman and almain of the
earlier English composers, the allemande of the
French and German) ; of a prelude, courante, sar-
aband, chaconne, and siciliano; of a prelude, al-
mand, courante, saraband cebell (gavotte), minuet,
riggadoon, intrada, and march, and so on. Insular
and continental tastes are met, and the people- who
by taste and training are best fitted to set the pegs
for the new fashion become the arbiters for the time
being of the polite world. With the instrumental art
secularized in tone and purpose and emancipated
from the vocal forms, the French naturally acquired
great importance in its practice. 1
1 1 yield to the temptation to offer here a curious contribu-
tion to a vexatious problem in musical terminology. In the
country districts of the eastern portion of the United States a
figure in a lively square dance is variously "alleman," "eleman,"
and "alement," the pronunciation evidently depending much upon
the taste and fancy of the pronouncer. The question raised by
this is whether or not we have here a survival of a dance which
long ago fell into disuse in the Old World. The allemande was a
popular dance in the sixteenth century, and also found favor in
the court of Louis XIV., because, it is said, being little else in its
85
The Composers
performance than a German waltz with figures, it was supposed to
symbolize the union of Alsace with France. But as a popular dance
the allcmandc, which survived in a musical form in the partitas and
suites of the eighteenth century, died in the seventeenth. Accord-
ing to Arbeau's " Orchesographie " (1588) it was a dance of Ger-
man origin, as its name implies, which was a sort of procession
of couples holding hands. Steevens, in a note on "Hamlet,"
quotes some one as saying: " We Germans have no changes in our
dances. An almain and an upspring, that is all." In portions
of New York State the command, "Alleman!" is carried out by
the dancers "swinging corners."
86
VI
French and Italian Clavecinists
FOR two hundred years after dancing had be-
come the most polite of polite arts it was
swayed by the gay and gallant court of France.
When Catherine de Medici came to Paris the in-
fluence of her native Italy splendor-loving, pleas-
ure-loving Italy was already at work. It had
long been nourished by the sun of the renaissance,
which had revived the pantomimes and spectacular
shows of the ancient Romans with all their gaudy
paraphernalia. At the courts of the great ones of
Italy, of the Estes and Medicis, in the palaces of
popes and cardinals, there had grown up and been
humored with extravagant generosity those panto-
mimic and musical entertainments in which the
virtues of the noble patrons of art were celebrated
by allegories and paraphrases of the beautiful fables
of classical antiquity. In these entertainments
music played an important part; but for long it
was music which in form and spirit failed to meet
any requirement of the dramatic art or to echo a
single sound from the voice of romanticism which
spoke in the songs and dances of the plain people.
87
The Composers
The predominant position which the dance oc-
cupied among the polite diversions of the aristoc-
racy of Italy and France during the sixteenth,
seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries must be kept
in view if the significance of the French school of
clavecin ists and its successors in Germany is to be
understood. Three hundred years ago nobody
thought the dance beneath his dignity. The most
august members of the Council of Trent, the princes
of the church, cardinals, bishops, abbots, and
priests danced at the ball given in honor of Philip II.
of Spain, in 1562. Dancing in the churches (a cus-
tom of vast antiquity) endured in France until pro-
hibited by decree of the Paris Parliament, in 1667.
It still survives in Seville. It was a priest, Jehan
Tabourot, who wrote that famous treatise on the
dances of the sixteenth century known as Arbeau's
" Orchesographie." Cardinal Richelieu tricked
himself out like a merry andrew, with green velvet
breeches and bells on shoes, rattled his castanets as
he danced a saraband for the delectation of Anne
of Austria. It is written that for twenty years
Louis XIV. took a daily dance lesson from Beau-
champs. Under a ministerial decree issued in his
reign (1669), members of the nobility were per-
mitted to perform at the opera for hire without
loss of dignity, and even to follow dancing as a
means of livelihood.
Don Juan of Austria, when Viceroy of the Neth-
88
JEAN PHILL1PPE RAMEAU.
French and Italian Clavecinists
erlands, went incognito from Brussels to Paris to see
Marguerite of Valois dance a minuet. Moliere,
Lully, and Quinault devoted a portion of their
genius to the invention of ballets, a species of en-
tertainment so popular, even before female dancers
had been admitted to the stage, that no fewer than
eighty of them were brought out at the Ope"ra in
the year 1610. Catherine de Medici not only in-
troduced heroic, comic, gallant, and allegorical
ballets in which the princes and nobles of the French
court masqueraded as apes, bears, ostriches, and
parrots; she also supplemented the grave and sol-
emn low dances (danses basses), like the pa van and
branle, with brisk Italian dances, like the galliard
and volta. In the old dances modesty of apparel
was paired with decorum in bearing, but in the new
the gentlemen had to caper, the ladies wear skirts
short enough to permit the movements of their feet
to be seen and allow themselves to be swung
bodily over the hips of their partners.
A love for variety of movement, rhythm, melody,
and color having been created, it was stimulated by
the introduction into the ball-room and on the stage
of the people's dances. The saraband was im-
ported from Spain, the passepied from Bas Bre-
tagne, the bourree from Auvergne, the tambourin
and rigaudon from Provence, the gavotte from
Dauphine. These dances were performed in the
costumes habitual to the various provinces, and to
89
The Composers
the music of provincial instruments. At one of
Catherine's balls hautboys played for the dances of
Burgundy and Champagne, violins for those of
Brittany, the large Basque drum marked the time
for the Biscayans, the tambourine and flageolet for
the Provencals, and the bagpipe for the people of
Poitou.
Here we have a picture of French music and
manners to place face to face with our English
picture. The French school of clavecinists which
grew up under the influences of the court of Louis
XIV. reflected the spirit and the manners of that
court. It was characterized by the gayety, the
grace, and the rhythmical incisiveness of the dance.
It led to the perfection of the suite, the highest
formal expression of the clavier art down to the
close of the old regime by the German giants,
Bach and Handel. It came a full century after the
English school, and reached its culmination within
a single generation; whereas the English school
compassed over a hundred years. It marked the
climax of a tendency without illustrating the steps
in its development. It was gentle, gracious, and
affected where the English was rugged, virile, and
straightforward. For our purposes it may be said
to have begun with Jacques Champion (called de
Chambonnieres, after the estate owned by his wife),
and culminated in Couperin (surnamed "the
Great") and Rameau. Its fashions were followed
90
French and Italian Glavecinists
by Franjois Dandrieu (1684-1740), Jacques Andre
Dagincourt (1684-175 ?) and Louis Claude Da-
quin (1694-1772). Chambonnieres was clavecin
player to Louis XIV.; so, too, was Francois Cou-
perin (1668-1733), whose father, Charles (died 1669),
and uncles, Louis (1630-1685) and Francois (1631-
1701), had preceded him in the post of organist
at the Church of St. Gervais.
The chief importance of Jean Philippe Rameau
(1683-1764) rests on his having laid the foundations
of the modern system of harmony; but his operas
and ballets made him the idol of the French people,
and a few of his compositions for the harpsichord
have come over into the pianoforte repertory of to-
day. He is, indeed, oftener heard than Couperin,
who is generally set down in the books as the head
of the old French school. Rubinstein paid a much
higher tribute to Rameau than to Couperin in his
historical lecture recitals given in St. Petersburg in
1888 and 1889. In fact, Rubinstein was disposed
to value the Couperin who is called "the Great"
less highly than the Couperin, his uncle, who was
plain Louis. Rameau is more modern than Cou-
perin much more modern than is indicated in the
difference between their birth and death dates.
Couperin's pieces are predominantly two- voiced;
Rameau's predominantly three. Rameau, more-
over, indulges freely in chords and arpeggios, and
91
The Composers
betrays an appreciation of broad effects. "Many
of his modulations are as profoundly conceived as
those of Beethoven and Schumann," says Rubin-
stein. Conscious of the awakening demand for
sonority and richness of tone, he sought to supply
it even at the cost of pure consonance.
Comparatively a small number of compositions
written by the French clavecinists other than Cou-
perin are open to the study of ordinary amateurs.
Among those which have lived in the affections of
musical antiquaries because of their puissant beauty
are Rameau's "Le Rappel des Oiseaux," "La
Poule" (a fascinatingly ingenious piece built on a
theme which imitates the cackling of a hen), "Les
tendres Plaintes" (most gracious and winning in its
melody), "L'Egyptienne," "La Timide," "Les
Soupirs," "La Livri," and "Les Cyclops"; Dan-
drieu's "Les tendres Reproches," and Daquin's
dainty "Le Coucou" and " L'Hirondelle." Cou-
perin is in a vastly different case. Between 1713
and 1730 he published four books of "Pieces de
Clavecin," containing no less than 236 composi-
tions; and all but a trifling fraction of these have
been edited with painstaking care by Brahms and
Chrysander and published in London (Augener)
as well as in Germany. Couperin did not call his
sets of pieces suites, but ordres. He did not confine
himself to the conventional sequence L, alle-
92
French and Italian Clavecinists
mande; II., courante; III., saraband; IV., gigue,
with the occasional interjection of a gavotte, passe-
pied, branle, minuet, bourree, etc. but, preserving
key relationship (changing from major to relative
or parallel minor and vice versa), as an external
tie between the members of his sets, he cultivated
contrast and interchange of mood.
Mixed in with pieces bearing the simple names of
the different orders of dances were others to which
he gave all manner of fanciful titles. Here, for
instance, is the list of pieces which make up the
first ordre of his first book: Allemande 1'Auguste,
premiere Courante, seconde Courante, Sarabande
la Majestueuse, Gavotte, Gigue la Mylordine, Men-
uet, Les Sylvains, Les Abeilles, La Nanette, Sara-
bande des Sentimens, La Pastorelle, Les Nonnettes,
Gavotte la Bourbonnoise, La Manon, L'Enchant-
eresse, La Fleurie, Les Plaisirs de St. Germain en
Laye.
He has a whole gallery of portraits: Nanette,
Manon, Antoinine, Babet, Angelique, La Couperin;
another of temperaments, moods, and characters:
La Prude, La Diligente, La Voluptueuse, La
Tenebreuse, La Flateuse, La Dangeureuse, L'ln-
sinuante, La Seduisante; an Olympian stageful
of mythological creatures: Sylvains, Bacchantes,
Graces, Corybantes, Diane, Terpsichore, Hymen,
Amor. Bees and gnats buzz and hum in some
93
The Composers
pieces, butterflies flutter and birds sing, even an
amphibian drags his slow length through a solemn
passacaille. Nuns, shepherds, pilgrims, sailors,
harvesters, and spinners are delineated, so far as
may be, by imitative hints at the sounds made by
them in the pursuit of their vocations. Nothing, in
fact, is too insignificant so its name awaken an
image in the fancy which may be associated with
the movement or mood of the music not even a
scarf with flying ends ("Le Bavelet flottant").
The court allegories and ballets provide hints for
further bits of musical delineation, as, for instance,
in " Les Folies Francaises, ou les Dominos," where
we find impersonations of Maidenhood, Shame,
Ardor, Hope, Fidelity, Perseverance, Languor,
Coquetry, Jealousy, Frenzy, and Despair dancing
in dominos of appropriate colors a premonition of
the " Carnaval" which was to come with Schumann.
But, however the little piece might be intituled, it
was a dance in form and movement its periods and
sections rigorously measured off, its melody and
bass moving along in gracious union and with many
a pretty courtesy, one to other, linked together by
an occasional chord. Adorned like the ladies of
Louis's court are these pieces, overcrowded with
embellishments, full of "nods and becks and
wreathed smiles"; and when the harmonies spread
out at the cadences we cannot but yield to the
94
French and Italian Clavecinists
fancied image of a grande dame in Louis's court
sinking low with ineffable grace as she receives
the conge of the King:
To erect a platform of observation which may
prove useful it can now be said, broadly, that down
to the beginning of the eighteenth century all com-
posers for keyed stringed instruments were church
musicians. The traditions of the fifteenth century
were enduring until the emancipation of instru-
mental music from the vocal style was complete.
It is, therefore, not surprising that when we take
up the story of Italian clavier music where it was left
when the English school appeared upon the scene
we find ourselves back again among the great or-
ganists of the land that has been called the cradle
of music. The most brilliant achievements of the
old organists of St. Mark's, in Venice, were eclipsed
95
The Composers
by Girolamo Frcscobaldi (1588-1645?), a native of
Ferrara who, after he had studied in his native
land and practised his art in Antwerp, found that
so wondrous a renown had preceded him to Rome
that twenty-five thousand persons attended his first
performance in St. Peter's. This was in 1614, and
the next year he was appointed organist at the
great church.
In the course of the twenty years following several
collections 'of his works were published in Rome
and Venice. They were, like the works that had
preceded them, ricercare, canzone, fantasie, capricci,
etc., and some of them were stated to be equally
adapted for voice or instrument or to be played on
the organ or cembalo. The meaning of this is that
they preceded the invention of a real clavier style.
This began to disclose itself in the compositions of
Bernardo Pasquini (1637-1710), a Tuscan. He
had studied with Antonio Cesti, an opera writer,
and the effect of the monodic school's use of the
keyed stringed instruments in the harmonic sup-
port of the airs in the dramma per musica may
have had something to do with his advancement
of the art of clavier composition. Rubinstein
thought that Pasquini's significance was not less
than that of Couperin's and Rameau's. He was
the recipient of great honors in Florence, Vienna,
and Paris, and the classic legend "S. P. Q. R."
was carved on his tombstone to testify that he
96
French and Italian Clavecinists
had been organist to the senate and people of
Rome.
The Italian school of this period found its cul-
mination in Domenico Scarlatti (1683-1757), son of
Alessandro Scarlatti (founder of the Neapolitan
school of opera) and pupil of Pasquini in organ and
harpsichord playing. Scarlatti was so great an ad-
mirer of Handel that he followed him from Venice
to study his methods. He stayed ten years in
Rome, where he became chapelmaster of St. Peter's,
and there was no corner of Europe to which his
fame as composer and player did not penetrate.
In 1720 he was cembalist at the opera in London
and saw the production of his opera "Narcissus."
He was a voluminous writer of pieces for the organ
and clavier, and is frequently spoken of as the in-
ventor of the sonata. The works which he wrote
under this title (the Abbate Santini collected 349 of
them) are, however, not sonatas in the sense of
to-day, though they foreshadow the modern form
in the contrasting mood of their principal themes
and the key relationship in which the themes are
presented. They are modern, too, in the firmness
with which the major and minor modes are kept in
view, as distinguished from the old ecclesiastical
modes, their brilliant passage work, broken chords
in contrary motion, repetition of single notes by
different fingers, and other indications of virtuosity.
The two sonatas in G and E major adapted for
97
The Composers
the pianoforte by Carl Tausig, entitled "Pastorale"
and " Capriccio," have much grace and animation,
but are as purely objective, formal, and soulless in
their musical content as any other compositions of
their epoch. Scarlatti, indeed, did not aim at
emotional expression. "Amateur or professor,
whoever thou art," said he in the preface to a col-
lection of his sonatas, "seek not in these sonatas
for any deep feeling. They are only a frolic in art,
intended to increase thy confidence in the clavier."
Apropos of Scarlatti's sonatas I find a singular
blunder in Rubinstein's St. Petersburg lectures.
" Scarlatti wrote many sonatas for the clavicembalo,
as well as the less cantabUe clavichord. He prob-
ably played two instruments. He played the An-
dantes on the clavicymbal, the brilliant movements
on the clavichord." The names of the instruments
should, of course, be reversed. The clavichord was
capable of a singing tone; the harpsichord was not,
for reasons which I have tried to point out. It
seems strange that Rubinstein should have erred
here, but even Dr. Oscar Paul seems to have been
ignorant of the mechanism of the clavichord when
he wrote his " Geschichte des Claviers."
For most of the music of the Italian composers
of this period students are thrown largely upon
historical works. Scarlatti's sonatas are plentiful
enough; Haslinger published two hundred of them,
edited by Czerny, in 1839; Breitkopf & HarteFs
98
DOMENICO SCARLATTI.
French and Italian Glavecinists
catalogue contains sixty and Kistner's thirty. An
excellent collection of a later date contains twenty-
four pieces in eight suites, edited and fingered by
Alessandro Longo. Of Frescobaldi's works a ca-
priccio is published in Rimbault's history and a
canzone in sesto tono in Weitzmann's " Geschichte des
Clavierspiels." Weitzmann also prints sonatas by
Pasquini, Francesco Durante (1684-1755), and Pier
Domenico Paradies (1710-1792). In his "Alte
Claviermusik" (Leipsic, Bartholf Senff) Pauer pub-
lishes a canzona and corrente by Frescobaldi, two
fugues by Antonio Nicolo Porpora (1685-1767), a
sonata by Baldassare Galuppi (1706-1785), a ga-
votte and ballet by Giovanni Battista Martini
(1706-1784), and a sonata by Paradies. "The
Golden Treasury of Piano Music," five volumes,
published by Schirmer, New York, is a fine and
serviceable collection of harpsichord pieces of the
sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries.
99
VII
The German School Bach and Handel
IT is not easy to form a clear idea of what the
domestic element in instrumental music the
element which springs first to mind when we think
of pianoforte music to-day was like in the Middle
Ages. To us the pianoforte represents the whole
world of music in nuce; stage and choir-loft are
charmed by it into the intimacy of the home circle.
But the clavier, in its two forms of tangential (clavi-
chord) and quilled (spinet, virginal, and harpsi-
chord) instrument, did not assume this position
until long after the work of developing an instru-
mental art had begun. The pioneership of Eng-
land in this work has already received recognition
in these studies; its significance lies chiefly in the
fact that in that country the supremacy of the lute
as the domestic instrument of music par excellence
was overthrown by the virginal before the clavier
had gained dominion on the Continent.
That there should have been a greater number
and variety of instruments in popular use at a time
when instrumental music was struggling to come
into existence than now, when it has forced purely
100
The German School Bach and Handel
vocal music out of the churches and suffers only
the mixed form to stand beside it on the concert
platform, is anomalous. The vast majority of
these instruments, however, had not the slightest
influence upon musical composition, and were not
designed for domestic enjoyment. Pratorius cata-
logues and describes a hundred of them in his
"Syntagma Musicum," but it needs only a glance
at his plates to see that most of them were din pro-
ducers, against which private doors had to be shut.
With all their number and variety, moreover, they
did nothing to advance the orchestral art, which
returned to the principle of a combination of kind
("consorts of viols" and the like) as soon as the
instrumental language had been freed from the
vocal idiom.
In a twofold manner the organ was the inter-
mediary between the music of ecclesiastical or
courtly functions and the home circle. Constructed
on a small scale, the instrument itself, under the
names "positif," "regal," and "organo picciolo,"
made its way into cultured houses. Its keyboard
being identical with that of the clavier, music com-
posed for it was easily transferred to that instru-
ment, whereas the lute necessitated the employment
of a notation belonging to it alone. So it came by
the operation of the law of survival that the favor-
ite domestic instrument of generations of musical
amateurs, omnium instrumentorum Princeps, the
The Composers
nobilissimo stromenlo, the Regina instrumentorum
upon which, by the exercise of an incomprehensible
skill, all the demands of home music were gratified,
was practically supplanted by the clavier when the
time for clavier music was come that is to say,
toward the close of the sixteenth century. It re-
mained in use a century longer, but not as a potent
influence.
There are a number of German names which
may be added to the list of church musicians who
became famous while the musical current flowed
out of Italy in all directions. Hans Leo Hasler
(1564-1612) won such renown in the service of
Rudolph II. that that emperor ennobled him.
Christian Erbach, Hieronymus Pratorius, Adam
Gumpeltzhaimer, Melchior Franck, and Samuel
Scheidt may be written down among the distin-
guished musicians of the early period on the testi-
mony of their contemporaries. Now we reach the
first name of large import that of Johann Jakob
Froberger (1637-1695). He carried his fame and
activities as far westward as Dr. Bull had done
toward the East. As a youth he was sent by the
Emperor Ferdinand III. to Rome to receive in-
struction from Frescobaldi. He remained three
years in the Holy City, went thence to Paris, thence
to Dresden, and then returned to the service of the
Emperor of Germany. In 1662, according to the
accepted story which has only himself for authority,
102
The German School Bach and Handel
he got a leave of absence and set out for England
via France. The tale of his adventures is worth
telling, if for no other reason than that it throws
a certain amount of light on a kind of music which
he and his contemporaries cultivated in a degree
not appreciated in this latter day. He says he was
robbed before he reached Calais. There he set sail
across the Channel, but fell into the hands of pirates
and had to save his life by swimming.
He reached the English shore and begged his
way to London. Tattered and torn, he found his
way to Westminster Abbey, and, loitering in the
church after the service, met the organist it must
have been Christopher Gibbons who discovered
him while locking the doors, and hired him to blow
the organ. At the wedding of Charles II. and
Catherine of Portugal, so the story goes, awed by
the pomp of the function, he neglected his duty,
and the organ stopped, breathless. Dire were the
imprecations poured out upon the head of the
luckless blower by the organist, who promptly dis-
appeared into an adjoining apartment after he,
too, was breathless. Then Froberger saw his op-
portunity. Filling the bellows he rushed to the
keyboard and began to play. A lady of Charles's
court who had been in Vienna recognized the artist's
manner. He was summoned into the presence of
the king, told his story on his knees, was bidden to
rise, a clavier was hurriedly brought, and for an
103
The Composers
hour by the dial he improvised on the instrument
to the delight of king and court. Charles gave him
a necklace, and he became the lion of the hour. He
returned to Vienna loaded with gifts and distinc-
tions; but calumny had preceded him, and he vainly
sought an audience with the emperor, whose mind
had been poisoned against him.
This is the story, and it is surely worthy of a
modern theatrical press agent. An organist play-
ing long enough with a single inflation of the bellows
to impress his individual style upon a casual listener
that detail might alone have served to arouse sus-
picion; but if it did not why have not the English
critics called attention to the fact that Charles II.
was not married in state at Westminster, but pri-
vately at Portsmouth? However, Froberger in all
likelihood did visit London, and failing of rehabili-
tation at the imperial court of Germany on his re-
turn to Vienna, went to Mayence, where he perished
miserably years later. Obviously, he was a brave
raconteur who essayed to be as entertaining in his
musical anecdotes as in his verbal; for Mattheson,
who reports the London story, also tells of hearing
one of Froberger's allemandes, which purported to
describe in musical tones incidents, to the number
of twenty-six, of an eventful Rhine journey among
others how a passenger, in attempting to hand his
sword to the skipper, fell overboard and was struck
on the head with a pike while struggling in the water.
104
The German School Bach and Handel
We shall hear more about this kind of music
presently.
Froberger was the first distinctively great Ger-
man clavierist. In his other musical activities he
had a colleague, contemporary and compatriot in
Johann Kaspar Kerl (1625-1690 or 1628-1693),
who, like him, was sent by Ferdinand III. to Rome
to study; but though it is suspected that he, too,
availed himself of Frescobaldi's skill and learning,
his direct purpose was to study under Carissimi.
Some of Kerl's compositions have been preserved
for the modern student, but to English readers his
name is likely to be best known as the author of the
melody of "Egypt was glad when they departed,"
which Handel borrowed for his "Israel in Egypt"
from one of Kerl's toccatas. George Muffat (died
in 1704) spent six years in Paris under the influence
of Lully and Couperin, and is said to have trans-
planted the latter's agremens to Germany. His
son, Gottlieb Muffat (born about 1690), was clavier
teacher to the family of Emperor Charles VI. and,
like Kerl, an involuntary contributor to Handel's
oratorios.
There now sprang up in the north of Germany
a group of organists who found inspiration in the
Protestant Church service akin to that which had
so long come from Rome. In this service there
had existed from an early period an element of ro-
manticism borrowed from the folksong which had
105
The Composers
bound itself up intimately with German hymnology.
Luther, though far from being an iconoclast,
desirous from the beginning of the movement which
he led to give a national trend to the music of the
new church to have all the features of the ser-
vice German in spirit and German in manner. It
was a tendency embodied in him which brought it
to pass that in Germany contrapuntal music based
on popular tunes, like that of the Netherland school,
soon developed into the chorale in which the melody
and not the contrapuntal integument was the essen-
tial thing. In the hymns and psalms which Luther
himself sang and heard the borrowed secular melody
was almost as completely buried as in the masses
which the books would have us believe scandalized
the church before the coming of Palestrina. The
people were invited to sing the paraphrases, it is
true, and to sing them to familiar tunes (later in
France they did so, and with a vengeance, some-
times using the melodies of popular dances with
the versified psalms of Marot), but the choir's
polyphony practically stifled the melody.
Soon, however, the free spirit so powerfully pro-
moted by the Reformation prompted a manner of
composition in which the admired melody was lifted
into relief. Now the monophonic style entered so
that the congregation might join in the singing a
distinctly romantic step. The musicians who fell
under this influence were the direct predecessors of
106
The German School Bach and Handel
the great Bach, in whom the polyphonic style cul-
minated. Diedrich Buxtehude was a Dane who
attracted so much attention with a series of con-
certs that he gave for years at Liibeck that Bach,
then nineteen years old, walked from Arnstadt to
Liibeck more than two hundred miles to hear
them. When Buxtehude grew old both Matthe-
son and Handel went from Hamburg and reported
themselves as candidates for his position as or-
ganist; they fled incontinently, however, when they
learned that one of the conditions attached to the
post was that the new organist must marry the
daughter of his predecessor. Some of Buxtehude's
organ music may yet be heard, but what were prob-
ably the best of his clavier compositions seem to be
irrevocably lost. They were a set of seven suites,
in which, according to Mattheson, " the nature and
properties of the seven planets were agreeably
expressed."
Johann Pachelbel (1653-1706) was native of Nu-
remberg, and died there as organist of the Church
of St. Sebaldus, having spent three years of his
early career in Vienna as organist of the venerable
Church of St. Stephen. He wrote many variations
on chorale melodies, publishing a group of four in
Erfurt in 1683 under the title, "Musical Death
Thoughts." In six Bible sonatas by Johann Kuh-
nau (1667-1722) we find the programmatic ten-
dency, which is daintily illustrated in the little
107
The Composers
dance pieces of Couperin and Rameau, carried to
an extreme which would be laughable were we not
compelled to recognize a latter-day reversion to the
type with all its absurdities in the symphonic poems
of Richard Strauss and his disciples.
Kuhnau was Bach's predecessor at Leipsic, and
had a high opinion of the expressive capacity of
music if words were brought to its aid. Sadness
or joy in the abstract, he held, could be expressed
by music alone, but he enlisted words when he
wished a distinction drawn between the lamenta-
tions of a sad Hezekiah, a weeping Peter, or a
mourning Jeremiah. He was a stanch believer in
the helpful potency of a verbal commentary, and
ingenious in his defence of a composer, "a cele-
brated Electoral Chapelmaster," whose name has
not got into the records, but who seems to have
been almost as subtle as Richard Strauss. This
composer had written a piece which he called "La
Medica," in which he described the groans and
whines of a sick man and his relations (not forget-
ting to indicate the sex of the latter), the chase for
a doctor, and the great grief of all concerned. The
piece ended with a gigue, under which the com-
poser had written: "The patient is making favor-
able progress, but has not quite recovered his
health." "At this," said Kuhnau, "some mocked,
and were of opinion that had it been in his power
the author might well have depicted the joy of a
1 08
The German School Bach and Handel
perfect recovery. So far as I could judge," he
goes on, "there was good reason for adding words
to the music. The sonata began in D minor; in
the gigue there was constant modulation toward G
minor. At the final close the ear was not satisfied,
and expected the closing cadence in G. There-
fore the patient was not quite well."
Could anything be clearer? Certainly not to
Kuhnau, who was quite as clever as the composer
of "La Medica" in the invention of devices to make
music explicit. One of his "Biblische Historien"
tells the story of Gideon, the saviour of Israel. In
this story Gideon asks God to give him a sign that
He would save Israel by his hand; he would put
a fleece upon the floor, and if on the morrow it
should be found to be wet with dew and the earth
dry, then would he accept it as the desired sign.
And it was so. But Gideon was unsatisfied and
wanted another test; let it be dry now only upon
the fleece, and upon all the ground let there be dew.
And God did so that night, for it was dry upon
the fleece only and there was dew on all the ground.
The composer of the "Pastoral Symphony" might
have been stumped by the task of setting such a
complicated phenomenon to music; not so Kuhnau.
He introduced a theme to represent the dewy fleece
and the dry ground, and then wrote it backward to
represent the dewy ground and the dry fleece; and
the thing was done.
109
The Composers
I have now reached the two men in whom the
polyphonic school found its culmination and in
whose lifetime the pianoforte came to the fore,
though too late and too timidly to influence the style
of writing or the manner of performance. They
are Georg Friedrich Handel (1685-1759) and Jo-
hann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750). Before record-
ing their labors, however, or commenting on the
character of their compositions, I shall venture to
bring them into juxtaposition for comparison in
order to make it plain why two men whose names
are so intimately associated in musical history and
who, in common and simultaneously, mark the
highest achievements of their time, yet differ so
greatly in the value of their contributions to the
art whose story we are tracing. All creative artists
are the product of their environment. The national
traits of the people among whom and for whom
Bach and Handel labored had much to do with
fixing the character of their music, as well as the
degree and nature of the influence which their com-
positions have exerted. Both were Germans by
birth, but before they reached mature manhood
their paths in life were widely divergent. Handel
fell into the current of Latinized culture which
dominated the larger cities of Germany two and a
half centuries ago as completely as it did Paris and
London. He was the son of a surgeon, went to a
university, and became familiar with the humani-
IIO
The German School Bach and Handel
ties. He met the grandees of various courts and
was patronized by them as a prodigy in music.
Their influence was thoroughly Latin. When he
began composing, it was in a style to fit the taste
of the polite society of the period. He connected
himself with the opera at Hamburg. Everywhere
save in Italy, opera was at the time a monstrosity.
It had sprung from the efforts of Florentine ama-
teurs to revive the classic drama. The Germans
had tried to suit the entertainment to their ruder
tastes and harsher language. The vernacular came
to be used, and the discovery was made that Ger-
man words lent themselves but ill to Italian music.
The opera-books were built on classic stories, such
as were utilized in Italy. These German poetasters
worked over into mongrel books, half German
half Italian, and the composers had to set them
according to rigid formularies. Handel's first opera,
"Almira," contained fifteen Italian airs and forty-
four German songs.
The artistic culture which tolerated such anoma-
lies was assuredly debased compared with that
which would have been the normal outcome of
purely German tendencies. The Prince of Tus-
cany heard "Almira" with admiration, and offered
to take the composer with him to Italy. Handel
declined the generous offer, but soon after set out
for the home of the arts on his own responsibility.
He produced an Italian opera, "Rodrigo," in
in
The Composers
Florence and "Agrippina" in Venice. His tri-
umph was complete. Alessandro Scarlatti became
his devoted friend and sincere admirer, and the
nobility, resident and visiting, showered honors and
attentions upon him. He went to London, com-
posed operas, managed a theatre, bankrupted him-
self over and over again, and finally, compelled by
sheer force of circumstances and in the bitterness
of disappointment, struck out a new path and
became the master of the fashion to which thitherto
he had been a slave.
In many respects the career of Bach was the very
opposite to that of Handel. He was a child of
German simplicity. He came into the world the
repository of the feelings, beliefs, and aspirations
of a line of musicians extending over more than a
century. His ancestors were church and town ser-
vants who had provided sacred and secular music
for Thuringia so long that the family name became
a generic term. He never went to a university and
never enjoyed the privilege in his youth of drawing
on such a clearing house of the world's knowledge,
beliefs, and speculations as had honored the intel-
lectual drafts of Handel. He travelled little, and
seldom came in contact with the class of society
whose tastes determined the early career of Handel.
At eighteen he was organist at Arnstadt, at twenty-
two organist at Miihlhausen. He accepted a post
at Weimar, made a few visits to neighboring towns
112
The German School Bach and Handel
and cities to give organ concerts, was for five years
chapelmaster at the court of Anhalt-Cothen, and
thence went to Leipsic, and became cantor of the
St. Thomas school and director of the music in four
of the churches of the old city.
Thenceforward his activity was confined to the
promotion of music in a sphere which, while it was
restricted in many respects, nevertheless left him
free to develop his ideals without concern touching
his livelihood. He could build on the solid ground
of German feeling, and was not obliged to watch
the shifting whims of an artificial and unnational
culture. If we had not the works to prove the
accuracy of the deduction, we could yet safely ar-
gue from the character of Bach's domestic and
artistic surroundings that his compositions would
show greater ideality, greater profundity of learn-
ing, greater boldness in invention, and greater va-
riety of form than those of Handel. In the things
which were dearest to him he could work either
with complete indifference to the caprices of the
public or in harmony with its most intimate feelings.
Bach remained a German; Handel became a
cosmopolite. Handel went to Italy to learn how
to write for the human voice. He went to Lon-
don, and under stress of circumstances abandoned
dramatic writing and took up oratorio. His style
in the former was conventional; in the latter, not
wholly divorced from convention, it was yet orig-
"3
The Composers
inal. In the former he composed, as we now know,
chiefly for the day in which he wrote; in the latter
he composed, as the phrase goes, for all time. In
both forms the human voice was the chief vehicle
of expression.
Bach came of a race of instrumentalists. He
was unequalled as an organ and clavichord player;
a master of the technical part of violin playing; he
knew thoroughly the structure of the organ; was
the inventor of the viola pomposa (an instrument
which occupied a place midway between the viola
and violoncello) ; he combined the clavier and lute
into an ingenious keyed instrument, and if he did
not invent a method of tuning the clavier in equal
temperament, he at least demonstrated that it could
and ought to be so tuned, and fixed his demon-
stration for all time with one of his most charming
and vital works, "The Well Tempered Clavichord."
The men were contemporaries born in the same
year. The period in which they lived was still
dominated by the vocal art. Handel followed the
tendencies of the time without hesitation; Bach,
impelled by inherited inclination and genius,
worked to bring in the new era, the instrumental
era of music. We are in the midst of that era
to-day; it has taken possession of the art. Noth-
ing has yet happened to check a progress the march
of which in the space of a century and a half is
unparalleled in any one of the other arts. Natu-
114
The German School Bach and Handel
rally and inevitably that composer exerts the most
puissant influence now who, something less than
two centuries ago, pointed out the line along which
Mozart, Beethoven, and Wagner were to hew a
road. That composer was Bach.
So we find Bach's clavier music more varied,
more voluminous, more significant, and more vital
by far than that of Handel. Of Handel's music
specifically written for the harpsichord, very little
is to be found upon the programmes of to-day.
The air and variations popularly known as "The
Harmonious Blacksmith" appears in the concert
lifts most frequently, and is the most generally ad-
mired of his compositions. Originally it consti-
tuted the last movement of a harpsichord suite.
Aside from the charm of its melody (the origin of
which has caused large discussion which may be
said to have failed of definite result) the piece has
interest as illustrating a brilliant style of variation
which Handel introduced into the suite form.
Tradition has added to the interest by wrapping
an ample cloak of fiction around it. The familiar
story runs that Handel was once caught in a rain-
storm while walking through the village of Edge-
ware on his way to Cannons. He took refuge in the
shop of a blacksmith, who sang a song while at
work, keeping time to the music with his hammer
on the anvil. Handel remembered the tune, and
on reaching home wrote variations on it. It was
"5
The Composers
thus that the tune acquired the name of "The
Harmonious Blacksmith." A vast deal of labor
has been spent in investigating the story, even the
hammer and anvil which figure in it having been
hunted up and preserved and the observation made
that the anvil (reverentially written in the books
with a big A) when hit by the hammer (spelled with
a big H) gave out the tones B and E, dominant and
tonic respectively of the key in which the air stands;
but, unhappily for the lovers of musical romance,
nothing has been found to substantiate the story.
In the early editions of Handel's suites the move-
ment has no other designation than "Air et
Doubles."
As for the rest, Handel's name is oftener seen
nowadays bracketed with that of Brahms as the
composer of the latter's Twenty-six Variations
(Op. 24) than alone on the programmes of piano-
forte players. In the complete edition of Handel's
works, published by the German Handel Society
(the title is little else than a euphemism for Dr.
