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Ken  of  music 


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INCLUDING  THE  RIGHT  OF  REPRODUCTION 
IN  WHOLE  OR  IN  PART  IN  ANY  FORM 

COPYRIGHT  ©   1939,   1950,   1958  BY  SIMON  AND  SCHUSTER,  INC. 

PUBLISHED  BY  SIMON  AND  SCHUSTER,   INC. 

ROCKEFELLER  CENTER,   630  FIFTH  AVENUE 

NEW  YORK  20,  N.  Y. 

TWELFTH  PRINTING 
REVISED  AND  ENLARGED  EDITION 


MANUFACTURED  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES  OF  AMERICA 
BY  AMERICAN  BOOK-STRATFORD  PRESS,  INC.,  NEW  YORK 


To 
Lillian  Brockway  Simmons 

and 
Edna  O.  Weinstock 


Introduction  to  the 
Revised  Edition 

Eleven  years  have  elapsed  since  we  finished  the  manuscript  of  Men  of 
Music,  and  in  those  years  the  book  has  run  through  eight  printings.  It 
was  one  of  the  end  products  of  many  years  of  an  all  but  uninterrupted 
conversation  about  arts  and  letters.  The  book  appeared,  and  the  con- 
versation went  on.,  particularly  about  music.  We  discussed  not  merely 
what  we  had  already  written  and  published,  but  also  what  might  have 
gone  into  it  had  it  been  the  ideal  book  we  had  always  wanted  to  write. 
We  took  into  account  both  criticisms  received  and  our  own  evolving 
opinions.  By  the  time  it  became  obvious  that  a  ninth  printing  was  de- 
manded, we  felt  that  Men  of  Music  needed  to  be  corrected  in  detail, 
brought  down  to  date,  and  enlarged.  This  Revised  Edition  is  the  result  of 
that  feeling. 

The  phrase  "corrected  in  detail"  needs  qualification.  We  did  not 
try  to  recast  the  entire  volume  to  fit  our  changed  (and  ever-changing} 
opinions  about  the  multifarious  data  that  had  passed  through  our  minds. 
Rather,  the  hundred  or  so  small  corrections  affected  chiefiy  minor  facts. 
Recently  unearthed  bits  of  information  were  occasionally  inserted.  Rarely 
did  we  alter  a  judgment — in  fact,  we  did  so  only  when  we  ourselves 
found  a  passage  we  could  not  read  without  blushing.  For  instance,  the 
curious  are  invited  to  compare  our  present  evaluation  of  the  Verdi  Requiem 
with  the  casual  dismissal  of  that  high  work  of  genius  in  the  First  Edition. 
On  the  other  hand,  in  the  matter  of  enunciating  points  of  view  that  many 
have  found  unpalatable  we  remain  unreconstructed. 

Bringing  Men  of  Music  down  to  date  was  a  much  easier  task  than 
we  might  have  envisaged  had  we  known,  eleven  years  ago,  that  we  would 
be  doing  it.  Of  the  twenty-one  composers  to  whom,  in  the  First  Edition, 
we  devoted  a  chapter  apiece,  two  of  the  three  who  were  living  then  are 
living  still.  Richard  Strauss,  whose  demise  many  years  earlier  would  have 
left  music  none  the  poorer,  died  in  1949.  Reports  of  a  new  symphony 
from  the  octogenarian  Jean  Sibelius  crop  up  constantly — as  they  did  a 
decade  ago.  And  we  still  wait  for  Igor  Stravinsky  to  equal  the  greatness 
of  his  early  years.  Sibelius  appears  to  have  created  little  or  nothing  since 

vii 


Vlll  INTRODUCTION   TO   THE    REVISED   EDITION 

our  chapter  was  written.  Strauss  and  Stravinsky  have  been  busy,  and  their 
latest  activities  have  been  faithfully  recorded. 

Bringing  Men  of  Music  down  to  date  on  Strauss  and  Stravinsky  has 
lengthened  it,  but  an  added  chapter,  on  Hector  Berlioz,  is  a  more  con- 
siderable enlargement.  Hearing  more  and  more  of  his  music  through  the 
years  had  brought  us  inevitably  to  the  decision  that  he  belonged  among 
those  great  creators  portrayed  and  criticized  in  Men  of  Music.  We 
were,  even  in  our  First  Edition,  somewhat  reluctant  to  omit  him,  but 
our  excuse  at  that  time  was  perfectly  valid.  He  was,  eleven  years  ago, 
so  little  played  that  we  could  not,  without  dishonesty,  have  pretended  to 
judge  him.  Times  have  changed,  though  not  enough.  Unfortunately, 
several  of  Berlioz's  greatest  compositions  were  available  to  us  only  in 
recorded  excerpts  or  in  score.  But  it  is  a  good  sign  that  while  we  discussed 
>and  wrote  this  new  chapter  it  was  possible  to  hear  Berlioz's  music  (in- 
cluding an  uncut  performance  of  Romeo  et  Juliette)  on  the  radio  or 
play  it  on  the  gramophone. 

WALLACE  BROCKWAY 
HERBERT  WEINSTOCK 
New  York 
February  22,  1950 


Acknowledgments 


For  the  opinions  and  statements  in  this  book,  the  authors  are 
alone  responsible.  They  feel  indebted,  however,  to  numerous 
friends  and  well-wishers  for  invaluable  practical  assistance.  They 
wish  to  thank  Richard  L.  Simon  for  many  illuminating  sugges- 
tions. Margaret  Sloss,  who  read  the  manuscript  as  it  was  written, 
and  pulled  the  authors  back  from  the  brink  of  not  a  few  absurdi- 
ties, has  their  lasting  gratitude.  They  owe  much  to  the  stimulating 
editorial  comment  of  the  late  Henry  H.  Bellamann  and  Robert 
A.  Simon.  Ben  Meiselman  was  of  great  assistance  in  preparing 
the  index.  Finally,  Bart  Keith  Winer  undertook  the  job  of  read- 
ing complete  page  proofs  of  the  book,  and  at  the  last  moment 
removed  various  unintentionally  humorous  touches. 

For  the  revised  edition  Jacques  Barzun's  criticisms  of  the 
added  chapter  on  Berlioz  have  been  invaluable. 


Table  of  Contents 

INTRODUCTION  TO  THE  REVISED  EDITION  vii 

I.  THERE  WERE  GREAT  MEN  BEFORE  BACH  3 

Ancestors  of  Western  music.  Dunstable  and  the  English  polyphonists. 
The  Flemings.  Josquin  hints  for  preferment.  A  bad  influence.  Pales- 
trina  the  God-intoxicated.  Saves  music  from  decadence  and  extravagance. 
The  Improperia  and  the  Missa  Papae  MarcelH.  Wife  and  money 
troubles.  Di  Lasso,  dramatist  in  tone.  A  success  story.  Mixed  motives. 
Seven  penitential  psalms.  Victoria  the  devout.  Spanish  rhythms.  The 
climax  of  unaccompanied  vocal  polyphony  in  Palestrina,  Di  Lasso,  and 
Victoria.  Close  of  a  period. 

ii.  JOHANN  SEBASTIAN  BACH  22 

Bach's  fame.  A  musical  clan.  Childhood.  Foreign  influences.  Stubborn- 
ness. Life  in  Weimar.  Appearance.  An  epitomizer  of  forms.  A  duke's 
servant.  Cantatas.  The  greatest  organist.  Cothen.  The  Well-Tempered 
Clavichord.  The  "Brandenburg"  Concertos.  Leipzig.  The  Magnificat. 
The  St.  Matthew  Passion.  A  stickler  for  rights.  The  B  minor  Mass. 
More  cantatas.  Secular  compositions.  Bach's  sons.  Frederick  the  Great 
and  his  theme.  Musical  puzzles.  Blindness  and  death. 

in.  GEORGE  FRIDERIC  HANDEL  53 

A  child  prodigy.  Johann  Mattkeson.  Almira,  HandeVs  first  opera. 
Italy.  Domenico  Scarlatti.  Success.  Hanover  and  London.  Purcell,  Eng- 
land's greatest  composer.  George  I  and  a  false  legend.  The  Water  Music. 
Cliques  and  stage  battles.  Big  box  office.  Handel  clings  to  tradition. 
Esther,  the  first  English  oratorio.  Alexander's  Feast.  Misfortunes  and 
illness.  Handel  as  clavier  composer.  Failure  after  failure.  A  chain  of 
masterly  oratorios.  Messiah.  The  Firework  Music.  Twelve  thousand 
people  attend  a  rehearsal.  Blindness  and  death.  Handel  as  a  British  vice 
and  glory. 

rv.  CHRISTOPH  WILLIBALD  VON  GLUCK  85 

The  Renaissance  produces  opera.  It  degenerates  in  France  and  Italy. 
Opera  as  a  social  gathering.  Gluck's  childhood.  He  writes  conventional 

xi 


i  CONTENTS 

successes.  Visits  Handel  in  London.  Marries  well.  Is  knighted  by  the 
Pope.  Reforms  ballet.  Meets  a  librettist  with  ideas.  Orfeo  ed  Euridice. 
Relapse.  Alceste.  The  importance  of  the  overture.  Iphigenie  en 
Aulide.  Marie  Antoinette  and  Sophie  Arnould.  Armide  and  a  famous 
feud.  Iphigenie  en  Tauride.  Reforms.  Failures.  Social  old  age. 
Entertains  the  Mozarts.  Disobeys  doctor's  orders. 

v.  FRANZ  JOSEF  HAYDN  102 

Parliament  pays  a  bill.  St.  Stephens  and  a  brutal  dismissal.  A  famous 
singing  teacher.  Karl  Philipp  Emanuel  Bach.  Haydn  marries  the  wrong 
wife.  The  Esterhdzys.  A  phlegmatic  genius.  Excellent  working  condi- 
tions. An  indiscretion.  Haydn  meets  Mozart.  And  loses  his  job.  Goes  to 
England.  Becomes  the  idol  of  London.  The  "Salomon"  Symphonies. 
Haydn  teaches  Beethoven.  As  a  symphonist.  Gott  erhalte  Franz  den 
Kaiser.  The  Creation.  Its  fading  luster.  The  Seasons.  Apotheosis 
and  death.  The  rediscovery  of  Haydn.  His  string  quartets.  His  lasting 
greatness. 

vi.  WOLFGANG  AMADEUS  MOZART  124 

The  rococo.  Most  dazzling  of  child  prodigies.  Leopold  Mozart.  Maria 
Theresa.  Tours.  A  boy  writes  operas.  Finds  Salzburg  intolerable. 
Grows  up.  Violin  concertos.  Mannheim  and  the  Webers.  Back  to  im- 
prisonment in  Salzburg.  The  Archbishop  kicks  him  out.  He  marries. 
Die  Entfuhrung.  Gluck.  Poverty  and  extravagance.  Mozart  as  a 
piano  composer.  -  The  concertos.  Symphonies.  Freemasonry.  Plays 
quartets  with  Haydn.  Le  Nozze  di  Figaro.  Success  in  Prague.  Don 
Giovanni.  A  triumph.  Hints  of  the  coming  century.  The  three  master 
symphonies.  Die  Zauberflote.  A  mysterious  visitor  and  the  Requiem. 
Death.  Mozart' *s  overtowering  greatness  and  limitations. 

viz.  LUDWIG  VAN  BEETHOVEN  162 

The  French  Revolution.  A  hero.  Childhood.  Helpful  friends.  Escape  to 
Vienna.  Beethoven* s  notebooks.  Noble  patrons.  Slow  development.  Early 
piano  sonatas.  The  First  Symphony.  The  nineteenth  century  opens.  The 
"Heiligenstadt"  Testament.  Physical  afflictions.  The  mystery  of  the 
"Immortal  Beloved."  Piano  concertos.  Napoleon  and  a  symphony.  More 
piano  sonatas.  Strange  career  of  Fidelia.  Its  overtures.  Beethoven  writes 
the  Fifth  Symphony.  The  Violin  Concerto.  M.  Lesueur  cannot  find  his 
head.  Overtures.  The  Seventh  Symphony.  Goethe.  Beethoven  as  puritan. 
Wellington's  Victory.  Apotheosis.  Last  piano  sonatas.  The  Missa 
solennis.  The  Ninth  Symphony.  Death.  The  string  quartets. 


CONTENTS  Xlll 

vin.  CARL  MARIA  VON  WEBER  208 

Relation  to  Constance  Mozart.  Trouping  childhood.  Wild  oats.  Early 
operas.  Life  in  Prague.  Captures  Germany  with  patriotic  songs.  Der 
Freischutz,  the  fast  romantic  opera.  The  Conzertstiick  as  program 
music.  Spontini  stages  a  spectacle.  The  failure  of  Euryanthe.  Bee- 
thoven speaks.  Weber  learns  English.  Composes  Oberon.  Ill  treat- 
ment in  London.  Triumph  of  Oberon.  Dies  away  from  home. 

ix.  GIOACCHINO  ANTONIO  ROSSINI  226 

Wagner  visits  a  retired  dictator.  Childhood  in  eighteenth-century  Italy. 
Early  operas.  Writes  a  smash-hit  song.  An  impresario  and  his  mistress. 
The  Barber  of  Seville.  Rebellion  in  Naples.  Rossini  marries.  Advice 
from  Beethoven.  Semiramide.  The  siege  of  Paris.  Balzac  likes  Moise. 
High  finance.  William  Tell.  The  monarch  of  opera  abdicates.  Olympe 
Pelissier.  Stabat  Mater.  A  gay  old  age.  Death. 

x.  FRANZ  PETER  SCHUBERT  248 

Unconscious  tragedy.  Genius  and  intellect.  Mastersongs  and  doggerel. 
Limitations.  Poverty  and  adoring  friends.  Masterpieces  at  eighteen.  The 
"Schubertians."  The  "Forellen"  Quintet.  Schubert  fails  with  opera. 
Syphilis.  The  "Unfinished"  Symphony.  Tales  of  romance.  Composes  for 
piano.  The  song  cycles.  The  C  major  Symphony.  Sees  Beethoven.  Death 
and  a  monument. 

xi.  FELIX  MENDELSSOHN-BARTHOLDY  267 

A  happy  life.  The  wonder  child.  A  Midsummer  Night's  Dream.  The 
rediscovery  of  Bach.  Mendelssohn  conquers  England.  Fingal's  Gave. 
Writes  tJie  "Italian"  Symphony.  Renovates  Dusseldorf.  Leipzig ,  the 
Gewandhaus,  and  Robert  Schumann.  St.  Paul.  Mendelssohn  listens 
to  Rossini.  A  romantic  marriage.  The  King  of  Prussia  is  difficult.  The 
"Scotch"  Symphony.  Again  A  Midsummer  Night's  Dream.  The 
Violin  Concerto.  Elijah.  Queen  Victoria.  Death.  Mendelssohn  re- 
judged. 

xii.  ROBERT  SCHUMANN  292 

Heredity  and  romanticism.  Studies  law.  Quarrels  with  Friedrich  Wieck. 
Papillons.  Romance  and  obstacles.  Founds  a  journal.  The  Davids- 
bundler.  Carnaval.  Arrival  of  Mendelssohn.  Wieck  is  obdurate.  Schu- 
mann visits  Vienna.  Finds  Beethoven's  pen  and  a  Schubert  symphony. 


XIV  CONTENTS 

Marries  Clara.  Fantasies tiicke  and  Kreisleriana.  The  great  songs. 
Flaws  as  a  symphonist.  Fails  as  a  pedagogue.  Signs  of  mental  decay. 
Genoveva.  The  Piano  Concerto.  Tragedy  and  death.  Schumann's 
reputation. 

XIII.    FREDERIG-FRANgOIS    CHOPIN  314 

Fame  and  self-limitation.  Childhood  in  Poland.  Weltschmerz.  Paris 
in  the  1830*5.  Noble  patrons.  Valses.  Liszt  and  polonaises.  Another 
Polish  dance.  Pedagogy.  Etudes.  Mendelssohn's  criticism.  Chopin's 
failure  as  a  pianist.  Liaison  and  romance.  Nocturnes.  Scherzos.  George 
Sand.  Hell  in  Majorca.  A  vigorous  corpse.  Preludes.  Four  mad  chil- 
dren. The  masterly  Fantaisie.  Break  with  George  Sand.  Doting 
women.  Purgatory  in  England.  Death  from  consumption. 

xiv.  HECTOR  BERLIOZ  338 

Retarded  recognition.  A  country  childhood.  Assaults  on  the  Prix  de  Rome. 
An  idee  fixe.  A  marvelous  Opus  i.  The  Symphonic  fantastique. 
Sojourn  in  Italy.  Marriage.  A  spot  of  Byronism.  The  mighty  Requiem. 
Cellini  and  Shakespeare.  Funeral  weeds.  Wanderjahre.  Faust 
damned.  Setbacks.  Visits  to  London.  L'Enfance  du  Christ.  A 
mammoth  opera.  More  Shakespeare.  A  classical  romantic.  Problems  and 
answers. 

xv.  FRANZ  LISZT  374 

A  figure  of  legend.  The  master  virtuoso.  Early  amours.  Chopin  and 
Paganini.  Love  and  Mme  d'Agoult.  Swiss  interlude.  Liszt  conquers 
Thalberg.  Triumphal  tours.  Creates  the  piano  recital.  Lola  Montez  et 
al.  Liszt's  children.  Weimar  and  the  Princess.  He  renounces  the  world. 
Becomes  an  international  celebrity.  A  fine  conductor.  Enthusiasm  for 
Wagner.  Almost  marries.  Becomes  an  abbe  instead.  A  vie  trifurqu6e. 
Ten  thousand  pupils.  Death.  An  estimate. 

xvi.  RICHARD  WAGNER  395 

Social  position  of  composers.  Biography  as  detective  story.  Admiration 
for  Weber.  Wagner  writes  a  bloodcurdling  libretto.  Composes  two 
operas.  Begins  to  attract  creditors.  Marries  Minna.  Das  Liebesverbot 
finishes  an  opera  company.  Riga  and  machinations.  Flight  by  sea.  Begin- 
nings of  Der  fliegende  Hollander.  Rienzi  and  success.  The  Leit- 
motiv. Composes  Tannhauser,  which  is  tepidly  received.  Quarrels  with 
Minna.  More  creditors.  Writes  the  Lohengrin  libretto.  Toys  with 
revolution.  Exiled.  Fails  to  conquer  Paris.  More  love  affairs.  Lohengrin 
fails.  The  Ring  librettos.  Wagner  leads  musical  life  of  Zurich. 


CONTENTS  XV 

Pamphleteering.  Mathilde  Wesendonck  and  the  AsyL  Enter  Cosima 
von  Billow.  The  Ring  progresses.  Tristan.  The  Paris  Tannhauser 
fiasco.  More  wanderings.  A  fairy  prince.  Revolution  in  Munich.  Wagner 
composes  Die  Meistersinger.  Marries  Cosima.  Completes  the  Ring. 
Builds  the  Festspielhaus*  The  fast  Ring.  Parsifal.  The  Wagner 
legend. 

xvii.  GIUSEPPE  VERDI  445 

Verdi  the  patriot.  Early  years.  Marriage.  First  opera  a  success.  Death  of 
wife  and  children.  Triumph  of  Nabucodnosor.  Troubles  with  the 
censors.  The  Villa  San?  Agata.  Giuseppina  Strepponi.  Rigoletto.  II 
Trovatore.  Camille  and  La  Traviata.  Failure  and  fiasco.  Verdi 
becomes  a  war  cry.  Marries  Giuseppina.  Enters  parliament.  St.  Peters* 
burg  and  La  Forza  del  destine.  The  Khedive  wants  an  opera.  Aida. 
The  Requiem.  Thirteen  yeans  of  silence.  Arrigo  Bdito.  Two  Shake- 
spearean masterpieces.  Dawn  of  the  twentieth  century. 

xvin.  JOHANNES  BRAHMS   ,   ,  469 

"The  three  B's."  Brahms  speaks.  Childhood  in  the  slums.  Potboilers. 
Joseph  Joachim.  The  Schumanns.  New  Paths.  Schumann  dies.  Brahms 
and  Clara.  Brahms'  psychology.  A  court  musician.  The  First  Piano 
Concerto.  Re-creates  the  variation  form.  Moves  to  Vienna.  As  chamber 
composer.  Brahms  and  romance.  Ein  deutsches  Requiem.  Waltzes 
and  Hungarian  dances.  Elisabeth  von  Herzogenberg.  The  Franco- 
Prussian  War.  The  "Haydn"  Variations.  Brahms  as  lieder  composer. 
Four  symphonies.  Visits  Italy.  The  Violin  Concerto.  A  degree  and  the 
Akademische  Festouverture.  A  famous  beard.  Von  Billow.  Brahms 
meets  Tchaikovsky.  The  "Double"  Concerto.  The  last  piano  pieces. 

xix.  PIOTR  ILYICH  TCHAIKOVSKY  502 

A  neurotic  child.  A  petty  official.  Studies  music.  The  Rubinsteins. 
Moscow.  Tchaikovsky  writes  a  symphony.  The  affaire  Desiree  Artot. 
The  Five.  Romeo  and  Juliet.  The  First  Piano  Concerto.  Von  Billow 
plays  in  Boston.  Bizet  vs  Wagner.  Nadejda  von  Meek  and  Antonina 
Miliukova.  Tchaikovsky  marries.  Grim  tragedy.  Ballets.  The  Fourth 
Symphony.  Eugen  Oniegin.  Italy.  The  Violin  Concerto.  World  fame. 
The  Fifth  Symphony.  Pique-Dame.  Break  with  Nadejda.  Tchaikovsky 
visits  the  United  States.  The  Nutcracker.  The  "Pathetique."  Cholera. 

xx.  CLAUDE-ACHILLE  DEBUSSY  529 

"Musicien  frangais."  Paris  and  tradition.  Childhood.  The  Conserva- 
toire. Visits  to  Moscow.  L'Enfant  prodigue.  Composes  songs.  The 


XVI  CONTENTS 

Prix  de  Rome.  A  Wagnerian.  La  Damoiselle  elue.  Russian  and 
Javanese  music.  Green-eyed  Gaby.  L5Apres-midi.  The  String  Quartet. 
The  fast  Debussyans.  Pierre  Louys.  More  songs.  First  marriage.  Noc- 
turnes. "M.  Croc  he."  Maeterlinck,  Mary  Garden,  and  Georgette 
Leblanc.  The  leitmotiv  and  Pelleas.  Second  marriage.  Piano  composi- 
tions. La  Mer.  Concert  tours.  Chouchou.  Le  Martyre  de  Saint- 
Sebastien.  D'Annunzio.  Images.  Preludes,  The  World  War. 
Etudes.  Death. 

xxi.  RICHARD  STRAUSS  556 

Decline  of  a  giant.  Prodigious  youth.  Von  Billow.  Early  works.  Don 
Juan.  Influence  of  Wagner.  Tod  und  Verklarung.  As  conductor  and 
discoverer.  Egypt  and  an  opera.  As  lieder  composer.  Marriage.  Till 
Eulenspiegel.  Also  sprach  Zarathustra.  A  touch  of  megalomania. 
Don  Quixote.  A  monument  to  bad  taste.  Berlin,  Nikisch,  and 
Wilhelm  II.  Feuersnot  and  the  critics.  What  is  the  Sinfonia  Domes- 
tica?  Salome.  Elektra.  Strauss  visits  the  United  States.  Der  Rosen- 
kavalier.  Ariadne  auf  Naxos.  Decline  and  fall.  A  Na&?  A  lesson 
from  Rossini. 

xxii.  JEAN  SIBELIUS  574 

False  picture  of  Finland.  Ancestry  and  boyhood.  Law  and  music  in 
Helsingfors.  Germany  and  education.  En  Saga.  Marriage.  Epic  in- 
spiration. The  Swan  of  Tuonela.  A  government  grant.  The  First 
Symphony  and  Tchaikovsky.  A  patriotic  gesture.  The  Second  Symphony 
and  the  Violin  Concerto.  Moves  to  Jdrvenp'd'd.  The  Third  Symphony. 
Miscellanea.  Pohjola's  Daughter.  Illness.  Voces  intimae.  The 
controversial  Fourth.  Sibelius  visits  the  United  States.  The  First  World 
War.  The  Fifth  Symphony.  Revolution  and  a  siege.  Under  fire.  The 
Sixth  Symphony  and  the  Seventh.  Sibelius  at  seventy-four;  at  eighty. 

xxin.  IGOR  STRAVINSKY  594 

Russian  composers  and  academies.  Rimksy-Korsakov.  Two  short  orches- 
tral pieces  win  Diaghilev.  L'Oiseau  de  feu.  Petrouchka.  Piano 
compositions.  Nijinsky  and  Le  Sacre  du  printemps.  A  riot  in  the 
Champs-Ely  sees.  Neoclassicism.  Le  Rossignol.  Experiments.  Les 
Noces  and  catharsis.  Devitalization.  Oedipus  Rex.  Jean  Cocteau. 
The  Symphonic'  de  psaumes.  A  genius  of  emptiness.  Music  for 
Ringling  Brothers  and  Billy  Rose.  The  later  symphonies.  Orpheus  and 
an  opera  in  English.  The  future  of  music. 

INDEX  613 


MEN  OF  MUSIC 


Dull-Useful  Information 
for  Conscientious  Readers 


Titles  of  compositions  are  given  in  their  original  form  except 
where  common  usage  forces  the  English  translation.  Thus,  we 
speak  of  The  Well-Tempered  Clavichord,  not  Das  Wohltemperirte 
Clavier;  of  La  Traviata,  not  The  Strayed  One. 

The  word  clavier  is  used  throughout  for  all  immediate  ancestors 
of  the  piano.  The  authors  found  that  discriminating  narrowly  be- 
tween clavicembalo,  clavichord,  clavier,  harpsichord,  and  spinet 
would  involve  discussions  of  timbre  and  mechanism  not  within 
the  scope  of  this  book. 


Chapter  I 

There  Were  Great  Men 
Before  Bach 


THE  fierce,  blinding  sun  of  the  high  Renaissance  was  beating 
down  on  papal  Rome  when  Giovanni  Pierluigi  da  Palestrina, 
the  greatest  of  the  old  composers,  was  writing  Masses  for  worldly 
and  splendor-loving  pontiffs.  Around  him  flowed  the  variegated 
life  of  sixteenth-century  Italy,  given  its  pattern,  texture,  and  color 
by  this  phenomenal  upsurge  of  human  ambition.  Everywhere 
artists  were  celebrating  the  victory  of  the  senses:  sculptors  were  ex- 
ploring with  rediscovered  candor  the  contours  of  the  human  body; 
painters  were  transforming  their  peasant  mistresses  into  the 
Mother  of  God;  architects  were  masking  the  harsh  Gothic  face  of 
the  cities  with  gracious  temples  and  colonnades,  and  philosophers 
were  dreaming  of  Plato,  that  prince  of  pagan  poets  whom  a  blas- 
phemous humanist  had  actually  proposed  for  sainthood.  In  the 
midst  of  all  these  busy  sensualists  ostensibly  re-creating  the  classic 
past,  but  in  reality  creating  the  modern  world,  Palestrina  was 
patiently  putting  the  finishing  touches  to  the  Gothic  edifice  of 
medieval  music. 

By  Palestrina' s  time  music  was  an  exceedingly  complicated 
affair.  Like  every  other  art,  it  had  developed  slowly  and  painfully 
from  meager  beginnings.  From  the  ritual  grunts  of  savages  it  had 
evolved  with  geologic  slowness  into  an  adjunct  of  the  Greek  drama. 
Whether,  if  we  knew  how  to  perform  it,  Greek  music  would  appeal 
to  us  or  not  we  can  never  know,  for,  as  a  wise  English  critic  has 
said,  "All  the  research  in  the  world  will  not  enable  us  to  under- 
stand the  Greek  musician's  mind." 

From  a  strictly  pragmatic  point  of  view,  music  blossoms  at  that 
moment  in  the  fourth  century  when  Ambrose,  Bishop  of  Milan, 
decided  to  regulate  the  singing  for  the  services  in  his  diocese.  The 
Ambrosian  chant — the  first  thoroughly  recognizable  ancestor  of 
music  as  we  hear  it — is  the  leanest  and  most  solemn  adaptation  of 
the  Greek  modes,  the  ancestors  of  our  modern  scales.  This  somber 
singing  can  still  be  heard  in  certain  Milanese  churches,  but  today 
we  are  more  familiar  with  the  elaboration  of  St.  Ambrose's  system 

3 


4  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

known  as  the  Gregorian  chant,  which  largely  superseded  the 
older  musical  service  at  about  the  beginning  of  the  seventh  cen- 
tury. Some  think  that  St.  Gregory,  the  greatest  Pope  of  the  early 
Middle  Ages,  sponsored,  or  even  devised,  the  innovation;  less 
romantic  historians  believe  that  he  was  too  busy  with  barbarians, 
heretics,  and  plague  to  bother  with  ideas  about  music. 

For  a  thousand  years  the  music  of  the  Church  was  rigidly 
melodic:  that  is,  it  attained  its  ends  without  the  use  of  harmony  as 
we  conceive  it  today.  The  troubadours  and  minnesingers  accepted 
unquestioningly  this  purely  horizontal  tradition  of  music,  and 
lavished  their  imagination  on  the  melody  and  words.  But  neither 
these  gay  itinerant  musicians  nor  the  formulators  of  primitive 
counterpoint  (whoever  they  were)  can  be  called  real  composers. 

The  Renaissance,  which  exploited  the  individual  ego,  gave  birth 
to  the  composer  with  a  name.  Until  then  men  had  been  content  to 
submerge  their  names  in  anonymous  giving  of  their  talents:  the 
musician  was  as  nameless  as  the  altar  boy  swinging  the  censer.  In 
the  Middle  Ages  music  had  no  separate  identity:  it  was  as  much  an 
accessory  of  the  sacred  rite  as  Greek  music  was  of  the  drama. 
Definitely,  purposely,  a  part  of  some  greater  whole,  it  was  designed 
to  recede.  It  is  no  coincidence  that  the  first  pieces  of  self-sufficient 
music  are  (with  few  exceptions)  not  anonymous:  they  were  still 
written  for  the  Church,  but  the  composer  had  begun  to  think  of 
his  music  as  a  living  thing  he  had  created. 

Considering  the  exalted  and  ancient  lineage  of  the  other  arts, 
it  comes  as  a  shock  to  find  that  the  first  composer,  in  the  modern 
sense  of  the  word,  was  an  Englishman  who  died  in  1453.  This  man, 
John  Dunstable,  is  an  almost  mythical  figure,  a  sort  of  English 
Orpheus  who  was  even  credited  with  the  invention  of  counter- 
point— a  feat  obviously  beyond  the  abilities  of  a  single  individual. 
Also,  for  no  apparent  reason,  he  has  been  confused  with  St. 
Dunstan,  an  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  who  had  died  more  than 
four  centuries  before.  Add  that  he  was  even  confused  with  another 
English  composer  of  his  time,  and  was  reputedly  astrologer  and 
mathematician,  and  this  sums  up  what  is  known  of  the  man  who 
was  probably  Geoffrey  Chaucer's  most  gifted  artistic  contem- 
porary. Little  of  Dunstable's  music  survives,  and  he  might  have 
vanished  from  history  altogether  if  it  had  not  been  for  his  long 
and  fruitful  association  with  Continental  musicians  of  his  age, 


THERE    WERE     GREAT    MEN    BEFORE    BACH  5 

whose    successors — especially    the    Flemish    masters — evidently 
studied  his  methods  to  great  advantage. 

Dunstable's  suave  and  euphonious  style  tended  temporarily  to 
soften  the  harsh  contours  of  the  music  of  the  Flemings.  But  Jean  de 
Okeghem  reverted  to  the  austerity  of  earlier  Flemish  music,  while 
vastly  increasing  its  technical  resources.  Okeghem  has  been  called 
the  greatest  music  teacher  of  all  time,  and  in  his  relentless  pursuit 
of  a  new  methodology  has  been  likened  to  the  modern  experi- 
mentalist, Arnold  Schonberg.  This  is  by  no  means  a  forced  com- 
parison, for  the  purely  esthetic  results  of  their  efforts  are,  in  both 
cases,  open  to  question. 

Like  many  another  outstanding  theoretician,  Okeghem  was  ful- 
filled in  the  work  of  his  pupils,  the  greatest  of  whom  was  Josquin 
Des  Pres.  Coming  upon  Josquin  after  mingling  with  his  still 
shadowy  predecessors  is  like  emerging  suddenly  into  the  light  of 
day:  he  is  recognizably  a  modern  man,  an  erratic  genius  whose 
checkered  career  extended  well  into  the  sixteenth  century.  He  was 
born  in  the  dawn  of  a  new  age,  when  the  Turks  swarming  into 
Constantinople  and  Gutenberg  devising  the  printing  press  helped 
to  liberate  forces  that  would  destroy  the  Middle  Ages.  Josquin 
emerges  from  the  mists  as  a  singer  at  Milan  in  1474.  He  was  then 
about  thirty  years  old,  and  it  seems  probable  that  his  sophistica- 
tion was  already  such  that  even  the  excessive  splendor  of  the  court 
of  the  Sforzas  could  not  overawe  him.  For  he  was  no  stranger  to 
court  life,  as  he  himself  testifies:  he  had  studied  under  Okeghem  at 
the  royal  chapel  of  Louis  XI.  As  he  left  the  then  cheerless  city  of 
Paris  with  a  whole  skin,  we  may  be  sure  that  he  did  not  make  the 
sour  French  monarch  the  butt  of  those  practical  jokes  for  which  he 
later  became  notorious. 

Within  the  next  decade  or  so,  Josquin  made  a  leisurely  progress 
through  the  burgeoning  duchies  of  northern  Italy,  where  beauty- 
loving  and  neurasthenic  princes  welcomed  good  musicians  with  the 
extravagant  warmth  of  those  lush  and  expansive  times.  He  finally 
arrived  at  Rome,  which  was  for  two  hundred  years  to  be  the  center 
of  the  musical  world,  and  became  a  singer  in  the  papal  chapel, 
thus  choosing  a  road  to  fame  that  became  stereotyped  with  his 
successors.  Perhaps  the  choristers  in  the  Pope's  service  lived  aloof 
from  the  dissolute  life  of  Renaissance  Rome,  but  if  they  came  much 
into  contact  with  that  grand  old  rake,  Innocent  VIII,  or  his  even 


D  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

more  riotous  successor,  Alexander  VI,  they  must  have  witnessed 
some  of  the  most  colorful  and  improper  scenes  in  the  history  of 
even  the  Eternal  City.  Here,  despite  the  obvious  distractions  of 
Borgian  Rome,  Josquin  worked  on  his  first  book  of  Masses — prob- 
ably some  of  them  were  sung  in  the  Sistine  Chapel  with  the  com- 
poser himself  taking  part. 

Louis  XI  had  died,  Charles  VIII  had  climaxed  a  humiliating 
career  by  mortally  bumping  his  head,  and  that  brilliant  match- 
maker, Louis  XII,  was  firmly  seated  on  the  French  throne  before 
Josquin  wandered  back  to  Paris  to  seek  preferment.  At  first  he  had 
to  live  on  glory  and  promises:  his  first  book  of  Masses,  published  in 
1502,*  was  received  with  great  acclaim,  and  though  Louis  XII 
began  to  hint  cheerfully  about  church  benefices,  these  failed  to 
materialize.  Josquin  was  no  respecter  of  the  person  of  the  Most 
Christian  King,  and  dared  to  jog  his  memory.  Being  commissioned 
to  compose  a  motet  for  performance  in  the  King's  presence,  he 
chose  two  telling  phrases  from  the  Psalm  cxix — "Let  Thy  words  to 
Thy  servant  be  remembered"  and  "My  portion  is  not  in  the  land  of 
the  living" — for  his  contrapuntal  embroidery.  He  received  a  bene- 
fice. 

Josquin  died  in  1521.  Later  composers,  exploiting  even  further 
the  devices  he  had  used  and  the  styles  he  had  vivified,  crowded  his 
music  out  of  the  churches  with  motets  and  Masses  of  their  own. 
For  almost  four  hundred  years  Josquin  has  been  hardly  more  than 
a  name.  Yet  the  most  painstaking  musicologists,  after  piecing  to- 
gether the  pitifully  sparse  details  of  his  life,  round  out  their  labors 
by  unanimously  acclaiming  him  a  genius.  Although  rarely  per- 
formed, a  sufficiently  large  amount  of  his  music  survives  for  us  to 
visualize  him  three-dimensionally  as  a  composer.  He  widened  the 
scope  of  musical  art  unbelievably:  he  advanced  and  subtilized  the 
technical  resources  of  his  predecessors;  more  important  still,  he 
discovered  that  music  can  be  made  the  vehicle  of  varying  human 
emotions.  Even  the  most  baroque  of  Josquin5  s  works,  though  full 
of  higher-mathematical  intricacies,  are  nevertheless  expressive-— 
the  music  of  a  man  who  felt  deeply  and  made  spacious  melodies. 
What  sets  him  above  the  earlier  masters — and,  indeed,  above  most 

*  Although  the  first  printed  music  antedates  this  by  a  quarter  of  a  century,  Jos- 
quin was  the  earliest  composer  to  have  a  complete  printed  volume  of  his  music 
published. 


THERE  WERE  GREAT  MEN  BEFORE  BACH     J 

composers — is  precisely  this  richly  varied  expressiveness.  His 
music  possessed  a  powerful  appeal  for  his  contemporaries.,  who  in- 
variably referred  to  him  as  "the  wonderful"  or  "the  marvelous" 
Josquin.  Luther,  a  good  judge  of  music,  and  himself  a  composer 
of  sorts,  said,  probably  of  Josquin's  less  intricate  style  (for  this 
downright  reformer  had  little  use  for  musical  monkeyshines),  that 
others  were  mastered  by  notes  while  Josquin  did  what  he  pleased 
with  them. 

Josquin's  effect  on  music  was  not  wholly  salutary:  his  associates 
and  followers — particularly  the  Flemings — admired  him  most  as  a 
superb  craftsman,  and  tended  to  forget  the  more  purely  musical 
excellences  of  his  style.  Uncritically  digesting  his  technique,  they 
then  began  at  the  point  beyond  which  prudence  and  taste  had  pre- 
vented Josquin  from  venturing,  and  went  on  to  create  monstrous 
complexities,  at  which,  finally,  the  Pope  himself  began  to  shudder. 

For  almost  two  hundred  years  the  Holy  See  had  been  vaguely 
disturbed  by  the  growing  elaborations  and  often  glaring  inap- 
propriateness  of  the  music  for  the  services.  The  complaints  were 
numerous:  secular  tunes  and  even  words  were  used;  different  sets  of 
words  were  sung  simultaneously,  and  at  times  the  style  was  so 
florid  that  the  words,  lost  in  the  mazes  of  ornamentation,  were 
completely  incomprehensible.  Imagine  a  solemn  High  Mass  sung 
to  the  tune  of  Oh!  Susanna,  with  the  tenors  crooning  Kiss  Me  Again 
and  the  basses  growling  Asleep  in  the  Deepl  This  is  the  sort  of  thing 
we  might  still  hear  if  an  affronted  and  conscientious  Pope  had  not 
moved  to  reform  these  evils. 

Reform  was  in  the  air.  The  Council  of  Trent,  originally  con- 
vened to  checkmate  Luther's  criticisms  by  a  general  house  cleaning, 
was  reconvened  in  1562  by  Pius  IV,  after  a  recess  of  ten  years. 
Among  what  they  doubtless  considered  far  weightier  matters,  the 
fathers  of  the  conclave  found  the  degraded  state  of  church  music 
worthy  of  their  august  consideration.  Therefore,  with  the  Pope's 
emphatic  approval,  two  cardinals*  were  appointed  in  1564  to  see 
that  sacred  music  was  once  more  made  sacred.  At  first  the  situa- 
tion seemed  so  hopeless  that  there  was  talk  of  restricting  the 

*  One  of  them  was  Carlo  Borromeo,  the  greathearted  Archbishop  of  Milan.  A 
nephew  of  Pius  IV,  he  almost  justified  the  institution  of  papal  nepotism  by  those 
noble  deeds  that  led  to  his  being  sainted,  twenty-five  years  after  his  death  in  1584, 
by  Paul  V. 


8  MEN     OF    MUSIC 

musical  services  to  the  traditional  body  ofplainsong.  It  is  possible 
that  this  deadening  remedy  had  already  been  seriously  considered 
when  a  man  was  found  who  could  evolve  an  idiom  both  artistically 
mature  and  ecclesiastically  acceptable. 

Giovanni  Pierluigi  da  Palestrina,  the  man  who  saved  the  art 
of  music,  was  thirty-nine  years  old  at  this  time.  Like  the  magnifi- 
cent Leonardo,  he  had  taken  as  his  own  the  name  of  his  native 
village,  where  he  was  born  in  either  1525  or  1526.  Palestrina  is, 
and  doubtless  was,  a  drowsy  and  picturesque  little  town  nestling 
in  the  craggy  fastnesses  of  the  Sabine  Mountains.  The  composer's 
parents  were  people  of  substance  in  this  obscure  place,  holding 
their  land  in  fee  of  the  powerful  Colonna  family.  It  is  probable  that 
one  of  the  Colonnas  took  notice  of  the  child,  and  persuaded  his 
parents  to  let  him  enter  the  papal  service.  At  any  rate,  we  know 
that  as  early  as  his  twelfth  year  Palestrina  was  living  in  Rome,  and 
serving  as  a  choirboy  in  the  basilican  church  of  Santa  Maria 
Maggiore. 

After  seven  years  in  Rome  Palestrina  returned  to  his  native  town 
with  a  life  appointment  as  organist  and  choirmaster  of  the  ca- 
thedral, offices  carrying  the  revenues  of  a  canonry.  His  fortunes 
were  on  the  upgrade.  Three  years  later,  his  marriage  to  a  local 
heiress  diverted  a  fat  dowry  his  way.  Shortly  afterwards,  Giovanni 
Maria  del  Monte,  Cardinal  Bishop  of  Palestrina,  became  Pope  as 
Julius  III — an  event  of  prime  importance  in  the  ascending  se- 
quence of  Palestrina5 s  fortunes.  Almost  immediately  the  new  Pope 
appointed  his  organist  choirmaster  of  the  Julian  Chapel,  the 
nursery  for  future  Sistine  singers.  Palestrina  dedicated  his  first 
book  of  Masses  to  the  Pope,  who  responded  by  giving  him  a  life 
appointment  as  a  singer  in  the  papal  chapel,  thus  enabling  him  to 
give  up  his  exacting  duties  at  the  Julian. 

In  March,  1555,  Julius  III  died,  and  the  next  month  Cardinal 
Cervino  was  elected  to  succeed  him,  assuming  the  curiously 
archaic  name  of  Marcellus  II.  Unfortunate  in  life — he  had  enjoyed 
the  papacy  but  three  weeks  when  he  died,  probably  poisoned — he 
was  singularly  fortunate  in  his  post-mortem  fame,  for  Palestrina's 
greatest  Mass  was  named  for  him.  Giovanni  Pietro  Caraffa  fol- 
lowed the  luckless  Marcellus,  and  as  Paul  IV  connected  himself 
inextricably  with  the  most  exquisite  refinements  of  the  Inquisition, 


THERE     WERE     GREAT    MEN    BEFORE    BACH  9 

to  which,  as  a  Neapolitan,  he  was  peculiarly  fitted  to  lend  his  in- 
ventive genius.  One  of  his  first  acts  was  to  rescind  Palestrina's 
"life"  appointment  in  the  Sistine:  the  morbidly  devout  pontiff 
could  not  brook  the  idea  of  a  married  man  singing  in  the  Vatican. 

Palestrina  interpreted  his  dismissal  as  a  personal  slight  (though 
two  other  married  members  of  the  choir  were  let  out  at  the  same 
time)  5  and  his  health  suffered.  The  niggardly  pension  that  Paul 
assigned  him  could  scarcely  compensate  for  his  loss  of  prestige, 
though  his  injured  feelings  were  somewhat  assuaged  by  his  ap- 
pointment to  succeed  the  renowned  Di  Lasso  as  musical  director  of 
St.  John  Lateran,  "of  all  churches  in  the  world  the  mother  and 
head.55  However,  this  position  seemed  to  be  better  than  it  actually 
was:  the  music  was  not  well  endowed,  and  Palestrina  was  con- 
stantly at  loggerheads  with  his  employers,  who  do  not  seem  to  have 
appreciated  him.  This  impossible  situation  was  terminated  by  his 
resignation  in  1560,  possibly  with  the  intention  of  devoting  him- 
self exclusively  to  composing.  Sorely  disturbed  though  he  was  by 
the  undignified  bickering  at  the  Lateran,  he  yet  composed,  in 
the  Improperia  for  the  Good  Friday  service,  the  work  that  raised 
him  to  a  pre-eminence  that  went  almost  unchallenged  until  his 
death. 

The  Improperia  brought  Palestrina  so  much  acclaim  that  he  was 
besieged  simultaneously  by  requests  for  more  compositions  and 
by  appeals  to  re-enter  the  service  of  the  Church.  The  compositions 
were  forthcoming  in  profusion,  but  he  hesitated  to  return  to 
masters  who  had  treated  him  so  ambiguously.  After  eight  months 
of  unemployment,  however,  he  consented  to  return  to  Santa  Maria 
Maggiore,  to  lead  the  choir  in  which  he  had  sung  as  a  child. 
Here  he  remained  for  six  years. 

The  fanatical  Paul  IV  died  in  1559,  and  there  ascended  the 
throne  of  St.  Peter  one  of  the  most  amiable  figures  of  the  late 
Renaissance,  Giovanni  Angelo  des  Medici.  This  cultured  and  en- 
lightened philosopher,  known  as  Pius  IV,  was  evidently  deeply  im- 
pressed by  Palestrina's  music,  for  he  requested  that  the  Improperia 
be  copied  into  the  manuscript  books  of  the  Sistine  Chapel.  It  is 
possible  that  the  simplicity  and  genuine  piety  of  these  Good 
Friday  pieces  led  the  Pope's  commissioners  to  turn  to  Palestrina  in 
solving  the  crisis  created  by  the  ultimatum  of  the  Council  of 


IO  MEN     OF    MUSIC 

Trent.  But  it  is  impossible  to  verify  the  old  tale  that  it  was  the 
Missa  Papae  Marcelli  that  won  them  over. 

This  Mass,  the  most  famous  piece  of  Renaissance  music,  is  as 
shrouded  in  legends  and  conflicting  traditions  as  the  Mono,  Lisa. 
Among  a  welter  of  data  there  are  many  absurdities  and  few  au- 
thenticated facts.  The  most  preposterous  story  attributes  the 
composition  to  Pope  Marcellus  I,  a  thoroughly  unmusical  gentle- 
man who  was  martyred  early  in  the  fourth  century.  It  seems  like- 
lier that  Palestrina  composed  it  in  1562,  and  submitted  it  to 
Cardinal  Borromeo  and  his  associate  two  years  later.  Even  the 
date  and  place  of  the  first  performance  are  not  known  with  cer- 
tainty: some  say  Santa  Maria  Maggiore  heard  it  first;  others 
favor  a  private  audition  at  the  palace  of  one  of  the  commis- 
sioners, followed  by  a  performance  at  the  Sistine,  in  the  presence 
of  the  Pope  himself,  on  June  19,  1565. 

We  are  on  firm  ground,  however,  in  regard  to  the  ultimate  re- 
ception accorded  this  great  masterpiece,  for  here  the  question 
refers  not  to  a  contradiction  in  data,  but  to  the  inherent  grandeur 
of  a  peak  in  art  comparable  to  the  Sistine  frescoes.  If  Pius  IV  did 
not  really  say  that  the  Missa  Papae  Marcelli  was  comparable  to  the 
music  heard  by  St.  John  the  Divine  during  his  vision  of  the  New 
Jerusalem,  he  should  have  said  it.  After  all,  it  is  merely  a  florid 
Renaissance  way  of  saying  exactly  what  critics  have  been  saying 
ever  since.  But  the  making  of  heavenly  melodies  was  not  very 
profitable,  and  Palestrina  welcomed  the  largess  of  wealthy  clerics 
and  noblemen. 

In  1565,  Palestrina's  friend  Pius  IV  died;  he  was  succeeded  the 
following  year  by  the  cantankerous  Inquisitor  General,  Michele 
Ghislieri,  who  assumed  the  name  of  Pius  V.  This  thoroughly 
morose  monk  (the  last  sainted  pope)  reappointed  Palestrina  to  the 
Julian  Chapel  in  1571,  this  time  as  choirmaster.  Meanwhile,  the 
composer's  creative  genius  was  at  flood:  Masses,  motets,  and  sacred 
madrigals  flowed  from  his  pen  unceasingly,  and  apparently  with- 
out effort.  Two  of  the  madrigals  commemorated  the  signal  vic- 
tory of  the  allied  Venetian,  Spanish,  and  papal  navies  over  the 
Turks  at  Lepanto. 

Palestrina's  sobriety  of  character  must  have  made  him  welcome 
in  the  more  serious  ecclesiastical  circles  of  the  time.  His  intimacy 
with  Filippo  Neri,  the  founder  of  the  Order  of  Oratorians,  dates 


THERE    WERE    GREAT    MEN    BEFORE    BACH         II 

from  the  year  1571,  when  the  future  saint*  is  said  to  have  invited 
him  to  conduct  the  musical  services  at  Neri's  own  church.  These 
services  came  to  be  known  as  oratorios  because  they  were  per- 
formed in  an  oratory:  the  term  "oratorio"  was  not  applied  to  a 
particular  form  of  music  until  1600.  Neri,  who  seems  to  have  been 
free  of  the  more  forbidding  qualities  usually  connected  with  saints, 
became  the  composer's  lifelong  friend. 

Despite  Palestrina's  many  friends  among  the  powerful  and  holy 
of  the  Renaissance — a  list  of  his  dedications  reads  like  a  sixteenth- 
century  Almanack  de  Gotha — his  life  was  cheerless  and  pinched.  His 
wife  and  two  musically  promising  sons  died  within  a  few  years  of 
each  other,  and  he  was  left  with  one  rascally  boy  who  not  only 
plagued  him  during  his  life,  but  also,  as  his  father's  musical  exec- 
utor, damaged  his  musical  reputation  after  his  death.  His  second 
marriage,  at  the  age  of  fifty-six,  could  not  well  have  been  a  ro- 
mantically happy  one:  he  needed  money  and  someone  to  preside 
over  his  household.  The  woman  of  his  choice  was  a  widow  in  com- 
fortable circumstances,  and  presumably  in  need  of  the  same 
human  companionship  that  Palestrina  craved.  He  took  over  a  fur- 
and-hide  business  she  had  inherited  from  her  first  husband,  and 
made  a  decided  go  of  it,  buying  much  valuable  real  estate  with 
his  profits. 

The  last  seventeen  years  of  Palestrina's  life  were  marked  only  by 
domestic  vicissitudes;  officially,  through  his  honored  connections 
with  the  Vatican,  he  had  achieved  the  utmost  distinction  the 
Renaissance  had  to  offer  a  musician.  Others  might  be  better  re- 
warded, but  the  fact  remained  that  Palestrina's  offices  gave  him 
the  tacit  dictatorship  of  the  musical  world.  Only  a  technical  ques- 
tion of  seniority  of  service  kept  him  from  the  position  of  master  of 
the  papal  choir.  He  issued  his  works  with  almost  calendar  regu- 
larity, though  not  in  the  sumptuous  format  that  distinguished  the 
publications  of  certain  of  his  contemporaries  who  enjoyed  the 
patronage  of  a  mere  king  or  duke — the  Popes  were  not  so  munifi- 
cent to  their  musicians  as  to  their  painters  and  sculptors. 

Palestrina  was  not  one  of  the  most  prolific  composers:  he  left 
only  ninety-three  Masses,  five  hundred  motets,  four  books  of 
madrigals,  hymns,  and  offertories  for  the  whole  Church  year,  three 

*  Palestrina  numbered  at  least  three  saints  among  his  acquaintance — Carlo  Bor* 
romeo,  Pius  V,  and  Filippo  Neri. 


12  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

books  of  Magnificats,  three  of  litanies,  three  of  lamentations,  and 
two  of  sacred  madrigals — a  mere  trifle  compared  to  the  incredible 
output  of  his  well-kept  contemporary,  Orlando  di  Lasso.  But  the 
percentage  of  excellence  is  amazingly  high:  Palestrina  seldom  fell 
below  his  own  standards,  which  were  uncompromising.  Occasion- 
ally a  composition  written  to  order  did  not  please  the  great  per- 
sonage for  whom  it  was  intended.  When  the  learned  builder-Pope, 
Sixtus  V,  heard  the  Mass  Tu  es  pastor  ovium,  he  remarked  dryly 
that  Palestrina  seemed  to  have  forgotten  the  Missa  Papae  Marcelli. 
But  even  this  hypercritical  pontiff  was  won  over  by  Assumpta  est 
Maria,  as  well  he  might  be,  for  it  is  barely,  if  at  all,  inferior  to  the 
Marcellan  Mass. 

Sir  Donald  Tovey  has  pointed  out  that  Palestrina,  like  Spinoza, 
was  a  God-intoxicated  man.  His  secular  compositions  are  negli- 
gible in  number,  but  in  his  Church  music  he  did  not  invariably 
follow  the  letter  of  the  regulations  laid  down  by  the  Council  of 
Trent.  He  frequently  used  secular  tunes  for  sacred  texts:  for  in- 
stance, he  used  the  folk  melody  UHomme  arme  as  the  basis  for  two 
Masses.  He  set  another  Mass  to  the  tune  of  a  French  love  song. 
However,  his  intense  devotional  fervor  so  spiritualized  these  lay 
melodies  that  all  trace  of  their  vulgar  origin  was  removed. 

Palestrina  gave  music  a  new  kind  of  beauty  based  on  an  under- 
standing of  integral  structure.  His  predecessors,  even  the  greatest 
of  them,  had  been  content  to  solve  specific  technical  problems 
without  conceiving  them  in  relation  to  the  total  effect.  Some  of 
them  had  given  beautiful  and  expressive  melody  to  each  voice, 
and  had  ingeniously  carried  these  single  threads  through  a  com- 
plicated labyrinth,  producing  a  rich  fabric  of  sound.  But  in  their 
single-minded  pursuit  of  correct  horizontal  development  of  the 
separate  voices,  they  failed  to  relate  them  vertically  in  such  a  way 
as  to  produce  harmonically  beautiful  chords.  We  have  no  evi- 
dence that  the  ugly  discords  of  the  great  Flemings  were  intentional. 

In  the  rather  barren  controversies  that  rage  perennially  over  the 
comparative  worth  of  various  compositions  by  a  single  master,  and 
which  are  particularly  unprofitable  in  the  case  of  a  composer  so 
rarely  performed  as  Palestrina,  the  vote  is  always  divided.  The 
Missa  Papae  Marcelli  is  by  no  means  unchallenged  in  its  pre-emi- 
nence: at  least  three  other  Masses  compete  for  highest  place. 
Assumpta  est  Maria^  for  instance,  has  been  compared  (with  com- 


THERE    WERE    GREAT    MEN    BEFORE    BACH         13 

plimentary  intent)  to  the  Sistine  Madonna.  But  now  that  the  re- 
cording companies  and  the  radio  have  thrown  their  enormous 
weight  on  the  side  of  the  Marcellan  Mass,  it  seems  destined  to  hold 
its  place  in  popular  estimation  as  the  greatest  composition  before 
Bach.  Nowadays,  when  the  link  with  Palestrina  is  becoming  ever 
more  tenuous,  it  is  increasingly  difficult  to  enjoy  him  fully  without 
the  act  of  faith  that  is  the  very  essence  of  the  creed  he  illuminates. 
For  Palestrina  is,  above  all  else,  other  worldly,  and  therefore,  to 
the  vast  majority  of  our  contemporaries,  he  must  necessarily  seem 
remote;  by  the  same  token,  his  esthetic  is  as  difficult  to  enter  into 
as  that  which  reared  a  Buddhist  stupa  or  fashioned  a  T'ang  vase. 
The  Missa  Papae  Marcelli  sums  up,  in  a  way  that  only  an  expert  can 
appreciate,  but  everyone  can  feel,  what  was  best  in  the  music  of 
the  time.  If  you  are  not  conditioned  to  be  moved  by  its  applica- 
bility as  part  of  revealed  truth,  you  can  at  least  savor  it  as  the  voice 
of  a  particular  moment  in  history — that  frozen,  baffling  eternity 
known  as  the  Middle  Ages. 

In  the  dedication  to  Gregory  XIII  of  his  fourth  book  of  Masses, 
Palestrina  shows  a  lively  sense  of  his  own  gifts  as  a  composer.  His 
contemporaries  already  regarded  him  as  one  of  the  fountainheads 
of  music.  One  of  them,  the  Spaniard  Victoria,  so  admired  him 
that  he  not  only  imitated  the  Italian  master's  musical  style,  but  is 
said  to  have  copied  his  somber  clothes  and  the  cut  of  his  beard. 
In  1592,  a  group  of  accomplished  north-Italian  composers  pre- 
sented a  collection  of  vesper  psalms  to  Palestrina,  with  a  dedica- 
tion that  reflects  the  reverence  in  which  he  was  held  during  the 
last  years  of  his  life.  Its  language  is  extravagant,  and  would  be 
fulsome  if  addressed  to  any  lesser  personage:  "As  rivers  are  natu- 
rally borne  to  the  sea  as  their  common  parent  and  lord,  and  rest  in 
its  bosom  as  the  attainment  of  their  own  perfection,  so  all  who  pro- 
fess the  art  of  music  desire  to  approach  thee  as  the  ocean  of  musical 
knowledge  to  testify  their  homage  and  veneration." 

During  his  last  years,  his  responsibilities  somewhat  lightened, 
Palestrina  continued,  as  was  his  oft-expressed  intention,  to  create 
music  for  the  greater  glory  of  God.  Old  age  did  not  stem  his  cre- 
ativeness,  and  he  was  preparing  his  seventh  book  of  Masses  for 
publication  when  he  died,  on  February  2,  1594.  His  intimate 
friendship  with  Filippo  Neri  lends  plausibility  to  a  legend  that  he 
died  in  the  saint's  arms. 


14  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

Palestrina  was  buried  in  the  old  basilica  of  St.  Peter's,  but  his 
tomb  was  moved  during  the  demolition  of  the  church,  and  no 
longer  exists.  Records  preserve  the  epitaph,  its  Latin  sonorousness 
aptly  saluting  the  greatness  of  his  achievements: 

JOANNES   PETRUS   ALOYSIUS   PRAENESTINUS 
MUSIGAE    PRINGEPS 

With  the  Missa  Papae  Marcelli  there  began  the  last  phase  of 
purely  vocal  contrapuntal  development,  enriched  by  later  works  of 
the  Prince  of  Music  himself  and  his  most  eminent  contemporaries 
— Orlando  di  Lasso  and  Tom^s  Luis  de  Victoria.  Di  Lasso  worked 
mainly  in  Germany,  and  therefore  fell  little  under  the  influence  of 
Palestrina:  a  native  of  Flanders,  he  summed  up  the  accomplish- 
ments of  the  Flemish  school.  Victoria,  however,  spent  much  time  in 
Rome,  and  consciously  modeled  his  compositions  after  the  great 
Italian's.  During  the  last  third  of  the  sixteenth  century,  when  all 
three  of  these  men  were  prodigally  pouring  forth  a  flood  of  master- 
pieces, they  divided  the  domain  of  music  among  them.  Although 
they  cannot  be  considered  rivals,  they  offer  endless  material  for 
comparison  and  contrast.  Palestrina  was  a  lyric  tone  poet  of  the 
lineage  of  Raphael  and  Mozart;  Di  Lasso  was  a  dramatist  in  tone, 
related  to  Michelangelo  and  Bach;  Victoria,  finally,  was  a  sort  of 
Spanish  Palestrina,  but  endowed  with  the  passion  and  mystical 
tenderness  of  his  countrymen. 

Of  this  peerless  constellation,  Di  Lasso  had  the  most  eventful 
life.  His  was  the  first  really  big  success  story  in  music.  Noble 
patrons  competed  for  the  honor  of  employing  him:  he  started  out 
as  the  favorite  of  a  Gonzaga,  and  ended  up  at  the  court  of  Munich 
in  the  softest  musical  berth  in  Europe.  The  pomp  and  glitter  of  his 
life  is  rather  like  Leonardo's.  He  spent  his  vacations  running 
pleasant  diplomatic  errands  for  his  powerful  patrons.  Everything 
conspired  to  produce  for  him  those  ideal  circumstances  for  which 
every  composer  yearns. 

Orlando  was  born  at  Mons,  in  what  is  now  Belgium,  about  1530. 
Even  at  the  age  of  nine  he  had  progressed  so  far  musically,  and  had 
so  angelic  a  voice,  that  he  was  thrice  abducted,  the  third  time  by 
agents  of  Ferdinand  Gonzaga,  Viceroy  of  Sicily.  His  lifelong 
habit  of  consorting  with  noblemen  was  formed  early,  and  after  his 


THERE    WERE     GREAT    MEN    BEFORE    BACH         15 

voice  broke  he  spent  several  years  fancying  the  high  society  of 
Naples  and  Rome. 

Orlando's  bent  was,  from  the  first,  secular.  Unlike  Palestrina, 
who  passed  his  entire  life  in  the  papal  service,  Orlando  held  only 
one  brief  church  appointment,  and  that  early  in  his  life:  the  direc- 
tion of  the  choir  at  St.  John  Lateran.  He  left  this  post  to  resume  his 
wanderings  with  a  highborn  friend,  and  may  even  have  reached 
England  before  settling  temporarily  at  Antwerp  in  1555.  In  that 
year  he  brought  out  his  first  two  publications,  a  book  of  madrigals^ 
mostly  on  verses  by  Petrarch,  and  a  collection  of  madrigals,  chan- 
sons, and  villanelle,  with  four  motets  trailing  after.  These  juvenilia, 
which  are  characterized  by  bold  chromatic  devices,  annoyed  Dr. 
Charles  Burney,  the  foremost  English  music  critic  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  into  calling  Orlando  "a  dwarf  on  stilts"  as  compared  with 
Palestrina. 

Orlando  cannily  dedicated  his  first  book  of  motets  to  the  future 
Cardinal  de  Granvella,  and  that  rising  statesman  promptly 
recommended  him  to  the  attention  of  Albert  V,  Duke  of  Bavaria. 
It  was  at  the  brilliant  court  of  the  Wittelsbachs,  at  Munich,  that 
Orlando  passed  most  of  his  life.  At  first  only  a  court  singer  (he  had 
to  learn  German  before  assuming  heavier  responsibilities),  he  al- 
ready drew  a  larger  salary  than  the  Kapellmeister.  He  married  a  rich 
Bavarian  girl.  Within  an  amazingly  short  time  after  his  arrival  in 
Munich  he  himself  was  Kapellmeister  and  one  of  the  Duke's  most 
trusted  ambassadors.  And  in  1570  the  Emperor  Maximilian  II 
ennobled  him. 

Orlando's  fame  soon  spread  throughout  Europe,  and  he  was 
received  with  great  enthusiasm  wherever  he  went.  Even  though  he 
enjoyed  incomparable  working  conditions  at  Munich,  it  is  difficult 
to  understand  how  he  found  time  to  produce  the  stupendous  body, 
of  his  music.  One  year  he  was  in  Venice  finding  singers  for  the 
ducal  chapel,  another  year  in  Paris  hobnobbing  with  Charles  IX, 
himself  an  amateur  musician;  another  time  he  journeyed  to  Fer- 
rara  to  present  Alfonso  II  with  a  book  of  madrigals.  The  Italian 
ruler  received  him  coldly,  and  to  save  the  artistic  credit  of  an  Este 
the  Florentine  ambassador  intervened  in  Orlando's  behalf.  A 
slight  to  this  composer  was  an  international  incident. 

An  exuberant  love  of  fun  endeared  Orlando  to  a  Paris  ruled 
by  Valois  and  Medici.  The  judicious  Abbe  de  Brantdme  spoke  of 


l6  MEN     OF    MUSIC 

some  music  he  had  written  at  Catherine  de'  Medici's  order  as  the 
most  melodious  he  had  ever  heard,  while  Charles  IX's  admiration 
became  so  intense  that  he  offered  to  engage  Orlando  as  a  chamber 
musician  at  a  fabulous  salary.  He  declined  the  honor,  but  con- 
tinued on  such  friendly  terms  with  the  royal  family  that  Henri  III, 
the  last  of  the  Valois,  gave  him  a  pension  and  special  privileges  for 
publishing  his  music  in  France. 

The  truth  is  that  Orlando  needed  no  favors  from  foreign  poten- 
tates. His  salary  at  Munich  was  more  than  lavish,  and  the  condi- 
tions under  which  he  worked  literally  have  no  parallel.  His  job 
was  simple:  to  write  as  much  as  he  wished  in  whatever  style  he 
chose.  The  only  thing  the  Duke  asked  for  himself  was  to  be  on 
hand  when  Orlando's  works  were  performed.  The  many  musicians 
who  thronged  the  court  of  Albert  V  were  at  Orlando's  beck  and 
call:  in  the  realm  of  music  he  was  as  absolute  as  the  Duke  was  in 
affairs  of  state.  If  Orlando  wrote  a  Mass,  he  could  order  its  im- 
mediate performance  in  the  ducal  chapel;  if  he  wrote  a  madrigal, 
the  chances  were  that  it  would  be  sung  at  a  court  gathering  the 
same  evening.  Here  the  ideal  circumstances  of  demand  and  im- 
mediate performance  were  realized  as  they  never  have  been  since. 

While  fortune  kept  her  fixed  smile  turned  on  Orlando,  he  con- 
tinued to  issue  Masses,  Magnificats,  Deutsche  Lieder,  and  chansons 
in  bewildering  abundance.  Albert  V  died  in  1579,  and  his  son, 
Orlando's  close  friend,  succeeded  him  as  William  V.  Albert's 
lavishness  left  the  treasury  depleted,  but  Orlando  did  not  suffer — 
on  the  contrary,  his  salary  was  doubled  within  the  next  few  years. 
Meanwhile,  the  Jesuits  got  at  the  Duke,  and  their  influence  slowly 
seeped  into  the  court,  blotting  out  the  old  gay  life,  and  making 
William  so  unpleasant  that  history  has  nicknamed  him  the  Pious. 
Orlando,  as  a  clever  courtier,  must  have  responded  to  this  re- 
vivalism, and  yet  in  1581  his  villanelle  are  still  overflowing  with 
the  very  essence  of  comic  drama — hold,  indeed,  the  germs  of 
opera  boujfe.  The  Duke's  bigotry  seemingly  imposed  few  restrictions 
on  Orlando,  and  more  than  ever  he  wrote  magnificently,  with 
subtlety,  expressiveness,  freedom,  and  boundless  audacity. 

In  1584,  the  annual  procession  of  the  Sacrament  through  the 
streets  of  Munich  on  Corpus  Christi  was  threatened  by  a  thunder- 
storm. For  some  moments — the  whole  incident  reads  like  a  fine 
page  from  South  Wind — it  seemed  that  the  ceremony  would  have  to 


THERE    WERE    GREAT    MEN    BEFORE    BACH         IJ 

be  held  indoors.  The  Sacrament  was  carried  to  the  porch  of  the 
Peterskirche,  and  the  choir  began  to  intone  Orlando's  motet 
Gustate  et  videte.  Suddenly  the  storm  abated,  the  sun  shone  brightly. 
On  the  theory  that  this  meteorological  miracle  had  been  brought 
aboul  by  the  music,  this  same  motet  was  thereafter  sung  during 
outdoor  processions  as  a  deterrent  to  storms. 

The  last  decade  of  Orlando's  life  was  marked  by  a  growing 
sobriety  of  attitude.  His  fifth  took  of  madrigals,  published  in  1585, 
revealed  this  change.  Like  some  of  his  earlier  efforts  in  this  genre, 
they  were  settings  of  Petrardi,  but  the  overdone  chromaticism  of 
the  early  pages  now  gave  wa.y  to  a  purer  diatonic  style.  It  was  as 
though  he  was  censuring  himself  for  his  youthful  extravagances, 
and  subjecting  his  gifts  to  more  rigorous  discipline.  But  the 
strength  of  strength's  prodigy  began  to  fail,  and  1586  passed 
ominously  without  a  publication.  The  Duke  noticed  Orlando's 
failing  health,  and  presented  him  with  a  country  house  to  which 
he  might  retire  from  the  strenuous  ritual  of  court  life. 

Baseless  fears  for  the  future  of  his  family  were  sapping  the  com- 
poser's vitality.  His  mind  became  increasingly  disturbed — he 
seems  to  have  suffered  attacks  of  real  insanity.  At  times,  he  refused 
to  speak  to  anyone,  and  was  unable  to  recognize  his  wife.  The 
court  physician  treated  him,  and  temporary  recovery  followed. 
But  he  brooded  constantly  on  death,  and  spoke  so  bitterly  that  the 
patient  Duke  became  enraged,  and  was  calmed  only  by  the  inter- 
cession of  Orlando's  faithful  wife.  His  blackest  humors  passed  as 
unreasonably  as  they  had  come,  and  he  was  able  for  a  time  in  1594 
to  resume  his  duties  at  court. 

On  May  24,  Orlando  dedicated  his  Lagrime  di  San  Pietro  to 
Clement  VIII.  It  was  his  swan,  song,  and  before  its  publication  he 
died,  on  June  14,  1594,  little  more  than  five  months  after  his  peer 
Palestrina. 

Orlando  is  one  of  the  most  difficult  composers  to  analyze:  not 
only  did  he  write  almost  two  thousand  works,  but  he  wrote  them 
in  a  bewildering  multiplicity  of  styles.  If  he  were  performed  as 
often  as  Wagner,  it  would  take  many  months  of  ceaseless  listening 
merely  to  hear  all  of  him;  as  it  is,  he  is  performed  even  less  than 
Palestrina.  His  works  range  from  ribald,  actually  bawdy  chansons 
(which  blushing  editors  permit  us  to  see  only  in  bowdlerized 
versions)  to  some  of  the  most  sublime  devotional  music  ever 


l8  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

written.  Between  these  extremes  are  pieces  expressing  every  subtle 
shade  of  emotion.  The  large  number  of  compositions  that  lie  at  the 
opposite  poles  of  this  gamut  suggests  a  manic-depressive  per- 
sonality at  work,  and  there  are  passages  in  Orlando's  life  itself 
that  give  color  to  this  hypothesis.  It  remains  unexplained  why  this 
exuberant  wisecracker  and  punster,  whose  letters  to  Duke  Albert 
are  full  of  excessive  high  spirits,  ended  his  life  of  unrelieved  good 
fortune  as  a  near-insane  melancholic.  Needless  to  say,  this  emo- 
tional seesawing  does  not  detract  from  the  greatness  of  his  music. 
In  surveying  the  vast  and  elevated  domain  carved  out  by 
Orlando's  genius,,  critics  have  espied  few  of  those  isolated  peaks 
that  crown  the  Palestrinian  landscape.  The  altitude  is  consistently 
very  high,  but  the  slopes  are  gentle;  there  is  no  Missa  Papae  Mar- 
cellij  no  Assumpta  est  Maria.  There  is,  nevertheless,  general  agree- 
ment that  Orlando's  setting  of  the  seven  penitential  psalms  is  his 
greatest  single  work.  In  the  musical  language  of  God-directed  con- 
trition and  sorrow,  Orlando  has  .never  been  excelled  by  anyone, 
has  been  equaled,  perhaps,  only  by  the  Bach  of  the  St.  Matthew 
Passion.  In  these  poignant  lamentations,  all  earthiness  and  ribaldry 
have  been  burned  out  by  searing  emotion,  and  what  remains  is  the 
very  distillation  of  sublimity. 

Tomas  Luis  de  Victoria  is  the  third  of  this  great  trio  of  six- 
teenth-century religious  composers.  He  was  born  at  Avila,  prob- 
ably about  1540.  As  the  birthplace  of  St  Teresa— she  may  have 
known  Victoria  personally,  for  she  mentions  his  brother  Agustm  in 
one  of  her  books — Avila  calls  to  mind  the  inextricable  mingling  of 
music  and  religiosity  in  late  Renaissance  Spain.  Mystical  and 
ascetic,  sensual  .and  ecstatic,  St.  Teresa  fills  a  unique  niche  in 
hagiology,  and  resembles  closely  but  two  other  figures  in  history; 
El  Greco  and  Victoria.  The  latter,  though  influenced  by  Pales- 
trina,  never  lost  the  dark^  intensely  Spanish  quality  that  some  find 
repellent,  others  magnificent.  The  mixture  of  spiritual  ecstasy 
and  lasciviousness  in  his  compositions  has  often  reduced  the  sacred- 
music  experts  to  a -state  of  silent  embarrassment.  Critics  have  been 
similarly  tongue-tied  before  certain  of  El  Greco's  canvases. 

Unlike  most  of  his  contemporaries,  Victoria  never  had  to  free 
himself  from  the  bonds  of  Flemish  pedantry,  with  its  endless 
•elaborations  and  frequently  empty  scrollwork:  from  the  beginning 


THERE    WERE     GREAT    ME3ST    BEFORE    BACH         IQ 

he  used  a  simple  and  expressive  style.  It  had  flowered  first  in 
Palestrina's  motets,,  but  Victoria  molded  it  into  something-  en- 
tirely new.  His  motets,,  though  less'  gracious  and  less,  contrapuntally 
clever  than  Palestrina's,  overflow  with  warmth,  masculine  tender- 
ness, and  mystical  ardor, 

Victoria  was  a  priest.  He,  rather  than  Palestrina,  was  the 
paragon  sought  by  the  reforming  fathers,  of  the  Council  of  Trent: 
he  never  composed  a  secular  piece  or  used  a  secular  theme.  He 
inscribed  a  book  of  motets  and  psalms  not  to  a  Irving'  patron,  but 
"to  the  Mother  of  God  and  to  All  the  Saints."  In  dedicating  a 
book  of  Masses  to  Philip  II  of  Spain,  he  said  that  he  had  been  led 
by  instinct  and  impulse  to  devote  himself  exclusively  to  church 
music.  At  the  same  time,  he  bade  farewell  to  composing,  saying 
that,  he  was  determined  to  resign  himself  to  the  contemplation  of 
divine  things,  as  befitted  a  priest*  He  made  this  vow  in  1583,  but 
the  urge  to  create  was.  too  strong,  and  before  he  died,,  almost  thirty 
years  later,  he  had  published  many  other  volumes. 

Victoria  was  happy  in  his  patrons,,  whose  generosity  enabled 
him  to  issue  his  compositions  in  sumptuous  folios  that  quite  out- 
shone the  publications  of  his  contemporaries.  His  severely  devout 
nature  recommended  him  to  Philip  II,.  who  in  1565  sent  him  to 
Rome  to  continue  his  musical  studies.  Here  he  became  a  chaplain- 
singer,  and  eventually  choirmaster,  at  the  Collegium  Germani- 
cum,  Loyola's  bulwark  against  Lutheranism.  He  worked  at  the 
Collegium,  for  more  than  a  decade,  leaving  in  1578  to  become 
chaplain  to  Philip*s  sister  Maria,  widow  of  the  Emperor  Maxi- 
milian II. 

Victoria's  relations  with  the  Empress  were  close.  He  remained 
in  her  service  until  her  death  in  1603,  and  the  liberal  pension  she 
left  him  in  her  will  evidences  her  esteem.  A  profoundly  devout 
woman,  she  took  up  her  residence  in  Madrid  at  the  convent  of  the 
Franciscan  nuns  known  as  Descalzas  Reales,  and  Victoria's  duties 
included  leading  its  choir.  The  E-mpress*  daughter  Margaret  joined 
this  barefoot  order  in  1584,  and  it  was  to  this  princess  that  he 
dedicated  a  great  Offieiim  defunctorum,  written  for  the  funeral  of 
her  mother.  He  survived  the  Empress  but  eight  years,  during 
which  he  was  chaplain  to  the  Archduchess  Margaret,  and  died  on 
August  27,  1611. 

In  forming  our  judgment  of  Victoria,  we  are  not  embarrassed 


20  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

by  the  overwhelming  output  of  an  Orlando.  The  Spaniard  was 
not  a  prolific  composer:  he  left  less  than  two  hundred  separate 
compositions.  The  most  striking  characteristic  of  his  music  is  its 
hint  of  Moorish  influence:  it  sometimes  uses  those  harmonic  and 
rhythmic  devices  which,  however  metamorphosed  and  cheapened, 
are  to  this  day  the  unmistakable  hallmark  of  Spanish  music.  Vic- 
toria, even  in  his  imitation  of  Pales trina,  retained  his  special  native 
quality:  his  Spanishness  is  as  obvious  as  that  of  Albeniz  or  Falla, 
though  it  is  asserted  less  blatantly. 

No  less  Spanish  is  Victoria's  pervasive  mysticism.,  which  occa- 
sionally borders  on  hysteria.  He  was  very  sure  of  his  mission.  In  the 
dedication  of  the  Canticae  beatae  Virginis,  one  of  his  most  ecstatic 
outpourings,  he  declared  that  his  aim  was  to  compose  music  solely 
as  a  means  for  raising  men's  minds  by  pleasant  stages  to  the  con- 
templation of  divine  truth.  No  music  would  be  more  likely  to  ac- 
complish such  a  purpose  than  Victoria's,  though  cynical  ears  may 
hear  in  it  sounds  more  descriptive  of  Mohammed's  paradise  of 
houris  than  of  a  seemly  Christian  heaven. 

The  death  of  Tomas  de  Victoria  in  1611  brought  to  a  close  the 
great  age  of  unaccompanied  vocal  polyphony.  Music  had  gone 
far  since  that  almost  mythical  past  when  St.  Ambrose  devised  his 
chants,  but  even  in  its  complex  development  it  had  kept  to  sub- 
stantially the  same  road.  The  great  musical  trinity  who  lifted  their 
art  to  equality  with  painting  and  sculpture,  and  added  to  the 
splendor  of  the  dying  Renaissance,  were  better  composers  than 
Okeghem  and  Josquin.  They  handled  richer  materials  with  more 
freedom,  with  more  sweep  and  emotional  depth,  than  the  old 
Flemish  masters.  With  all  their  multifarious  gifts,  they  had  summed 
up  twelve  hundred  years  of  technical  progress,  and  had  set  up 
enduring  monuments  to  the  past.  The  sound  of  their  own  mighty 
cadences,  as  well  as  their  very  position  in  history  as  the  inheritors 
and  fulfillers  of  the  great  tradition  of  ecclesiastical  music,  deafened 
them  to  the  feeble  murmurs  of  the  new  music  coming  to  life  around 
them.  The  first  opera — a  puny  infant — was  performed  while  two 
of  them  were  still  alive. 

Palestrina,  Orlando,  and  Victoria  closed  a  period  with  such 
finality  that  no  further  development  in  unaccompanied  vocal 
polyphony  was  possible.  Their  own  followers,  obscure  men  all, 


THERE    WERE     GREAT    MEN    BEFORE    BACH         21 

were  feeble,  ineffectual,  and  anticlimactic.  Music,  to  develop 
further,  needed  innovators,  experimentalists  with  motivations  and 
compulsions  different  from  those  which  had  unleashed  the  creative 
drive  of  the  great  vocal  contrapuntalists.  It  took  a  hundred  years 
of  experimentation  with  new  forms  and  new  techniques  to  pro- 
duce, in  Johann  Sebastian  Bach  and  George  Frideric  Handel,  men 
comparable  in  stature  to  the  master  polyphonists  of  the  sixteenth 
century. 


Chapter  II 

Johann  Sebastian  Bach 

(Eisenach,  March  21,  i685~July  28,  1750,,  Leipzig) 


ONE  of  the  most  dangerous  of  pastimes  is  nominating  a  man  for 
first  place  among  the  musical  immortals.  For  this  supreme 
honor  there  are  rarely  more  than  three  candidates,  and  the  war 
between  their  adherents  wages  perpetually  in  the  living  rooms  of 
the  land.  Like  three  eternally  recurring  cards  in  the  musical  deck, 
Bach,  Beethoven,  and  Mozart  are  dealt  out  with  a  monotonous 
regularity  that  enrages  a  Handel  or  Wagner  cultist.  However, 
there  can  be  no  doubt  that  a  vote  taken  today  would  favor  Johann 
Sebastian  Bach  for  first  or,  just  possibly,  second  place. 

The  growth  of  Bach's  fame  is  in  itself  a  story  of  absorbing  in- 
terest. All  but  forgotten  for  almost  a  century  after  his  death,  he  was 
discovered  by  a  coterie  of  nineteenth-century  musicians  much  as 
classical  antiquity  had  been  discovered  by  the  scholars  of  the 
Renaissance.  Mozart  and  Beethoven  had  both  drunk  deep  at  the 
inexhaustible  well  of  Bach's  technique,  but  it  remained  for  Men- 
delssohn and  Schumann  to  preach  the  greater  Bach.  They  saw 
him  not  merely  as  a  magnificent  textbook,  but  also  as  the  creator 
of  manifold  and  incomparable  beauty.  From  Germany  the  good 
tidings  spread  to  England,  and  then  rapidly  throughout  the  rest  of 
the  Protestant  world.  Bach,  as  pre-eminently  the  glory  of  Protes- 
tant music  as  Pales trina  is  of  Roman  Catholic,  had  to  wait  longer 
for  recognition  in  Latin  countries. 

What  had  begun  as  the  jealous  enthusiasm  of  a  group  came  to 
delight  the  entire  confraternity  of  musicians  throughout  the 
civilized  world.  In  1850  the  Bach  Gesellschaft,  a  society  to  publish 
the  complete  corpus  of  Bach's  surviving  works  (few  of  which  were 
published  during  his  lifetime),  was  founded,  with  twenty-three 
royal  patrons,  and  subscribers  from  a  dozen  countries,  including 
the  United  States.  This  stupendous  undertaking  required  forty- 
nine  years  for  its  completion,  and  was  carried  out  under  several 
editors  of  varying  competence.  Brahms  said  that  the  two  greatest 
events  of  his  lifetime  were  the  founding  of  the  German  Empire  and 
the  completion  of  the  Bach  Gesellschaft's  publications.  With  nu- 


BACH  23 

merous  other  partial  editions  of  Back's  output,,  the  Gesellschaft 
served  to  disseminate  his  compositions  so  effectively  that  today  the 
sun  never  sets  upon  his  empire. 

All  this  tremendous  to-do  would  have  nonplussed  the  indus- 
trious old  town  musician  whose  mortal  greatness  culminated  when 
a  king  deigned  to  give  him  a  theme  for  improvisation.  For  Johann 
Sebastian  Bach  never  once  fancied  himself  as  anything  so  unlikely 
as  the  greatest  composer  in  the  world.  He  was  merely  carrying  on 
the  family  trade  (seven  generations  of  Bachs  had  already  included 
more  than  fifty  cantors,  organists,  and  town  musicians),  and  doing 
his  job  as  well  as  he  knew  how.  What  differentiated  him  from 
Uncle  Christoph  or  Cousin  Johann  Valentin  was  simply  that  he 
happened  to  be  the  greatest  musical  genius  the  world  has  ever 
known. 

There  is  no  evidence  to  prove  that  the  far-flung  Bach  dan 
realized  that  Johann  Sebastian  was  much  better  than  they  were: 
even  his  son  Karl  Philipp  Emanuel  dismissed  him  as  c 'musical 
director  to  several  courts  and  in  the  end  cantor  at  Leipzig55 — in 
short,  a  common,  garden  variety  of  Bach.  It  must  be  realized, 
however,  that  this  was  in  itself  high  praise^  for  the  Bachs  were  the 
most  renowned  musical  family  in  Germany,  having  cornered  the 
musical  market  in  at  least  half  a  dozen  towns.  One  branch  of  this 
prolific  family  settled  at  Erfurt^  near  Leipzig,  and  so  identified 
themselves  with  the  musical  life  of  the  town  that  many  years  after 
the  last  of  them  had  departed,  "Bach55  remained  a  synonym  for 
any  musician  plying  his  trade  there. 

The  great  Johann  Sebastian  was  born  on  March  2r,  1685,  at 
Eisenach,  the  capital  of  the  tiny  duchy  of  Saxe-Eisenach.  The 
associations  of  the  town  were  such  that  it  was  as  if  fate  itself 
had  had  a  hand  in  choosing  his  birthplace.  For  here,,  in  the  four- 
hundred-year-old  Wartburga  which  dominated  the  town  from  its 
lofty  eminence,.  Luther  had  made  his  epochal  translation  of  the 
Bible  into  German,  and  had  lightened  the  long  hours  by  singing 
the,  simple,,  rugged  hymns  that  he  loved.  Here  he  had  come  from 
the  Diet  of  Worms,  for  which  he  had  written  Ein  feste  Burg  ist 
unser  Gatt,  that  battle  hymn  of  militant  Protestantism  which  Heine 
called  the  "Marseillaise  of  the  Reformation,53  and  which  Bach  was 
to  know  well  and  to  use  as  the  theme  of  one  of  the  best  loved  of  his 
cantatas.  But  Eisenach  boasted  an  even  more  venerable  tradition, 


24  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

for  in  the  Wartburg,  then  the  seat  of  boisterous  Thuringian  land- 
graves, had  taken  place  in  1207  that  memorable  contest  of  minne- 
singers which  Wagner  immortalized  in  Tannhduser. 

Johann  Sebastian's  father,  Johann  Ambrosius,  one  of  the  Erfurt 
Bachs,  had  come  to  Eisenach  as  town  musician  in  16713  succeeding 
another  member  of  his  ubiquitous  tribe  in  that  post.  Their  clan- 
nishness  is  typified  by  the  fact  that  Johann  Ambrosius  twice  mar- 
ried women  already  related  to  him  by  marriage.  Johann  Sebastian 
was  the  eighth  and  last  child  of  the  first  marriage.  Of  the  amazing, 
almost  miraculous  precocity  that  gives  the  story  of  Mozart's  early 
childhood  an  air  of  legend.  Bach  showed  no  trace  during  his  boy- 
hood in  Eisenach.  We  know  that  he  entered  the  local  Gymnasium^ 
where  he  was  by  no  means  a  star  pupil;  we  assume,  but  do  not 
know,  that  he  received  his  first  clavier  lessons  from  his  father. 

In  1695,  shortly  after  both  his  parents  died,  Bach  was  sent  to  the 
little  village  of  Ohrdruf,  in  the  depths  of  the  Thuringian  Forest. 
Here  life  was  even  quieter  than  at  Eisenach,  and  from  his  organ 
bench  at  the  Lutheran  Michaeliskirche  one  of  Bach's  elder  brothers 
presided  over  the  musical  destinies  of  the  pious  burghers.  In  this 
remote  hamlet  there  was  no  call  for  the  secular  music  that  Johann 
Ambrosius  had  practiced  at  Eisenach.  The  school  where  Bach 
completed  his  formal  education  was  known  for  its  theological  bias 
and  grave  atmosphere;  though  no  pains  were  spared  to  ground  its 
pupils  in  the  humanities,  Ohrdruf  9s  was  primarily  a  stern  school  of 
character.  Its  lessons  had  a  profound,  lifelong  effect  on  Johann 
Sebastian:  the  lad  who  had  nodded  over  his  catechism  at  Eisenach 
now  took  to  his  heart  the  simple  trusting  faith  that  was  to  flower  in 
the  greatest  devotional  music  the  world  has  ever  heard. 

Johann  Sebastian  continued  his  clavier  lessons  with  his  brother, 
and — what  had  an  even  more  important  effect  on  his  life  and  his 
art — began  to  play  the  organ.  This  "king  of  instruments,"  though 
used  in  Christian  churches  as  early  as  the  fifth  century,  developed  a 
literature  comparatively  late,  and  only  came  into  its  own  during 
the  seventeenth  century.  No  interpretive  art  boasts  a  more  majestic 
and  continuous  tradition  than  German  organ  playing.  It  flowers 
with  Reinken  and  Buxtehude,  whom  Bach  heard  and  revered,  and 
runs  unbroken  through  Bach  and  Handel  down  to  Albert  Schweitzer, 
humanitarian,  doctor,  theologian,  and  Bach  scholar.  The  Germans 
were  so  devoted  to  the  organ  that  many  forms  of  music  developing 


BACH  25 

in  Italy  and  France  during  the  seventeenth  century  gained  little 
headway  in  Germany. 

Clavier  music  in  seventeenth-century  Germany  developed  only 
less  rapidly  than  organ  music.  Essentially  Latin  in  its  origins,  it 
was  until  late  a  secondary  interest  that  consumed  the  lighter  in- 
spirations of  the  great  German  masters  of  organ  composition. 
Johann  Sebastian's  brother  owned  a  collection  of  clavier  works  by 
his  teacher,  Johann  Pachelbel,  Bohm,  Buxtehude,  and  others.  For 
some  unknown  reason,  the  use  of  these  pieces  was  refused  the  boy, 
who  thereupon  secretly  took  them  from  the  music  cabinet,  and 
copied  them  out  on  moonlit  nights.  This  six-month  task  was  the  be- 
ginning of  his  lifelong  custom  of  transcribing  music  that  he  wished 
to  study.  When  the  vast  amount  of  music  Bach  copied  is  added  to 
the  noting  down  of  his  own  compositions,  it  is  little  wonder  that  he 
eventually  became  blind. 

In  1700,  when  Bach  was  fifteen  years  old,  and  his  brother  no 
longer  found  it  convenient  to  house  him,  it  happened  that  Lxine- 
burg,  more  than  two  hundred  miles  away,  was  in  need  of  a  good 
soprano.  The  lad,  whose  sweet  treble  had  already  secured  him  a 
paid  job  in  the  Ohrdruf  choir,  made  the  long  journey,  and  was 
promptly  accepted  as  choirboy  at  the  Michaeliskirche.  The  three 
years  he  spent  in  Liineburg  broadened  his  musical  horizon  im- 
measurably, though  the  most  vitalizing  contacts  were  outside  the 
town  itself.  His  own  church  was  pedestrian  in  its  services,  but  at  the 
near-by  Katharinenkirche  the  eminent  Georg  Bohm  sat  at  the 
organ  console.  Already  Johann  Sebastian  had  copied  some  of  this 
man's  work,  and  now  there  is  little  doubt  that  he  came  to  know 
him  personally.  It  was  probably  at  Bohm's  suggestion  that  Bach 
once  trudged  the  thirty  miles  to  Hamburg  to  hear  the  venerable 
Johann  Adam  Reinken,  a  master  of  florid  organ  effects  whose  in- 
fluence is  strong  in  some  of  Bach's  early  works. 

Now,  too,  Bach  was  exposed  to  other  than  purely  German  in- 
fluences. In  the  notable  music  library  of  the  Michaeliskirche  he 
suddenly  came  upon  a  new  world  of  musical  delight.  The  for- 
eigners— Orlando,  Monteverdi,  Carissimi,  and  many  others —  '. 
brought  him  news  of  a  more  urbane  civilization  than  the  one  he 
knew.  And  at  near-by  Celle,  an  imitation  Versailles  whose  Franco- 
phile duke  ate  his  German  food  to  the  accompaniment  of  elegant 


26  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

French  music  played  by  French  musicians.  Bach  caught  the  dim 
reflection  of  a  brilliant  culture,  beside  which  Eisenach,  Ohrdruf, 
and  LiinebuTg  were  uncommonly,  Teutonically  stodgy.  During  his 
many  visits  to  the  ducal  Sckloss  he  may  sometimes  have  taken  his 
place  at  the  clavier.  At  all  events,  the  French  music  he  heard  there, 
including  both  orchestral  suites  and  the  tinkling  clavier  suites  of 
Couperin  le  grand,  profoundly  influenced  him.  Not  only  did  he 
delight  in  this  suave  and  polished  Latin  idiom,  but  his  own  Italian 
Concerto,  French  Suites,  and  other  curiously  un-German  pieces 
show  that  he  understood  it. 

But  Luneburg,  despite  its  many  extraneous  attractions,  did  not 
offer  the  opportunities  Bach  desired  for  bettering  himself  finan- 
cially and  professionally.  In  1702,  when  he  was  only  seventeen,  he 
was  actually  .elected  organist  at  a  ndghboring  town,  but  its  over- 
lord imposed  his  own  candidate  on  the  electors.  A  job  in  the  pri- 
vate band  of  the  reigning  Duke  of  Saxe-Weimar's  younger  brother 
was  in  itself  a  makeshift,  though  it  brought  him  into  contact  with 
one  of  the  most  interesting  minor  figures  in  the  musical  life  of  the 
times.  This  was  his  master's  younger  son,  Johann  Ernst,  a  pre- 
cocious talent  whose  violin  concertos  were  so  beautiful  and  so  pro- 
fessionally made  that  three  of  them  later  adapted  by  Bach  for 
clavier  were  attributed  to  Antonio  Vivaldi,  the  Paganini  of  the 
eighteenth  century. 

While  still  employed  at  Weimar,  Bach  made  the  first  of  those 
journeys  to  inspect  an  organ  that  occur  with  increasing  frequency 
throughout  the  rest  of  his  life.  Although  he  was  but  eighteen  years 
old,  Ms  fame  as  an  organist  had  reached  the  ears  of  the  good  men 
of  Arnstadt,  and  after  he  had  tried  out  the  instrument  they  promptly 
offered  him  a  position. 

Bach's  new  duties  were  not  unusually  onerous,  but  included  one 
he  always  resented:  training  the  choristers.  He  did  not  suffer  tribu- 
lations silently:  he  was  a  vocal  and  irascible  man  even  at  the  age 
of  twenty.  Growing  dissatisfaction  with  his  singers  precipitated  an 
incident  that  does  much  to  correct  the  widespread  false  picture  of 
Bach  as  a  gentle  old  hymn-singing  fogy  entirely  surrounded  by 
childrm.  He  had  reached  such  a  stage  of  exasperation  with  his 
charges  that  they  began  to  resent  his  attitude.  One  night,  as  he 
was  retaining  home  from  the  Residenzschloss,  he  was  attacked  by 


BACH  27 

several  of  them.  One,  hurling  a  pungent  epithet  at  him,  began  to 
belabor  him  with  a  stick,,  but  the  young  organist  defended  himself 
so  ably  with,  his  sword  that  the  ruffians,  retired  discomfited.  The 
fracas  came  to  the  notice  of  the  town  authorities,  and  Bach  was 
called  to  account  for  his  unconventional  behavior.  Nothing  came 
of  the  incident,  but  he  was  now  embarked  on  his  long  career  of 
alternately  explaining  his  doings  to,  and  defying,  stiff-necked 
officials. 

These  controversies  were  the  trivia  of  a  musical  life  that  at  Arn- 
stadt  began  to  find  its  own  direction.  It  is  not  known  where  or 
when  Johann  Sebastian  wrote  down  his  first  compositions.,  but 
certain  it  is  that  the  first  typical  fruits  of  his  genius  belong  to  his 
stay  at  Arnstadt.  These  compositions  bespeak  a  learner,  not  on-e 
who  has  mastered  his  craft.  The  scoring  of  his  first  cantata,  for 
instance,  is  overheavy  and  highfahitin.  One  of  these  Amstadt 
pieces,  though  slight  musically,  deserves  mention  as  Bach*s  only 
essay  in  out-and-out  program  music.  A  clavier  Capnccw  on  the  De- 
parture of  His  Beloved  Brother,  it  summons  up  the  apprehensions  and 
regrets  of  farewell,  and  imitates  vividly  the  hurly-burly  of  the 
coachyard. 

Again,  as  at  Liineburg,  Bach  found  the  most  enduring  inspira- 
tion away  from  the  scene  of  his  official  duties.  In  October,  1705, 
his  employers  granted  him  a  month's  leave  of  absence  so  that  he 
could  go  to  hear  the  most  famous  organist  of  the  day,  Dietrich 
Buxtehude.  Installing  his  cousin  as  deputy  organist,  he  set  out  on 
the  three-hundred-mile  journey  to  the  old  Hanseatic  port  of  Lii- 
beck..  So  widespread  was  the  fame  of  Buxtehude's  Abendmusiken,  or 
evening  church  concerts,  that  it  threatened  the  supremacy  of  Hamr 
burg  in  the  north-German  musical  world.  Bach  was  so  held  in  the 
magical  thrall  of  Buxtehude's  dazzling  technical  display  that  when 
he  finally  tore  himself  away,  three  months  had  passed. 

Back  among  the  staid  Arnstadters,,  their-  organist  exhibited  the 
effects  of  his  hegira  with  stupefying  eloquence.  Their  beloved 
organ,  which  had  been  wont  to  give  forth  only  the  most  conven- 
tional sounds,  now  emitted  such  audacities,  such  swirling  and  un- 
churchly  arabesques,  that  they  were  struck  dumb.,  Bach  had  an- 
nexed many  of  Buxtehude's  extravagances,,  and  had  outstripped 
him  in  improvisation.  These  modernisms  might  have  served  him 


28  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

well  in  a  more  sophisticated  musical  center,  but  in  Arnstadt  they 
bordered  on  heresy.  Once  again  he  was  haled  before  the  authori- 
ties, and  the  accumulated  grievances  burst  out  in  a  relentless  cate- 
chism. Why  had  he  outstayed  his  leave?  Why  was  he  so  stubbornly 
neglecting  his  choirmasterly  duties?  Why  did  he  introduce  mon- 
strosities into  the  simple  Lutheran  tunes?  Why,  finally,  had  he  had 
a  "strange  maiden"  in  the  organ  loft?  Bach's  answer  to  the  first 
three  questions  was — after  some  hemming  and  hawing — to  termi- 
nate his  now  thoroughly  unpleasant  connection  with  the  Michael- 
iskirche. 

Bach  next  went  to  Miihlhausen,  another  little  center  of  Thu- 
ringian  life,  where  he  had  secured  the  post  of  organist  at  the  Blasius- 
kirche.  Although  his  stipend  here  was  no  larger  than  in  Arnstadt, 
he  regarded  this  change  as  a  promotion,  for  his  predecessor  had 
been  a  man  of  some  distinction.  And  now  a  timely  legacy  enabled 
him  to  marry  the  "strange  maiden."  She  was  his  cousin,  Maria 
Barbara  Bach,  and  they  were  married  on  October  17,  1707,  re- 
maining in  Miihlhausen  less  than  eight  months  after  their  mar- 
riage. To  this  period,  however,  belongs  the  only  cantata  Bach 
composed  that  was  published  during  his  lifetime:  Gott  ist  mein 
Kbnig.  Doing  his  duty  by  his  new  congregation  was  fraught  with 
difficulties,  but  this  time  Bach's  role  was  that  of  the  innocent  by- 
stander. The  little  town  was  in  the  grips  of  a  feud  between  the 
orthodox  Lutherans  and  a  kill-joy  sect  known  as  Pietists.  Much  of 
the  squabbling  centered  on  the  church  music:  the  orthodox  wanted 
it  just  as  it  was,  and  the  Pietists  did  not  want  it  at  all.  Bach  was 
caught  between  them,  and  had  practically  reached  his  wit's  end 
when  an  opportunity  occurred  to  return  to  Weimar.  The  Miihl- 
hausen authorities  accepted  his  resignation  only  on  condition  that 
he  continue  to  supervise  the  enlargement  of  the  organ  he  had  him- 
self requested. 

As  they  rush  from  the  railway  station  to  the  houses  of  Goethe 
and  Schiller,  and  perhaps  remember  to  visit  the  scenes  of  Liszt's 
declining  years,  visitors  to  Weimar  are  likely  to  forget  Bach's 
fruitful  years  there.  Weimar  itself  has  forgotten  Bach — not  even 
one  of  those  ubiquitous  bronze  plaques  marks  his  possible  dwelling. 
Yet  it  was  at  Weimar  that  he  reached  his  zenith  as  a  composer  for 
the  organ;  here,  too,  he  produced  the  brilliant  "Vivaldi"  Con- 
certos and  many  cantatas,  some  of  them  only  a  shade  less  masterly 


BACH  29 

than  those  of  his  last  period.  Finally,  Weimar  saw  the  birth  of  two 
of  his  three  famous  sons — Wilhelm  Friedemann  and  Karl  Philipp 
Emanuel. 