Friedrich Chrysander) the clavier pieces are in-
cluded in a single volume, which, in four divisions,
contains sixteen suites, three chaconnes (one with
sixty-two variations), two capriccios, six fugues, a
fantasia, a prelude and air with variations, a lesson,
a coranto and two minuets, a prelude and allegro,
two sonatas and a sonatina. His fugues, like his
concertos, were for either organ or harpsichord. A
116
The German School Bach and Handel
light-hearted, glad devotion to simple, sensuous
beauty, the dower received in Italy and husbanded
among the English aristocracy, characterizes this
music. Everything is clear, everything natural,
everything plastic, everything shows the typical
physiognomy of the period.
Were I discussing Bach's church compositions
it would be an easy and a delightful task to show
how the influence of the German Reformed ser-
vice, to which I have referred in connection with
his predecessors of the North German school, made
Bach's music in a peculiar degree an expression of
true, tender, deep, and individual feeling the
hymning of a sentiment, sprung from a radical
change in the relative attitude of church and indi-
vidual accomplished by the Reformation in Ger-
many. Bach was a supreme master in the treat-
ment of the Chorale, in which the secular folksong
was in a manner sublimated, and the romantic ele-
ments found in their melodies, coupled with the
vast freedom allowed to him in their treatment (as
hymns, organ preludes, the foundation of cantatas,
motets, oratorios, etc.), emancipated him from
nearly all conventional shackles. Polyphonist he
was of a necessity, but with what a wondrous pre-
science of the future is shown in his "Chromatic
Fantasia and Fugue."
This composition is one that has held musi-
cians in wonder and admiration as long as it has
117
The Composers
been known. Forkel, who was practically Bach's
first biographer, got a copy of the work from Wil-
helm Friedemann, the great Bach's son. Accom-
panying it was a bit of paper containing the follow-
ing doggerel, written by a friend of the biographer:
Anbcy kommt an
Etwas Musik von Sebastian.
Sonnst genannt: Fantasia Chromatica
Bleibt schon in allc Sarcula.
In this monumental work the treatment of a
purely vocal element the recitative is such as
to bring it a century nearer us than it was in
the works of Vivaldi and the Northern organists
from whom Bach borrowed it. Tendencies toward
homophonic writing may be found in his instru-
mental pieces, as in Handel's, but in the interweav-
ing of voices he found a more eloquent means of
expressing emotions than the Italians commanded,
with their fondness for melody qud melody. The
seriousness of his nature is shown in the fact that
the clavier pieces in which his individuality is most
pronounced are those written for the instruction of
would-be players and composers, chiefly of his own
household. His French and English suites are
written in the manner of the time, and his Italian
concerto shows his appreciation of the sensuous
beauty which was the be-all and end-all of Italian
music at the time. The simplest form of his clavier
118
The German School Bach and Handel
music is found in his two and three part "Inven-
tions," whose supplementary title confesses that
they were composed to help players to attain to a
cantabile style.
His loveliest work, the forty-eight preludes and
fugues in all the keys, major and minor, known as
"The Well Tempered Clavichord," not only had
the educational purpose already assigned to it, but
was also a tribute to that one of the clavier instru-
ments which was most capable of expression. Its
melodies, whether treated freely, as in the preludes,
or strictly, as in the fugues, are full of the charm of
spontaneous song, and are in a spiritual sense as
eloquent a voice of romanticism as the recitatives
in the "Chromatic Fantasia" and the efforts at the ex-
pression of set ideas in the "Capriccio on the De-
parture of a Beloved Brother" are in a material.
It pleases me when I hear the C-sharp major fugue
to think that Bach probably found the inspiration
for such themes on those Sunday excursions which,
he tells us, he used to make in order to rejoice
and refresh himself at popular merry-makings with
the songs and dances of the folk. In further ex-
planation of the title and purpose of "The Well
Tempered Clavichord" it may be said that it was
composed to illustrate the practicability of equal
temperament. In claviers tuned according to the
system approved by Bach all the twenty-four keys
hi chromatic succession are equally in tune, whereas
119
The Composers
in the system formerly employed certain keys had
to be avoided. For instance, B major and A-flat
major were rarely used; F-sharp major and C-sharp
major never. Bach gathered the first twenty-four
preludes and fugues together in 1722 and the second
set in 1744. Of the first set three copies are extant
in Bach's handwriting; of the second there is no
complete autograph. The work was not printed
until 1800.
By Bach's four duets for two claviers, his varia-
tions for clavier with two keyboards, echo-effects in
other works and the compositions specified as writ-
ten for clavicembalo (harpsichord) , as well as other
works in which the clavier figures in association
with other instruments, the student should be
warned that the notes as written down and after-
ward printed by no means represent the music as
it was actually heard in Bach's time. The mechan-
ical construction of the harpsichord, with its several
sets of strings and its couplers, placed at the com-
mand of the player a much greater variety and vol-
ume of sound in proportion to the normal voice of
the instrument, than can be obtained from the
pianoforte to-day. Since the name of Bach is so
frequently bracketed with that of Liszt, it seems also
well to explain that six of Bach's preludes and
fugues for the organ were transcribed for the piano-
forte by Liszt. The transcriptions were an experi-
ment, Liszt desiring to see what effect could be pro-
120
The German School Bach and Handel
duced on a pianoforte with works which their cre-
ator intended to be played upon the organ, with
its multiplicity of keyboards two or three for the
hands and one for the feet. In reducing the mech-
anism which was at Bach's service to its lowest
terms, so to speak, Liszt, anxious not to sacrifice any
of the original polyphonic fabric, produced a set of
virtuoso pieces which long remained his private
property. He made the transcriptions in 1842, and
it was more than ten years later that he yielded to
the pleadings of Dehn and gave them to the public.
121
VIII
Classicism and the Sonata
IN a peculiarly intimate manner the pianoforte,
which superseded the other instruments of the
clavier family about the close of the period illus-
trated by the men last discussed, is bound up with
classicism and the sonata. I use these terms ar-
bitrarily, intending that they shall serve as obser-
vation points, and to this end I must attempt a
definition of them. Such a definition ought to be
general and comprehensive rather than specific.
Strictly speaking, the dividing lines commonly con-
sidered as existing between periods, schools, and
artistic forms do not exist. These things are over-
lapping and gradual growths. We recognize them,
note their elements, give them names, and employ
these names in broad characterization after a man
of strong individuality has arisen and stamped them
with the hall-mark of his genius. Such a man the
people of a later day are prone to look upon as an
innovator or inventor, when, in point of fact, he is
only a continuator, and, at the best, a perfecter.
So Palestrina; so Bach; so Haydn; so Beethoven;
so Wagner. All these are but products of an evo-
122
Classicism and the Sonata
lution of vast scope and antiquity, and were sur-
rounded by men who worked with them on the
lines which they drew, broad and luminous, across
the pages of musical history. That fact explains
why it was that some of them seemed less great to
their contemporaries than to those who came after
them. They were not so pre-eminent in their day,
because they were surrounded by composers whose
learning and skill satisfied the critical demands and
the popular taste of their times. Not even the
greatest of these men would loom up in the histori-
cal vista as he does were the works of his prede-
cessors and contemporaries intimately known and
his relationship to them properly appreciated. The
history of every art is full of pretty fictions too
much occupied with biography. When musical
history shall be revised (as it will be when the
labors of the critical antiquaries now active are
completed) it will have lost some of its romance,
but it will better disclose the processes of musical
evolution.
But to the definitions. Classical music is music
written by men of the highest rank in their art
men corresponding with the classici of ancient
Rome. It is music written in obedience to widely
accepted laws, disclosing the highest degree of per-
fection on its technical and formal side, but pre-
ferring aesthetic beauty to emotional content, and
123
The Composers
refusing to sacrifice form to poetic, dramatic, or
characteristic expression. In this definition I have
embraced the notion of rank and also the antithesis
between classicism and romanticism which will have
to be borne in mind when we proceed to a discus-
sion of the music of the nineteenth century.
A pianoforte sonata is a piece of music designed
for the instrument, consisting of three or four move-
ments, which are contrasted in tempo and char-
acter, and, in the best specimens, connected by a
spiritual bond. Strictly speaking, the model, or
design, which distinguishes the sonata from other
compositions is found in the first movement. This
is tripartite. In the first section the subject-matter
of the movement (generally two themes, which are
contrasted in mood but related in key) is pre-
sented for identification; in the second it is de-
veloped, worked out, illustrated, exploited. The
third section is recapitulatory; it is made up of a
repetition of the first part, with modifications and
a close.
The sonata became the dominant form in all
kinds of instrumental music in the middle of the
eighteenth century, and has remained the domi-
nant form ever since. Like everything else in this
world, it was a growth. Its name existed centuries
before the thing itself as we know it now. If my
readers will think back upon the story of the piano-
124
Classicism and the Sonata
forte as I have sketched it they will note that it
illustrates the first, the simplest, and the most per-
vasive principle in the law of evolution. Each step,
from the savage's bow to the grand pianoforte of
to-day, shows a development from the simple to
the complex, from the homogeneous to the hetero-
geneous. So, too, does the history of the sonata.
When the term was first used it served only to dis-
tinguish pieces that were sounded i. e., played
from pieces that were sung. Sonata was the an-
tithesis of cantata, and nothing more. The orches-
tral pieces of the Gabrielis, in the sixteenth century,
were called sonatas; so were the instrumental pre-
ludes, interludes, and postludes in mixed pieces. A
century later the term was applied to compositions
in several movements for combinations of viols, for
violin alone, and for violin solo with continue for
the clavier. Essentially there was no difference be-
tween the sonata and the suite of this period, a relic
of which fact is still seen in the inclusion of such
dance forms as the minuet and rondo in the sonata
of to-day. The sonata form, with its triple division
into expository, illustrative, and recapitulative sec-
tions, moreover, is itself little else than an expan-
sion of a device found in some of the oldest printed
dances. The repetition of the first section, the
modulatory nature of the second section, and the
reprise in the third may be seen in the following
125
The Composers
branle (Shakespeare's "brawl"), from a book of
French dances published in 1545:
FiPr
F
Fft
5
'* * *=*J
*=
r-f*
m=
2 -Mb-, t^*-r-
^^^^^-JL
^^^/JTTl
A Bach closed the epoch last described; a Bach
opened the new. The greatest master of the fugue
was succeeded by a son who laid broad the founda-
tions upon which the structure characteristic of the
new century was to be reared. The contrapuntal
style gave way to the free, polyphony to homophony,
counterpoint to harmony. The change was not
abrupt, but gradual. The achievements of Johann
Sebastian Bach had long been presaged, and his
son, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (1714-1788), had
many forerunners. There were Rameau and Cou-
perin, in France; Domenico Scarlatti and Paradies,
in Italy, and Kuhnau, in Germany. Nevertheless,
his immediate successors, Joseph Haydn (1732-
1809), and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791),
126
Classicism and the Sonata
looked upon him as the real fashioner of the form
which each of them took a hand in perfecting. " He
is the father, we are the boys," said Mozart. The
form was a purely arbitrary one. Unlike the suite,
it owed nothing to the dance ; nor was it beholden to
any type or types of folksong. Yet it proved to be a
marvellously efficient vehicle for beauty, an inviting
playground for the fancy. It promoted a love for
symmetry, furthered unity between the parts, and
at the same time increased the opportunities for
contrast in moods not only between the movements,
but in the movements themselves. Varied expres-
sion, flux and reflux of sentiment, wide and fruitful
harmonic excursions, richness in modulation all
were invited by it. The way was broadened for
the exercise of the imagination and opened to the
play of the emotions. German music in especial
lost some of its seriousness and sober-sidedness and
took on some of the careless gayety of its French and
Italian sisters. The sonata was a convenient for-
mula for composers, and stimulated them to vast
productiveness. Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach wrote
146 sonatas for clavier alone, 52 concertos with
accompaniments, besides a mass of other works;
Haydn wrote 34 sonatas and 20 concertos, and em-
ployed the form in his 125 symphonies and many
chamber pieces; Vanhal composed 23 sonatas and
ro6 sonatinas; Clementi, 64 sonatas; Cramer, 105,
and so on.
127
The Composers
The laws of the sonata were less rigid than those
of the polyphonic forms, yet it permitted the exer-
cise of any amount of skill and learning. Logic
was not excluded, but its demands were no longer
tyrannous. Originality and ingenuity were ex-
pended chiefly in the invention of themes that is,
the discovery of material. This material, once
found, was easily poured into the mould waiting to
receive it. But there was scope for all the known
styles of writing for thematic development, which,
along new lines, is become the be-all and end-all
of music since Beethoven; for homophony and po-
lyphony, for fugue, for recitative, for variety of
rhythm, and, as appeared later, for dramatic ex-
pression as well as lyric.
C. P. E. Bach has suffered at the hands of
modern criticism because he stands in the shadow
of his father. He was Johann Sebastian's third-
son, and after he had abandoned the law became
chamber musician and cembalist at the Prussian
court. There it was his special duty to accompany
the tootling of Frederick the Great's flute at the
court concerts, of which Dr. Burney gives us so
delightful an account in his "Present State." He
was accounted less gifted than his elder brother,
Wilhelm Friedemann (who inherited his father's
genius in a large measure, but squandered it in an
aimless and dissolute life), but he did a great ser-
vice to music in strengthening and improving the
128
Classicism and the Sonata
lines of the sonata, and also in laying the founda-
tions of pianoforte playing in his book, entitled
" Versuch iiber die wahre Art das Clavier zu spielen,
mit Exempeln und 18 Probestiicken in 6 Sonaten
erlautert." 1 This book was an authority in its
field for generations, and is still sought by students
of pianoforte pedagogics. Its first part was pub-
lished by Bach himself in 1753, the second part in
1761. It discusses methods of fingering, embellish-
ments (Manireri), style (Vorlrag), accompaniment,
and thoroughbass. Bach printed much of his
music in periodical publications and otherwise, and
thus enjoyed an opportunity to reach the public ear
vastly greater than did his father, who ruined his
eyes copying and engraving his compositions.
Adolf Prosniz, in his "Handbuch der Clavier-
Literatur," 2 describes his music as predominantly
melodic, vivacious, and varied in rhythm; at times
full of feeling, and anon humorous; rich in con-
ceits and modulations which occasionally run out
in bizarrerie. Flowing cantabile alternates with
lively figuration and passage-work calculated to
develop the capacity of the instrument. As in
Domenico Scarlatti, two-voicedness prevails; where-
fore the music frequently sounds empty. In only a
portion of his works did this Bach utilize the com-
*" Essay on the True Manner of Playing the Clavier, Illus-
trated with Examples and 18 Trial Pieces in 6 Sonatas."
2 VoL I. Published by Carl Gerold's Sohn in Vienna, 1887.
129
The Composers
plete sonata form as he handed it over to Haydn.
Couperin and Scarlatti seem to have influenced him
more than the great father who begot and taught
him, though this may have been largely due to his
surroundings. There was nothing German about
Frederick the Great's court except the people. The
great soldier's tastes in art and literature were
French; he had no patience with German ideals.
Bach followed his French predecessors in writing
little dance pieces, to which he gave titles supposed
to be suggestive of their contents. Sometimes the
titles were proper names (of his friends, doubtless) ;
sometimes they were fancifully delineative of char-
acter, like those of Couperin which I have cited
"La Journaliere," "La Complaisante," "La Ca-
pricieuse," and the like. The French excess of
ornament also remains in Emanuel Bach's music.
Scan the programmes of the pianoforte virtuosi
of to-day and you shall occasionally find the name
of Haydn connected with the "Andante vane"" in
F minor. It is an exquisite musical blossom, stand-
ing far from its companions and redolent of ro-
manticism. Supposing the recital to be an histor-
ical one, you may also look for a sonata, even two
sonatas, in E-flat major, and a fantasia in C. Is
this, then, the great Haydn, "the father of modern
instrumental music"? It is. So far as this study
goes, we are concerned with Haydn in the least
significant aspect that he occupies in musical his-
130
Classicism and the Sonata
tory. On this promenade we can only glance at
him who established the string quartet and crys-
tallized the symphony, and make obeisance in pass-
ing. Some of his sonatas live in the class-room, and
the teachers are not few who prefer a few of them
to most of the sonatas of the greater Mozart. " In-
deed, in some of them he seems to step beyond
Mozart into the Beethoven period," remarks C. F.
Pohl in the article on the master in Grove's " Dic-
tionary of Music and Musicians." Haydn does not
mark so wide a stride beyond his immediate prede-
cessor as C. P. E. Bach marked beyond his in the
mere structure of his pianoforte pieces, but there is
a great advance in the firmer, clearer modelling of
his material, the greater depth and beauty of his
melodies (especially in the slow movements), and
the development of the spiritual bond of unity be-
tween the parts. Artificial elegance has given way
to that ingenuous winsomeness which mirrored the
composer's happy disposition in all that he did.
There is less of salon courtesy and more of out-of-
doors geniality in the new music. The largest
groups of Haydn's music for the pianoforte consist
of the thirty-four solo sonatas, the thirty-one trios
for pianoforte, violin, and violoncello (also de-
nominated sonatas when first published), the
sonatas for pianoforte and violin (eight in num-
ber in the edition of Breitkopf and Hartel), and
the concertos for pianoforte and orchestra. The
The Composers
groups are here put down in the order of their
artistic value. The concertos have long been in
the limbo of oblivion; the duet sonatas and trios
live modestly in the home-circle of musical folk;
the sonatas survive in the class-room. The order is
reversed in the case of Mozart, the best of whose
concertos still possess vitality and charm enough to
engage the attention of public performers.
Though I have associated the pianoforte with
the perfection of the sonata in its classic state the
instrument did not become a dominant influence
in composition until the advent of Mozart. The
invention of Cristofori had practically been forgot-
ten and had to be revived in Germany by Silber-
mann. That manufacturer produced instruments
and brought them to the notice of Bach. It is a
familiar story in the books how the great man
visited Potsdam in 1747 on the invitation of the
great Frederick, arriving at the palace while a court
concert was in progress. " Gentlemen, old Bach is
come," said the royal flautist, and closed the enter-
tainment at once. Then the company went from
room to room to hear Bach play "on the forte-
pianos of Silbermann," and to listen with amaze-
ment and delight to that improvisation on a theme
set by the king, which, when elaborated at home,
became the " Musikalisches Opfer." Silbermann
was extremely anxious to win the good opinion of
Bach for his new instrument, but though he con-
132
Classicism and the Sonata
suited him, profited by his advice, and eventually
received hi compliments, he never weaned him
from his preference for the clavichord over all its
rivals. Forkel said of Bach: "He liked best to
play upon the clavichord; the harpsichord, though
certainly susceptible of a very great variety of ex-
pression, had not soul enough for him, and the
piano was in his lifetime too much in its infancy and
still much too coarse to satisfy him." His son saw
the pianoforte come into favor, but he, too, pre-
ferred the clavichord for his own communings with
the muse, and brought forth that instrument when
he wished to give Dr. Burney an evidence of his
skill as a player. 1 There is nothing in the music of
Haydn to suggest the need of the new instrument.
He was not a virtuoso, like Mozart, and his public
use of the harpsichord was probably confined to its
employment as an accompaniment instrument in
connection with the orchestra. But the advent of
the gracious sonata style, the development of musi-
cal culture among amateurs, and, probably, also the
growing popularity of the Hammer darner led to
the employment of keyed instruments in the manner
exemplified in the duo sonatas and trios of Haydn.
The old continue gave way to a part which was of
something like equal importance with that of the
violin or the violin and violoncello; then to a part
1 See the account of Burney's visit to Bach in his "Present
State."
The Composers
which might hold its own with an orchestral accom-
paniment.
The road to the modern trio, quartet, quintet,
and concerto, in which the pianoforte shares the
work of developing the thematic material with its
companions, was thus blazed by Haydn, though it
was not fully opened until a little later. That
opening needed the coming of Mozart and the im-
petus which he, a public performer from the very
outset of his career, received in the concert-room.
When the wonderful child made his trip down the
Danube, to play before the emperor and climb into
the lap of the empress at Vienna, he carried his
little clavichord with him. When he called for
Wagenseil, in order that his playing might have the
appreciation of "one who knew," he performed
upon the harpsichord. Before the end of his
career the pianoforte had won his love and en-
tered upon that progress which, in our day, enables
it to cope with an army of strings, wood-wind and
brass. One of the items in the inventory of the
property which he owned when he died was a piano-
forte "with pedal," valued at eighty florins. A
pianoforte is preserved among the relics housed in
the quaint little museum, in the Getreidegasse, in
Salzburg; as also is a clavichord, which, however, is
generally and incorrectly set down in the catalogues
as a spinet. A letter which he wrote to his father
from Augsburg in October, 1777, tells of the pleas-
Classicism and the Sonata
ure which he derived from playing upon a piano-
forte made by Stein. In it he praises the equality
of the key action and the promptness of the escape-
ment as something new, and lauds the superiority
of the damper-action, which was still worked with
the knee, like the swell of a harmonium.
As to the qualities of Mozart's pianoforte music,
they cannot be described better than Prosniz has
described them in the book already referred to:
That beauty of form, purity of tone, and carelessly easy in-
vention which were native to Mozart mark his clavier music.
In his ideas noble expression alternates with innocent tone-
play full of childlike ingenuousness. In the workmanship
pellucid harmony is predominant, and that chaste temperance
which permeates modulation as well as polyphony and never
loses itself in baroque conceits and whimsicalities. Mozart
widened the sonata form by an extended middle section in the
song style. Some of his sonatas, as well as a number of his
other pieces for pianoforte, are of lasting loveliness; but the
centre of gravity in the music which he wrote for the instru-
ment lies in the concertos. These are thoroughly novel in
form and style. Though the pianoforte parts may appear
puny in ideas at times, and faded in the passage-work, they
are nevertheless ennobled by the symphonic and magical
treatment of the orchestra which appears concertante with the
solo instrument. Here we find veritable treasures of music.
It was Mozart, too, who created the first important pieces for
four hands in his incomparable sonatas.
It was Beethoven who breathed the breath of a
new life into that which had been little else than a
convenient formula for the expression of merely
The Composers
sensuous beauty. Beethoven was at once the end
of the old dispensation and the beginning of the
new; the connecting link between classicism and
romanticism; conservator and regenerator; his-
torian and seer; master builder and arch destroyer.
To him I purpose to devote a separate chapter.
Grouped around, antedating and postdating him,
influencing him and receiving influence from him,
are the epigonoi who tilled the ground prepared by
the classic composers. It is significant of the
period and the style of their writing that the best
of them were virtuosi whose influence was most
enduring in the department of pianoforte technics.
Manner rather than matter distinguished their com-
positions. They were vastly productive, for they
found their models at hand, and lofty thought and
deep emotion had not begun to assert themselves as
essentials when they began their careers. They
were a numerous band, and the burden of their
importance lies in the department of study to which
I hope to devote my final chapter. A few, however,
must have mention here, and I have chosen Muzio
Clementi (1752-1832), Johann Nepomuk Hummel
(1778-1837), Johann Ludwig Dussek (1761-1812),
and Johann Baptist Cramer (1771-1858) as rep-
resentatives of the class. Two other men may first
enlist our passing attention and sympathetic inter-
est because of their relationship, one physical, the
other spiritual, to the giant who was the culmina-
136
Classicism and the Sonata
tion of the preceding order. Johann Christian
Bach shared only the family name with his great
father, Johann Sebastian. Like Handel, he went
out into the world of fashion, yielded to its sway,
and became an elegant musician. Italy set its seal
on him when he became organist of Milan Cathe-
dral, married an Italian prima donna, and set his
heart on operatic compositions. He spent the last
twenty-three years of his life in London, where he
became music-master to the queen. There the
boy Mozart sat on his knees and improvised duets
with him.
The Bach traditions did not live in him as they
did in one between whom and their creator there
existed no ties of blood. Friederich Wilhelm Rust
(1739-1796) was only eleven years old when "old
Bach" died, but at thirteen he was already able to
play all the Forty-eight Preludes and Fugues by
heart. Bach's music was his delight. He went to
the sons Friedemann and Emanuel for lessons in
composition and organ and clavier playing. His
son, Wilhelm Karl, enjoyed the friendship of Beeth-
oven, and his grandson, Dr. Wilhelm Rust (1822-
1892), who edited some of his works (with modern
additions, as Mr. Shedlock regretfully chronicles),
appropriately became a successor of Bach as cantor
of St. Thomas's, in Leipsic. Dr. E. Prieger has
hailed F. W. Rust as Ein Vorgdnger Beethovens, a
precursor of Beethoven.
The Composers
"With the exception of Mozart's sonata in C
minor, Haydn's 'Genziger' and 'London' sonatas,
both in E-flat, also some of Rust's . . . there are, to
our thinking, none which in spirit come nearer to
Beethoven than some of dementi's," says Mr. Shed-
lock in his admirable book on the history of the
sonata. 1 "Clement! represents the sonata proper
from beginning to end," is Edward Dannreuther's
dictum in his article printed in Grove's "Dic-
tionary." Scholars frequently hold such opinions
touching works which to the mass of musicians in
our eager, impatient, and self-sufficient age seem
hopelessly antiquated. Haydn has not been spared,
nor Mozart, nor Beethoven; so radical has been
the change in taste accomplished by the romantic
movement characteristic of the nineteenth century.
It is meet and proper, therefore, in a historical re-
view, that the excellences of the masters of the past
which appealed to their contemporaries be pointed
out as well as the things which are shortcomings
from a later point of view. Pianists are not likely
soon to forget what Clementi did in a pedagogic
way in his collection of one hundred studies entitled
" Gradus ad Parnassum," * neither should they so
1 "The Pianoforte Sonata; Its Origin and Development," by
J. S. Shedlock, B.A., London: Methuen & Co., 1895.
'"Gradus ad Parnassum, ou Part de jouer le Pianoforte
demonstrl par des Exercices dans le style severe et dans le style
elegant." The work is in three parts, the first of which appeared
in 1817.
'38
Classicism and the Sonata
completely neglect his sonatas as to remain ignorant
of the fine sense of characterization as well as the
vivacity and variety displayed in them, dementi's
sonatas were the admiration of Beethoven, who
knew how to keep a firm foothold on the past even
while sending his prescient glances far into the
future. Mr. Dannreuther's comprehensive praise
need not disturb us. dementi's life covered a
greater stretch of the classical sonata period than
any one of its sons. He was born twenty years
after Haydn, but lived twenty- three years later;
born four years before Mozart and outlived him
forty-one years; was eighteen years old when Bee-
thoven was born, and had still five years of life be-
fore him when that master went to his grave. He
was Mozart's rival in the concert-field, and met him
in artistic combat, as was customary at the time,
before Emperor Joseph II. in 1781, when he played
the sonata in B-flat, whose principal theme became
the chief subject of the overture to "The Magic
Flute," a decade later. Mozart once called him a
"charlatan, like all the Italians"; but it was plainly
in a moment of irritation, and the remark did not
reflect a dispassionate judgment. It was not given
to Clementi to go beyond Haydn; but neither was
it given to Haydn to go beyond Mozart, though he
antedated him twenty-four years and outlived him
eighteen. He was a phenomenal talent, not a great
genius.
The Composers
It is written that Haydn was in the habit of begin-
ning a composition by inventing a theme, selecting
the keys through which he intended to make it pass,
and then going to a little romance which he im-
agined for sentiment and color while he worked. It
is not unlikely that dementi's method was a simi-
lar application of rule of thumb and subjective
impression. However mild the dose of subjectivity,
it was yet an advance toward romanticism, as com-
pared with the externalism which held sway in the
intituled dance pieces of Couperin and the Biblical
sonatas of Kuhnau. Titles and marks of expres-
sion and tempo helped to fix the attention and
arouse the fancy, and it is quite as easy to detect
the conflicting emotions which tore the heart of
unhappy Dido deserted by ^Eneas in dementi's
sonata in G minor, Op. 64, as the long train of
poetical and metaphysical conceits in some of the
programmatic pieces which came a century later.
His hints, at least, were direct, lucid, modest, and
not impertinent; for instance: "Didone abbando-
nata, Scena tragica. I. Largo-sostenuto e patetico;
II. AUegro-deliberando e meditando; III. Adagio-
dolente; IV. Allegro-agitato e con disperazione"
Dussek was less temperate in his use of titles, or,
perhaps, like Beethoven and Chopin, a greater vic-
tim of the insensate desire of publishers to put
attractive labels on their wares.
Dussek was a Bohemian, and there is an occa-
140
Classicism and the Sonata
sional outburst of something like the Czechish fire
to which Smetana and Dvorak have accustomed us
in some of his music. He was enormously fruitful
in the sonata field, though only a small fraction of
his works have survived in print. We count twelve
concertos with orchestra, a quartet, a quintet,
twenty or twenty-five pianoforte trios, forty or fifty
sonatas for pianoforte and violin (or flute it made
little difference to the taste of that day), twelve
sonatinas for pianoforte and violin, twenty-six
sonatas for pianoforte alone. For four years Dus-
sek was a friend and musical mentor to that Prince
Louis Ferdinand whose highest encomium is to be
found in Beethoven's comment: "Your highness
does not play like a prince, but like a musician."
When the prince died Dussek wrote a ^sonata in
F-sharp minor (Op. 61) and called it " E16gie har-
monique sur le mort du Prince Louis Ferdinand de
Prusse, en forme de sonate," following it with an
andante in B-flat, which he dedicated to the mem-
ory of his royal patron and called "La Consola-
tion." He also composed a "Tableau de la situa-
tion de Marie Antoinette," and a sonata, " La morte
de Marie Antoinette." Nor did he disdain to follow
a horde of predecessors in writing a battle piece.
He called it a " Battaille navale," and issued it not
only as a pianoforte solo, but in an arrangement
for violin, violoncello, and big drum. We may
smile at this, at Kotzwara's "Battle of Prague,"
141
The Composers
" Mr. Byrd's Battle," and Munday's meteorological
fantasia, but we can scarcely do so in good con-
science so long as we accept Richard Strauss's set-
ting of Nietzsche's philosophy with sober faces.
Mr. Shedlock courageously breaks a lance for Dus-
sek and finds that in his last three sonatas he was
influenced "by the earnestness of Beethoven, the
chivalric spirit of Weber, and the poetry of Schu-
bert."
Johann Baptist Cramer wrote no less than
105 sonatas, of which forty or fifty were for piano-
forte solo, the rest accompanied; also eight con-
certos and many pieces of a miscellaneous charac-
ter. To a few of his sonatas he gave titles in Dus-
sek's manner: "La Parodie," "L'Ultima," "Les
Suivantes" (the three sonatas, Op. 57, 58, and
59), and "Le Retour a Londres." The distinction
between the old and new styles of playing, which
grew up in his time and was actively promoted by
the English manufacture of pianofortes, was illus-
trated by Cramer in a "Fantasie capricieuse."
Other pieces which he issued with titles (he was
his own publisher) were " Un J9ur de Printemps,"
"Le Petit Rien" (a romance with variations), and
" Les Adieux a ses Amis de Paris." The last com-
position, and the sonata in which he celebrated his
return to London, probably owed their origin, or
rather titles, to the fact that he spent a few years of
his life as a resident of the French capital.
142
Classicism and the Sonata
Cramer was taken to London when one year
old by his father, a German violinist, who became a
conspicuous figure in the musical life of the metrop-
olis as teacher, player, and conductor. He was
leader for a time of the Antient and the Profes-
sional concerts, and conducted two of the Handel
festivals in Westminster Abbey. His son studied
with him and other local teachers of minor impor-
tance, then with Clementi and Johann Samuel
Schroter, who succeeded Johann Christian Bach
as music-master to the queen. Schroter deserves
to be remembered even in so cursory a review as
this, for the authorities agree that he was among
the first teachers to disclose the possibilities of the
pianoforte as distinguished from the harpsichord.
He married one of his aristocratic pupils, who soon
tired of him and purchased a separation. She
became a pupil of Haydn when he came to London
and formed an attachment for that susceptible old
gentleman which found rather amusing expression
in the letters which I gave to the public hi a little
book published in 1898.* Like Clementi, Cramer
combined a commercial with an artistic spirit; he
founded the music publishing house of J. B.
Cramer & Co., which still flourishes in London.
Not his concert-pieces but his works of instruction
have kept his name alive. In his compositions de-
1 "Music and Manners in the Classical Period." New York:
Charles Scribner's Sons.
'43
The Composers
signed for public performances he reflects the shal-
low taste of his time; but he was an admirable vir-
tuoso and a still more admirable teacher. His
eludes are classics and in vigorous use to-day.
Henselt published fifty of them with accompani-
ments for a second pianoforte, and his example was
followed by Henry C. Timm, an American pianist
and one of the founders of the Philharmonic Society
of New York. Dr. von Billow also edited half a
hundred of the studies. His "Pianoforte School"
and the "School of Velocity" have been published
over and over again.
Clementi, Dussek, and Cramer have disappeared
from our concert-rooms, but Hummel still main-
tains a place there in despite of the radicals, with
his concerto in A minor and his perennially lovely
septet. "A classic, but a dull classic," remarks
Mr. Edward Dannreuther; "Hummel's piano-
forte music represents the true pianoforte style
within pure and noble forms," says Prosniz,
"uniting agreeable and solid elegance and glitter-
ing ornamentation with warmth of feeling, which,
however, seldom swings itself up to passionate ex-
pression. . . . Trained in the school and style of
Mozart, he thoroughly developed the peculiarities
of the pianoforte its beautiful tone, its elegant
and pleasing effects. He cultivated gentle song and
dainty, often coquettish ornament." So far as it
was possible in one whose genius was of asubor-
144
FRANZ LISZT.
After a drawing by S. MiHag.
Classicism and the Sonata
dinate order, Hummel was a continuator of Mozart,
in whose house he lived, and by whom he was
taught for two years as a lad. He recognized his
inability to keep pace with the heaven-storming.
Titan, Beethoven, and so, according to his own
confession, he resolved not to try. His thoughts
were not those of a great tone-poet, but those of a
devotee of the pianoforte. In a manner he was a
worthy precursor of Chopin and Liszt. In develop-
ing the varied effects and euphony of his instru-
ment he was remarkably successful; and he reared
a monument to it in his stupendous school with its
2,200 examples.
145
IX
Beethoven An Intermezzo
characterization of Ludwig van Beethoven
(1770-1827) which I made in the preceding
chapter (and which I should like to have accepted,
not as mere rhetorical hyperbole, but as sober and
very truth) justifies, if it does not demand, the set-
ting apart of a special chapter for the consideration
of his contribution to pianoforte music. The con-
tribution is a considerable one, though in bulk it
does not measure up with the product of some of
his predecessors or the virtuoso-composers of his
own period. He did not write one-quarter as many
concertos as Mozart; he wrote only half as many
solo sonatas as Clementi, and one-quarter as many
sonatas with other instruments obbligalo as Dussek;
but as music his contribution surpasses theirs, as it
also surpasses all that has been written by any com-
poser since, in variety, artistic dignity and signifi-
cance. In using the qualifying phrase "as music,"
it is intended to distinguish Beethoven's pianoforte
compositions from works whose merit lies largely,
if not chiefly, in their specific relationship to the
instrument for which they were conceived.
146
Beethoven An Intermezzo
The point of view, moreover, is that of to-day.
No critical historian need hesitate to say this, or,
saying it, beg pardon of the manes of Schubert,
Schumann, Mendelssohn, or Chopin. Not only is
the climax of eleven decades of pianoforte music,
as of eleven decades of symphonic and chamber
music, still to be found in Beethoven, but the best
example in each of the categories into which piano-
forte music may be divided are worthy of being
classed with the best examples of the other depart-
ments in which the composer is acknowledged to be
pre-eminent. Only the best examples, of course.