Bach's  position  at  Weimar  was  that  of  court  organist  and  cham- 
ber musician  to  the  reigning  Duke,  Wilhelm  Ernst,  brother  to  the 
now  deceased  prince  who  had  first  invited  Bach  there.  His  new 
employer  was  a  petty  tyrant  whose  tolerance  barely  extended  be- 
yond his  own  person.  A  childless,  dour  man,  he  had  a  lively  sense 
of  his  duty  to  keep  the  lower  classes  in  their  place,  and  his  actions 
suggest  that  to  him  anyone  not  in  the  Almanack  de  Gotha  belonged 
among  them.  For  his  own  pleasure  he  supported  a  court  orchestra, 
where  Bach  alternated  between  the  clavier  and  the  violin,  but  his 
public  emphasis  was  all  on  church  music.  Bach,  therefore,  was 
largely  employed  in  the  court  chapel,  an  overdone  baroque  crea- 
tion whose  theatricality  was  by  no  means  as  foreign  to  the  florid, 
ill-considered  virtuosity  of  his  earlier  toccatas  as  some  Bach  experts 
would  lead  us  to  believe.  Pompously  peruked  and  accoutered  in 
the  regular  livery  of  the  Duke's  servants,  Bach  sat  at  the  organ 
every  Sunday  outdoing  Buxtehude,  while  the  gloomy  prince  and 
his  respectfully  morose  court  looked  on  from  the  loges. 

Nothing  that  we  know  about  Wilhelm  Ernst  can  convince  us 
that  he  was  able  to  distinguish  between  the  compositions  of  Bach 
and  those  of  any  other  musician.  He  had  hired  the  best  organist 
available,  and  that,  according  to  the  convention  of  the  times, 
meant  someone  who  would  compose,  improvise,  and  adapt  the 
music  he  played.  The  Duke  was  scarcely  the  man  to  appreciate 
that  his  ears  were  hearing  the  toccata  transformed  from  the  collec- 
tion of  magnificent  fragments  that  had  satisfied  Buxtehude  into  a 
perfectly  molded  whole,  in  which  brilliant  cascades  of  sound  were 
built  into  a  vast  architectural  form.  Buxtehude  left  the  toccata  a 
showpiece;  Bach  made  it  into  a  perfect  vehicle  for  exalted  musical 
ideas.  Such  a  composition  as  the  massive  D  minor  Toccata  and 
Fugue  would  in  itself  have  made  a  deathless  reputation  for  a  lesser 
composer,  but  in  Bach's  case  it  is  only  one  of  many  peerless  works. 
His  treatment  of  the  toccata  illustrates,  at  a  comparatively  early 
stage  of  his  career,  his  phenomenal  capacity  for  saying  the  last 
word  in  the  musical  genres  he  used. 

It  has  been  said  that  Bach  invented  no  musical  form.  This  is  true 
only  if  invented  is  interpreted  literally,  for  he  borrowed  nothing  that 


30  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

he  did  not  transmute  beyond  recognition.  To  take  the  most  striking 
case,  who  would  credit  the  invention  of  what  he  himself  called  the 
passacaglia  to  anyone  but  Bach?  True,  Girolamo  Frescobaldi  and 
Buxtehude  had  composed  fine  passacaglias.  Bach  used  the  form 
only  once,  but  in  this  Passacaglia  in  C  minor  he  is  as  different  from 
them  ,as  they  are  from  the  nameless  Juan  Diego  who  invented  the 
Spanish  folk  rhythm  they  borrowed.  This  grave  and  measured 
dance,  :certainly  one  of  the  most  superbly  conceived  creations  in 
all  music,  affords  the  unique  example  of  a  composer  using  a  form 
once,  exploiting  its  utmost  possibilities,  and  then  abandoning  it. 

It  is  always  a  shock  to  turn  from  Bach's  lofty  creations  to  a  con- 
sideration of  the  humdrum  details  of  his  everyday  life.  Weimar 
jaOTst  have  been  an  uncongenial  place  for  a  man  of  his  touchy  dis- 
position. The  Duke  treated  him  as  a  servant,  and  even  failed  to 
appoint  him  Ho/kapellmeister  when  the  post  fell  vacant;  his  neigh- 
bors treated  him  just  as  they  would  the  cobbler  or  the  apothecary. 
And  why  not?  No  one  observing  Bach  in  the  bosom  of  his  family, 
laboring  over  his  manuscripts,  or  trudging  to  the  Schloss  would 
have  had  the  slightest  reason  to  -suspect  this  bumbling  fellow,  with 
his  short  neck,  protruding  jaw,  slanting  forehead,  and  almost  com- 
ically misshapen  nose,  of  being  even  a  cut  above  the  other  five 
thousand  folk  in  Weimar.  He  loved  his  wife,  was  well  started  on 
his  extraordinary  career  as  a  father  (he  begat  a  grand  total  of 
twenty  children),  and  never  liad  to  scrimp  too  much.  In  an  age 
when  fagade  counted  for  much,  Bach  was  neither  handsome  nor 
clever  nor  highborn  nor  rich — and  the  good  people  of  Weimar 
were  not  music  critics. 

While  it  is  difficult  to  interpret  Bach's  motives  from  the  docu- 
mentary evidence,  it  is  clear  that  after  five  years  in  Weimar  he 
was  prepared  to  consider  bids  from  other  quarters.  Now  the  Lieb- 
frauenkirche  at  Halle  invited  him  to  succeed  Handel's  teacher  as 
its  organist.  After  some  complicated  negotiations,  he  finally  turned 
down  the  offer  because  the  salary  was  less  than  he  was  already 
receiving  at  Weimar.  Further,  the  .Duke  disliked  anyone  leaving 
his  service,  and  chose  this  particular  moment  to  make  him  Konzert- 
meister  and  raise  his  pay.  The  authorities  at  Halle,  resorting  to  the 
time-honored  reasoning  of  post  hoc,  propter  hoc^  accused  Bach  of 
temporizing  with  them  to  force  the  Duke's  hand.  He  answered  this 


BACH  31 

probably  unjustified  charge  in  a  letter  that  was  bath  temperate  and 
dignified,  saying  in  part: 

"To  insinuate  that  I  played  a  trick  upon  your  worshipful  Col- 
legium in  order  to  compel  my  gracious-  master  to  increase  my 
stipend  here  is  unwarranted;  he  has  always  been,  so>  well-disposed 
to  me  and  my  art  that,  certes,  I  have  no  need  to  use  Halle  to  in- 
fluence him.  I  am  distressed  that  our  negotiations:  have  not  reached 
a  satisfactory  conclusion,  but  I  would  ask  whether,  even  if  Halk 
offered  me  an  emolument  equivalent  to  ray  stipend  here,  I  could 
be  expected  to  leave  my  present  situation,  for  the  new  one.5* 

Bach's  position  placed  him  under  obligation  to  compose  ccone 
new  piece  monthly,"  and  so  brought  his  attention  back  to  the 
cantata  form  he  had  already  tried  with  indifferent  success  at  Arn- 
stadt  and  Muhlhausen.  Now  he  collaborated  with  another  mem- 
ber of  the  ducal  household,  Salomo  Franck,.  a  numismatist  with  a 
flair  for  letters,  in  the  production  of  no  fewer  than  thirty  sacred 
cantatas  in  three  years — a  pious  Gilbert-and-SulEvan  partnership 
that  was  crowned  with  great  success.  The  Duke  unloosed  his  puise 
strings  to  provide  paper  (then  a  luxury)  for  these  works.  Although 
none  of  them  is  as  impressive  as  the  best  cantatas  of  Baches  last 
period,  almost  all  contain  fine  single  numbers,  and  at  least  one 
achieves  an  internal  unity  that  places  it  high  among  his  smaller 
compositions.  This — the  popular  Gottes  ^eit  ist  atterbeste  %eit — is 
thoroughly  German  in  its  directness  and  simplicity.  It  follows  the 
text  with  great  sensitivity,  and  the  statement  is  so  personal  that 
some  experts  think  that  Bach  also  wrote  the  words.  Gottes  £ei?s 
tragic  and  poignant  utterance  has  evoked  any  number  of  fantastic 
interpretations:  Rutland  Boughton,  composer  of  the  perennially 
popular  English  opera,  The  Immortal  Hour,  believes  that  it  repre- 
sents the  funeral  of  Christianity! 

The  Duke  of  Saxe- Weimar's1  dynastic  plans  now  began  to  influ- 
ence the  course  of  Bach's  life.  He  had  no  children,,  and  his  heir 
presumptive  was  unmarried.  In  1714,  taking  Bach  along,  he  paid 
a  ceremonial  visit  to  the  Landgrave  of  Hesse-Cassel,  in  search  of  a 
wife  for  this  nephew.  Matrimonially,  the  visit  was  a.  fizzle,  but  it 
gave  Bach  an  opportunity  to  play  before  the  music-loving'  Land- 
grave and  his  son  Frederick,  the  future  King  of  Sweden.  Bach's 
performance  on  this  occasion  was  so  brilliant  that,  in  the  words  of 
one  of  the  audience,  "His:  feet,  flying  over  the  pedals  as  though 


32  MEN     OF    MUSIC 

they  were  winged,  made  the  notes  reverberate  like  thunder  in  a 
storm,  till  the  Prince  Frederick,  cum  stupore  admiratus^  pulled  a  ring 
from  his  finger,  and  presented  it  to  the  player.  Now  bethink  you, 
if  Bach's  skilful  feet  deserved  such  a  bounty,  what  gift  must  the 
prince  have  offered  to  reward  his  hands  as  well?" 

Two  years  later,  Wilhelm  Ernst  made  another  ceremonial  visit, 
this  time  to  Duke  Christian  of  Saxe-Weissenfels.  The  occasion  was 
a  great  hunting  party  arranged  in  honor  of  Christian's  thirty-fifth 
birthday,  and  his  cousin  of  Weimar  commissioned  his  Konzert- 
meister  to  compose  an  appropriately  jolly  piece.  The  result  was 
Bach's  first  secular  cantata,  Was  mir  behagt,  an  allegorical  and 
mythological  work  which  produced  such  an  effect  that  Christian 
had  it  performed  again  thirteen  years  later  when  he  made  Bach 
his  honorary  Kapellmeister.  If  such  Olympian  celebrities  as  Diana 
and  Pan  seem  out  of  place  in  Bach,  it  will  be  recalled  that  he  had 
been  studying  contemporary  French  and  Italian  works  that  made 
abundant  use  of  mythological  machinery. 

The  same  year  Bach  returned  to  Halle  to  inspect  and  perform 
on  the  new  organ  at  the  Liebfrauenkirche.  The  rancor  of  the  Col- 
legium was  entirely  dissipated,  and  Bach  was  regaled  at  a  Teu- 
tonic feast  of  epic  proportions:  "Eggs  boiled  in  brine,  cold  meats, 
ox  tongues,  and  saveloys,-  washed  down  with  Rhenish  and  Fran- 
conian  wine  and  beer."  During  his  six-day  visit,  coachmen  and  a 
staff  of  servants  were  at  his  constant  disposal.  Clearly,  Bach's  dig- 
nified estimate  of  himself  as  a  personage  had  led  the  Halle  au- 
thorities to  treat  him  as  one. 

Bach's  reputation  as  an  organist  was  growing  apace.  The  staging 
of  a  contest  between  him  and  Louis  Marchand,  organist  to  Louis 
XV,  began  to  be  discussed.  As  Handel's  interests  lay  almost  ex- 
clusively in  England,  this  would  have  brought  together  the  two 
most  noted  Continental  organists  of  the  day.  Marchand's  part  in 
the  business  seems  to  have  been  confined  to  a  great  deal  of  pre- 
liminary boasting,  but  when  Bach  arrived  in  Dresden,  where  the 
bout  was  to  take  place,  and  Marchand  accidentally  heard  him  im- 
provising, his  assuredness  collapsed,  and  he  fled  from  town  by  the 
first  post  chaise.  Commenting  on  this  ignominous  retreat,  Dr.  Bur- 
ney  wrote,  "It  was  an  honor  to  Pompey  that  he  was  conquered  by 
Caesar,  and  to  Marchand  to  be  only  vanquished  by  Bach." 

This  bloodless  conquest  took  place  during  a  crisis  in  Bach's  life. 


BACH  33 

It  had  all  begun  when  Wilhelm  Ernst  finally  persuaded  a  respect- 
able and  well-dowered  widow  to  marry  his  heir,  Ernst  Augustus. 
This  lady's  brother.  Prince  Leopold  of  Anhalt-Cothen,  a  gifted 
musical  amateur,  met  Bach  at  his  new  brother-in-law's  palace,  and 
was  so  impressed  by  his  genius  that  he  forthwith  offered  him  the 
position  of Kapellmeister  at  Co  then.  Several  considerations  prompted 
Bach  to  entertain  the  offer.  As  a  member  of  the  ducal  household 
he  was  hedged  in  by  a  thousand  irritating  restrictions,  not  the 
least  of  which  forbade  him  to  visit  the  heir  presumptive  and  his 
wife,  with  whom  the  Duke  was  constantly  quarreling.  In  defiance 
of  this  ukase,  Bach's  friendship  with  Ernst  Augustus  and  his  con- 
sort continued  on  so  intimate  a  footing  that  the  Duke  became  sus- 
picious. Any  chance  of  closing  the  rift  between  Bach  and  his  em- 
ployer was  precluded  when  the  Duke  passed  over  Bach's  head  in 
appointing  a  new  Kapellmeister,  the  highest  musical  honor  in  his 
gift.  Smarting  from  this  indignity,  Bach  proceeded  to  his  triumph 
at  Dresden,  and  came  back  with  his  mind  made  up.  He  informed 
Prince  Leopold  of  his  willingness  to  leave  Weimar,  and  the  deal 
was  closed  in  August,  1717. 

When  Bach  applied  for  his  release,  the  Duke  was  furious.  In- 
nately opposed  to  change  as  something  inherently  wrong,  he  saw 
in  the  threatened  departure  of  one  of  his  best  musicians  a  deter- 
mination on  his  heir's  part  to  interrupt  the  smooth  tenor  of  his 
life.  He  refused.  Bach  insisted,  and  on  November  6  the  Duke  placed 
him  under  arrest.  During  his  incarceration,  which  lasted  almost  a 
month,  Bach  seems  to  have  imitated  the  examples  of  Cervantes, 
Bunyan,  and  other  geniuses  who  suffered  imprisonment,  by  con- 
tinuing to  work  at  his  art.  The  one  thing  he  did  not  do  was  change 
his  mind.  Torture  being  out  of  fashion,  the  Duke  had  to  give  in, 
and  on  December  2  he  granted  this  stubborn  servant  permission 
to  go  elsewhere.  On  that  date  Bach's  official  career  as  an  organist 
came  to  an  end.  Little  more  than  a  week  later,  he  was  settled  at 
Cothen. 

The  move  was  a  drastic  one.  From  a  worldly  point  of  view,  it 
meant  promotion,  more  prestige,  and  more  pay.  Bach  had  always 
coveted  the  title  of  Kapellmeister,  and  for  some  years  had  needed  an 
income  more  nearly  commensurate  with  the  demands  of  a  rapidly 
growing  family.  The  attitude  of  his  new  patron  was  like  a  tonic  to 
his  flagging  spirits.  At  Weimar  he  and  his  family  had  been  cooped 


34  MEN     OF    MUSIC 

up  in  such  narrow  quarters  that  his  own  health  and  that  of  faik 
children  had  been  imperiled.  At  Cothen,  as  the  friend,  rather  than 
the  servant  of  Prince  Leopold,  he  seems  to  have  settled  with  his 
family  in  the  Schioss.  After  the  rigors  of  court  Hfe  in,  Weimar,  Bach 
iBiast  have  looked  forward  to  Cothen  as  a  blessed  dispensation. 

But  Cothen  proved  to  be  a  mixed  blessing.  Pleasant  shelter  it 
was,  but  Bach  paid1  for  it  by  renouncing  the  most  solemn  duty  he 
had  laid  upon  himself:  to  dedicate  his  art  to  the  service  of  God. 
IB  Gothen-  this-  was  literally  impossible,,  for  the  official  Calvinism 
of  tke  dynasty  allowed  only  the  sternest,  most  unadorned  hymns 
to  be  sung  in  chapel.  There  was-  no  call  for  the  cantatas  and 
chorales  that  until  then  had  tapped  the  purest  so?urce$  of  Bach's 
genius..,  Willy-nilly,,  he  had  to  turn  to  the  secular  art  practiced-  by 
his  father  and"  grandfather,  and  provide  music  for  the  players  in 
the  court  band,  in  which  the  Prince  himself  played  the  clavier, 
violin-^  or  viola  da  gamba.  Simultaneously  he; — the  most  famous 
organist  of  the  age — found  himself  without  constant  access  to  an 
organ  worthy  of  hi&  supreme  talents.  All  this  meant  that,  at  the 
age  of  thirty-two,  Bach  had  to  learn  to  function  in  a  new  world. 

Bach  did  not  completely  lose  touch  with  the  world  be  had  aban- 
doned. His  celebrity  as  an  organist  and  authority  on  the  instru- 
ment itself  brought  him  constant  invitations  from  other  towns.  Less 
than  a  week  after  his  arrival  at  Cdthen,  he  was  off  to  Leipzig  to 
inspect  the  new  organ  in  the  Paulinerkirche.  His  report  bristles 
with,  rare  knowledge  of  acoustics  and  details  o£  organ  manufacture. 
More  picturesque  are  the  records  of  his  visitr  in  1720,  to  Hamburg, 
where  the  seemingly  imperishable  Reinken  was  still  active.  Prob- 
ably Bach  went  there  to  compete  for  the  vacant  post  of  organist  at 
the  Jacobikirche>  and  as  Reinken  was  one  of  the  judges,,  played 
before  the  ninety-seven-year-old  master.  After  the  younger  man 
had  improvised  for  a  good  hour  on  a  theme  Reinfoen  himself  had 
once  used,,  this  mighty  voice  from  the  past  spoke,,  "I  thought  this: 
art  was  dead,  but  I  see  it  still  lives  in  you."  Eventually  the  Jaoobi- 
kirche  organ  was  offered  to  Bach,  but  he  declined  it,,  chiefly  be- 
cause of  his  loyalty  to  Prince  Leopold. 

If^  despite  this  loyalty,  Bach  really  was  looking  for  other  employ- 
rnent  in  Hamburg,  there  were  two  reasons.,  First,  there  was  in 
Cothen  no  Lutheran  school  where  he  could  send  his  children. 
Second,  the  town  became  crowded  with  sad  memories;  for  him 


BACH  35 

when,  on  returning  from  a  trip  to  Carlsbad  with  the  Prince,  he 
found  Ms  wife  dead  and  .already  buried.  Of  the  seven  children  she 
had  borne  him,  four  survived,  and  the  task  of  caring  for  them  fell 
on  him  alone,  for  the  eldest  was  a  twelve-year-old  girl.  Less  than 
a  year  and  a  half  later,  he  led  Anna  Magdalena  Wilcken  to  the 
altar.  His  new  bride,  though  only  twenty,  was  a  court  singer  earn- 
ing half  as  much  as  Bach  himself.  What  was  in  every  sense  an  ex- 
cellent match  turned  out  to  be  a  iappy  marriage,  for  Anna  Mag- 
dalena  was  a  good  housekeeper,  a  good  stepmother,  and  a  good 
musician.  She  bore  him  thirteen  children,  including  his  third  fa- 
mous .son,  Johann  Christian,  the  "English"  Bach,  She  was  his 
faithful  companion  and  helpmeet  until  his  death,  and  survived 
him  for  ten  years. 

Meanwhile,  Bach  did  not  forget  his  children's  musical  education. 
Wilhelm  Friedemann,  always  his  favorite,  was  the  first  to  receive 
instruction.  The  little  exercise  book  his  father  wrote  out  for  him  is 
still  preserved.  Partly  from  these  exercises,  headier  fare  was  soon 
provided  in  twenty-four  preludes  and  fugues  for  the  clavier.  With 
a  second  set  compiled  at  Leipzig  in  1 744,  these  were  published  after 
Bach's  death  as  The  Wdl-Tempered  Clavichord*  This  title,  indicating 
Bach's  secondary  purpose  in  composing  them,  is  less  mysterious 
than  it  sounds.  "Tempered"  merely  means  "tuned/5  and  so  The 
Well-  Tempered  Clavichord  is  Bach's  pronuncianiento  against  the  old 
system  of  tuning  instruments  which,  as  H.  C.  Colles  pithily  ob- 
serves, "made  the  instruments  beautifully  in  tune  in  certain  keys, 
the  more  usual  ones,  and  quite  unbearable  in  others."  By  writing 
this  series  of  pieces,  one  for  each  major  and  minor  key,  Bach  forced 
upon  the  old-fashioned  tuners  that  modern  system  which  prepares 
the  instrument  for  playing  in  any  key. 

If  The  Well-Tempered  Clavichord  had  done  nothing  more  than 
revolutionize  tuning,  it  would  still  be  worth  a  paragraph  in  any 
history  of  music,  for  much  of  the  effectiveness  of  the  instrumental 
music  of  the  eighteenth  century  and  later  depends  upon  the  ability 
to  shift  from  one  key  to  another  without  catastrophic  sound  effects. 
But  it  is  as  revolutionary  musically  as  technically.  These  preludes 
and  fugues,  starting  out  as  exercises  for  children,  have,  like  Cho- 
pin's etudes,  been  graduated  from  the  studio  to  the  concert  hall, 
where  their  popularity  shows  unflagging  vitality-  Nor  is  this  only 
because  of  the  many-sidedness  of  the  task  they  set  the  performer, 


36  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

In  sheer  musical  quality,  in  variety  of  mood,  and  in  unceasing  in- 
ventiveness, they  are  scarcely  matched  in  the  entire  field  of  key- 
board literature.  With  these  "Forty-eight"  and  the  partitas  and 
French  and  English  Suites,  Bach  raised  the  clavier  to  a  position  of 
pre-eminence  that  its  descendant — the  modern  piano — has  sus- 
tained to  this  day. 

The  Well-  Tempered  Clavichord  has  had  a  varied  and  amazing  ca- 
reer, some  of  which  would  have  delighted  the  pedagogue  in  Bach. 
Not  only  is  it  a  favorite  with  virtuosos  and  their  audiences,  but  it 
is  also  used  as  a  textbook  in  the  study  of  harmony,  counterpoint, 
and  fugue.  Although  Schumann  called  it  the  "musicians'  Bible," 
many  have  dared  to  violate  the  sacred  text.  The  unfortunate  "Forty- 
eight"  have  been  adapted  for  other  instruments,  transcribed,  and 
probably  even  sung.  Needless  to  say,  they  have  not  escaped  the 
lush  orchestrating  hand  of  Dr.  Leopold  Stokowski.  But  the  first 
prelude  of  the  first  set  has  suffered  the  strangest  fate  of  all.  Using 
it  as  an  accompaniment  to  the  text  of  the  Ave  Maria,  the  composer 
of  Faust  was  inspired  to  add  a  honeyed  soprano  obbligato.  But 
even  in  this  form  the  prelude  is  indestructible — Gounod's  Ave 
Maria  is  among  the  most  popular  songs  ever  manufactured. 

Another  favorite  from  the  Gothen  period  is  the  set  of  six  con- 
certos written  at  the  request  of  Christian  Ludwig,  Margrave  of 
Brandenburg,  an  obscure  younger  son  of  the  House  of  Hohen- 
zollern.  These  stirring,  vibrant  pieces  represent  Bach's  first  excur- 
sion into  purely  instrumental  music  on  a  large  scale.  They  are  not 
concertos  in  the  modern  sense;  that  is,  they  are  not  for  a  solo  in- 
strument accompanied  by  the  rest  of  the  orchestra.  Rather,  they 
are  more  like  concerti  grossi,  in  which  several  instruments  have  more 
important  roles  than  the  balance  of  the  ensemble.  The  "Branden- 
burg" Concertos  exhibit  Bach  as  a  tireless  experimentalist,  con- 
stantly trying  new  effects,  testing  the  color  of  various  instrumental 
combinations,  and  indulging  his  own  concepts  of  form.  The  "Bran- 
denburg" at  their  best  tremble  on  the  brink  of  being  orchestral 
music  in  the  modern  sense,  and  only  Bach's  way  of  conceiving  the 
parts  vocally  keeps  them  from  being  so.  Andre  Pirro,  whose  study 
of  Bach's  esthetic  is  definitive,  has  flatly  called  them  symphonies. 
Of  the  six,  the  third  has  long  been  the  most  popular.  Scored  for 
strings  and  clavier,  it  consists  of  two  vigorous  allegros — bracing 
instrumental  polyphony  that  moves  to  irresistible  rhythms.  All  the 


BACH  37 

others  have  contrasting  slow  movements  and,  with  the  exception 
of  the  sixth,  are  scored  for  strings,  wind  instruments,  and  clavier. 
The  andante  of  the  second  is  of  a  serene  and  unearthly  loveliness 
that  even  Bach  himself  has  not  often  equaled.  These  are  but  iso- 
lated beauties  in  five  small  masterpieces  (for  the  first  is  by  com- 
parison uninspired)  that  Schweitzer  has  called  "the  purest  prod- 
ucts of  Bach's  polyphonic  style.53 

The  Well-Tempered  Clavichord  and  the  "Brandenburg"  Concertos 
by  no  means  complete  the  tally  of  Bach's  instrumental  works. 
There  exist,  in  bewildering  profusion,  pieces  for  clavier,  violin,  and 
various  ensembles.  In  discussing  these,  confusion  worse  confounded 
arises  from  the  impossibility  of  establishing  their  chronological 
order,  and  from  the  absurdity  of  the  names  applied  to  many  of 
them  by  editors  and  publishers.  As  enjoyment  of  these  delightful 
pieces  does  not  depend  on  knowing  when  they  were  written,  or 
why  one  is  called  a  French  Suite  rather  than  a  partita,  solving 
these  puzzles  can  safely  be  left  to  the  musical  Dr.  Dryasdusts.  Bach 
himself  was  too  busy  for  such  minutiae;  he  did  not  scruple  to  move 
a  whole  section  from  a  secular  into  a  sacred  cantata  written  more 
than  a  decade  later.  His  borrowings  from  himself  were  sometimes 
made  with  ludicrous  results,  and  only  a  hair  divides  his  worst 
transplantations  from  Handel's  callously  putting  Agrippina's  words 
and  music  into  Mary  Magdalene's  mouth.  And  he  borrowed  from 
others,  too — notably  some  of  the  best  melodies  in  the  St.  Matthew 
Passion.  Bach  was  not  composing  for  his  biographers:  he  was  al- 
ways devising  a  cantata  for  the  Duke  of  Saxe- Weimar,  finishing  a 
suite  for  Prince  Leopold,  or  piecing  together  a  Passion  for  the 
Leipzig  worthies — he  was  like  a  newspaperman  with  a  perpetual 
deadline. 

All  of  Bach's  instrumental  music,  except  that  for  the  organ,  be- 
longs in  spirit  to  his  happy  years  at  Cothen,  whether  written  there 
or  at  Leipzig.  French  Suites,  English  Suites,  partitas,  and  con- 
certos— most  of  them  contain  music  of  rare  quality,  for  Bach  could 
not  write  long  without  achieving  some  memorable  measures.  Oc- 
casionally he  strikes  a  note  of  grandeur,  as  in  the  last  movement  of 
the  second  partita  for  violin  alone — the  sublimely  built  chaconne, 
as  varied,  as  perfect,  and  as  lifting  as  a  great  Gothic  cathedral.  But 
the  adjectives  that  best  describe  most  of  this  instrumental  music — 
delightful,  charming,  sprightly — are  not  those  commonly  applied 


38  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

to  the  greatest  music.  Compared  to  the  Bach  of  the  B  minor  Mass 
and  the  Matthew  Passion^  they  are  lightweight.  They  are  the  diver- 
sions of  a  man  whose  deepest  and  most  intense  inspirations  were  of 
a  religious  nature.  The  Italian  Concerto  has  the  feckless  gaiety  of 
a  man  enjoying  his  vacation.  The  French  Suites  echo  the  heeltaps 
of  Versailles.  The  concerto  for  four  claviers  is  a  delicious  excursion 
into  pure  melody. 

But  the  conception  of  an  unrelievedly  pious  Bach  dies  hard.  He 
loved  his:  life  in  Cothen,,  even  though  he  could  not  write  religious 
music  there.  The  idea  that  he  was  unhappy  in  Cothen  is  the  inven- 
tion of  earnest  souls  who  insist  upon  standing  up  for  his  better 
nature,  which  they  must  have  unrelieved.  Actually.,  seven  years 
after  leaving  Cothen  he.  was  still  writing  wistfully  of  his  life  there: 
"Its  gracious:  Prince  loved  and  understood  music,  so  that  I  ex- 
pected to  end  my  days  there.53  In  this:  same  letter,  he  revealed  the 
true  cause  of  his  departure:  "My  Serenissinms*  married  a  Bernburg 
wife,  and  in  consequence,  so  it  seemed,  his  musical  inclination 
abated,  while  his  new  Princess  proved  to  be  an  amusa"  This  lady^ 
whom  Prince  Leopold  took  as  his  consort  a  week  after  Bach*s  mar- 
riage to  Anna  Magdalena^  disliked  music,,  and  resentment  of  the 
time  her  husband  gave  to  it  soon  changed  to  jealousy  of  Bach. 
Leopold3  s  growing  coolness  fortified  the  composer  in  his  wish  to 
move  to  a  town  where  his  children  could  attend  a  Lutheran  school. 

In  1722,  Johann  Kuhnau,  one  of  the  earliest  composers  of  pro- 
gram music,  died,  leaving  vacant  the  cantorate  of  the  Thomas- 
schule.  in  Leipzig.  Although  this,  was  not  at  the  time  a  very  im- 
portant post,  six  candidates'  presented  themselves,  including,  the 
redoubtable  Georg  Philipp  Telemann,  musical  autocrat  of  Ham- 
burg. Telemann,  whose  candidacy  was  a  mere  political  maneuver, 
was  unanimously  elected,  but  preferred  to  return  to  Hamburg  and 
enjoy  an  increased  stipend.  Bach  then  entered  the  field,,  but  the 
electors3  second  choice  fell  upon  one  Graupner,  a  nonentity  em- 
ployed as  Kapellmeister  at  Darmstadt.  His1  employer  refused  to  re- 
lease him,  however,  and  Bach  was  then  chosen  because,  as  the 
electors  explicitly  said,  no  one  better  offered  himself.  By  May, 
1723,  he  and  his  family  were  settled  in  their  new  home. 

In  Leipzig,  Bach,  entered  seriously  upon,  his  career  as  a  litigant. 

*  The  italicized  words  in  quotations  from  Bach  have  been  left  in  the  language  and 
form  in  which  he  wrote  them. 


BACH  39 

His  official  duties  as  cantor  of  the  Thomasschule,  an  ancient  acad- 
emy for  poor  students  who  were  tcained  to  sing  in  the  -choirs  of  the 
four  principal  .city  churches,  would,  under  ideal  conditions,  have 
made  him  musical  dictator  of  Leipzig.  But  such  conditions  were 
lacking:  there  was  nothing  in  the  rules  and  regulations  of  the 
Thomasschule  that  dearly  defined  the  cantor's  office,  and  Bach's 
conception  of  his  duties  differed  widely  from  what  the  rector  and 
other  officials  expected  of  him.  He  was  to  furnish  a  cantata  for  the 
Thomaskirdhe  and  the  Nikoiaikirche  on  alternate  Sundays — he 
favored  the  Thomaskirche.  He  was  to  teach  Latin  to  the  scholars, 
and  to  supervise  their  .choral  training — he  either  neglected  these 
duties  or  delegated  them  to  .others.  These  omissions  led  to  constant 
and  protracted  bickering,  acrimonious  letters  exchanged,  appeals 
to  the  Elector  of  Saxony,  and  picayune  feuds  over  questions  of 
precedence  ;and  prerogative.  Bach,  who  had  gone  to  Gothen  partly 
because  he  .coveted  tke  title  <£  Kapellmeister  ^  felt  that  a  cantorat^ 
and  many  of  its  -duties  were  beneath  his  dignity:  he  salved  his 
vanity  by  .acting  .as  though  he  were  .still  a  Kapellmeister  >  and  by 
calling  himself  .Director  Musices. 

When  Bach  arrived  in  Leipzig,  the  opera,  founded  there  as  early 
as  1693,,  was  in  a  decayed  state,  and  folded  up  several  years  later. 
Otherwise,  the  town  was  already  launched  on  its  stately  'career  as 
one  of  the  musical  centers  of  the  world.  During  Bach's  lifetime 
there  was  founded  a  small  civic  society  of  instrumentalists,  and 
from  this  humble  origin  grew  the  Gewandhaus  concerts,  which 
have  numbered  among  their  conductors  Mendelssohn,  Nikisch, 
and  Fnrtwangler,  A  more  cosmopolitan  life  than  was  common  to 
the  rest  of  Germany  existed  at  Leipzig  because  of  the  great  trade 
fairs  that  were  held  there  annually.  The  many  foreigners  who  came 
to  these,  and  the  town's  large  leisure  class  combined  to  produce  a 
more  sophisticated  culture  than  that  to  which  Bach  had  been  used. 

Bach  celebrated  his  first  Christmas  in  Leipzig  by  performing  one 
of  his  masterpieces — the  Latin  Magnificat.  On  Christmas  Eve,  it 
was  the  pleasing  custom  at  the  Thomaskirche — one  continued  well 
into  the  nineteenth  century— to  stage  a  sort  of  mystery  play  of  the 
birth  of  Christ.  Bach's  contribution  to  the  fete  was  his  largest 
church  work  up  to  this  -time:  it  is  scored  for  a  five-part  choros, 
soloists,  and  full  orchestra,  as  that  term  was  .then  mteprefced.  It  is 
rarely  heard,  for  its  qualities  have  less  appeal  than  those  of  the 


4O  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

B  minor  Mass  and  the  St.  Matthew  Passion.  The  fact  that  Bach  was 
setting  Latin  words  may  well  have  prompted  him  to  use  an  aloof, 
objective  style  which  owes  much  to  the  technically  tight  Italianism 
of  the  times.  There  is  nothing  personal  or  reflective  about  the 
Magnificat:  it  depends  for  its  effect  on  its  flawless  formality,  its 
unearthly  jubilance,  and  its  florid  conduct  of  the  voices.  It  is,  of  all 
Bach's  works,  the  one  best  meriting  the  oft-repeated  sneering  com- 
ment on  his  music — "golden  mathematics." 

For  ten  years  or  more,  Bach's  fight  for  prestige  and  ideal  condi- 
tions for  producing  his  music  went  on  at  a  jog  trot,  though  his 
field  of  controversy  was  slowly  widening.  He  got  off  to  a  bad  start 
by  inheriting  a  feud  with  the  University  authorities  from  his  prede- 
cessor. It  involved  the  ex  officio  right  of  the  Thomascantor  to  con- 
duct certain  services  in  the  Paulinerkirche,  or  University  church. 
After  two  years  of  fruitless  warfare  with  its  musical  director,  Bach 
appealed  to  the  Elector,  who  instantly  commanded  the  University 
to  answer  Bach's  charges.  As  their  reply  was  unsatisfactory  in  cer- 
tain details,  Bach  sent  to  the  Elector  the  longest  letter  extant  from 
his  pen.  Its  Jesuitical  casuistry  elicited  from  Augustus  the  Strong 
a  fence-straddling  reply  worthy  of  the  oracle  of  Delphi.  It  indicated 
the  separate  provinces  of  the  Stadtcantor  and  his  opponent,  but  left 
the  boundary  between  them  vague.  Therefore,  when  the  Electress 
Christiane  Eberhardine  died,  the  feud  took  a  new  turn,  as  neither 
rival  had  a  clear  title  to  the  right  to  conduct  the  memorial  service 
for  her  august  and  truly  lamented  majesty.  This  time  Bach  won: 
on  October  17,  1727,  seated  at  a  clavier  in  the  organ  loft  of  the 
Paulinerkirche,  Johann  Sebastian  triumphantly  conducted  one  of 
his  less  distinguished  compositions. 

Less  acrimonious,  but  involving  finer  music,  was  a  misunder- 
standing with  the  Nikolaikirche,  always  the  stepchild  of  Bach's 
conscience.  Among  his  duties  was  that  of  providing  the  Thomas- 
kirche  and  the  Nikolaikirche  on  alternate  years  with  special  Good 
Friday  music  known  as  a  Passion.  In  applying  for  the  cantorate, 
he  had  composed  a  Passion  to  prove  his  abilities,  and  had  per- 
formed if  in  the  Thomaskirche  on  Good  Friday,  1723.  The  au- 
thorities of  the  Nikolaikirche,  which  had  missed  its  turn  in  1722, 
were  eagerly  awaiting  the  Holy  Week  of  1724,  when  they  were  sud- 
denly confronted  with  programs  announcing  that  the  Passion 
would  again  be  performed  in  the  Thomaskirche.  They  protested, 


BACH  41 

and  Bach  answered  that  their  facilities  were  inadequate:  the  gal- 
lery was  too  small,  and  the  organ  was  a  wreck.  By  immediately 
tending  to  these  matters,  the  authorities  forced  Bach's  hand,  and 
on  Good  Friday,  1 724,  the  Nikolaikirche  heard  the  St.  John  Passion. 

This  was  the  first  of  possibly  five  Passions  that  Bach  wrote,  of 
which  two  unquestionably  authentic  ones  remain.  A  third,  though 
in  his  handwriting,  is  probably  a  copy  of  a  work  by  another  com- 
poser. When  Bach  died,  his  manuscripts  were  divided  among  the 
members  of  his  family,  the  Passions  falling  to  Karl  Philipp  Eman- 
uel  and  Wilhelm  Friedemann.  The  methodical  younger  son  cher- 
ished his  share,  and  the  John  and  Matthew  are  therefore  preserved. 
But  the  ne'er-do-well  Wilhelm  Friedemann  lost  the  three  entrusted 
to  him.  His  loss  of  these  has  given  rise  to  a  literature  of  conjecture 
as  to  their  nature  and  quality  that  almost  equals  the  commentaries 
on  the  existing  Passions. 

Bach  was  not  fortunate  in  the  libretto  for  the  John  Passion.  He 
used,  in  addition  to  direct  quotations  from  the  eighteenth  and 
nineteenth  chapters  of  the  Gospel  according  to  John,  parts  of  a 
poetic  paraphrase  of  the  same  material  by  Barthold  Heinrich 
Brockes,  a  Hamburg  town  councilor.  Despite  its  confused  and 
feeble  character,  Brockes'  libretto  was  much  favored  by  other 
eighteenth-century  composers,  including  Handel.  Bach  attempted 
to  improve  on  Brockes,  and  achieved  passages  whose  absurdity 
surpasses  even  the  original.  His  work  on  the  text  clearly  evidences 
the  harried  spirit  of  a  man  writing  against  time,  and  the  music 
itself  shows  traces  of  the  same  hurry.  The  whole  work  produces  a 
certain  disjointed  effect  that  certainly  was  not  part  of  the  compos- 
er's plan.  But  the  John  Passion  was  written  as  part  of  a  church 
service  in  which  every  circumstance  conspired  to  bridge  what  mod- 
ern concertgoers  may  feel  are  gaps  in  the  formal  structure. 

The  John  Passion  opens  with  a  massive  chorus  done  in  Bach's 
largest  manner.  It  is,  with  the  possible  exception  of  the  alto  aria, 
"Es  ist  vollbracht,"  the  most  effective  section  of  the  work.  Certain 
portions  are  positively  operatic  in  their  impact,  notably  in  the 
Golgotha  music,  where  the  mighty  catechism  of  the  full  chorus  is 
answered  by  a  solo  voice,  producing  a  moment  of  piercing,  intoler- 
able tragedy.  Although  the  rest  of  the  Passion  is  not  at  this  intense 
pitch,  there  are  many  surpassingly  fine  pages  evoking  despair  and 
triumph,  interspersed  with  passages  of  the  most  appealing  tender- 


42  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

ness.  And  yet,  with  its  many  excellences,  the  John  Passion  has  a 
way  of  creaking  at  the  joints:  the  episodes  succeed  each  other 
without  cumulating.  The  work  in  its  present  state  was  twice  re- 
vised by  Bach;  even  so,  it  remains  a  stringing  together  of  musically 
unequal  units.  v 

The  St.  Matthew  Passion  leaves  no  such  impression  of  makeshift. 
From  the  first  moment,  when  the  choral  floodgates  are  flung  open, 
to  the  tragic  revery  at  Christ*s  tomb,  this  tremendous  drama, 
which  is  scored  for  three  choruses,  two  orchestras,  two  organs,  and 
soloists,  and  which  takes  three  hours  to  perform,  is  deeply  felt, 
flawlessly  designed,  and  magnificently  achieved.  First  produced  at 
the  Thomaskirche  in  1729,  it  shows  such  unfailing  command  of 
the  material  that  it  lends  weight  to  the  well-attested  theory  that 
another  Passion,  now  lost,  intervened  between  it  and  the  John 
Passion.  The  Matthew  is,  by  comparison,  a  revolutionary  work. 

In  the  first  place,  Bach  was  not  plagued  by  a  poor  libretto. 
Christian  Friedrich  Henrici,  a  local  postal  official  who  wrote  under 
the  name  of  Picander,  had  collaborated  with  him  as  early  as  1725, 
and  now  provided  a  workmanlike  and  thoroughly  adequate  text, 
which,  considering  the  abject  state  of  German  poetry  at  the  time, 
was  no  mean  task.  It  was  so  exactly  what  Bach  needed  that  we  can 
assume  that  Picander  was  an  amiable  man  who  probably  was 
happy  to  take  any  reasonable  suggestion  from  his  collaborator.  He 
cleverly  devised  the  Matthew  Passion  libretto  so  that  the  two  sec- 
tions are  contrasted  dramatically:  the  first  is  lyrical,  reflective,  al- 
most a  commentary,  until,  in  its  closing  moments,  Judas'  betrayal 
of  Christ  foreshadows  the  swiftly  moving  catastrophe  of  the  second 
section.  The  tragic  problem  is  set  in  part  one:  in  part  two  it  is 
resolved.  In  this  Passion — Bach*s  supreme  flight  in  the  purely  Ger- 
man manner — the  collaborators  limn  the  Christ  loved  by  the  sim- 
ple Lutheran  congregations,  the  human  being  who  suffered  for 
their  redemption,  rather  than  the  God  incarnate  glorified  in  the 
ultramontane  splendors  of  the  B  minor  Mass. 

The  key  to  the  vastness  of  the  Matthew  Passion  is  Bach's  profound 
conception  of  the  Christ.  In  the  John  Passion  he  made  no  attempt 
to  differentiate  musically  between  the  words  of  Christ  and  those 
of  the  other  actors  in  the  drama;  in  the  Matthew  His  voice  is  dis- 
tinguished from  the  others  by  having  a  string  accompaniment,  one 
that  adds  luminosity  and  warmth  to  the  tonal  color  whenever  He 


BACH  43 

speaks.  Bach's  sensitive  response  to  text  is  evident  in  many  works, 
but  in  the  Matthew  Passion  he  surpassed  himself.  At  no  point  has  he 
failed  the  slightest  promptings  of  the  words;  the  merest  syntactical 
shift  finds  its  counterpart  in  some  subtle  alteration  in  musical  tex- 
ture. Yet  it  is  never  precious  or  oc^rsubtilized:  the  design  persists, 
the  structure  coheres.  If  at  any  moment  Bach  seems  to  clothe  his 
text  too  realistically  (and  it  must  be  admitted  that  the  musical 
cockcrow  strains  the  integrity  of  the  structure),  he  recovers  himself 
immediately  by  some  miraculous  touch. 

The  Matthew  Passion  was  received  with  a  bewilderment  of  which 
one  of  Bach's  pupils  has  left  an  account:  "Some  high  officials  and 
well-born  ladies  in  one  of  the  galleries  began  to  sing  the  first  Choral 
with  great  devotion  from  their  books.  But  as  the  theatrical  music 
proceeded,  they  were  thrown  into  the  greatest  wonderment,  saying 
to  each  other,  'What  does  it  all  mean?3  while  one  old  lady,  a 
widow,  exclaimed,  cGod  help  us!  'tis  surely  an  Opera-comedy!"3 
Such  a  reception,  which  must  have  been  Baches  common  lot  as  a 
composer,  was  not  calculated  to  improve  his  touchy  disposition, 
and  his  wrangling  with  the  authorities  vexed  them  so  that  when 
the  councilors  met  to  appoint  a  new  rector,  one  of  them  expressed 
the  fervent  hope  that  they  would  "fare  better  in  this  appointment 
than  in  that  of  the  cantor."  Their  pent-up  .anger  at  Bach's  grand 
manners  and  arrogant  disregard  of  his  pedagogical  duties  finally 
burst  forth  in  a  threat  to  sequestrate  his  moneys. 

But  if  the  town  fathers  were  fed  up,  so  v/as  Bach.  It  is  certain 
that  by  October,  17,30,  he  was  ready  to  relinquish  the  cantorate 
and  go  elsewhere.  It  is  to  his  straining  at  the  leash  that  we  owe 
the  most  personal  of  his  extant  letters,  written  to  Georg  Erdmann, 
a  childhood  friend  who  was  then  the  Tsarina's  agent  at  Dan- 
zig. "Unfortunately,"  Bach  wrote,  "I  have  discovered  that  (i)  this 
situation  is  not  as  good  as  it  was  represented  to  be,  (2)  various 
accidentia  relative  to  my  station  have  been  withdrawn,  (3)  living  is 
expensive,  and  (4)  my  masters  are  strange  folk  with  very  little  care 
for  music  in  them.  Consequently,  I  am  subjected  to  constant  an- 
noyance, jealousy,  and  persecution.  It  is  therefore  in  my  mind, 
with  God's  assistance,  to  seek  my  fortune  elsewhere.  If  your  Honor 
knows  of  or  should  hear  of  a  convenable  station  in  your  town,  I  beg 
you  to  let  me  have  your  valuable  recommendation.  Nothing  will  be 
wanting  on  my  part  to  give  satisfaction,  show  diligence,  and  justify 


44  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

your  much  esteemed  support.  My  present  station  is  worth  about 
700  kronen  a  year,  and  if  the  death-rate  is  higher  than  ordinaire- 
ment,  my  accidentia  increase  in  proportion:,  but  Leipzig  is  a  healthy 
place,  and  for  the  past  year,  as  it  happens,  I  have  received  about 
100  kronen  less  than  usual  in  funeral  accidentia.  The  cost  of  living, 
too,  is  so  excessive  that  I  was  better  off  in  Thuringia  on  400  kronen." 

After  his  bill  of  complaints,  with  its  pettifogging  note.  Bach 
passes  to  a  newsy  paragraph  about  his  home  life:  "And  now  I  must 
tell  you  something  of  my  domestic  circumstances.  My  first  wife 
died  at  Gothen  and  I  have  married  again.  Of  my  first  marriage 
are  living  three  sons  and  a  daughter,  whom  your  Honor  saw  at 
Weimar  and  may  be  pleased  to  remember.  Of  my  second  marriage 
one  son  and  two  daughters  are  living.  My  eldest  son  is  a  studiosus 
juris,  the  other  two  are  at  school  here  in  the  prima  and  secunda 
classis;  my  eldest  daughter  as  yet  is  unmarried.  My  children  by  my 
second  wife  are  still  young;  the  eldest  boy  is  six.  All  my  children 
are  born  musici;  from  my  ownfamilie,  I  assure  you,  I  can  arrange  a 
concert  vocaliter  and  mstrumentaliter\  my  wife,  in  particular,  has  a 
very  clear  soprano,  and  my  eldest  daughter  can  give  a  good  ac- 
count of  herself  too." 

But  things  cleared  up.  The  bumbling  old  rector,  whose  dotage 
had  been  unequal  to  the  task  of  suppressing  faction,  was  succeeded 
by  a  man  of  very  different  stripe,  Johann  Matthias  Gesner.  A  man 
of  generous  affections  and  wide  taste,  and  himself  a  leader  of  the 
new  humanism  that  was  warming  the  intellectual  currents  of 
eighteenth-century  Germany,  he  immediately  appreciated  Bach, 
and  exerted  his  sympathetic  nature  to  soothe  the  troubled  waters. 
For  nearly  five  years  the  cantor  enjoyed  comparative  calm,  almost 
as  if  he  were  gathering  strength  for  the  bitter  controversies  of  the 
late  thirties. 

In  1729,  Bach  was  appointed  honorary  Kapellmeister  to  his  old 
friend,  Christian  of  Saxe-Weissenfels.  About  this  time,  he  began 
going  frequently  to  Dresden,  ostensibly  to  take  his  favorite  son, 
Wilhelm  Friedemann,  to  the  opera,  but  actually  to  canvass  pos- 
sibilities for  advancement  at  the  Elector's  court.  Here  he  met  the 
now-forgotten,  but  then  world-famous,  Johann  Adolf  Hasse,  and 
his  dazzlingly  lovely  wife,  Faustina.  Hasse  was  Hof kapellmeister .,  and 
divided  the  honors  of  the  royal  opera  with  Faustina,  he  as  com- 
poser, she  as  prima  donna.  It  is  doubtful  that  Hasse  cared  more  for 


BACH  45 

Bach's  compositions  than  the  Thomascantor  did  for  his.  Bach's  at- 
titude toward  opera  in  general  is  summed  up  in  his  "Well,  Friede- 
mann,  shall  we  go  to  Dresden  and  hear  the  pretty  tunes?"  In  1 73 1 , 
when  he  was  there  to  hear  tlit  premiere  of  one  of  Hasse's  operas,  he 
gave  a  recital  at  the  Sophienkirche,  after  which  the  Hofkapell- 
meister  joined  the  chorus  of  those  who  hymned  Bach  as  the  king  of 
organists.  This  recital,  coming  after  seven  years'  retirement  as  an 
organist,  launched  Bach  on  a  new  career  of  trips  to  near-by  towns 
to  "examine  and  display"  organs. 

In  1733,  Augustus  II,  Elector  of  Saxony  and  King  of  Poland, 
passed  to  whatever  reward  comes  to  a  man  who  has  begotten 
three  hundred  and  sixty-five  illegitimate  children.  During  the 
period  of  mourning  decreed  by  the  court,  less  music  was  used  in 
the  churches,  and  Bach's  duties  were  therefore  light.  He  used  his 
leisure  to  concoct  a  Latin  Kyrie  and  Gloria — parts  of  the  Mass 
common  to  the  Roman  and  Lutheran  services — that  might  aptly 
accompany  a  request  to  a  Catholic  sovereign  for  the  office  ofHof- 
compositeur,  a  distinction  that  would  strengthen  his  hand  in  Leipzig. 
Unfortunately,  the  gift  and  petition  found  Augustus  III  immersed 
in  the  troubled  waters  of  Polish  politics,  and  Bach  had  to  wait 
three  years  for  his  appointment.  Although  the  Kyrie  and  Gloria 
seem  never  to  have  been  performed  for  Augustus,  this  did  not  deter 
Bach:  in  five  years  he  welded  them  into  a  structure  so  vast  that  it 
could  never  be  performed  as  part  of  any  church  service.  This  was 
his  supreme  masterpiece. 

The  B  minor  Mass  is  the  greatest  composition  ever  written.  Its 
sustained  sublimity  would  seem  to  predicate  Bach,  the  very  vessel 
of  divine  inspiration,  creating  it  whole  in  one  mighty  surge.  Ac- 
tually, it  was  composed  and  arranged  in  an  amazingly  desultory 
manner.  If,  as  many  believe,  it  was  finished  in  1740,  it  had  taken 
as  long  to  complete  as  The  Last  Judgment.  But  Bach,  unlike  Michel- 
angelo, had  not  been  working  exclusively  on  his  masterpiece:  quite 
literally,  he  did  it  in  his  spare  time.  It  does  not  even  consist  of 
entirely  new  material — though  the  samples  he  had  sent  to  Augus- 
tus III  did:  throughout,  he  borrowed  copiously  from  himself.  Of 
the  twenty-six  divisions  of  the  Mass,  several  are  adaptations  from 
sacred  cantatas,  and  at  least  one  had  its  ultimate  source  in  an 
unquestionably  secular  piece.  Naturally,  a  work  put  together  in 
this  fashion  does  not  have  the  same  kind  of  unity  as  a  Mozart 


46  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

symphony  or  a  Beethoven  quartet  But  it  is  doubtful  whether  the 
conglomerate  text  of  a  Mass  demands  this  kind  of  unity.  What  holds 
the  B  minor  together,,  and  gives  the  impression  of  a  unifying  de- 
sign, is  its  consistently  Bachian  character. 

The  Mass  opens  with  a  five-part  fugue,  126  bars  long,  whose 
severe  and  uncompromising  woefulness  prepares  the  least  aware 
for  this  fearsome  journey  into  a  new  musical  world.  The  very  form 
of  this  Kyrie  sets  it  apart  from  the  intimate  German  utterances  of 
the  cantatas  and  Passions:  we  hear  once  again,  after  more  than  a 
century,  the  accents  of  Palestrina.  Luther  suddenly  recedes  into 
the  remote  distance,  and  the  vast,  impersonal  voice  of  Rome  is 
heard.  As  the  huge  liturgical  machine  gets  under  way,,  Spitta  says, 
"The  solo  songs  stand  among  the  choruses  like  isolated  valleys  be- 
tween gigantic  heights,  serving  to  relieve  the  eye  that  tries  to  take 
in  the  whole,  composition."  Bach  moves  among  the  complexities 
of  the  text  with  perfect  ease,,  and  even  at  that  part  of  the  Credo 
where  the  Nicene  Fathers  fell  into  doggerel  keeps  to  the  lofty  plane. 
And  when  the  text  itself  is  most  dramatic,  as  in  the  Resurrexit,  when 
the  tragic  despair  of  the  Crueifiws  is  dissipated  in  an  outburst  of 
ecstatic  joy,  Bach  creates  page  after  page  of  a  majestic  intensity 
unequaled  in  music. 

The  history  of  the  B  minor  Mass  is  unique.  Never  given  in  its 
entirety  during  Bach's,  lifetime,  it  did  not  have  its  first  complete 
performance  until  well  into  the  nineteenth  century.  Today  it  is  the 
most  famous,  and  possibly  the  most  popular,  of  Ms  larger  com- 
positions. Bach  Societies  everywhere  devote  much  of  their  time 
and  energy  to  "working  up"  the  B  minor>  most  often  with  in- 
different success.  The  Bach  Festival,  at  Bethlehem,  Pennsylvania, 
annually  presents  it  with  pious  attention  to  detail;  it  attracts  ca- 
pacity audiences  from,  all  over  the  world. 

In  glaring  contrast  to  the  ever-growing  popularity  of  the  Mass 
is  the  unworthy  fate  of  the  vast  majority  of  Bach's  vocal  works.  Of 
more  than  two  hundred  cantatas,  as-  well  as  a  considerable  mis- 
cellany of  pieces  going  under  other  names,  but  few  have  been 
performed  in  the  United  States.  Yet  these,  far  more  than  the  Pas- 
sions and  the  B  minor  Mass,  represent  the  intimate  side  of  Bach's 
creative  nature;  not  only  did  he  earn  his  daily  bread  by  composing 
them  (sometimes  at  the  rate  of  one  a  week),  but  they  were  them- 
selves the  bread  of  life  to  him,  based  as  they  are  on  those  simple 


BACH  47 

Lutheran  hymn  tunes  that  were  his  first  musical  loves.  The  can- 
tatas, too,  rather  than  the  Passions  and  the  great  Mass,  give  us  the 
most  varied  and  nearly  complete  picture  of  Bach  as  a  vocal  writer. 
They  were  composed  for  every  Sunday  and  great  feast  of  the 
church  year,  and  range  from  the  most  solemn  and  poignant  lamen- 
tations to  canticles  of  pure  joy.  Some  are  mystical  and  contempla- 
tive, others  so  dramatic  that  they  lack  only  action  to  be  operas. 

Those  few  cantatas  that  have  been  made  accessible  through 
occasional  performances,  transcriptions,  and  recordings  are  mas- 
terpieces in  small.  The  Easter  cantata,  Christ  lag  in  Totesbanden,  is 
a  stark  frenzied  commentary  on  the  death  sacrifice  of  the  Son  of 
God.  In  Em  feste  Burg,  Bach,,  with  the  foursquare  Gospel  in  his 
hand,  thunders  forth  his  simple  German  credo.  And  in  portions  of 
W&chet  auf  the  music  reaches  such  passionate  heights  that  it  has 
been  called  the  greatest  love  music  before  Tristan  und  Isolde.  The 
choice  of  the  cantatas  performed  lias  admittedly  been  fortuitous: 
there  is  every  reason  to  believe  that  the  untapped  remainder  is  an 
inexhaustible  supply  of  great  musk*  One  of  the  reasons  heard  most 
frequently  for  not  giving  these  works  is  that  Bach  did  not  know 
how  to  write  for  the  voice.  This  is  merely  an  excuse  for  singers  too 
lazy  to  learn  more  than  the  bare  fundamentals  of  their  craft.  Some 
difficulties  arise  from  the  fact  that  notes  now  represent  a  much 
higher  pitch  than  they  did  in  Bach's  day.  Even  allowing  for  this,  his 
vocal  music  at  its  most  complex  is  not  unsingable;  rather,  it  is  the 
most  rewarding  a  conscientious  singer  can  hope  for,  as  it  exploits 
the  fullest  resources  of  the  human  voice. 

Only  twenty-four  of  the  cantatas  are  written  to  secular  texts, 
and  even  many  of  these  are  predominantly  religious  in  feeEng.  But 
in  a  few  of  them  Bach  shows  a  refreshingly  topical  slant.  The 
"Coffee"  Cantata  satirizes  a  Leipzig  that,  when  coffee  was  still  a 
fad  of  the  wealthy,  boasted  eight  licensed  coffeehouses.  Dm  Streit 
zwischen  Phoebus  und  Pan  strikes  a  more  personal  note  because  of  its 
connection  with  Johann  Adolf  Scheibe,  a  voluminous  composer 
and  criticaster  Bach  had  blackballed  for  a  job,  and  who  took  his 
revenge  by  indicting  the  bases  of  ins  enemy's  musical  style.  Bach, 
in  lampooning  Scheibe  as  Midas,  got  back  at  him  much  as  Wagner 
was  to  scuttle  his  enemies  in  Lie  Meistersinger.  Scheibe,  however, 
probably  reflected  the  bafflement  of  even  the  more  cultured  among 
Bach's  audience  when  exposed  to  his  complex  style. 


48  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

"This  great  man,"  Scheibe  wrote,  after  the  conventional  tribute 
to  Bach's  prowess  at  the  organ,  "would  be  the  wonder  of  the  uni- 
verse if  his  compositions  displayed  more  agreeable  qualities,  were 
less  turgid  and  sophisticated,  more  simple  and  natural  in  charac- 
ter. His  music  is  exceedingly  difficult  to  play,  because  the  efficiency 
of  his  own  limbs  sets  his  standard;  he  expects  singers  and  players 
to  be  as  agile  with  voice  and  instrument  as  he  is  with  his  fingers, 
which  is  impossible.  Grace  notes  and  embellishments,  such  as  a 
player  instinctively  supplies,  he  puts  down  in  actual  symbols,  a 
habit  which  not  only  sacrifices  the  harmonic  beauty  of  his  music 
but  also  blurs  its  melodic  line.  All  his  parts,  too,  are  equally  me- 
lodic, so  that  one  cannot  distinguish  the  principal  tune  among 
them.  In  short,  he  is  as  a  musician  what  Herr  von  Lohenstein* 
used  to  be  as  a  poet:  pomposity  diverts  them  both  from  a  natural 
to  an  artificial  style,  changing  what  might  have  been  sublime  into 
the  obscure.  In  regard  to  both  of  them,  we  wonder  at  an  effort  so 
labored,  and,  since  nothing  comes  of  it,  so  futile.5* 

As  Bach,  reviving  Phoebus  und  Pan  in  1749,  satirized  a  new  ad- 
versary as  Midas,  it  is  probable  that  he  became  reconciled  with 
Scheibe.  Less  happy  was  the  outcome  of  a  long  and  bitter  contro- 
versy with  Gesner's  successor  as  rector  of  the  Thomasschule,  Johann 
August  Ernesti.  Although  his  reputation  as  a  classical  scholar  has 
justly  dwindled,  there  is  no  doubt  that  Ernesti  stood  forth  as  one 
of  the  leaders  in  the  movement  to  free  institutions  of  learning,  as 
Charles  Sanford  Terry  says,  "from  the  standards  of  the  age  in 
which  they  originated,  from  the  classical  trammels  of  the  Renais- 
sance, and  the  theological  bonds  of  the  Reformation.  .  .  ."  As 
Ernesti  naturally  tried  to  shift  the  Thomasschule's  emphasis  from 
music  to  a  general  curriculum,  his  activity  conflicted  with  the 
cantor's  personal  interests.  Bach  was  unconsciously  shunted  into 
the  position  of  a  pigheaded  opponent  of  the  Zeitgeist,  for,  after  sift- 
ing all  the  petty  details  of  this  dreary  tug  of  war,  it  is  clear  that  the 
equally  pigheaded  Ernesti  was  on  the  side  of  progress.  After  keep- 
ing the  rector,  the  cantor,  the  students,  and  sundry  town  busy- 
bodies  in  an  uproar  for  several  years,  the  struggle  seems  to  have 
died  of  sheer  inanition.  Or  perhaps  Bach's  appointment  as  Hof* 
compositeur  in  1736  salved  his  injured  feelings,  and  made  his  ad- 

*  D.  C.  von  Lohenstein  (1665-1684)  wrote  numerous  wooden  dramas. 


BACH  49 

versaries  feel  that  they  had  best  not  proceed  farther  against  so 
lofty  a  personage. 

Augustus  III  asked  Baron  Karl  von  Kayserling  to  deliver  the 
long-delayed  appointment  to  the  composer.  This  envoy's  insomnia 
called  forth  one  of  Bach's  most  delightful  clavier  works.  Kayserling^ 
a  man  of  culture,  kept  a  private  musician  named  Goldberg,  a  pupil 
of  Bach  and  his  son  Friedemann.  For  this  David,  whose  chief 
duty  was  to  relieve  his  wakeful  hours  with  cheerful  melodies,  the 
amiable  Saul  commissioned  Bach  to  supply  a  new  musical  balm, 
and  the  result  has  been  known  ever  since  as  the  "Goldberg"  Varia- 
tions. They  doubtless  performed  their  work  well,  and  Kayserling 
affectionately  referred  to  them  as  "my  variations."  He  paid  off 
like  a  true  grandee,  sending  Bach  one  hundred  louis  d'or  ia  a 
golden  goblet.  The  insinuating  and  delicious  suite  has  had  a 
notable  progeny,  for  from  it  stem  the  tremendous  "Eroica"  and 
"Diabelli"  Variations  of  Beethoven  and,  less  directly,  Brahms9 
achievements  in  the  form. 

In  giving  the  title  of  Hofcompositeur  to  Bach,  Augustus  III  had 
set  the  official  seal  on  a  creative  faculty  that  was  well-nigh  spent. 
In  1736  the  master  still  had  fourteen  years  to  live,  but  aside  from 
a  mere  handful  of  cantatas  and  a  few  finishing  touches  on  the  B 
minor  Mass,  his  vocal  work  was  behind  him.  The  Dresden  ap- 
pointment was  far  from  an  empty  honor:  it  involved  frequent 
attendance  at  court  on  ceremonial  occasions.  Bach  was  often  away 
playing  and  testing  organs.  In  his  spare  time  he  was  editing  and 
arranging  his  works,  preparing  for  death  by  putting  his  remains  in 
order,  as  great  men  often  do.  He  paused  from  his  labors  in  1 744 
to  complete  the  second  part  of  The  Well-Tempered  Clavichord,  which 
had  been  composed  as  study  pieces  for  his  second  family  just  as 
the  first  part  had  been  written  for  his  elder  children. 

The  widespread  ramifications  of  his  first  family,  as  well  as  the 
educational  needs  of  his  second,  now  took  up  more  and  more  of 
Bach's  time.  Wilhelm  Friedemann,  first  at  Dresden  and  then  at 
Halle,  seemed  to  be  starting  the  brilliant  career  his  doting  father 
hoped  for  him  (mercifully  he  managed  to  check  until  after  the  old 
man's  death  an  un-Bachian  talent  for  loose  living  that  finally 
wrecked  his  life) .  Johann  Gottfried  Bernhard  was  less  considerate. 
After  running  out  on  his  organist's  job — and  numerous  debts — he 
disappeared,  and  when  next  heard  of  had  died  of  fever.  Karl 


50  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

Philipp  Emanuel,  though  less  endowed  with  native  genius  than 
Wilhelm  Friedemann,  had  inherited  his  father's  steadfast  charac- 
ter, and  at  an  early  age  was  on  the  way  to  becoming  the  most  dis- 
tinguished musician  of  his  generation. 

In  1 740  Karl  Philipp  Emanuel,  though  technically  a  Saxon  sub- 
ject, accepted  a  post  at  the  court  of  Frederick  the  Great,  who  was 
about  to  launch  an  attack  on  Augustus  III,  Austria's  ally.  He  was 
on  excellent  terms  with  the  flute-playing  King,  whom  he  often 
accompanied,  and  was  promoted  in  1 746  to  the  position  of  Kam- 
mermusikus.  When  EmanuePs  first  son  was  born,  Bach  doubtless 
would  have  gone  to  Berlin  to  attend  the  christening  had  not  Fred- 
erick chosen  that  very  month — November,  1745 — for  investing 
Leipzig.  Bach  had  to  wait  two  years  to  see  his  first  grandson.  Tak- 
ing Wilhelm  Friedemann  with  him,  he  set  out  for  the  Prussian 
capital.  Emanuel,  who  was  proud  of  his  father,  knew  the  music- 
loving  sovereign  would  appreciate  Bach's  playing,  and  informed 
the  King  that  he  was  coming. 

When  told  of  Bach's  arrival  in  Potsdam,  Frederick  was  just  sit- 
ting down  to  participate  in  his  usual  evening  concert.  He  rose 
excitedly,  and  exclaimed,  "Gentlemen,  old  Bach  is  here!"  Com- 
manded to  join  the  King  at  once,  Bach  appeared  in  his  traveling 
clothes.  Frederick  greeted  him  warmly,  high-flown  compliments 
were  exchanged,  and  the  old  cantor  was  brought  face  to  face  with 
an  instrument  he  had  never  seen  before — a  piano.  He  immediately 
sat  down  and  improvised  fugally  on  a  theme  that  the  King  gave 
him  there  and  then.  He  disliked  the  instrument,  but  gave  so  mag- 
nificent a  performance  that  Frederick  invited  him  to  return  the 
next  day,  give  an  organ  recital,  and  again  attend  him  in  the 
evening. 

Back  in  Leipzig,  prompted  both  by  his  admiration  of  the  King's 
theme  and  his  eagerness  to  advance  EmanuePs  fortunes  by  a  dip- 
lomatic stroke,  Bach  composed  a  musical  gift  for  Frederick.  Using 
the  theme  as  the  basis  of  several  complicated  fugues  and  canons, 
and  adding  a  grateful  flute  part,  Bach  devised  the  so-called  Musika- 
lisches  Opfer,  had  it  engraved,  and  sent  the  first  sections  to  Potsdam 
with  an  unusually  flowery  letter  of  dedication.  It  is  problematical 
whether  Frederick,  who  collected  great  men  as  an  entomologist 
collects  specimens,  quite  realized  that  he  was  crowning  the  mortal 
career  of  the  greatest  of  all  composers. 


BACH  51 

Bach  did  not  forget  the  Kong's  theme.  It  haunted  his  mind,  and 
he  finally  arrived  at  the  idea  of  using  a  condensed  version  of  it  as 
a  guinea  pig  to  be  subjected  to  every  possible  contrapuntal  opera- 
tion. He  called  these  experiments  simply  "counterpoints/5  and 
there  is  not  a  scrap  of  evidence  that  he  ever  intended  them  to  be 
played.  He  did  not  even  specify  the  medium  for  which  they  were 
intended — if,  indeed,  they  were  intended  for  anything  more  than 
object  lessons.  But  his  editors  got  hold  of  these  "counterpoints/* 
as  well  as  some  fragments  that  have  no  earthly  connection  with 
them,  and  published  the  odd  assortment  as  Die  Kunst  der  Fuge.  It 
has  been  adapted  for  solo  piano,  for  two  pianos,  for  string  quartet, 
for  orchestra.  And  it  has  been  selected  by  Bach  cultists  as  the  very 
ark  of  their  covenant  with  an  esoteric  Johann  Sebastian  of  then- 
own  imagining. 

Heading  those  amused  at  this  sanctification  of  the  c  "counter- 
points" would  undoubtedly  be  Bach  himself.  The  truth  is  that 
most  of  these  diabolically  clever  solutions  of  contrapuntal  puzzles 
are  thankless  in  performance,  while  the  few  with  real  musical  ap- 
pea]  do  not  sufficiently  relieve  the  crushing  tedium  of  listening  to 
Die  Kunst  der  Fuge  as  a  whole.  The  less  extravagant  fugues  rank 
with  the  best  in  The  Well-Tempered  Clavichord,  but  they  are  not 
enhanced  by  being  played  with  others  of  which  Parry  said,  "Bach 
possibly  wrote  them  just  to  see  if  it  could  be  done;  he  certainly 
would  not  have  classed  them  as  musical  works  unless  as  extremely 
abstruse  jokes.55 

The  fact  that  Die  Kunst  der  Fuge  breaks  off  abruptly— in  a  fugue 
on  the  notes  B  A  C  H  (B  is  B  flat,  H  is  B  natural  in  German  nota- 
tion)— tells  dramatically  the  failure  of  Bach's  health.  Whether  he 
became  blind  at  this  point,  or,  what  is  more  likely,  suffered  a 
paralytic  stroke,  is  not  known.  The  certain  facts  are  that  by  the 
summer  of  1749  he  was  so  incapacitated  that  there  was  talk  of  ap- 
pointing his  successor  as  Stadtcantor,  and  that  in  January  of  the  fol- 
lowing year  he  entrusted  his  tired  eyes  to  the  knife  of  the  "Chev- 
alier John  Taylor,  Opthalmiater.55  It  is  difficult  to  say  whether 
Taylor  was  a  quack  or  was  consistently  called  in  too  late,  but  his 
principal  claim  to  fame  is  that  he  operated  with  varying  degrees  of 
unsuccess  on  three  of  the  greatest  men  of  the  eighteenth  century — 
Bach,  Handel,  and  Gibbon. 

On  July  1 8,  after  six  months  of  darkness  prescribed  by  Taylor 


52  MEN     OF    MUSIC 

as  a  postoperative  requisite,  during  which  Bach  chafed  at  the  in- 
activity and  reacted  poorly  to  the  dosage,  he  definitely  rallied.  It 
was  then  decided  to  admit  light  into  the  sickroom,  and  test  his 
sight.  He  could  distinguish  objects  in  the  room  and  the  faces  of 
his  anxious  family.  But  the  excitement  was  too  much  for  him:  a 
few  hours  later  he  had  a  stroke.  For  ten  days  he  lay  unconscious 
and  in  a  raging  fever.  Toward  evening,  on  July  28,  1750,  he  died. 
Before  his  burial,  three  days  later,  the  town  councilors  had  ap- 
pointed his  successor  at  the  Thomasschule. 

At  the  time  of  his  death,  Bach  was  known  throughout  Germany, 
but  as  his  fame  was  chiefly  that  of  an  organ  virtuoso,  it  did  not 
endure  into  an  age  when  the  organ  ceased  to  dominate  music.  He 
was  soon  forgotten  by  everyone  except  his  family  and  a  few  of  his 
pupils.  His  small  estate,  consisting  mainly  of  musical  instruments, 
theological  tomes,  and  household  furnishings,  did  not  suffice  to 
maintain  his  widow  and  four  children  who  were  still  minors.  Four 
of  his  grown  children  seem  not  to  have  lifted  a  finger  to  help  Anna 
Magdalena.  Karl  Philipp  Emanuel  was  the  sole  exception:  he  took 
the  youthful  Johann  Christian  to  live  with  him,  and  helped  to 
form  that  facile  talent  which  later  made  "the  English  Bach"  Lon- 
don's most  popular  composer  of  Italianate  opera.  Anna  Magdalena 
survived  her  husband  for  ten  years,  and  died  in  the  poorhouse.  The 
site  of  Bach's  grave  was  lost  for  almost  a  hundred  years,  and  his 
body  was  recovered  late  in  the  nineteenth  century  only  by  a  clever 
piecing  together  of  records.  The  inscription  that  now  marks  his 
sepulture  is  even  more  stark  than  that  on  Palestrina's: 

JOHANN   SEBASTIAN   BACH 
1685-1750 


Chapter  Til 

George  Frideric  Handel 

(Halle,  February  23,  i685~April  14,  1759,  London) 


TTIXCEPT  for  the  fact  that  Handel  and  Bach  were  born  only  a 
JLJ  month  apart,  and  both  in  Saxony,  they  had  nothing  in  com- 
mon but  genius.  Bach  was  a  small-town  musician  who  devoted  his 
unsurpassed  gifts  mainly  to  the  service  of  the  church;  Handel  wrote 
for  a  metropolitan  audience,  and  spent  most  of  his  life  in  the 
world's  largest  city.  If  he  was  not  precisely  obscure,  Bach's  fame 
was  limited  to  Germany  except  among  professional  musicians; 
Handel  was  for  many  years  the  most  celebrated  composer  alive. 
Time  has  commented  ironically  on  this  situation.  The  fame  of  the 
Thomascantor  keeps  growing,  and  shows  no  sign  of  slackening  this 
side  of  deification,  but  the  great  god  of  the  eighteenth  century  has 
fallen  from  his  pedestal.  The  stricken  deity  lies  neglected  while  the 
world  comes  perilously  near  to  overrating  Bach — if  such  a  thing  is 
possible.  We  hear  little  of  the  greater  Handel,  and  too  much  of 
that  little  in  bad  superproductions  of  Messiah. 

George  Frideric  Handel,*  unquestionably  one  of  the  greatest 
musicians  the  world  has  ever  known,  was  born  at  Halle  on  Febru- 
ary 23,  1685.  His  father,  Georg  Handel,  was  a  rich  barber-surgeon, 
and  one  of  the  town's  leading  citizens.  At  the  age  of  sixty-one  he 
married  as  his  second  wife  a  clergyman's  daughter,  and  George 
Frideric  was  the  first  surviving  child  of  this  union  of  highly  re- 
spected and  thoroughly  mediocre  parents,  in  whose  veins  flowed 
not  a  single  drop  of  musical  blood.  The  old  barber-surgeon  was  not 
only  unmusical — he  had  an  aversion  to  musicians,  and  was  deter- 
mined that  his  son  should  become  a  lawyer.  Nevertheless,  a  relent- 
less artistic  urge  drove  the  child  to  find  an  outlet  for  his  musical 
cravings,  and  in  some  way  (just  how,  nobody  knows)  he  learned  to 
play  the  organ  and  the  clavier.  When  he  was  seven  years  old,  his 
father,  who  was  court  surgeon  at  Weissenfels,  took  him  there  on  a 
visit.  He  played  the  organ  for  the  Duke,  who  was  so  delighted  at 
the  lad's  obvious  talent  that  he  advised  his  amazed  and  nettled 
surgeon  to  get  the  boy  a  music  teacher. 

*  The  form  in  which,  from  1719  to  his  death,  he  himself  signed  his  name. 

53 


54  MEN   OF  MUSIC 

At  Halle  they  found  the  very  man — Friedrich  Wilhelm  Zachau, 
organist  of  the  Liebfrauenkirche.  Romain  Holland,  a  close  student 
of  seventeenth-  and  eighteenth-century  music,  testifies  to  the  tal- 
ents of  this  forgotten  musician.  From  the  first,  the  relations  be- 
tween master  and  pupil  were  of  the  warmest.  Zachau  instantly 
recognized  the  child's  gifts,  and  lavished  the  greatest  care  on  train- 
ing him  as  both  instrumentalist  and  composer.  But  his  most  valu- 
able service  to  Handel,  as  it  turned  out,  was  introducing  him  to 
the  music  of  other  lands,  particularly  Italy.  While  studying  with 
Zachau,  Handel  :eems  to  have  begun  composing  with  the  un- 
stinted fluency  he  never  lost.  When  the  brilliant  pupil  needed  re- 
freshment, a  visit  to  Berlin  was  arranged.  The  eleven-year-old  boy 
apparently  made  this  considerable  journey  alone,  and  was  received 
cordially  at  court,  which  was  enjoying  a  flicker  of  brilliance  under 
the  dashing  leadership  of  the  Electress  Sophia.  Evidently  Handel 
had  influential  sponsors,  for  he  was  commanded  to  play  before 
their  Electoral  Highnesses.  They  were  so  impressed  by  his  pyro- 
technics at  the  clavier  that  the  Elector  offered  to  send  him  to  Italy 
for  further  study.  But  Georg  Handel  was  enraged  by  the  idea,  and 
ordered  his  son's  immediate  return  to  Halle.  Probably  while  on 
the  way  home,  the  lad  was  overtaken  by  news  of  his  father's  death 
on  February  n,  1697. 

Five  years  later,  after  preparatory  studies,  Handel  entered  the 
University  of  Halle  as  a  law  student,  in  deference  to  his  father's 
wishes.  Thereafter  he  did  not  strain  his  filial  piety:  a  month  after 
matriculating,  he  accepted  a  temporary  appointment  as  organist 
at  the  Domkirche.  Only  a  recognition  of  his  extraordinary  gifts 
could  have  persuaded  the  tight-lipped  Calvinists  to  give  this  re- 
sponsible position  to  a  seventeen-year-old  college  boy  not  of  their 
faith.  The  youthful  Georg  Philipp  Telemann,  even  in  1702  well  on 
the  way  to  becoming  the  most  prolific  of  composers,  passed  through 
Halle  about  this  time,  and  wrote  a  eulogy  of  the  "already  famous 
Handel."  It  was  on  the  cards  that  his  native  town  could  not  long 
hold  this  prodigious  boy.  In  1 703,  probably  after  consulting  Zachau, 
he  responded  to  the  lure  of  Hamburg,  the  capital  of  German  opera. 

The  musical  tsar  of  this  busy  seaport  was  the  notorious  Reinhard 
Keiser,  then  at  the  height  of  a  variegated  career.  Handel  naturally 
gravitated  to  Reiser's  opera  house,  where  he  was  soon  playing  the 
violin  and  imbibing  the  fecund  ideas  and  lyric  melodies  of  this 


HANDEL  55 

vest-pocket  Mozart.  It  is  probable  that  Handel's  relations  with 
Keiser  were  on  a  rather  formal  basis,  but  he  found  a  warm  though 
capricious  friend  in  Johann  Mattheson,  another  law  student  who 
had  turned  to  music.  A  man  of  wide  versatility,  Mattheson  sang, 
composed,  and  conducted.  When  deafness  caused  him  to  abandon 
these  activities,  he  turned  to  writing,  and  left  behind  him  more 
than  eighty  books  containing  invaluable  source  material  about  the 
music  of  his  epoch,  as  well  as  contributions  to  musical  theory  that 
are  still  significant. 

Handel  and  Mattheson  had  much  to  offer  each  other,  and  their 
common  youth  made  interchange  easy.  Handel  was  eager  to  know 
all  about  the  workings  of  an  opera  house  bulwarked  by  a  quarter 
century  of  brilliant  achievement.  Mattheson,  who  had  already  had 
an  opera  produced,  willingly  played  the  city  mentor  to  the  new- 
comer, whose  genius  he  immediately — and  enviously — sensed. 
They  became  inseparable,  and  when  Mattheson  went  to  Liibeck 
to  try  out  as  Buxtehude's  successor  at  the  Maiienkirche,  Handel 
accompanied  him.  When  they  heard  that  the  new  organist  was 
required  to  marry  Buxtehude's  daughter,  they  took  one  look  at  the 
Fr'dulein,  and  then  did  what  Bach  is  said  to  have  done  a  few  years 
later — ran  as  fast  as  they  could. 

Mattheson' s  Cleopatra,  produced  sumptuously  in  1704,  caused  a 
stir  quite  out  of  proportion  to  its  musical  worth:  it  was  such  a 
popular  success  that  Keiser's  star  temporarily  waned.  Mattheson, 
who  fancied  himself  declaiming  the  romantic  lines  of  Antony,  in- 
stalled Handel  in  the  conductor's  place  at  the  clavier,  and  himself 
resumed  the  conducting  only  after  dying  on  the  stage.  One  day, 
Handel,  no  longer  able  to  brook  Mattheson's  overweening  vanity, 
refused  to  relinquish  his  place.  Violent  words  and  fisticuffs  were 
exchanged,  and  the  audience  fanned  the  flames  by  taking  sides  in 
a  lusty  Hamburger  fashion.  After  the  curtain  was  rung  down,  the 
erstwhile  friends,  followed  by  the  enthusiastic  audience,  repaired 
to  the  Gansemarkt,  and  fell  to  with  their  swords.  Numberless  mil- 
lions might  have  been  deprived  of  the  "Hallelujah"  Chorus  and 
the  "Largo"  had  not  Mattheson's  sword  shattered  against  a  but- 
ton on  Handel's  coat.  This  anticlimax  seems  to  have  stopped  the 
actual  fighting.  After  a  sullen  truce  of  some  weeks,  they  were 
reconciled,  and  with  a  gala  celebration  began  the  rehearsals  of 
Handel's  first  opera. 


56  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

Almira,  which  had  its  premiere  on  January  8,  1705,  with  Matthe- 
son  as  first  tenor,  was  notable  for  the  splendor  of  its  sets.  Although 
written  to  an  absurd  and  bombastic  libretto,  it  had  many  dramatic 
high  spots  which  Handel  had  treated  with  delightful  freshness  and 
the  sure  touch  of  a  born  writer  for  the  stage.  It  was  a  smash  hit,  ran 
for  almost  seven  weeks,  and  was  retired  only  because  Handel 
wished  to  mount  his  second  opera,  Nero.*  Keiser,  who  had  turned 
the  book  ofAlmira  over  to  Handel  because  he  was  too  lazy  to  write 
music  for  it  himself,  was  enraged  by  the  success  of  the  parvenu.  He 
and  his  cronies  set  about  to  destroy  the  one  man  who  could  have 
rehabilitated  the  tottering  fortunes  of  their  opera  house,  and  suc- 
ceeded in  driving  him  from  Hamburg. 

Not  that  he  would  have  remained,  anyway.  His  somewhat 
languid  interest  in  Italy  had  been  whetted  by  a  meeting  with 
Giovan  Gastone  de'  Medici,  the  dissolute  but  music-loving  tag  end 
of  the  once  illustrious  Florentine  family.  Only  one  thing  could 
have  induced  this  gay  prince  to  linger  in  murky,  bourgeois  Ham- 
burg— the  opera.  Much  taken  by  Handel's  talents  and  personal- 
ity, he  tried  to  persuade  him  to  migrate  south.  But  the  young  com- 
poser did  not  act  upon  this  urging  until  the  machinations  of  his 
enemies  and  the  decline  of  the  opera  house  made  him  realize  that 
Hamburg  was  no  longer  the  best  arena  for  his  efforts.  So,  some- 
time before  the  Christmas  of  1 706,  he  decided  to  stake  all  on  an 
Italian  hegira.  He  set  out  armed  with  a  paltry  two  hundred  ducats 
and  a  letter  to  Giovan  Gastone's  brother  Ferdinand. 

Stopping  in  Florence  merely  long  enough  to  pay  his  respects  to 
the  Medici,  compose  twenty  cantatas,  rewrite  part  ofAlmira,  and 
begin  a  new  opera,  Handel  posted  to  Rome,  doubtless  pondering 
the  stinginess  of  Ferdinand,  who  had  once  answered  Alessandro 
Scarlatti's  plea  for  a  loan  by  saying,  "I  will  pray  for  you."  The 
Holy  City,  where  opera  was  under  a  papal  ban,  was  little  more 
generous,  and  Handel  was  soon  back  in  Florence  with  the  com- 
pleted score  of  his  new  opera,  Rodrigo.  Ferdinand,  who  had  tired  of 
Scarlatti's  learned  and  melancholy  music,  sponsored  its  production, 
-and  so  enthusiastic  was  he  over  this  lighthearted  work  that  he 
Joosed  his  purse  strings,  and  presented  its  composer  with  fifty 
pounds  and  a  set  of  dishes.  Having  successfully  set  an  Italian  text 
and  mastered  the  flowing  Italian  vocal  style,  Handel  turned  his 

*  Love  Obtained  Through  Blood  and  Murder,  or  Nero,  ran  for  three  nights. 


HANDEL  57 

thoughts  to  Venice,  still  lit  by  the  late  sun  of  the  Renaissance. 
Here,  in  1637,  had  been  built  the  first  public  opera  house,  and  it 
was  still  the  most  opera-loving  city  in  the  world. 

But  Venice  turned  a  cold  shoulder  to  Handel's  hopes.  The  doors 
of  its  fifteen  opera  houses  remained  shut  against  him,  though  high 
society  lionized  him  as  a  virtuoso.  Alessandro  Scarlatti's  son 
Domenico,  destined  to  revolutionize  the  bases  of  keyboard  style, 
and  to  eclipse  the  fame  of  a  father  deified  by  the  connoisseurs  of 
the  eighteenth  century,  first  heard  Handel  at  a  costume  ball.  After 
listening  spellbound  to  the  masked  performer,  he  exclaimed,  "That 
must  either  be  the  famous  Saxon  or  the  Devil!"  The  friendship  thus 
warmly  inaugurated  endured  for  many  years.  But  of  decisive  im- 
portance in  shaping  Handel's  career  were  encounters  with  Prince 
Ernst  Augustus  of  Hanover  and  the  English  envoy  to  Venice,  the 
Duke  of  Manchester.  The  former  engineered  Handel's  appoint- 
ment as  Kapellmeister  to  his  brother,,  the  Elector  of  Hanover,  later 
George  I  of  England.  Manchester  pressed  him  to  seek  his  fortune  in 
England,  and  promised  to  help  him  when  he  got  there. 

Handel  did  not  take  advantage  of  these  invitations  immediately. 
Instead,  he  traveled  southward  with  Domenico  Scarlatti,  and  once 
again  laid  siege  to  the  papal  capital.  Glowing  reports  of  the  high 
excellences  ofRodrigo  had  preceded  him,  and  this  time  the  Roman 
nobles  vied  with  each  other  for  the  honor  of  entertaining  him.  The 
Arcadian  Academy,  a  society  of  a  few  artists  and  many  dilettantes, 
feted  the  dashing  Saxon,  and  two  of  its  most  lavish  patrons  were 
his  hosts.  Prince  Ruspoli  built  a  private  theater  in  his  palace  for  the 
premiere  of  Handel's  first  oratorio,  La  Resumzione,  which  was  really 
an  opera  disguised  to  evade  the  papal  ban.  Its  overwhelming  suc- 
cess set  all  Rome  talking,  and  Handel  was  prompted  to  try  his 
hand  at  another  oratorio.  But  though  produced  under  the  even 
more  distinguished  patronage  of  Cardinal  Ottobuoni,  nephew  of  a 
Pope,  and  furnished  with  a  libretto  by  another  cardinal,  II  Trionfo 
del  tempo  e  del  dmnganno  fell  flat,  partly  because  the  music  was  too 
difficult  for  the  orchestra  assembled  by  the  renowned  Corelli, 
Ottobuoni's  concertmaster.  The  work  haunted  Handel's  imagina* 
tion,  and,  almost  fifty  years  later  his  last  oratorio  was  called  The 
Triumph  of  Time  and  Design, 

Ever  on  the  search  for  preferment  and  sympathetic  understand- 
ing of  his  music,  Handel  now  drifted  to  Naples,  where  the  story  of 


58  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

social  success  and  lack  of  solid  opportunity  was  repeated.  For  a 
time  this  child  of  the  North  surrendered  to  the  lure  of  the  southern 
paradise,  storing  his  phenomenal  memory  with  its  catchy  folk 
tunes.  But  the  only  ponderable  result  of  a  year's  stay  developed 
from  a  meeting  with  Cardinal  Grimani,  the  Imperial  Viceroy. 
This  cultivated  scion  of  a  princely  Venetian  family  gave  him  the 
libretto  for  his  next  opera.,  Agrippina,  and  laid  plans  for  its  produc- 
tion at  the  theater  the  Grimani  controlled  in  Venice.  The  cer- 
tainty of  a  public  performance  under  such  propitious  circum- 
stances roused  Handel  from  his  languor,  and  in  three  weeks  he  had 
completed  the  score.  With  the  precious  manuscript  in  his  traveling 
bags,  he  returned  to  Rome,  and  lingered  there  until  time  for  the 
new  opera  to  go  into  rehearsal. 

On  December  26,  1709,  Agrippina  began  a  spectacular  run  of 
twenty-seven  nights  at  the  theater  of  San  Giovanni  Crisostomo. 
It  was,  beyond  question,  the  best  opera  Handel  had  yet  written, 
and  as  Venetian  approval  was  the  touchstone  of  musical  success, 
his  Italian  reputation  was  made.  The  echoes  of  the  frantic  applause 
carried  Handel's  name  across  Italy  and  throughout  Europe,  and 
in  Venice  itself  he  was  more  important  than  the  Doge.  He  had 
justified  his  rash  invasion  of  Italy,  which  now  lay  prostrate  at  his 
feet.  But  he  had  no  settled  future,  and  while  he  was  pondering  the 
next  step  Prince  Ernst  Augustus  of  Hanover  intervened.  Night 
after  night  this  already  stanch  Handelian  had  sat  entranced  in  the 
royal  loge  at  the  Crisostomo.  The  manifold  beauties  of  Agrippina 
convinced  him  more  than  ever  that  Handel  was  the  man  for  his 
brother's  court.  He  urgently  renewed  his  invitation,  and  this  time 
Handel  accepted. 

Hanover  offered  as  ideal  conditions  as  any  musician  could  hope 
to  find  in  eighteenth-century  Germany;  the  most  beautiful  opera 
house  in  the  country  and  a  perfectly  drilled  corps  of  singers  and  in- 
strumentalists. This  happy  state  of  affairs  had  been  brought  about 
by  the  unwearying  efforts  of  Agostino  Steffani,  one  of  the  most  re- 
markable figures  of  the  age.  This  charming  Venetian — a  jack-of- 
all-trades  with  a  touch  of  genius  for  each — was  still  officiating  as 
Kapellmeisterwhtn'H.a.udGl  arrived.  They  had  met  in  Italy,  and  had 
struck  up  a  cordial  relationship  based  on  mutual  esteem.  It  is  not 
known  whether  Steffani  graciously  yielded  place  to  the  younger 
man,  or  whether  misunderstandings  with  his  orchestra  and  singers 


HANDEL  59 

forced  his  hand.  In  any  event,  Handel  soon  became  Kapellmeister 
with  his  predecessor's  blessing.  Although  their  contact  had  been 
fleeting,  Steffani's  influence  was  decisive  in  the  final  molding  of 
Handel's  Italian  manner,  and  Handel  never  forgot  this  debt. 

The  new  Kapellmeister's  first  act  was  to  ask  for  leave  of  absence 
to  go  to  England.  Why  did  he  go?  Probably  plain  restlessness  and 
curiosity — a  desire  for  new  worlds  to  conquer.  England  was  wear- 
ing her  gloomiest  autumnal  aspect  when  he  landed  on  her  shores. 
Everything  was  against  him.  He  did  not  know  a  word  of  English. 
The  few  German  musicians  resident  in  London  looked  upon  the 
newcomer  as  a  source  of  danger  to  their  embattled  positions.  And 
in  Queen  Anne's  England  music  was  in  a  state  of  coma  brought 
about  by  a  chain  of  lamentable  circumstances  and  a  dearth  of 
national  talent.  The  structure  of  English  music,  founded  on  so  fair 
a  base  by  Dunstable,  gaining  high-vaulted  nave  and  transepts  with 
Orlando  Gibbons  and  William  Byrd,  and  crowned  with  a  gleam- 
ing spire  by  Henry  Purcell,  had  suddenly  collapsed. 

Fifteen  years  before  Handel's  advent  in  1710,  Purcell  had  died 
prematurely.  It  is  idle  to  speculate  what  he  would  have  done  if  he 
had  lived  longer.  In  his  single  opera.  Dido  and  Aeneas.,  he  achieved 
perfection;  though  an  indefatigable  writer  for  the  stage,  he  never 
wrote  another  true  opera.  He  was  too  busy  with  anthems,  catches, 
chamber  pieces,  organ  voluntaries,  and  the  other  occasional  music 
demanded  by  the  exigencies  of  his  numerous  official  positions.  No 
matter  whether  examined  through  a  microscope  or  a  telescope, 
Purcell  is  a  baffling  figure.  Artistically  speaking,  he  is  a  sport:  he 
had  no  recognizable  ancestors;  more,  no  heirs  claimed  his  rich 
musical  estate,  though  Handel  borrowed  what  he  pleased  of  it. 
Indeed,  Handel's  "Englishness"  is  exactly  that  borrowing,  and  is 
betrayed  in  his  mighty  choral  effects,  his  widely  spaced  harmonies, 
and  the  pungent  utterances  of  his  woodwinds  and  brasses.  The 
overwhelming  choruses  conceived  by  the  Saxon  invader,  and  sung 
at  vast  tribal  festivals  these  past  two  hundred  years,  have  served 
to  blot  out  PurcelTs  fame.  Yet  he  was  a  very  great  composer,  far 
ahead  of  the  resources  of  his  age,  speaking  in  a  voice  that  was  at 
once  unmistakably  his  own  and  that  of  Restoration  England.  No 
one  has  less  deserved  obscurity. 

Musically,  then,  England  was  a  sorry  place  when  Handel 
arrived  there.  The  drying  up  of  the  national  genius  had  left  the 


6o  MEN     OF    MUSIC 

field  vacant  for  foreigners.  Thus  far,  however,  though  English 
society  loved  Italian  opera,  no  company  had  been  successful  in 
establishing  itself.  There  were  plenty  of  good  singers  available,  but 
no  composers  of  sufficient  talent  to  make  society  venture  out 
among  the  footpads  and  murderers  who  infested  the  London 
streets  and  lanes  at  night.  Drury  Lane  and  the  Queen's  Theater  in 
the  Haymarket  were  in  such  rank  sections  of  town  that  the  dimin- 
ishing audiences  feared  for  their  lives  going  to  and  from  the  opera. 
Frequently  pockets  were  picked  and  noses  broken  in  the  theaters 
themselves.  With  box-office  receipts  steadily  falling,  and  society 
forsaking  town  in  despairing  ennui,  it  was  evident  that  only  a 
novelty  of  high  quality  would  save  the  day.  Handel  was  exactly 
the  man  to  fill  the  bill. 

The  astute  impresario  of  the  Queen's  Theater,  Aaron  Hill, 
clearly  recognized  the  desperate  situation  he  was  in,  and  as  soon 
as  Handel  arrived,  commissioned  him  to  set  a  preposterous 
libretto  based  on  Tasso's  Gerusalemme  liberata.  Within  a  fortnight 
Handel  gave  Hill  a  masterpiece,  and  this,  under  the  title  of 
Rinaldo,  was  first  presented  to  an  unsuspecting  London  on  Febru- 
ary 24,  1711.  Its  success  was  beyond  Hill's  wildest  dreams:  over- 
night Handel  added  England  to  his  empire.  In  vain  did  Addison, 
himself  the  producer  of  an  unsuccessful  opera,  fulminate  against 
Rinaldo;  in  vain  did  Steele,  with  an  ax  to  grind  in  the  concert  field, 
come  to  his  friend's  aid.  Rinaldo  ran  through  the  town  like  wild- 
fire: society  danced  it,  whistled  it,  warbled  it — and  even  returned 
to  London  to  hear  it.  Between  the  premiere  and  June,  it  played 
fifteen  times  to  packed  houses.  John  Walsh,  who  published  the 
score,  made  so  much  money  out  of  it  that  Handel  remarked 
bitterly  that  Walsh  should  compose  the  next  opera,  and  he  would 
publish  it. 

Although  Handel  continued  to  compose  operas  for  a  quarter  of  a 
century,  he  never  surpassed  Rinaldo.  He  himself  pronounced  the 
air  "Cara  sposa"  the  best  he  ever  wrote;  "Lascia  cKiopianga"  which 
he  borrowed  note  for  note  from  Agrippina,  is  scarcely  less  fine. 
These  lamentations  are  not,  however,  characteristic  of  the  opera 
as  a  whole:  Rinaldo  brims  over  with  a  bright  youthful  passion  that 
Handel  lavished  on  his  scores  but,  seemingly,  not  on  his  personal 
relationships.  It  sounds  like  the  music  of  a  young  man  very  much 
in  love,  but  outside  of  a  not  very  well  attested  story  of  a  passing 


HANDEL  6l 

fancy  for  a  singer  who  had  sung  in  Rodrigo,  there  is  not  a  scrap  of 
evidence  that  Handel  ever  submitted  to  the  tenderer  emotions. 
Indeed,  except  for  Sir  Isaac  Newton,  Handel  seems  to  have  been 
the  most  unemotional  man  in  eighteenth-century  England. 

At  the  end  of  the  season,  Handel  reluctantly  left  Piccadilly's 
hospitable  drawing  rooms,,  and  returned  to  assume  his  duties  at 
Hanover.  It  was  a  decided  letdown  after  the  feverish  activity  of 
London,  and  the  opera  house,  which  alone  might  have  made  life 
tolerable  for  him,  was  closed.  A  year  later,  he  applied  for  another 
leave  of  absence,  which  was  granted  graciously  enough,  for  the 
Elector  was  willing  to  have  so  welcome  an  ambassador  of  good  will 
in  England,  where  he  hoped  shortly  to  reign.  Handel  was  cau- 
tioned, however,  to  return  in  a  "reasonable  time."  His  interpreta- 
tion of  this  vague  phrase  was  the  most  elastic  in  history:  with  the 
exception  of  flying  visits  to  the  Continent  and  Ireland,  he  remained 
in  England  until  his  death  almost  half  a  century  later. 

Handel's  return  was  marked  by  the  unsuccessful  performance  of 
a  rather  dull  opera  he  had  begun  in  Hanover.  Teseo  9  his  next  pro- 
duction, was  a  great  success,  due  both  to  its  superb  music  and  the 
excellent  libretto  furnished  by  Nicolo  Haym,  who  thus  began  a 
long  and  happy  collaboration  with  his  great  countryman.  The 
libretto  was  dedicated  to  Richard  Boyle,  Earl  of  Burlington,  the 
most  distinguished  art  patron  of  the  age,  and  already,  at  seven- 
teen, an  intelligent  admirer  of  Handel's  music.  After  hearing 
Teseo,  he  invited  Handel  to  take  up  his  abode  at  Burlington 
House.  Here  he  came  into  contact  with  the  social  and  intellectual 
elite.  Pope  and  Gay  were  intimates  of  the  house,  the  former  deli- 
cately tasting  the  music  he  was  to  extol,  years  later,  in  The  Dunciad. 

But  an  even  more  august  personage  was  to  shed  her  favor  on 
Handel.  While  Teseo  was  still  playing  to  crowded  houses,  he  was 
setting  his  first  English  text,  to  celebrate  the  approaching  birth- 
day of  Queen  Anne.  The  lonely  and  embittered  daughter  of  James 
II  was  so  delighted  with  this  Birthday  Ode,  and  with  the  Te  Deum 
Handel  composed  for  the  fetes  in  honor  of  the  Peace  of  Utrecht, 
that  she  settled  an  annual  pension  of  two  hundred  pounds  on  him. 
Poor  Anne,  whose  energies  were  too  often  spent  in  securing  petty 
revenge,  was  happy  to  make  England  seem  a  paradise  for  the 
favorite  musician  of  the  Elector  of  Hanover,  whom  she  detested. 
But  Handel  was  backing  tlie  wrong  horse.  In  August,  1714,  Anne 


62  MEN     OF     MUSIC 

did  the  one  thing  that  has  immortalized  her:  she  died.  On  the  same 
day  the  hated  Hanoverian  was  proclaimed  King. 

At  first  Handel  had  every  reason  to  fear  that  his  slighted  master 
would  retaliate.  His  name  was  pointedly  missing  from  among 
those  commanded  to  compose  music  for  the  coronation,  and 
though  he  kept  his  pension,  he  was  not  summoned  to  court.  But 
George  I  loved  music  passionately — even  Thackeray's  superb  vili- 
fication grants  that.  In  1715  the  news  that  Handel  had  written 
another  delightful  opera  was  too  much  for  the  King;  he  sulkily 
missed  the  first  performance,  but  showed  up  at  the  second  with 
two  fantastic  German  ladies  (his  mistress  and  his  half-sister),  and 
thereafter  came  regularly  during  the  balance  of  the  opera's  run. 
He  and  Handel  were  then  formally  reconciled. 