In the large form of the symphony and the mass, in
the aristocratic form of the string quartet, there was
not the temptation which beset him, as it has always
beset the great, to write much and print freely music
which affords opportunities for the dilettanti to dis-
play their accomplishments. We cannot conceive
the writing of symphonies or quartets as potboilers :
but with a clamorous public and importunate
publishers we can easily conceive such a thing
in the case of pianoforte pieces even when the
composer is a Beethoven, to whom writing on
commission was always irksome and sometimes
impossible. 1
1 What fate sometimes attended the writing of a work for an
occasion we see in the history of the Solemn Mass in D, which was
completed three years after the installation of the friend, patron,
and pupil whom Beethoven wished to honor with it
147
The Composers
The difference in merit, therefore, as well as the
limitations set for these studies, compel me to
choose chiefly two classes of compositions from
"which to deduce Beethoven's large and unique sig-
nificance the solo sonatas and variations. Of the
solo sonatas there are thirty-two, not counting three
which were written when Beethoven was a boy of
eleven years, a fragment found among his posthu-
mous papers, and two sonatinas. Of the variations
for pianoforte solo there are twenty-three sets. His
other compositions in which the pianoforte enters
may be summarized as follows : Seven concertos with
orchestra (counting in one in E-flat written when he
was fourteen years old, and a transcription of the
concerto for violin made by himself) ; one concerto
for pianoforte, violin, violoncello, and orchestra; a
rondo with orchestra (found among his manuscripts
after his death) ; a fantasie for pianoforte, chorus,
and orchestra; a quintet with oboe, clarinet, horn,
and bassoon (also published for pianoforte and
strings); three quartets with strings, nine trios
with strings, a set of variations with strings on a
melody by Wenzel Miiller (" Ich bin der Schneider
Kakadu"); ten sonatas with violin, a rondo with
violin, five sonatas with violoncello, three sets of
variations with violoncello, a sonata with horn, seven
sets of variations with violin (or flute); a sonata,
three marches, and two sets of variations for piano-
forte (four hands), a fantasia; an Andante Favori
148
Beethoven An Intermezzo
in F, eight cadenzas for his own concertos and two
for Mozart's concerto in D minor, and two scores or
more of bagatelles, preludes, rondos, dances, etc.
Though monumental labor and devotion were ex-
pended on the "Complete Edition" (Gesammt
Ausgabe) of his works published by Breitkopf &
Hartel, of Leipsic, unpublished manuscripts are still
in the hands of private collectors, though none of
those known is of critical significance.
I have called Beethoven a master builder and
arch destroyer. He was, indeed, both; but he
built up and strengthened what is essential in art
and destroyed only that which is unessential. His
iconoclasm did not have the purpose, nor was it of
the kind which ill-balanced admirers no less than
ill-balanced detractors have proclaimed it to be.
The extremists of to-day attempt to justify by ap-
peal to him, or his example, not only the vagaries
of their own compositions, but their strained read-
ings of his texts and the changes which they arro-
gantly make in his pages. When they appeal to
him as the destroyer of form they disclose crass
ignorance of one of his highest artistic qualities;
they have no understanding of his attitude toward
the most important element of artistic construction.
It was not form, but formalism, or formula, which
Beethoven antagonized. Nowhere is there a greater
master or profounder reverencer of constructive
form than he.
149
The Composers
Why should the question be beclouded ? There
can be no expression, no utterance of any kind in
art without form. Form is the body which the
spirit of music creates that it may make itself
manifest. It is impossible to conceive of a com-
bination of the integral elements of music (melody,
harmony, and rhythm) in a beautiful manner with-
out form of some kind. In music more than any
other art form is necessary to the existence of the
highest quality of beauty, i.e., repose; the quality
which Ruskin eloquently describes as being "the
'I am' as contradistinguished from the 'I become';
the sign alike of the supreme knowledge which is
incapable of surprise, the supreme power which
is incapable of labor, the supreme volition which is
incapable of change." Music is not ineptly spoken
of in the books as the language of feeling; and there
is nothing truer than that it gives voice to things
for which we seek in vain for utterance in words.
There is no beautiful speech without an orderly
arrangement of words and phrases without some
kind of form. Now, if this degree of form is essen-
tial to speech, which deals with ideas, how much
more essential must it be to music, which deals with
states of the soul, with emotions, which is a language
the need of which as a medium of expression in its
highest estate does not arise until words no longer
suffice us for utterance 1 Let me quote, now, some
words of mine from an earlier writing; the thoughts
150
Beethoven An Intermezzo
are apposite here, and I do not feel that I could
improve on the manner in which they were ex-
pressed twenty years ago:
When the composers of two hundred and fifty years ago
began to develop instrumental music they found the germ of
the sonata form the form that made Beethoven's symphonies
possible in the homely dance-tunes of the people, which, till
then, had been looked upon as vulgar things wholly outside
the domain of polite art. The genius of the masters of the
last century (i.e., the eighteenth) moulded this form of plebeian
ancestry into a vessel of wonderful beauty; but by the time
this had been done the capacity of music as an emotional
language had been greatly increased, and the same Romantic
spirit which had originally created the dance-forms, that they
might embody the artistic impulses of that early time, sug-
gested the filling of the vessel with the new contents. When
the vessel would not hold these new contents it had to be
widened. New bottles for new wine. That is the whole
mystery of what conservative critics decry as the destruction
of form in music. It is not destruction, but change. When
you destroy form you destroy music, for the musical essence
can manifest itself only through form. 1
Until Beethoven came the sonata was a beautiful
vessel whose contents were pleasing to the ear,
gratifying to the intellect appreciative of symmetry
and the display of ingenious learning, and charming
to the fancy. "We have now become acquainted
with the fluency and humor of Scarlatti, Rameau,
and Couperin, the earnestness of Bach and Handel,
the grace, elegance, and heartiness of Haydn and
1 "Studies in the Wagnerian Drama," by H. E. Krehbiel, p. 83.
The Composers
Mozart," said Rubinstein at one of his historical
lecture-recitals in St. Petersburg in 1888, "but we
have not yet found the soul of music. The man
who filled music with soul, with dreamings and
dramatic life, was Beethoven. The music which
before him had a heart had no soul. It is often
asserted that Beethoven wrote his first sonatas
under the influence of Mozart and Haydn. This
I deny in toto. The form, the manner of expression,
the style were inherited, it is true, but not as an
imitation of Haydn and Mozart, but as the expres-
sion of the period"; and later Rubinstein attempts
to account for the new contents and changed man-
ner of expression on political grounds by what he
calls his paradox: "So long as political life was so
constituted that the state cared for all the needs of
the people music was the region in which simplicity,
joyousness, and ingenuousness spread their wings.
When after the Revolution man had to care for
himself music became dramatic. Then Beethoven
came to be the interpreter of the soul's travail and
suffering the suffering not only of his own soul,
but also that of his people. Every man takes on
the color of his period. When political life is with-
out pronounced character, when it becomes color-
less, then music becomes characterless and pallid
as it is now I"
This analogy between politics and art has often
been discussed and Beethoven held up as a striking
152
Beethoven An Intermezzo
illustration of its correctness. He certainly was the
first great democrat amongst the representatives of
his art. Before his time the greatest musicians no
less than the least were house servants of the politi-
cally great. Mozart sat high at the table (above
the cook if I remember rightly) in the servants'
hall of his master in Vienna; Haydn, as an officer
of the household of Prince Esterhazy, was charged
with the responsibility of looking after the livery
of the men in his orchestra as well as their habits
and behavior. Beethoven would brook no mark or
suggestion of servitude of any kind. Whether true
or not, Bettina von Arnim's story of the rebuke
which he administered to Goethe when the two
encountered the Austrian emperor in the park is
illuminative and characteristic; and it is very
likely that once he remarked to a prince: "You
are what you are by accident of birth; I am what
I am by the grace of God!"
Now, such a man would as little accept the bond-
age of formula in his artistic utterance as the
bondage of caste in social life. "Listen to Beetho-
ven's Sonata in F minor," says Rubinstein again:
" the old elegance, grace, and loveliness have given
place to dramatic and passionate expression. Here
we see the gloomy face, seamed with pain, which is
seldom lighted up by a careless or merry smile.
The Adagio, because of its sweetness and gentleness,
is nearer the old period, but it has a new spirit.
The Composers
And is there an iota in the last movement to re-
mind us of the eighteenth century or Haydn and
Mozart?" It is the individual note which Rubin-
stein emphasizes here; but Beethoven did not speak
for himself alone. He was the poet of humanity;
he sang all its present joys and all its sorrows; all
its aspirations, its tragedies, its earthly environment
and its glimpse of the celestial. "Dalliance with
tones here becomes tonal speech," says Prosniz,
"and in this speech it was given him to utter the
unutterable" that is to say, that which is unutter-
able in words. To Beethoven music was not only
a manifestation of the beautiful, that is art, it
was also akin to religion. He felt himself to be
a prophet, a seer. All the misanthropy, seeming
rather than real (for at heart he was a sincere and
even tender lover of man), engendered by his deaf-
ness and his unhappy relations with mankind, could
not shake his devotion to this ideal which had
sprung from truest artistic apprehension and been
nurtured by enforced introspection and philosophic
reflection. 1
Beethoven was a conservator of form always, and
even of formula whenever thought and the con-
ventional manner of expression balanced each other;
but when the former refused to go into the old
vessel he exercised the right which belongs to crea-
tive genius but only true creative genius to
1 See the author's " Music and Manners," p. 237.
154
Beethoven An Intermezzo
widen the latter. 1 He provided new bottles for the
new wine. Like Hans Sachs in Wagner's comedy,
he stood between the apparently warring elements
of classicism and romanticism as I shall attempt
to define them in the next chapter, and bravely did
battle for both conserving the old, but regenerat-
ing it and adapting it to the new regime.
We have taken a glance at the impulses which
prompted him to break down some of the con-
ventional barriers; let us now look at some of the
devices by means of which he adapted the enlarged
vessel to the new contents. Weitzmann in his
" Geschichte des Clavierspiels " likens the Beethoven
sonata to a trilogy, or tetralogy, in which the satyr
play, as he calls the scherzo, has a part but as a mid-
dle instead of a final member. The expository part
of the first movement contains a principal subject
with which are associated a second subject and one
or more episodes or side-themes which are in har-
mony with the mood of the whole, and which, them-
selves organically developed, bind together the prin-
cipal themes. Whereas the second theme of this
first movement formerly entered as a rule in the
key of the dominant (or in the relative major in
the case of minor keys), Beethoven practised the
liberty of using other keys which bore relationship to
the original tonality for the sake of modulatory con-
1 Only true creative genius. Quid licet Jmri non licet bovi
should never be forgotten.
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The Composers
trast. In the second division of the movement,
which is concerned with the development of this
material, Beethoven indulges in modulations of
great daring, touching at times far distant keys,
thus stimulating curiosity concerning the return of
the principal subject, and by contrapuntal devices
and otherwise stimulating interest and not infre-
quently building up his climaxes in this develop-
ment portion which English writers call the " free
fantasia." The coda, which presents the principal
material of the movement compressed and intensi-
fied, also affords Beethoven a field for his marvel-
lously fertile ingenuity. In it he likes to startle the
hearer once again before bringing about the con-
clusion for which ear and fancy are waiting.
"Occasionally," says Weitzmann, "Beethoven
arouses the highest degree of expectancy by unusual
resolutions of dissonances and deceptive progres-
sions. His rhythms, moreover, veiling the metre,
create a feeling of tensity and excitement, but the
resting places for the fancy and the emotions are
not neglected, and we are never wearied by too long
continued deceptions or too persistent withholding
of that which is expected." The same writer also
directs attention to the labor and care bestowed
by Beethoven on the choice and development of his
melodic material. His compositions always con-
tain melodies which are complete in their expression
and easily grasped. Sometimes they are even popu-
156
Beethoven An Intermezzo
lar in style, and for that reason appeal to the many
who are able to follow the artistic treatment to
which the tunes are subjected. "The adagio, or
andante, in Beethoven has either the extended form
of the first movement (the sonata form), with a
recurring episode in the second part, or the song
form, with one or more contrasting themes, which
appear but once, or it constitutes the introduction
to the movement which follows. The movement,
lively, bright, good-humored, humorous, called the
minuet or scherzo, which had already received a
place in the sonata scheme, first received a contour
appropriate to the character of the composition as a
whole through Beethoven. In connection with this
it is edifying to compare the structures created espe-
cially to this end by Beethoven, such as the march-
like movement in the A major Sonata, Op. 101;
the Scherzo of the B-flat Sonata, Op. 106, and the
Allegro molto of the Sonata Op. no."
The Scherzo, as everybody knows, is the offspring
of the minuet. It appears in the first three Sonatas,
Op. 2, dedicated to Haydn, under whose bewitching
hand, as may be seen in some of the string quartets,
the old-fashioned dance had already received the
impulse toward what it became under Beethoven;
but it was the latter who eventually gave it a stu-
pendous import in his symphonies, such as Haydn
never could have dreamed of. How the strange
quality of Beethoven's humor affected this jocose
The Composers
movement in the sonatas, and some of the sonatas
themselves, is thus pointed out by Selmar Bagge:
"As Beethoven was always the enemy of formula,
he sometimes introduced this element of humor into
the slow movement and then omitted the scherzo,
as in the Sonata in G major (Op. 31, No. i); or he
gave the minuet the character of emotional contrast,
as in the E-flat Sonata (Op. 31, No. 3); or he
imbued the scherzo movement, despite its rapid 3-4
time, with a serio-fantastic spirit, in which case the
adagio was dispensed with, as in the Sonatas in F
major (Op. 10, No. 2) and E major (Op. 14, No. i)."
The conventional finale before Beethoven was
either a rondo or a minuet. In Beethoven's sonatas
it is sometimes a rondo, in which a principal theme
appears three, four, or more times in alternation
with various episodes, side themes, and develop-
ments; sometimes it has the sonata form; some-
times the principal theme is treated as a free fugue;
sometimes it blossoms into a series of variations, as
in the Sonatas Op. 109 and in. It is in the high-
est degree noteworthy that in the last five sonatas
there is a return to a multiplicity of movements
(though there are only two in the transcendent one
in C minor, Op. in, the last of all) and that in
theSe there is less intimation of a drama playing on
the stage of the individual human heart than of a
projection of the imagination into the realm of
cosmic ideality. Beethoven was frequently trans-
'58
Beethoven An Intermezzo
figured, but never so completely as in some mo-
ments of these great works with which he said almost
his last word on the pianoforte. In the finale of
Op. in he soars heavenward like a skylark in the
rapture of the variations. He is "in the spirit" like
John on the isle of Patmos. With the first move-
ment of this sonata he carries us to the theatre in
which the last scene in Goethe's "Faust" plays
the higher regions of this sphere, where earth and
heaven meet as they seem to do at times in the high
Alps. There we hear the song of the Pater Pro-
fundis, and thence we begin the ascent to the celes-
tial realms above. The variations are the songs of
the Pater Ecstaticus, Blessed Boys, Penitents, and
Angels, who soar higher and higher, carrying with
them the immortal soul of Faust.
It would require a detailed analysis of a majority
of the sonatas to point out all the significant in-
stances in which Beethoven changed, extended, and
^ enriched the sonata form as it had been handed
down to him. There is no steadily progressive de-
velopment to be traced in the sequence of the opus
numbers, for they are not always chronological
records; nor hi the times of composition, for, as in
the case of the symphonies, there is a rising and
falling of the emotional waters, and a portrayal of
either profound or exalted feelings may be followed
by a composition in which amiable dalliance with
tones is the be-all and end-all of the work. More-
The Composers
over, Beethoven's activities were dispersed over too
wide a field to permit that each new production
should show such a step forward as we observe in
the lyric dramas of Wagner and Verdi. Yet it
ought not to be overlooked that as the quality of
dramatic expression grew more and more dominant
in Beethoven's art the element of unity was em-
phasized. Now the development of melodies gives
place in a large measure to the development of
motivi such as is also exemplified in the E-flat,
C minor, and D minor symphonies. Also, as has
been intimated, movements which might interfere
with the psychological unity of all the parts are
omitted. The familiar " Andante Favori " in F was
originally written for the Sonata in C, Op. 53. So
says Ries, who adds that Beethoven substituted the
present slow introduction to the final rondo for it
when it was pointed out to him that the andante
would make the work too long. A much likelier
explanation is that Beethoven felt that its associa-
tion with two such movements as the allegro con
brio and the allegretto moderato would be an
artistic mesalliance.
As the poetical, or emotional, contents deter-
mined the number of movements, their relative
disposition, and the modification of their forms, so
also it led to the introduction of new or unusual
forms. So the stories of the two sonatas, Op. 27,
are told in a rhapsodical way (quasi fantasia} and
1 60
Beethoven An Intermezzo
in the slow movement of the great Sonata in A-flat,
Op. no, a fragment of recitative, such as had
already been employed in the Sonata in D minor
(Op. 31, No. 2) many years before, becomes an ele-
ment in a vocal form. This adagio is a scena, an
arioso with an introduction in which we may hear
(if we wish so to exercise our fancy) at first an or-
chestral introduction, then a voice speaking in the
declamatory style of the recitative, then the two
flowing together as cantilena and accompaniment.
Whatever the shape and dimensions of the vessel,
however, it is to be kept in view that they were
determined by the contents which Beethoven
poured into it.
We have ample evidence that Beethoven per-
mitted impressions made on his mind by external
things to influence his music by natural scenes,
happenings, and sounds. Thus, the murmur of
a brook prompted the observation in a note-book,
"The deeper the water the graver the tone"; the
clatter of a horse's hoofs, Ries says, suggested the
theme of the finale of the Sonata in D minor, Op. 31,
No. 2; he caught the motif 'of the C minor symphony
from a bird. But in his sonatas he was not a pro-
grammist in the crude sense of an imitator of
sounds or user of the device of association of ideas.
The principle which he followed was always that
expressed in the words which he inscribed on the
score of the "Pastoral" symphony: "More an ex-
161
The Composers
pression of feeling than delineation." He was
chary about giving even a hint of the ideas or
feelings which had prompted his music, either by
writing titles or by word of mouth. Schindler says
that in 1816 he was prevailed upon to make ar-
rangements for the publication of a revised edition
of his sonatas for pianoforte, being influenced in
this determination by three considerations, viz.,
first, "to indicate the poetic ideas which form the
groundwork of many of those sonatas, thereby facili-
tating the comprehension of the music and deter-
mining the style of the performance; secondly, to
adapt all his previously published pianoforte com-
positions to the extended scale of the pianoforte of
six and one-half octaves, and, thirdly, to define the
nature of musical declamation."
There is plausibility at least in the suggestion
that Beethoven entertained the second and third
considerations; but the first not only flies in the
face of Beethoven's consistent conduct, but is at
variance with an experience which Schindler him-
self had, as we shall see presently. If Beethoven
ever felt disposed to give verbal interpretations to
his sonatas he must have given them to the pupils
and patrons to whom he dedicated them; and had
he done this we would surely have had the poeti-
cal glosses handed down to us. Sometimes when
directly asked about his meanings he replied enig-
matically. The "Pastoral" symphony is most in-
162
Beethoven An Intermezzo
dubitably programme music, yet Beethoven's note-
books contain almost pathetic evidence of his desire
that it should not be thought that in it he had
dropped into realism. "All painting in instru-
mental music, if pushed too far, is a failure," is a
note found among his sketches; "People will not
require titles to recognize the general intention to
be more a matter of feeling than of painting in
sounds," is another.
Much mischief has been made by titles which
publishers and others have given to works without
the sanction of the composer. It was not Beeth-
oven who called the Sonata in F minor "Appas-
sionata," or that in C-sharp minor (Op. 27, No. 2)
"Moonlight," or that in D major (Op. 28) "Pas-
torale." There is some appositeness in the first and
last of these designations, and in the case of persons
gifted with healthy intellectual and aesthetic stom-
achs they do no harm; but others are led by them
to think foolish things of Beethoven and to play his
music in a silly manner. The Sonata in C-sharp
minor has asked many a tear from gentle souls
who were taught to hear in its first movement a
lament for unrequited love and reflected that it was
dedicated to the Countess Giulietta Guicciardi, for
whom Beethoven assuredly had a tender feeling.
Moonlight and the plaint of an unhappy lover-
how affecting! But Beethoven did not compose
the sonata for the countess, though he inscribed it
163
The Composers
to her. He had given her a rondo, and wishing to
dedicate it to another pupil he asked for its return
and in exchange sent the sonata. Moreover, it ap-
pears from evidence scarcely to be gainsaid that
Beethoven never intended the C-sharp minor sonata
as a musical expression of love, unhappy or other-
wise. In a letter dated January 22, 1892 (for a
copy of which I am indebted to Fraulein Lipsius
[La Mara], to whom it is addressed), Alexander W.
Thayer, the greatest of Beethoven's biographers,
says: "That Mr. Kalischer has adopted Ludwig
Nohl's strange notion of Beethoven's infatuation
for Therese Malfatti, a girl of fourteen years, sur-
prises me; as also that he seems to consider the
Cis-moll Senate to be a musical love poem addressed
to Julia Guicciardi. He ought certainly to know
that the subject of that sonata was or rather, that
it was suggested by Seume's little poem 'Die
Beterin.' " The poem referred to describes a maiden
kneeling at the high altar in prayer for the recovery
of a sick father. Her sighs and petitions ascend
with the smoke of incense from the censers, angels
come to her aid, and at the last the face of the sup-
pliant one glows with the transfiguring light of hope.
The poem has little to commend it as an example of
literary art and it is not as easy to connect it in fancy
with the last movement of the sonata as with the
first and second; but the evidence that Beethoven
paid it the tribute of his music seems conclusive.
164
Beethoven An Intermezzo
As for the epithet "Moonlight," it seems to owe its
existence to a comparison made by a critic (Rellstab)
of its first movement to a boat rocking on the waves
of Lucerne on a moonlit evening. Many years ago
a picture on the title-page of an edition led the
Viennese to call it the Laubensonate (Arbor Sonata),
the picture evidently referring or giving rise to a
story of its composition in an arbor.
Rubinstein was unwilling to accept "Moonlight"
as a characteristic title, because, though the sonata
is nominally in a minor key, its music is predomi-
nantly major, and he was glad that Beethoven was
not responsible for the designation. He also ob-
jected to the title " Pathe'tique " for the Sonata in
C minor, Op. 13, though this has the composer's
sanction. " Only the adagio might be said to justify
the title," says Rubinstein; "the other movements
develop so much action, so much dramatic life, that
the sonata might better have been called 'dra-
matic.'"
The Sonata in F minor has long been called
"Appassionata." Is there any appositeness here?
Passionate the music assuredly is; but in what di-
rection ? Is there a passion of contemplative pray-
erf ulness ? If not, how can the epithet apply to the
second movement, with its transfigured resignation,
its glimpse into the celestial regions, into which
Beethoven's soul soared so often when its pinions
took a slow and measured movement? Then, if
165
The Composers
shallow passions murmur "but the deep are
dumb," as Sir Walter Raleigh said, are the pas-
sions which not only murmur but mutter and swell
and roar in this sonata shallow? No one shall
think it who hears the music. The epithet is mis-
leading because it is inconclusive and vague, though
it is not as harmful as its companion, "Moonlight,"
which term has not only given rise to a multitude of
foolish interpretations, as I have intimated, but also
to a multitude of apocryphal stories which in some
instances have got into and disfigured biographies
of the great composer.
Schindler relates that once when he asked Beeth-
oven to tell him what the F minor and D minor
(Op. 31, No. 2) sonatas meant he received only the
oracular answer, "Read Shakespeare's 'Tempest.'"
Many a student and commentator has no doubt
since then read "The Tempest'' in the hope of find-
ing a clew to the emotional contents which Beeth-
oven's utterance indicates had received expres-
sion in the two works so singularly brought into
relationship; has read and been baffled. But are
there no tempests except those created by the ele-
ments of nature? What else were those psycho-
logical struggles which Beethoven felt called upon
more and more to delineate as he was more and
more shut out from companionship with the external
world and its denizens ? Such struggles are in the
truest sense of the word tempests.
1 66
Beethoven An Intermezzo
The tempest in my mind
Doth from my sense take all feeling else
Save what beats there.
And one shall scarcely attempt to find verbal
symbols for the music of the first and last move-
ments of the sonata without being thrown back on
the familiar one of night and storm. The chief
trouble caused by Beethoven's dark hint is that it
invites us to find in the sonatas delineation of a
sequence of events, external and internal, such as
we see in Shakespeare's comedy of enchantment.
But Beethoven sometimes liked to talk in riddles,
and was so frequently lost in profound broodings
that it is possible he did not mean his words to be
accepted as literally and comprehensively as his
Boswell wanted to accept them. It is even pos-
sible that the question merely brought up a fleeting
memory of the mood of the last movement and the
circumstances of its composition. Ries is authority
for the statement that once (it must have been in
the summer of 1804) while he was walking with
Beethoven they wandered so far into the country
that it was nearly 8 o'clock before they got back to
Dobling, where Beethoven was living at the time.
During the walk Beethoven alternately kept hum-
ming and howling up and down the scale without
reference to any particular intervals. When asked
the meaning of this he replied that the theme of
the final allegro of his sonata had occurred to him.
167
The Composers
His conduct indicated that he was in a state of
emotional excitement again a storm, a struggle,
but one of the human soul, not of the earth.
It was only when saying farewell to the piano-
forte in the last group of sonatas that Beethoven
made large use of the polyphonic forms; but to
another form he paid tribute all through his career.
It is that of the theme and variations. He was ten
years old when he wrote variations on a march by
Dressier; he was fifty-three when he put the cap-
stone on his creations in this form by his "Thirty-
three Variations on a Waltz by Diabelli" (Op. 120).
The variation form is old; it suggests reflection,
technical skill, formalism; yet Beethoven made it
as perfect a vehicle for soulful poetizing as he had
made the free fantasias in his sonatas and sym-
phonies. In the old conception of the form, one
which left the theme after all its embellishments
essentially what it had been at the beginning, it
may be said to have reached its culmination in
Bach. Beethoven breathed a new life into it and
lifted it to a height which no composer has been
able to reach since. Indeed, it may be said that
only three of his successors have been able to apply
his ideal methods Mendelssohn in his "Varia-
tions se"rieuses," Schumann in his "fetudes sym-
phoniques," and Brahms in his variations on
themes by Handel, Paganini, Schumann, and him-
self. Beethoven's purpose in his variations was
1 68
Beethoven An Intermezzo
not, like that of the composers who preceded and
the majority of those who followed him, simply to
present a theme in a series of structural metamor-
phoses: he aimed to exhibit it in its potential poet-
ical phases, to give an exposition of the various
moods which his penetrative mind and exuberant
fancy saw latent within it. It was as if one having
a beautiful diamond should successively present
each of its many facets to view so that the changes
in diffraction might reveal all the gem's wealth of
beauty in the light best calculated to make that
beauty evident.
It is the testimony of practically all of Beethoven's
contemporaries who have left a record of their im-
pressions of his pianoforte playing that it was in
his improvisations that his genius shone most
refulgent. In the friendly competitions which were
a common feature of the artistic life of his time he
again and again met rivals whose technical skill
upon the keyboard was admittedly as great if not
greater than his own; but he met no one who could
improvise upon a given theme as he could. And it
would appear as if sometimes something else than
the mere beauty of a theme would fire his fancy.
There, for instance, is the story, often told, of his
meetings with the redoubtable Steibelt. It was at
the house of Count Fries in Vienna in 1800. At the
first meeting Beethoven produced his Trio in B-flat
for pianoforte, clarinet, and violoncello (Op. n),
169
The Composers
and Steibelt a quintet for a pianoforte and strings.
After these set pieces Steibelt yielded to the requests
of the company and won rapturous applause by an
exhibition of a fetching trick in arpeggios which
was one of the catch-penny specialties of this char-
latan. Beethoven could not be persuaded to touch
the pianoforte a second time that evening. A week
later there was a second meeting, at which Steibelt
surprised the company with a new quintet, and an
obviously prepared improvisation consisting of vari-
ations on a theme which Beethoven had varied in
the trio played at the first meeting. Such a chal-
lenge was too obvious to be overlooked and Beeth-
oven's friends demanded that he take up the
gauntlet. At length he went to the pianoforte,
picked up the bass part of Steibel's quintet, set it
upside down on the music desk, nonchalantly
drummed out the first few measures of the bass
with one finger, and began to improvise upon the
motif thus obtained. Soon the guests were listening
in wonderment, and in the midst of the performance
Steibelt left the room and never again attended a
soire'e at which Beethoven was expected to be
present.
It is impossible to imagine the marvellous music
which must frequently have been struck out in this
manner when Beethoven's imagination was at white
heat; but the incident recalls not only his fecund
skill in developing large and beautiful ideas out of
170
Beethoven An Intermezzo
apparently insignificant but really pregnant motivi
but also his skill ia writing beautiful basses. The
theme of the variations which make up the finale of
the "Eroica" symphony is also the theme of a set
of variations for the pianoforte (in E-flat, Op. 35)
and the melody of the finale of the ballet "Die
Geschopfe des Prometheus." In its original form
it is a little contradance which Beethoven may have
written as early as 1795. In the pianoforte varia-
tions, as in the symphonic, Beethoven begins with
the bass and introduces the melody as a counter-
point upon it; thereafter it remains the theme
with the bass as an ostinato. "A musician is
known by his basses" might well be set down as an
axiom. "In the Sonata Op. 7," said Rubinstein in
one of his historical lectures, " the bass of the Largo
alone is, in my opinion, worth twice as much as
(many) a whole sonata."
Of the transporting effect of the variations in
Op. in I have already spoken. In cherubic union
with them stand the variations in the Sonata Op.
109. Both sets, though their flight into the upper
ether is infinitely greater, may be said to have had
their prototype in the variations which begin the
Sonata in A-flat, Op. 26. " A Titanic creation with-
out parallel," says Rubinstein, speaking of the
"Thirty-three Variations on a Waltz by Diabelli,"
and he goes on: "What the Ninth is among the
symphonies and the Op. 106 among the sonatas
171
The Composers
these variations are among all others." The origin
of the composition is as singular as it is diverting.
Diabelli, the publisher of many of Beethoven's com-
positions, conceived a happy idea for a stroke of
business. He wrote a simple waltz melody and
then asked fifty musicians whose names were famil-
iar to his patrons to write variations on his bantling
Beethoven among them. It was 1823, the year
which saw the completion of the Symphony in D
minor with its choral finale on Schiller's "Ode to
Joy." Imagine what must have been the amaze-
ment of Diabelli when he received from Beethoven
not one variation but thirty-three, and when he
recognized, as he did, that his inconsequential tune
had become the germ of an unrivalled masterpiece. 1
On his last visit to America Dr. von Billow played
these variations in New York at his concerts in
which he produced the last five sonatas. To his
penetrative mind it had been disclosed that, as Dr.
Bie says, the variations " constitute an inner drama"
like the sonatas. He provided each with a title in
the manner of Schumann's "Carnival." To con-
1 In the publisher's announcement of the work occurred these
words: "The most original forms and thoughts, the most daring
turns and harmonies are exhausted in this work; all utilized for
pianoforte effects based on a solid style of playing. The work is
made especially interesting by the fact that it was created on a
theme which no one else would have deemed capable of treatment
in a style in which our exalted master stands alone among his con-
temporaries."
172
Beethoven An Intermezzo
tinue with Dr. Bie: "The variations are a last will
and testament as were the Goldberg Variations of
Bach. From melody to canon, from gloom to
parody, from archaism to anticipation of the future,
from popularity to the philosophy of the hermit,
from mysticism to dance, from technical glitter to
the mystery of enharmonics, they lead us along
three-and-thirty paths to different realms."
Something remains to be said about the influence
of the mechanism of the pianoforte as it existed in
his day on the music which Beethoven wrote for the
instrument. Sketches have been found, dating
from about 1785 to 1795, which indicate that he
had it in mind to write a pianoforte method. In
his childhood, no doubt, he studied on the clavi-
chord, which was not only in common use among
the poorer classes, but preferred to the harpsichord
for purposes of instruction. In the Elector's
chapel and the theatre at Bonn he played upon the
harpsichord as well as organ. Carl Czerny, in his
"Outline of the Entire History of Music" (Umriss
der ganzen Musikgeschichte) published in 1851, says:
Until 1770 clavier music existed only for harpsichord and
clavichord. About this time the pianoforte (Hammer-
clavier) gradually became known. Very imperfect at first, it
soon began to excel the other keyed instruments, and in 1800
clavichords and harpsichords were already completely dis-
possessed. Clementi and Beethoven (between 1790 and
1810), by their demands on the performer, contributed much
173
The Composers
to the perfection of the pianoforte and, in London, dementi
took part also in its manufacture. The pedals, previously
called mutations, came into use about 1802.
From Junker we know that Beethoven used one of
the pianofortes made by Stein (which had received
the approval of Mozart in 1777) before he left Bonn.
These instruments had a damper pedal, though it
was at first operated by the knee in the manner of
the swell on a cabinet, or "American," organ.
About 1800 Beethoven used an instrument made by
Walther and Streicher. In 1803 he received an
Erard from Paris and in December, 1817, a Broad-
wood from London. In his room at the time of
his death stood an instrument specially built for
him by Graf, a Viennese manufacturer. It had
four unison strings throughout the scale, and Graf
also built a resonator, shaped somewhat like a theat-
rical prompter's box, to enable the deaf man to hear
himself play. This interesting relic is now the
property of the Beethovenhaus Verein and is pre-
served in the museum established by that society
in the composer's native city. The English in-
strument was the gift of Ferdinand Ries, J. B.
Cramer, G. G. Ferrari, C. Knyvett, and Broad-
wood, in 1818. At the sale of Beethoven's posses-
sions after his death it was bought by Spina, the
publisher, who gave it to Liszt in 1845. It is now
in the National Museum at Budapest, to which
institution it was presented by Princess Marie
Beethoven An Intermezzo
Hohenlohe, daughter of Liszt's friend, the Princess
Sayn- Wittgenstein. The action of all these instru-
ments was light, the dip of the keys shallow. All
of them, it would also seem, had two damper
pedals, one controlling the hammers of the upper
half, the other those of the lower half of the key-
board. The manuscript of the so-called "Wald-
stein" sonata (Op. 53) contains this note in
Beethoven's handwriting: "N. B. When 'ped' is
marked all the dampers, both bass and treble
(Discant), are to be raised. *O' means that they
are to be released." It was possible, therefore, at
that time to play with dampers on in one part of
the keyboard and off in the other, a device which
must have been of assistance in the production of
an effective cantilena.
Some of the instruments used by Beethoven con-
tained two shifting pedals, or two movements of a
single pedal, to move the hammers from the three
unisons to two strings (due corde) or one string
(una corda) at will. Beethoven seems to have been
the first composer to appreciate the beautiful effect
of the sympathetic vibrations of the unstruck
unisons, as we see in the slow movement of the
G major concerto, composed about 1805, where the
una corda is of entrancing effect.
In a general way it may be said that all the
clavier compositions which Beethoven wrote before
he took up his permanent abode in Vienna (in
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1792) are equally adapted to the harpsichord and
pianoforte; they contain the conventional scale
passages, figurations, etc., common to the Haydn-
Mozart period. But the fact that many of his
pieces for pianoforte solo up to 1803 were pub-
lished as for "pianoforte or harpsichord" (Clavier)
should not lead the student to think. that Beethoven
was for so long a time indifferent to the newer in-
strument. Here again composer, no less than
publisher, may have had an eye to the commercial
side of the matter. So long as the harpsichord
continued to be found in the houses of the musical
amateurs it was only a bit of worldly wisdom to let
these amateurs know that their instrument was not
excluded from the new repertory.
It is a charge frequently brought against Beeth-
oven's music that it is not claviermdssig, as the
Germans say i.e., that it is not always adapted to
the instrument. There is some truth in this state-
ment, no doubt. I have already emphasized the
fact that it is as music that his pianoforte composi-
tions are supreme, not as the utterance of the instru-
ment. But though he may have grown compara-
tively indifferent to his medium as he became more
and more engrossed in the art which to him was an
evangel, and as he withdrew from public gaze as a
virtuoso, he yet strove till the end to keep the piano-
forte eloquent. It is the testimony of visitors to his
apartments in his later years that his pianofortes
176
Beethoven An Intermezzo
were in poor condition. In one of the note-books in
which Mr. Thayer kept the memoranda of his con-
versations with persons who had come into direct
contact with Beethoven I found this record: " Once
Beethoven told Stein that some strings in his Broad-
wood P. F. were wanting, and caught up the boot-
jack and struck the keys with it to show." His
deafness affected his playing, and led him to adopt
some idioms which were strange to the formulas,
just as it led him to ask impossible things of the
human voice. But some of the things which fright
the souls of fearful virtuosi to-day, and keep some
compositions out of the hands of all but specially
gifted amateurs, were not in the same degree diffi-
culties, or even unclaviermdssig, when they were
written. The octave glissandos in the finale of the
" Waldstein " sonata are an instance in point. Beeth-
oven marked them to be played with thumb and
little finger of one hand, both descending and as-
cending. Dr. von Biilow simplified the passages by
permitting both hands to play them. Restore the
light action and shallow dip of the old mechanism,
and the music is at once as easy as it is idiomatic.