The  bare  facts  of  this  reconciliation,  which  had  such  bright 
results  for  English  music,  did  not  please  the  romancemongers. 
They  told  a  charmingly  whimsical  story  that  is  still  treasured  in  the 
great  human  hearts  of  the  broadcasting  companies.  According  to 
this  idyl,  in  1715  things  became  so  strained  that  His  Majesty's 
benevolent  Master  of  the  Horse  thought  of  a  quaint  stratagem. 
While  George  was  making  one  of  his  frequent  progresses  down  the 
Thames,  Handel  and  a  band  of  musicians  were  to  follow  closely  in 
another  barge,  and  play  music  that  would  melt  the  King.  And 
everything  fell  out  just  as  the  kindly  old  official  had  planned. 
George  was  so  enchanted  with  the  music  that  he  embraced 
Handel,  and  forgave  him  completely. 

There  is  only  one  thing  wrong  with  this  story:  it  is  not  wholly 
true.  Part  of  the  Water  Music  was  written  and  performed  in  1 71 5, 
part  in  1717,  after  the  reconciliation  between  Handel  and  the 
King.  Instead  of  being  sprung  on  George  as  a  surprise,  the  1715 
portions  were  played  at  his  command  for  a  party  on  the  Thames. 
He  liked  it  so  well  that  he  had  it  repeated  during  the  evening, 
though  each  performance  lasted  more  than  an  hour.  Even  in 
the  much  truncated  form  in  which  the  Water  Music  is  played  to- 
day (as  originally  published  in  1 740  it  had  twenty-five  movements) , 
it  can  be  heard  again  and  again  without  losing  its  freshness. 

Handel  never  composed  anything  more  English  than  the  Water 
Music.  It  is  shot  through  and  through  with  English  feeling;  it  is 
fashioned  with  jaunty  English  rhythms  and  bold,  simple  har- 
monies. The  hornpipe,  which  is  one  of  the  most  effective  sections  of 


HANDEL  63 

the  suite,  utilizes  a  form  that  reaches  back  at  least  to  Ben  Jonson's 
England.  The  suite  concludes  with  a  robust  allegro  deciso  brim- 
ming over  with  the  gusto  of  living,  and  full  of  high,  singing  brasses 
that  would  have  delighted  PurceU.  Written  several  years  before  the 
"Brandenburg55  Concertos  (the  third  of  which  it  resembles  in 
rhythmic  heartiness),  the  Water  Music  is  the  oldest  orchestral  piece 
in  the  standard  repertoire.  It  is  difficult  to  conceive  of  an  age  that 
will  not  yield  to  its  vigorous  masculine  beauty. 

Handel's  reconciliation  with  George  I  had  doubled  his  pension. 
Further  to  emphasize  his  favor,  the  King  appointed  him  music 
master  to  the  royal  granddaughters — an  honor,  but  scarcely  a 
pleasure.  And  when  the  sovereign,  disgusted  with  English  ways, 
decided  in  1716  to  go  home  to  Hanover — he  even  threatened  never 
to  return— he  took  Handel  with  him.  For  the  composer  this 
German  sojourn  was  one  of  almost  complete  inactivity:  the  King 
was  too  busy  with  politics  and  the  chase  to  think  about  music. 
Handel  paid  a  visit  to  Halle,  where  he  saw  his  mother,  and  gen- 
erously relieved  Zachau's  widow,  who  had  been  left  in  penury. 
He  made  a  sentimental  journey  to  Ansbach  to  see  his  old  uni- 
versity chum,  Johann  Christoph  Schmidt,  and  found  him  and  his 
large  family  in  pitiable  circumstances.  Handel's  warm  sympathies 
were  roused,  and  as  he  needed  a  sympathetic  friend  to  manage  his 
affairs,  he  invited  Schmidt  to  accompany  him  to  England.  Schmidt 
accepted,  and  so  successfully  did  the  arrangement  turn  out  that  he 
soon  became  indispensable  to  his  benefactor.  He  shortly  brought 
over  his  entire  family,  and  they  all  seem  to  have  lived  with  Handel. 
One  of  the  sons,  whose  name  was  anglicized  to  John  Christopher 
Smith,  gradually  took  over  his  father's  duties  as  Handel's  general 
factotum.  It  was  to  this  John  Christopher,  himself  a  prolific  com- 
poser and  accomplished  organist,  that  Handel  dictated  his  music 
when  he  could  no  longer  see  to  write.  He  was  warmly  attached  to 
the  Schmidts.  Once,  having  removed  old  Schmidt's  name  from 
his  will  in  anger,  he  replaced  it  with  that  of  John  Christopher  and 
tripled  the  legacy.  For  Handel,  to  whom  love  seemed  a  stranger, 
was  the  most  affectionate  and  appreciative  of  men. 

Handel  returned  empty-handed  to  England  early  in  1717,  with- 
out even  waiting  to  hear  the  first  performance,  in  Hamburg,  of  the 
sole  fruit  of  his  German  visit — a  Passion  based  on  the  same  text 
Bach  later  used  for  parts  of  his  John  Passion.  Not  only  does  this 


64  MEN     OF    MUSIC 

work  not  merit  mention  in  the  same  breath  with  Bach's  great 
Passions,  but  it  shows  that  Handel's  genius  was  not  congenial  to 
the  sentiments  of  German  Pietism.  As  he  never  showed  the  slight- 
est interest  in  his  Passion,  he  probably  realized  that  this  type  of 
music  was  not  in  his  province.  Poles  apart  from  the  profoundly 
subjective  Bach,  Handel  was  too  much  the  magnificent  extrovert 
ever  to  be  a  truly  religious  composer. 

Handel's  return  coincided  with  a  lull  in  the  furore  for  opera,  and 
for  a  while  he  was  at  a  loose  end.  More,  he  was  in  financial  diffi- 
culties. It  is  true  that  he  had  his  pension  and  fees  for  teaching  the 
princesses  and  a  few  noble  pupils,  but  such  an  income  was  nothing 
to  a  man  who  had  learned  to  live  lavishly  from  the  high  society 
in  which  he  moved.  But,  as  always,  he  had  a  windfall.  He  met 
James  Brydges,  Earl  of  Carnarvon,  an  amiable  scoundrel  who  for 
years  had  enjoyed  the  best  graft  in  England  as  Paymaster  of  the 
Forces.  The  Earl  had  amassed  an  immense  fortune,  and  in  1712 
had  begun  the  building  of  Canons,  a  vast  palace  near  London, 
reputed  to  have  cost  £230,000.  The  magnificence  of  life  at  Canons, 
and  particularly  of  its  musical  establishment  is  thus  described  by 
Defoe: 

"The  chapel  hath  a  choir  of  vocal  and  instrumental  music,  as 
in  the  Chapel  Royal;  and  when  his  grace  goes  to  church,  he  is 
attended  by  his  Swiss  Guards,  ranged  as  the  yeomen  of  the  guards; 
his  music  also  plays  when  he  is  at  table;  he  is  served  by  gentlemen 
in  the  best  order;  and  I  must  say  that  few  German  sovereign 
princes  live  with  that  magnificence,  grandeur,  and  good  order." 

The  director  of  the  music  at  Canons  was  the  competent  but 
pedantic  Dr.  Johann  Christoph  Pepusch,  later  to  become  famous  as 
arranger  of  The  Beggar's  Opera.  Poor  Pepusch  had  no  chance  at  all 
after  his  patron  met  Handel.  He  got  his  walking  papers  in  short 
order,  and  Handel  moved  in.  Here,  in  surroundings  which  were, 
even  for  him,  of  unprecedented  luxury,  he  lived  quietly,  spending 
most  of  his  time  playing  on  the  clavier  or  the  organ.  He  occasion- 
ally staged  a  masque  in  the  private  theater  or  gave  a  formal  recital 
for  his  master's  guests.  In  1719,  when  the  Earl  was  created  Duke 
of  Chandos,  Handel  hymned  the  great  event  in  a  group  of 
cantatas — the  "Chandos"  Anthems.  These  little-known  works, 
based  almost  entirely  on  the  Psalms,  are  in  effect  sketches  for  the 


HANDEL  65 

vast  religious  dramas  of  his  later  years.  The  choruses  are  big  and 
imposing — monumental  on  a  small  scale. 

In  1720,  Handel  published  his  first  book  of  Puces  pour  le  clavecin, 
which  were  originally  noted  down  for  the  studies  of  the  little 
princesses.  The  character  of  these  pieces  obviates  any  real  com- 
parison with  The  Well-Tempered  Clavichord:  Bach  opened  up  a  new 
world  of  design,  while  Handel  was  content  to  follow  safely  in  the 
steps  of  Domenico  Scarlatti  and  Couperin.  A  second  book  of 
Pieces,  published  in  1733  (without  Handel's  permission),  is  equally 
conventional.  His  clavier  compositions  are  apt  to  disappoint  the 
listener  used  to  the  prodigally  ornamented  polyphonic  schemes  of 
Bach.  HandePs  are  unaffectedly  barren  in  harmony,  and  their 
simple  plan  of  successive  tonics  and  dominants  at  first  suggests 
lack  of  imagination.  These  suites,  and  particularly  the  second 
book,  were  in  effect  but  sketches  for  Handel's  own  performance. 
They  may  be  filled  out  in  imagination,  if  the  hearer  wishes,  with 
the  wealth  of  improvisatorial  ornament  that  flowed  torrentially 
from  Handel's  fingers. 

But  this  does  not  mean  that  the  suites  cannot  be  enjoyed  pre- 
cisely as  they  stand.  On  acquaintance,  their  very  simplicity  and 
Doric  leanness  invest  them  with  vigorous  beauty,  and  eventually 
one  finds  oneself  going  back  to  them  again  and  again.  The  fifth 
suite  in  the  first  book  contains  the  air  and  variations  known 
familiarly  but  absurdly  as  "The  Harmonious  Blacksmith."  The 
seventh  suite  in  this  book,  conceived  in  the  grand  style  Handel 
most  often  reserved  for  his  great  choruses,  contains  a  magnificent 
passacaglia  that  is  ever  effective  in  the  many  arrangements  that 
have  been  made  of  it.  Finally,  in  the  G  major  Chaconne,  from  the 
second  suite  of  Book  II,  rich  variety  is  created  by  slight  changes 
in  pattern — a  typically  Handelian  method.  It  is  another  essay  in 
the  grand  style,  opening  maestoso,  going  on  its  way  in  many  moods 
— scamperingly,  playfully,  pathetically — and  ending  in  a  swirling 
cascade  of  rolling  notes.  There  is  nothing  in  this  music  that  would 
baffle  a  first-year  theory  student,  and  its  effect  is  magical.  It 
illuminates  Beethoven's  judgment:  "Go  and  learn  of  him  how  to 
achieve  great  efforts  with  simple  means." 

Handel's  yearning  for  the  stage  bore  fruit  early  in  1720,  when 
he  set  John  Gay's  Ads  and  Galatea,  which  contains  one  of  his  most 
jocose  and  engaging  airs  (for  a  bass!),  "O  ruddier  than  the  cherry." 


66  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

The  same  year,  probably  to  a  poem  by  Pope  (not  one  of  his  happi- 
est flights)  3  he  composed  Haman  and  Mordecai,  for  which  the  Duke 
of  Ghandos  was  said  to  have  given  him  £1000.  Both  of  these  were 
masques,,  and  were  doubtless  first  produced  in  the  private  theater 
at  Canons.  Handel  then  put  them  aside,  and  years  later  produced 
much  expanded  versions  of  them.  But  they  were  still  the  char- 
acteristic efforts  of  a  composer  working  leisurely  under  the  pat- 
ronage of  a  benevolent  prince.  Even  while  he  was  fashioning  these 
trifles,  a  scheme  was  under  way  that  was  destined  to  uproot  him 
forever.,  and  throw  him  into  the  hurly-burly  of  opera  management. 

Disgusted  with  the  trash  that  was  still  holding  the  London 
stage,  an  aristocratic  clique  under  the  direction  of  the  Duke  of 
Newcastle  floated  a  shareholding  company  that  was  called,  by 
George  Ps  permission,  the  Royal  Academy  of  Music.  It  was  char- 
acteristic of  the  age  of  the  South  Sea  Bubble  and  other  vast  money- 
making  schemes  that  an  artistic  venture,  designed  to  make  London 
the  capital  of  opera,  should  have  been  put  on  a  speculative  basis. 
The  entire  stock  issue  of  £50,000  was  quickly  subscribed,  each  share 
costing  £100  and  entitling  its  owner  to  a  permanent  seat  in  the 
house.  As  early  as  1 7 1 9,  Handelj  to  whom  the  active  musical  direc- 
tion had  been  entrusted  at  the  King's  suggestion,  was  in  Germany 
hiring  singers  for  the  great  enterprise.  Everything  was  done  on  a 
lavish  scale.  There  were  associate  composers;  there  were  official 
librettists,  including  Handel's  favorite  collaborator,  Haym;  and, 
finally,  as  stage  manager,  the  directors  secured  the  services  of 
John  James  Heidegger,  called  "the  Swiss  Count."  If  not  one  of  the 
most  romantic  figures  of  the  time,  Heidegger  was  surely  one  of  the 
most  picturesque.  His  ugliness  was  a  byword,  but  fortunately  it 
was  matched  by  a  resourcefulness  that  amounted  to  genius.  The 
warm  friendship  between  him  and  Handel  had  begun  in  1713, 
when  the  kindhearted  Swiss  had  saved  the  run  of  Teseo  after  a  dis- 
honest manager  had  absconded  with  the  box-office  receipts. 

The  first  season  of  the  Royal  Academy  of  Music  opened  not 
with  an  opera  by  Handel,  but  with  a  confection  by  an  insignificant 
fourth-rater.  It  ran  six  nights,  and  then  the  season  really  opened, 
on  April  27,  1720,  with  Radamisto,  one  of  the  loveliest  and  most 
melodious  of  Handel's  scores.  None  of  the  celebrated  stars  hired 
by  Handel  had  yet  arrived,  and  the  difficult  role  of  Zenobia  was 


HANDEL  67 

probably  sung  by  the  very  adequate,  but  familiar,  Anastasia 
Robinson.  King  George  and  his  entourage  occupied  the  royal  box, 
and  society  stormed  the  rest  of  the  house,  even  gallery  seats  going 
as  high  as  forty  shillings.  But  the  music  did  not  need  the  glamour 
of  new  stage  personalities  to  get  across.  For  almost  two  months  the 
Haymarket  Theater  was  the  scene  of  nightly  near  riots  by  wildly 
enthusiastic  audiences.  Once  more  the  notes  of  Handel  were  on 
every  lip.  The  shareholders  were  delighted. 

At  the  moment  of  Handel's  triumph  forces  were  gathering  for 
his  destruction.  Led  by  his  former  friend,  the  Earl  of  Burlington, 
they  included  those  exquisites  who  did  not  consider  the  large- 
bodied  German  the  most  appropriate  apostle  of  pure  Italian  art. 
Burlington  now  went  abroad  to  find  the  real  thing,  and  brought 
back  with  him  Giovanni  Battista  Buononcini,  almost  as  supreme 
on  the  Continent  as  Handel  was  in  England.  This  affected  but 
talented  Italian  became  the  spearhead  of  the  growing  cabal 
against  the  man  who  had  re-established  England's  prestige  in 
music.  Fate  played  into  his  hands:  the  opera  Handel  had  designed 
to  inaugurate  the  season  of  1 72 1  fell  flat,  despite  its  fine  melodies 
and  the  magnificent  roulades  of  the  most  sensational  castrato  of  the 
hour,  Senesino.  The  society  that  had  hailed  Buononcini's  Astarto 
the  season  before  wanted  more  music  in  this  lighter  vein.  Buonon- 
cini was  ready.  The  success  of  two  tuneful  operas,  produced  in 
rapid  succession,  took  the  town  by  storm,  and  drove  most  of 
fashionable  society  into  his  camp.  Momentarily  at  least,  Handel 
was  crowded  off  the  stage. 

Buononcini  was  rashly  content  to  rest  on  his  laurels.  He  roused 
himself  from  his  luxurious  sloth  during  the  next  year  only  to  write 
the  anthem  for  the  funeral  of  the  great  Duke  of  Marlborough. 
Meanwhile,  Handel  was  deploying  his  forces  for  a  final  struggle 
with  his  epicene  opponent.  Great  general  that  he  was,  he  realized 
that  London  could  not  be  reconquered  by  fine  music  alone.  He 
therefore  sent  to  Venice  for  Francesca  Cuzzoni,  already  at  twenty- 
two  so  famed  that  on  the  basis  of  her  reputation  alone  he  offered 
her  £2,000  a  year.  But  the  ugly  soprano  proved  so  intractable 
and  arrogant  that  he  once  threatened  to  throw  her  out  of  a  window 
if  she  did  not  sing  the  way  he  wanted  her  to.  Taming  Cuzzoni  was 
worth  the  trouble,  for  her  brilliant  performance  in  the  premiere  of 
Ottoney  on  January  12,  1723,  helped  Handel  to  regain  his  pre- 


68  MEN    OF     MUSIC 

eminence.  Although  Buononcini  remained  in  London  for  another 
decade,  even  producing  an  occasional  work  with  some  success,  he 
quietly  faded  out  as  an  effective  rival  to  the  all-conquering  Saxon. 
And  yet,  a  dispassionate  observer  will  agree  with  the  epigram  John 
Byrom  struck  off  in  the  heat  of  the  controversy: 

Some  say,  compared  to  Buononcini 
That  Mynheer  Handel's  but  a  ninny; 
Others  aver  that  he  to  Handel 
Is  scarcely  fit  to  hold  a  candle. 
Strange  all  this  difference  should  be 
Twixt  tweedle-dum  and  tweedle-dee. 

Up  to  this  point  Handel  had  shown  himself  superior  only  in  kind 
to  Buononcini. 

Until  1 724  Handel  had  been  content  to  fit  his  happy  inspirations 
into  the  creaking  formal  patterns  of  conventional  Italian  opera. 
Furthermore,  he  had  responded  like  a  weather  vane  to  every 
breeze.  Even  at  the  height  of  the  struggle  with  Buononcini,  he 
emulated  his  rival's  style.  Now,  however,  without  sloughing  off  the 
absurd  conventions  that  were  to  hold  opera  in  chains  until  Gluck 
rebelled  against  them,  he  invested  the  old  forms  with  a  new  ex- 
pressiveness. Giulio  Cesare  and  Tamerlano,  both  produced  in  1724, 
suffered  from  weak  librettos,  but  even  so  Handel  worked  wonders 
with  them.  The  recitatives  are  dramatic  revelations  of  character, 
and  Tamerlano^  indeed,  built  up  to  such  a  tremendous  climax  of 
pathos  that  the  sophisticated  and  reasonable  audiences  were  sent 
home  weeping. 

But  circumstances  prevented  Handel  from  exploring  farther  this 
rich  new  vein,  even  had  he  wanted  to.  Despite  the  quality  of  its 
music  and  the  most  starry  casts  in  Europe,  the  Royal  Academy  of 
Music  was  tottering.  The  generalissimo  of  this  vast  enterprise  was 
desperate.  Cuzzoni  and  Senesino  drew  such  fabulous  salaries  that 
only  nightly  capacity  audiences  could  satisfy  them  and  the  share- 
holders. And  attendance  was  falling  off.  Instead  of  retrenching, 
Handel  decided  to  stake  everything  on  a  single  throw  of  the  dice 
by  importing  Faustina  Bordoni,  Cuzzoni's  only  rival.  In  contriving 
to  bring  together  the  two  most  famous  sopranos  in  Europe,  Handel 
adumbrated  the  exploits  of  P.  T.  Barnum.  He  was  a  man  without 
fear:  he  put  them  both  in  his  new  opera,  Alessandro,  which  opened 


HANDEL  69 

with  great  reclame  on  May  5,  1726.  As  it  ran  until  the  end  of  the 
season,  it  began  to  seem  that  Faustina's  salary  of  £2,000  a  year  was 
well  spent.* 

If  the  contest  between  Handel  and  Buononcini  was  a  spectacle, 
that  between  Cuzzoni  and  Faustina  was  a  sideshow.  For  two  whole 
jrears,  music  played  second  fiddle  at  the  Haymarket.  The  audi- 
snces  divided  into  Cuzzonites  and  Bordonites:  not  since  the  days  of 
the  Empress  Theodora  and  the  Hippodrome  riots  between  the 
Blues  and  the  Greens  had  faction  run  so  high.  Footpads  and 
tiooligans  mixed  with  the  operagoers,  and  took  sides  in  the  rowdy 
demonstrations.  Unquestionably  the  two  most  important  events 
Df  the  year  1727  were  the  death  of  George  I  in  a  post  chaise  on  a 
lonely  German  road  and  the  public  hair-pulling  match  between 
the  rival  queens  of  song  on  the  night  of  June  6. 

In  the  midst  of  all  this  hubbub  Handel  solemnly  became  a 
British  subject. 

One  of  the  new  Englishman's  first  duties  was  to  provide  the 
anthems  used  at  the  coronation  of  George  II,  in  October,  1727. 
The  next  month,  as  a  further  compliment  to  his  adopted  country, 
tie  presented  a  new  opera,  Riccardo  Primo,  a  fantastic  hash  based 
remotely  on  the  adventures  of  Richard  the  Lionhearted.  He  dared 
to  use  his  rival  prima  donnas  in  the  cast  again,  but  the  public 
would  have  none  of  Richard.  Handel  played  every  trump  in  his 
band,  but  even  his  belated  nationalism  peeping  from  under  an 
Italian  domino  could  not  save  the  Royal  Academy.  The  following 
January  the  happy  collaboration  of  Gay  and  Pepusch  successfully 
exploited,  in  The  Beggar's  Opera  (which  included  tunes  lifted 
brazenly  from  Handel),  a  vein  of  nationalism  that  paid  real  divi- 
dends. But  Handel  was  still  too  immersed  in  Italianism  to  draw  the 
moral  from  its  overwhelming  success.  He  saw  his  few  remaining 
patrons  flocking  to  the  Little  Theater  in  Lincoln's  Inn  Fields. 
While  Gay  and  Pepusch  were  pioneering  in  musical  comedy,  and 
packing  them  in  with  broad  ditties  sung  in  English  and  strung 
together  by  rollicking  dialogue,  the  master  opportunist  at  the 
Haymarket  could  do  nothing  better  than  compose  another — and 
then  another — Italian  opera.  Both  of  these  contained  much  excel- 

*  After  two  seasons  Faustina  returned  to  Italy.  Later  she  became  as  well  ac- 
quainted with  Bach  as  she  had  been  with  Handel.  She  died  in  1 783  at  the  age  of 
ninety. 


7O  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

lent  music,  but  they  could  not  save  the  situation.  In  June,  1 728,  the 
last  season  of  the  Royal  Academy  ended  with  a  huge  deficit. 

Still  Handel  clung  to  Italian  opera.  Having  lost  a  fortune  for  the 
Academy  shareholders,  he  now  decided  to  risk  his  own  and  Hei- 
degger's. Accordingly,  early  in  1729,  after  leasing  the  King's 
Theater,  he  made  another  Continental  foray  in  search  of  singers. 
He  lingered  in  Venice  until  news  that  his  mother  had  suffered  a 
paralytic  stroke  made  him  squeeze  his  huge  frame  into  the  first 
post  chaise.  At  Halle  he  found  her  in  a  pitiable  state- — blind, 
crippled,  and  mortally  ill.  In  a  life  singularly  free  of  emotional 
attachments,  Handel  had  lavished  all  his  love  on  his  mother.  To 
see  her  thus  stricken  dejected  him  immeasurably,  and  when,  at  this 
juncture,  Wilhelm  Friedemann  Bach  arrived  bearing  an  invitation 
from  his  father  in  Leipzig,  Handel  was  too  depressed  to  accept. 
These  two  giants  of  eighteenth-century  music  never  met. 

Reluctantly  bidding  what  he  must  have  known  was  a  last  fare- 
well to  his  mother  (she  died  the  following  year)  Handel  returned 
to  London,  and  busied  himself  with  managerial  problems.  So 
arduous  and  hectic  were  these  that  not  until  a  fortnight  before  the 
opening  did  he  finish  his  first  offering  of  the  season.  Haste  played 
him  false:  the  opera  was  a  makeshift  that  deservedly  failed.  And, 
in  fact,  the  new  management's  entire  first  season  was  an  unmiti- 
gated failure  despite  the  singers  Handel  had  imported.  The 
season  of  1730-31  was  more  successful,  due  as  much  to  the  drawing 
power  of  Senesino  as  to  the  revival  of  several  Handel  favorites. 
Poro,  a  new  work,  was  actually  declared  by  connoisseurs  to  be  the 
finest  opera  he  had  yet  composed.  Not  a  single  performance  failed 
to  pay.  The  old  magic  was  working  once  more.  But  even  it  could 
not  contend  against  the  weather,  of  which  there  was  a  vast  deal  in 
May,  1731.  The  King's  Theater  was  the  last  in  London  to  sur- 
render to  an  unprecedented  heat  wave. 

The  next  season  opened  dully,  and  was  languishing  along  un- 
profitably  when  there  took  place  an  event,  not  in  itself  important, 
that  changed  the  direction  of  Handel's  life  and  altered  the  face  of 
English  music,  Bernard  Gates,  one  of  his  warm  admirers,  ar- 
ranged a  birthday  surprise  for  Handel — a  revival  of  Haman  and 
Mordecai.,  the  masque  composed  for  the  private  theater  at  Canons  a 
decade  before.  Little  did  the  forty-seven-year-old  composer  realize, 
as  he  listened  to  the  children  of  the  Chapel  Royal  performing  his 


HANDEL  71 

Long-neglected  work,  that  from  it  lie  would  seize  an  idea  whose 
development  would  make  his  place  secure  among  the  greatest 
masters  of  music  long  after  his  Italian  operas  had  fallen  into  un- 
deserved oblivion.  And  when  a  second  performance  drew  loud 
plaudits  from  a  picked  audience,  Handel's  only  reaction  was  a  de- 
dsion  to  produce  an  enlarged  version  at  the  Haymarket  He 
planned  to  have  it  sung  by  the  children  of  the  Chapel  Royal,  who 
had  given  so  excellent  an  account  of  themselves  in  the  Gates  re- 
vival. But  as  soon  as  the  news  spread,  there  were  vociferous  pro- 
tests from  moralists  and  churchmen.  They  had  protested  until 
they  were  blue  in  the  face  about  the  bawdy  farces  filling  the  play- 
houses. They  were  on  firmer  ground  in  objecting  to  a  Biblical 
drama  in  an  opera  house.  Gibson,  the  learned  and  austere  Bishop 
of  London,  brought  matters  to  a  head  by  forbidding  the  perform- 
ance. This  was  more  than  an  empty  ukase,  for  the  Chapel  Royal 
was  under  his  jurisdiction.  Handel  circumvented  the  ban  by  a 
technicality:  he  further  revised  Haman  and  Mordecai,  named  it 
Esther:  an  Oratorio  in  English,  and  presented  it  on  May  2,  1732,  at 
the  Haymarket,  but  without  scenery,  costumes,  or  stage  business, 
On  the  fourth  night  the  royal  family  attended  in  state,  and  from 
then  on  Esther's  complete  success  was  assured. 

It  was  not  at  once  apparent  that  oratorio  would  ultimately  dis- 
lodge Italian  opera  from  its  firm  hold  on  the  English  heart.  In 
fact,  Handel's  next  two  experiments  in  disguised  opera  were  dis- 
heartening, despite  the  increasing  impressiveness  of  his  choruses. 
Deborah  was  a  dead  failure,  and  the  measured  success  of  Athalia 
was  due  mainly  to  the  fact  that  it  was  produced  for  university 
celebrations  at  Oxford.  Here  Handel  was  welcomed  with  noisy 
admiration  by  students  and  dons  alike,  but  his  own  enthusiasm 
was  dampened  when  he  learned  that  the  doctorate  of  music  the 
University  intended  to  confer  on  him  would  cost  him  £100.  He 
declined  the  honor. 

Until  1738  HandePs  interest  in  oratorio  was  definitely  a  sideline, 
and  he  remained  generally  faithful  to  his  old  love.  But  Italian 
opera  proved  a  faithless  wench.  Affairs  at  the  Haymarket  went 
from  bad  to  worse,  and  the  rise  of  an  opposition  opera  under  the 
sponsorship  of  Frederick,  Prince  of  Wales  (historically  a  mere  inci- 
dent in  the  bitter  feud  between  George  II  and  his  heir),  brought 
the  Handel-Heidegger  management  to  the  brink  of  disaster.  The 


72  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

new  venture,  housed  in  the  Lincoln's  Inn  Fields  Theater,  drew 
away  from  the  Haymarket  its  brightest  stars — Senesino  and 
Cuzzoni — and  also  secured  the  services  of  Porpora,  the  most  cele- 
brated singing  teacher  of  the  age,  and  the  peerless  castrato,  Fari- 
nelli.  Porpora,  who  was  also  the  official  composer  of  this  "Opera 
of  the  Nobility,"  might  not  compose  as  effectively  as  Handel,  but 
the  Prince's  patronage  secured  the  most  fashionable  audiences 
possible,  and  his  singers  were  more  brilliant  than  those  the  Hay- 
market  could  muster.  In  July,  1734,  Handel  and  Heidegger 
bowed  to  the  inevitable,  and  closed  their  doors.  Porpora  im- 
mediately leased  the  Haymarket,  which  was  a  better  house  than 
Lincoln's  Inn  Fields. 

As  a  businessman  Handel  was  as  resilient  as  ever:  knowing  full 
well  that  Lincoln's  Inn  Fields  was  inadequate  in  every  respect,  he 
nevertheless  took  it,  and  boldly  planned  his  coming  season.  His 
new  opera  house  was  seated  in  little  better  than  a  garbage  dump, 
and  was  a  catchall  for  London's  lowest  denizens;  his  once  splendid 
galaxy  was  sadly  depleted,  and  the  King's  halfhearted  patronage 
availed  nothing  against  the  Prince  of  Wales'  spirited  championing 
of  Porpora.  Handel  revived  a  few  operas  at  Lincoln's  Inn  Fields, 
but  the  response  was  worse  than  poor — all  London  was  flocking  to 
the  Haymarket,  where  the  one  and  only  Farinelli  was  warbling 
inimitably  in  Artaserse,  the  masterpiece  of  Faustina's  husband, 
Johann  Adolf  Hasse.  Nor  did  a  move,  in  December,  1734,  to  a  new 
theater  in  Covent  Garden  help  matters  much.  The  exquisite 
melodies  of  Alcina  could  not  leave  the  English  heart  completely 
untouched,  but  generally  speaking,  Handel's  ill  luck  continued 
throughout  1735.  And  now,  to  make  matters  worse,  the  robust 
Saxon  frame  was  assailed  by  the  first  of  a  cumulation  of  ailments 
that  were  to  trouble  the  latter  days  of  this  amiable  glutton.  He 
was  fifty,  and  had  never  had  the  prudence  to  husband  his 
strength. 

Back  from  taking  the  waters  at  Tunbridge  Wells,  Handel 
devoted  himself  feverishly  to  setting  the  finest  libretto  that  ever 
fell  to  his  lot — a  version  of  Dryden's  Alexander's  Feast,  or  the  Power 
of  Music.  He  completed  the  oratorio  in  twenty  days,  and  shocked 
conservative  musicians  by  hiring  a  nineteen-year-old  English 
boy  as  leading  tenor.  This  youngster,  John  Beard,  was  finally  to 
lift  Handel  from  the  financial  morass  as  effectively  as  Farinelli 


HANDEL  73 

had  lifted  Porpora's  company.  Alexander's  Feast  was  a  triumph, 
Dryden  had  written  this  most  Dionysiac  of  English  odes  in  a  single 
night:  Handel's  setting  has  the  same  controlled  abandon,  the  full 
flavor  of  a  classic  bacchanal.  Handel.,  whose  English  was  so  broken 
and  halting  that  he  was  a  laughingstock  among  the  cruel  wits  of 
the  town,  honored  Dryden's  beautiful  lines  with  a  perfect  under- 
standing that  wove  for  them  a  sumptuous  and  entirely  appropriate 
garment  of  song. 

But  Alexander's  Feast  only  momentarily  stemmed  the  flood  of 
disaster.  Even  good  luck  was  against  Handel.  When  custom  re- 
quired him  to  write  wedding  music  for  the  Prince  of  Wales,  he  did 
his  duty  so  well  that  the  Prince  was  won  over  to  his  side  in  the  War 
of  the  Opera  Houses.  But  by  winning  the  Prince  he  lost  the  King, 
who  declared  pettishly  that  where  his  son  went  he  was  never  seen. 
The  effect  on  musical  London  was  simple:  Covent  Garden  and  the 
Haymarket  exchanged  audiences.  And  both  companies  rushed 
headlong  toward  failure.  Handel's  health  became  alarming:  his 
frantic  efforts  to  shore  up  his  collapsing  fortunes  were  succeeded 
by  an  obstinate  spell  of  the  most  abject  depression.  As  Covent 
Garden  dragged  to  its  miserable  end,  the  composer  was  smitten 
with  paralysis.  His  entire  right  side  was  affected,  he  was  in  agony, 
and  for  a  moment  it  seemed  that  his  mind  was  going.  While  he 
was  in  this  fog  of  mingled  physical  and  mental  anguish,  Govent 
Garden  closed  its  doors.  Ten  days  later,  Porpora  too  was  forced  to 
the  wall. 

And  now  the  threat  of  imprisonment  was  added  to  Handel's 
other  woes.  He  was  bankrupt,  and  though  most  of  his  creditors 
were  well  disposed  toward  him,  at  least  one  of  them  acted  toward 
the  fallen  impresario  with  malignant  severity.  Possibly  Handel's 
official  position  enabled  him  to  escape  debtors'  prison.  In  any 
event,  after  giving  promissory  notes  to  his  creditors,  he  painfully 
took  ship  for  the  Continent.  He  lingered  at  Aix-la-Chapelle  for 
some  months:  the  paralysis  gradually  left  him  and  the  clouds  lifted 
from  his  mind.  When  he  returned  to  England  in  November,  1737, 
he  was,  to  all  intents  and  purposes,  completely  cured.  He  found 
London  in  gloom:  Caroline,  the  beloved  wife  of  George  II,  was 
dying.  To  his  sorrow,  Handel's  first  task  proved  to  be  her  funeral 
anthem.  Not  since  the  days  of  Tom^s  Luis  de  Victoria's  elegy  on 
the  death  of  his  august  patroness  had  so  majestic  a  threnody  been 


74  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

composed.  Under  such  solemn  auspices  did  the  disgraced  com- 
poser win  back  his  place  in  the  fickle  affections  of  the  people. 

But  his  misfortunes  dragged  on.  Heidegger,  the  new  lessee  of 
the  Haymarket,  staged  two  new  Handel  operas  early  the  next  year. 
London  stayed  away,  not  maliciously,  but  because  Italian  opera 
had  momentarily  worn  out  its  welcome.  Handel's  inability  to 
meet  his  notes  so  enraged  one  of  his  creditors  that  he  was  again 
threatened  with  debtors'  prison.  At  this  juncture  he  was  reluctantly 
persuaded  to  permit  a  benefit  concert  in  his  behalf.  Fashionable 
London,  which  had  so  frankly  left  him  in  the  lurch  as  soon  as  his 
entertainment  bored  them,  turned  out  en  masse  as  if  to  make 
amends.  One  thousand  pounds  was  collected,  and  with  this  sum 
Handel  was  able  to  pay  his  persecutor,  and  tell  him  off  in  a  spate 
of  mixed  German  and  English  invective. 

In  the  summer  another  proof  of  Handel's  place  in  public  esteem 
was  provided  when  the  astute  Jonathan  Tyers,  manager  of  the 
Vauxhall  Gardens,  London's  most  fashionable  resort,  commis- 
sioned Louis-Frangois  Roubilliac,  a  kind  of  latter-day  Bernini,  to 
make  a  statue  of  Handel  for  the  Gardens.  Tyers  would  never  have 
spent  the  £300  unless  he  had  been  certain  that  it  was  good  busi- 
ness. Even  if  the  public  stayed  away  from  his  operas,  Handel  was 
the  idol  of  the  hour.  Nobody's  music  was  more  popular  at  the 
Gardens:  the  band  nightly  played  excerpts  from  his  works.  Of 
course,  Tyers  reaped  a  golden  harvest.  As  for  poor  Handel,  all  he 
got  was  a  silver  ticket  of  general  admission  to  the  Gardens,  en- 
graved by  Hogarth. 

Handel  reacted  to  these  signs  of  friendliness  with  a  terrific  spurt 
of  energy.  In  April,  Heidegger  had  staged  Serse  at  the  Haymarket. 
This  new  work  had  been  a  clever  attempt  to  muscle  in  on  the  new 
territory  opened  up  by  The  Beggar's  Opera,  But  despite  a  really 
funny  libretto  and  appropriate  music,  Serse  (which  looks  forward 
to  the  opera  comique  rather  than  backward  to  The  Beggar's  Opera) 
had  not  caught  the  public  fancy.  It  contained  the  aria  "Ombra 
maifu"  which  as  far  as  is  known  evoked  no  curtain  calls  opening 
night.  It  was  just  another  Handel  tune.  It  got  no  publicity  in  the 
eighteenth  century.  Suddenly,  in  Queen  Victoria's  time,  it  was 
taken  up,  and,  as  "Handel's  Largo"  or  "The  Largo  from  Xerxes," 
now  holds  a  vast  public.  As  performed  today  (in  the  wrong  tempo) , 
it  is  peaceful  and  majestic,  almost  solemn  in  mood;  its  popularity 


HANDEL  75 

is  something  of  a  mystery.  What  Handel  thought  of  it  is  not  known, 
but  as  he  had  a  habit  of  using  his  favorites  over  and  over,  the  fact 
that  "Ombra  maifu"  appears  in  only  one  opera  tells  its  own  story. 

The  failure  ofSerse  finally  convinced  Handel  that  his  struggle  to 
keep  Italian  opera  on  the  boards  was  futile.  At  the  age  of  fifty- 
three,  he  boldly  started  at  the  top  of  another  musical  leaf.  But  love 
dies  hard,  and  during  the  next  three  years  he  worked  intermit- 
tently at  two  operas.  These,  tuneful  though  they  are,  seem  half- 
hearted and  stillborn.  Handel  allowed  them  to  be  produced  care- 
lessly by  hack  singers :  he  was  busy  making  history  with  the  oratorio. 
'  Had  Handel  died  in  1 738,  he  would  not  now  be  reckoned  among 
the  titans  of  music.  As  far  as  their  value  to  posterity  is  concerned 
the  first  fifty-three  years  of  his  life  must  be  counted  as  a  tragic 
waste.  In  cold  fact,  some  of  his  finest  inspirations  lie  buried  in 
those  crumbling  operatic  scores  that  seem  unlikely  ever  to  be 
revived  except  as  lifeless  curiosities.  The  blame  for  this  neglect 
must  be  laid  unqualifiedly  at  Handel's  own  door.  He  was  content 
to  acquiesce  in  the  traditional  scheme  of  Italian  opera — a  succes- 
sion of  barely  related  numbers  having  no  integral  connection  with 
the  libretto,  itself  usually  a  piece  of  extravagant  and  high-flown 
nonsense.  It  seems  doubtful  that  he  ever  conceived  of  the  opera  as 
a  dramatic  unity — in  any  event  he  never  achieved  it.  Many  of  his 
arias  and  concerted  numbers  attain  momentary  dramatic  in- 
tegrity, and  a  surprisingly  high  percentage  of  them  are  as  lovely 
and  appealing  now  as  the  day  they  were  written.  The  best  airs 
have  a  springtime  spontaneity  that  is  lacking  in  the  otherwise  more 
impressive  later  works.  But  so  long  as  recitalists  confine  their  ex- 
haustive investigations  to  the  compositions  of  Oley  Speaks,  Liza 
Lehmann,  Ernest  Charles,  and  other  modern  masters,  it  seems  un- 
likely that  audiences  will  ever  know  that  Handel  wrote  more  than 
ten  or  twelve  songs. 

Had  Handel  died  in  1738,  what  now  would  be  salvaged?  Prob- 
ably nothing  more  than  the  "Largo,"  "The  Harmonious  Black- 
smith," and  the  Water  Music.  In  short,  he  would  belong  among 
those  small  masters  who  on  rare  occasions  outranked  themselves.  He 
would  be  classed  among  the  Rameaus  and  Corellis  and  Galuppis, 
with  their  Tambourins  and  Weinachtskonzerts  and  Toccatas.  Once  in 
a  while  that  discoverer  of  buried  treasure,  Bernard  Herrmann, 


76  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

would  dignify  the  business  of  broadcasting  by  presenting  one  of 
the  Concerti  grossi,*  the  best  of  which  challenge  comparison  with 
the  c  "Brandenburg"  Concertos.  But  that  strange  marriage  of  names 
— Bach  and  Handel — would  never  have  been  heard.  Handel  would 
have  been,  in  musical  history,  just  another  of  that  group  of  eight- 
eenth-century immortals — Alessandro  Scarlatti,  Hasse.  Porpora, 
and  Jommelli — unjustly  massacred  in  the  operatic  revolution  of 
Christoph  Willibald  von  Gluck. 

But  Handel  in  1738  had  more  than  twenty  years  to  live.  Witnout 
worrying  about  a  career  that  lay  in  ruins,  he  set  about  creating — 
or  piecing  together — a  new  musical  form.  Just  as  he  had  stub- 
bornly kept  on  producing  Italian  operas  long  after  the  public  lost 
interest  in  them,  he  now  began  literally  forcing  oratorios  on  his 
audiences.  There  was  bitter  resistance.  He  made  and  lost  fortunes, 
and  triumphed  in  the  end  only  because  he  happened  to  die  on  an 
upswing.  It  is  only  fair,  however,  to  observe  that  the  reaction  in 
favoF  of  these  magnificent  creations  eventually  drew  to  them  the 
largest  and  most  enthusiastic  audiences  in  the  history  of  music. 

Although  Handel  had  already  tentatively  explored  the  possi- 
bilities of  oratorio,  it  was  not  until  1739  that  he  turned  his  back  on 
Italian  opera,  and  finally  made  oratorio  the  main  business  of  his 
life.  His  new  career  began  inauspiciously  enough.  Having  leased 
the  King's  Theater,  he  produced  Saul  and  Israel  in  Egypt  within  a 
few  months  of  each  other.  The  indifference  that  greeted  these 
works  is  inexplicable:  the  solemn  and  majestic  Dead  March  from 
Saul  would  alone  immortalize  this  work,  while  the  monumental 
Israel  in  Egypt)  now  heard  all  too  rarely,  does  not  lack  partisans 
who  hold  it  more  sublime  than  Messiah.  It  is  so  vast  in  its  propor- 
tions that  Handel  waited  seventeen  years  before  reviving  it.  The 
thunder  of  its  choruses  rolls  almost  constantly,  unfolding  the 
awful  chronicle  of  Exodus  with  epic  grandeur.  With  the  surest  of 
instincts,  Handel  rigorously  limited  the  use  of  solo  voices,  doubtless 
realizing  that  they  could  not  sustain  the  dread  cadences  of  the 
narrative.  Of  course,  as  the  choruses  now  used  in  Israel  in  Egypt  are 
usually  at  full  war  strength,  outnumbering  the  orchestra  at  least 
five  to  one,  it  has  become  almost  impossible  to  hear  the  oratorio  as 
Handel  conceived  it,  with  chorus  and  orchestra  of  equal  size.  Sir 

*  Although  not  yet  published  in  1 738,  most  of  the  twelve  masterly  Concerti  grossi 
of  Opus  6  had  doubtless  been  composed. 


HANDEL  77 

Donald  Tovey,  who  produced  Israel  in  Egypt  in  Handel's  way, 
called  "The  people  shall  hear  and  be  afraid"  the  "greatest  of 
all  Handel's  choruses." 

Depressed  in  mind  and  purse  by  the  failure  of  these  oratorios, 
Handel  withdrew  once  more  to  the  smaller  Lincoln's  Inn  Fields 
Theater.  Strangely  enough,  the  very  people  who  had  disdained  to 
hear  Saul  and  Israel  in  Egypt  at  the  King's  Theater  plowed  their 
way  through  the  noisome  muddy  lanes  to  the  large  hovel  that 
housed  HandePs  new  undertaking.  There  was  war  with  Spain,  and 
the  martial  flourishes  of  the  Ode  for  St.  Cecilia's  Day  stirred  the 
bellicose  Londoners.  Soon  the  town  was  belligerently  droning 
Dryden's  worst  lines: 

The  TRUMPETS  loud  Clangor 

Excites  us  to  Arms 
With  shrill  Notes  of  Anger 

And  Mortal  Alarms. 
The  double  double  double  beat 

Of  the  thundering  DRUM 

Cryes,  heark  the  Foes  come; 
Charge.,  Charge,  'tis  too  late  to  retreat. 

For  a  time,  money  poured  in.  Then  came  an  intense  cold  wave, 
so  persistent  and  unprecedented  that  it  is  still  known  as  the  "great 
frost  of  1740."  Handel,  whose  enterprises  had  once  succumbed  to 
heat  prostration,  tried  to  make  the  theater  as  coldproof  as  possible, 
and  wooed  his  frozen  patrons  with  a  new  work  of  exceeding 
charm — U  Allegro,  il  Penseroso,  ed  il  Moderate.  Charles  Jennens,  who 
contrived  this  potpourri,  used  parts  of  Milton's  two  poems,  and 
added  a  third  section  by  himself — a  tasteless  procedure  typical  of 
an  age  which  preferred  Nahum  Tate's  bowdlerized  versions  of 
Shakespeare  to  the  originals.  This  work  failed,  and  so  did  HandeFs 
final  fling  at  opera  the  next  autumn.  The  weary  old  man  withdrew 
into  himself,  and  none  but  his  intimates  saw  him  for  almost  a  year. 
In  the  drawing  rooms  of  Piccadilly  they  were  saying  that  Mr. 
Handel  was  through. 

Suddenly,  in  November,  1741,  he  emerged  from  his  shell,  and 
sailed  for  Ireland  at  the  invitation  of  the  Lord  Lieutenant.  He  was 
traveling  heavy — in  his  luggage  was  the  manuscript  of  Messiah., 
which  he  had  composed  the  previous  summer  in  little  more  than 


78  MEN     OF     MUSIC 

three  weeks.  In  Dublin,  he  was  received  everywhere  with  an  ac- 
claim that  quickened  his  chilled  blood.  He  produced  several  of  his 
compositions  with  growing  success.  Late  in  March,  the  first  play- 
bills announcing  Messiah  appeared  in  Dublin,  and  on  April  13, 
1742,  it  was  produced  at  Neal's  Music  Hall  in  Fishamble  Street. 
Scenes  of  wildest  enthusiasm  occurred  at  this  performance,  and  it 
seems  strange  that  Handel  waited  until  June  to  repeat  it.  This 
day  turned  out  sultry,  but  heat  did  not  deter  the  Irish:  Neal's  was 
packed  to  the  roof.  Two  cathedral  choirs  sang  the  mighty  choruses 
superbly,  and  the  notorious  Mrs.  Gibber,  who  had  created  the  role 
of  Polly  Peachum  in  The  Beggafs  Opera.,  sang  the  air  "He  was 
despised"  with  such  devout  tenderness  that  the  Reverend  Dr. 
Delany  exclaimed,  "Woman!  for  this  thy  sins  be  forgiven  thee!" 

Messiah  is  Handel's  masterpiece,  and  among  the  unquestioned 
masterpieces  of  music  it  towers  like  a  mighty  alp.  In  this  rarefied 
atmosphere  only  the  tremendous  massif  of  the  B  minor  Mass 
reaches  higher.  With  the  Matthew  Passion,  Messiah  crowns  the  devo- 
tional aspiration  of  the  Protestant  genius.  From  the  foursquare 
orchestral  introduction  to  the  great  concluding  chorus,  "Worthy  is 
the  Lamb,"  the  oratorio  is  sustained  on  the  loftiest  level  of  musical 
invention  and  spiritual  nobility.  Unity  though  Messiah  is,  it  con- 
tains many  separate  airs  which  lose  little  in  being  performed 
alone.  The  two  tenor  airs  after  the  introduction  are  so  moving  that 
one  hearing  Messiah  for  the  first  time,  and  unaware  of  Handel's 
stanchless  melodic  inventiveness,  might  fear  that  his  best  work  is  at 
the  beginning.  But  Messiah  is  like  a  palace  in  which  wonderment 
grows  at  every  step,  and  the  mere  recital  of  its  treasures  is  weari- 
some. That  outburst  of  tremendous  joy,  the  "Hallelujah"  Chorus, 
which  brought  cocky  little  George  II  to  his  feet  in  spontaneous 
homage,  has  lost  none  of  its  overpowering  vitality  in  two  cen- 
turies. Handel  believed  it  was  divinely  inspired:  "I  did  think  I  did 
see  all  Heaven  before  me — and  the  great  God  himself."  The 
pathos  of  "He  shall  feed  His  flock"  and  "I  know  that  my  Re- 
deemer liveth"  is  not  lost  even  on  an  unbeliever.  The  truth  is  that 
Messiah,  like  any  transcendent  work  of  genius,  escapes  the  bound- 
aries of  creed  and  nation. 

The  British  did  not  take  to  Messiah  at  once.  When  Handel  re- 
turned from  Dublin,  he  was  not  so  simple  as  to  begin  his  London 
season  with  a  work  he  had  first  produced  in  Ireland.  He  presented, 


HANDEL  79 

instead,  an  entirely  new  oratorio,  Samson.,  which  under  the  Bang's 
patronage  enjoyed  the  brilliant  success  it  well  deserved.  This  time 
the  librettist  had  bowdlerized  Milton's  Samson  Agonistes,  a  poem 
from  which  Handel  wrung  the  utmost  dramatic  value.  Although 
it  is  Handel  on  a  large  scale,  and  contains  such  memorable  num- 
bers as  "Fixed  in  His  everlasting  seat55  and  "Total  eclipse/5  it  is 
not  of  Messiah  caliber.  And  yet,  the  very  people  who  had  ac- 
claimed Samson  received  Messiah  coldly.  In  vain  did  George  II  do 
homage — London  barely  supported  five  performances  of  Handel's 
masterpiece  in  six  years.  For  once,  the  composer  was  so  annoyed 
that  he  took  to  his  bed,  and  somewhat  later  had  recourse  to  the 
waters  at  Tunbridge  Wells. 