In the note reiterated twenty-eight times with
crescendo and diminuendo in the introduction to
the Arioso of the Sonata Op. no Rubinstein be-
held a prescient demand upon the pianoforte and
player of the future which he declared the modern
virtuoso could only meet by the "beggarly devices"
The Composers
of pedals and a light, reiterated stroke. Dr. von
Biilow set down the analogous effect in the coda
of the Adagio of the Sonata 106 as an imitation of
the Bebung, or Balancement, practised by the old
clavichordists, and Dr. Frimmel thinks that here
Beethoven was harking back to his studies on the
clavichord. It is, of course, a daring and imperti-
nent thing for a mere critic to do, but I nevertheless
venture to say that had either of the two great
players whom I have cited pondered but a moment
on the structure of the so-called soft pedal on
Beethoven's pianofortes they would have seen that
the reiterated strokes upon the key as indicated
by Beethoven's own fingering, were necessary, not
to prolong the tone, as Rubinstein thought, or to
produce the effect of the Bebung, as von Biilow
asserted, but to achieve an emotional and dynamic
effect only possible by means of the strokes in
combination with movements of the shifting pedal
from una corda up to tutti corde and back again,
as see:
But to reproduce this effect, which is impossible
rit.
Beethoven An Intermezzo
on modern pianofortes because of the absence of
the middle movement (due corde), we must again
equip the instrument with a shifting mechanism
like that in use in Beethoven's day. And why not ?
We are rapidly coming to an appreciation of the
fact that all music sounds best when played under
conditions like those which existed when it was com-
posed. The present generation may yet hear a
Mozart or Beethoven sonata for pianoforte and
violin from instruments in angelic wedlock instead
of destructive warfare.
179
X
The Romantic School
THUS Beethoven ended the old dispensation and
ushered in the new. He was the last great
classicist and the first great romanticist. The
words are out and we are at once confronted by
the need of further definition. We cannot go on
without it, yet I despair of inventing one which
shall be accepted as of general validity. The best
that I can do is to set one down which shall be
applicable to this study, and urge some arguments
in its defence; let it be discarded by all who can
find a better.
From every point of view the term classic is more
definite in its suggestion than romantic, which in
musical criticism is chiefly used for the purpose of
conveying an idea of antithesis to classic. In lit-
erary criticism this is not always the case. Classi-
cal poets and prose writers are those of all times
whose works have been set down as of such excel-
lence that all the world that knows them has ac-
corded them a place apart, has put them in a class,
out of which, so far as we can judge from the
history of centuries, they will never be taken. Here
1 80
The Romantic School
the term, as Archbishop Trench pointed out, re-
tains a relic of a significance derived from the
political economy of ancient Rome, in which citi-
zens were rated according to their income as dassici
or as being infra classem. 1
When the term romantic got into literary criti-
cism it meant something different from, though not
necessarily antithetic to, classic, and this difference
enters also into thp term as used in musical criticism.
Romantic writings in poetry and prose were those
whose subject-matter was drawn from the imagina-
tive literature of the Middle Ages the fantastical
stories of chivalry and adventure which first made
their appearance in the Romance languages. The
principal elements in these tales were the marvel-
lous and the supernatural. When these subjects
were revived by some poets of Germany and France
in the early part of the nineteenth century, they were
clothed in a style of thought and expression different
from that cultivated by the authors who thitherto
had been looked upon as models. So not only
subject-matter but manner of expression also en-
tered into the conception of the term romantic which
these writers affected.
We see romanticism of the first kind in the sub-
jects of the operas of Wefeer and Marschner; but this
element cannot be said to enter significantly into
purely instrumental music, least of all into music
1 See the author's: "How to Listen to Music," page 65.
181
The Composers
for the pianoforte, to which I am trying to confine
myself. In a way it is influential, it is true, in
music which relies more or less upon suggestions
derived from external sources "programme mu-
sic," as it is called. It would be incorrect, however,
to classify all programme music as romantic. Fro-
berger's attempt to describe the incidents of an
adventurous journey, Buxtehude's musical delinea-
tion of the celestial spheres, Kuhnau's Biblical
sonatas, Bach's " Capriccio on the Departure of a
Beloved Brother," Dittersdorf's descriptive sym-
phonies, were all cast in classical forms; the titles
in no wise affected the character or value of the
music as such. No more did the titles which the
virtuoso composers of a later date gave their sonatas
and fantasias. They did no more than invite a
pleasing play of fancy and an accompanying intel-
lectual operation the association of naturally mu-
sical ideas. By this I mean a correlation of certain
attributes and properties of things with certain
musical idioms which have come to have conven-
tional significance, such as position in space and
acuteness and gravity of tone; speed, lightness, and
ponderosity of movement and tempo; suffering or
death and the minor mode; flux and reflux and
alternating ascent and descent of musical figures,
etc. Music of this kind may be only one degree
higher in the aesthetic scale than that which is
crudely imitative of natural sounds, like the whis-
182
The Romantic School
tling of the wind, the rolling crash of thunder, the
roar of artillery, the rhythmical clatter of horses'
hoofs, etc.
It is only when these things become stimuli of
feeling and emotion, with their infinite phases, that
they become associate elements, with melody, har-
mony, and rhythm, in music. Now, we have pro-
gramme music of a higher order, the order which,
because it demanded freer vehicles of utterance than
were offered by the classical forms (especially when
they had degenerated into unyielding formulas),
came to be looked upon as antithetical to the con-
ception of classicism, and therefore was called
romantic as the newer literature had been.
The composers whose names first spring into our minds
when we think of the Romantic School are men like Mendels-
sohn and Schumann, who drew much of their inspiration from
the young writers of their time who were making war on
stilted rhetoric and conventionalism of phrase. Schumann
touches hands with the Romantic poets in their strivings in
two directions. His artistic conduct, especially in his early
years, is inexplicable if Jean Paul be omitted from the equa-
tion. His music rebels against the formalism which had held
despotic sway over the art, and also seeks to disclose the beauty
which lies buried in the world of mystery in and around us,
and gives expression to the multitude of emotions to which
unyielding formalism had refused adequate utterance. 1
Now, I think, we are ready for the tentative
definition of romanticism; it is the quality in com-
1 "How to Listen to Music," p. 67.
183
The Composers
position which strives to give expression to other
ideals than mere sensuous beauty, and seeks them
irrespective of the restrictions and limitations of
form and the conventions of law; the quality which
puts content, or matter, over manner. The striv-
ing cannot be restricted to the composers of any
particular time or place. Evidences of it are to be
found here and there in the works of the truly great
composers of all times; but it became dominant in
the creative life of the men who drew their inspira-
tion from Beethoven. The chief of these are to be
studied after a brief excursion demanded by his-
torical integrity.
I have already called attention to the circum-
stance (not peculiar to music but shared with it by
all other creations of the human mind) that there is
no sharp line of demarcation between characteristic
periods of development, but that they overlap each
other. Every great artist, before he becomes the
forward man who strikes a new path, first travels
along the old and has company on his journey. It
is only after posterity recognizes his puissance that
his companions drop out of sight and he appears in
his solitary grandeur. It is this that gives us the
perspective of the great masters touching hands
with each other in an isolated line, though their
contemporaries may have walked with them,
thought with them, and worked with them along
large stretches of their progressive journey. Beeth-
184
The Romantic School
oven looms a lonely figure before our fancy when
we contemplate him amid the period which pro-
duced him, and he still stands alone as the preacher
of his ultimate evangel; but there were brave men
not a few who recognized his greatness and prof-
ited by his example, though they could not di-
vorce themselves as completely from the spirit of
their time as he did. Their feet, like those of the
mortals, as the Hindu legend has it, were on the
.ground, while his, like those of the immortals,
touched it only in seeming. The period which be-
gan with his youth and endured throughout his life
and until his spirit bore its first vigorous fruit in
the founders of the Romantic School was one of
technical brilliancy. Its representatives, building
on the foundations laid by Cramer and dementi,
developed pianoforte playing to a high degree of
perfection and established pedagogical principles
which have been transmitted without loss of vital-
ity by a direct line of successors down to to-day; but
as composers, they created little which has with-
stood the tooth of time except instructive material.
Most of them live in history merely as virtuosi and
teachers. These shall receive attention in the final
subdivision of these studies. Special considerations
call for the mention of a few here.
Dr. Burney, in his "Present State," bears testi-
mony to the extraordinary love for music cherished
by the natives of Bohemia and their skill as prac-
185
The Composers
titioners. Among Bohemian musicians of the pe-
riod which overlapped that of Beethoven there were
several who deserve to be singled out because of
their dignified position in musical history. J. L.
Dussek has been discussed in connection with the
development of the classical sonata up to Beethoven.
A predecessor, J. B. Vanhall (1739-1813), was a
composer of church music, symphonies, and cham-
ber music, but most popular among the dilettanti
for his pianoforte pieces, his sonatas challenging
special interest, no doubt, by the titles which he gave
to some of them, such as "Sonate Militaire,"
"The Celebration of Peace," "The Battle of Wiirz-
burg," "The Sea Fight at Trafalgar," etc. Louis
Kozeluch (1748-1818) was a music-master at the
Austrian court in Vienna, and received the ap-
pointment of court composer after Mozart's death.
He composed voluminously in the large forms, in-
strumental and vocal, and wrote from forty to fifty
pianoforte sonatas, three concertos for four hands
and one concerto for two pianofortes.
Though Johann Wenzel Tomaschek (1774-1850)
found as a teacher that his devotion to the aesthetic
principles of his age was incompatible with the
erraticism of Beethoven, the composer, we are yet
indebted to him for an illuminative account of the
effect produced by Beethoven's playing on impres-
sionable hearers. He was a man of education and
broad culture, one who, like Schumann, was trained
1 86
The Romantic School
to the law, but who abandoned jurisprudence for
music when his pupil, Count Bouquoy, offered him
a salaried place in his household. His composi-
tions, of which twelve "Eclogues" and the same
number of "Rhapsodies" were noteworthy, and
caused one enthusiastic critic to call him the
"Schiller of Music," enjoyed great popularity
among his countrymen. Ignaz Pleyel (1757-1831)
was a pupil of Vanhall and Haydn, with whom he
lived for a space. When Haydn went to London
in 1791 on the invitation of Salomon the managers
of the Professional Concerts engaged Pleyel, whom
they intended to play off against his old master.
The rivalry between the two concert organizations
was extremely bitter, and an inspired newspaper
article which told that negotiations had been begun
with Pleyel said that Haydn was too old, weak,
and exhausted to produce new music, wherefore he
only repeated himself in his compositions. How
little the two artists felt the rivalry is indicated in
the memorandum which Haydn entered in his note-
book:
Pleyl came to London on the 23d of December. On the
24th I dined with him.
In 1783 Pleyel became musical director of the
Cathedral at Strasburg, whence he went to Paris
and founded a music publishing house and a
pianoforte factory (1807), which still survives un-
187
The Composers
der his name. All of his sonatas and other compo-
sitions, except those intended for the purposes of
instruction, were modelled after those of Haydn.
Yet he cut a brave figure in the concert life of the
eighteenth century. Ludwig Berger (1777-1839),
who, among many other things, wrote a "Sonata
Pathtique" and a "Marche pour les armees Angl.-
Espagn. dans les Pyrenees," deserves to be remem-
bered as the teacher of Mendelssohn, Dorn, and
Taubert. A similar title is that of the Abbe* G. J.
Vogler (1749-1814), a Bavarian theoretician and
organist, who taught Weber and Meyerbeer, and
showed some appreciation of a tendency into which
pianoforte music was later to fall in a piece for
pianoforte with quartet accompaniment, entitled:
"Polymelos, ou caracte*re de musique de differ.
Nations." Louis Spohr (1784-1859), violinist,
conductor, composer of operas, oratorios, and sym-
phonies, is more significant in the department of
chamber music employing the pianoforte than as a
writer for that instrument alone a characteriza-
tion which also fits George Onslow (1784-1853),
who, although descended from a noble English
family, was a native of France. However, two
sonatas for four hands have received praise from
modern critics.
A successor of Mozart, Hummel, Clementi, and
Beethoven was Ignaz Moscheles (1794-1870), whom
Edward Dannreuther in Grove's "Dictionary of
1 88
The Romantic School
Music and Musicians" describes as "the foremost
pianist after Hummel and before Chopin." Mosch-
eles, who has many pupils among the older musi-
cians of to-day, made the pianoforte score of
Beethoven's "Fidelio" under the eye of the com-
poser, taught Mendelssohn when the latter was a
lad of fifteen, became an active spirit in the affairs
of the London Philharmonic Society, and was called
in 1846 to the professorship of pianoforte playing
at the Conservatory of Music in Leipsic. He filled
the post till his death. Moscheles composed eight
pianoforte concertos, among them a " Fantastique,"
"Pathe*tique," and "Pastorale." He also added
variations to the theme of "The Harmonious Black-
smith" and wrote a "Hommage Handel" for two
pianofortes, which he first played with Cramer in
London and afterward with Mendelssohn in Leip-
sic; but the public of to-day has scarcely heard any
of his music in the concert-room except the cadenzas
which he wrote for Beethoven's concertos. Never-
theless, his studies still possess vitality.
A most efficient propagandist of the so-called
Vienna school of pianists was Carl Czerny (1791-
1857). As a lad he became Beethoven's pupil, and
later was the transmitter of many traditions touch-
ing the interpretation of his master's works, and the
teacher of such famous virtuosi as Liszt, Thalberg,
and Dohler. He has left a name of enduring bright-
ness despite his subservience in some things to popu-
189
The Composers
lar taste. It nevertheless speaks for the solidity of
his character as a lad that Beethoven was sincerely
fond of him, volunteered to take him as a pupil and
for a space contemplated making his home with the
boy's parents. Czerny was a tremendously pro-
ductive composer, his published pieces at the time
of his death having reached the number of almost
one thousand. Most of those which were not de-
signed for instruction were of the simply entertain-
ing order, and served that end by their showy effec-
tiveness. He followed the classic forms in his
sonatas, but they, like his variations, fantasias, pot-
pourris, etc., were mere hollow glitter. He also
followed the fashion of the salon composers of his
day in giving titles to some of his pieces and, it is
easy to see, with an eye to the sales counter. Com-
positions like "The Conflagration of Mariazell"
and "The Ruins of Wiener Neustadt" were aimed
at arousing interest through the civic pride of the
Viennese. His enduring value rests on his peda-
gogical works (chiefly on the "Complete Theoreti-
cal and Practical Pianoforte School" and "The
School of Velocity"), and the principles which he
instilled into his pupils and which have been handed
down by them.
The honor of receiving pianoforte lessons from
Beethoven was shared by Czerny with a youth who,
like his companion in later years, contributed much
interesting knowledge about their great master to
190
The Romantic School
the world. This was Ferdinand Ries (1784-1838),
the son of Franz Ries, a musician of Bonn, who had
been kind to Beethoven's parents when they were
suffering from poverty. A letter from his father
opened Beethoven's door to the young aspirant for
musical honors when, after considerable wandering,
he reached Vienna. Ries remained under the eye
of Beethoven, who also persuaded Albrechtsberger
to give him lessons in composition for three years.
He spent ten years in the prime of his life in Lon-
don, where he faithfully promoted the interests of his
master in every way possible. He wrote nine piano-
forte concertos, saying " Adieu to London" in one
and giving a "Greeting to the Rhine" in another.
His writings, though of a serious cast, are gone in-
to desuetude; among them were ten solo sonatas,
three pianoforte trios, and five pianoforte quartets.
Friedrich Kuhlau (1786-1832) was opera composer
and flautist, who wrote sonatinas and sonatas which
appealed to the best taste of his own time and a long
period afterward.
Two men stand in the shadow of Beethoven on
the borderland of romanticism. As a composer of
operas one of these, Carl Maria von Weber (1786-
1826), sent his glance far into the " Mondbeglanzte
Zaubernacht," and is almost as fresh in the hearts
of the German people as ever he was. As a com-
poser of dramatic overtures all the musically cult-
ured peoples of the world admire him beyond
191
The Composers
measure, but as composer of pianoforte music he
lives chiefly by virtue of his Sonata in A-flat, his
Polacca in the same key, his " Concertstiick " in
F minor, and his waltz-rondo, "The Invitation to
the Dance" once the battle-horse of virtuosi like
Tausig and Liszt, now the abused plaything of
boarding-school misses, who appreciate its merits
as little as they do those of Chopin's nocturnes. It
is Weber's masterpiece in the field of pianoforte
music, and in it I find a most gracious manifestation
of the new spirit a manifestation which is much
clearer and more convincing in the original form
of the composition than in the disarrangements of
it which virtuosi have made to lend technical brill-
iancy to their playing. 1 Prelude and coda of the
"Invitation," with their dainty device of tender
dialogue and their exquisite characterization of the
young lovers, are of ineffable poetic charm. Weber
gave a plain indication of the romantic conceit which
underlies his music in a little-known letter, and Dr.
John Brown wrote a delightful rhapsody upon it in a
review of one of Sir Charles Hallo's concerts printed
in "The Scotsman" and incorporated in his book
of essays, entitled "Spare Hours." The "Invita-
tion" is not the only one of Weber's pianoforte
1 As for the orchestral transcription by Weingartner, obviously
made only because that musician found that the two waltz melodies
could be brought together in counterpoint, it is a piece of vandal*
ism which I cannot discuss with patience.
192
The Romantic School
compositions to which he provided a verbal com-
mentary. By his own confession, in his sonata in
E minor (No. 4) he attempted to portray the suffer-
ings of a melancholiac: his despondency sometimes
lightened by hope in the first movement; rage and
insanity in the second; the effects of consolation in
the andante; exhaustion and death in the final
tarantelle. The " Concertstiick " was Weber's last
composition for the pianoforte. Sir Julius Bene-
dict, in his little biography of the composer, who
was his teacher, tells the story of chivalry as he
heard it from the composer's own lips on the morn-
ing of the day on which he finished its composition
and also saw the first performance of "Der Frei-
schiitz." Dr. Bie is as far from appreciation of
Weber's pianoforte music as Sir Julius is extrava-
gant in its praise. I like best the brief but com-
prehensive estimate of Prosniz:
Through his pianoforte pieces there runs a popular and
natural vein. Here, too, we observe those melodic turns with
which his operas have familiarized us. In fact, Weber's piano-
forte pieces often remind us of his operas. They are full of
fire and bravura, permeated with gracious and graceful ele-
ments, yet often superficial and empty and almost trivial. His
sonatas, his "Concertstiick," and his popular " Auff orderung
zum Tanz" represent Weber, the pianoforte composer.
John Field (1782-1837), born in Dublin, was a
pupil of Clementi, whom he accompanied on his
The Composers
concert tours as far as St. Petersburg, where he
stayed long enough to get the sobriquet "Russian
Field." He was the precursor of Chopin in the
cultivation of the nocturne. His compositions in
this compact and simple form numbered eighteen.
They are sadly faded now, but were potent enough
long after Field passed away to draw words of
admiration from Liszt.
Field [said he] was the first who introduced a genre which
traced its origin to none of the existing forms, a genre in
which sentiment and song were absolutely dominant, free
from shackles and free from the slack of an imposed form.
He opened the way for all achievements which followed under
the style of songs without words, impromptus, ballads, etc.,
and to him may be traced the source of all those pieces de-
signed to give voice in tones to particular sensations and
feelings.
If Field really deserves this characterization he
was surely the first genuine romanticist. Besides
his eighteen nocturnes he composed seven concertos,
one of them with the flamboyant title "L'incendie
par Forage"; at least six solo sonatas, a pianoforte
quintet, and a number of smaller pieces.
We now come to the group of composers whose
names are by universal consent first in the minds of
men when romantic music is the topic of discussion.
Before their compositions are studied an effort
ought to be made to point out wherein the character-
istic elements of romantic expression consist. Any
194
The Romantic School
attempt to do this, however, is likely to be as incon-
clusive as that to formulate a satisfactory definition
of the term. The attitude of man toward music is
an individual one, and in some of its aspects defies
explanation; and what is generally true of the art
becomes specifically true of its particular phases.
Pianoforte music is in a singularly difficult case
because it must perforce forego helps enjoyed by
other kinds. It cannot be aided by words as vocal
music is, which draws one of its elements from liter-
ature; when words give expression to ideas asso-
ciated with romanticism a fitting musical setting of
them may also be said to be romantic music. In
orchestral music the voices of the instruments and
the color which they impart may inspire a feeling
of mystery and thoughts of the supernatural and
thus proclaim the romantic character of the music
so far as mystery and supernaturalism are elements
of romanticism. This pianoforte music cannot do;
it is thrown back upon content and the musical ele-
ments which that content influences.
Having in mind the best pianoforte music to
which Beethoven pointed the way, it may be said
that the following are the principal elements intro-
duced into music written for the instrument by the
new spirit, it being prefaced that all of them are
imposed upon music which answers the primary
notion of classicism as an embodiment of excel-
lence:
The Composers
(a) Freedom in the treatment of structural forms i. e., a
freedom which contracts or expands or otherwise modifies
forms to adapt them to their spiritual contents;
(b) Invention of new forms;
(c) Extension of the harmonic scheme, harmony being in
a high degree a vehicle of the emotions, occupying in this
respect the place filled by rhythm in the musical system of
the ancient Greeks. This brings us to
(d) Freedom in modulation modulation being a factor in
the old conception of form;
(e) Increase in the number and variety of rhythms, from
which element comes life in the sense of movement or action,
as illustrated in the peculiarly propulsive effect of syncopation.
(0 Adoption of poetical conceits as underlying and deter-
mining factors of the composition, either as a starting-point
for the creative imagination of the composer or the recreative
imagination of the performer and ultimately the receptive
mood of the hearer.
All these things are summed up in the axiom that
in romantic compositions matter determines man-
ner, content the dimensions and shape of the
vessel. They might exist in a greater or lesser
degree in music which is properly called ckssic, or
music which, for want of the quality of beauty, is
not entitled to either of the epithets which we are
applying. Hence it is that here, as in the apprecia-
tion of music generally, personal equation enters so
largely and definitively. Each individual must for
himself recognize the existence of what Rubinstein
called the "soul" which came into the art with
Beethoven, and the propriety and effectiveness of
196
The Romantic School
the habiliments with which in each case it has been
clothed.
The names of the High Priests in the Temple
of Music are to its votaries sources of spiritual re-
freshment and inspiration. Those who bore them
seem ever near us. Though they have passed
away, their lives are still intertwined with ours. We
think of Bach, and admiration surges up within us
for the greatest representative of musical science
that the world has ever known a myriad-minded
artist to whom its severest laws were the most natu-
ral vehicles for the expression of a soaring imagina-
tion; a tender, simple, devout, domestic man, yet
the repository of all the music that had been before
him and the fountain-head of all that was to come.
We think of Haydn, and our room is at once sunlit
and " out-doorsy," a world full of cheer and happy
laughter; of Mozart, and a lambent flame of
divinity appears to us, playing about one of earth's
most gifted children, inspiring him to utterances
which now search our souls to their depths, and
anon fill us with an uplifting sense of the delight
of living; of Beethoven, and our voices sink into
the key which publishes awe and reverence, for his
is the Ineffable Name. We think of Schubert and
our heart-strings grow tense; something draws out
our affections with a warm embrace; now we not
only marvel, respect, and admire, we also love. His
music is the most lovable of all. Not all of it; only
197
The Composers
the best, and of the best unfortunately the smallest
portion is in the music which he wrote for the
pianoforte. Two great symphonies (one a torso
so perfect in its incompleteness, like the Venus of
Milo, that we are unwilling to think of it otherwise
than as it is), a grand mass, a string quartet (that
in D minor), a quintet for pianoforte and strings,
a fantasia for pianoforte (which the present genera-
tion of concert-goers knows only as a concerto with
orchestra into which it was expanded by Liszt), and
songs numbering hundreds these are the works
upon which the great fame of Franz Schubert rests.
The remainder of the legacy is touched with mor-
tality. Melody is the life-blood with which these
works pulsate, and the source from which it flows
was finite only because his physical life was bounded
by years. His soul was lyrical. His symphony in
C sings on and on in an ecstasy of loveliness, until
we feel its only imperfection in its excess. He gave
too lavishly always to give wisely, for moderation
must enter into all things, even into beauty. He was
too prolific to be critical or even judicious. Varia-
tions on melodies which he had conceived for songs
make up the slow movements of two of the compo-
sitions set down here among his masterpieces the
String Quartet in D minor and the Pianoforte
Fantasia in C. The Adonic metre which flows
through the Impromptu in B-flat (one of the few
pianoforte pieces still to be heard in the concert-
198
The Romantic School
room) runs through the slow movement of his
String Quartet in A major, in the theme of the
variations of his String Quartet in D minor (the
song "Tod und das Madchen"), in one number
of his between-acts music to "Rosamunde," and
several of his songs, the finest illustration being
the cradle-song beginning, " Wie sich die Auglein."
(Its gentle beat is heard throughout the Allegretto
of Beethoven's Symphony in A.) The song "Der
Wanderer" supplies the theme of the variations in
the Fantasia; "Die Forelle" that of the Quintet
with double-bass. On the melody of "Trockene
Blumen" (of the "Miillerlieder") he wrote varia-
tions for pianoforte and flute.
The list of pianoforte pieces composed by Schu-
bert (1797-1828) comprises seventy-three titles,
the majority made up of groups of small pieces,
scores of them dances of no significance in piano-
forte literature. There are eleven solo sonatas,
and a fragment of a sonata which L. Stark com-
pleted for publication; two sets of impromptus; a
set of short pieces called "Momens Musicals"
which, with some of the impromptus, are the shin-
ing gems of the entire collection; a fantasia in C
(Op. 15), many marches and divertimenti, over-
tures, polonaises, and rondos for four hands, some
of them of high importance in their department.
His chamber music, in which the pianoforte is
combined with other instruments, consists of a
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The Composers
quintet (Op. 14), two trios with violin and violon-
cello, a "Rondeau brilliant" with violin, three
sonatinas with violin, a fantasia with violin, a
sonata with violin, an introduction and variations
for flute, and a sonata with arpeggione, the last
written for the inventor of the instrument, which
was of the viol kind, with six strings and a body
and fretted fingerboard like those of a guitar.
There is a great wealth of melodic inventiveness
in the sonatas, but also excess of injudicious passage-
work in the development portion. Through the
decades Schubert-lovers among the pianists have
tried to habilitate them in the concert-room, but in
vain. They fail to satisfy the lover of technique,
and, despite their occasional moments of poetical
charm, they weary the cultured lover because of
their remplissage. Schubert's nature was too un-
critical to win success in the larger and higher
forms. This is not said in disparagement of the
small forms in which he was at his greatest, but in
justice to the masters in all forms. There is noth-
ing more foolish in modern criticism than the dis-
position of unthinking admirers of composers like
Chopin and Grieg to depreciate the large forms
because Chopin and Grieg were not so successful
in them as they were in smaller or small forms, to
which the bent of their genius inclined them. As
if the great cathedrals were less magnificent and
beautiful because the Taj Mehal is lovely!
200
FRANCOIS FREDERIC CHOPIN.
The Romantic School
We have seen that Liszt credited Field with being
the first composer who introduced a genre in piano-
forte music " in which sentiment and song were ab-
solutely dominant . . . free from the slack of an
imposed form." Except for the want of seriousness
in content I do not see why Beethoven's "Baga-
telles" should not have precedence in history over
Field's "Nocturnes." The latter, however, were
contemporaneous in publication with Schubert's
"Impromptus" and "Momens Musicals," which
are the most perfect of that composer's pianoforte
utterances. "Schubert's greatest achievement,"
sa'ys Dr. Bie, "was the 'Momens Musicals,' which
appeared in 1828, the year of his death. The first
of these is a naturalistic, free musical expatiation;
the second, a gentle movement in A-flat major; the
third, the well-known F minor dance in which a
dance became a penetrating and sorrow-laden
tongue; the fourth, the Bach-like C-sharp minor
Moderato, with its placid middle section in D-flat
major; the fifth, a fantastic march with a sharply
cut rhythm, and the sixth, perhaps Schubert's most
profound pianoforte piece, that revery in still chords
which only once are more violently shaken in order
to lull us to sleep with its pensive and dainty sor-
row, its delicate connections, its singing imitations,
its magic enharmonics, and its sweet melodies ris-
ing like flowers from the soft ground. The close of
the trio in the style of a popular chorale, with its
201
The Composers
harmonization in thirds, is (like many of his har-
monic passages in octaves or sixths) exceedingly
characteristic of the popular nature of Schubert's
music."
One who loved Schubert ardently, in whom the
romantic spirit burst into unparalleled efflorescence,
and who represents it with more varied eloquence
than any of his contemporaries or all of them com-
bined, was Robert Schumann (1810-1856). "What
he did to develop the expressive power of the
pianoforte is all his own," says Richard Aldrich
(in "The Musical Guide," edited by Rupert
Hughes). "He wrote for the instrument in a new
way, calling for new and elaborate advances in
technique not the brilliant finger dexterity of
Chopin and Liszt, but a deeper underlying potency
of expression through interlacing parts, skilfully
disposed harmonies, the inner voices of chords, and
through new demands as to variety of tone quality,
contrasts of color, and the enrichment of the whole
through pedal effects. It has been called a crabbed
style, but it is no less idiomatic of the piano than
the more open and brilliant manner that was de-
veloped at the same period by the virtuoso school
of piano-playing and composition." Schumann's
music is admirable as that of Beethoven is, because
of its excellence as music irrespective of the vehicle
chosen for its exposition. Yet, like Beethoven, he
put a greater eloquence into the tones of the instru-
202
The Romantic School
ment than did the virtuosi who called forth the
critical wrath of his Davidites, or even Chopin,
whose unique genius he so generously praised. He
was the ideal representative of romanticism in every
one of its aspects. He turned the fantastics and the
whimsicalities of E. T. A. Hoffman and Jean Paul
Friedrich Richter into instrumental song, and wove
their parti-colored threads into his polyphony. He
remains, after half a century, the foremost repre-
sentative of idealized programme music; proclaim-
ing not things, but the moods and essences of things,
applying titles which do not weight the fancy, but
lift it into a buoyant atmosphere, removing all fet-
ters of soul and mind, pointing the way in all direc-
tions except those which lead to the realm of the
ignoble and the ugly. The most perfectly emanci-
pated of all the tone-poets after Beethoven, the one
in whom intellect and the emotions were most
equably poised, and a priest in the Temple of the
Beautiful who held his duty sacred. To her who
became his wife Schumann wrote: "Everything
touches me that goes on in the world politics,
literature, people. I think after my own fashion of
everything that can express itself through music or
can escape by means of it. This is why many of
my compositions are so hard to understand be-
cause they are bound up with my remote associa-
tions and often very much so, because everything of
importance in the time takes hold of me, and I
203
The Composers
must express it in musical form. And this, too, is
why so few compositions satisfy my mind because,
aside from all defects in craftsmanship, the ideas
themselves are often on a low plane and their ex-
pression is often commonplace." To such a man
music could not be mere " lascivious pleasings." It
was a language to be used in the service of the true,
the beautiful, and the good. Its utterances he be-
lieved might be helped along by verbal suggestion
in the shape of a title; but he was far from believing
that the title or its literary suggestion entered into
the quality of the music itself. His creed on the
subject of programme music was as brief as it was
clear and comprehensive? a tide might help to ap-
preciation by stimulating thought and the fancy; it
could not help poor music and would not mar good;
but music which required it was in a sorry case.
The catalogues of Schumann's works show forty
pieces for pianoforte solo, four for four hands, one
for two pianofortes, three for pianoforte and or-
chestra, and twelve for chamber music in which
the instrument is consorted with others. All of his
numbered compositions from Op. i to Op. 23 are
for the pianoforte and the majority of his works
in this class are what I have called idealized pro-
gramme music, whether or not the fact be indicated
by a title. The " Carnaval," which lives in loving
company with Beethoven's Diabelli variations, as
well as Schumann's "Etudes symphoniques," pre-
204
The Romantic School
sents the picture of a masquerade with the familiar
figures of Pierrot, Harlequin, Pantaloon, and Co-
lumbine, associating with real persons like Clara
Wieck (Chiarina], Chopin, Ernestine von Fricken
(Estrella], and Paganini (all indicated by imitations
of their musical styles), creatures of Schumann's
poetic fancy, Eusebius, Florestan, the Davidites, and
the Philistines, these last being the hurdy-gurdy
virtuosi of the period. In a letter to Moscheles,
written in 1837, Schumann told the story of the
composition in brief and furnished a hint at his
purposes. He says: "'The Carnaval' was written
for an occasion, and is for the most part and with
the exception of three or four movements entirely
upon the notes A, S, C, H, which spell the name of
a little Bohemian town where I had a musical
friend, but which also, strange to say, are the only
musical letters in my name. The titles I added
afterward. Is not music always sufficient unto
itself and does it not speak for itself?"
Eusebius and Florestan were names invented by
Schumann to embody the two contrasting tempera-
ments in his own nature. Their fanciful holders
were members of the society of Davidites, which ex-
isted only in Schumann's mind, but who labored in
his compositions as well as his criticisms to destroy
the Philistines in art. The two are the ostensible
authors of Schumann's first sonata (in F-sharp
minor), in which we recognize music that is not only
205
The Composers
programmatic but also biographic. Florestan is
all energy, passion, and eager fancy; Eusebius is
the personification of simplicity, tenderness, and
dreamy mysticism. Schumann had recognized the
habitation within himself of these antagonistic ele-
ments long before he thought of giving them exist-
ence on a title-page or in his journal. Writing from
Milan to a friend in 1829, he said: "For several
weeks, or, rather, always, I have seemed to myself
entirely poor or entirely rich, utterly feeble and
utterly strong, decrepit, and yet full of life." It must
have been because he recognized how completely he
had given expression to this quality of feeling in
his sonata that he conceived the idea of putting it
forth, not as the composition of Robert Schumann,
but of " Florestan and Eusebius," who had already
met Chiarina, to whom the sonata is dedicated
under her real name in the " Carnaval." We recog-
nize the gentle Eusebius in the introduction of the
sonata, with its sweetness and love; in the second
melody of the first movement proper, and the aria,
which is borne up as on angels' wings, while the
Florestan ranges through every strong measure of
the Allegro vivace, consistently dealing his rhyth-
mical blows.
It was Schumann's manner to compose a piece
of music, or a set of pieces, under the influence of
emotions aroused by his own experiences or the
reading of his favorite authors, and when all was
206
The Romantic School
finished to invent a title which should be character-
istic and give a hint at the poetic contents of the
music. It frequently happened that years elapsed
between the writing of a work and its publication,
and during this time it continually occupied his
mind and became associated with many notions
which had nothing to do with it in the beginning.
The Fantasia in C (Op. 17) is a case in point. In
several letters wrkten two years after the composi-
tion of the work he plainly indicates that the in-
spiration of its first movement, at least, was his love
for Clara Wieck and the misery which grew out of
her father's opposition to their marriage. In one
letter he says to Clara: "The first movement is
perhaps the most passionate thing I have written";
in another: "The first movement is a deep lamen-
tation over you"; in another: "You can only under-
stand the Fantasia if you shall think yourself back
in the unhappy summer of 1836, when I gave you
up." It may have been this last reflection which
suggested the superscription, "Ruins," which he
gave to the first movement after he had decided to
make a gift of the composition to the Beethoven
monument fund at Bonn. When the work was
printed this superscription (together with "Tri-
umphal Arch" and "Constellation," which he had
in mind for the other movements) was abandoned
and the simple title "Fantasia" was supplemented
by a motto from Schlegel.
207
The Composers
A letter to Clara Wieck, written a few months
after he had composed the " Nachtstiicke " (Op.
23), furnishes an interesting bit of evidence of
the manner in which he hunted for illuminative
superscriptions. The piece had not been given to
the printer, and he was anxious to indulge his fancy
for programmatic titles. So he writes: "I have
quite arranged the 'Nachtstiicke' what do you
think of calling them: No. I 'Trauerzug'; No. II,
'Kuriose Gesellschaf t ' ; No. Ill, 'Nachtliches Ge-
lage'; No. IV, 'Rundgesang mit Solostimmen'?"
Here we see a hint at the contents of each of the
first three pieces in the set, but only a fanciful title
suggested by its structural form for the last. The
first title is explained by the fact that while engaged
upon the first nocturne he was oppressed by a pre-
sentiment. " While I was composing I kept seeing
funerals, coffins, and unhappy, despairing faces;
and when I had finished and was trying to think of
a title the only one that occurred to me was ' Leich-
enfantasie' ('Funeral Fantasia'). I was so much
moved over the composition that the tears came
into my eyes, and yet I did not know why, and
there seemed to be no reason for it Then came
Therese's letter, and everything was at once ex-
plained." The explanation lay in the fact that his
brother Edward was dying.
Not only his devotion to form but his consum-
mate mastery of it has marred the excellence of
208
The Romantic School
Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847) in the eyes of the
self-elected champions of progress since his death,
nearly two generations ago. Perfection in a god
is tolerable, but in a mere human artist contem-
plation of it becomes a vexation and weariness of
the flesh. In his lifetime Mendelssohn was idolized;
after he was dead he was overwhelmed with critical
contumely. Now, despite the irreverence of the
age, the divine light is again recognized in his
countenance. Reformers and revolutionists are
prone to be image-breakers. It is more difficult for
artists who are impressionists, because they lack
the skill to be anything else, to admire impeccable
perfection in execution, than for those whose im-
pressionism is a fulfilment of all their desires.
Mendelssohn brought no sword into the world;
he was a reformer of taste, but not a revolutionist.
There is not a word in the technical vocabulary of
pianoforte music which traces its origin to him.
To the romantic content of music he added little
more than a form and an idiom; and because the
form was degraded to a formula by himself and his
imitators and the idiom overworked, their value
soon came to be underestimated. "It is a pity,"
said Rubinstein to his pupils at the Imperial Con-
servatory in St. Petersburg, "that I am to play
Mendelssohn to you after Weber. If I had played
him after Herz you would better understand why
we must think of him so highly." The point was
209
The Composers
well taken. It is also something of a pity that in
this discussion I have placed Schumann before him;
but it was done so that I might the quicker reach
the heart of this phase of our study. In reading a
book one may, if he wishes, turn back and reread an
earlier page, while at a recital one can revert to
what has been done only by appeal to memory and
the imagination.
Mendelssohn's life was contemporary with Schu-
mann's, though its artistic activities began as many
years earlier than his as they ended. He, too, made
war on the Philistines, though his was the suaviter
in modo rather than the fortiter in re of his friend
and admirer. Herz and Kalkbrenner, Dreyschock
and Liszt, yes, even Liszt, were filling the salons of
Paris with the jingles of operatic fantasias while
Mendelssohn in Germany and England was turn-
ing the minds of amateurs to a purer taste by com-
positions which combined perfection of form with
marvellous clarity, purity, and unity of style, mas-
terly counterpoint, graceful melody, euphony, and
brilliancy. It is easy to smile at the mushy sen-
timentalism of the majority of the " Songs Without
Words" now, but think of them back in their
historical environment and you will not withhold
from them honor due. How hackneyed are the
"Spinning Song" and the "Hunting," "Spring,"
and "Gondolier" songs; but give your imagina-
tion a little flight: Mendelssohn sits playing them
210
The Romantic School
in Leipsic, Berlin, or London, while in a whited
sepulchre in Paris Herz's pianoforte scintillates
with scales, arpeggios, trills, and pretty broderies
above, below, and around melodic echoes of Rossini
and Bellini and Donizetti. How do the "Songs
Without Words" sound now? Pianistic babes and
sucklings have mastered their difficulties long ago,
but virtuosi who think seriously of their art still
play them in public, and we must not think it is
only to ingratiate themselves with boarding-school
misses.
So much for Mendelssohn's most marked con-
tribution to pianoforte literature in the depart-
ment of form; as for the fairy idiom of his scherzos,
though it, too, has been greatly abused, by him as
well as his successors, it was an inspiration straight
from the world of sunshine and happiness in which
Mendelssohn lived and moved and had his being;
and it is as substantial and beautiful a contribu-
tion to the language of music as the plangent tone
of Chopin's nocturnes even to-day. It was not in
vain that Mendelssohn's mother named him Felix,
and we should not repine that there was no tragedy
in his life which he found it necessary to proclaim.
It is a singular fact that this idiom fell into the mind
of the glorious boy when he wrote his overture to
"A Midsummer Night's Dream" in the same year
in which Weber, sinking pain-racked into his grave,
found appropriate and similar delineation for his
211
The Composers
fairy-folk in "Oberon." It proved to be service-
able in many instrumental forms, and though it has
been much abused, its charm remains perennial.
Mendelssohn's pieces for pianoforte solo num-
ber a round hundred, nearly half of them "Songs
Without Words," a too convenient and appealing
appellation. There are three sonatas, but they do
not mark high water; that is done by the "Varia-
tions seYieuses," which even Dr. Bie, who is sar-
castic and contemptuous because of the compos-
er's too persistent perfection of utterance, says are
" without a suspicion of triviality and filled with in-
tellectual lines and harmonies a splendid struct-
ure," though he thinks that " they rest on all sides
on Schumann." To him the "Songs Without
Words" are "folksongs in evening dress." In illus-
tration of what he considered the best in Men-
delssohn as regards artistic content Rubinstein se-
lected the third fugue, the first, third, seventh,
seventeenth, twenty-second, twenty-third, and
twenty-seventh " Songs Without Words," the " Ve-
netian Gondolier's Song," and the "Variations
se'rieuses"; for his technical significance the "Ca-
priccio" in F-sharp minor, "Rondo capriccioso,"
Scherzo in E minor, Fantasia in F minor, fitude
in F, and the "Scherzo capriccio," which last he
held to be the most valuable and individually char-
acteristic of all of Mendelssohn's pianoforte pieces.
For four hands he wrote an "Allegro brillante"
212
The Romantic School
and a "Duo concertante" (variations on the march
in "Preciosa") the latter with Moscheles. In the
department of chamber music Mendelssohn wrote
two sonatas for painoforte and violoncello, and
one sonata for pianoforte and violin; "Variations
concertantes" for pianoforte and violoncello; two
trios, and a sextet for pianoforte and strings; a
"Song Without Words" for pianoforte and vio-
loncello, and a piece called "The Evening Bell"
for pianoforte and harp, the bell in question being
that of Atwood's gate. He joined the pianoforte
with the orchestra in two concertos, a "Capriccio
brillante," a rondo, and a "Serenade and Allegro
giojoso." All of these were concert-room hobbies
in the heyday of the composer's popularity, the
vogue of the Concerto in G minor being so great
as to provoke Berlioz's amusing skit in which he
tells how the pianoforte at the Conservatoire at
an examination of pupils began at last to play the
concerto of itself at the mere approach of a pupil,
and the hammers continued jumping about even
after the instrument had been demolished and
thrown out of the window.
If I were to consult only my own mental comfort
I should omit all except a mere mention of him here
and classify Fre'de'ric Francois Chopin (1810-1849)
with the representatives of national schools of com-
position in the next chapter; but he has so long
been held up as an arch romanticist that such a step
213
The Composers
might prove disturbing. Chopin stands alone in
musical history. Albert Lavignac in his "Music
and Musicians" says: "Although France was the
country of his adoption, and, indeed, his family
were of French origin, I do not hesitate to class him
by reason of his affinities in the romantic school of
Germany." James Huneker says he remained aloof
from the romanticists, "though in a sympathetic
attitude," and was "a classic without knowing
it," but immediately attributes to him one of the
qualities which I have been pleased to think are
determinative of romanticism: "With Chopin form
was conditioned by the idea. He took up the
dancing patterns of Poland because they suited his
inner life." If these principles are dominant in his
music then Chopin is a romanticist, though a na-
tional romanticist because of his use of folksong
idioms, as we shall see hereafter. Then, too, we
should find him well consorted in this chapter with
Mendelssohn because of their common love for
architectural symmetry, their attitude toward pro-
gramme music, and their devotion to beauty, a
quality which they impressed upon even the most
native and characteristic of their utterances. Ad-
herence to architectural structure was forced upon
him by his adoption of dance forms for so many
of his compositions; but he made free with form
in the conception which is foremost in the mind of
the pedagogue the relative distribution of keys in
214
The Romantic School
a composition; and, therefore, if he was a classi-
cist in one sense, he was a romantic-classicist, as
Bach was at times, and Beethoven always.
Thus do our definitions rise up and seemingly try
to plague us. But we shall not permit them to do
so. They are, at least, like some of the so-called
scientific laws, "good working hypotheses."
We are not yet at the end of the Chopin paradox.
If it is difficult to deduce his artistic creed from his
works it is impossible to do so from what we know
of his musical predilections. He admired Mozart,
but disliked Schubert; thought Weber's pianoforte
music too operatic; seems to have believed that
Beethoven's greatness was largely summed up in
the C-sharp minor Sonata, and that Schumann's
music (the "Carnaval," at any rate) was scarcely
music at all. This apparently bears out Mr. Hune-
ker's contention that he was unconsciously a classi-
cist. But Chopin is a sentimentalist, despite the fact
that some virtuosi have tried to make him appear
otherwise by strenuous playing of his works; and
how can one who is devoted to sentimental ut-
terance be at heart a classicist? Dull a classicist
might be, commonplace, monotonous, and unin-
spired; but a morbid publisher of poppy and
mandragora, never. And Chopin is morbid, de-
spite the fact that Schumann declared him to be
"the boldest, the proudest soul of the time." Men-
delssohn, with a calmer view than Schumann,
215
The Composers
thought his playing "a little infected by the Parisian
mania for despondency and straining for emotional
vehemence."
I do not know that Mr. John F. Runciman, who
says many things only to startle his readers, ought
to count when he classes Chopin among the "in-
heritors of rickets and exhausted physical frames";
but he has many among the composer's admirers
who believe with him that his music is "sick, un-
healthy music." Dr. Niecks, his greatest biog-
rapher, confesses that there is seductive poison in
the nocturnes, and prescribes Bach and Beethoven
as antidotes. Heinrich Pudor is a greater ex-
tremist than Runciman, one who affects at least to
despise all modern tendencies. "No less deca-
dent," he writes, the reference being to Wagner and
Liszt, " is Chopin, whose figure comes before one as
flesh without bones this morbid, womanish, slip-
slop, powerless, sickly, bleached, sweet-caramel
Pole." Dr. Bie is more discriminating. An en-
thusiastic admirer of Chopin's music, he yet utters
a protest against putting it in the hands of the
young.
We know that the extreme of culture is closely allied to
decay, for perfect ripeness is but the foreboding of corruption.
Children, of course, do not know this, and Chopin himself
would have been much too noble ever to lay bare his mental
sickness to the world, and his greatness lies precisely in this:
that he preserves the mean between immaturity and decay.
216
The Romantic School
His greatness is his aristocracy. He stands among musicians
in his faultless vesture a noble from head to foot. The sub-
limest emotions toward whose refinement whole generations
had tended, the last things in our soul whose foreboding is
interwoven with the mystery of judgment day, have in his
music found their form.
This is rather extravagant, but Chopin enthusi-
asts are prone to hyperbole, and as we have per-
mitted Runciman and Pudor to have their say we
can only in justice give the other side a hearing.
ThusHuneker: 1
Chopin neither preaches nor paints, yet his art is decora-
tive and dramatic though in the climate of the ideal. He
touches earth and its emotional issues in Poland only; other-
wise his music is a pure aesthetic delight, an artistic enchant-
ment, freighted with no ethical or theatric messages. It is
poetry made audible, the "soul written in sound."
Rubinstein:
The piano bard, the piano rhapsodist, the piano mind, the
piano soul is Chopin. Tragic, romantic, lyric, heroic, dra-
matic, fantastic, soulful, sweet, dreamy, brilliant, grand, sim-
ple all possible expressions are found in his compositions
and all are sung by him upon his instrument.
And Tappert:
If ever a composer deserved the title tone-poet, it was
Chopin. He set chords to vibrating which had never been
1 "Chopin, the Man and His Music," p. 116.
217
The Composers
touched before, and have not been touched since. He asked
little about rule and formula, and what he learned is of minor
importance in his works. He dipped his transporting melodies
and harmonic combinations out of an original and brimming
fountain of invention. Unlettered in the sense of any par-
ticular pedagogic tendency, he handles his natural gifts with
the utmost freedom. In the matter of the pianoforte, its
technic, and all that relates to the two, Chopin must be set
down as the greatest and most skilful genius. Even the tini-
est leaf of his graceful arabesques can be traced from a poetic
impulse. He never aimed merely at vain bravura. . . . The
once homeless stranger has everywhere found a home. In life
the suffering exile won a crown of thorns; a grateful posterity
crowned him with laurel. He passed into the land of eternal
harmony. He came, charmed, and died!
Like many of the virtuosi-composers who pre-
ceded him, Chopin wrote almost exclusively for the
pianoforte. Among his compositions are seven-
teen settings of Polish poems for voice and piano-
forte, and these, together with five works for piano-
forte and orchestra, four chamber pieces in which
the instrument is used in combination with strings,
and a rondo for four hands, make up the sum of
his compositions which are not pianoforte solos.
The entire list of published works, including a polo-
naise of doubtful authenticity, numbers close on to
two hundred. For pianoforte and orchestra there
are two concertos, a "Fantasia on Polish airs," a
"Krakowiak," and a set of variations; for piano-
forte and violoncello a sonata, an "Introduction and
Polonaise," and a "Grand Duo Concertanto" on
218
The Romantic School
a Theme from " Robert le Diable." His solos em-
brace 56 Mazurkas, 27 Etudes, 25 Preludes, 19 Noc-
turnes, 15 Waltzes, 13 Polonaises, 4 Rondos, 4
Ballades, 4 Scherzos, 3 Sonatas, 3 Impromptus,
3 Ecossaises, 3 sets of Variations, 2 Fantasias, i Tar-
antelle, i Berceuse, i Barcarolle, i "Concert
Allegro," i "Marche funebre," and i Bolero.
Though some of the most friendly analysts of
Chopin's music have fallen foul of his two con-
certos and denied them a place among his greatest
and most characteristic works, both have main-
tained a place in the active lists of concert pianists
for two generations. If Chopin's genius were gen-
erally recognized as the loftiest that his century
saw in music, this fact would not be calculated to
cause so much wonder. Then his concertos would
themselves create the standard by which they
would have to be judged, and one might think them
inferior to all his other compositions and still hold
them to be without a rival so far as the concertos
of others are concerned. But that is not the case,
and the admiration and love with which they are
regarded, though confessedly faulty, is a beautiful
tribute to their winsomeness and subtle charm.
They date back to the early manhood of the com-
poser, having been composed in the reverse order of
their publication when he was still in Warsaw and
before he had won fame outside of his native land.
Yet they are full of the unmistakable individuality
219
m The Composers
of his genius, not only in the exquisite gracefulness
of the figuration and melodic ornament, but also in
the character of the melodies themselves. This is
particularly true of the slow movement of the second
concerto (in F minor), which is the imperishable
monument which the composer reared to an early
love, that for Constantina Gladkowska, a singer. A
great drawback to the popularity of the concertos
has been found in the ineffectiveness of their orches-
tral parts; wherefore these have been rewritten
whether successfully or not critical opinion has not
yet determined. It was Mr. Edward Dannreuth-
er's opinion that the concertos were most effective
when played on two pianofortes.
The Etudes have a purpose indicated by their
title, which is to develop the technique of piano-
forte playing along the line of the composer's dis-
coveries his method of playing extended arpeggios,
contrasted rhythms, progressions in thirds, octaves,
etc. but some of them breathe poetry and even
passion. The title "Preludes" can scarcely be
considered as more than a makeshift, adopted in
default of a better one. It indicates nothing of the
character of the pieces which have aptly been com-
pared to sketches in an artist's portfolio notes,
memoranda, impressions, studies in color, light and
shade, contrasts and contours. Schumann said of
them: "They are sketches, beginnings of studies,
or, if you will, ruins, single eagle-wings, all strangely
220
The Romantic School
mixed together." Some of the most strikingly beau-
tiful of the composer's inspirations are gathered
under this head in Op. 28. The prototypes of the
Nocturnes, dreamy, contemplative, even elegiac
pieces, we have met in the principal compositions
of John Field. The term "Ballade," however, is
an invention of Chopin's, who applied it to four
compositions written between 1836 and 1843.
These works have in common that they are written
in triple time and belong to the composer's finest
inspirations. Schumann said on the authority of
Chopin himself that they were prompted by Mickie-
wicz's poems, and that a poet might easily write
words to them. They are moody and passionate,
and may be said to have correspondence with
Schumann's "Noveletten" and Liszt's "Sonnets."
Byron could find no good in a waltz, which was to
him only "a damned seesaw, up and down sort of
tune." Evidently he knew only the poorest waltzes
of the ball-room, or was, like Lamb, organically un-
musical. Chopin's waltzes are salon music of an
aristocratic kind. Ehlert called them "dances of
the soul, not of the body," and Schumann, in his
guise of Florestan, declared that he could not play
the one in A-flat for a dance unless at least half of
the women dancers were countesses.
The term "scherzo" which Chopin gave to four
of his compositions has struck some writers as being
just as arbitrary as prelude and nocturne, and even
The Composers
more anomalous. "How is gravity to clothe itself
if jest goes about in dark veils?" asked Schumann,
commenting on the first scherzo. We have since
learned, as Schumann might have learned from
Beethoven, that the emotional content of a sym-
phonic scherzo need not always be jocose; that the
term, indeed, may sometimes stand only for the
form of a composition. There is more madness
than merriment, more tragedy than comedy, in the
forced and desperate gayety of many Slavic scherzos,
and the struggle between the human and the divine
which is reflected in Beethoven's C minor symphony
is carried on as grimly in the third movement as in
the first, yet, though Beethoven scrupled to call it
such, that third movement is a scherzo.
The few attempts which Chopin made to express
himself in the larger forms all appear to be more or
less desultory. They are offshoots from the gen-
eral tendency of his genius. It is plain that he did
not move without constraint in the sonata form, and
that he could not always find in it characteristic and
unembarrassed expression. For this reason there
has been considerable discussion over the merits and
demerits of the sonatas in B minor and B-flat minor;
the one in C minor being universally admitted to be
inferior. Schumann and Liszt, both admirers of
Chopin, felt constrained to pronounce against the
works. But whatever may be said in criticism of
them on the score of their deficiencies in form and
223
The Romantic School
lack of unity, the opulence and beauty of their
musical ideas have argued irresistibly in their be-
half, and they are played as much to-day as ever
they were, if not more.
This must suffice for Chopin here; some remarks
on his national dances, mazurka and polonaise,
may be reserved for the next chapter. Between him
and the last of the really great composers there do
not stand many to detain us. On one only would I
like to dwell if space permitted. This is Stephen
Heller (1815-1888), a musician of rare elegance and
distinction, as truly a Tondichter as contradistin-
guished from a Tonsetzer as was Chopin. He, too,
though not a Frenchman, made his home in Paris,
much to the regret of Schumann, who had hailed
his coming as he had hailed Chopin's, and who
feared the influence of French art and life on the
young Bohemian. But Heller, though he lived fifty
years among the French, was not of the French.
Devoted to the smaller lyric forms, he never became
a salon composer in the popular sense. He wished
to extend his literary and historical studies, and to
that end found Paris propitious. He had started
out as a virtuoso, but nervousness prevented him
from pursuing the career. He taught, wrote essays
for the "Gazette musicale," and composed. He
wrote studies, eclogues, fantasies, caprices, bal-
lades, and dances, besides a set of delightful effu-
sions which are called "Flower, Fruit, and Thorn
223
The Composers
Pieces" (after Jean Paul's book) in Germany, but
for which no better title could be found in French
than "Restless Nights" (Nuits blanches). Fickle
taste has dallied with many an idol since Heller's
first pieces came to charm, but he has remained the
admiration of musicians. Chopin's waltzes seem
to be for that society of which Heller said that the
higher you went in it the denser was the ignorance
which you found. Heller's waltzes are reflective,
introspective, "physiognomical," as Louis Kohler
wrote in 1879. They may not be waltzes to be
danced, but they are at least dances to be felt and
brooded over. His studies are less for the fingers
than for the heart and mind. They inculcate music
in its ethereal essence rather than its mechanical
manifestations. Like the "Blumen, Frucht, und
Dornenstiicke," they are proclamations of moods
moods dreamy, fantastic, aerial, riant, defiant, inert,
leaden, perverse, like those which possessed the
creatures of Jean Paul Friedrich Richter's fecund
fancy.
Adolf Henselt (1814-1885) wrote in a brilliant
style and with a nobility suggestive of Chopin. He
was poetical even in his Etudes, one of which (" If
I were a Bird") won a place in the concert-room
which it still holds, as does his dashing and grandi-
ose concerto in F minor. Henselt was a pupil of
Hummel for eight months as a lad, and spent the
last fifty years of his life in St. Petersburg.
224
The Romantic School
William Sterndale Bennett (1816-1875) was an
ingratiating echo of Mendelssohn in his native Eng-
land. He wrote among other things for the piano-
forte four concertos, a fantasia with orchestra, a
trio, and a sonata in F minor. Schumann dedi-
cated his " Etudes symphoniques" to him. Bennett
was in Leipsic when the work was composed, and
Schumann, in a letter to his sister, wrote of him that
he was "a glorious artist and a lovely poet soul."
To make the tribute which he wished to pay as
beautiful and fragrant as possible, and at the same
time a compliment to the English people, it has
been said that Schumann abandoned the theme
almost completely in the final variation (the march)
and built up a new melody on the basis of a phrase
from the romance which Ivanhoe sings in praise of
Richard Cceur de Lion in Marschner's opera "Tem-
plar and Jewess." It is a pretty conceit that by
quoting the first phrase of the romance in which
England is enjoined to rejoice in the possession of
so chivalric a king as Lionheart an allusion to Ben-
nett was intended. I do not wish wholly to destroy
it, but it is nevertheless true that Schumann's finale
might easily have come into being had Marschner's
melody never been written; and, indeed, by a device
which is frequently employed in the course of the
preceding variations viz., that of inversion. It is
no strain to fancy that Schumann conceived the be-
ginning of his march melody only as an inversion
225
The Composers
and transposition into the major mode of the begin-
ning of the theme of the entire composition.
Woldemar Bargiel (1828-1897) wrote one fantasia
which he thought worthy of a dedication to his step-
sister, Clara Schumann (he was the son of the
divorced wife of Friedrich Wieck), and another
which he inscribed to Johannes Brahms. Joachim
Raff (1822-1882) is much better known as a sym-
phonist than as a writer for the pianoforte, yet he
wrote a concerto and a suite which were very popu-
lar in their day. The programmatic tendency illus-
trated in his orchestral compositions is also char-
acteristic of some of his smaller pianoforte pieces,
Schumann's successors in all departments cul-
tivated by him called themselves "new roman-
ticists," and the movement which they represented
received a tribute in the shape of an " Hommage au
Neoromantisme " composed by Raff. Among them,
though not admitted by the radicals, is Johannes
Brahms (1833-1897), who provided the generation
which is now passing away with the best music
which came into its life in all fields except the
operatic. Schumann greeted him at the beginning
of his career in an essay ("Neue Bahnen") which
might well have turned the head of any composer,
even an older; but it left Brahms unspoiled. To
Schumann the sonatas which the new-comer played
for him sounded like "veiled symphonies," and the
suggestion of an orchestral idiom marks his piano-
226
The Romantic School
forte pieces, as it does those of Beethoven and
Schumann himself. Yet, like those giants, Brahms
was profoundly interested in the technique of the
instrument. Like them, too, he disclosed the dig-
nity and profundity of his art hi his variations. He
gave his first public concert when a boy of fourteen,
and though the affair had been arranged by his
teacher to exploit his skill as a pianist the pro-
gramme contained an original set of variations on a
German folksong. Ever after, in all departments
to which Brahms contributed, the old love for the
form asserted itself. Prominent among his works
are the variations on themes by Handel, Haydn,
Paganini, and Schumann.
Brahms's genius was essentially Teutonic; he
was, indeed, what Wagner imagined his Tann-
hauser, "German from top to toe." His devotion
to German ideals was exemplified in his rugged
honesty, his sturdy yet tender affection, his con-
tempt for affectation, his simplicity, and his candor,
which frequently overstepped the line of demarca-
tion between courtesy and rudeness. Like his
revered models, he represented the element of
both classicism and romanticism hi their best es-
tates; and like them, too, he raised his structures
polyphonically. He was a master of form, but he
moulded the form to suit the contents, and he left
the vessel shapely and transparent. He wrote
much for the pianoforte, but never carelessly.
227
The Composers
Carelessness, indeed, was wholly foreign to his
nature. From the beginning to the end of his
career he exemplified the Horatian maxim and kept
many of his works away from the public, not for
nine years only, but forever. He wrote two con-
certos, three sonatas, five sets of variations, one
scherzo, one ballade, and a large number of short
pieces called variously rhapsodies, intermezzos, and
caprices, and published in groups. His last pub-
lications were in this form. His chamber music
consists of three trios, three quartets, and one quin-
tet for pianoforte and strings, three sonatas with
violin, two sonatas with violoncello, a trio with vio-
lin and horn, a trio with clarinet and violoncello,
and a set of waltzes (" Liebeslieder") for two piano-
fortes and four solo voices.
XI
National Schools
THOUGH in a general way I have pursued a
chronological course in these studies, I have
not tied myself down to dates because, as I have
intimated, dates do not mark clearly the progressive
steps in art, science, or learning. Neither have I
tried to mention all the pianoforte composers whose
names have been written brightly on the roll of
fame in the course of the last century and a quarter.
These studies do not make up either a historical
hand-book or a guide to pianoforte literature. If
this had been their design I should now be scarcely
at the beginning of my task instead of near the close.
Never before was so much pianoforte music written
as now; but, it must be added, never before was so
little of the product of the day utilized by virtuosi.
If, then, the apprehension touching the critical at-
titude of these writings at the end which I expressed
in an earlier chapter should now be verified, I shall
at least be able to shield myself behind the men
whose business it is to stand between the creative
artist and the public. If they are unwilling to play
the pianoforte music composed by their contem-
229
The Composers
poraries (they are always willing to play their own),
why should I be bound to discuss it ? I have been
frank in all things heretofore; let me continue to
be frank to the end of the book, and confess that I
feel very little sympathetic interest in the composi-
tions with which pianoforte literature is being ex-
tended in this latter day. Yet this is not because
of an excessive conservatism of the kind which is
willing to find beauty only in that which belongs to
the days of old. Music is too young an art and its
progress in some departments within the last genera-
tion or two has been too obvious to give color of
truth to the assertion that its capabilities have been
exhausted. Nor can it be said that the public is
indifferent to the creations of the present. On the
contrary, every novelty from a famous pen is scru-
tinized with almost feverish eagerness by concert
players in the hope that it may prove good enough
to be included in their repertories. Yet how small
is the proportion of the music given out by the
writers of to-day which takes hold upon the popular
heart or finds an abiding place in the popular
affections! A study of the programmes of a sea-
son's concerts in New York which I made some
years ago (there has been no change in conditions
since, except that Brahms has died) disclosed that
out of 256 miscellaneous pianoforte compositions
played (concertos and sonatas being excluded) more
than two-thirds were the works of masters of the
230
National Schools
past; and the remaining one-third included the
productions of all living and local composers who
in various ways, such as giving concerts of their own
works, got their names in the list. The concertos
played included practically every work of this class
which has maintained itself in the concert-room,
thus representing the survival of the fittest of a cen-
tury's productions. Here is, however, a fact more
significant still: sixteen of Beethoven's sonatas
were played a number several times greater than
all the sonatas of other composers combined. Ob-
viously, I am not alone in a want of sympathy with
latter-day pianoforte compositions; it is shared by
the pianists themselves.
Is there a lesson to be learned from this? I
think so; but before I attempt to look for it let me
draw a few other factors into the problem. Music,
especially pianoforte music, was never so univer-
sally cultivated as now. Musical pedagogy never
before reached the eminence which it occupies now.
On its mechanical side it has profited by the patient
plodding of centuries; on its intellectual it has bene-
fited by the researches of wise men who have lifted
some of the elements of interpretation almost to a
science. Printed music was never so cheap as now.
The pianoforte of to-day has many times the power
and richness of tone of the instrument of fifty years
ago. Science has lent its aid to make it an instru-
ment capable of asserting itself against an orchestra
The Composers
of a hundred, and at the same time of giving voice
to the tremulous and all but inaudible sigh. Why
should not this be the Golden Age of pianoforte
music ?
First Because it is not an artistic age in any
sense. It is the age of science, politics, and com-
merce, the last activity determining the course and
activities of the two others. It is an age shod with
iron. The flowers of art do not and cannot spring
up in its path. Indescribably brilliant, but hard
and cruel, are the sparks which it strikes out in its
thunderous progress. That is one reason. There
is another, which is inherent in the development of
music itself. Who it was that first made the ob-
servation I do not know, but it is an axiom that
a period of highest technical achievement in art is
contemporary with a period of decay in production;
that is to say, the period of the mere virtuoso (and
there are now virtuosi in the domain of composi-
tion) is not that of the creative artist. It is not
difficult to find out some of the reasons why this
should be so; a little hunting will discover them.
But here is a hint as to the direction which the
search may take: In old Greece when Pindar was
alive and writing his odes in praise of the winners
at the Pythian and Olympian games there was a
flute-player, named Midas, who was one of those
thus gloriously celebrated. But what feat of Mi-
das's was it the record of which has come down to
2J2
National Schools
us with the tribute of Hellenic applause ? At a cer-
tain concert, while playing, he lost the mouthpiece
of his instrument, yet managed to finish the piece
with great bravura without it. In Midas we have
the prototype of the modern virtuoso, and in the
Greeks who applauded him the prototype of the
modern public, which in all the domains of art is
more inclined to look at the manner than the mat-
ter, which comes into the concert-room to be as-
tounded and bewildered by feats of skill rather than
to enjoy music.
Interest is added to the compositions of a very
considerable number of composers of the last half
century by reason of the adoption by them of the
idioms of the folkmusic of the peoples to which
they belonged. These idioms are evidences of ro-
manticism in two aspects they have provided new
contents as well as new forms to artistic music.
They have also made possible the classification of
composers and compositions into schools on lines
which were unknown in the earlier history of the art.
In the classical periods of operatic and church
music the boundaries of so-called "schools" were
composed of dates and the names of masters and
the places of their principal activity. Composers
and their pupils who congregated in Rome or
Florence or Milan were described as representa-
tives of the Roman, Florentine, or Milanese schools,
notwithstanding that there was nothing in their
233
The Composers
music which belonged specifically to those musical
capitals. For a long time, except as language and
its influence upon melodic declamation modified the
manifestations, there was no essential difference be-
tween Italian, French, and German opera. When
national or historical subjects other than those
drawn from antiquity came to be used it got to be
the custom to speak of the products of the opera-
houses in different political capitals as if they had
patriotic significance; but as a matter of fact the
musical integument was long the same whether the
hero of an opera was called Alexander, Cyrus,
Julius Caesar, Charlemagne, or Gustavus Adolphus
whether the plot turned on a classic myth or a
popular romance. The talk about national schools
began when national subjects were chosen for
operas, or titles drawn from the history, geography,
literature, or folklore of a country were given to in-
strumental music of a descriptive or programmatic
character. But the musical settings did not be-
come "racy of the soil," as the phrase goes, until
the influence of the German romantic school had
made itself felt among the composers of other
countries. Inasmuch, then, as composers for a
while all drew their inspiration from Germany, their
music had to wait until it occurred to them to go
to the people's songs and dances for characteristic
elements. There were sporadic cases of the use of
national idioms in an earlier period, but they were
234
National Schools
not influential. Thus Beethoven used Russian
melodies in two of the quartets which he composed
for Count Rasoumowsky; Schubert's Op. 54 is a
" Divertissement a la hongroise" for pianoforte, four
hands; Haydn adapted Croatian melodies for his
works, changing them to suit his purposes without
giving them characteristic expression; Mozart, Beeth-
oven, Weber, and others utilized local color bor-
rowed from Oriental music orchestral pieces which
made large use of instruments of percussion, like
cymbals, triangle, and large drum, being called
"Janizary " or " Turkish " music. Mozart's " Turk-
ish March" in the Sonata in A major, Beeth-
oven's incidental music for "The Ruins of
Athens," the tenor solo variation in the finale of
the symphony in D minor, Weber's "Preciosa" and
the overture to "Turandot" (built on a Chinese
tune) are familiar examples.
In the sense which is to prevail in this chapter
the first distinctive school in the field (all classicists
belonging to the school universal) was the Scan-
dinavian, the chief representatives of which are the
Danes: J. P. E. Hartmann (1805-1900) and Niels
W. Gade (1817-1890); the Norwegians: Halfdan
Kjerulf (1815-1868), Johann Svendsen (1840- ),
Richard Nordraak (1842-1866), Edvard Grieg
(1843-1907), and Christian Sinding (1856- ) ; the
Swedes: Ludwig Norman (1831-1885), J. A. Soder-
mann (1832-1870), Andreas Halle'n (1846- ),
235
The Composers
Emil Sjogren (1853- ), and Wilhelm Sten-
hammar (1871- ). The composers of Finland
are generally counted among the Scandinavians,
because Finland was completely under the in-
fluence of Sweden for over four hundred years,
but few of the elements of the ancient folkmusic of
the Finns (who are of Ugrian stock and more
closely connected in racial relationship with the
Hungarians than with the people of the Northland)
have got into artistic music, and in this study no
Finnish composer calls for mention, except, pos-
sibly, Jean Sibelius (1865- ), whose most ex-
pressive instrument is the orchestra, though he has
written transcriptions of Finnish melodies for the
pianoforte.
In a general way all Scandinavian composers may
be described as romanticists, with a leaning toward
conservatism in the matter of form. Danish folk-
melodies were introduced into a Danish opera
("Elverhoe") by Kuhlau, a German, in 1828, but
little attention was paid to their idiom until after
A. P. Berggreen (1801-1880), who was one of
Cade's teachers, made his admirable collection of
folksongs. The "real founder of the national
Scandinavian school in the nineteenth century, the
creator of Danish romanticism," according to Dr.
Walter Niemann, 1 was J. P. E. Hartmann, a com-
1 " Die Musik Scandinaviens," Leipsic, Brcitkopf und Hartel,
1908.
236
National Schools
poser of operas, dramatic overtures, and a ballet,
"The Valkyria," besides a sonata, novelettes,
studies, and caprices for the pianoforte. His suc-
cessor in the leadership was Gade, who was also his
son-in-law, the friend of Schumann and Mendels-
sohn, associate conductor with the latter in Leipsic
and after his death long director of the Gewandhaus
concerts. He wrote copiously symphonies, over-
tures (the "Nachklange aus Ossian" is still a po-
tent Bardic voice), and cantatas, but he is most
specifically national in his pianoforte pieces, among
which are "Norse Tone Pictures" and "Folk
Dances." He dedicated a sonata in E minor to
Liszt. Of recent years Ludvig Schytte (1848- )
has composed some pieces with a pretty glitter.