It  took  a  national  celebration  to  rouse  Handel  from  his  lethargy. 
On  June  27,  1743,  the  King  happened  to  be  with  his  armies  at 
Dettingen,  a  tiny  Bavarian  village.  Here  he  chanced  to  meet  a 
much  larger  French  army,  and  in  some  inexplicable  way  won  the 
only  victory  of  his  brief  career  as  a  soldier  in  the  field.  A  tre- 
mendous celebration  with  trumpet  and  drum  was  in  order,  and 
Handel  rose  to  the  occasion  with  the  specially  composed  Dettingen 
Te  Deum,  which  was  performed  on  a  terrifyingly  large  scale  in  the 
Chapel  Royal.  Needless  to  say,  this  Te  Dmm  was  the  only  im- 
portant result  of  George  IPs  great  victory  at  Dettingen. 

During  the  next  two  years.  Handel  was  busy  producing  both 
sacred  and  secular  oratorios,  only  one  of  which  is  still  stageworthy, 
Most  of  these  are  museum  pieces,  but  Semele  is  really  delicious 
throughout.  Unhappily,  the  lovely  "Where'er  you  walk35  exerts  a 
fatal  attraction  on  every  proud  possessor  of  a  tenor  voice.  As  sung 
by  John  McCormack,  it  comes  through  as  the  high  lyrical  flight 
that  Handel  wrote.  Semele  provoked  a  modest  show  of  interest,  but 
the  machinations  of  rival  impresarios  (who  were  still  true  to  opera) 
wooed  away  his  patrons,  and  the  productions  that  followed  it  soon 
dissipated  not  only  the  meager  profits  from  Semele,  but  also  those 
from  his  Irish  tour.  And  so,  in  April,  1745,  Handel  was  once  more 
forced  into  bankruptcy,  and  went  automatically  to  drink  what 
must  by  then  have  been  the  very  bitter  waters  of  Tunbridge  Wells. 
Pain  racked  his  body,  and  this  time  there  were  those  who  said 
that  Mr.  Handel  was  going  mad. 

But  again  he  disappointed  his  enemies.  He  rose  triumphant  to 
scourge  the  Stuart  uprising — the  sad  lost  cause  of  the  Young  Pre- 


8o  MEN     OF  .MUSIC 

tender — in  the  vengeful  strophes  of  the  Occasional  Oratorio,  and  a 
little  more  than  a  year  later  he  hymned  the  victor  of  Culloden  with 
a  masterpiece,  Judas  Maccabaeus.  It  would  take  a  Jesuit  to  find  any 
real  resemblance  between  the  noble  hero  of  the  Maccabees  and  the 
bloody  Duke  of  Cumberland,  the  butcher  who  had  finally  saved 
England  from  the  Stuarts.  Nor  is  there  any  reason  to  suspect  that 
Handel  saw  any  resemblance.  However,  in  the  stirring  chorus 
"Glory  to  God/'  the  old  composer  rose  loftily  to  the  patriotic 
demands  of  an  England  that  had  treated  him  shabbily  for  years. 
And  Judas  Maccabaeus,  with  its  intensely  expressed  national  feeling, 
turned  the  English  into  true  if  tardy  Handelians,  and  so  they  have 
remained  ever  since. 

Because  Judas  Maccabaeus  was  the  first  Jewish  figure  to  be 
represented  favorably  on  the  English  stage,  the  Jews  crowded 
Covent  Garden  during  the  entire  run  of  the  oratorio.  Handel's 
fortunes  were  completely  rehabilitated,  and  as  a  grateful  compli- 
ment to  his  new  patrons  (as  well  as  what  he  thought  was  a  shrewd 
business  move),  the  rest  of  his  oratorios,  except  one,  were  based  on 
stories  from  Jewish  history  and  legend.  The  writing  of  these  took 
most  of  his  creative  energy  from  the  summer  of  1747  to  that  of 
1751.  Although  he  did  not  hit  another  real  winner  until  Jephtha, 
the  last  of  these,  every  one  of  them,  with  the  possible  exception  of 
Alexander  Balus,  contains  melodies  and  choruses  of  enduring 
beauty.  Joshua  has  the  lyric  "Oh,  had  I  Jubal's  lyre,"  Susanna  the 
exquisitely  tender  "Ask  if  yon  damask  rose  be  fair,"  and  Jephtha 
the  perennial  favorite,  "Waft  her,  angels.35  Such  instances  could  be 
many  times  multiplied.  Handel  himself  said  that  the  chorus  "He 
saw  the  lovely  youth,"  from  Theodora,  was  the  finest  he  ever  com- 
posed, and  complained  bitterly  that  the  oratorio  was  not  better 
attended.  "There  was  room  enough  to  dance  there  when  that  was 
performed,"  he  declared.  George  II  remained  faithful,  but  so  little 
social  importance  attached  to  his  person  that  often  he  was  almost 
alone  in  the  theater. 

But  if  London  was  cold  to  these  novelties  from  the  pen  of  its 
aging  musical  arbiter,  it  lined  his  pockets*  when  he  revived  those 
works  which  were  already  on  their  way  to  becoming  staples  of  the 
English  fireside.  Hercules,  now  gone  from  the  repertoire,  was  a 

*  In  his  otherwise  simply  appointed  house  in  a  fashionable  section,  Handel  col- 
lected some  fine  paintings,  including  several  Rembrandts. 


HANDEL  8l 

jreat  favorite  in  the  eighteenth  century.  Judas  Maccabaeus  by  itself 
made  a  fortune  for  Handel.  But  Messiah,  the  history  of  whose  popu- 
larity is  still  being  written,  eventually  outstripped  its  rivals,  even 
iuring  his  lifetime.  Things  came  to  such  a  pass  that  it  was  almost 
accessary  to  declare  a  national  holiday  when  Mr.  Handel,  seated  in 
majesty  at  the  organ,  conducted  his  masterpiece. 

But  the  phenomenal  vitality  that  had  driven  this  mighty  engine 
for  sixty-four  years  was  beginning  to  dry  up.  Gout  tortured 
Handel's  massive  body,  and  every  motion  was  agony.  His  sight 
was  failing  rapidly.  Early  in  1749,  the  King  asked  him  to  perform 
what  proved  to  be  his  last  official  duty — the  composition  of  music 
for  a  celebration  of  the  Peace  of  Aix-la-Chapelle.  The  result  was 
the  celebrated  Firework  Music.  When  it  was  rehearsed  in  Vauxhall 
Gardens  on  April  2 1 ,  over  twelve  thousand  people  paid  two  shill- 
ings sixpence  each  to  hear  it,  and  held  up  traffic  over  London 
Bridge  for  three  hours — probably  the  most  stupendous  tribute  any 
composer  ever  received.  The  performance,  six  days  later,  was  even 
more  spectacular..  A  fantastic  victory  temple  was  erected  in  the 
Green  Park,  a  noted  French  pyrotechnician  was  employed  to 
devise  the  fireworks,  101  brass  cannon  were  provided  for  the  royal 
salute,  Handel  was  given  a  band  larger  than  a  modern  symphony 
orchestra,  and  the  bill,  for  .everything  was  handed  to  the  Duke  of 
Montagu,  who  died  three  months  later.  In  fact,  everything  was 
done  to  hide  the  truth  that  the  Peace  of  Aix4a-Chapelle  was  an 
empty  victory  for  England.  All  London  was  crowded  into  the 
Green  Park:  the  little  brass  cannon  roared,  the  fireworks  fizzled, 
and  finally  the  victory  temple  burst  into  flames.  The  one  un- 
questioned success  was  the  music. 

The  Firework  Music  ranks  just  below  the  Water  Music,  which  it 
strongly  resembles,  with  its  emphatic  rhythms  and  noisy,  eloquent 
brasses,  though  here,  as  always,  Handel  knew  how  to  ring  the 
changes  on  his  own  quotations.  The  idyllic  largo,  which  he  called 
La  Paix,  breathes  the  very  essence  of  a  world  into  which  peace  has 
come.  Both  the  Firework  and  Water  suites,  so  admirably  scored  for 
open-air  performance,  evidence  Handel's  delicate  sense  of  acoustics. 
-.•In  May,  1749,  Handel  repeated  the  Firework  Music  in  the  first 
of  those  charity  concerts  which  have  ever  since  linked  his  name  in- 
extricably with  that  of  the  Foundling  Hospital.  The  next  year  he 
began  the  famous  annual  series  of  benefit  performances  of  Messiah, 


82  MENOFMUSIG 

the  proceeds  of  which — never  less  than  £500,  and  once  as  much  as 
£1000 — likewise  went  to  the  Hospital.  His  last  years  were  spent  in 
thinking  up  ways  of  helping  this  favorite  charity,  to  which  he 
willed  a  copy  of  Messiah,  and  he  served  as  a  governor  of  the  insti- 
tution for  many  years.  As  Hogarth  was  likewise  a  governor,  the 
Foundling  Hospital  was  served  by  the  two  greatest  geniuses  in 
England. 

In  August,  1750,  Handel  made  his  last  trip  to  the  Continent.  He 
was  sixty-five  years  old,  and  must  have  wanted  to  see  the  scenes  of 
his  childhood  for  the  last  time.  Just  outside  The  Hague  his  coach 
overturned,  and  he  was  severely  injured.  After  convalescing,  he 
proceeded  to  Halle,  where  he  found  Wilhelm  Friedemann  Bach — 
whose  illustrious  father  had  died  only  a  few  months  before — pre- 
siding in  Zachau's  place  at  the  Liebfrauenkirche  organ.  Handel 
was  soon  back  in  London.  At  first  he  was  too  sick  to  work,  but  in 
January  began  to  compose  his  last  oratorio,  Jephtha.  While  he  was 
working  on  the  final  chorus  of  the  second  part,  "How  dark,  O 
Lord,  are  Thy  decrees,"  he  received  the  first  serious  warning  of 
impending  blindness.  Despite  the  ministrations  of  three  doctors, 
his  sight  grew  dimmer  rapidly,  and  on  January  27,  1753,  the 
Theatrical  Register  told  the  tragic  outcome:  "Mr,  Handel  has  at 
length,  unhappily,  quite  lost  his  sight."  Rather  confused  records 
suggest  that  John  Taylor,  who  did  his  worst  on  Bach,  also  operated 
unsuccessfully  on  Handel's  eyes.* 

Handel  the  composer  was  through.  But  though  the  creative 
spark  was  extinct,  the  old  man  did  not  give  up.  He  was  the  greatest 
of  living  organists,  and  almost  until  the  last  day  of  his  life  con- 
tinued his  wonderful  virtuoso  performances.  In  1753  he  played 
all  of  his  organ  concertos  from  memory.  Year  after  year  he  revived 
his  oratorios  to  packed  houses,  conducting  and  accompanying 
them  at  the  organ.  At  last,  after  years  of  disappointment  and  bad 
luck,  he  had  acquired  the  touch  of  Midas.  Better  still,  he  was  loved 
by  all  London:  by  1759  the  figure  of  this  enormously  fat  old  man, 
scarcely  able  to  walk  a  step  unassisted,  seemed  almost  as  much 
part  of  the  landscape  as  the  Tower  and  Westminster  Abbey.  He 
celebrated  his  seventy-fourth  birthday  in  the  midst  of  his  most 
successful  season.  On  April  6,  with  mastery  unimpaired,  he  pre- 

*  One  eminent  authority,  however,  believes  that  Handel  retained  a  vestige  of 
*s%ht  tintil  his  death. 


HANDEL  83 

sided  at  a  performance  of  Messiah  at  Covent  Garden.  Yet  all  was 
not  well.  In  one  section  he  faltered,  but  recovered  himself  adroitly. 
Scarcely  had  the  final  amen  been  sung  when  he  fainted,  and  was 
carried  to  his  house  in  Brook  Street.  As  he  lingered  in  his  last 
agony,,  he  said,  "I  want  to  die  on  Good  Friday  in  the  hope  of  re- 
joining the  good  God,  my  sweet  Lord  and  Saviour,  on  the  day  of 
his  Resurrection."  Actually,  he  died  early  in  the  morning  of  Holy 
Saturday,  April  14,  1759. 

Handel  had  expressed  in  his  will  a  desire  to  be  buried  in  the 
Abbey,  and  his  wish  was  enthusiastically  carried  out.  Six  days 
after  his  death,  at  eight  o'clock  in  the  evening,  he  was  lowered  into 
his  place  among  England's  great,  in  the  presence  of  three  thousand 
uninvited  mourners,  while  the  combined  voices  of  the  Gentlemen 
of  the  Chapel  Royal  and  the  choirs  of  St.  Paul's  and  the  Abbey 
sang  the  dirge. 

The  best  proof  of  Handel's  unique  sovereignty  over  English 
music  was  furnished  by  his  posthumous  glorification.  That  at  his 
death  he  was  well  beloved  and  greatly  honored  is  unquestioned;  a 
few  years  later,  he  was  a  god,  or  in  less  pagan  parlance,  a  saint. 
The  official  canonization  took  place  in  1784,  when  a  five-day 
commemoration  was  arranged  on  an  unprecedented  scale.  George 
III,  assisted  by  a  committee  of  noblemen,  was  the  moving  spirit  of 
the  fete,  during  which  Messiah  was  given  twice  in  the  Abbey.  So 
elaborate  were  the  ceremonies  that  Dr.  Burney  wrote  an  account 
of  them  some  months  later,  to  which  Dr.  Johnson  contributed  the 
dedication  to  the  King.  It  proved  to  be  the  Grand  Cham's  last 
effort,  and  before  the  pamphlet  actually  appeared  he  too  was  dead. 
The  Handel  Commemoration  was  the  death  knell  of  the  eighteenth 
century:  even  as  the  mighty  amens  of  Messiah  rolled  away  into 
silence,  the  first  premonitions  of  the  French  Revolution  were 
rumbling  across  the  Channel. 

Although  popular  enthusiasm  for  Handel  continued  unabated, 
it  was  not  until  1857 — the  year  of  the  Indian  Mutiny— that  the 
English  actually  got  around  to  staging  the  first  of  the  well-known 
festivals  that  have  been  the  admiration  and  despair  of  critics,  ac- 
cording to  their  points  of  view.  The  lamentable  story  of  this 
musical  elephantiasis  can  be  compressed  into  the  fact  that  while 
Handel  himself  presented  Messiah  with  a  chorus  and  orchestra 
numbering  about  thirty  performers  each,  at  recent  festivals  the 


84  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

chorus  has  swollen  to  four  thousand  voices  "supported"  by  an 
orchestra  of  five  hundred  pieces.  The  Gargantuan  scale  of  these 
performances  is  not  so  fatal  to  Handel's  intention  as  the  flagrant 
disproportion  of  the  choral  and  orchestral  elements.  The  directors 
of  these  festivals,  from  Sir  Michael  Costa  to  Sir  Henry  J.  Wood, 
might  well  have  remembered  that  Handel  himself,  supreme 
master  of  the  grand  effect,  never,  except  in  the  single  instance  of 
the  Firework  Music — an  outdoor  performance — set  out  to  make  as 
much  noise  as  possible. 

However,  to  offset  this  gaudy  festival  picture,  England  boasts 
a  thriving  and  intelligent  Handel  Society  which,  since  1882,  has 
presented  most  of  the  oratorios  under  the  direction  of  excellent 
musicians.  Germany  has  contributed  an  edition  of  Handel  edited 
by  the  great  enthusiast  Chrysander,  which  falls  short  of  the  mag- 
nificent Gesellschaft  Bach,  but  is  nevertheless  a  monument  to  one 
man's  untiring  industry  and  patient  research.  In  America,  how- 
ever, popular  knowledge  stops  short  with  Messiah — occasional 
presentations  of  a  few  other  works  do  not  alter  the  fact  that 
Handel  is,  in  this  country,  the  most  neglected  of  the  truly  great 
composers.  Bach,  now  that  he  is  widely  known,  is  unlikely  ever  to 
give  place  to  another  on  that  high  seat  to  which  public  esteem  has 
exalted  him.  But  the  day  cannot  be  far  distant  when  familiarity 
with  the  manifold  facets  of  Handel's  genius  will  elevate  him  to  his 
rightful  place  a  small  step  below  that  of  his  great  contemporary. 


Chapter  IV 

Christoph  Willibald  von  Gluck 

(Erasbach,  July  2,  lyi^November  15,  1787,  Vienna) 


THE  Renaissance,  which  invented  so  many  things,  also  invented 
opera.  It  all  happened  quite  accidentally.  The  legend  is — and 
for  once  the  legend  is  true — that  at  the  dawn  of  the  seventeenth 
century  Count  Bardi  and  a  group  of  smart  young  Florentines,  wist- 
ful for  the  past,  decided  to  stage  dramatic  adaptations  of  Greek 
myth  as  the  Greeks  had  staged  Aeschylus  and  Euripides.  They 
fondly  believed  they  had  found  the  Greek  formula — and  who 
knows? — maybe  they  had.  Believing  that  the  ancient  actors  had 
declaimed  their  lines  in  a  style  halfway  between  speech  and  song, 
they  invented  recitative,  that  is,  they  guided  the  rising  and  falling 
cadences  of  the  players  by  means  of  musical  notes.  Whenever  they 
felt  inclined  to  interrupt  the  narrative,  they  wrote  a  set  piece  either 
for  the  singing  voice  or  to  accompany  dancing,  which  ultimately 
developed  into  the  operatic  aria  and  the  operatic  ballet  respec- 
tively. In  the  glorious  sunset  of  Italian  vocal  polyphony,  Count 
Bardi's  young  men  showed  their  independence,  and  possibly  some 
real  knowledge  of  the  role  and  nature  of  the  music  used  at  Greek 
dramatic  performances,  by  adopting  a  simple  homophonic  style. 
With  doubtless  a  full  appreciation  of  the  many-voiced,  ingeniously 
interwoven  music  Palestrina  had  lately  brought  to  a  triumphant 
maturity,  they  nevertheless  chose  the  single  spare  line  of  accom- 
panied melody. 

A  few  years  after  these  experiments  at  the  Palazzo  Bardi,  Claudio 
Monteverdi  shrewdly  made  use  of  the  tentative  form  that  had  been 
evolved.  He  was  more  talented  and  resourceful  than  the  first  pio- 
neers of  opera:  several  musical  ideas  that  were  eventually  made 
much  of  appear  in  his  operas  in  rudimentary  form.  He  wrote  the 
first  operatic  duet.  He  even  sired  a  remote  ancestor  of  the  Wag- 
nerian  leitmotiv.  The  rest  of  his  technical  accomplishments  may 
be  left  to  the  musical  archeologist.  What  concerns  us  is  that  he 
wrote,  in  both  his  operas  and  his  madrigals,  some  music  that  can 
still  be  heard  by  courtesy  of  something  better  than  mere  historical 
curiosity.  His  U Incoronazione  di  Poppaea  has  recently  been  revived 

85 


86  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

with  modest  success:  it  is  probably  the  earliest  opera  to  survive  the 
discriminating  hand  of  time. 

Until  1637,  when  the  first  public  opera  house  was  opened  in 
Venice.,  opera  was  the  plaything  of  the  nobility.  Then  the  people 
took  it  up,  and  before  the  end  of  the  century  Italy  was  dotted  with 
opera  houses.  Within  a  hundred  years  it  became  the  principal  dis- 
traction— and  besetting  sin — of  the  Italians,  because  it  allowed 
such  ample  scope  to  the  national  gift  for  facile  melody.  As  it  in- 
creased in  popularity,  opera  changed  its  character.  Abandoning 
the  archaic  dramatic  gusto  of  Monteverdi,  it  tended  to  become 
prettified  and  overelaborate — a  mere  showpiece  for  the  fantasti- 
cally flexible  voices  of  the  times.  This  coincided  with  the  discovery 
that  castrati,  originally  used  to  enhance  the  sexless  character  of 
religious  music,  could  outdo  even  their  most  spectacular  female 
rivals  in  coloratura  tricks.  Some  of  the  music  written  for  these 
freak  voices  is  so  difficult  that  it  can  no  longer  be  sung.  By  the  end 
of  the  seventeenth  century  5  Italian  opera  had  degenerated  into  a 
contest  between  rival  songbirds,  and  had  lost  the  little  dramatic 
integrity  it  once  had. 

In  France,  things  were  no  better.  Opera,  which  became  the 
vogue  under  the  iron  dictatorship  of  Louis  XIV's  Italian  favorite, 
Jean-Baptiste  Lully,  did  not  suffer  from  the  empty  contests  of  cas- 
trati  (who  never  flourished  in  France),  but  fell  into  the  hands  of 
the  masters  of  stage  effects.  Lully's  operas,  which  often  possess  sin- 
gle numbers  that  are  most  moving  and  impressive,  are  dramatically 
absurd — the  attention  is  inevitably  distracted  by  the  goings-on  of 
the  ponderous  stage  machines.  Hannibal  crosses  the  Alps,  rivers 
overflow  their  banks,  cities  go  up  in  smoke,  fountains  play;  of  a 
piece  with  these  bewildering  scenic  cataclysms,  the  meaningless 
plot  goes  cluelessly  on. 

Italian  opera  at  its  most  inane  held  the  rest  of  Europe  in  a 
stranglehold.  In  the  German-speaking  countries,  Italians  and  Ital- 
ianized natives  ground  out  servile  imitations  of  the  Southern  pat- 
tern. In  England,  Purcell,  the  one  man  with  a  marked  talent  for 
dramatic  music,  wrote  a  single  opera,  and  died  young.  Dido  and 
Aeneas  had  no  progeny:  the  Italians  therefore  annexed  England  as 
easily  as  they  had  Germany.  Handel,  complacently  accepting  the 
conventions  of  opera  as  he  found  it,  was  not  able  to  beat  the  Ital- 
ians at  their  own  game.  His  genius  for  the  dramatic  found  its 


GLUCK  87 

proper  scope  only  when  he  abandoned  opera  for  oratorio,  in  which 
he  invented  his  own  conventions. 

It  has  often  been  asked  why  opera,  which  almost  from  its  incep- 
tion recruited  the  services  of  first-rate  composers,  languished  so 
long  and  so  smugly  in  a  state  of  complete  inanity.  The  answer  is 
that  its  patrons  liked  it  just  as  it  was.  Even  more  than  today,  the 
opera  was  then  a  social  affair.  People  went  to  see  and  to  be  seen, 
to  watch  the  amazing  stage  business  as  children  watch  a  circus, 
and  to  take  sides  in  the  quarrels  between  rival  castrati  and  prima 
donnas.  The  noble  and  the  moneyed  sipped  beverages  in  their 
loges,  diced,  or  played  cards,  and  discussed  politics.  The  famous 
President  de  Brosses  considered  the  opera  merely  a  distraction 
from  a  too  great  passion  for  chess.  These  much  admired  eighteenth- 
century  bluestockings  and  philosophes  turned  their  languid  atten- 
tion to  the  stage  only  when  some  unwieldy  engine  was  erupting 
over  a  papier-mache  Pompeii,  when  a  Faustina  or  a  Farinelli  was 
carrying  a  tortuous  roulade  beyond  the  compass  of  the  human  ear, 
or  when  a  hummable  tune  they  already  knew  from  a  dozen  previ- 
ous operas  was  being  resung.  With  such  excellent  diversions,  why 
should  operagoers  have  ever  asked  for  anything  more?  As  a  matter 
of  fact,  they  eventually  got  something  more  not  because  they  asked 
for  it,  but  because  the  feeble  protests  of  a  few  musical  progressives, 
hitherto  lost  in  the  din  of  rattling  chessmen,  grinding  wheels,  and 
screeching  sopranos  of  both  sexes,  finally  found,  in  Ghristoph 
Willibald  von  Gluck,  a  champion  with  vigor  and  genius. 

Gluck's  vigor  is  easier  to  account  for  than  his  genius:  his  par- 
ents came  from  peasant  stock  with  a  long  tradition  as  upper  serv- 
ants to  the  nobility.  They  were  of  mixed  German  and  Bohemian 
blood.  The  father  was  a  forester,  and  seems  to  have  been  in  much 
demand,  for  he  was  constantly  on  the  move.  Until  his  eighteenth 
year,  when  he  went  to  Prague,  Gluck  led  a  more  or  less  outdoor 
life,  picking  up  scraps  of  education  where  he  could.  Of  his  youth 
nothing  beyond  the  usual  assortment  of  cut-and-dried  conjectures 
is  known.  It  is  not  even  certain  what  he  did  in  Prague  outside  of 
supporting  himself  by  giving  music  lessons  and  playing  the  organ, 
but  it  is  fairly  obvious  that  he  had  already  acquired  a  haphazard 
musical  education.  Also,  in  Prague  he  must  have  heard  opera,  par- 
ticularly the  works  of  the  most  popular  composer  of  the  day— 
Johann  Adolf  Hasse,  the  fortunate  husband  of  the  lovely  Faustina, 


88  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

These  slick  musical  nosegays,  the  favored  vehicle  of  the  peerless 
castrato,  Farinelli,  made  a  deep  impression  on  Gluck. 

In  1736,  Gluck  went  to  Vienna,  where  he  was  received  into  the 
palace  of  Prince  Lobkowitz,  his  father's  liege  lord,  as  a  chamber 
musician.  In  the  capital  he  was  exposed  to  nothing  but  Italianate 
music,  and  within  a  year  was  off  to  Milan  in  the  private  orchestra 
of  a  Lombard  noble  of  exalted  rank.  Here  he  took  what  were  prob- 
ably his  first  serious  musical  lessons  from  Giovanni  Battista  Sam- 
martini,  who  has  come  in  for  a  lot  of  jingoistic  praise  in  recent 
years  as  a  precursor  of  Haydn — who,  though  invariably  generous 
in  his  estimates,  summed  him  up  as  a  c "bungler."  The  effect  on 
Gluck  of  Sammartini,  primarily  an  instrumental  composer,  was 
rather  enigmatic:  after  studying  with  him  for  four  years,  Gluck 
wrote  his  first  opera,  Artaserse,  to  some  shopworn  doggerel  by  Metas- 
tasio,  the  busiest  librettist  of  the  age.  The  music  is  lost,  yet  it  is 
easy  to  imagine  what  it  must  have  been  like — not  too  good  an 
imitation  of  Hasse  further  obscuring  the  tortuosities  of  a  long  and 
rambling  libretto.  But  it  got  Gluck  a  big  following,  and  he  found 
in  it  the  idiom  he  was  to  use  more  or  less  unquestioningly  for  the 
next  thirty  years. 

By  1 745  Gluck  had  composed  ten  operas,  all  of  which  were  en- 
thusiastically received  by  the  uncritical  Italian  audiences.  They 
contained  no  hint  of  any  dissatisfaction  with  the  established  mode 
of  writing  opera.  Only  one  of  them,  Ipermestra,  survives  in  entirety, 
and  it  shows  the  feebleness  of  the  technique  he  was  content  to  use. 
Yet  his  fame  spread  widely,  and  late  in  1745  he  was  invited  to 
London  to  compose  operas  for  the  Haymarket  Theater.  If  the 
noble  lessee  of  the  Haymarket  hoped  that  Gluck  would  initiate  a 
renascence  of  Italian  opera  in  England,  he  was  sadly  mistaken. 
Gluck3  s  stage  pieces  were  too  wishy-washy  for  the  sharpened  taste 
of  London  audiences,  used  now  to  the  richer  diet  of  Handel's  great 
oratorios.  Tovey  flatly  says,  "Gluck  at  this  time  was  rather  less 
than  an  ordinary  producer  of  Italian  opera,"  and  there  is  no  mys- 
tery about  his  failure  in  England. 

Handel  received  Gluck  with  bearish  good  humor,  and  roughly 
consoled  him  for  his  ill  fortune,  remarking  cynically  that  he  had 
taken  too  much  trouble  for  English  audiences,  who  understood 
music  only  when  it  sounded  like  a  big  drum.  But  this  was  Handel 
in  one  of  his  notorious  half-truthful  moods,  and  he  was  probably 


GLUCK  89 

being  as  serious  as  when  he  said,  "Gluck  knows  no  more  counter- 
point than  my  cook."  (The  cook,  incidentally,  was  an  excellent 
bass  singer,  who  had  appeared  successfully  in  many  of  Handel's 
operas,  and  was  doubtless  harmonically  aware.)  But  there  was  a 
deep  truth  underlying  Handel's  flippancy:  Gluck  was  always  tech- 
nically insecure,  and  even  years  later,  after  he  had  mastered  the 
fundamentals  of  his  mature  style,  his  technique  often  limped  be- 
hind his  intentions. 

Up  until  his  London  visit,  Gluck's  success  had  been  so  uniform 
that  he  had  had  no  reason  to  examine  the  esthetic  bases  of  his  art. 
He  was  a  shameless  writer  of  pasticci,  those  monstrous  hashes  made 
up  of  pieces  taken  from  older  works  and  set  to  a  new  libretto.  But 
he  took  HandePs  criticism  to  heart,  and  his  failure  with  London 
audiences  gave  him  even  greater  pause.  The  man's  complacency 
was  jolted.  He  reacted  characteristically:  endowed  with  a  keen 
mind,  he  was  slow  on  the  uptake,  and  had  to  mull  ideas  over  for 
years  before  taking  action.  His  bitter  London  experience  and  his 
admiration  for  Handel  and,  to  a  lesser  degree,  for  Jean-Philippe 
Rameau,  whom  he  met  in  Paris  at  about  the  same  time,  influenced 
the  forming  of  his  mature  style — twenty  years  later.  In  the  mean- 
time, he  went  on  grinding  out  imitation  Hasse  that  could  have 
been  produced  by  a  man  who  never  stopped  to  think  at  all. 

Until  1761 — that  is,  for  more  than  fifteen  years — the  history  of 
Gluck's  mind  is  one  of  silent  growth,  so  silent,  in  fact,  that  few 
realized  that  anything  at  all  was  happening  to  him.  To  all  out- 
ward appearance,  he  continued  his  humdrum  round,  turning  out 
ephemeral  stage  pieces  of  all  sorts.  His  mediocre  compositions  being 
much  in  demand,  he  traveled  extensively;  at  home  in  Vienna,  he 
was  often  about  the  court.  All  this  activity  was  superficial.  Actu- 
ally, he  was  educating  himself,  pondering  the  esthetic  bases  of 
dramatic  music,  and  gradually  coming  to  those  conclusions  that 
would  revolutionize  the  whole  art  of  opera.  He  was  studying  for- 
eign languages  and  letters,  and  gaining  a  working  knowledge  of 
French  by  writing  opera  comique.  Finally,  he  was  cultivating  an  ac- 
quaintance among  the  cognoscenti.  In  short,  his  own  innate  bent 
toward  things  intellectual,  stultified  in  his  extremely  active  youth, 
was  now  asserting  itself. 

Even  Gluck's  choice  of  a  wife  reflects  his  ruling  mental  passion: 
Marianne  Pergin,  whom  he  married  in  1750,  was  no  beauty.  Their 


gO  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

marriage,  though  childless  (according  to  Dr.  Alfred  Einstein  be- 
cause of  a  venereal  infection  Gluck  had  contracted  from  a  wanton 
singer),  was  apparently  happy,  doubtless  because  Frau  Gluck  was 
something  of  an  Aspasia.  One  of  the  few  surviving  double  portraits 
of  a  composer  and  his  wife  shows  Gluck  and  his  Marianne  at  table? 
enjoying  a  drink  together.  His  marriage  is  important  from  a  mu- 
sical point  of  view  mainly  because  his  wife's  dowry  freed  him  for- 
ever from  money  worries,  so  that  when  his  phlegmatic  develop- 
ment was  at  last  consummated,  he  could  write  the  operas  he 
wanted  without  fear  of  the  economic  consequences. 

Gluck  shared  with  Mozart  the  not  very  high  distinction  of  re- 
ceiving the  Golden  Spur,  a  low-grade  papal  order.  Unlike  Mozart, 
who  never  paraded  his  insignificant  knighthood,  he  thenceforth 
signed  himself  Ritter  von  Gluck.  Appropriately,  he  received  his 
Golden  Spur  not  for  one  of  his  great  operas,  but  for  a  tawdry  piece 
of  musical  fustian.  It  merely  happened  that  Benedict  XIV,  really 
quite  an  astute  man  otherwise,  took  a  fancy  to  the  mediocre  opera 
called  Antigono.  But  the  Golden  Spur  was  the  least  important  in- 
cident of  Gluck's  Roman  sojourn  of  1756,  for  here  he  joined  the 
circle  of  Cardinal  Albani,  and  met  Winckelmann,  the  inspired  re- 
suscitator  of  a  fake  classicism.  Even  though  Winckelmann's  Greece 
was  unlike  anything  ever  on  land  or  sea,  it  profoundly  attracted 
Gluck.  It  was  a  convention  of  Italian  opera  to  set  almost  nothing 
but  classical  subjects,  but  the  classicism  of  Gluck's  mature  operas 
shows  a  glimpse  of  antiquity  that,  however  distorted,  could  only 
have  come  from  the  epochal  Geschichte  der  Kunst  des  Alterthumsy 
which  was  then  being  conceived  in  Winckelmann's  gigantic  but 
mistaken  intellect. 

Gluck  is  always  called  the  reformer  of  opera:  it  is  not  so  well 
known  that  he  first  tried  his  hand  at  reforming  ballet.  In  trying  to 
understand  why  his  first  thunderbolt  was  cast  where  it  was,  it  must 
be  remembered  that  the  date  of  Don  Juan  (1761),  his  great  ballet 
and  the  first  of  his  mature  works  for  the  theater,  coincided  with 
Noverre's  impassioned  plea  for  a  reformed  ballet.  This  noted  French 
dancer  and  ballet  master,  while  revolutionizing  the  actual  tech- 
nique of  ballet  dancing,  wanted  dramatic  music  and  eloquent 
action.  Anyone  who  has  suffered  through  that  long-drawn-out 
Chopinesque  swoon  known  as  Le$  Sylphides  can  understand  what 
Noverre  was  up  against.  Although  he  did  not  dance  in  it,  and  in 


GLUGK  91 

fact  had  nothing  to  do  with  it,  Don  Juan  effectually  answered  his 
plea.  To  start  with,  the  librettist-choreographer  had  cleverly  retold 
Moliere's  Le  Festin  de  pierre  in  danceable  terms.  With  a  suddenness 
that  has  led  many  to  the  improbable  conclusion  that  he  changed 
overnight,  Gluck  produced  music  showing  that  the  ideas  which 
had  been  brewing  so  long  in  his  mind  had  at  last  fermented.  He 
went  far  toward  making  the  music  and  the  story  one,  mainly  by 
throwing  overboard  the  meaningless  conventions  that  had  been 
the  curse  of  ballet  music.  Almost  for  the  first  time  in  its  history,  the 
stage  had  recruited  a  composer  willing  and  able  to  place  his  brains 
as  well  as  his  purely  musical  talents  at  its  disposal. 

Having  experimented  successfully  with  ballet,  Gluck  turned  back 
to  opera.  Hitherto  he  had  set  little  else  than  Metastasio,  whose 
librettos  had  not  only  cornered  the  market,  but  were  used  over  and 
over  again.  But  with  their  tortured  conceits  and  lifeless  artifice, 
these  were  not  suitable  for  the  musical  dramas  Gluck  was  con- 
templating. At  this  juncture,  Raniero  da  Calzabigi,  one  of  Metas- 
tasio's  most  outspoken  critics,  turned  up  with  the  right  sort  of 
libretto.  The  initiative  for  this  happy  collaboration  came  from  Cal- 
zabigi, and  there  are  writers  who  believe  that  he,  rather  than 
Gluck,  should  be  credited  with  the  reform  of  opera.  But  it  is  not 
reasonable  to  assume  that  in  1762,  when  Gluck  wrote  Orfeo  ed 
Euridice,  he  should  suddenly  have  pulled  an  eminently  successful 
dramatic  opera  out  of  the  blue:  Calzabigi  merely  touched  fire  to 
well-seasoned  kindling. 

Orfeo  ed  Euridice,  while  retaining  much  of  the  old-style  diction, 
departed  from  Metastasio  in  telling  a  simple  story  in  dramatic 
terms.  The  sweet  singer  Orpheus  mourns  his  dead  wife,  Eurydice; 
the  gods  permit  him  to  bring  her  back  from  the  Elysian  Fields  if 
he  will  not  look  at  her  before  they  reach  daylight.  But  Eurydice's 
pleadings  force  him  to  break  his  vow,  and  she  dies  again.  In  de- 
fiance of  the  classical  legend,  Calzabigi  then  has  Amor  restore  her 
to  life,  and  the  opera  ends  happily,  not  without  loss  of  dramatic 
verity.  Care  has  been  taken  to  give  each  character  music  that 
really  expresses  him — music  that  subtly  changes  with  each  new 
situation.  But  we  must  listen  carefully  to  realize  that  we  are  hear- 
ing dramatic  music — must  listen  with  innocent  ears.  We  must  not 
expect  to  hear  the  protagonists  shouting  at  the  top  of  their  voices 
as  in  Wagner  and  Strauss.  This  is  drama  as  the  ancients  knew  it — 


Q2  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

decorous,  stylized,  restrained.  We  must  discard  temporarily  the 
conventions  of  modern  music  drama,  and  judge  Orfeo  ed  Euridice 
and  Gluck's  five  other  masterpieces  within  the  framework  of  their 
times. 

But  to  respond  to  the  purely  musical  charm  of  Gluck  no  such 
adjustment  is  needed.  Orfeo  is  an  excellent  introduction  to  the 
greater  Gluck.  Unfortunately  for  him  who  is  being  introduced  to 
this  noble  style,  however,  it  opens  unpromisingly  with  one  of 
Gluck' s  dullest  overtures,  anything  but  expressive  of  what  is  to 
follow.  But  after  the  brief  first  act  comes  a  scene  Gluck  never  sur- 
passed in  dramatic  intensity:  Orpheus,  finding  his  way  to  the  Ely- 
sian  Fields  blocked  by  a  chorus  of  Furies,  pleads  with  the  infernal 
sentinels  to  allow  him  to  pass.  As  his  ineffably  poignant  song  pro- 
ceeds, they  interrupt  him  with  shouts  of  "No!"  The  exquisite 
strains  reduce  even  them  to  submission,  and  the  gates  open.  Al- 
most immediately,  before  the  spell  of  this  superb  scene  has  worn 
off,  we  hear  the  serene  and  solemn  "Dance  of  the  Blessed  Spirits," 
the  most  affecting  music  Gluck  ever  composed  for  instruments 
alone.  The  thin,  pure  line  of  the  flute  achieves  a  particular  kind  of 
magic  here — the  essence  of  that  fabled  "peace  which  passeth  all 
understanding" — that  is  unique  in  the  whole  realm  of  music.  Here 
Gluck,  whose  gifts  are  not  always  purely  musical,  stands  on  the 
loftiest  heights  with  the  very  greatest  of  the  masters. 

After  the  two  magnificent  scenes  of  the  second  act,  almost  any 
third  act  would  have  seemed  flat.  Orfeo's  suffers  undeservedly  both 
from  its  position  in  the  opera  and  from  the  fact  that  the  libretto 
trails  off  into  an  absurd,  tacked-on  happy  ending.  Gluck  might 
better  have  rung  the  curtain  down  as  Eurydice  dies — except  for 
one  thing:  the  deathless  aria  Che  faro  senza  Euridice.  By  modern 
standards,  this  is  not  a  very  dramatic  aria:  measured,  for  instance, 
against  the  Liebestod,  it  sounds  lyric  rather  than  dramatic.  The 
point  is  that  sung  in  the  proper  tempo,*  and  by  a  real  artist,  it  is 
irresistible,  and  seems  the  only  possible  expression  of  Orpheus' 
grief.  As  Alfred  Einstein  has  well  said,  "It  is  devoid  of  pathos  be- 
cause ...  it  transcends  all  expression."  After  this  great  melody 
has  been  sung,  those  who  have  the  heart  may  remain  to  witness,  in 

*  Gluck  himself  admitted  that  taking  the  aria  at  a  wrong  tempo  would  reduce  it  to 
a  merry-go-round  tune,  and  critics,  enlarging  on  this  point,  have  said  that  taken  a 
shade  faster,  it  might  better  be  sung  to  joyful  words — "I've  found  my  Eurydice," 
for  example. 


GLUCK  93 

the  concluding  ballet  and  general  jollification,  the  very  inanities 
against  which  Gluck  had  struck  the  first  blow  in  this  selfsame  opera. 

Orfeo  ed  Euridice  was  first  produced  at  Vienna  on  October  5, 
1 762.  It  was  received  coldly,  but  within  a  year  a  strong  reaction  in 
its  favor  set  in.  By  1764  it  had  become  so  popular  that  it  was  used 
at  the  coronation  of  the  Archduke  Josef  as  King  of  the  Romans  at 
Frankfort,  where  the  young  Goethe,  who  was  on  hand  for  the 
ceremonies,  heard  it.  It  brought  Gluck  so  much  money  that  in  the 
same  year  he  was  able  to  give  up  the  position  of  Hqfkapellmeister 
Maria  Theresa  had  conferred  on  him  ten  years  before.  He  raised 
his  style  of  living,  moving  from  a  comfortable  but  unpretentious 
house  into  a  splendidly  appointed  one  in  a  fashionable  quarter  of 
Vienna.  Now,  instead  of  taking  the  next  logical  steps  after  Orfeo  9 
Gluck  immediately  reverted  to  the  old-fashioned  opera,  and  even 
gave  Metastasio  a  special  order  for  a  libretto.  For  the  next  five 
years  Gluck  served  up  silly  confections  and  gave  singing  lessons  at 
court,  one  of  his  pupils  being  the  young  Archduchess  Marie 
Antoinette. 

In  1766  Gluck  began  to  write  Alceste  to  a  Calzabigi  libretto.  By 
examining  the  probably  ghostwritten  dedication,  we  can  see  that 
Gluck  had  not  wasted  the  years  since  Orfeo:  he  had  raised  his 
previously  nebulous  feelings  about  operatic  reform  to  the  con- 
scious level.  This  brief  revolutionary  manifesto  is  one  of  the  most 
important  documents  in  musical  history.  "My  purpose,"  he  writes 
firmly,  "was  to  restrict  music  to  its  true  office,  that  of  ministering 
to  the  expression  of  the  poetry,  and  to  the  situations  of  the  plot, 
without  interrupting  the  action,  or  chilling  it  by  superfluous  and 
needless  ornamentation."  And  further,  "I  thought  that  my  most 
strenuous  efforts  must  be  directed  toward  a  noble  simplicity,  thus 
avoiding  a  parade  of  difficulty  at  the  expense  of  clearness.  I  did 
not  consider  a  mere  display  of  novelty  valuable  unless  naturally 
suggested  by  the  situation  and  the  expression,  and  on  this  point  no 
rule  in  composition  exists  that  I  would  not  have  gladly  sacrificed 
in  favor  of  the  effect  produced." 

Gluck  carried  out  these  ideas  in  Alceste  with  such  relentless  logic 
that  he  all  but  alienated  the  world  of  Vienna,  where  it  was  first 
produced  on  December  i63  1767.  The  plot  was  even  more  stark 
than  that  of  Orfeo:  King  Admetus  must  die  unless  he  can  find  a 
substitute;  Alcestis,  his  wife,  offers  her  life  for  his,  and  Admetus 


94  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

recovers.  When  Alcestis  dies,  Admetus  prepares  to  kill  himself. 
Apollo  appears,  and  revives  Alcestis.  This  story  offered  situations 
more  dramatic  than  those  ofOrfeo,  and  Gluck  fully  exploited  them. 
The  overture  marks  another  step  in  his  reform.  In  the  dedication 
he  had  written,  "My  idea  was  that  the  overture  should  prepare 
the  spectators  for  the  plot  to  be  represented,  and  give  some  indica- 
tion of  its  nature.39  This  the  Alceste  overture,  with  its  slow,  solemn, 
and  elevated  cadences,  does  perfectly.  While  the  necessity  of  an 
appropriate  overture  has  long  been  a  commonplace  of  opera,  it 
must  be  borne  in  mind  that  previous  to  Alceste  most  overtures  had 
been  mere  irrelevant  curtain  raisers.  Even  before  this  one  melts 
into  the  first  scene,  the  curtain  is  up.  Besides  the  overture,  only 
two  excerpts  can  be  familiar  to  even  the  most  faithful  concert- 
goers.  The  first  is  Alcestis'  grand  scene  of  renunciation  in  the  first 
act — "Divinitis  du  Styx,"*  which  by  its  nervous,  sensitive  changes  of 
tempo  exquisitely  mirrors  the  heroine's  shifting  emotions.  The 
other  is  Saint-Saens'  potpourri  of  ballet  tunes  from  the  opera, 
which  was  yesterday  a  hackneyed  stand-by  of  pianists  of  recital 
and  subrecital  stature. 

Like  Orfeo  ed  Euridice,  Alceste  got  a  chilly  reception  at  the  pre- 
miere. Probably  voicing  the  consensus,  one  member  of  the  audience 
said,  "For  nine  days  the  theater  has  been  closed,  and  on  the  tenth 
it  opens  with  a  Requiem."  Everybody  was  annoyed  with  Gluck: 
his  confreres  resented  his  attack  on  their  style  of  opera;  the  singers 
were  vexed  because  this  unadorned  music  gave  them  no  chance  to 
display  their  incredible  agility,  and  the  audience  was  bored  be- 
cause it  could  not  hear  the  singers  exercise.  Gluck5  s  patrons  trickled 
away:  scarcely  anyone  encouraged  him  to  persist  in  his  great  effort 
But  he  had  found  his  m6tier — and  he  was  a  very  stubborn  man 
when  he  finally  made  up  his  mind.  Even  as  his  critics  and  enemies 
multiplied,  he  turned  once  more  to  Calzabigi  for  the  libretto  of  an 
opera  that  would  shock  them  even  further. 

Paride  ed  Elena  is  not  the  best  of  Gluck's  operas,  but  it  is  in  one 
sense  the  most  dramatic.  Or  at  least  Calzabigi  and  Gluck  intended 
it  to  be.  The  dramatic  crux  is  the  conflict,  or  antithesis,  between 
two  civilizations,  the  Spartan  and  the  Phrygian.  Helen  is  a  pure, 
high-minded,  and  chaste  Grecian  maid,  Paris  a  voluptuous  and 
impulsive  Trojan  youth.  The  librettist  even  altered  the  legend, 

*  The  opening  words  of  the  aria  in  the  later  French  version  of  Alceste. 


GLUGK  95 

making  Helen  Menelaus'  fiancee  rather  than  his  wife,  in  order  to 
make  her  more  than  ever  a  goody-goody.  Unfortunately,  the  ac- 
tion does  not  measure  up  to  the  grandiose  scheme  of  racial  con- 
trast. As  Cupid  promises  Helen  to  Paris  early  in  the  first  act,  the 
only  reason  her  four  acts  of  prudish  protest  are  not  anticlimactic  is 
that  the  opera  has  no  climax.  The  music,  by  its  finely  drawn  con- 
trasts, partly  saves  the  stupid  plot.  The  alternation  of  numbers  in 
varying  modes  is  highly  effective,  and  the  love  music  is,  for  Gluck, 
convincingly  erotic.  Paris'  passionately  yearning  "0  del  mio  dolce 
ardor"  still  a  prime  favorite  in  the  recital  haU,  is  one  of  the  great 
love  songs  of  all  times,  but  it  is  a  pity  that  in  this  long  five-act  opera 
the  musical  climax  should  occur  in  the  first  act* 

Considering  its  palpable  defects,  it  is  no  wonder  that  Paride  ed 
Elena  was  a  failure.  Gluck  made  matters  worse  by  defying  public, 
colleagues,  critics,  and  singers  in  another  dedicatory  blast.  After 
defending  Alceste  and  calling  its  detractors  pedants,  he  flings  down 
the  gauntlet:  "I  do  not  expect  greater  success  from  my  Paride  than 
from  Alceste.)  at  least  in  my  purpose  to  effect  the  desired  change 
in  musical  composers;  on  the  contrary,  I  anticipate  greater  op- 
position than  ever;  but,  for  my  part,  this  shall  never  deter  me 
from  making  fresh  attempts  to  accomplish  my  good  design."  And 
he  winds  up  this  dedication  to  the  Duke  of  Braganga  with  the 
courtierlike  avowal  that  he  is  ready  to  take  it  on  the  chin  from 
the  general  public  so  long  as  he  has  one  Plato  to  encourage 
him. 

In  reality,  Gluck  was  bitterly  disappointed  at  the  public's  apathy 
and  open  hostility.  Nor  were  his  feelings  assuaged  when  Calzabigi 
generously  shouldered  the  blame  for  Paride  ed  Elena.  But  whereas 
Calzabigi  had  won  his  own  battle — diminishing  Metastasio's 
predominance — Gluck  had  reached  a  stalemate.  After  1 770,  when 
Paride  was  first  produced,  it  became  obvious  to  him  that  Vienna 
was  invincible  in  its  stupidity.  He  then  began  to  look  toward  Paris, 
which  had  already  been  put  in  a  receptive  mood  by  the  declama- 
tory style  of  Rameau.  So  seasoned  a  courtier  as  Gluck  had  no 
difficulty  in  pulling  the  proper  wires,  and  we  soon  find  him  on  the 
friendliest  terms  with  the  Bailli  du  Rollet,  secretary  of  the  French 
embassay  in  Vienna.  In  the  back  of  his  mind  was  the  fact  that  his 
former  pupil  was  now  the  pampered  and  all-powerful  wife  of  the 
Dauphin  Louis. 


96  MEN     OF     MUSIC 

Du  Rollet,  besides  being  a  first-rate  wangler,  also  had  literary 
ambitions,  which  the  politic  Gluck  was  pleased  to  further.  The 
Frenchman  now  became  his  librettist,  presenting  him  in  1 772  with 
Iphigenie  en  Aulide,  a  curious  hodgepodge  of  Racine,  legend,  and 
Du  Rollet.  Gluck  started  to  work  on  this  at  once,  and  by  the  end 
of  the  year  the  collaborators  prayerfully  forwarded  the  first  act  to 
Antoine  d'Auvergne,  a  director  of  the  Opera.  D'Auvergne  an- 
swered at  once,  saying  that  he  would  like  to  produce  the  opera, 
but  would  do  so  only  if  the  Chevalier  Gluck  would  undertake  to 
write  five  more  operas  for  him.  By  these  exacting  terms  he  doubt- 
less hoped  to  deter  a  man  who  was  almost  sixty  years  old.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  reason  he  gave  for  the  proviso — that  one  Gluck 
opera  would  drive  all  competitors  from  the  stage — was  so  flattering 
to  the  composer's  thirsting  ego  that  he.  decided  to  force  the  issue. 
Realizing  that  he  was  too  old  to  guarantee  five  more  operas,  he 
induced  Marie  Antoinette  to  command  the  staging  of  Iphigenie  en 
Aulide.  His  royal  friend  did  her  work  so  well  that  by  the  end  of 
1773  he  received  an  invitation  to  come  to  Paris  to  direct  the  opera 
on  his  own  exceedingly  favorable  terms. 