Halfdan Kjerulf, who opens the Norwegian list, was
a gentle and tender lyrist in his pianoforte pieces
as well as his songs. Edmund Neupert (1842-
1888), to whom Grieg dedicated his pianoforte con-
certo, was an efficient propagandist for the music of
his country, especially in America, where he spent a
considerable portion of his life. Little importance
attaches to the pianoforte music of Svendsen; and
Nordraak, though he composed Norway's national
hymn, acquires his chief significance from the influ-
ence which he exerted upon Grieg at a critical time
in his life. It was a protest against Gade which
put Grieg at the head of the Scandinavian school
and gave it the individuality and potency which it
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now enjoys. In his early years Grieg had taken
Gade for his model, but shortly after embarking on
his artistic career he fell under the influence of Nor-
draak, a young musician of great talent and a
Norwegian patriot of uncompromising aggressive-
ness. To Nordraak the nationalism of Gade
seemed pallid and ineffective. It was too full of
Mendelssohnian suavity. It is still possible for us
to enjoy the gentle and poetic melancholy of Cade's
B-flat symphony, which erstwhile awakened so
much enthusiasm in Schumann; yet it must be con-
fessed that it sounds archaic even by the side of Men-
delssohn's "Scotch." But put aside modern ideals
and there is a beauty in the gloom of the fjords and
the shadows of the forests which pervade it and
heighten the effect of the sunny delights which fell
into its scherzo from the breezy mountain pastures;
yet we can well understand how when Grieg, a Nor-
wegian to the backbone (though of Scotch extrac-
tion on his father's side), acquired the needed degree
of self-reliance, he resolved to be more truthful and
less sophisticated than Gade had been. And so
there crept out of his music some of its gentleness
and mellifluous grace, and there stalked into it a
strength, a grim vigor, and a sort of uncouthness
which are native to the North and its people.
Grieg's short mood pieces, far and away the best
of his compositions, are in the key set by the North.
By turns they depict the sadness and the boisterous
National Schools
humor natural to a people oppressed by the cli-
matic rigors of the Scandinavian peninsula.
"Grieg is greatest in small things," says Dr.
Niemenn, whose admiration is evidenced not only
by the dedication to him of his book on Scandina-
vian music but also in the assertion that the Con-
certo in A minor is the most beautiful work of its
kind since Schumann. "His ten books of Lyric
Pieces," the same critic adds, "are the musical
Testament of the Norway of the nineteenth century,
the musical reflex of the land of the vikings, with its
silent, light night, gilded by the midnight sun, its
tempest-tossed coasts, its snow-covered highlands,
lonely valleys, lakes, rivers, and innumerous cas-
cades." The composer has suffered from the too
extravagant praise of his friends, who have too
persistently ignored the greater poetical tenderness
of some of his Norse compatriots and the virility
and broader vision of a composer like Christian
Sinding. Grieg himself knew his limitations better
than they and was frank in his confession of them.
"Artists like Bach and Beethoven," he wrote,
"erected churches and temples on the heights. I
wanted, as Ibsen expresses it in one of his last
dramas, to build dwellings for men in which they
might feel at home and happy. In other words, I
have recorded the folkmusic of my land. In
style and form I have remained a German ro-
manticist of the Schumann school; but at the
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same time I have dipped from the rich treasures of
native folksong and sought to create a national art
out of this hitherto unexploited emanation of the
folksoul of Norway." Ole Olesen (1850- ),who
wrote the funeral march for Grieg, has written
also a notable Suite for pianoforte and orchestra;
and Agathe Backer-Grondahl (1842-1899), even if
she had not excited interest as a virtuoso and be-
cause she was a woman, would merit attention
because of her " Romantische Stiicke," dainty min-
iatures quite worthy of a place beside Grieg's instru-
mental lyrics.
Besides German influences, French and Italian
have been at work in Sweden ever since music
entered into its culture. The opera at Stockholm
is still essentially an Italian institution. Neverthe-
less, K. Stenborg (1752-1813) introduced Swedish
melodies into his operas, and the spirit of national
music has been promoted by Norman, Sodermann,
Halle"n, Sjogren, and Stenhammar. Sjogren's po-
etic fancy is gentle and refined and less robust than
that exhibited by Stenhammar in his Concerto in
B-flat.
Nine-tenths of the glory with which Polish music
is surrounded shines from the name of Chopin;
yet, though he has been held up persistently as a
paragon among national composers, there is a point
of view from which the musical expression of his
patriotism might be questioned. The voice of the
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Polish people is predominantly heroic, while Cho-
pin's, though not without an infusion of healthy
vigor and vivacity, is yet predominantly languid and
melancholy. This trait in his music seems to me
to be much more personal than national. It is not
fair to the folkmusic of Poland, the expression of
the people's heart, to make it responsible for the
weak emotionalism which tinctures so many of Cho-
pin's works, or for that feeling for which he could
find no definition outside of the Polish word zal,
which, Liszt says, "means sadness, pain, sorrow,
grief, trouble, repentance, etc." There is melan-
choly, indeed, in Polish folkmusic, and it would be
impossible to avoid the effect of it while making
such frequent use of the Oriental scale, with its
augmented intervals, as the Polish folk-musicians
did; but the spirit of Polish song speaks more
truthfully in its characteristic rhythms than in its
aberrations from the diatonic scale of Occidental
music. Mr. Ignaz Jan Paderewski (1859- ) is
a truer musical patriot than Chopin, at least in one
of the several contributions which he has made to
national pianoforte music by his "Fantasie Polo-
naise" for pianoforte and orchestra. In Chopin's
Mazurkas (of which he composed over half a hun-
dred) we are compelled to hear a Parisian idealiza-
tion of the characteristic Polish dance modulated to
the key of the French salons. Mr. Paderewski is
more democratic. In the second and last of the
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The Composers
sections of his fantasia the people dance not in
courtly but in peasant fashion; you hear the clatter
of heavy soles and hobnails, as in the scherzo of the
"Pastoral Symphony." A truer national voice is
heard in Chopin's polonaises, where the form adapts
itself better to proud and patriotic utterance. The
polonaise was the stately dance of the Polish nobil-
ity full of gravity and courtliness, of "state and
ancientry," more like a march or procession than a
dance, resembling in this what the pavan must have
been in its prime. The music now has an imposing
and majestic rhythm in triple time, with a tendency
to emphasis on the second beat of the measure and
an occasional division of the first beat into two notes,
with the stress of syncopation on the second, like
the "Scotch snap," or the Hungarian alia zoppa.
Mr. Paderewski has shown both learning and
fine aptitude for the large and erudite forms in a
sonata and his last set of variations, and his con-
certo is Polish to a degree.
A couple of concertos, like his symphony " Jeanne
d'Arc" and his opera " Boabdil," speak of a longing
for lofty flights on the part of Moritz Moszkowski
(1854- ), but his popularity among amateur
pianists at least rests upon smaller things, like " Aus
Allen Herren Landen," for pianoforte, four hands
(in which national forms and styles are pleasingly
imitated), the "Etincelles" and "Tarantelle."
There is pronounced nationalism in the composi-
243
IGNAZ JAN PADEREWSKI.
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tions of Philipp and Xaver Scharwenka (born re-
spectively in 1847 and 1850). The latter has more
closely identified himself with pianoforte music
as performer and composer than his elder brother,
who has devoted himself largely to teaching, and
in composition has shown a predilection for the
larger forms and apparatuses. Xaver Scharwenka
has written four pianoforte concertos, two sonatas,
and many smaller pieces, including some Polish
dances.
Bohemia has a musical history which is quite as
brilliant and remarkable as its literary, a love for
music and aptitude in its practice seeming to be the
birthright of every son of the country, be he German
or Czech. For over two centuries some of the lead-
ing musicians of Europe, composers as well as per-
formers, have come out of Bohemia. Notice must be
taken of such a list as Gyrowetz (1763-1850), Van-
hal (already mentioned with other compatriots),
Dyonysius Weber (1766-1842), Wranitzky (1756-
1808), Duschek (1736-1799), Dreyschock (to
whom we shall recur when we reach the study of
the virtuosi), Kalliwoda (1801-1866), the Benda
family, especially Georg (1722-1795), Stamitz
(1717-1761), Bendl (1838-1897), Skroup (1801-
1862), Smetana (1824-1884), Dvorak (1841-1904),
and Fibich (1850-190x3). Not all of these men
have significance in the history of pianoforte
music, but Antonin Dvorak made notable contri-
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The Composers
butions to the chamber music field with his quartet
and quintet for pianoforte and strings, wrote a
pianoforte concerto which deserves more attention
than it has received from pianists, and enriched
the literature of the instruments with two forms
drawn from the folkmusic of his native land the
Dumka, of an elegiac character, and the Furiant,
a wild scherzo.
The name of Franz Liszt (1811-1886) looms large
in the annals of the pianoforte and its music. His
playing established the modern cult as well as the
modern technical system, bringing the latter to as
high a degree of perfection as seems possible with
the instrument constructed as it now is. It was
Liszt's good fortune to discover capabilities in the
pianoforte which up to his time had not been thought
of, and the fact that he developed them more on their
external side than on their spiritual is accounted for
by the fact that he was a virtuoso who from child-
hood to his death as an old man lived in the incense
of popular adulation. Quite early in his career he
conceived the idea that the pianoforte was a uni-
versal instrument in the sense that it could be made
to speak the language of the entire instrumental
company. When he published his arrangements of
Beethoven's symphonies he stated that every or-
chestral effect could be reproduced on the piano-
forte. When Mendelssohn read this he turned to
the G minor symphony of Mozart and said: "Let
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me hear the first eight measures with the figure in
the violas played on the pianoforte so that they will
sound as they do in the band, and I will believe it."
It is not necessary to think that Liszt intended that
his remark should be accepted in its full literalness;
but the story serves to direct attention to the high
merit of Liszt as a transcriber, and to the fact that
with him the orchestral style came boldly into piano-
forte music. It had been lurking there since Bee-
thoven, but now it came forward as an aim not
merely as a means. Since Liszt opened new paths
there has been no writer for the instrument who
has not been a greater composer for the orchestra
than for the pianoforte. Let the names of Raff, Ru-
binstein, Saint-Saens, Tschaikowsky, and Brahms
be offered in evidence. Liszt's place as an orig-
inal composer of pianoforte music is still unde-
termined, despite his two concertos, with their
superb tonal effects and their firmly knit logical
structure; the imposing Sonata in B minor, the
"Consolations," "Harmonies poe'tiques et religi-
euses," the "Dream Nocturnes," "Amides de Pe'le-
rinage," the "Le"gendes,"and the scintillant fitudes;
but the transcriptions of Schubert's songs are
unique and so are his "Hungarian Rhapsodies,"
which are much more than mere transcriptions,
though they are constructed out of the folktunes of
the Magyars, and frequently disclose the character-
istic features of the performances which they re-
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The Composers
ceive at the hands of the Gypsies, from whom Liszt
learned them. This fact (to which Liszt gave cur-
rency in his book, "Des Bohemians et de leur
Musique en Hongrie") has given rise to the gen-
eral belief that the folksongs of Hungary are of
Gypsy origin. This belief is erroneous, as I have
argued in my book, "How to Listen to Music,"
from which I draw what I have still to say on the
subject of the Rhapsodies. The Gypsies have for
centuries been the musical practitioners of Hun-
gary, but they are not the composers of the music
of the Magyars, though they have put a marked
impress not only on the melodies, but also on popu-
lar taste. The Hungarian folksongs are a perfect
reflex of the national character of the Magyars, and
some have been traced back centuries in their
literature. Though their most marked melodic
peculiarity, the frequent use of a minor scale con-
taining one or even two superfluous seconds, may
be said to belong to Oriental music generally (and
the Magyars are Orientalists), the songs have a
rhythmical peculiarity which is a direct product of
the Magyar language. This peculiarity consists of
a figure in which the emphasis is shifted from the
strong to the weak part by making the first take
only a fraction of the time of the second. It is the
"Scotch snap" already alluded to, but in Hun-
garian music it occurs in the middle of the measure
instead of the beginning. The result is a syncopa-
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tion which is peculiarly forceful. There is an in-
dubitable Oriental relic in the profuse embellish-
ments which the Gypsies weave around the Hun-
garian melodies when playing them; but the fact
that they thrust the same embellishments upon
Spanish and Russian music indeed, upon all the
music which they play indicates plainly enough
that the impulse to do so is native to them, and has
nothing to do with the national taste of the countries
for which they provide music.
Liszt's confessed purpose in writing the "Hun-
garian Rhapsodies" was to create what he called
"Gypsy Epics." He had gathered a large num-
ber of the melodies without a definite purpose, and
was pondering what to do with them when it
occurred to him that
These fragmentary, scattered melodies were the wandering,
floating, nebulous part of a great whole, that they fully an-
swered the conditions for the production of a harmonious
unity which would comprehend the very flower of their
essential properties, their most unique beauties, . . . and
might be united in one homogeneous body, a complete work,
its divisions to be so arranged that each song would form at
once a whole and a part, which might be severed from the
rest and be examined by and for itself; but which would,
nevertheless, belong to the whole through the close affinity of
subject-matter, the similar character of its inner nature and
unity in development.
The basis of Liszt's "Rhapsodies" being thus
distinctly national, he has in a manner indicated in
their character and tempo the dual character of the
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The Composers
Hungarian national dance, the Czardas, which con-
sists of two movements, a Lassu, or slow movement,
followed by a Friss. These alternate at the will
of the dancers, who give a sign to the band when
they wish to change from one to the other.
One of the formal characteristics of Liszt's con-
certos, though not wholly new at the time when
Liszt composed the first (between 1840 and 1848),
was less common then than now, and no doubt
helped it to win its wide popularity. Their move-
ments are fused into a whole by omission of the
customary pauses and by community of theme.
Wherein the first concerto was chiefly remarkable
at the time of its composition is the consistency
and ingenuity with which the principal theme of the
work (the stupendously energetic phrase which the
orchestra proclaims at the outset) is transformed to
make it express a great variety of moods and to give
unity to the work. " Thus, by means of this meta-
morphosis," says Edward Dannreuther, " the poetic
unity of the whole musical tissue is made apparent
in spite of very great diversity of details; and Cole-
ridge's attempt at a definition of poetic beauty
unity in multiety is carried out to the letter."
Of all the schools of composition based on folk-
music the Russian is now at once the most asser-
tive, the most vigorous, and (outside of pianoforte
music, at least) the most characteristic. In or-
chestral works there is no mistaking the utterances
of composers like Borodin (1834-1887), Balakirew
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(1836-1910), and Moussorgsky (1839-1881). Their
idioms are taken straight from the lips of the Rus-
sian peasantry, and compared with them Anton
Rubinstein (1830-1894) and P. I. Tschaikowsky
(1840-1893), who were practically the only Rus-
sians whose music was known outside of the czar's
empire twenty-five years ago (Glinka can hardly be
called an exception), are not striking representatives
of the school to which they are supposed to belong
by reason of their nationality. Rubinstein offers a
troublesome proposition in several respects. That
he himself realized the fact is amusingly (and yet a
bit pathetically) illustrated by his remark that he
was at a loss what to call himself, the Russians say-
ing that he was a German, the Germans that he was
a Russian, the Christians that he was a Jew, the
Jews that he was a Christian, the classicists that he
was romantic, and the romanticists that he was a
classic. "Neither fish, flesh, nor fowl" might have
been his comment had he been a quoter of English
saws; "Issachar, a strong ass couching down be-
tween two burdens," had he had a keener sense of
humor, coupled with a knowledge of the book of
Genesis. With the Young Russian School (Kusch-
kd) Rubinstein had only a modicum of sympathy.
He says of it:
It is the outcome of the influence of Berlioz and Liszt. . . .
Its creations are based on thorough control of technical re-
sources and masterly application of color, but on total absence
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The Composers
of outline and predominating absence of form. . . . Whether
something is to be hoped for in the future from this tendency
I do not know, but would not doubt it altogether, for I believe
that the peculiarity of the melody and rhythm and the unusual
character of Russian folkmusic may permit of a new fructifi-
cation of music in general. Besides, some of the representa-
tives of this new tendency are not without notable talent
Balakirew was the head of this school. He,
said Borodin, was the hen that laid the eggs, which
were all alike at first, out of which came the chicks
which were no sooner hatched than they took on
plumages of their own and flew away in different
directions. Balakirew and his companions, Cesar
Cui (1835), Moussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakow,
play only a small part, comparatively speaking, in
pianoforte music, and of their earlier contempora-
ries Rubinstein and Tschaikowsky are far and away
the most significant. The besetting sin of Rubin-
stein as a composer was his lack of a capacity for
self-criticism. He felt, and correctly, that he was
cut out for large things, but he was impatient of his
own industry, and though inclined to Titanic
thoughts, like Beethoven, whom he sometimes sug-
gests in his slow movements, could not "learn to
labor and to wait," as the supreme master did.
The climax of Rubinstein's popularity as a. com-
poser was coincident with the climax of his popu-
larity as a player. Half a generation has passed
away since his death, and much has been written
National Schools
since of the fading of his music; but of his three
concertos that in D minor still glows with beauty;
pianists still perform his "Staccato Etude" and
"Study on False Notes" in the concert-room;
amateurs still revel in his "Melodic" in F and the
one of the numbers of his "Kammenoi Ostrow,"
and many players of chamber music are loath to
give up his Sonata in A for pianoforte and violin
(Op. 19), the three sonatas for pianoforte and vio-
loncello, the best of the five trios, the quintet for
pianoforte and strings, or the octet for pianoforte,
violin, viola, violoncello, double-bass, flute, clarinet,
and horn. Tschaikowsky's pianoforte solos have
won little favor compared with the first of his two
concertos (in B-flat minor) and the Trio in A minor.
Mrs. Newmarch, reviewing his works in Grove's
"Dictionary," says: "His single pianoforte sonata
is heavy in material and treatment, and cannot be
reckoned a fine example of its kind. A few of his
fugitive pieces are agreeable, and the variations
in F show that at the time of their composition
he must have been interested in thematic develop-
ment, but the world would not be much the poorer
for the loss of all that he has written for piano
solo."
Balakirew's pianoforte compositions are not
many, and when his name is seen on the programme
of a pianoforte recital it is in connection with his
Oriental fantasy "Islamey." The majority of the
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The Composers
pianoforte pieces of Nicholas Andrievich Rimsky-
Korsakow (1844-1908) are variations, one set end-
ing with a fugue on the familiar subject "B-a-c-h"
and one set having a folksong theme. The suc-
cessors of these men, the younger composers of to-
day, have cultivated the field more industriously,
though some of them have had to depend largely
for their popularity on a single lucky hit, like Lia-
dow's (1859) "Musical Snuff-Box" ("Tabatiere a
Musique") and Rachmaninow's (1873) C-sharp
minor prelude. The latter musician, however,
has written three concertos, and is inclined toward
work of large dimensions. Other representatives
of the school are Alexandre Glazounow (1865),
suite on the name " S-a-s-c-h-a," dtude "La Nuit,"
Mazurka (Op. 25, No. 3), Nocturne (Op. 37);
Nicolai de Stcherbatchew (1853), "Feeries et Pan-
tomimes," Scherzo capriccio (Op. 17), "Mosaique"
(Op. 15); Joseph Wihtol (1863), variations on a
Lettish theme (Op. 6); W. Rebikow (1867), "Au-
tumn Dreams" (Op. 8); Alexandre Scriabin (1871),
sonata (Op. 6), "Allegro appassionata" (Op. 4),
"Sonata-fantasie" (Op. 19), and twelve Etudes;
Felix Blumenfeld (1863), Etude "La Mer," "Fan-
tasies-Etudes" (Op. 25), and a Polish suite (dedi-
cated to Paderewski); S. Liapounow (1859),
"fetudes d'execution transcendantes " (Op. n);
Antony Stemanovich Arensky (1861), "Esquisses"
(Op. 24), Concerto in F, Caprices (Op. 43), and
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some interesting experiments in antique metres
called "Lagodees" and "Peons."
Except for the works of a small coterie of men
who are striving to emancipate French music
from the influence of Wagner and can think of
no way save to throw the diatonic system over-
board, the pianoforte music of France to-day dis-
closes no special characteristics. The whole tone
scale of these men is in no sense national, and since
the movement is still in an experimental stage, it
follows that the taste of French music-lovers is still
represented by the older composers who combine
accepted systems with the individuality, elegance,
and grace which distinguish French art in all its
phases. Chief of these composers is Camille Saint-
Saens, born in 1835, who, though he gave his first
public concert in 1846, is still, after sixty-four years,
the most energetic and enterprising of French mu-
sicians. A generation ago Dr. von Billow, describ-
ing one of his feats in prima vista score-reading,
called him " the greatest musical mind of the day,"
and for sound learning it is doubtful if M. Saint-
Saens has found a rival since. Like the majority
of French composers, he has written much for the
lyric stage, and his operas preserve national ideals;
but his propensity for travel has taken him to many
parts of the earth, and in his journeys he has gath-
ered elements of local color and utilized them in
some of his pianoforte pieces, such as a "Caprice
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on Russian Airs" for pianoforte and three wind
instruments, "Africa," a fantasia for pianoforte
and orchestra, and "Caprice Arabe" for two piano-
fortes, four hands. Of his four concertos the
second, in G minor (in the introduction to which he
pays a gracious tribute to Bach), is of first-class
importance, while the fourth, in C minor, still holds
a place in the programmes of virtuosi. A prede-
cessor in the serious school, but not so many-sided
a musician as he, was C. H. V. M. Alkan (called
Alkan ain, 1813-1888), who is chiefly noteworthy
now for his studies, especially those for the pedals.
Ce"sar Franck (1822-1890) was an organist of
great distinction, as was also Saint-Saens in his
early days; but he gave less attention than the
latter to the pianoforte and devoted himself more
assiduously to the ecclesiastical instrument and the
forms of composition to which it directed his mind,
which had a distinctly religious and mystical bent.
His most notable contributions to chamber music
employing the pianoforte with other instruments
are four trios, a quintet, and, best of all, a sonata
with violin. Of his compositions fitted to the
larger concert-rooms that which has retained the
greatest vitality is the "Variations symphoniques"
for pianoforte and orchestra. A piece of similar
dimensions and apparatus is " Les Djinns," a sym-
phonic poem for pianoforte and orchestra, as he
called it. Franck found his ideals in the music of
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the great Germans, and so did his pupil Vincent
d'Iridy, born in 1851, who, after the death of his
master, became the head of the would-be revolu-
tionists of French music. Saint-Saens had used
the pianoforte as an orchestral instrument in his
symphony in C minor; d'Indy does the same, but
lifts it into greater prominence in his "Symphony
on a Mountain Air," in which the melody of a folk-
song is treated as an idee fixe. Chief of the younger
men who in small descriptive pieces marvellous for
finish of harmonic detail and intervallic novelty are
Claude Achille Debussy, born in 1862, and Maurice
Ravel, born in 1875.
Italy, the cradle of opera, is still its nursery to
the exclusion, almost, of all other forms. Since it
yielded the sceptre to Germany in the eighteenth
century it has not produced an instrumental com-
poser of first-class importance. There are, however,
a few men who stand for other things than opera,
and among them are three who deserve mention in
these studies. They are Giovanni Sgambati, born
in 1843; Giuseppe Martucci, born in 1856, and En-
rico Bossi, born in 1861. The first two began their
careers as brilliant pianists and later took up com-
position and teaching. In Sgambati's Concerto in
G minor, and two pianoforte quintets, Martucci's
Concerto in B-flat minor, quintet with strings and
sonata with violoncello, as well as in the smaller
solo works of the two men, their consummate mas-
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tery of the resources of the instrument is much in
evidence. Bossi is an organist and composer for
the organ in the first instance, which fact explains
his leaning toward chamber music and the large
sacred forms.
England's glory in the field of music for key-
board stringed instruments is in the distant past;
that of the United States is yet to come. America
has produced a considerable number of sterling
musicians within the last fifty years, but those
among them who have distinguished themselves as
composers for the pianoforte are not many. Chad-
wick, Parker, and Converse have kept their eyes
fixed on other goals. Distinctly pianistic talents of
a high order were possessed by Louis Moreau Gott-
schalk (1829-1869), and Edward A. MacDowell
(1861-1907). Their ideals were far apart, Gott-
schalk being a salon sentimentalist and MacDowell
a musical poet of fine fibre. In one thing they strove
along parallel lines, though only incidentally. In
his "Bananier" and "La Savane," Gottschalk used
folk-melodies of the Southern plantations as themes
and in his second orchestra) suite and one of his
"Woodland Sketches" for pianoforte solo, Mac-
Dowell called into service melodies of the red men
of North America. The efforts were tentative, but
I have no doubt their influence will some day be
felt. Of larger significance from the view-point of
universal art are MacDowell's two concertos (in
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A minor and D minor), his four sonatas ("Tragica,"
"Eroica," "Norse," and " Keltic"), and a suite in
which the influence of his master Raff is as obvious
as that of Grieg is in his later compositions. The
sentimental salon style was tastefully and success-
fully cultivated by Ethelbert Nevin (1862-1901).
Henry Holden Huss, born in 1862, has published
a concerto besides a number of smaller pieces,
and Arthur Whiting, born in 1861, a Fantasy in
B-flat minor for pianoforte and orchestra, a " Suite
moderne" (Op. 15), and three waltzes which are
extremely interesting and in a nice sense idiomatic
of the pianoforte.
257
Part III
The Players
XII
Virtuosi and Their Development
THE art of pianoforte playing has been de-
veloped hand in hand with the instrument
and the music composed for it. The action of the
evolutionary factors has been reciprocal mechani-
cal elements suggesting or compelling manner and
limitation of performance, technical resources invit-
ing or prohibiting the character of musical ideas,
and these, in turn, urging to improvement in mech-
anism and technical manipulation. The manu-
facturer, composer, and performer are thus fellow
agents in the evolution of pianoforte music, receiv-
ing encouragement in strivings toward both good
and bad ends from popular taste, which is itself a
product of the co-operation of all the factors in the
art-sum.
With earnest endeavor, and so far as the limita-
tions of this book permitted, I have made a study
of the evolution of the instrument and the music
composed for it, and I must now address myself
to the third factor, the virtuoso. Were it not for
the fact that he is at once a reflex and embodi-
261
The Players
ment of the popular taste, of which he is also to
a large extent the creator, he would not be an in-
teresting or profitable subject of study. Idealism,
and therefore unselfishness in a fine sense, which
are the necessary attributes of every great creator
in art, are exceptional qualities in the professional
reproducer. It is, therefore, a less deplorable cir-
cumstance than it seems to be in the minds of sen-
timental rhapsodists that the fame of the ordinary
virtuoso is evanescent, that all that posterity holds
of him and his is anecdote (which is seldom valu-
able), or, at the best, pedagogical material.
Of course I am speaking now of the mere vir-
tuoso. If a virtuoso be in the true sense an artist,
he will be more than reproducer; he will be a
creator also, giving out so much of himself as has
been released by sympathetic interest along with
the intellectual and emotional product of the com-
poser. Virtuosi inflamed with generous and noble
sympathies are, therefore, of infinitely higher rank
than virtuosi whose bent is toward the petty and
ignoble. In this lies the morality of the art. It is
the former who win a reward like that of the com-
poser, though they may not meet with the same
measure of material recompense as their worldly-
wise and unworthier companions. They create
traditions which are fragrant; they leave a heritage
which is enduring and fruitful. They live on after
death in those who, possessed of the same artistic
262
CARL TAUSIG.
Virtuosi and Their Development
and ethical qualities, have learned from them and
follow their example.
Unfortunately virtuosi of this class are not nu-
merous and never have been. The many are those
who seek success in the favor of the multitude and
to win it pander to the predilections of the crowd.
The crowd, however, can no more occupy the high-
est plane in musical appreciation than in wisdom
or morality; hence, the most successful virtuosi, as
a rule, are those whose capacities, physical, intel-
lectual, emotional, and moral, are best adjusted to
popular taste, not so much, perhaps, in what may
be called its ground swell as in the fleeting ripples,
eddies, and curling froth on its surface, the phe-
nomena of fad and fashion. Such virtuosi can have
no abiding place in the sympathy or even the in-
terest of the serious critic or historian except as
their example be used "for doctrine, for reproof,
for correction, for instruction in righteousness";
there is small room for them in these articles.
Very little is known about the methods of study
pursued by the early clavier performers. The mu-
sic of the English virginalists indicates that fleetness
of finger was as essential in the sixteenth century as
it is in the twentieth, and when one reflects on the
system of fingering which seems to have prevailed
up to the time of Johann Sebastian Bach it is
almost inconceivable how sufficient digital dexterity
to play the music of the early virginalists and harp-
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The Players
sichordists could be acquired. 1 The rules for fin-
gering generally in use to-day date back only to
C. P. E. Bach. " The earliest marked fingering of
which we have any knowledge," says Mr. D. J.
Blaikley, in his admirable essay on the subject in
Grove's "Dictionary of Music and Musicians,"
"is that given by Ammerbach in his 'Orgel oder
Instrument Tabulatur' (Leipsic, 1571). This, like
all the fingering in use then and for long afterward,
is characterized by the almost complete avoidance
of the use of the thumb and little finger, the former
1 A letter first published in 1854 by S. Caffi in a history of church
music and reprinted in Weilzmann's "Geshichte des Clavierspiels
und der Clavicrlitcratur," would seem to indicate that fully as
much time was consumed in learning to play the clavichord in the
sixteenth century as is required to become proficient on the piano-
forte to-day. The writer of the letter was Pietro Bembo, eminent
as poet and scholar in the first quarter of the sixteenth century.
His daughter, a pupil in a convent school, had asked permission
to learn the clavichord, or monochord as it was then also called.
The father replied:
"Concerning your request to be permitted to learn to play the
monochord I reply (since you cannot know the fact because of
your tender age) that to play upon the instrument is suitable only
to vain and frivolous women; but I want you to be the most
amiable, pure, and modest woman on earth. Moreover, it would
bring you little pleasure to play ill and not a little humiliation.
But to play well you will have to practise ten to twelve years to
the exclusion of all else. Consider for yourself, regardless of me,
whether or not this would be worth while. If, now, your friends
wish that you shall learn in order to give them pleasure say to
them that you do not care to make a laughing-stock of yourself to
your own humiliation; and content yourself with books and
embroidery."
264
Virtuosi and Their Development
being only occasionally marked in the left hand,
and the latter never employed except in the play-
ing of intervals of not less than a fourth in the
same hand."
An Italian system to which Mr. Blaikley makes
no reference would seem to show that eighty-five
years after the publication of Ammerbach's book
an even more primitive system of fingering pre-
vailed in Italy. In Lorenzo Penna's "Li Primo
Albori musicali," published in Bologna in 1656, it
is set down that ascending scales are to be played
by the middle and ring fingers alternately of the
right hand, and middle and index fingers of the left;
in descending the process is to be reversed middle
and index fingers alternately of the right hand, and
middle and ring fingers of the left. Mr. Blaikley's
explanation of these stiff and awkward kinds of
fingering is this:
In the first place, the organ and clavichord not being tuned
upon the system of equal temperament, music for these instru-
ments was written only in the simplest keys, with the black
keys rarely used, and in the second place the keyboards of
the earlier organs were usually placed so high above the seat
of the player that the elbows were of necessity considerably
lower than the fingers. The consequence of the hands being
held in this position and of the black keys being seldom required
would be that the three long fingers stretched out horizontally
would be chiefly used, while the thumb and little finger, being
too short to reach the keys without difficulty, would simply
hang down below the level of the keyboard.
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The Players
But while the pedagogues prescribed systems
there were empiricists, no doubt in large numbers,
who practised whatever way seemed to them best
in the application of the fingers to the keys. They
had a valiant champion, too, in Praetorius, who, in
his "Syntagma Musicum" (1619), wrote: "Many
think it matter of great importance and despise such
organists as do not use this or that particular finger-
ing, which in my opinion is not worth the talk; for
let a player run up or down with either first, middle,
or third finger, aye, even with his nose, if that
could help him, provided that everything is done
clearly, correctly, and gracefully, it does not much
matter how or in what manner it is accomplished."
A sparing use of the thumb is timidly suggested
by Purcell in his " Choice Collection of Lessons for
the Harpsichord" (about 1700), and Couperin in
his "De la Toucher le Clevecin" (1717); but when
Bach took up the matter he revolutionized it com-
pletely, as indeed he had to do to make his system
of equal temperament and the free use of all the
modes practicable. Bach transformed the attitude
of the hand at once. The three fingers, instead of
lying horizontally with the keys, were bent so that
their tips rested perpendicularly on the keys. This
brought the hand forward on the keyboard and
raised the wrists. Thus a smart blow could, when
need be, take the place of pressure a very impor-
tant thing when the harpsichord gave way to the
266
Virtuosi and Their Development
pianoforte and quilled jacks to hammers, that is,
when the strings were struck instead of plucked.
Bach also fixed the place of the thumb in the scale
and used it and the little finger freely in all posi-
tions. In his playing Bach cultivated evenness of
touch by ending each application, not by lifting the
finger from the key, but drawing it inwardly toward
the palm of the hand with a caressing motion, which
transferred the requisite amount of pressure to the
next finger in passage playing. Forkel says that the
movement of Bach's fingers was so slight as to be
scarcely noticeable. The position of his hand re-
mained unchanged, and he held the rest of his body
motionless.
His contemporary, Handel, who was also highly
esteemed as a harpsichordist, used the same hand
position. Burney said his fingers "seemed to grow
to the keys, they were so curved and compact when
he played that no motion, and scarcely the fingers
themselves, could be discovered." C. P. E. Bach
in his "Versuch," while enforcing the need of a
quiet movement of the hands, nevertheless fore-
shadows a change to a practice which in the course
of time became an abomination. The mechanical
principle of the pianoforte invited a blow upon the
keys. Bach, therefore, to secure power, permitted a
lifting of the hands in the delivery of the blow.
This, he said, was not an error, but good and neces-
sary so long as it could be done in a manner "not
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The Players
too suggestive of wood-chopping." Wood-chop-
ping would be an inexpressive simile applied to the
actions of many pianists since.
The clavichord lent itself best to an expressive
singing style of playing, the harpsichord to a crisp
and scintillant staccato. The former instrument
could not be used in public performances, but its
greater soulfulness made it an invaluable prepara-
tory instrument for the pianoforte. At Vienna,
Burney, on his historical tour, heard a child play on
the pianoforte with such nice command of nuance
that he inquired on what instrument she had prac-
tised. He was told the clavichord, which led him
to comment as follows: "This accounts for her
expression and convinces me that children should
learn upon this or a pianoforte very early, and be
obliged to give an expression to 'Lady Coventry's
Minuet,' or whatever their first tune, otherwise after
long practice on a monotonous harpsichord, how-
ever useful for strengthening the hand, the case is
hopeless."
The accounts of Mozart's playing are not many,
but taken in connection with his comments on some
of the virtuosi whom he encountered on his travels
it is plain that his style was chiefly distinguished by
its musical qualities; its charm came from its ex-
pressiveness, its grace and lucidity, combined with
truthfulness of emotional utterance. In 1 781 , when
he met Clement! in rivalry at the Austrian court, the
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Virtuosi and Their Development
two, after producing set pieces of their own compo-
sition, varied a theme which the emperor gave
them. Long afterward Clementi said: "Until then
I had never heard anybody play with so much in-
telligence and charm. I was particularly surprised
by an adagio and a number of his extemporized
variations on a theme chosen by the emperor, which
we were obliged to vary alternately, each accom-
panying the other."
Mozart was less gracious in his opinion of his
rival. He called the great Roman a mere "mech-
anician" (Mechanicus), with a great knack in pass-
ages in thirds, but not a pennyworth of feeling or
taste. Mozart, it is plain, was prejudiced against
Italian players as a rule. He had no patience, in-
deed, with the display of mere digital dexterity which
many of the virtuosi of his day made, to the neg-
lect of taste in tempo and expression. Kullak re-
views his qualities as follows: "Delicacy and taste,
with his lifting of the entire technique to the spirit-
ual aspiration of the idea, elevate him as a virtuoso
to a height unanimously conceded by the public, by
connoisseurs and by artists capable of judging.
. . . Dittersdorf finds art and taste combined in
his playing; Haydn asseverated with tears that
Mozart's playing he could never forget, for it
touched his heart; his staccato is said to have
possessed a peculiarly brilliant charm."
At the beginning of his career the instrument for
269
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Mozart's intimate communings was the clavichord;
for his public performances the harpsichord. When
the pianoforte came under his notice he gave it his
enthusiastic adherence at once, and he seems to have
succeeded in combining in it the best qualities of its
predecessors. Writing about his visit to Mann-
heim in 1777, his mother said: "Wolfgang is highly
appreciated everywhere, but he plays very differ-
ently than he did in Salzburg, for here pianofortes
are to be found on all sides, and he handles them
incomparably, as they have never been heard before.
In a word, everybody who hears him says that his
equal is not to be found." His predilection for the
instrument may be said to have led to the establish-
ment of the Vienna school of pianoforte playing, for
which the foundations were laid by his pupil Hum-
mel, and him who would gladly have been his pupil
Beethoven. This school cultivated warmth of
expression combined with limpidity and symmetry
of melodic contour, while that founded by Clement!
tended to virtuosity and systematic development of
technique.
It was Clementi who opened the way to the
modern style of playing, with its greater sonority
and capacity for effects. Under him passage play-
ing became something almost new; deftness, light-
ness, and fluency were replaced, or consorted with
stupendous virtuosoship which rested on a full and
solid tone. Clementi is said to have been able to
270
Virtuosi and Their Development
trill in octaves with one hand. Mozart's opinion
of him in 1781 looks less jaundiced when brought
into juxtaposition with a confession which he made
in later years than it does when contrasted with
dementi's praise of his rival. To his pupil Ludwig
Berger, Clementi said that in the early part of his
career he had cultivated brilliant and dashing dex-
terity, particularly passages in double notes, which
at that time were unusual, and that he had acquired
a nobler cantabile style later, being led thereto by
careful attention to famous singers and the grad-
ual perfection of the English pianofortes. A re-
poseful attitude of the hand was also one of his
characteristics, for he was perhaps the first of the
players who practised the device of balancing a coin
on the back of his hand while in action. Among his
pupils were Cramer, Field, Moscheles, and Kalk-
brenner.
Beethoven as a pianist was very much what he
was as a composer, viz., an. epitome of what had
gone before as well as a presage of what was to
come. He studied composition in Vienna, but not
pianoforte playing, and as a virtuoso he must have
been self-developed on the foundation of what he
had been taught in Bonn. His studies began when
he was not more than five years old, and he seems
to have been pretty thoroughly grounded in the
principles of C. P. E. Bach and to have believed in
them always. His first advice when he took Ries
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The Players
as pupil was to get Bach's "Versuch." He was
only eleven and a half years old when he began to
play the organ as a substitute for his teacher Neefe
in the electoral chapel at Bonn; at twelve he was
cembalist and at thirteen and a half he became
second organist by appointment. At eighteen he
played viola in the orchestra in the theatre and also
in concerts. His style, formed at the clavichord
and organ (perhaps to his detriment at the latter),
was smooth and quiet, and despite the fact that his
tone seems to have been rude he preserved the
reposeful manner to a late date.
Czerny says: "His attitude while playing was
masterly in its quietness, noble and beautiful, with-
out the least grimace, though he bent forward more
and more as his deafness grew upon him. He at-
tached great importance to correct position of the
fingers in his teaching (according to the school of
Emanuel Bach, which he used in teaching me)."
In Thayer's note-book, in which Beethoven's biog-
rapher recorded the conversations which he had
with the men who had come into personal contact
with the composer, I found the following memo-
randum under date of May 28, 1860: "I called
again on Mahler and questioned him as to the above,
and find that I have reported him correctly. One
thing, he says, particularly attracted his attention,
and that was that he played with his hands so very
still. Wonderful as was his execution, there was no
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Virtuosi and Their Development
tossing up and about of his hands, but they seemed
to glide right and left over the keys, the fingers
doing the work."
The incident which Mahler (in his youth a painter
who had painted a portrait of the master) had
described took place in the winter of 1803 or 1804,
for Beethoven was at work on the finale of the
"Eroica" symphony and played some of the varia-
tions for his listeners. After that date Beethoven
gradually abandoned playing in public. Two years
later Pleyel describes his playing as extremely dar-
ing and fearless of all difficulties, though they were
not always cleanly overcome; he "thrashed" too
much, said Pleyel. Hummers adherents found
fault with his playing because of his excessive use
of the pedals, "which produced a confused noise."
Czerny also refers to his pedalling, and in his
"School," describing the manner in which Beeth-
oven's music ought to be played, says: "Char-
acteristic and passionate power alternately with all
the charms of cantabile are dominant. The means
of expression are often developed to the extreme,
particularly in respect of the humorous mood. The
piquant, brilliant manner is seldom to be applied
here, but all the oftener the general effect is to be
attained partly trough a full-voiced legato, partly
by the use of the forte-pedal, etc. Great dexterity
without pretensions to brilliancy. In adagios
rhapsodical expression and emotional song."
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The Players
The rudeness of Beethoven's playing harped
upon by musicians who heard him in the later years
of his life, such as Spohr and Moscheles, finds
ample explanation in his temperament, aggravated
by his deafness. If Wegeler is to be believed, it
was noticeable before he had heard any really great
players, but when he was twenty years old he heard
Johann Franz Xaver Sterkel (1750-1817), whose
playing was light and pleasing, almost effeminate,
so much more finished and refined than anything
that Beethoven had ever heard that he was unspeak-
ably amazed and much persuasion was necessary to
get him to the pianoforte in turn. When finally he
did play, however, he astonished his friends by do-
ing so with a perfect reproduction of Sterkel's style.
Schindler says that in his later years Beethoven
confessed to him that his rude manner was due to
his having played the organ so much, which is alto-
gether likely, considering the heavy action of the
organs at that period, yet it may have been due also
to his emotional impulsiveness and his original bent,
for Carl Ludwig Junker wrote in 1791: "His play-
ing is so different from the usual manner of hand-
ling the instrument that it seems as if he had tried
to open entirely new paths for himself."
In his early years in Vienna he gave much
thought to perfecting his violin playing, and it is
possible that that instrument usurped a large place
in his affections to the prejudice of the pianoforte.
274
Virtuosi and Their Development
As he grew more and more engrossed in composition
the ambition which had prompted him to make
concert trips to Prague, Nuremberg, and Berlin
left him. Thereafter he played in public but sel-
dom, and what we know of his playing we learn
from accounts of his performances in private.
These accounts all agree as to the rhapsodic elo-
quence and dramatic vitality of his playing, espe-
cially when improvising, and his sinking of the
virtuoso in the character of the musical poet. Yet
he mastered some difficulties which were appalling
to his rivals. One of these was a Bohemian abbe*
named Joseph Gelinek (1757-1825), whom Mozart
heard in Prague in 1787 and started on a prosperous
career by recommending him to Count Kinsky, who
appointed him his Hauscaplan; later he became
musical director in Prague and Vienna. He was a
voluminous composer of variations of the conven-
tional order, so voluminous and so conventional that
Carl Maria von Weber hit him off in a distich:
No theme on earth escaped your genius airy,
The simplest one of all yourself you never vary.
Gelinek's variations are lost forever, but the
story of his first meeting with Beethoven will
probably live as long as the fame of the great
master. Czerny tells the story: One day Gelinek,
meeting Czerny's father, remarked to him that he
had been invited to a soiree that evening to break
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The Players
a lance with a new pianist: " Den wollen wir zusam-
menhauen" ("We'll cudgel him well!") he added.
The next day Czerny asked Gelinek how the affair
had turned out. "Oh," replied the abbe*, "I'll
never forget yesterday. The devil himself is in
that young man; I never heard such playing. He
improvised on a theme which I gave him as I never
heard even Mozart improvise. Then he played
compositions of his own which were in the highest
degree grand and wonderful. And he plays diffi-
culties and brings effects out of the pianoforte of
which we never dreamed."
What Beethoven's innovations were like we can
guess in some degree from a remark in a letter
which he wrote to his childhood friend, Eleonore von
Breuning, in sending her a set of variations for piano-
forte and violin on the melody of "Se vuol ballare"
from Mozart's "Nozze di Figaro," which he had
dedicated to her. In the coda occurred a passage
in which a trill was imposed on other voices. Re-
ferring to this Beethoven wrote: "You will find
the V. a little difficult to play, especially the trills
in the coda, but don't let that alarm you. It is so
contrived that you need play only the trill, leaving
out the other notes, because they are also in the
violin part. I never would have composed a thing
of the kind had I not often observed that here and
there in Vienna there was somebody who, after I
had improvised of an evening, noted down many
276
Virtuosi and Their Development
of my peculiarities and made parade of them next
day as his own. Foreseeing that some of these
things would soon appear in print I resolved to an-
ticipate them. Another reason that I had was to
embarrass the local pianoforte masters. Many of
them are my deadly enemies and I wanted to re-
venge myself on them, knowing that once in a
while somebody would ask them to play the varia-
tions and they would make a sorry show with them."
Beethoven's shafts were levelled at Gelinek.
Beethoven's single encounter with Daniel Stei-
belt (1765-1823) has been described in an earlier
chapter of these studies. Steibelt seems to have
possessed a great measure of digital skill, though
it is said that a showy tremolando with both hands,
which caught the ears of the groundlings, had for
its real purpose the hiding of a weakness of the left
hand. He travelled a great deal and became some-
thing of a musical lion by reason of the success of
an opera, "Romeo and Juliet," produced in 1793.
Not only his own character as a charlatan but also
the popular taste of the time may be read in the tale
of his triumphs in Vienna, whither he went in 1800.
He was accompanied by an English woman who
figured as his wife and who played the tambourine
in catchpenny pieces called " Bacchanales." The
instrument was taken up by some of the fashionable
ladies of the Austrian capital, who paid the ad-
venturess a gold ducat an hour for lessons and
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bought a cartload of tambourines from her hus-
band.
A virtuoso of a very different order was Josef
Woelffl, or Woelfl, with whom, though he put him
to his trumps both as player and improviser, Beeth-
oven associated on terms of amity and mutual
esteem. Woelffl was a native of Salzburg and a
pupil of Mozart's father and Haydn's brother.
The friendly rivalry between him and Beethoven
separated the music-lovers of Vienna into two
camps. Describing their meetings at which, in the
presence of their aristocratic adherents, the two
artists measured their powers against each other,
performing their own compositions and improvising
on themes which they exchanged, the Chevalier von
Sey fried wrote at the time: "It would have been
difficult, perhaps impossible, to award the palm of
victory to either one of the gladiators in respect of
technical skill. Nature had been particularly kind
to Woelffl in bestowing upon him a hand which
enabled him to span a tenth as easily as other
hands compass an octave, and permitted him to play
passages of double notes in these intervals with the
rapidity of lightning." He then describes the tem-
pestuous manner of Beethoven's playing in his ex-
alted moments, when he "tore along like a wildly
foaming cataract, and the conjurer constrained his
instrument to an utterance so forceful that the
stoutest structure was scarcely able to withstand
278
Virtuosi and Their Development
it. ... Woelffl, on the contrary, trained in the
school of Mozart, was always equable ; never super-
ficial, but always clear, and thus more accessible to
the many. He used art only as a means to an end,
never to exhibit his acquirements. He always en-
listed the attention of his hearers and inevitably it
was made to follow the progression of his well-
ordered ideas. Whoever has heard Hummel will
know what is meant by this."
We have another description of WoelfH's playing
in Tomaschek's autobiography, in an account of a
concert given in 1799: "Then he played Mozart's
Fantasia in F minor, published by Breitkopf for
four hands, just as it is printed, without omitting a
note, or, for the sake of the execution, lessening the
value of a single tone, as the so-called romanticists
of our time love to do, thinking to equalize matters
by raising the damper pedal and producing an un-
exampled confusion of tones. He is unique in his
way. A pianoforte player who is six feet tall,
whose extraordinarily long fingers span the interval
of a tenth without strain, and who, moreover, is so
emaciated that everything about him rattles like a
scarecrow; who executes difficulties which are im-
possibilities to other pianists with the greatest ease
and a small but neat touch, and without once dis-
turbing the quiet posture of his body; who often
plays whole passages in moderate tempo legato with
one and the same finger (as in the andante of the
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Mozart Fantasia, the long passage in sixteenth notes
in the tenor voice) such a pianist certainly is with-
out a fellow in his art."
In 1901 that is, only nine years ago there still
lived in London an English musician who could
and did tell us how some of the great pianists of the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries played. The
memory of Charles Salaman went back to J. B.
Cramer, who with Clementi, Hummel, and Czerny
formed the first great group of creative virtuosi
whose formative influence has been felt down to
to-day. Salaman wrote down his recollections of
the old pianists whom he had heard and his essay
was printed in "Blackwood's Edinburgh Maga-
zine" for September, 1901, only a few weeks after
the death of the author. The testimony is of the
highest importance, for Salaman had lived through
all the phases of musical development and made
experience of them from, let us say, five years
before the death of Beethoven to as many after
the death of Liszt a period of more than two en-
tire generations. His description of Cramer, for
instance, carries us back into the eighteenth cen-
tury and emphasizes several things which have been
pointed out in these studies:
As a musician he was of the school of Mozart, whose com-
positions he constantly interpreted with true enthusiasm and
perfect sympathy, and it was beautiful to hear him speak of
Mozart, with whom he was contemporary for the first twenty
280
Virtuosi and Their Development
years of his life. In appearance Cramer was dignified and
elegant, with something of the look and bearing of the Kem-
bles; and well can I recall the tranquil manner in which he
displayed his mastery of the instrument, so different from the
exhibitions of restless exaggeration and affectation one so often
sees at the modern pianoforte recitals. It was a pleasure to
watch the easy grace with which John Cramer moved his
hands, with bent fingers covering the keys.
The youthful reader will be tempted, perhaps, to
think that a little too much importance was at-
tached to tranquillity of manner and evenness of
touch by the early school of pianoforte playing, but
these qualities, combined with fleetness of finger
and correct taste, sufficed to give utterance to most
of the music of that period, outside of the dramatic
compositions of Beethoven. Studies were then
exercises for the mastery of technique and no one
thought of reading deeper purposes into them.
This fact finds illustration in Von Lenz's interesting
story of his meeting with Cramer. It was in 1842,
and the Russian pianist and writer had bidden
Cramer to a dinner in Paris, and seeking the way
to the venerable master's confidence through his
stomach and vanity, had set before him a feast of
English viands (Cramer had lived long in England)
and banished all music from the room except the
complete works of his guest. He told Cramer of
the continued popularity of his compositions in
Russia and played some of them. Then he asked
281
The Players
the old man to play and he complied with the first
three of his studies. Von Lenz was amazed and
disappointed; everything, he says, was "dry,
wooden, rough, without cantilena, in the third study
in D major, but well rounded and magisterial."
Von Lenz tried to conceal his disappointment, but
confesses that he was thoroughly disillusioned. He
asked if an absolute legato was not indicated in the
third study, in which Cramer had simply put the
groups in the upper voice to the sword and neg-
lected even to tie the bass progressions.
"We were not so anxious," replied Cramer; "we
did not put so much into the music. These are
exercises. I haven't your accents and intentions.
Clementi played his 'Gradus ad Parnassum' in the
same way. We knew no better, and no one sang
more beautifully than Field, who was a pupil of
Clementi. My model was Mozart. Nobody com-
posed more beautifully than he! Now I am for-
gotten and a poor elementary teacher in a suburb
of Paris, where they play the eludes of Bertini, which
I have got to teach. You can hear them if you want
to eight pianos at once!"
Yet in his day Beethoven valued Cramer so highly
that he did not think any other artist worthy of
being compared with him.
As a boy Hummel lived two years in Mozart's
household and studied with him; afterward Haydn,
Salieri, Clementi, and Albrechtsberger had a hand
282
Virtuosi and Their Development
in his musical education. Comparing his playing
with that of Beethoven, Czerny wrote: "If Beeth-
oven's playing was marked by immense power, in-
dividual character, and unheard-of bravura and dex-
terity, Hummel's, on the contrary, was a model of
purity, clarity, and distinctness, of insinuating ele-
gance and delicacy." Salaman heard Hummel in
1830, after he had been absent from London forty
years; yet he says of his playing :
With ease and tranquil, concentrated power, with undevi-
ating accuracy, richness of tone and delicacy of touch, he
executed passages in single and double notes and in octaves
of enormous technical difficulty. Above all, his playing pos-
sessed the indefinable quality of charm.
"Don't talk to me about these passage-players,"
said Beethoven, angrily, when somebody mentioned
the name of Moscheles. The remark, which sounds
ungracious, and even unjust, in view of the position
which Moscheles came to occupy later in the mu-
sical world, receives an illuminating gloss from
Salaman's estimate; he heard Moscheles in 1826:
Moscheles had taken Europe by storm and initiated his
great reputation by his wonderful performance of the ex-
traordinary bravura variations he had written on the French
popular piece, "The Fall of Paris." ... So completely did
this style captivate the popular taste that he soon had a follow-
ing, and became recognized as the founder of a school which
continued in .fashion for some years. Later on, however,
283
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Moschelcs emancipated himself from the bravura style, which
played itself out, and he developed into a classical pianist
and composer. I heard him often in the ao's, the 30*3, and
40*3 at the Philharmonic, his own and other concerts; and more
than once I had the honor of appearing on the same programme
with him. I always admired his masterly command of all the
resources of his instrument and the genuine art of his playing;
but I confess that he seldom quite charmed me, never deeply
moved me. ... I never remember feeling in listening to the
accomplished performances of Moscheles that a temperament
was speaking to mine through the medium of the pianoforte,
as I felt with Mendelssohn, with Liszt, with Chopin, with
Thalbcrg, and later with Rubinstein.
Of Field, Mendelssohn, Chopin, and Henselt it
can be said that their achievements as composers so
far overshadow their fame as performers that these
studies would be reasonably complete so far as they
are concerned with the attention which they have
received in an earlier chapter; yet they were all
remarkable performers; all of them, indeed, might
have become famous as virtuosi had they not been
swayed by their loftier creative impulse. Field was
a forerunner of Chopin in the style of his playing,
as he was in the creation of the nocturne. " A really
great player," says Salaman of him, "his style, like
his compositions, romantic and poetic, as if inter-
preting some beautiful dream, while in the singing
quality of his touch, the infinite grace and delicacy
of his execution, his emotional expression, he was
unrivalled in his day."
284
Virtuosi and Their Development
Schumann's ambition to become a virtuoso was
nipped in the bud by an accident resulting from an
effort to gain dexterity, flexibility, and strength of
finger by mechanical means, and we can only
guess at what he might have become as an inter-
preter of the music of other masters from his critical
writings. It is, moreover, doubtful if he would ever
have become so convincing a performer of his own
music as his wife, Clara Wieck (1819-1896); for I
was told many years ago by an excellent musician
who was a student in Leipsic in the Schumann
period that when he conducted he depended on his
wife to indicate the tempo for each number, which
she did by protruding her foot from beneath her
skirts and beating time on the floor. Mr. Franklin
Taylor, an excellent authority, considers that Mme.
Schumann stood "indubitably in the first rank as
a pianist, perhaps higher than any of her contem-
poraries, if not as regards the possession of natural
or acquired gifts yet in the use she made of them."
While the majority of virtuosi down to Liszt, and
even he during his period of greatest brilliancy, dis-
played their powers almost exclusively in their own
compositions, Mendelssohn as a performer was also
an admirable exponent of the creations of his great
predecessors. Speaking of his performance of Beeth-
oven's G major concerto, Salaman says: "A more
reverential, sympathetic, and conservative reading
of the old master's text I have never heard, while at
285
The Players
the same time the interpretation was unmistakably
individual Mendelssohn's and no possible other's!
His touch was exquisitely delicate, and the fairy
fancies of his 'Midsummer Night's Dream* music
seemed ever to haunt him in his playing, lending it
a magic charm. . . . His fugue playing was strictly
classical and based on Bach; his handling of octave
passages was magnificent, and, as I have said, his
power of improvisation boundless." Von Lenz calls
Henselt "the most unique of all keyboard phe-
nomena." "Liszt," he says, "must be accepted
cosmically, universally, because of his command of
all the resources of the instrument and, therefore,
of all styles. . . . Chopin was too original in pro-
duction to permit his reproduction to express his
whole individuality, the more because of the decay
of physical command over his resources. Midway
between Liszt and Chopin, and in a degree as a bond
between their contrasts, stands Henselt, a primitive
Teutonic phenomenon, a Germania at the piano-
forte."
If Chopin had longings and predilections for a
virtuoso's career, he left them behind him with his
youth. After he had attained fame in Paris he
played only for small gatherings of sympathetic
souls. " I am not fitted for public playing," he said ;
" the public frightens me, its breath chokes me. I
am paralyzed by its inquisitive gaze and affrighted
at these strange faces." So Henselt lived thirty-two
286
Virtuosi and Their Development
years in St. Petersburg, where he was greatly es-
teemed, without appearing once in public; and
when he went to Germany he played only before a
chosen few. Yet Lenz, whose admiration for Liszt
was boundless, held Henselt to be the only peer of
. that pianistic macrocosm. Henselt exercised his
fingers indefatigably upon a dumb keyboard and
practised Bach's fugues on a muted pianoforte,
reading the Bible the while. "When Bach and
the Bible are finished he begins again at the begin-
ning," says his not always veracious laudator.
To return for a moment to Chopin. As a player
he might be described as a descendant of de-
menti's in the second generation: Clementi begat
Field, Field begat Chopin. When he went to Paris
he contemplated taking lessons from Kalkbrenner,
a famous bravura player and teacher, who after
hearing him play asked him if he had been Field's
pupil. An instructive characterization of Chopin's
playing is found in Moscheles's diary:
His ad libitum playing, which with the interpreters of his
music degenerates into disregard of time, is with him only the
most charming originality of execution; the amateurish and
harsh modulations which strike me so disagreeably when I
am reading his compositions no longer shock me, because his
delicate fingers glide lightly over them in a fairylike way; his
piano is so soft that he does not need any strong forte to produce
contrasts; it is for this reason that one does not miss the or-
chestral effects which the German school demands from a
287
The Players
pianoforte player, but allows one's self to be carried away as
by a singer who, little concerned about the accompaniment,
entirely follows his feelings.
Chopin was a master of cantabile. Schumann
tells of hearing him " sing" his E-flat nocturne; Von
Lenz describes his playing of Beethoven's sonata
in A-flat, Op. 26: "He played it beautifully, but
not so beautifully as his own works, not so as to
take hold of you, not en relief, not like a romance
with a climacteric development from variation to
variation. He murmured mezza voce, but incom-
parably in the cantilena, infinitely perfect in the
connection of phrases, ideally, beautifully, but
effeminately"
Over against three great players who were piano-
forte virtuosi and nothing more, the " Philistines" of
Schumann's wrath Friedrich Kalkbrenner (1784?-
1849), Henri Herz, to give him his Gallicized name
(1806-1888), and Alexander Dreyschock (1818-1869)
I place the triumvirate of great virtuosi who were
also great musicians, Liszt, Thalberg, and Tausig.
If any man shall undertake to say who of these three
was the greatest pianoforte performer he shall be
a rock of offence to the special admirers of the two
others. Only a portion of the musical world, and
that a small one, sat under the spell of the youngest
of them, and only for a short space, for Tausig's
scintillant career spanned only a dozen years, while
288
Virtuosi and Their Development
that of his elders compassed each two generations.
And Liszt was Tausig's master, as he was the mas-
ter, in practice or in precept, or in both, of nearly
all the pianists of wide note during the last half cen-
tury. There were three distinct periods in Liszt's
career: the first when he travelled through Europe
as a prodigy, with the kiss of Beethoven on his brow,
and won all hearts as much by his charming natural-
ness of conduct as by his phenomenal skill upon the
keyboard; the second when, the ripened virtuoso, he
carried everything before him, bewildering the
musicians no less than the mere music-lovers, widen-
ing the boundaries of the technicians, giving a new
voice to the pianoforte, breaking the seven seals
of the Book of Revelation of Beethoven the Divine,
stimulating the manufacturers to augment the power
and the brilliancy of the instrument so that it might
withstand the assaults of men with
thews of Anakim
And pulses of a Titan's heart;
and the last when, " far from the madding crowd,"
he gave himself up to the unselfish labors of a
doubly creative musician, composing music and
fashioning artists out of the elect who flocked to
him for instruction from all the ends of the earth.
All critical discourse touching him runs out into
metaphorical rhapsody. "Liszt is the latent his-
tory of the keyboard instruments and himself the
289
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crown of the work!" cries Von Lenz; "Liszt is a
phenomenon of universal musical virtuosity such as
had never before been known, not simply a pianistic
miracle," he says again, and still again and again:
"The pianist Liszt is an apparition not to be com-
pressed within the bounds of the house drawn by
schools and professors"; "Liszt is the past, the
present, and the future of the pianoforte. ... He
is the spirit of the matter, he absorbs the concep-
tion"; "When Liszt thunders, lightens, and mur-
murs the great B-flat Sonata for Hammerklavier by
Beethoven, this Solomon's Song of the keyboard,
there is an end of all things pianistic; Liszt is mak-
ing capital for humanity out of the ideas of the
greatest thinker in the realm of music." And so
Von Lenz goes on and others follow him. "Liszt
is the father of modern pianoforte virtuosity," says
Prosniz somewhat more instructively; "he de-
veloped the capacity of the instrument to the ut-
most; he commanded it to sing, to whisper, to
thunder. From the human voice as well as the
orchestra he borrowed effects. Daringly, trium-
phantly his technique overcame all difficulties a
technique which proclaimed the unqualified do-
minion of the mind over the human hand."
Liszt's great period as a virtuoso was from 1839
to 1847, an d during this period he had only one
rival, though a formidable one. This was Sigis-
mund Thalberg (1812-1871), a natural son of
290
Virtuosi and Their Development
Prince Dietrichstein and the Baroness Wetzlar. He
studied in Paris with Pixis and Kalkbrenner, and
at the outset of his career divided with Liszt the
cognoscenti of the French capital into parties as
Beethoven and Woelffl had divided the Viennese a
generation before. In the pen battle which ensued
Fetis championed him and Berlioz, his rival. He
travelled more extensively and longer than Liszt,
his journeyings, as Herz's had done, carrying him
to America, where for a short time in 1857 he was
engaged with Ullmann in the management of Italian
opera at the Academy of Music in New York. He
was a true aristocrat and cultured gentleman in his
bearing in society as well as at the pianoforte.
We have the estimates of two fellow pianists to help
us to form an opinion of his playing.
Sir Charles Halle*:
Totally unlike in style to either Chopin or Liszt, he was
admirable and unimpeachable in his own way. His perform-
ances were wonderfully finished and accurate, giving the im-
pression that a wrong note was an impossibility. His tone
was round and beautiful, the clearness of his passage-playing
crystal -like, and he had brought to the utmost perfection the
method identified with his name, of making a melody stand
out distinctly through a maze of brilliant passages. He did
not appeal to the emotions except those of wonder, for his
playing was statuesque, cold, but beautiful and so masterly
that it was said of him, with reason, he would play with the
same care and finish if roused out of the deepest sleep in the
middle of the night. He created a great sensation in Paris
291
The Players
and became the idol of the public, principally, perhaps, be-
cause it was felt that he could be imitated, which with Chopin
and Liszt was out of the question.
Charles Salaman:
Perhaps brilliancy and elegance were his chief distinguish-
ing qualities, but, of course, he had much more than these.
He had deep feeling. . . . His playing quite enchanted me;
his highly cultivated touch expressed the richest vocal tone,
while his powers of execution were marvellous. Nothing
seemed difficult to him; like Liszt, he could play the appar-
ently impossible, but unlike Liszt, he never indulged in any
affectation or extravagance of manner in achieving his mechan-
ical triumphs on the keyboard. His strength and flexibility
of wrist and finger were amazing, but he always tempered
strength with delicacy. His loudest fortissimos were never
noisy. His own compositions, which be chiefly played in
public, enabled him best to display his astonishing virtuosity,
but to be assured that Thalberg was a really great player was
to hear him interpret Beethoven, which he did finely, classi-
cally, and without any attempt to embellish the work of the
master.
While Chopin could not play in public and
Henselt would not because of too great conscien-
tiousness, Tausig, as he himself said, was at his
best only on the concert platform. Cramer said
of Dreyschock that he had two right hands; Von
Lenz remarked of Tausig that his left hand was a
second right. Peter Cornelius told of the amaze-
ment which Tausig caused as a boy of fourteen when
he played for Liszt the first time: "A very devil
292
Virtuosi and Their Development
of a fellow; he dashed into Chopin's A-flat Polo-
naise and knocked us clean over with the octaves."
Von Lenz relates how he heard Tausig play the
ostinato octave figure in the trio of the polonaise
in a frenetic tempo from a murmuring pianissimo
to a thunderous forte, so that his listener cried out in
amazement.
"It's a specialty of mine," said Tausig. "You see my hand
is small and yet I ball it together. My left hand has a natural
descent from the thumb to the little finger. I fall naturally
upon the four notes (E, D-sharp, C-sharp, B); it's a freak of
nature. (He smiled.) I can do it as long as you please; it
doesn't weary me. It is as if written for me. Now, you play
the four notes with both hands; you'll not get the power into
them that I do." I tried it. "You see, you see! Very good,
but not so loud as mine, and you are already tired after a
few measures, and so are the octaves."
It is not for want of appreciation, respect, and
admiration for many of the pianists of to-day that
I choose to end my survey of pianoforte players
with Rubinstein and Hans von Billow (1830-1894).
Of them it is possible to take a view which shall
have a proper historical perspective. A discussion
of the living, however, would of necessity have in
it much of personal equation. Unlike the virtuosi
of the pre-Lisztian period, the pianists of the present
day present themselves pre-eminently as interpret-
ers of the music of the master composers and not
of their own; and in this fact there lies a merit the
293
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only qualification of which arises from the fact that
so few of them are in a high sense creative artists.
In it, also, lies a tribute to the taste of the public
of to-day; and every player who aims to maintain
a high standard of appreciation deserves well in
the thoughts of the musically cultured. It cannot
mar the reputation of any of the living, however, to
say that Rubinstein and Dr. von Billow loom above
them all as recreative artists.
Of the players to whom the older generation of
to-day has listened, Rubinstein was the most elo-
quent and moving. He was in the highest degree
subjective and emotional, his manner leonine and
compelling. His prodigious technical skill seemed
to give him as little concern as it did his listeners,
who were as intent on taking in the full of his out-
pouring as he was in giving it. The technical side
of Dr. von Billow's playing was forced into greater
prominence because of his pronounced objectivity;
yet there was a wonderful delight in his playing for
all who found intellectual and aesthetic pleasure in
clear, convincing, symmetrical, and logical presen-
tations of the composers' thoughts. Dr. Bie has
hit him off in his chief capacity capitally:
"When he gave public recitals he did not, like
Rubinstein, crowd a history of the piano into a few
evenings. He took by preference a single author,
like Beethoven, and played only the last five sonatas,
or he unfolded the whole of Beethoven in four even-
294
Virtuosi ancj Their Development
ings. He would have preferred to play every piece
twice. Great draftsman as he was, he hated all
half-lights and colorations; he pointed his pencil
very finely, and his paper was very white."
395
INDEX
ACADEMIE ROYALE DES
SCIENCES, 30.
^Eschylus, 82.
Albrechtsberger, 191, 282.
Aldrich, Richard, on Schu-
mann, 202.
Alkan aine, 254.
Alia zoppa, 242.
Allemand (almain, allemande,
and alman), 83, 85.
Allen, William, introduces tu-
bular braces, 39.
"All in a Garden Green," 76.
American music and compo-
sers, 256, 257.
Ammerbach, "Orgel oder In-
strument Tabulatur," 264,
265.
" Appassionata " Sonata, 163,
165-
Apollo, Greek archer god and
god of music, 7, 12.
Apollodorus, n.
Arbeau, "Orchesographie,"88.
"A-re," 64.
Arensky, 252.
Aristides Quintilian, 15.
Aristotle, 80, 82.
Aristoxenus, 82.
Arne, 82.
Assyrian dulcimer, 12.
BABCOCK, ALPHETTS, his patent
iron frame, 39, 44.
Bach, C. P. E., 126; his clave-
cin pieces, 127, 128; "Ver-
such, etc.," 129, 267, 272;
" La Journaliere," 130; "La
Complaisante," 130; "La
Capriceuse," 130, 131; his
preference for the clavichord,
133; use of harpsichord, 133,
264; his fingering, 267, 271.
Bach, J. C., 137.
Bach, Johann Sebastian, 21,
28, 100 et seq^ 107; com-
pared with Handel, no et
seq.; ancestors, 112; posts
at Miihlhausen, Weimar,
Cothen and Leipsic, 112,
113; an instrumental mu-
sician, 114; "The Well-
Tempered Clavichord," 114,
119; "Chromatic Fantasia
and Fugue," 117; Preludes
and fugues, 120; "Gold-
berg" variations, 173; "Ca-
priccio on the Departure of
a Brother," 182; "Musi-
kalisches Opfer," 132; other
compositions, 120; at court
of Frederick the Great, 132;
preference for clavichord,
297
Index
133; influence of the North
German School, 117; equal
temperament, 119; a con-
tinuator, 122; 215, 216, 239,
954; characterized, 197, 263;
his clavier playing, 266.
Bach, W. F., 128.
Backer-Grondahl, Agathe, 240.
Bacon, "Sylva Sylvarum," 68.
Balakirew, 248, 250; "Isla-
mey," 251.
Balancement, 178.
Ballets, allegorical, 89.
Bargiel, 226.
"Base," 64.
Bebung, 178.
Beethoven, a continuator, 122;
his significance, 135; un-
authorized titles, 140; his
comment on Prince Louis
Ferdinand, 141; his piano-
forte music, 146 et seq. ; as
writer of " occasional," 147;
the complete edition of his
works, 149; attitude toward
form, 149, 154; influence on
the sonata, 151; his democ-
racy, 153; a poet of human-
ity, 154; innovations in so-
nata form, 155; his scherzos,
157; finales, 158; last five
sonatas, 158; motival devel-
opment, 1 60; descriptive
music, 161; projected piano-
forte method, 162, 173; con-
tents of his sonatas, 162; his
polyphony, 168; his improv-
isations, 169, 171; his varia-
tions, 168-173; meeting with
Steibelt, 169; his piano-
fortes and their mechanism,
I 73i '79'. clavichord and
harpsichord, 173; compo-
sitions for harpsichord, 176;
his music " claviermassig,"
176-178; a classic and a
romantic, 180; his pupil
Czerny, 189; and Ries, 191;
characterized, 197; use of
folksong idioms, 235; his
pianoforte playing, 271-279;
studies C. P. E. Bach, 271;
style formed on clavichord
and organ, 272; Czerny 's
account of his playing, 272,
283; Mahler's account, 272;
Pleyel's account, 273; pedal-
ling, 273; rudeness, 274;
Sterkel's influence, 274;
Schindler's statement, 274;
Junker's account, 274; pub-
lic performances, 275; en-
counter with Gelinek, 276;
with Steibelt, 277; associa-
tion with Woelffl, 278; von
Seyfried's account, 278; his
high opinion of Cramer, 282;
interpreted by Thalberg, 292.
His compositions: Sonatas
for pianoforte, Op. 2, 157;
Op. 7, 171; Op. 10, 158;
Op. 13, 162; Op. 14, 158;
Op. 26, 171, 178, 288; Op.
27, No. a ("Moonlight"),
161, 162, 165, 215, 216;
Op. 28, 163; Op. 31, 158,
298
Index
161, 162; Op. 53 ("Wald-
stein"), 160, 174, 175, 177;
Op. 57 ("Appassionata"),
153, 162, 165; Op. 101, 157;
Op. 106, 157, 290; Op. 109,
158, 171; Op. no, 157, 161,
177; Op. in, 158, 159, 171.
Variations: "Ich bin der
Schneider Kakadu," 148; on
Diabelli's waltz, 168, 172,
204; in E-flat, Op. 35, 171;
on "Se vuol ballare," 276;
Concerto in G, 175, 285;
Symphonies: "Eroica," 171,
272; C minor, 222; "Pastor-
al," 162, 242; in D minor
("Choral"), 172, 235; "An-
dante fa vori, " 160; Trio Op.
n, 169; Bagatelles, 201;
"Missa solemnis," 147;
" Geschopf e des Prome-
theus," 171; "Fidelio," 189;
"Ruins of Athens," 235.