Early  in  1774,  Gluck  and  his  wife,  with  his  highly  talented  niece, 
whom  they  had  adopted  some  years  before,  set  out  for  Paris.  They 
stopped  in  Karlsruhe  to  visit  the  poet  Klopstock,  then  at  the  height 
of  his  fame,  and  by  early  spring  were  in  the  French  capital.  Gluck 
worked  himself  to  a  shadow  during  the  rehearsals  of  Iphigenie: 
there  were  all  the  usual  difficulties  with  singers,  orchestra,  and 
managers,  and  on  several  occasions  Marie  Antoinette  had  to  soothe 
ruffled  feelings  all  round.  The  peerless  Sophie  Arnould,  who  was  to 
sing  Iphigenia,  was  so  intractable  that  once  Gluck  threatened  to 
return  to  Vienna  if  she  did  not  follow  instructions.  But  ultimately 
all  obstacles  were  overcome:  the  most  dangerous  critics  were  pla- 
cated in  advance,  and  even  the  savage  Jean-Jacques  Rousseau,  for 
long  the  champion  of  Italianate  opera,  was  won  over  by  carefully 
directed  flattery. 

On  April  19,  1774,  Iphigenie  en  Aulide  was  produced  at  the  Op6ra. 
Gluck  must  have  risen  to  conduct  with  a  mind  full  of  doubts  and 
questions.  Would  Arnould,  as  usual,  sing  off  pitch?  Was  Legros 
really  too  ill  to  do  justice  to  the  tempestuous  role  of  Achilles? 
Would  the  phlegmatic  Larrivee,  by  some  miracle,  make  Agamem- 


GLUCK  97 

non  come  to  life?  During  rehearsals  Gluck  had  torn  his  hair  as 
Larrivee  listlessly  walked  through  the  part,  but  the  baritone  had 
said  loftily,  "Wait  till  I  get  into  my  costume — you  won't  recognize 
me  then."  But  when,  at  dress  rehearsal,  Larrivee  was  as  wooden  as 
ever,  Gluck  had  called  out,  "Oh,  Larrivee,  Larrivee,  I  recognize 
you!"  And  finally  there  was  the  problem  of  Vestris,  le  dieu  de  la 
danse,  who  had  once  boasted  that  the  three  greatest  men  in  Europe 
were  Frederick  the  Great,  Voltaire,  and  himself.  If  he  had  had  Ms 
own  way,  Iphigenie  en  Aulide  would  have  been  more  ballet  than 
opera.  One  by  one,  Gluck  had  squelched  his  demands,  even  refus- 
ing his  piteous  appeal  for  a  chaconne  at  the  end  of  the  opera. 
"Whenever  did  the  Greeks  dance  a  chaconne?"  Gluck  had  asked 
witheringly.  But  Vestris  was  not  to  be  withered.  "Oh,  didn't 
they?"  he  replied  haughtily.  "So  much  the  worse  for  them!" 

Iphigenie  triumphed  at  once.  Despite  certain  glaring  absurdities 
in  the  libretto,  and  not  a  few  arid  stretches  in  the  music,  Paris 
momentarily  took  the  Chevalier  Gluck  to  its  heart.  At  the  premiere 
the  overture,  generally  considered  the  finest  he  composed,  was  en- 
thusiastically encored.  At  one  point  the  music  and  action  were  so 
convincing  that  some  hotheaded  officers  in  the  audience  were 
ready  to  rush  onto  the  stage  and  rescue  Iphigenia.  The  score  is 
rich — almost  too  rich — in  fine  airs,  which  sometimes  come  in  clus- 
ters of  three,  thereby  tending  to  interrupt  the  flow  of  the  action. 
.Although  there  were  disturbing  errors  of  taste  in  Alexander 
Smallens'  revival  some  years  back  of  what  might  more  appropri- 
ately have  been  called  Iphigenie  en  Philadelphie,  enough  of  Gluck's 
intention  came  through  to  convince  the  audience  that  it  was  hav- 
ing an  esthetic  experience  of  the  first  rank.  The  whole  effect  of  the 
opera  is  one  of  archaic  grandeur,  sustained  by  sculptured  declama- 
tion and  a  loftiness  of  effect  that  rarely  falters  even  when  purely 
musical  inspiration  flags. 

The  witty  Abbe  Arnaud  had  remarked  of  one  bit  from  Iphigenie, 
"With  that  air  one  might  found  a  religion,"  and,  indeed,  the 
Parisians  were  not  slow  in  founding  one,  its  devotees  being  known 
as  Gluckists,  though  all  Paris  did  not  worship  at  this  shrine.  Some 
months  later,  Gluck  was  ready  with  a  French  version  of  his  Orfeo, 
with  the  hero's  part  transposed  for  Legros,  a  tenor,  as  there  was 
no  male  contralto  to  sing  the  part  as  originally  written.  This 


98  MEN     OF    MUSIC 

change  of  key  spoiled  many  of  Gluck's  finest  effects,*  but  the 
Parisians  liked  Orphee  et  Eurydice  even  better  than  Iphigenie.  On  the 
crest  of  this  unflawed  success^  with  his  celebrity  growing  by  leaps 
and  bounds,  Gluck  returned  to  Vienna  to  receive  from  Maria 
Theresa  a  brevet  as  court  composer.  In  1774,  at  the  age  of  sixty, 
he  had  become  the  leading  musician  of  Europe. 

The  next  year,  however,  found  Gluck  in  poor  spirits.  He  had 
several  important  projects  under  way,  one  of  them  a  French  ver- 
sion of  Alceste.  He  busied  himself  remodeling  two  flimsy  operas  of 
his  earlier  period.  Neither  interested  the  Parisians,  though  Marie 
Antoinette,  now  Queen  of  France,  had  asked  for  them.  Gluck  was 
present  when  the  first  of  these  was  given,  but  he  lay  perilously  near 
to  death  in  Vienna  when  the  other  was  produced,  and  so  was 
spared  a  repetition  of  the  bitter  spectacle  of  public  apathy.  He 
returned  to  Paris  on  his  recovery,  and  the  following  spring  was 
recompensed  for  all  his  recent  disappointments  by  the  success, 
negligible  at  first,  but  ever  increasing,  of  the  French  Alceste.  Un- 
happily, in  one  of  his  absences  from  Paris  the  meddlers  at  the 
Op6ra  commissioned  Frangois-Joseph  Gossec — a  young  Belgian 
whose  fame  is  kept  verdant  by  an  immortal  and  ninth-rate  gavotte, 
and  by  the  fact  that  he  first  used  the  clarinet  in  a  score — to  write  an 
extra  character — Hercules — into  the  third  act  of  Alceste,  where  it 
has  remained  to  this  day. 

In  1777,  Gluck  produced  Armide,  the  libretto  of  which  had  been 
adapted  from  Tasso's  Gerusalemme  liberata  by  Moliere's  collaborator 
and  erstwhile  rival,  Philippe  Quinault,  for  the  use  of  Louis  XIV's 
dictatorial  favorite,  the  former  Italian  busboy,  Jean-Bap tiste  Lully .  f 
Nor  had  a  century  on  the  shelf  improved  the  libretto — it  was  more 
old-fashioned,  and  certainly  just  as  diffuse.  Armida  in  her  magic 
garden  is  a  sort  of  seventeenth-century  Kundry,  and  her  natural 
playmates  are  demons,  knights-errant,  warlocks,  and  fairies.  It  is 
useless  to  pretend  that  Gluck  was  entirely  successful  in  setting 
Quinault's  libretto — the  bewildering  change  of  scene  and  the  stage 
properties  got  in  the  way  of  the  music  all  too  often.  Nevertheless, 
though  Armide  does  not  hold  together,  and  is  less  rich  in  memo- 
rable airs  than  some  of  Gluck's  other  operas,  it  shows  him  as  not 

*  In  modern  revivals,  the  role  of  Orpheus  is  always  sung — in  the  original  key — by 
a  woman. 

f  Handel  had  also  used  Quinault's  libretto  for  his  Rinaldo. 


GLUGK  99 

only  a  starter  but  a  developer  of  character.  The  influential  critic, 
La  Harpe,  entirely  missed  the  point  in  stigmatizing  the  part  of 
Armida  as  "a  monotonous  and  fatiguing  shriek  from  beginning  to 
end."  What  Gluck  had  really  done  with  considerable  success  was 
to  sacrifice  purely  musical  beauty  to  the  demands  of  dramatic 
characterization — a  romantic  attitude  that  has  found  its  ultimate 
logic  in  Strauss5  Elektra. 

Armide  touched  off  the  fuse  of  the  most  notorious  strife  in  musical 
history — the  war  between  the  Gluckists  and  the  Piccinnists.  It  em- 
broiled everyone  in  Paris  with  the  exception  of  Gluck  and  the 
frightened  and  confused  Niccola  Piccirmi,  who  had  originally  been 
imported  to  cross  swords  with  the  great  Austrian— and  to  add  to 
the  gaiety  of  nations.  Far  too  much  has  been  made  of  this  quarrel. 
It  is  true  that  all  sorts  of  bigwigs — Marie  Antoinette,  Mme  Du 
Barry,  Voltaire,  and  Rousseau — were  involved  in  setting  the  stage 
for  the  pitched  battle,  and  anyone  reading  the  journals  of  the  time 
would  conclude  that  nothing  else  was  talked  of.  Actually,  the  prin- 
cipals refused  to  fight:  Gluck  not  only  scrapped  a  partially  com- 
pleted version  of  Roland  when  he  heard  that  the  conspirators  had 
given  Piccinni  the  same  libretto,  but  consistently  refused  to  admit 
that  there  was  any  rivalry  between  him  and  the  Italian;  Piccinni, 
who  had  his  share  of  talent  and  taste,  was  loud  in  his  admiration 
of  Gluck.  Eventually,  however,  the  unwilling  protagonists  were 
tricked  into  setting  the  same  libretto — Iphigenie  en  Tauride.  Piccinni 
offered  his  profound  apologies  to  Gluck,  and  the  whole  feud 
shortly  died  of  inanition.* 

Gluck  was  sixty-five  years  old  when  Iphigenie  en  Tauride,  the  last 
of  his  six  great  operas,  was  first  performed.  He  was  fortunate  in 
securing,  for  this  final  masterpiece,  the  best  libretto  he  ever  had, 
adapted  from  Euripides  with  singular  faithfulness  by  an  obscure 
poet,  Nicolas-Frangois  Guillard.  For  once,  Gluck  was  freed  from 
supplying  appropriate  music  to  absurd  mythological  hocus-pocus. 
The  story  is  refreshingly  straightforward:  when  Iphigenia  offers  to 
take  her  brother  Orestes5  place  on  the  sacrificial  altar,  her  nobility 
is  rewarded  by  the  gods;  she  is  rescued  by  Orestes'  faithful  friend, 
Pylades,  and  the  tyrant  who  had  ordered  the  sacrifice  is  slain.  Age 
had  steadied  rather  than  weakened  Gluck's  hand,  and  the  only 

*  The  Gluckists  claimed  the  victory,  for  Piccinni's  setting  of  Iphigenie  en  Tauride 
fell  far  short  of  Gluck' s — as  Piccinni  was  the  first  to  acknowledge. 


100  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

criticism  of  the  score  (if  criticism  it  be)  is  that  it  lacks  those  catchy 
melodies  which  have  served  to  keep  Gluck5  s  fame  alive  in  public 
esteem.  Otherwise  the  Tauric  Iphigenie  is  the  perfect  and  magnifi- 
cent realization  of  his  operatic  theories — simple  music  that  effec- 
tively, inevitably  clothes  the  text.  His  achievement  here  is  all  the 
more  impressive  since  several  of  the  most  dramatically  apt  num- 
bers were  borrowed  from  earlier  works,  borrowed  with  such  nicety 
of  discrimination  and  adapted  to  their  new  surroundings  with  such 
a  sure  touch  as  to  completely  transform  them. 

It  was  this  quality  of  intelligence,  of  seeing  the  shape  of  an  opera 
whole,  that  drove  Gluck  to  the  innovations  that  constitute  his 
historical  importance.  In  sheer  musical  genius  he  was  not  meas- 
urably superior  to  the  best  of  his  now  forgotten  contemporaries, 
except  in  the  few  instances  when  he  was  carried  beyond  his  own 
powers  by  the  force  of  the  drama.  His  actual  idiom  differs  but  little 
from  theirs,  and  so  there  is  no  exaggeration  in  Vernon  Lee's  judg- 
ment: c 'Musical  style,  in  its  musical  essentials,  was  unaltered  by 
Gluck5  s  reforms."  His  aims  were  all  in  the  direction  of  dramatic 
verity  and  continuity.  Stated  bluntly,  his  was  a  scissors-and-paste 
job:  he  moved  certain  elements  around,  dropped  others,  and  made 
inserts  of  his  own.  He  saw,  for  instance,  that  the  time-honored  da 
capo  aria,  with  its  automatic  reprise,  was  fatal  to  all  dramatic 
movement:  he  dropped  it.  He  saw  that  clavier-accompanied  reci- 
tative interrupting  the  orchestral  language  was  quite  as  fatal  to  his 
purpose:  he  dropped  the  clavier,  incidentally  creating  the  modern 
opera  conductor,  for  the  clavierist  had  previously  given  the  beat. 

Iphigenie  en  Tauride  was  Gluck' s  last  success — almost  his  last  effort. 
Shortly  afterwards,  he  wrote  Echo  et  Narcisse,  and  for  the  first  time 
in  years,  the  directors  of  the  Opera,  with  ominous  prescience, 
dared  to  bargain  with  him  about  the  price.  They  were  right:  Echo 
et  Narcisse  failed  miserably,  infuriating  Gluck  and  losing  money  for 
the  management.  He  would  have  fled  to  Vienna  at  once,  but  he 
was  in  bed  recovering  from  a  stroke  of  apoplexy.  He  was  worn  out 
from  hard  work  and  years  of  rich  food  and  drink:  the  lustrous  gray 
eyes  were  dimmed;  the  brown  hair  was  silvery  white,  the  thick 
bull  neck  withered,  the  towering  frame  stooped.  Before  reaching 
Vienna,  in  October,  1779,  he  suffered  several  more  slight  strokes. 

Gluck's  last  years  were  uneventful.  He  had  no  financial  worries: 
not  only  was  his  wife  wealthy,  but  he  had  himself  made  a  large 


GLUGK  101 

fortune.  Furthermore,  he  had  his  salary  as  court  composer  at 
Vienna  and  an  annual  pension  of  six  thousand  livres  from  Marie 
Antoinette,  which  he  had  been  drawing  since  1774.  He  and  his 
wife  lived  happily  if  rather  lonesomely  (their  adopted  daughter's 
death,  some  years  earlier,  had  affected  them  both  deeply)  in  a 
spacious  house  in  the  Rennweg.  They  occasionally  entertained 
with  some  splendor:  Catherine  the  Great's  son,  the  future  Paul  of 
Russia,  and  his  wife  called  in  1781,  and  the  next  year  the  Mozarts 
dined  with  them.  Nothing  resembling  the  friendship  between  Mo- 
zart and  Haydn  resulted,  but  the  two  composers  genuinely  ad- 
mired each  other:  Gluck  listened  to  Die  Entfuhrung  aus  dem  Serail 
with  sympathetic  delight;  Mozart  haunted  the  rehearsals  oflfkige- 
nie  en  Tauride  (not  disdaining  to  get  a  few  pointers  for  Don  Giovanni}., 
and  even  composed  a  set  of  variations  on  a  Gluck  theme. 

Musically,  Gluck  was  all  but  comatose.  He  toyed  with  the  idea 
of  writing  music  for  one  more  Calzabigi  libretto — Les  Danaides — 
but  abandoned  it  shortly,  turning  it  over  generously  (but  without 
the  playwright's  authorization)  to  his  protege,  Antonio  Salieri, 
whom  he  allowed  to  announce  the  work  as  a  joint  product  of  their 
pens.  When  the  opera  was  a  hit,  Gluck  was  even  more  kind  to 
Salieri:  he  publicly  stated  that  his  only  share  in  the  work  had  been 
advice.  But  when  the  rightfully  indignant  Calzabigi  protested 
against  this  highhanded  use  of  his  libretto,  Gluck  was  silent.  He 
had  nothing  to  say — there  was  no  effective  defense  possible,  and 
besides,  he  was  too  ill  to  reply.  He  now  saw  no  one.  Under  the 
strictest  medical  care  because  of  recurring  strokes,  he  was  de- 
prived of  the  last  pleasures  of  the  aged.  This  was  worse  than  death 
to  Gluck,  and  one  day  when  his  wife's  back  was  turned,  he  downed 
a  liqueur.  Feeling  nothing  the  worse,  he  went  for  a  drive.  Before 
reaching  home,  he  had  another  seizure,  and  before  the  day  was- 
over  he  was  dead.  It  was  November  15,  1787,  and  Gluck  was 
seventy-three  years  old. 


Chapter  V 

Franz  Josef  Haydn 

(Rohrau,  March  31,  1732-May  31,  1809,  Vienna) 


IN  1795  England  was  well  embarked  on  that  bloody  and  pro- 
tracted strife  with  France  that  was  to  end  on  the  field  of  Water- 
loo some  twenty  years  later.  It  was  a  black  year,  characterized  by 
bread  riots  and  widespread  famine.  There  were  threats  against  the 
life  of  the  younger  Pitt,  whose  indomitable  spirit  alone  kept  the 
war  going.  In  October,  a  hungry  mob  howled  at  poor  crazy  George 
III  on  his  way  to  open  Parliament.  Everyone  except  the  ministry 
wanted  peace,  and  it  seemed  that  the  brave  English  nation  could 
think  of  nothing  but  its  misery.  Parliament  was  the  scene  of  acri- 
monious debate  on  matters  of  the  gravest  import.  And  yet,  at  a 
time  when  the  most  trivial  motion  was  made  a  pretext  for  embar- 
rassing the  government  in  the  voting,  the  battling  Whigs  and  To- 
ries agreed  to  honor  an  Austrian*  composer's  claim  for  one  hundred 
guineas.  For  the  creditor  was  Franz  Josef  Haydn,  who  had  lately 
given  the  people  of  England  such  musical  fare  as  they  had  not  en- 
joyed since  the  days  of  George  Frideric  Handel. 

Of  course,  some  of  the  more  old-fashioned  squires  may  have 
muttered  that  the  bill  was  not  in  the  best  of  taste.  It  was  well 
known  that  Herr  Haydn  had  carried  away  a  small  fortune  from 
the  island,  not  to  speak  of  a  talking  bird  of  inestimable  value.  A 
more  fastidious  man,  going  off  with  such  spoils,  might  well  have 
hesitated  to  bill  the  royal  family  for  the  unique  honor  of  appearing 
at  twenty- six  command  performances. 

But  the  truth  is  that  the  excellent  businessman  who  presented 
the  claim  was  anything  but  a  fastidious  gentleman.  He  was  a  peas- 
ant, with  a  peasant's  shrewdness  and  realism  about  money  matters. 
That  is  the  fundamental  thing  to  remember  about  Josef  Haydn, 
Mus.  D.  (Oxon),  Kapellmeister  to  His  Serene  Highness  Prince 
Esterhazy,  and  the  music  that  he  made.  Even  in  his  silkiest  peruke 
and  most  brocaded  court  suit  he  never  forgot  his  poor  and  humble 
origins  and,  far  from  trying  to  gloss  them  over,  proudly  described 

*  The  idea  that  Haydn  had  some  Croatian  blood  has  now  been  thoroughly 
discredited. 


102 


HAYDN  IO3 

Mmself  as  something  made  from  nothing.  His  father  was  a  wheel- 
wright, his  mother  a  cook;  both  families  were  completely  undis- 
tinguished. 

Haydn's  father  lived  at  Rohrau,  in  Lower  Austria,  and  there,  in 
a  poor,  almost  squalid,  house  that  is  still  standing,  the  composer 
was  born  on  March  31,  1732.  Both  of  his  parents  loved  music,  the 
father  playing  the  harp  by  ear.  Their  leisure  hours  were  often  spent 
ringing  the  local  folk  melodies  that  Haydn  himself  was  to  use  as 
thematic  material.  The  child  showed  such  a  lively  interest  in  this 
Tiomemade  music,  and  sang  so  sweetly,  that  at  the  age  of  six  he 
was  carried  off  to  near-by  Hamburg  by  a  distant  relative  who 
there  served  as  schoolteacher  and  choirmaster.  His  preceptor, 
though  unnecessarily  harsh,  grounded  him  in  the  fundamentals  of 
violin  and  clavier,  and  trained  his  voice  so  well  that  two  years 
later,  when  the  music  director  of  St.  Stephen's  at  Vienna  was  pass- 
ing through  Hamburg,  and  heard  Haydn  sing,  he  asked  to  have 
the  boy  for  his  choir.  Permission  was  granted,  and  Haydn  became 
a  Viennese  at  the  age  of  eight. 

So  much  legend  has  clustered  around  Haydn's  life  in  St.  Ste- 
phen's choir  school  that  it  is  no  longer  possible  to  disentangle  fact 
from  fiction.  Boiled  down  to  their  bare  essentials,  these  often  point- 
less stories  testify  not  only  to  his  extreme  poverty,  but  also  to  his 
intense  love  of  music.  The  choirmaster,  whose  sole  interest  was  to 
keep  his  establishment  running  on  the  smallest  possible  amount  of 
money,  did  little  to  encourage  Haydn's  obvious  talent.  He  was  a 
cruel  and  exacting  slave  driver,  and  it  is  amazing  that  his  stern,  re- 
pressive measures  did  not  crush  the  boy's  high  spirits.  There  was 
never  any  love  lost  between  the  two,  and  when  Maria  Theresa 
complained  of  Haydn's  voice,  which  was  beginning  to  break,  the 
choirmaster  was  glad  to  seize  upon  the  first  pretext  for  dismissing 
him.  When  Haydn  was  accommodating  enough  to  cut  off  another 
chorister's  pigtail,  and  was  summarily  thrown  out,  the  director 
doubtless  congratulated  himself  on  having  washed  his  hands  of  an 
insolent  practical  joker. 

Thus,  at  the  age  of  seventeen,  Haydn  found  himself  alone  and 
friendless  in  the  streets  of  Vienna.  This  was  not  quite  so  bad  as  it 
sounds,  for  though  almost  a  century  was  to  elapse  before  Johann 
Strauss  made  Vienna  the  symbol  of  Schwarmrei,  it  was  already  the 
scene  of  gaiety  and  good  fellowship.  Musicians  of  all  ranks  enter- 


1O4  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

tained  their  patrons  and  friends  with  open-air  serenades,  often, 
scored  for  full  orchestra.  Vienna  was  organized  like  a  luxury  liner, 
with  half  the  population  devoted  to  the  full-time  business  of  enter- 
taining a  benevolently  disposed  nobility.  The  streets  were  full  of 
friendly  people,  who  were  too  busy  having  a  good  time  to  stand  on 
ceremony.  One  of  them — a  tenor  with  a  wife  and  child — met 
Haydn  disconsolately  roaming  about,  and  generously  offered  him 
a  bunk  in  his  humble  attic.  For  three  years  Haydn's  efforts  to  stave 
off  hunger  were  no  more  interesting  or  distinguished  than  those  of 
any  young  man  in  his  position:  he  sang  in  church  choirs,  took  part 
in  street  serenades,  and  helped  out  the  music  at  weddings,  funer- 
als, and  other  festal  occasions.  All  this  time  he  studied  hard:  he 
learned  theory  backward  and  forward,  and  practiced  the  clavier. 
He  got  hold  of  six  of  Karl  Philipp  Emanuel  Bach's  clavier  sonatas, 
and  studied  them  so  thoroughly  that  they  became  the  backbone 
of  his  own  style.  In  crystallizing  the  sonata  form,  Karl  Philipp 
Emanuel  had  in  one  respect  outdone  his  illustrious  father,  who 
evolved  nothing,  but  perfected  forms  already  at  hand.  Haydn  him- 
self, in  both  his  quartets  and  symphonies,  developed  the  new  form 
far  beyond  anything  achieved  earlier,  but  its  fundamental  archi- 
tecture he  owed  to  the  pioneer.  Quick  to  give  praise  where  it  was 
due,  he  freely  admitted  this  debt,  and  Bach  returned  the  compli- 
ment by  proclaiming  Haydn  his  one  true  disciple. 

Spurred  on  by  his  studies  in  theory  and  his  increasing  command 
of  instrumental  resources,  Haydn  had  begun  to  compose.  Most  of 
his  very  early  works,  including  a  comic  opera  for  which  he  re- 
ceived the  splendid  sum  of  twenty-five  ducats,  are  lost.  An  indif- 
ferent Mass,  for  which,  as  one  of  his  firstborn,  Haydn  had  a  sneak- 
ing partiality,  survives.  It  must  be  admitted  that  these  first  flights 
add  little  to  his  stature  as  a  composer,  and  at  the  time  added  less  to 
his  purse.  He  even  had  to  accept  menial  jobs  to  make  ends  me.et. 
For  several  years  he  gave  music  lessons  to  a  young  Spanish  blue- 
stocking whose  general  education  was  being  supervised  by  "the 
divine  Metastasio."  Haydn's  meeting  with  this  stuffy  but  kindly 
old  bachelor  set  in  motion  a  train  of  events  that  determined  the 
entire  course  of  his  life.  For  Metastasio  introduced  him  to  another 
stuffy  old  bachelor,  Niccola  Porpora,  "the  greatest  singing  master 
that  ever  lived."  Haydn  aspired  to  study  with  him,  but  had  noth- 
ing to  offer  in  payment  except  his  services  as  valet  and  accom- 


HAYDN  IO5 

panist.  Porpora,  whose  penny  pinching  was  notorious,  drove  the 
hardest  possible  bargain. 

Working  for  Porpora  was  probably  the  toughest  job  Haydn  ever 
filled.  Porpora  was  an  irascible  old  man,  embittered  by  his  fruit- 
less rivalry  with  Handel,  unsuccessful  quest  for  high  preferment, 
and  the  obvious  truth  that  his  great  days  were  mostly  behind  him. 
Haydn  had  to  bear  the  brunt  of  his  spleen.  But  between  brushing 
the  maestro^  filthy  clothes  and  accompanying  the  Venetian  ambas- 
sador's mistress  at  her  singing  lessons,  he  somehow  managed  to 
get  the  information  he  wanted.  George  Sand  has  amusingly  em- 
broidered the  few  facts  known  about  this  strange  relationship  in 
her  long  but  rewarding  musical  novel,  Consuelo.  Although  Haydn, 
with  his  usual  generosity,  admitted  his  debt  to  Porpora,  it  was 
actually  less  artistic  than  social — through  him  he  met  many  wealthy 
noblemen  and  celebrities,  among  them  Gluck,  already  famous  for 
a  long  series  of  conventional  operas,  but  not  yet  embarked  on  his 
stormy  career  as  a  reformer.  More  important  to  Haydn  was  a  rich 
Austrian  squire,  Karl  von  Fiirnberg. 

Von  Fiirnberg,  a  man  of  artistic  tastes,  who  entertained  lavishly 
at  his  country  house  outside  Vienna,  invited  the  needy  young  man. 
to  assume  the  direction  of  the  music  at  Weinzierl.  Haydn  accepted 
with  alacrity,  and  in  1755  initiated  his  long  career  as  a  household 
musician.  He  was  at  Weinzierl  less  than  a  year,  but  in  that  brief 
time  wrote  a  series  of  eighteen  pieces  for  strings,  which  he  labeled 
indifferently  divertimenti,  nocturnes,  and  cassations.  Basing  them 
on  the  conventional  orchestral  suite,  he  gradually  refashioned 
them  in  the  light  of  the  formal  hints  he  had  taken  from  the  sonatas 
of  Karl  Philipp  Emanuel  Bach.  In  this  way,  Haydn  slowly  made 
something  new  out  of  the  suite,  bringing  into  being,  according  to 
the  instruments  used,  his  conceptions  of  the  string  quartet  and  the 
symphony.  Naturally,  he  did  not  effect  this  transformation  at  one 
sitting  or  without  getting  ideas  from  other  composers:  the  gap  be- 
tween one  of  the  Weinzierl  pieces  and  the  "Oxford"  Symphony  of 
his  last  period  is  enormous.  He  made  many  false  starts  (some  of 
them  delightful)  before  evolving  the  four-movement  symphony 
and  quartet  that  until  yesterday  were  the  formal  norms  for  these 
media. 

Haydn  returned  to  Vienna  with  money  in  his  pocket  and  pres- 
tige increased.  He  came  perilously  near  to  becoming  a  fashionable 


IO6  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

singing  and  clavier  teacher.  After  three  years,  during  which  he 
seems  to  have  sacrificed  his  creative  ambitions  to  ready-money 
teaching  and  performing  jobs,  he  was  rescued  by  Von  Fiirnberg, 
who  recommended  him  to  Count  Maximilian  von  Morzin,  a  Bo- 
hemian grandee  who  kept  a  country  establishment  far  beyond  his 
means.  Von  Morzin  engaged  Haydn  as  his  music  director  and 
composer  at  the  niggardly  salary  of  two  hundred  florins  yearly — 
about  $100.  His  new  master  kept  him  a  scant  two  years,  during 
which  he  returned  to  composition,  producing  a  mass  of  miscella- 
neous pieces  that  have  mostly  been  forgotten. 

Now  twenty-eight  years  old,  and  good  Viennese  bourgeois  he 
had  become,  Haydn  bethought  himself  of  taking  a  wife.  There 
were  three  stumbling  blocks  in  the  way  of  his  marriage:  his  stipend 
was  too  meager  to  support  even  a  frugal  bachelor;  Count  von 
Morzin  never  kept  a  married  man  in  his  employ,  and  the  girl  of 
Haydn's  choice — a  barber's  younger  daughter — entered  a  convent. 
None  of  these  warnings  could  shake  his  determination:  he  wanted 
to  get  married,  and  nothing  could  stop  him.  Accordingly,  when 
the  calculating  barber  suggested  his  elder  daughter  as  a  second 
choice,  Haydn  rose  to  the  bait.  On  November  26,  1760,  he  led  the 
elder  Fraulein  Keller  to  the  altar.  She  was  three  years  his  senior — 
and  a  highly  unreasonable  woman.  From  the  beginning,  this  love- 
less marriage  was  doomed  to  failure.  Fortunately,  Haydn  was  not 
a  very  emotional  man,  and  marrying  a  harridan  could  not  break 
his  spirit.  There  were  no  children  to  hold  them  together,  and  after 
a  few  years  a  separation  was  quietly  arranged,  though  he  con- 
tinued to  support  her. 

Von  Morzin  had  no  opportunity  to  apply  to  his  musical  director 
his  odd  rule  about  married  men.  His  creditors  denied  him  that 
luxury.  Early  in  1761,  he  was  obliged  to  retrench,  and  his  musi- 
cians were  among  the  first  dismissed.  Luckily  for  Haydn,  just  be- 
fore the  collapse  Prince  Pal  Antal  Esterh^zy  visited  Von  Morzin, 
and  was  greatly  impressed  by  Haydn's  compositions  and  by  his 
conduct  of  the  band.  He  at  once  offered  him  a  place  in  his  own 
musical  establishment,  and  so,  when  he  was  dismissed,  Haydn 
went  almost  immediately  to  the  EsterMzy  estate  at  Eisenstadt. 

Haydn  was  to  remain  in  the  service  of  the  Esterhazys  until  the 
dawn  of  the  nineteenth  century.  Because  of  the  medieval  temper 
of  the  Hungarian  squirearchy,  as  well  as  the  idiosyncrasies  of  his 


HAYDN  IO7 

masters,  he  was  practically  a  prisoner  in  the  country  for  almost 
thirty  years.  Very  occasionally,  when  he  had  an  acute  attack  of 
wanderlust,  he  resented  this  enforced  isolation.  But  he  was  not  a 
man  to  beat  his  wings  against  the  bars  in  senseless  fretting — he  was 
inclined  to  take  life  as  he  found  it.  As  a  peasant  who  had  come  up 
in  the  world,  homely  philosophy  was  definitely  his  line,  and  he 
almost  invariably  stuck  to  it.  A  Beethoven  or  a  Mozart  could  not 
have  brooked  the  soul-sapping  monotony  of  petty  court  life — either 
they  would  have  revolted  by  running  away,  or  would  have  stifled 
their  anguish  in  tragic  masterpieces.  But  Haydn  was  content,  even 
when  his  fame  had  spread  throughout  Europe,  to  remain  the  per- 
fect upper  servant  perfectly  performing  his  daily  duties. 

Judged  by  ordinary  standards,  Haydn  was  emotionally  a  vege- 
table. After  leaving  Rohrau  at  the  age  of  six,  he  seems  to  have 
displayed  only  the  most  perfunctory  interest  in  his  parents.  Their 
deaths  apparently  left  him  untouched.  His  attitude  toward  his 
brothers,  two  of  whom  were  musicians,  might  be  described  as  one 
of  polite  interest.  As  we  have  seen,  his  marriage  was  entered  into 
without  romance,  and  turned  out  a  complete  failure.  He  was  far 
advanced  in  his  forties  before  he  really  fell  in  love,  if  indeed  such  a 
strong  term  can  be  applied  to  his  businesslike  passion  for  a  young 
married  woman,  almost  thirty  years  his  junior.  In  fact,  Haydn's 
recorded  connections  with  women  invariably  have  a  touch  of  the 
comic  about  them. 

A  clue  to  Haydn's  sparse  emotional  life  is  to  be  found  both  in  the 
wearisome  multiplicity  of  his  official  duties  and  in  the  very  quality 
of  the  vast  amount  of  music  he  composed.  To  paraphrase  Buffon, 
the  music  was  the  man.  He  was  well  balanced,  genial,  sensible,  a 
little  pedantic,  and  did  not  wear  his  genius  on  his  sleeve.  In  short, 
just  the  sort  of  person  to  get  along  with  a  temperamental  master 
and  win  the  affection  of  his  colleagues — the  perfect  Kapellmeister. 
There  was  something  in  Josef  Haydn  that  liked  being  a  fun-C- 
tionary :  he  took  even  the  deification  he  underwent  in  his  old  age  as 
the  just  deserts  of  a  man  who  had  done  his  job  faithfully  and  well. 

When  Haydn  first  took  up  his  residence  at  Eisenstadt>  he  found 
his  duties  comparatively  light.  The  musical  establishment  was 
small,  and  besides,  he  was  at  first  only  assistant  Kapellmeister.  In  less 
than  a  year,  however,  Prince  Pal  Antal  died,  and  was  succeeded 
by  his  more  ostentatious  brother,  who  immediately  began  to  ex- 


IO8  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

pand  in  all  directions.  His  Serene  Highness  Prince  Miklds  Jozsef 
Esterhazy  of  GaHnta,  Knight  of  the  Golden  Fleece,  was  known, 
with  the  curious  understatement  of  the  eighteenth  century,  as  "the 
Magnificent."  Decked  out  in  his  renowned  diamond-studded  uni- 
form, he  would  be  perfectly  at  home  on  a  De  Mille  set.  When  he 
made  his  triumphal  entry  into  Eisenstadt  after  succeeding  to  his 
resounding  title,  the  festivities  lasted  a  month,  and  were  on  an  im- 
perial scale. 

But  Prince  Miklds  had  something  more  than  a  baroque  side  to 
his  nature.  Like  all  the  Esterhazys,  he  loved  music,  and  wanted  his 
artists  to  be  the  best  in  Europe.  Accordingly,  when  his  old  Kapell- 
meister died  in  1766,  he  promoted  Haydn  to  the  post.  It  turned  out 
that  this  was  a  far  more  important  position  than  his  predecessor 
had  held,  for  Haydn  was  soon  presiding  over  the  musical  house- 
hold of  the  most  spectacular  country  place  east  of  Versailles.  In 
1764  the  Prince,  bored  with  his  two-hundred-room  manor  at 
Eisenstadt,  had  begun  a  vast  Renaissance  cMteau  directly  in- 
spired by  a  visit  to  Versailles.  Whether  Prince  Miklds  actually 
aimed  at  putting  Louis  XV's  nose  out  of  joint  will  never  be  known, 
but  it  is  certain  that  he  dropped  eleven  million  gulden  transform- 
ing an  unhealthy  marsh  about  thirty  miles  from  Eisenstadt  into 
the  fairy  palace  of  Esterhaz.  The  cleverest  gardeners  worked 
miracles  with  its  unpromising  environs,  strewing  them  with  the 
elegant  commonplaces  of  eighteenth-century  landscaping:  grot- 
toes, hermitages,  classical  temples,  kiosks,  artificial  waterfalls,  and 
— of  course — a  maze.  The  park  was  copiously  stocked  with  game; 
the  streams  were  sluggish  with  fish.  But  more  important  than  these 
were  the  spendthrift  provisions  for  musical  and  theatrical  enter- 
tainment: the  opera  house  accommodating  four  hundred  spec- 
tators and  the  marionette  theater  equipped  with  every  imaginable 
contrivance. 

As  Kapellmeister  of  one  of  the  most  hospitable  magnificoes  of  the 
age,  Haydn  held  no  sinecure.  The  detail  work  was  tremendous, 
and  despite  his  fertility,  composing  must  have  taken  up  only  a 
tithe  of  his  time.  To  get  a  picture  of  Haydn's  schedule,  imagine 
Toscanini  composing  almost  everything  he  plays,  acting  as  music 
librarian,  seeing  that  the  instruments  are  in  repair,  and  sending 
written  reports  of  his  players5  conduct  to  the  board  of  directors 
of  the  National  Broadcasting  Company.  Even  when  the  master  was 


HAYDN 

away,  Haydn  had  to  give  two  concerts  a  week  to  guarantee  against 
the  musicians  absenting  themselves  without  leave,  and  to  keep 
them  in  concert  trim.  And  when  Prince  Miklds  had  a  houseful  of 
distinguished  guests  (which  was  much  of  the  time),  Haydn's  duties 
kept  him  on  the  run  from  early  morning  until  the  last  candle  was 
snuffed. 

Haydn  spent  almost  a  quarter  of  a  century  at  Esterhaz,  oc- 
cupying three  rooms  in  the  servants*  wing.  His  relations  with  the 
Prince  were  as  warm  as  the  difference  in  their  ranks  allowed. 
True,  while  still  assistant  Kapellmeister,  Haydn  had  been  repri- 
manded for — of  all  things — dilatory  attention  to  his  duties.  And 
once  he  made  the  tactical  blunder  of  mastering  the  baryton,  a  kind 
of  viola  da  gamba  on  which  his  master  fancied  himself  a  virtuoso. 
Instead  of  being  pleased,  the  Prince  was  annoyed  to  find  a  rival  in 
the  field.  Haydn  then  showed  his  native  diplomacy  by  abandoning 
the  baryton  except  to  write  some  two  hundred  pieces  for  it,  pieces 
carefully  calculated  not  to  expose  the  Prince's  limitations.  He  was 
unfeignedly  fond  of  his  patron.  After  Prince  Miklds'  death,  he 
wrote: 

"My  Prince  was  always  satisfied  with  my  works;  I  not  only  had 
the  encouragement  of  constant  approval,  but  as  conductor  of  an 
orchestra  I  could  make  experiments,  observe  what  produced  an 
effect  and  what  weakened  it,  and  was  thus  in  a  position  to  im- 
prove, alter,  make  additions  or  omissions,  and  be  as  bold  as  I 
pleased;  I  was  cut  off  from  the  world,  there  was  no  one  to  confuse 
or  torment  me,  and  I  was  forced  to  become  original" 

Between  Haydn  and  his  musicians  the  friendliest  feelings  always 
prevailed.  The  junior  members  of  his  staff,  many  of  whom  studied 
with  him,  were  the  first  to  refer  to  him  as  "Papa  Haydn."  In  truth, 
he  was  a  father  to  all  his  musicians,  and  was  always  ready  to  plead 
their  case.  One  of  the  more  delicate  subjects  was  obtaining  leave  for 
the  men,  practically  cut  off  from  their  families  by  the  Prince's 
morbid  affection  for  Esterhaz.  With  rare  humorous  tact,  Haydn 
once  presented  a  vacation  plea  by  writing  the  "Farewell"  Sym- 
phony, in  the  finale  of  which  the  men  blew  out  the  candles  on 
their  music  stands,  and  stole  out,  one  by  one.  Until,  as  Michel 
Brenet  says,  "Haydn,  alone  at  his  desk  was  preparing,  not  without 
anxiety,  to  go  out  too,  when  Nicolas  Esterhazy  called  him  and 


IIO  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

announced  that  he  had  understood  the  musicians5  request  and 
that  they  might  leave  the  next  day."* 

But  though  Haydn  and  his  men  craved  an  occasional  vacation, 
life  at  Esterhaz  was  not  too  monotonous,  and  working  conditions 
were — for  the  period — excellent.  Haydn  went  to  work  originally 
for  four  hundred  florins  a  year,  a  figure  which  was  almost  doubled 
before  Prince  Miklds  died.  Considering  that  he  had  no  personal  ex- 
penses, the  fact  that  he  saved  a  mere  pittance  during  a  quarter 
century  at  Esterhaz  is  eloquent  of  an  extravagant  wife.  But  Frau 
Haydn  was  not  entirely  to  blame.  When  the  composer  was  almost 
fifty,  he  became  involved  with  the  wife  of  one  of  his  violinists. 
Little  Signora  Polzelli,  a  vocalist  briefly  employed  at  Esterhaz,  was 
only  nineteen  when  Haydn  met  her.  She  did  not  love  her  husband, 
and  there  is  little  evidence  that  she  cared  for  the  bluff  old  Austrian. 
Soon,  however,  things  came  to  such  a  pass  that  the  lovers  were  ex- 
changing pledges  that  they  would  wed  when  death  released  them 
from  their  partners.  Polzelli  died  after  a  polite  interval,  but 
Haydn's  wife  was  disobliging  enough  to  linger  until  1800,  at  which 
time  the  now  rather  faded  siren  got  Haydn  to  sign  a  promise  to 
leave  her  an  annuity  of  three  hundred  florins.  Whereupon  she 
married  an  Italian,  for  the  money  had  been  her  only  object  all 
along.  Before  forcing  the  promise  of  an  annuity,  she  had  for  years 
been  milking  Haydn,  probably  on  the  strength  of  an  old  indiscre- 
tion. Only  once  did  he  complain,  after  he  had  sent  her  six  hundred 
florins  in  one  year. 

The  affaire  Polzelli  seems  to  have  been  the  only  wild  oat  Haydn 
sowed  at  Esterhaz.  His  mere  routine  duties  ruled  out  excesses; 
the  special  entertainments  for  the  Prince's  eminent  guests  made 
self-denial  mandatory.  The  gallant  Prince  Louis  de  Rohan,  later 
the  scapegoat  of  the  "affair  of  the  diamond  necklace,"  stopped  at 
Esterhaz  in  1772,  and  delighted  his  host  by  comparing  the  cMteau 
to  Versailles.  The  next  year,  Maria  Theresa  was  entertained  at  a 
three-day  festival,  for  which  Haydn  composed  the  delightful  sym- 
phony that  still  bears  her  name.  And  so  it  went,  with  the  palace  a 
scene  of  constant  revelry  and  music-making.  Or  Prince  Miklds 
might  tear  himself  away  from  Esterhaz  for  the  pleasure  of  exhibit- 
ing his  band  and  its  increasingly  famous  leader.  Sometimes  he 

*  In  1939  the  Boston  Symphony  Orchestra,  attired  in  eighteenth-century  cos- 
tume, enacted  this  scene,  with  Dr,  Koussevitzky  as  Haydn. 


HAYDN  III 

took  them  to  Pressburg,  where  the  Hungarian  diet  met;  one  year 
they  went  to  the  imperial  palace  at  Schonbrunn,  where  Haydn 
conducted  one  of  his  own  operas  as  well  as  the  music  at  a  state 
dinner.  When  the  Grand  Duke  Paul  of  Russia  visited  Vienna  in 
1781,  Prince  Miklds  and  his  orchestra  were  on  hand.  Some  of 
Haydn's  operas  were  performed,  and  the  indefatigable  Kapell- 
meister composed  the  six  "Russian"  Quartets  in  Paul's  honor.  The 
Grand  Duchess,  who  was  extremely  fond  of  his  music,  presented 
Haydn  with  a  diamond-studded  addition  to  his  already  imposing 
collection  of  royal  and  noble  snuffboxes. 

But  infinitely  more  important  than  Haydn's  contacts  with  the 
most  imposing  stuffed  shirts  of  the  era  was  his  meeting  with 
Mozart.  This  was  more  than  a  mere  momentary  crossing  of  paths. 
It  was  a  mutual  recognition  of  genius  that  affected  the  work  of 
both  men,  and  thus  left  an  imperishable  mark  on  music.  Each  had 
something  of  the  highest  value  for  the  other,  and  it  is  no  mere 
coincidence  that  their  masterpieces  were  composed  after  their 
meeting.  They  saw  each  other  rarely,  but  for  collectors  of  great 
moments  be  it  known  that  on  at  least  two  occasions  they  sat  down 
to  play  quartets  together,  once  with  Karl  Ditters  von  Dittersdorf 
and  their  now  forgotten  rival,  Johann  Baptist  Wanhal. 

And  so  the  years  passed  gently  over  Haydn's  head.  Suddenly,  in 
September,  1790,  Prince  Miklds  died,  and  the  world  Haydn  had 
known  for  almost  thirty  years  came  to  an  end.  The  new  Prince,  less 
interested  in  the  arts  than  most  of  the  Esterhazys,  disbanded  the 
musicians — and  Haydn,  at  fifty-eight,  was  out  of  a  job.  This  was  no 
great  tragedy,  for  his  beloved  patron  had  left  him  an  annual  pen- 
sion of  one  thousand  florins,  to  which  Prince  Antal  now  generously 
added  four  hundred  more.  It  might  seem  that  with  an  assured 
annual  income  of  almost  twice  his  stipend  from  Prince  Miklds, 
Haydn  was  better  off  financially  than  ever.  But  this  was  not  the 
case.  Not  only  did  the  bonuses  Prince  Miklds  had  given  him  for 
special  compositions  cease,  but  also  he  was  obliged  to  live  at  his 
own  expense.  And  life  in  Vienna,  to  which  he  naturally  gravi- 
tated, was  expensive.  On  the  other  hand,  his  already  great  fame 
brought  many  pupils  flocking  to  his  door,  and  considerable  sums 
were  coming  in  from  his  publishers. 

For  the  man  who  had  once  been  reprimanded  for  loafing  on  the 
job  had  really  produced  during  his  life  at  Esterhaz  a  vast  body  of 


112  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

compositions.  Unlike  Hasse,  who  may  possibly  have  been  cheated 
of  immortality  when  the  great  Dresden  fire  destroyed  almost  all  his 
manuscripts,  Haydn,  though  he  lost  many  scores  in  a  fire  at  Ester- 
haz  in  1779,  had  already  published  so  much  that  his  fame  would 
have  been  secure  if  he  had  never  written  another  note.  Roughly 
speaking,  while  there  he  had  composed  over  twenty  operas,  about 
ninety  symphonies,  and  more  than  sixty  quartets,  besides  small 
orchestral  works,  pieces  for  clavier  and  other  solo  instruments  (in- 
cluding a  glass  harmonica  and  a  musical  cloc1*),  chamber  music  of 
all  varieties,  and  Masses  and  other  works  for  solo  and  concerted 
voices. 

Almost  without  exception,  Haydn's  early  vocal  works  are  now 
outside  the  living  repertoire,  if,  indeed,  they  were  ever  in  it.  Most 
of  them  were  written  to  be  performed  at  Esterhaz,  and  were  born 
and  died  there.  Haydn  himself  seems  to  have  had  mixed  feelings 
about  the  operas.  On  the  one  hand,  he  could  write  with  naive  con- 
ceit to  his  Viennese  publisher:  "If  only  the  French  could  know  my 
operetta  Ulsola  disabitata  and  my  last  opera  La  Fedelta  premiatal  I 
am  sure  such  works  have  never  yet  been  heard  in  Paris,  perhaps 
not  even  in  Vienna."  The  answer  is  that  by  1781,  when  this  letter 
was  written,  the  French  and  the  Austrians  had  heard  far  too  many 
such  operas,  and  Gluck  had  already  won  his  battle  against  them. 
Haydn,  who  had  been  taught  to  write  opera  according  to  the  old- 
fashioned  recipes  of  Alessandro  Scarlatti  and  Hasse,  was  in  a  saner 
frame  of  mind  six  years  later,  when  he  was  invited  to  compose  an 
opera  for  Prague: 

"You  ask  me  for  a  comic  light  opera,"  he  wrote.  "Certainly,  if 
you  are  willing  to  reserve  for  private  use  some  vocal  work  of  my 
composition.  But  if  it  is  intended  for  performance  in  the  theater  at 
Prague,  then  I  cannot  serve  you,  for  all  my  operas  are  written  for 
the  special  conditions  of  Esterhaz,  and  could  not  produce  else- 
where the  effect  I  have  calculated  upon  for  this  setting.  It  would 
be  otherwise  if  I  had  the  inestimable  good  fortune  to  be  able  to 
compose  for  your  theater  upon  a  completely  new  libretto.  Though, 
there  again,  I  should  run  too  many  risks,  for  it  would  be  difficult 
for  anyone — no  matter  whom — to  equal  the  great  Mozart.  That  is 
why  I  wish  that  all  music  lovers,  especially  the  influential,  could 
know  the  inimitable  works  of  Mozart  with  a  profundity,  a  musical 
knowledge,  and  a  keen  appreciation  equal  to  my  own.  Then  the 


HAYDN  113 

nations  would  compete  for  possession  of  such  a  treasure.  Prague 
must  hold  fast  so  precious  a  man — and  reward  him.  For  without 
that,  the  history  of  a  great  genius  is  a  sad  one,  and  gives  posterity 
little  encouragement  to  follow  the  same  course.  That  is  why  so 
much  fine  and  hopeful  talent  unfortunately  perishes.  I  am  full  of 
anger  when  I  think  that  this  unique  genius  is  not  yet  attached  to  a 
royal  or  imperial  court.  Forgive  this  outburst:  I  love  the  man 
too  much." 