Miscellaneous references:
36, 186, 195, 201, 203, 215,
227, 231, 239, 245, 270, 280,
282, 291.
Beethovenhaus Verein in Bonn,
174.
Bellini, 211.
Bembo, Pietro, 264.
Benda, family of musicians,
243-
Bendl, 243.
Benedict, Julius, 193.
Bennett, William Sterndale,
225.
Berger, Ludwig, 188, 271.
Berggrcen, collection of folk-
songs, 236.
Berlioz, 213, 249.
Bernard, the German, 58.
Bertini, 282.
Bie, Dr. Oscar, 75, 173; on
Mendelssohn, 212; on Cho-
pin, 216; on Weber, 193; on
Schubert, 201; on von Bil-
low, 294.
Blaikley, D. J., 264, 265.
Blitheman, William, 71.
Blow, Dr. John, 81.
"Blue Danube," waltzes, 60.
Blumenfeld, 252.
"Boabdil," 242.
Bohm, Theobald, 44.
Bosendorfer, 42.
Bohemian musicians and com-
posers, 185, 243, 244.
Bologna, Jacopo, 58.
"Bonny Sweet Robin," 75.
Borodin, 248, 250.
Bossi, 255.
Bouquoy, Count, 187.
Bourree, 89, 93.
Bow, primitive musical instru-
ment, 7 et seq.
Brade, William, 77.
Brahms, Johannes, edits Cou-
perin's works, 92; variations,
168, 227; 226, 227; com-
positions for pianoforte, 228;
" Liebeslieder," 228, 230.
Branle (Shakespeare's bra-wl),
93, 126.
Breuning, Eleonore von, 276.
British Museum, 12.
299
Index
Broadwood, 47, 174.
"Broken music," 64.
Brown, Dr. John, 192.
Brown, Mrs. John Crosby, 31.
Bull, Dr. John, 71, 72; his
career, 79, 80; "King's
Hunting Jigg," 80, 81, 102.
Bullen, Anne, her taste in mu-
sic, 65, 67.
"Burdens," 64.
Burney, Dr. Charles, "Present
State, etc.," 128, 133, 185;
on clavichord, 268, 270.
Burton, 83.
Buus, 58.
Buxtehude, 107, 182.
Byrd, 71; his "Battle," 74, 143;
"The Carman's Whistle,"
75; "Sellinger's Round,"
76, 81.
Byrne, Albert, 72.
Byron, on the waltz, 221.
CAFPI, S., 264.
Cantata, 125.
Cantus firmus, 59.
Canzona per sonar, 60.
"Carman's Whistle," 75.
Cassiodorus, 14.
Catherine of Portugal, 103.
Censorinus, 8.
Cesti, Antonio, 96.
Chaconne, 61, 85.
Chadwick, Geo. W., 256.
Chambonnieres, Jacques Cham-
pion de, 90, 91.
Charles II, King of England,
103, 104.
Charles IX, King of France,
his favorite dance-tune,
84.
Chickering, Jonas, invents iron
frame for grand pf ., 39.
Chinese tune, used by Weber,
*35-
Chopin, labels on his music,
140; and national music,
213; his romanticism, 213;
Huneker on, 214, 215, 217;
his taste, 215; and classicism,
215; Schumann on, 215;
Mendelssohn on, 215; Run-
ciman on, 216; his morbid-
ness, 215, 216; Niecks on,
216; Pudor on, 216; Bie
on, 216; Rubinstein on, 217;
Tappert on, 217; his piano-
forte compositions, 218-223;
his playing, 284, 286, 287,
288, 292; his Polish music.
240-242.
Compositions: Bolero,
219; Concertos, 218, 219;
Fantasia on Polish airs, 218;
Krakowiak, 918; Mazur-
kas, 219, 223, 241; Etudes,
219, 220; Preludes, 219,
220; Nocturnes, 192, 211,
219, 220; Waltzes, 219, 221;
Polonaises, 219, 223, 242,
293; Rondos, 219; Ballades,
219, 220; Scherzos, 219,
221, 222; Sonatas, 219, 222;
Impromptus, 219; Ecos-
saises, 219; Variations, 219;
Fantasias, 219; Tarantelle,
3
Index
219; Berceuse, 219; Bar-
carolle, 219; "Concert Alle-
gro," 219; "Marche fune-
bre," 219.
References, 189, 194, 200,
202, 203.
Chrysander, 92, 116.
Cithern, 68.
Claudius Ptolemy, 15.
Classicism, denned, 122; 123,
1 80 et seq.
Clavicembalo, 19.
Clavichord, 17, 18; expressive
capacity of, 21; instrument
owned by Philip II, 39; over-
strung, 43, 44; touch of, 268;
as preparatory instrument,
268.
Clavicymbal, 18.
Clavicytherium, 19.
Clementi, his sonatas, 127, 136,
138; "Gradus ad Parnas-
sum," 138; Sonata in B-flat,
139; competes with Mozart,
139; "Didone abbandona-
ta," 140, 143, 144, 173, 174,
185, 1 88, 193; and Mozart,
269.
Cobb, J., 72.
"Cobbler's Jig," 77.
Coleridge, definition of beauty,
248.
"Concords," 64.
Conti, Cosimo, 31.
Continue, 133.
Contrapuntal music, 58, 59.
Converse, Frederick, 256.
Coranto, 61, 85, 93.
Cornelius, Peter, 292.
Coupenn, Charles, 91.
Couperin, Franoise ("the
Great"), 90, 91; his "or-
dres," 92, 93; his descrip-
tive music, 93, 1 08; his alle-
gories and ballets, 94; "Les
Folies Francaises," 94; 126,
130, 140, 151.
Couperin, Louis, 91.
Courante, 85, 93.
Cramer, his sonatas, 127; 136,
142; "La Parodie," 142;
"L'Ultima," 142; "Les
Suivantes," 142; "Le Re-
tour a Londres," 142; "Fan-
tasie capricieuse," 142; " Un
Jour de Printemps," 142;
"Le petit Rien," 142; "Les
Adieus k ses Amis de Paris,"
142; career in London, 143;
J. B. Cramer & Co., 143;
fitudes, 144; "Pianoforte
School," 144; "School of
Velocity," 144; 174, 185, 189,
271, 280; his playing, 280;
282, 292.
Cristofori, 25, 29-30; his piano-
forte described, 32, 33; his
stringing, 40; compass of his
pianoforte, 41; compared
with a Steinway, 47-49.
Crosby Brown collection of
musical instruments, 9, 31,
47-
Cui, Cesar, 250.
" Cushion Dance," 83.
Czardas, 248.
301
Index
Czcrny, edits Scarlatti's sona-
tas, 98; " Outline of Musical
History," 173; schools of
pianoforte playing, 190; on
Beethoven's playing, 273; on
Beethoven and Gelinek, 275,
380; on Beethoven and Hum-
mel, 283.
DAcrNcoxniT, 91.
Dampers, 33, 46, 174, i?5-
Dances, at the French court,
83, 84, 87, 89.
Dancing, at Italian courts, 87;
at the Council of Trent, 88;
in churches, 88; Cardinal
Richelieu's, 88; Louis XI V's,
88; Marguerite of Valois's,
89.
Dandrieu, 91; "Les Tendres
Reproches," 92.
Danish composers, 335; folk-
tunes, 336.
Dannreuther, quoted, 138, 144,
188, 320, 348.
Danses basses, 89.
Daquin, "Le Coucou," 92;
"L'Hirondelle," 92.
Debussy, 355.
Dehn, 121.
"Descant," 64.
Descriptive music, 183.
DiabeUi, variations on his
waltz, 168, 171.
Diana, 8.
Diapason normal, 41.
"Diapasons," 65.
Diedrichstein, Prince, 291.
"Dieu quel manage," 59.
"Discords," 64.
"Divisions," 64.
Dittersdorf, his symphonies,
183; on Mozart, 269.
Ddhler, 189.
Dolcimelo, 13.
Domestic music in the Middle
Ages, 100.
Donizetti, 311.
Don Juan of Austria, 88.
Dorn, 188.
Dramma per musica, its in-
fluence on clavier music, 06.
Drayton, Michael, "Poly Ol-
bion," 68.
Drexel, Joseph W., 72.
Dreyschock, 210, 243, 388, 393.
Due corde, 175.
Dulcimer, 13, 13, 26; Heben-
strcit's, 27.
Dumka, 244.
"Dumps," 64.
Durante, 99.
Duschek, 243.
Dussek, 136, 140; his piano
fo/te compositions, 141; So-
nata in F-sharp minor, 141;
" La Consolation," 141; com-
positions on Marie Antoi-
nette, 141; "Battaile na-
vale," 141; 144, 186.
Dvorak, 141, 243.
EDWARD VI, KING or ENG-
LAND, 67.
Egyptian harps, n.
Ehlert, 221.
302
Index
Elizabeth, Queen, music in her
period, 63, 64; plays on the
virginal, 67, 70; her alleged
virginal book, 70.
"Elverhoe," 236.
England's Golden Age of
Music, 63 et seq.
English virginalists, 63 et seq.;
69 et seq.
English music, modern, 256.
Epinette, 19.
Equal temperament, 119.
Erard, system of stringing, 43;
action, 47; piano owned by
Beethoven, 174.
Erasmus, quoted, 65.
Erbach, 102.
FACKELTANZ, 84.
"Fain would I wed," 76.
Farnaby, Giles, 71, 81.
Farnaby, Richard, 71; "Jog
on," 75; "Bonny Sweet Rob-
in." 75-
Ferrari, G. G., 174.
Fibich, 243.
Field, John, 193; character-
ized by Liszt, 194; his com-
positions, 194; 201, 221, 271,
282; his playing, 284, 287.
Fingering, 35, 264, 267.
Finnish music, 236.
Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, 70
et seq.
Flood, Valentine, 77.
Folksong and romanticism, 105,
117; idioms, 233, 234,
235-
Forkel, 133; on Bach's finger-
ing, 267.
Form, defined and described,
15. 'Si-
" Fortune my Foe," 77.
Frames of pianofortes, 36, 37.
Franck, Cesar, 254; "Varia-
tions symphoniques," 254;
"Les Djinns," 254.
Franck, Melchior, 102.
Frederick the Great, 130, 132.
"Freischiitz, Der," 193.
French clavecinists, 90 et seq.
French music and composers,
253-255-
Frescobaldi, 96; "Capriccio,"
99; "Canzone in sesto
Tono," 99; "Canzona," 99;
Correnti, 99.
" Frets," 64.
Fries, Count, 169.
Frimmel, Dr. Theodor, 178.
Friss, 248.
Froberger, 102-105; his ad-
ventures, 103, 104; his alle-
mandes, 104; 182.
Furiant, 244.
GABRIELI, ANDREA, 58.
Gade, 235; his compositions
for pianoforte, 237; "Nach-
klange aus Ossian," 237;
B-flat symphony, 238; pu-
pil of Berggreen, 236.
Galliard, 61, 83, 84, 89.
Galuppi, 99.
"Gamut," 64.
Gavotte, 85, 89, 93.
33
Index
Geigenwcrk, 25.
Gelinek, 275; competes with
Beethoven, 276.
German Handel Society, 116.
Gibbons, Christopher, 72, 81,
103.
Gibbons, Orlando, 71, 72, 81.
Giga (and Jig), 61, 93.
Cittern, 68.
Gladkowska, Constantina, 220.
Glazounow, 252.
"Go from my Window," 76.
" Golden Treasury of Pianoforte
Music," 99.
Gourds as resonators, 9, 10.
Gottschalk, 256.
"Gradus ad Parnassum," 282.
Gravicembalo, 19.
Greek harp and lyres, n.
"Green Sleeves," 77.
Grieg, 200, 235, 237; self-esti-
mate, 239, 240.
Grove, "Dictionary of Music
and Musicians," 131, 138,
188, 251, 264.
Guicciardi, Giulietta, 163, 164.
Guido d'Arezzo, 15.
Gumpeltzhaimer, 102.
Gypsy musicians in Hungary,
246; "Gypsy Epics," 247.
Gyrowetz, 243.
HALL*:, SIR CHARLES, 192, 391.
Hallen, Andreas, 235, 240.
Hammer-action, 33, 44, 45.
Hammerclavier, 173.
Handel, admired by Scarlatti,
97; his career, 100 et seq.;
borrowings from Kerl and
Mutlat, 105; candidate as
Buxtehude's successor, 107;
compared with Bach, no
et seq. ; " Almira," in;
"Rodrigo," in; "Agrip-
pina," 112; oratorios, 113;
harpsichord music, 115;
"The Harmonious Black-
smith," 115, 189; Brahms's
variations, 116; other com-
positions, 116; 151, 168, 227;
his playing, 267.
"Hanskin," 74.
"Harmonious Blacksmith,
The," 115, 189.
Harp, 5; Egyptian, n.
Harpsichord, 18, 19; defects of,
21 ; improvements of, 22;
Ruckers, maker of, 22;
touch of, 268.
Hartmann, J. P. E., 235,
236.
Hasler, Hans Leo, 102.
Hawkins, Isaac, improves
pianoforte, 39.
Haydn, Joseph, 42; a contin-
uator, 122; 126; his clavier
pieces, 127; "Andante va-
rie," 130; Fantasia in C,
1 3> i33' "Genziger" and
" London " sonatas, 138; 139;
method of composing, 140;
letters of Mrs. Schroeter,
143; 187, 188; characterized,
197; on Mozart, 237, 269;
Croatian melodies, 235.
Hebenstreit, 27, 28.
304
Index
Heller, 223, 224; "Flower,
Fruit, and Thorn Pieces"
("Nuits blanches"), 223.
Helmholtz, 28.
Henry VIII, King of England,
64, 65; his musical educa-
tion, 67.
Henselt, edits Cramer's Etudes,
144; 224; "If I were a
Bird," 224; Concerto in F
minor, 224; his playing,
284.
Herz, Henri, 209, 210, an,
288, 291.
Hipkins, " History of the Piano-
forte," 31, 34; on metal
frames, 38; on earliest clav-
ier compositions, 53.
Hoffmann, E. T. A., 203.
Hohenlohe, Princess Marie,
175-
Homer, " Iliad," 7; " Odyssey,"
8,11.
"Homme arme", L'," 59,
60.
Hughes, Rupert, "The Musical
Guide," 202.
Hummel, 136; Dannreuther
on, 144; his "School," 145;
188, 189, 224, 270, 273, 279,
280; his studies, 282; his
pianoforte playing, 283.
Huneker, James, on Chopin,
214, 215, 217; "Chopin,
the Man and his Music,"
217.
Hungarian music, 242, 245.
Huss, H. H., 257.
"ILIAD," 7.
Indy, Vincent d', "Symphony
on a Mountain Air," 255.
Instrumentalists, once legal
vagabonds, 54.
Instrumental music, tardy de-
velopment of, 54, 60.
Intrada, 85.
Italian composers, for clavier,
95 et seq. ; modern, 255.
JACKS, IN HARPSICHORDS, 18,
19, 64.
Jean Paul Friedrich Richter,
183, 203, 224.
Jig, 61.
"Jog on, jog on," 75.
"John, come kiss me now,"
76.
Josquin des Pres, 67.
Junker, 174; on Beethoven's
playing, 274.
KALISCHER, DR. ALFRED, 164.
Kalkbrenner, 210, 271, 287,
288, 291.
Kalliwoda, 243.
Kerl, 105.
Key-action, 33, 44.
Keyboard, 14-16; shifting, 23.
Kissing, in Queen Elizabeth's
time, 65.
Kjerulf, 235, 237.
Knyvett, C., 174.
Kohler, Louis, 224.
Kotzwara, " Battle of Prague,"
74, 141.
Kozeluch, 186.
35
Index
Krehbiel, H. E., "How to
Listen to Music," 24, 181,
183, 346; "Musk and Man-
ners in the Classical Peri-
od," 143, 154; "Studies in
the Wagnerian Drama," 151.
Kuhlau, 191; "Elverhoe,"
236.
Kuhnau, 28, 107; "Biblische
Historien " (Bible sonatas),
107, 109, 182; programme
musk, 1 08, 109, 126, 140.
"LADY COVENTRY'S MINUET,"
368.
"La Mara" (Fraulein Lipsius),
164.
"Lady Neville's Virginal
Book," 71, 74, 77-
Landini, 57.
Lassu, 348.
Lasso, Orlando di, 81.
Lavignac, "Music and Musi-
cians," 313.
Leicester, Earl of, his virginal
book, 71.
Lenz, von, on Cramer's play-
ing, 281, 282; on Liszt, 286,
289; on Henselt, 286; on
Chopin, 388; onTausig, 293.
Liadow, "Tabatiere a Mu-
sique," 252.
Liapounow, 253.
Lightning, in music, 73.
Lipsius, Fraulein ("La Mara"),
164.
Liszt, 174, 175, 189, 192, 203,
310, 3l6, 337, 241, 280;
"Sonnets," 231; on Cho-
pin's sonatas, 333; on Field,
194, 301; Schubert's Fan-
tasia in C, 198, 344; arrange-
ments of Beethoven's sym-
phonies, 344; orchestral
style, 245; sonata in B minor,
345; "Consolations," 345;
"Harmonies poe'tiques," 345;
"Dream Nocturnes," 345;
" Anneesde Pelerinage." 345;
"Legendes," 345; Etudes,
345; "Hungarian Rhapso-
dies," 245-348; "Des Bo-
hem iens, etc.," 346; Con-
certos, 248; influence on
Russian school, 349; his
playing, 388-390; compared
with Thalberg, 392; hears
Tausig, 292.
Locke, Matthew, 72.
Longo, Alessandro, 09.
"Lord Willoughby's Welcome
Home," 77.
Louis Ferdinand, Prince of
Prussia, 141.
Louis XIV, 27, 85; his danc-
ing lessons, 88; dancing at
his court, 90, 95; his clave-
cin players, 91.
Lute, supplanted by the clavier,
102.
Luther, 67; and church music,
1 06.
Lyre, origin of, n.
MACDOWELL, EDWARD A., 256,
306
Index
Machin, Richard, 77.
Maffei, Scipione, 39, 33.
Magyar folkmusic, 245, 246.
Maitland, J. A. Fuller, 701
"Mall Sims," 76, 77.
"Malt's come down," 76.
Marenzio, 81.
Marguerite of Valois, 89.
Marie Antoinette, 141.
Marius, 25, 29; his "Clavecin
a mallets," 30.
Marot, tunes to his psalms,
106.
Marschner, his romantic ope-
ras, 181; "Templar and Jew-
ess," 225.
Martelli, Signora Ernesta, 31.
Martini, 99.
Martucci, 255.
Mary Stuart, Queen of Scot-
land, 67.
Mason, Professor, 10.
Mason, William, 80.
Mattheson, 104, 107.
"Means," 64.
Medici, Catherine de, 87; in-
troduces Italian dances in
France, 89.
Medici, Prince Ferdinando dei,
3-
Melvil, Sir. James, 67.
Mendelssohn, "Variations se*-
rieuses," 168, 212; a roman-
tic composer, 183, 188; his
works, 209-213; Rubin-
stein's estimate, 209; "Songs
without Words," 210, 211,
212; overture to "A Mid-
summer Night's Dream,"
211, 286; "Capriccio in F-
sharp minor," 212; "Rondo
Capriccio," 212; Scherzo in
E minor, 212; Fantasia in
F minor, 212; Etude in F,
212; "Scherzo capriccio,"
212; "Allegro brillante,"
212; Concerto in G minor,
213; and Chopin, 214; on
Liszt's arrangement of Mo-
zart's G minor symphony,
244; his playing, 284, 285.
Mercury, n.
Merulo, 58.
Metropolitan Museum of Art
in New York, 10, 31, 47.
Meyerbeer, 188; "Robert le
Diable," 219.
Midas, Greek virtuoso, 232.
"Midsummer Night's Dream,"
286.
"Minims," 64.
Minuet, 93.
Monochord, 15, 18.
Moussorgsky, 249, 250.
"Moonlight" sonata, 163, 165.
Morley, Thomas, 71.
Moscheles, 188, 205, 213, 271;
on Beethoven's playing, 274;
Salaman on his playing, 283;
Beethoven on his playing,
283; on Chopin, 287.
Moszkowski, "Jeanne d'Arc,"
242; "Boabdil," 242; "Aus
alien Herren Landen," 242;
"Etincelles," 242; "Taran-
telle," 242.
37
Index
Mozart, 42, 136, 133; his in-
struments, 134; praises
Stein's pianofortes, 135; his
composition, 135; plays
duets with J. C. Bach, 137;
Sonata in C minor, 138;
competes with Clement!, 139;
"Magic Flute," 139; 152,
174, 179, 186, 188; charac-
terized, 197; 215; Turkish
march, 235; G minor sym-
phony, 244; his playing,
268, 270, 276; and Clement!,
268; "Nozze di Figaro," 276;
278, 279; Fantasia in F mi-
nor 279; 280, 282.
Murer, 58.
Muffat, G. (father), 105.
MufTat, G. (son), 105.
" Mulliner's Virginal Book," 7 1 .
Munday, 71; his meteorological
fantasia, 72, 142.
NATIONAL MUSEUM (IN BUDA-
PEST), 174.
National Schools of Music,
229-257.
National Museum in Washing-
ton, 10.
Neefe, 272.
Neupert, 237.
Neville, Lady, her virginal
book, 71.
Nevin, Ethelbert, 257.
Newmarch, Mrs., 251.
New Romanticists, 226.
New York Public Library,
manuscripts in, 72.
New York, a season's piano-
forte music, 230.
Niemann, Dr. Walter, "Die
Musik Scandinaviens," 236;
on Grieg, 239.
N-kungo, an African instru-
ment, 9, ii.
Nordraak, 235, 237.
Norman, Ludwig, 235, 240.
North German organists, 105,
117.
Norwegian composers, 235,
37 * *!
"Nozze di Figaro," 276.
"OBERON," 212.
"Odyssey," 8.
Olesen, Ole, 240.
"O Mistress mine," 74.
Onslow, 188.
Opera, invention of, 62.
Organ, ancient, 14, 22; music
f r 55 5<>; influences cla-
vier music, 101; Beethoven's
playing influenced by, 272.
Orgelschlager, 55.
Oriental, color in music, 235;
music, 241, 246.
PACHELBEL, "MUSICAL DEATH
THOUGHTS," 107.
" Packington's Pound," 76, 77.
Paderewski (dedication); his
Polish music, 241; "Fan-
taisie Polonaise," 241; so-
nata and variations, 242,
252.
Paganini, 168, 227.
308
Index
Palestrina, 106; a continuator,
122.
Pantaleon, 27.
Paradies, 99, 126.
Parker, Horatio, 256.
Partita, 61.
"Parthenia," 72, 78, 84.
Pasquini, 96, 99.
Passacaille, 94.
Passepied, 89, 94.
"Pastoral" sonata, 163.
"Pastoral" symphony, 162,
242.
" Pathe"tique " sonata, 165.
Pauer, E., "Old English Com-
posers," 70, 82; "Alte Cla-
viermusik," 99.
Paul, Dr. Oscar, "Geschichte
des Claviers," 83, 98.
Paulmann (or Paumann), 57.
Pavane, 83.
"Peascod Time," 76.
Pedals, 23, 37, 46, 47, 174, 175.
Penna, Lorenzo, "Li Primo
Albori musicali," 265.
Pepys, 69.
Pesaro, 57.
Petrarch, 57.
Phillips, P., 72, 81.
Pianoforte, its origin, 4 et seq. ;
its name, 6; defined, 6; lack
of singing quality in, 24;
Schroeter's invention, 25, 27;
etymology of name, 29;
Cristofori's invention, 29, 30;
Marius's invention, 30;
Cristofori's instrument de-
scribed, 32; evolution of, 34,
49; frame, 36-39; upright
patented, 39; stringing, 39-
44; compass, 41, 42; over-
strung scale, 43; hammer-
action, 44, 45; Cristofori's
instrument compared with a
Steinway, 47-49; its univer-
sality, 100; Beethoven's,
173, 179-
Pindar, 82, 232.
Pistoia, 53.
Pixis, 291.
"Plainsong," 64.
Playford, "Introduction to the
Skill of Musick," 82, 83, 85.
Pleyel, 197.
Pohl, 131.
Pole, William, metal frames, 37.
Polish music and composers,
240-243; Chopin and Pad-
erewski, 240-242.
Polonaise, 84, 242.
Ponsicchi, Cesare, 32, 40.
Porpora, 99.
Pratorius, Hieronymus, 102.
Pratorius, Michael, 60; "Syn-
tagma Musicum," 60, 101,
266.
"Preciosa," 213.
Price, John, 77.
"Pricksong," 64, 67.
Programme music, 182 et seq.
Proposto, 57.
Prosniz, "Handbuch der Cla-
vier Literatur," 129; on
Mozart, 135; on Weber, 193.
Psalter ion, 13.
Pudor, on Chopin, 216, 217.
39
Index
Puliti, 37.
Purcell, 81, 82; use of thumb,
366; "Choice Collection of
Lessons for Harpsichord,"
266.
Pythagoras, 15.
"QUODLINC'S DELIGHT," 76.
RACHMANINOW, PRELUDE IN
C-SHARP MINOR, 252.
Raff, 226; "Hommage au Neo-
romantisme," 226; 245, 357.
Raleigh, Sir Walter, 166.
Rameau, 90, 91, 92; " Les Rap-
pel des Oiseaux," 92; "La
Poule," 92; "Les tendres
Plaintes," 92; "L'gyp-
tienne," 92; "La Timide,"
92; "Les Soupirs," 92; "La
Livri," 92; "Les Cyclops,"
92; 108, 126, 130, 151.
Rebikow, 252.
Rasoumowsky, 235.
Ravel, 255.
Reformation, influence of, 106.
Rellstab, Ludwig, 165.
"Rests," 64.
Richelieu, Cardinal, dances a
saraband, 88.
Ries, Ferdinand, on Beetho-
ven's Sonata Op. 31, No. 2,
161; 167, 174, 191, 271.
Rigaudon, 89.
Riggadoon, 85.
Rimbault, Dr. Edw., "Collec-
tion of Specimens," etc.,
71, 72; "The Pianoforte,"
33; on metal frames, 38; on
strings, 40.
Rimsky-Korsakow, 250; pf.
compositions, 252.
" Robert leDiable," 219.
Rogers, Dr., 72.
" Rolandston," 77.
Roman harps and lyres, n.
Romano, Giulio, 81.
Romanticism, 180, et setj. ; a
definition, 183; aided by
words and instruments, 195;
its elements, 196; and folk-
songs, 234.
Rore, 58.
Rossini, 211.
Rowe, Walter, 77.
Rowe, Walter, son of above, 77.
"Rowland," 76, 77.
Rubinstein, on Rameau, 91;
on Couperin, 91; on Pas-
quini, 96; on Scarlatti, 98;
on Beethoven's music, 52,
171; on Beethoven's C-sharp
minor sonata, 165, 166; on
"Pathe'tique," 166; on Bee-
thoven's Op. 1 06, 178, 196;
on Mendelssohn, 209, 212;
on Chopin, 217, 245; on
himself, 349; on young Rus-
sian school, 249; Concerto
in D-minor, 251; "Staccato
tude," 251; "Study on
False Notes," 251; Melodic
in F, 251; "Kammenoi Os-
trow," 251; Sonata for pf.
and violin, 251; his playing,
293. 294.
310
Index
Ruckers, harpsichord maker,22.
"Ruins of Athens," 235.
Runciman, John F., on Chopin,
216, 217.
Ruskin, definition of repose in
art, 150.
Russian music and composers,
248-253.
Rust, Friedrich Wilhelm, 137.
Rust, Dr. Wilhelm, 137.
Rust, Wilhelm Karl, 137.
SAINT-SAENS, 245; von Bii-
low on, 253; "Caprice on
Russian Airs," 253; "Afri-
ca," 254; "Caprice Arabe,"
254; Concerto in G minor,
254; Symphony in C minor,
255-
Salaman, Charles, his recol-
lections of pianists, 280, 283,
284, 285, 292.
Salieri, 282.
Salomon, 187.
Santini, Abbate, collection of
Scarlatti's works, 97.
Santir, Persian dulcimer, 13.
Saraband, 85, 89, 93.
Sayn-Wittgenstein, Princess,
175-
Scandinavian composers, 235-
240.
Scarlatti, Alessandro, "Capric-
cio," 97.
Scarlatti, Domenico, 97; "Nar-
cissus," 97; Santini's collec-
tion of his works, 97; "Pas-
torale," 97; "Capriccio,"
97; editions of his works, 98;
126, 129.
Scharwenka, Philipp, 243.
Scharwenka, Xaver, 243.
Scheldt, Samuel, 102.
Scherzo, influenced by Bee-
thoven, 167; 221, 222.
Schindler, on Beethoven's pi-
anoforte method, 162; 166;
on Beethoven's playing, 274.
Schroeter, Christoph Gottlieb,
2S 29.
Schroeter, Johann Samuel, 143.
Schubert, characterized, 197;
his compositions, 198 et seq.;
Quartet in D minor, 198,
199; Fantasia in C, 198, 199;
Symphony in C, 198; varia-
tions, 198, 199; "Impromp-
tu" in B-flat, 198; Adonic
metre in his music, 198, 199;
Quartet in A major, 199;
"Der Tod und das Mad-
chen," 199; "Rosamunde,"
199; "Wie sich die Aug-
lein," 191; "Die Forelle,"
199; "Der Wanderer," 199;
"Trockene Blumen," 199;
"Momens musicals," 199,
201; Impromptus, 199, 201;
chamber music, 199; "Ron-
deau brillant," 200; the so-
natas, 200; 202; Chopin's
dislike of his music, 215;
"Divertissement a la Hon-
groise," 235.
Schumann, Clara (Wieck), 205,
207, 226, 285.
3 11
Index
Schumann, Robert, "Carna-
val," 94, 173, 204, 215;
Ktudcs symphoniques," 168,
205, 335; a romantic com-
poser, 183, l86, 303, 203-
308; programme music, 203,
304; his inspirations, 303; his
pianoforte compositions, 304
ei seq.; Sonata in F-sharp
minor, 205; his titles, 306;
Fantasia in C, 307; "Nacht-
stiicke," 308; " Funeral Fan-
tasia," 308; and Weber, 310;
and Mendelssohn, 310; and
Gade, 338; on Chopin, 215;
on Chopin's preludes, 330;
"Noveletten," 331; on Cho-
pin's Waltz in A-flat, 331;
on Chopin's Scherzos, 332;
on Chopin's sonatas, 233; on
Brahms, 336; his theme va-
ried by Brahms, 237; his
playing, 385.
Schytte", Ludwig, 337.
"Scotch snap," 246.
Scriabin, 352.
Selden, John, "Table Talk,"
S3-
"Sellinger's Round," 76.
Seume, "Die Beterin," 164.
Seyfried, Chevalier von, 278.
Sgambati, 355.
Shakespeare, the music of his
time, 64 et seq.; songs from
the plays, 74, 75; sonnet to
"the dark lady," 30, 36;
"The Tempest," 166.
"Sharps," 64.
Shedlock, J. S., "The Piano-
forte Sonata," 138; on Dus-
sek, 143, 137.
Sibelius, 336.
Siciliano, 85.
Silbermann.his pianofortes, 13 3.
Simonides, 83.
Simpson, Richard, 77.
Sinding, 335.
Sjdgren, 336, 240,
Skroup, 343.
Smetana, 141, 243.
Smithsonian Institution, 9.
Sodermann, 235, 340.
Sonata, 60; defined, 134; evo-
lution of, 134, 12$ ct seq.;
Beethoven's influence on,
151 et seq.
Sound-box, evolution of, 9.
Spina, publisher, 174.
Spohr, 188.
Spinet, 19; defects of, 21.
Square ialupi, 57.
Squire, W. Barclay, edits vir-
ginal music, 70.
Stamitz, 243.
Stanley, John, 77.
Stark, L., 199.
Stcherbatchew, 252.
Steibelt, 169; routed by Beetho-
ven, 277.
Stein, pianoforte maker, 135,
174-
Steinway, Henry Engelhard, 44.
Steinway pianofortes, 33, 40;
how strung, 40, 41; com-
pared with a Cristofori in-
strument, 47-49.
312
Index
Stenborg, 240.
Stenhammar, 240, 326.
Sterkel, his playing, 274.
"Stops," 64.
Strauss, Richard, 108, 142.
Striggio, Alessandro, 81.
Stringed instruments, classifi-
cation of, 5.
Strings, material, 22; on the
Cristofori pianoforte, 32;
sizes of, 32; development of,
39-44; laws of strings, 42.
Suite, 61.
Svendsen, Johann, 235, 237.
Swedish music and composers,
235; opera, 240.
Syrinx, 14.
TABOURET, "ORCHESOG-
RAPHIE," 88.
Tallis (or Tallys), 71, 81.
Tambourin, 89.
Tannhauser, 227.
Taubert, 188.
Tausig, 288; his playing, 292,
293; edition of Scarlatti's
sonatas, 98, 192.
Taylor, Franklin, 285.
"Tell me, Daphne," 76.
"Tempest, The," 166.
"Templar and Jewess," 225.
Thalberg, 189, 288, 290-292.
Thayer, Alexander W., 177.
Timm, Henry C., edits Cra-
mer's studies, 144.
Tomaschek, 186; on Woelffl,
279.
Tomkins, Thomas, 72.
Tregian, Francis, 70.
Trench, Archbishop, 181.
Tschaikowsky, 250; pianoforte
compositions, 251; concerto
in B-flat minor, 251.
"Turandot," 235.
Tutte corde, 178.
ULLMANN, 291.
Una corda, 23, 175, 178.
"VALKYRIA," BALLET BY
HARTMANN, 237.
Vanhal, his clavier pieces, 127;
186, 187, 243.
Variations, the form, 168;
Beethoven's on Diabelli's
waltz, 168-173; Mendels-
sohn's, 1 68, 212; Schubert's,
198, 199; Schumann's, 168,
204, 225; Brahms's, 168;
Bach's "Goldberg," 173.
Venice, organists of St. Mark's,
56, 95-
Viennese, School of pianoforte
playing, 270.
"Viol-de-gamboys," 68.
Virginal, 19; defects of, 21; 69,
70; collections of music for,
70, 71.
Virginalists, technique, 263.
"Virginalling," 64.
Virtuosi, not productive, 232;
characterized, 261-263.
Vivaldi, 118.
Vogler, Abbe", 188.
Volta, 89.
Von Arnim, Bettina, 153.
313
Index
Von BUlow, edits Cramer's
KtutJes, 144, 177, 178; his
playing, 293, 294; on Saint-
Sains, 353.
WAGNER, A CONTPOJATOR, 122;
316, 237, 353.
Walther and Streicher, 174.
" Walsingham," 76.
Waltz, Diabelli's, 1 68, 171, 173,
173; Byron's description of,
331.
Weber, Carl Maria von, his
romantic operas, 181, 188;
his pianoforte compositions,
191 et seq.; "Concertstlick,"
193, 193; "Invitation to the
Dance," 193, 193; Sonata in
E minor, 193; "Der Frei-
schiitz," 193; "Oberon,"
sis; "Preciosa," 213, 335;
"Turandot," 335; on Geli-
nek, 375; Prosniz on, 193;
Bie on, 193; 309, 211.
Weber, Dyonysius, 343.
Weingartner, his transcription
of Weber's "Invitation," 192.
Weitzmann, "Geschichte des
Clavierspiels," 99, 364; on
Beethoven's sonatas, 155, 156.
"Well Tempered Clavichord,"
Bach's, 114.
Wetzlar, Baroness, 391.
Whiting, Arthur, his pianoforte
compositions, 357.
"Why ask you," 76.
Wieck, Clara (Schumann), 305,
307, 326, 285.
Wieck, Friedrich, 226.
Wihtol, 352.
Willaert, 58, 60.
Woelffl, 278, 279, 291.
Wood, Anthony a, 73.
Wranitzky, 343.
YAQUIMA INDIANS, USE BOW
AS MUSICAL INSTRUMENT, 9.
ZIEGLER, HENRY, 49.
3*4
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