Haydn's  affection  for  Mozart  was  reciprocated.  In  1790,  when 
he  was  invited  to  visit  London,  Mozart  tried  to  dissuade  him  from 
going.  "Oh,  Papa!"  he  exclaimed  (though  momentarily  he  seemed 
like  the  wise  parent),  "you  have  had  no  education  for  the  wide, 
wide  world,  and  you  speak  too  few  languages." 

"My  language  is  understood  all  over  the  world,"  Haydn  replied 
dryly.  For  he  was  determined  to  go.  Salomon,  the  London  im- 
presario, had  suddenly  burst  in  upon  him  several  days  before, 
saying,  "I  have  come  from  London  to  fetch  you.  We  will  settle 
terms  tomorrow."  That  morrow  came,  and  like  Satan  displaying 
the  nations  of  the  world  from  the  mountaintop,  Salomon  unrolled 
his  little  plan.  Haydn  heard,  was  tempted,  and  fell.  Salomon 
guaranteed  him  £900  if  he  would  make  the  trip.  The  only  diffi- 
culty, from  Haydn's  point  of  view,  was  that  he  had  to  pay  his  own 
traveling  expenses.  However,  Prince  Esterhazy  advanced  him  the 
money,  and  after  providing  for  his  wife  by  selling  a  little  house  in 
Eisenstadt  that  Prince  Miklds  had  given  him,  Haydn  set  out  for 
London  in  mid-December.  Mozart,  on  hand  to  see  him  off,  burst 
into  tears.  "This  is  good-by,"  he  sobbed.  "We  shall  never  meet 
again."  And,  indeed,  before  Haydn  returned  to  Vienna  Mozart 
was  dead. 

At  fifty-eight,  the  composer  set  out  on  his  travels  with  the  na'ive 
curiosity  of  a  child.  The  Channel  crossing  was  rough.  "I  remained 
on  deck  during  the  whole  passage,"  he  wrote,  "in  order  to  gaze  my 
fill  at  that  huge  monster,  the  ocean.  So  long  as  it  was  calm,  I  had 
no  fears,  but  when  at  length  a  violent  wind  began  to  blow,  rising 
every  minute  ...  I  was  seized  with  a  little  alarm  and  a  little  in- 
disposition." He  landed  at  Dover,  and  arrived  in  London  on  New 
Year's  Day,  1791.  He  was  received  like  a  sovereign  prince:  his 
fame  had  been  trumpeted  before  him,  and  the  clever  Salomon 
had  used  the  press  to  raise  public  interest  to  fever  pitch.  His  lodg- 


114  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

ings  were  besieged  by  ambassadors  and  great  nobles,  and  invita- 
tions came  pouring  in  by  the  hundreds.  The  inescapable  Dr. 
Burney  called,  and  firmly  presented  him  with  an  ode  of  welcome, 
In  view  of  the  fact  that  the  terms  of  his  contract  called  for  twenty 
especially  written  compositions,  including  six  symphonies,  he 
finally  had  to  move  into  the  country  to  elude  his  pertinacious 
admirers.  Unhappily  he  had  arrived  in  the  midst  of  one  of  those 
wars  of  the  impresarios  in  which  Handel  had  received  so  many 
noble  scars,  and  thus  his  opening  concert  was  delayed.  Slurring 
squibs  about  him  appeared  in  the  newspapers,  and  doubtless  the 
announcement  of  an  actual  date  for  the  first  concert  narrowly 
averted  a  question  being  asked  in  Parliament. 

All  criticism  was  silenced  by  the  overwhelming  success  of  the 
first  concert.  The  adagio  of  the  symphony  (now  known  as  the 
"Salomon"  No.  2)  was  encored — in  those  times  a  rare  proof  of 
enthusiasm.  And  when  the  Prince  of  Wales  appeared  like  a  re- 
splendent apparition  at  the  second  concert,  the  newspapers 
changed  their  tone.  Blending  sycophancy  with  true  admiration, 
they  now  referred  to  "the  sublime  and  august  thoughts  this  master 
weaves  into  his  works."  The  shrewd  Salomon  was  assisting  at  an 
apotheosis.  Crowds  were  turned  away  from  the  Hanover  Square 
Rooms  for  every  concert,  and  Haydn's  benefit  on  May  16  realized 
£350 — almost  twice  the  take  Salomon  had  guaranteed.  The  first 
week  of  July,  Haydn  journeyed  up  to  Oxford  (or,  as  he  wrote  it, 
Oxforth),  which,  at  Burney's  recommendation,  had  offered  him  a 
musical  doctorate.  At  the  second  of  the  three  concerts  given  there 
in  his  honor,  the  lovely  symphony  in  G  major  he  had  written  some 
years  before  was  performed  instead  of  a  new  work.  Ever  since 
known  as  the  "Oxford"  Symphony,  this  delicious  musical  kitten 
appealed  immediately  to  the  lettered  dons  and  young  fashionables. 

Haydn  was  enormously  pleased — and  a  bit  flustered.  After  he 
received  his  degree,  he  acknowledged  the  applause  by  raising  his 
doctor's  gown  high  above  his  head  so  that  all  could  see  it,  saying 
in  English,  "I  thank  you."  He  must  have  been  a  rather  comic 
figure,  though  he  wrote  home  in  great  glee,  "I  had  to  walk  around 
in  this  gown  for  three  days.  I  only  wish  my  friends  in  Vienna  might 
have  seen  me."  Like  so  many  famous  men,  he  was  decidedly  below 
middle  height.  His  thickset,  flabby  body  was  carried  on  absurdly 
short  legs.  And  his  face  was  far  from  prepossessing,  though  its  fc?- 


HAYDN  115 

tures,  except  for  an  underslung  Hapsburg  jaw,  were  regular.  His 
swarthy  skin  was  deeply  pitted  by  smallpox,  and  his  nose  was  dis- 
figured by  a  growth  he  stubbornly  refused  to  have  removed  even 
when  John  Hunter,  the  ablest  surgeon  of  the  epoch,  offered  to 
perform  the  operation.  Haydn  realized  that  he  was  ugly,  and 
preened  himself  on  the  fact  that  women  fell  in  love  with  him  "for 
something  deeper  than  beauty.5' 

Susceptibility  to  women  as  women  made  Haydn  rather  un- 
critical of  them.  One  was  "the  most  beautiful  woman  I  ever  saw"; 
another,  "the  loveliest  woman  I  ever  saw."  These  were  but 
glances:  his  affections  were  directed  toward  Mrs.  John  Samuel 
Schroeter,  a  widow  of  mature  years.  What  began  as  music  lessons 
ended  as  something  far  more  intense:  she  was  soon  addressing  her 
elderly  music  master  as  "my  dearest  love."  As  for  Haydn,  he 
cherished  a  packet  of  her  letters  until  his  death,  and  once  said, 
"Those  are  from  an  English  widow  who  fell  in  love  with  me.  She 
was  a  very  attractive  woman  and  still  handsome,  though  over 
sixty;  and  had  I  been  free  I  should  certainly  have  married  her." 

It  may  be  that  Mrs.  Schroeter's  matronly  charms  played  their 
part  in  keeping  Haydn  in  London.  At  any  rate,  he  dallied  there 
until  June,  1792 — a  full  year  and  a  half  after  his  arrival — and  then 
set  out  for  the  Continent.  He  traveled  by  way  of  Bonn,  where  the 
young  Beethoven  presented  himself,  and  submitted  a  cantata  for 
criticism.  Haydn's  generous  praise  may  well  have  spurred  Bee- 
thoven to  study  in  Vienna.  In  December,  Beethoven  began  to  take 
lessons  from  Haydn.  From  the  beginning,  they  misunderstood 
each  other:  the  young  musical  rebel  puzzled  Haydn,  while  the  im- 
patient Beethoven  rather  unfairly  regarded  his  aging  teacher  as  a 
fogy.  Haydn  was  too  old  to  realize  the  scope  and  significance  of 
Beethoven's  music— to  him  certain  aspects  of  it  seemed  senseless 
license.  But  in  the  course  of  years,  Beethoven  came  to  appreciate 
his  teacher's  musical  genius.  Yet,  the  relationship  between  the  two 
men  was  nothing  more  than  a  protracted  casual  meeting — they 
were  never  actually  friends,  and  their  influence  on  each  other  was 
negligible.  Beethoven  said  flatly,  "I  never  learned  anything  from 
Haydn." 

Wanderlust — and  a  dazzling  new  contract  from  Salomon — 
called  Haydn  back  to  England  after  a  year  and  a  half  in  Vienna. 
He  arrived  in  London  in  February,  1794,  and  it  is  worth  recording 


lib  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

that  he  carefully  chose  lodgings  near  Mrs.  Schroeter's  house.  This 
is  the  single  tantalizing  scrap  of  knowledge  preserved  about 
Haydn's  love  affair  during  this  second  visit.  Warm  though  London 
had  been  to  him  when  he  first  reached  England,  it  now  offered 
him  an  adulation  it  had  lavished  on  no  composer  since  Handel. 
After  six  new  symphonies  had  been  performed,  the  public  clam- 
ored for  a  repetition  of  the  first  set.  His  benefit  concert  netted  him 
£400.  The  royal  family  took  him  up:  George  III,  whose  first 
loyalty  to  Handel  never  flagged,  was  somewhat  restrained  in  his 
ardors,  but  the  Prince  of  Wales  invited  Haydn  to  Carlton  House 
twenty-six  times.  It  was  for  these  performances  that  Haydn  pre- 
sented to  Parliament  his  famous  bill  for  the  extremely  modest  sum 
of  £100. 

Again  Haydn  found  it  difficult  to  tear  himself  away:  he  re- 
mained in  England  for  more  than  eighteen  months,  playing  the 
social  game  heavily.  During  the  summer  of  1794  he  moved  lei- 
surely from  one  spa  or  country  seat  to  another.  His  diary  is  bare  of 
references  to  music:  he  was  much  exercised  over  the  character  of 
Mrs.  Billington,  the  actress,  whose  frank  memoirs  were  the  current 
scandal.  He  remarked  on  the  national  debt,  preserved  the  Prince 
of  Wales'  favorite  recipe  for  punch,  and  looked  in  at  the  trial  of 
Warren  Hastings.  Not  even  the  price  of  table  delicacies  escaped 
his  omnivorous  curiosity:  "In  the  month  of  June  1792  a  chicken, 
73.;  an  Indian  (a  kind  of  bittern  found  in  North  America),  9  s.; 
a  dozen  larks,  i  coron  [crown?].  N.  B. — If  plucked,  a  duck,  5  s." 
Haydn  relished  a  good  joke,  and  the  best  ones  he  heard  also  went 
into  his  diary.  Certain  lines  about  the  comparative  morals  of 
English,  French,  and  Dutch  women  are  too  graphic  for  publica- 
tion. So,  busily  jotting  down  fresh  items  along  the  way,  he  returned 
to  Vienna  early  in  September,  1795. 

With  this  second  London  visit,  Haydn  wrote  finis  to  his  career 
as  a  symphonist.  That  career,  extending  over  more  than  thirty- 
five  years,  had  produced  no  fewer  than  one  hundred  and  four  sep- 
arate symphonies,  many  of  high  quality,  but  less  notable  for  their 
variety.  The  fact  that  his  earliest  trial  balloons  are  worthless 
museum  pieces  is  easily  explained:  learning  to  write  for  the 
orchestra  was  to  Haydn  a  slow  and  painful  process  completed 
Comparatively  late  in  life,  and  he  had  no  models.  He  literally 
evolved  the  symphony  from  the  orchestral  suite  and  the  clavier 


HAYDN  117 

sonatas  of  Karl  Philipp  Emanuel  Bach  by  laborious  trial  and  error. 
The  wonder  is  that  he  found  the  essential  symphonic  form  as 
quickly  as  he  did:  to  perfect  it  (within  his  recognized  limitations, 
of  course)  took  years.  For  almost  a  quarter  of  a  century  he  con- 
tinued to  write  symphonies  for  his  small  court  orchestra,  many 
of  which  are  delightful  and  witty,  and  almost  all  of  which  are 
within  the  same  narrow  range.  Their  individuality  rests  on  the- 
matic variety  alone. 

The  more  Haydn's  life  and  compositions  are  examined,  the 
clearer  it  becomes  that  Mozart  provided  the  stimulus  for  his 
emancipation  from  the  stiffness  of  his  earlier  manner.  The  differ- 
ence between  even  the  finest  of  Haydn's  pre-Mozartian  sym- 
phonies— the  "Farewell"  and  "La  Chasse"  for  example — and  a 
richly  mature  work  like  the  "Oxford"  is  not  an  obvious  one:  from 
first  to  last,  the  personality  of  Josef  Haydn  dominated,  and  limited, 
his  symphonic  conceptions.  But  in  the  later  works  this  personality 
expressed  itself  through  more  ample  resources — richer  orchestra- 
tion and  untrammeled  handling  of  musical  ideas.  With  Mozart, 
Haydn  finally  brought  the  purely  classical  symphony  as  far  as  it 
could  go  without  becoming  something  else.  In  the  twelve  "Salo- 
mon" Symphonies,  the  man  who  evolved  a  form  lifted  it  to  its 
zenith — a  phenomenon  unique  in  musical  history. 

These  twelve  symphonies  owe  their  supremacy  not  only  to  their 
freedom  of  expression,  but  also  to  the  fact  that  they  were  written 
for  the  best  and  largest  orchestra  Haydn  ever  knew.  It  would  ap- 
pear pathetically  inadequate  beside  one  of  the  perfectly  trained 
and  equipped  orchestras  of  our  own  day,  but  it  was  capable  of 
effects  quite  beyond  the  powers  of  the  little  household  band  at 
Esterhaz.  In  short,  before  composing  for  London,  Haydn  had 
never  had  a  chance  to  make  the  most  of  his  newly  discovered 
resources.  It  is  among  the  more  fascinating  ifs  of  musical  history  to 
speculate  on  what  he  might  have  done  if  he  had  had  this  vastly 
superior  organization  at  his  command  when  he  was  thirty  rather 
than  when  he  was  almost  sixty.  The  answer  seems  to  be,  on  the 
basis  of  everything  known  about  the  composer,  that  we  would 
have  many  more  symphonies  as  fine  as  the  "Oxford"  or  the  "Salo- 
mon" No.  5,  in  C  minor — but  nothing  different  in  kind.  Haydn 
achieved  his  ideal  of  formal  perfection,  and  there  is  no  evidence 
that,  in  his  symphonies  at  least,  he  ever  wanted  anything  more.  It 


Il8  MEN     OF    MUSIC 

took  a  restless,  eternally  dissatisfied  temperament  like  Beethoven's 
to  weld  the  symphony  into  a  tremendous  emotional  vehicle.* 

The  truth  is  that  Haydn's  symphonies  perfectly  express  his  per- 
sonality and  its  rather  limited  outlook.  Nobody  goes  to  them  for  the 
Aeschylean  tragedy  of  Beethoven  or  the  transcendent,  unearthly 
serenity  of  Mozart — nor  can  you  wallow  with  Haydn  as  you  can 
with  Tchaikovsky.  Haydn  is  a  prose  writer,  and  as  such,  un- 
equaled.  He  is  the  Addison  and  Steele  of  music,  with  the  former's 
flawless  touch  and  the  latter's  robust  humor  and  lustiness  of  out- 
look. Any  one  of  his  great  symphonies  is  the  man  in  small:  one  and 
all  they  breathe  his  sunny  disposition,  his  wit,  his  irrepressible  high 
spirits,  and  his  sane  and  healthy  love  of  life.  When  his  inspiration 
flagged,  his  untroubled  faith  degenerated  into  smugness,  his  desire 
for  formal  perfection  into  schoolmasterly  finickiness.  But  his  best 
symphonies  are  canticles  of  life  enjoyed  to  the  full — works  of  lively 
beauty  that  rank  just  below  the  best  of  Mozart  and  Beethoven. 
"Haydn  would  have  been  among  the  greatest/'  Bernard  Shaw 
once  wrote,  "had  he  been  driven  to  that  terrible  eminence." 

When  Haydn  returned  to  Vienna  he  abandoned  the  symphony, 
the  form  with  which  his  name  is  most  popularly  connected. 
He  was  sixty-three  years  old,  and  some  of  his  well-meaning  ad- 
mirers had  begun  to  treat  him  as  though  he  were  dead.  They  in- 
vited him  to  Rohrau,  and  showed  him  a  monument  to  his  fame. 
His  reaction  is  not  recorded,  but  he  was  properly  overcome  with 
emotion  when  he  visited  the  house  where  he  had  been  born.  He 
knelt  down,  solemnly  kissed  the  threshold,  and  pointing  dramati- 
cally at  the  stove,  declared  that  on  that  very  spot  his  musical  career 
had  begun.  Despite  this  premature  commemorative  service,  he 
returned  to  Vienna,  and  continued  to  be  thoroughly  alive. 

The  main  reason  for  Haydn's  return  from  England  had  been  a 
pressing  invitation  from  a  new  Prince  Esterhazy,  who  wished  him 
to  resume  his  old  position.  Haydn  consented,  for  the  duties  were 
comparatively  light,  entailing  a  few  months  each  year  at  Eisen- 
stadt,  and  the  composition  of  some  perfunctory  occasional  pieces, 
notably  an  annual  Mass  on  the  Princess'  name  day.  But  now 

*  The  general  lines  of  this  argument  are  not  affected  by  the  recent,  and  loving, 
exhumation  of  five  typical  symphonies  of  the  master's  late  middle  period,  ranging 
from  1779  to  1786.  Pieced  together  by  Dr.  Alfred  Einstein  from  old  manuscripts  and 
early  editions,  they  were  performed  for  the  first  time  in  New  York  during  1939,  by 
the  orchestra  of  the  New  Friends  of  Music,  under  Fritz  Stiedry, 


HAYDN  119 

Haydn  was  so  famous  that  it  was  he  who  conferred  an  honor  on  the 
Esterhazys,  rather  than  they  on  him.  In  fact,  excepting  Francis  II 
and  Metternich,  he  was  the  most  famous  living  Austrian.  It  was 
natural.,  therefore,  that  in  1797,  when  the  Imperial  authorities 
wished  to  combat  revolutionary  influences  that  had  seeped  into 
Austria  from  France,  they  should  ask  Haydn  to  help  by  composing 
an  air  that  could  be  used  as  a  national  anthem.  Basing  it  on  words 
by  the  "meritorious  poet  Haschka,"  he  not  only  achieved  his  am- 
bition of  equalling  God  Save  the  King — he  far  surpassed  it.  Gott  er- 
halte  Franz  den  Kaiser,  musically  the  finest  national  anthem  ever 
written,  served  its  purpose  perfectly  until  1938,  when  it  was 
officially  superseded  by  Deutschland  uber  Alles  (to  the  Haydn 
melody)  and  the  Horst  Wessel  Song.  Haydn's  hymn  was  first  sung 
on  the  Emperor's  birthday — February  12,1 797 — at  the  National- 
theater  in  Vienna.  Francis  II  himself  attended  in  state,  and  on 
the  same  day  it  was  sung  at  the  principal  theaters  throughout  the 
Empire.  It  has  always  been  the  most  popular  of  Haydn's  songs. 
But  God  Save  the  King  was  not  the  only  English  music  Haydn 
wished  to  emulate.  While  in  London,  he  went  to  a  performance  of 
Messiah,  during  which  he  was  heard  to  sob,  "Handel  is  the  master 
of  us  all."  Later  he  heard  Joshua,  and  was  even  more  moved,  say- 
ing to  a  friend  that  "he  had  long  been  acquainted  with  music,  but 
never  knew  half  its  powers  before  he  heard  it,  as  he  was  perfectly 
certain  that  only  one  inspired  author  ever  did,  or  ever  would,  pen  so 
sublime  a  composition."  Just  before  Haydn  left  London,  Salomon 
handed  him  a  sacred  text  originally  contrived  for  Handel  partly 
from  Paradise  Lost  and  partly  from  Genesis.  A  friend  of  Haydn's 
made  a  free  translation  of  it,  and  the  composer  set  to  work.  "Never 
was  I  so  pious  as  when  composing  The  Creation"  Haydn  declared. 
"I  knelt  down  every  day  and  prayed  God  to  strengthen  me  for  my 
task."  However,  things  did  not  go  smoothly.  At  times  the  infirmi- 
ties of  age  dammed  up  the  flow  of  his  creative  genius.  Like  Di 
Lasso  in  his  old  age,  Haydn  began  to  suffer  from  melancholia  and 
nerves,  but  he  had  reserves  of  peasant  energy  that  the  pampered 
Fleming  lacked.  So  he  came  through  with  a  masterpiece  after 
eighteen  difficult  months.  On  April  29,  1798,  The  Creation  was  first 
produced  privately  at  the  palace  of  Prince  Schwarzenburg,  in 
Vienna.  Little  less  than  a  year  later,  it  was  performed  publicly  on 
Haydn's  name  day — March  19 — at  the  Nationaltheater.  It  was 


I2O  MEN     OF    MUSIC 

an  immediate  success,  and  soon  was  being  heard  by  appreciative 
audiences  throughout  Europe.  Even  Paris,  which  did  not  like 
oratorio,  capitulated.  More,  the  French  performers  had  a  medal 
struck  in  homage  to  the  composer.  In  England,  the  work,  trans- 
lated back  into  execrable  English,  rapidly  became  a  runner-up  to 
Messiah. 

Time  has  not  been  kind  to  The  Creation:  it  has  been  all  but 
crowded  out  of  the  repertoire.  There  are  various  reasons  for  this, 
the  main  one  being  the  advent  of  Mendelssohn  and  his  catchy  ora- 
torios. Under  this  onslaught,  only  a  consistently  effective  work 
could  hold  its  place.  The  Creation  is  by  no  means  consistently  effec- 
tive. Although  "The  Heavens  are  telling"  is  magnificent  choral 
writing,  most  of  the  choruses  are  feeble — an  inexcusable  fault  in 
an  oratorio.  As  the  musical  climax  comes  in  the  first  third,  the 
rest  of  The  Creation.,  despite  scattered  beauties,  is  anticlimactic. 
The  exact  truth  is  that  after  Haydn  has  created  his  two  main 
characters,  he  does  not  know  how  to  make  them  dramatic.  The 
best  passages  are  descriptive — &  kind  of  sublime  journalism.  They 
are  usually  solos,  and  lose  nothing  in  being  performed  alone. 
"With  verdure  clad'*  is  one  of  Haydn's  most  exquisite  inspirations: 
blending  simple  rapture  with  a  rare  contemplative  quality,  it  is 
one  of  Ms  infrequent  achievements  in  musical  poetry.  Unfortu- 
nately, the  fine  things  in  The  Creation  are  scattered  too  sparingly  to 
prevent  a  performance  of  the  whole  oratorio  from  being  a  chore  to 
the  listener.  He  rises  from  his  seat  with  the  paradoxical  feeling  that 
he  has  heard  a  masterpiece — but  a  very  dull  one. 

Enormously  pleased  by  the  success  of  The  Creation,  the  un- 
inspired translator  who  had  provided  its  text  began  to  badger 
Haydn  to  set  another  of  his  adaptations — this  time  of  James  Thom- 
son's The  Seasons.  The  old  man  was  not  too  pleased  with  the  pros- 
pect of  more  work:  he  was  in  failing  health,  and  doubted  his 
strength  to  complete  another  large  composition.  At  last  he  con- 
sented, and  The  Seasons  was  completed  in  a  remarkably  short  time. 
Yet  it  is  a  work  of  great  length,  requiring  two  evenings  for  an 
uncut  performance.  Generally,  it  is  not  inferior  to  The  Creation.  Cer- 
tainly it  is  far  livelier,  and  the  fact  that  it  has  had  to  take  a  back 
seat  is  largely  due  to  its  comparatively  frivolous  (and  absurdly 
adapted)  text,  which  is  less  congenial  to  stuffy,  single-minded  ora- 
torio societies.  Haydn  himself  recognized  the  absurdity  of  the 


HAYDN  121 

German  words,  and  was  inclined  to  regard  The  Seasons  as  a  step- 
child. He  once  remarked  petulantly  to  Francis  II  that  "in  The 
Creation  angels  speak,  and  their  talk  is  of  God;  in  The  Seasons  no 
one  higher  speaks  than  Farmer  Simon.55 

Haydn's  attitude  to  The  Seasons  was,  to  say  the  least,  ambiguous. 
Nowhere  did  he  more  successfully  transmute  his  lifelong  love  of 
nature  into  music.  Page  after  page  is  inspired  by  the  Austrian 
countryside  and  the  manifold  aspects  of  its  life.  The  vivid  de- 
scriptiveness  of  this  music  is  its  most  immediately  engaging  quality, 
and  it  is  no  wonder  that  its  early  listeners  delighted  in  the  literal 
transcriptions  of  country  sounds  in  which  it  is  rich.  But  Haydn  was 
furious  when  these  mimetic  passages  were  singled  out  for  special 
praise:  "This  French  trash  was  forced  upon  me/'  he  stormed.  His 
injustice  to  this  delicious  work  may  be  traced  to  a  well-founded 
conviction  that  the  exertion  of  composing  it  had  finally  made  him  a 
feeble  old  man.  At  any  rate,  his  creative  life  was  over.  After  com- 
posing The  Seasons,  he  dragged  out  eight  years,  subsisting  on  the 
bitter  diet  of  past  accomplishments.  He  lived  in  a  pleasant  house 
in  the  Mariahilf  suburb  of  Vienna,  which  his  wife  had  fondly 
hoped  to  inhabit  "when  I  am  a  widow."  Why  this  woman,  who 
was  three  years  Haydn's  senior,  expected  to  outlive  him  is  not 
clear.  She  died  in  1800,  and  her  widower  lived  the  rest  of  his  life 
in  the  Mariahilf  house. 

The  last  years  are  a  constant  record  of  mental  and  physical 
decline.  In  December,  1803,  Haydn  conducted  for  the  last  time. 
After  that,  he  was  confined  to  his  house  by  increasing  infirmities. 
His  already  enormous  fame  became  gigantic:  people  of  rank  and 
eminence  besieged  his  door;  learned  organizations  and  musical 
societies  delighted  in  honoring  him.  In  1804,  he  was  made  an 
honorary  citizen  of  Vienna.  When  Napoleon's  armies  occupied  the 
city,  many  French  officers  called  upon  him  to  pay  their  respects. 
When  he  was  feeling  comparatively  well,  he  received  his  visitors 
warmly,  often  showing  them  his  medals  and  diplomas,  and  ram- 
bling on  about  his  past.  But  more  often  than  not  callers  merely  con- 
fused and  upset  him,  and  his  only  wish  was  to  be  left  alone.  In  1806 
he  took  steps  to  discourage  visitors  by  having  a  card  printed,  bear- 
ing a  fragment  of  one  of  his  vocal  quartets,  with  these  words:  "Fled 
forever  is  my  strength;  old  and  weak  am  I!" 

During  these  last  years  none  were  more  considerate  than  the 


122  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

Esterhdzys.  The  Prince  increased  Haydn's  pension  to  twenty- 
three  hundred  florins  annually,  and  paid  his  doctor.  The  Princess 
often  called  on  him.  In  1808,  four  days  before  his  seventy-sixth 
birthday,  his  admirers  wished  to  make  public  acknowledgement  of 
their  affection.  Prince  Esterhazy's  carriage  called  to  take  him  to 
the  University,  where  The  Creation  was  to  be  performed.  The  vener- 
able old  man  was  carried 'into  the  hall,  whereupon  the  entire 
audience  rose.  He  was  very  agitated.  When  Salieri,  Mozart's 
famous  enemy,  gave  the  sign  to  begin,  the  whole  house  was  stilled. 
Haydn  controlled  his  emotions  until  the  great  fortissimo  on  the 
words  "And  there  was  light."  He  then  pointed  upward,  and  ex- 
claimed loudly,  "It  came  from  on  high."  His  excitement  in- 
creased, and  it  was  thought  prudent  to  take  him  home  after  the 
first  part.  As  he  was  carried  out  of  the  hall,  Beethoven  pressed 
forward  and  solemnly  kissed  the  master's  forehead  and  hands. 
On  the  threshold,  Haydn  raised  his  hand  in  benediction:  he  was 
saying  farewell  to  Vienna. 

Haydn  lingered  another  year,  growing  constantly  weaker  and 
less  and  less  master  of  his  emotions.  On  May  26,  1809,  he  had  his 
servants  carry  him  to  the  piano,  where  he  thrice  played  the 
Austrian  national  anthem  with  remarkable  strength  and  expres- 
siveness. It  was  his  last  effort:  he  died  five  days  later.  The  French, 
who  had  again  occupied  Vienna,  gave  him  a  magnificent  funeral, 
and  Requiems  were  sung  all  over  Europe. 

Our  own  time  is  rediscovering  Haydn.  He  was  submerged  dur- 
ing the  later  nineteenth  century — admittedly  a  classic,  but  usually 
kept  on  the  shelf.  In  view  of  the  fact  that  practically  only  his 
"Toy"  and  "Clock"  Symphonies  were  played,  he  was  in  danger  of 
being  thought  of  as  a  children's  composer.  The  renascence  of 
chamber  music  has  done  much  to  rehabilitate  him.  His  more  than 
eighty  string  quartets,  after  decades  of  neglect,  are  re-emerging  as 
his  most  characteristic  works.  They  were  little  publicized  during 
his  lifetime  because  of  the  very  circumstances  of  performance. 
They  are  much  heard  now,  and  a  society  has  been  formed  to 
record  them.  They,  as  much  as  the  symphonies  and  the  fresh  and 
delightful  piano  sonatas,  give  point  to  the  saying,  "Haydn  thought 
in  sonatas."  Possibly  we  hear  Haydn  best  in  the  quartets,  for  they 
are  performed  today  "exactly  as  he  wrote  them.  By  their  very  na- 
ture, they  cannot  seem  thin,  as  the  symphonies  sometimes  do  to 


HAYDN  123 

ears  accustomed  to  the  augmented  orchestras  of  Wagner,  Strauss, 
and  Stravinsky.  Nor  have  the  instruments  of  the  quartet  changed 
since  Haydn's  day,  as  the  piano  has. 

Haydn  has  been  called  the  father  of  instrumental  music,  which 
is  true  in  spirit  if  not  in  entire  substance.  His  almost  unique  ability 
to  create  and  perfect  musical  forms  was  due  largely  to  his  freedom 
from  academic  dead  letter.  "What  is  the  good  of  such  rules?"  he 
once  asked.  "Art  is  free,  and  should  be  fettered  by  no  such  me- 
chanical regulations.  The  educated  ear  is  the  sole  authority  on  all 
these  questions,  and  I  think  I  have  as  much  right  to  lay  down  the 
law  as  anyone.  Such  trifling  is  absurd;  I  wish  instead  that  some- 
one would  try  to  compose  a  really  new  minuet."  This  liberalism 
infuriated  some  of  Haydn's  pedantic  colleagues,  two  of  whom  once 
denounced  him  to  the  Emperor  as  a  charlatan.  But  he  was  a  pro- 
found student,  and  as  careful  a  craftsman  as  ever  lived.  When  his 
strength  no  longer  matched  his  inspiration,  he  lamented  to  the 
pianist  Kalkbrenner,  "I  have  only  just  learned  in  my  old  age  how 
to  use  the  wind  instruments,  and  now  that  I  do  understand  them,  I 
must  leave  the  world." 

This  free  and  living  attitude  toward  music  is  central  in  Haydn. 
It  allowed  him,  for  example,  to  use  the  rich  store  of  folk  melody 
always  available  to  him,  and  to  use  it  without  scruple — Bee- 
thoven's debt  to  him  in  this  respect  has  not  been  sufficiently 
acknowledged.  It  allowed  him  to  perpetuate  the  robust  jokes  of 
the  period  not  only  in  his  diary,  but  also  in  his  music.  It  allowed 
him  to  breathe  life  into  the  form  that  Karl  Philipp  Emanuel  Bach 
had  left  quivering  on  the  brink  of  being,  and  to  stamp  it  with  the 
three-dimensioned  qualities  of  a  generous  and  glowing  personality. 


Chapter  VI 

Wolfgang  Amadeus  Mozart 

(Salzburg,  January  27,  lysG-December  5,  1791,  Vienna) 


WHEN  Mozart  was  born,  Johann  Sebastian  Bach  had  been  dead 
six  years,  and  before  he  was  four  years  old  Handel,  too,  had 
vanished  from  the  scene.  In  his  Neapolitan  retreat,  Domenico 
Scarlatti  was  gambling  away  the  last  years  of  his  life.  The  great 
musicians  of  the  age  of  Bach  and  Handel  were  either  dead  or,  like 
Rameau,  were  no  longer  producing  work  of  any  consequence.  Nor 
had  most  of  their  successors  shown  what  they  could  do.  Gluck,  at 
forty-two,  was  diligently  imitating  the  Italians,  and  had  not  yet 
begun  his  reform.  Haydn  was  still  a  dark  horse:  if  he  was  known  at 
all,  it  was  as  the  accompanist  of  a  popular  Italian  singing  teacher. 
But  the  sonatas  of  Karl  Philipp  Emanuel  Bach  had  already  been 
published,  and  these  were  to  be  the  patterns  after  which  the  great 
instrumental  masterpieces  of  the  late  eighteenth  century  were  cut. 

The  age  of  the  baroque  was  passing,  and  a  more  delicate  and 
fantastic  style  was  taking  its  place.  The  rococo  is  merely  the 
baroque  seen  through  the  wrong  end  of  a  telescope,  and  with  a 
great  deal  of  superimposed  ornamentation.  It  lay  lightly  but 
tenaciously  on  architecture  and  decoration  for  some  decades, 
affecting  them  profoundly,  and  also  coloring  modes  and  manners 
and  the  other  arts.  Artifice  was  the  keystone  of  the  whole  pre- 
posterous structure:  chinoiserie,  jewelers'  whims,  plaster  scrollwork, 
exquisite  cabinetmaking,  theatrical  church  fronts,  and  coloratura 
roulades  were  accepted  as  proofs  of  civilization.  Petty  princes 
feverishly  transformed  their  capitals  into  monstrous  jewelboxes, 
and  none  sparkled  more  brilliantly  than  the  home  of  the  pleasure- 
loving  Archbishops  of  Salzburg.  No  more  appropriate  birthplace 
could  have  been  found  for  that  new  extravagance  of  the  eighteenth 
century — the  child  prodigy. 

The  childhood  of  Mozart  is  one  of  the  masterpieces  of  the  rococo. 
His  loving  but  ambitious  father  raised  him  on  the  principle  that  he 
was  a  performing  bear:  from  his  sixth  year  he  was  dragged  over 
the  map  of  Europe,  and  exhibited  as  a  marvel — which,  indeed,  he 
was.  Great  monarchs  made  much  of  him,  and  by  the  time  he  was 

124 


MOZART  125 

fourteen  he  had  seen  the  interior  of  every  palace  from  London  to 
Naples.  His  amazing  virtuosity  and  facile  improvisations  made 
him  the  wonder  of  the  age.  The  boy's  compositions  were  so  re- 
markable that  skeptics  accused  his  father  of  having  written  them. 

Mozart's  early  passion  for  music  cannot,  like  Bach's,  be  traced 
to  a  long  family  tradition.  Leopold  Mozart,  his  father,  was  the  first 
of  an  obscure  family  of  country  bookbinders  to  forsake  the  an- 
cestral craft.  Settling  in  Salzburg,  he  had  by  dogged  determination 
risen  to  be  fourth  violinist  in  the  Archbishop's  band.  Also,  being  a 
fine  figure  of  a  man,  he  managed  to  secure  a  pretty  wife.  He  was 
well  liked,  and  the  year  after  Wolfgang  Amadeus  was  born,  be- 
came court  composer  to  the  Archbishop,  Sigismund  von  Schratten- 
bach.  The  Mozarts  had  seven  children  in  all,  but  five  of  them  died 
in  infancy  owing  to  the  dampness  and  lack  of  sanitation  in  their 
otherwise  fine  house  in  the  Getreidegasse.  Leopold,  as  ambitious 
for  the  two  survivors  as  for  himself,  could  hardly  wait  until  his 
daughter  was  old  enough  to  begin  her  music  lessons.  Nannerl  was 
eight,  and  already  an  accomplished  performer  on  the  clavier, 
when  her  baby  brother  began  to  show  an  absorbing  interest  in  the 
musical  activities  of  the  household. 

Mozart  was  three  when  he  began  to  amuse  himself  at  the  key- 
board, and  the  next  year  his  formal  lessons  began.  At  five,  he  was 
improvising  little  minuets,  and  his  delighted  father  was  writing 
them  down.  Like  Each,  Leopold  Mozart  copied  into  a  notebook 
simple  pieces  for  his  children  to  study,  and  among  them  were  works 
by  Hasse,  Telemann,  and — most  important — Karl  Philipp 
Emanuel  Bach.  These  were  to  be,  for  a  while  at  least,  the  staples 
of  their  concerts.  Their  travels  began  in  1762  with  a  performance 
before  the  Elector  of  Bavaria  at  Munich,  The  tremendous  furore 
over  the  handsome  Wunderkinder  whetted  Leopold's  appetite,  and 
he  was  soon  busy  systematically  taking  advantage  of  their  childish 
appeal.  Later  the  same  year  they  proceeded  by  easy  stages  to 
Vienna,  concertizing  on  the  way.  Everywhere,  the  children's 
talent,  but  even  more,  Wolfgang's  charm,  made  friends  for  them, 
and  aroused  unprecedented  enthusiasm.  At  Vienna  they  found  the 
city  ready  to  receive  them  with  open  arms:  their  fame  had  pre- 
ceded them.  They  had  scarcely  arrived  when  a  command  invita- 
tion to  play  at  court  was  presented  at  their  lodgings. 

The  existence,  at  Schonbrunn,  of  the  most  musical  court  in 


126  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

Europe  immeasurably  helped  Leopold  Mozart's  plans.  Every 
member  of  Maria  Theresa's  huge  family  sang  or  played  a  musical 
instrument.,  and  the  Empress  had  once  referred  to  herself  as  the 
first  of  living  virtuosos,  because  she  had  sung  in  a  court  opera  at 
the  age  of  seven.  Of  her  talented  daughters  the  caustic  Dr.  Burney 
said  that  they  sang  "very  well — for  princesses."  The  self-possessed 
little  Wolfgang  more  than  shared  Burney 3s  skepticism  about  Haps- 
burg  musicianship:  before  playing,  he  asked  loudly  for  the  Im- 
perial music  teacher:  "Is  Herr  Wagenseil  here?  Let  him  come. 
He  knows  something  about  it."  The  court  went  mad  about  the 
children,  and  the  little  boy  who  was  forever  asking,  "Do  you  love 
me?  Do  you  really  love  me?"  warmed  characteristically  to  this 
show  of  affection,  jumping  on  the  Empress'  lap  and  hugging  and 
kissing  her.  Besides  a  gift  of  money,  the  children  each  received  a 
court  costume  from  Maria  Theresa,  and  sat  for  a  portrait.  Wolf- 
gang, looking  very  pert  and  pleased,  was  painted  in  his  sumptuous 
suit  of  stiff  lavender  brocade  and  gold  lace. 

The  nobility  promptly  followed  the  court's  lead,  and  soon  the 
Mozarts  had  invitations  to  the  best  houses  in  Vienna.  Suddenly 
the  prodigy  fell  ill  of  scarlet  fever,  and  before  he  recovered,  in- 
terest in  him  and  his  sister  had  somewhat  abated.  With  hopes  a 
little  dashed,  they  were  back  in  Salzburg  by  the  beginning  of  1 763. 
Six  months  elapsed  before  their  next  tour.  To  this  period  belongs 
the  piously  attested,  but  completely  incredible,  story  of  Mozart 
picking  up  a  violin  and  playing  it  with  no  previous  training.  Only 
slightly  less  suspicious  is  his  alleged  mastery  of  the  organ — includ- 
ing the  pedals — at  first  try.  His  general  musical  virtuosity,  which 
would  have  been  remarkable  in  a  grown  man,  was  so  phenomenal 
in  a  seven-year-old  that  witnesses,  and  particularly  his  doting 
father,  hypnotized  themselves  into  an  inability  to  sift  the  pro- 
digious from  the  impossible. 

Leopold  Mozart's  plans  for  the  second  tour  partook  of  the 
grandiose:  with  Paris  and  London  as  their  goals,  they  were  to 
progress  across  Europe  like  genial  musical  deities  dispensing  their 
favors.  As  they  set  out  in  June,  their  way  led  through  the  summer 
capitals  of  the  reigning  princes,  who  received  them  with  amazed 
enthusiasm.  At  Aix-la-Chapelle  one  of  Frederick  the  Great's 
sisters  tried  to  lure  them  to  Berlin.  But  the  royal  lady,  while  lavish 
with  promises,  was  penniless — and  Leopold  Mozart  was  on  his 


MOZART  127 

way.  At  Frankfort,  the  fourteen-year-old  Goethe  heard  the  "little 
man,  with  his  powdered  wig  and  sword."  By  mid-November  they 
arrived  in  Paris,  where  they  remained  five  months.  Here,  after 
some  delay,  their  Viennese  triumph  was  repeated  and  not  only 
the  court  but  the  intellectuals  took  them  up.  At  Versailles,  the 
strict  conventions  of  the  court  of  Louis  XV  relaxed  momentarily— 
while  the  Mozarts  were  there,  it  was  like  a  family  party.  Only  the 
haughty  Pompadour  remained  aloof  until  Mozart  innocently  put 
her  in  her  place.  "Who  is  this  that  does  not  want  to  kiss  me?"  he 
asked.  "The  Empress  kisses  me."  What  doors  remained  closed 
despite  court  favor  were  opened  through  the  generous  offices  of  the 
influential  Baron  Grimm,  a  German  who  had  become  one  of  the 
leaders  of  French  thought.  Before  leaving  Paris,  Leopold  Mozart 
had  the  satisfaction  of  seeing  his  children  completely  capture 
French  society.  He  signalized  their  triumph  by  having  four  of 
Wolfgang's  sonatas  for  violin  and  clavier  published,  the  first  two 
with  a  dedication  to  Mme  Victoire,  one  of  the  King's  daughters. 

At  London  they  found  another  musical  family  on  the  throne. 
George  III  and  Queen  Charlotte,  who  were  uniformly  kind  to 
musicians,  not  only  showered  favors  on  them  at  court,  but  also, 
as  Leopold  Mozart  noted  with  pride,  nodded  to  them  while  out 
driving  in  St.  James'  Park.  The  Queen's  music  master,  Johann 
Christian  Bach,  the  youngest  of  Johann  Sebastian's  sons,  and 
Handel's  successor  as  undisputed  arbiter  of  English  music,  was 
entranced  by  the  wonderful  boy,  and  played  musical  games  with 
him.  The  affectionate  child  never  forgot  Bach.  The  children's  first 
public  concert  was  such  a  success  that  their  father  confessed  him- 
self "terrified"  by  the  size  of  the  box-office  receipts.  Probably  the 
excitement  of  a  successful  and  fashionable  London  season  was  too 
much  for  him,  for  he  took  to  his  bed  for  seven  weeks  with  a  throat 
ailment.  In  the  interim,  Wolfgang  composed,  and  at  the  next  con- 
cert all  the  pieces  were  his  own.  In  all,  the  family  was  in  London 
more  than  a  year,  and  rather  outstayed  its  welcome. 

The  Mozarts  now  turned  their  steps  homeward,  but  so  circuitous 
was  their  route,  and  so  indifferent  their  health  (only  Frau  Mozart 
was  exempt  from  illness),  that  they  were  on  the  road  more  than  a 
year.  After  playing  at  the  court  of  the  Prince  of  Orange  at  The 
Hague,  they  returned  to  Versailles,  where  they  were  again  warmly 
welcomed.  A  happy  summer  in  Switzerland  followed.  From 


128  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

Geneva  they  drove  out  to  call  on  Voltaire  at  Ferney,  but  the  lion 
was  sick  abed,  and  they  were  refused  admittance.  After  a  tri- 
umphal journey  up  the  Rhine,  they  finally  returned  to  Salzburg  in 
November,  1766,  having  been  away  from  home  three  and  a  half 
years. 

Leopold  Mozart  did  not  let  any  grass  grow  under  his  feet. 
Nannerl,  at  sixteen,  was  definitely  through  as  a  child  prodigy,  and 
he  cannily  decided  to  concentrate  on  the  eleven-year-old  boy,  who 
had  always  been  the  family's  stellar  attraction.  By  a  lot  of  well- 
timed  boasting,  the  wily  impresario  managed  to  arouse  the  skepti- 
cism of  his  master,  the  Archbishop.  His  Grace  decided  to  stop  his 
retainer's  loud  mouth  by  putting  this  alleged  Wunderkind  to  a  stiff 
test:  he  divided  the  text  of  an  oratorio  between  Wolfgang,  the 
court  conductor,*  and  the  cathedral  organist,  keeping  the  boy  in 
solitary  confinement  while  he  composed  his  part.  The  music  was 
evidently  satisfactory,  for  the  oratorio  was  both  performed  and 
published  the  same  year.  Archbishop  von  Schrattenbach  no  longer 
doubted,  and  gave  proof  of  his  conversion  in  increased  friendliness 
toward  the  Mozarts. 

Soon  the  family  was  off  to  Vienna  again,  hoping  to  play  an  im- 
portant role  in  an  impending  royal  marriage.  But  a  smallpox 
epidemic  frustrated  their  little  scheme:  the  intended  bride  suc- 
cumbed, and  the  Mozarts  fled  to  Olmiitz,  where  the  two  children 
came  down  with  the  disease,  Wolfgang  being  blinded  for  nine 
days.  After  being  nursed  back  to  health  in  the  home  of  a  humane 
and  fearless  nobleman,  they  returned  to  the  capital,  where  they 
found  the  court  plunged  in  mourning.  Nevertheless,  Maria 
Theresa  and  her  son  Josef  II  received  them  kindly.  Although  ex- 
ceedingly stingy,  the  new  Emperor  commissioned  Wolfgang  to 
write  an  opera.  The  boy  accordingly  composed  La  Finta  semplice  in 
record  time,  but  faction  ran  so  high  that  it  was  not  actually  pro- 
duced until  months  later,  and  then  in  Salzburg  by  order  of  the 
Archbishop,  who  was  so  delighted  that  he  gave  Wolfgang  a  high- 
sounding  but  unpaid  position  in  his  musical  household.  A  second 
opera,  Bastien  und  Bastienne,  which  was  written  for  Dr.  Franz 
Anton  Mesmer,  a  respectable  precursor  of  Mary  Baker  Eddy,  fared 
better.  Zealots  have  revived  it  in  late  years,  but  it  is  in  reality  a 

*  Josef  Haydn's  talented  brother  Michael,  of  whose  roistering  ways  the  tight- 
lipped  Leopold  Mozart  strongly  disapproved. 


MOZART  129 

musical  curio  faintly  adumbrating  the  mature  style  of  Mozart's 
other  German  operas — Die  Entfuhrung  aus  dem  Serail  and  Die 
^auberflote. 

They  rested  in  Salzburg  almost  a  year,  for  Leopold  Mozart  was 
planning  nothing  less  than  a  conquest  of  Italy.  There  was  no 
respite  for  Wolfgang:  he  spent  these  eleven  months  composing 
pieces  of  all  descriptions,  and  practicing,  practicing,  practicing. 
Then,  after  bidding  Frau  Mozart  and  Nannerl  an  affectionate 
adieu,  the  travelers  set  out  armed  with  a  battery  of  gilt-edged 
introductions.  Crossing  the  Brenner  in  the  dead  of  winter,  they  ar- 
rived, after  a  series  of  spectacular  successes,  at  Milan,  where  they 
enjoyed  the  exalted  patronage  of  the  Governor  General.  Here 
Wolfgang  received  the  blessing  of  Gluck's  venerable  teacher,  Sam- 
martini.  Parma,  Bologna,  Florence,  Rome,  Naples — all  capitu- 
lated to  Wolfgang.  He  keenly  missed  his  mother  and  Nannerl, 
and  talked  to  them  through  letters  that  teem  with  amazingly  frank 
and  incisive  comments  on  the  music  he  heard,  the  famous  people 
he  met,  and  the  customs  of  the  country.  Like  Juvenal,  he  en- 
countered nothing  he  did  not  stuff  into  his  conversational  ragbag. 
Some  of  these  letters  are  so  coarse  (to  our  taste  but  not  to  that  of 
the  eighteenth  century)  that  their  pious  editors  have  scarcely  left 
one  unbowdlerized.*  Mozart  is  always  in  high,  and  very  often  in 
ribald,  spirits.  In  short,  it  is  almost  impossible  to  believe  that  these 
are  the  letters  of  a  thirteen-year-old  boy  to  his  mother  and  sister. 
But  it  must  be  remembered  that  he  was  already  an  old  trouper. 

At  Bologna,  the  recognized  center  of  Italian  musical  theory, 
Mozart  was  examined  by  the  most  eminent  of  its  professors — the 
old  Padre  Martini — and  passed  with  flying  colors.  Much  the  same 
tests  awaited  him  at  Florence,  and  from  these  he  emerged  even 
more  brilliantly.  There,  too,  he  met  the  omnipresent  Dr.  Burney, 
and  enjoyed  a  tender  but  brief  friendship  with  Thomas  Linley,f  a 
talented  English  lad  of  exactly  his  own  age — and  no  doubt  a  vast 
relief  after  the  endless  catechisms  of  prying  sexagenarians.  There 
were  tears  at  parting,  avowals  of  eternal  friendship,  and  elaborate 

*  This  sentence  was  written  prior  to  Emily  Anderson's  superb  three-volume  anno- 
tated translation  of  the  Mozart  family  correspondence.  Miss  Anderson — a  civil 
servant  in  her  spare  time — is  pious,  in  the  best  sense  of  the  word.  She  sticks  to  the  text 
whatever  the  consequences. 

f  He  was  Richard  Brinsley  Sheridan's  brother-in-law.  His  death  at  the  age  of 
twenty-two  was  a  serious  loss  (say  pundits)  to  English  music,  then  starving  to  death 
from  lack  of  talent. 


I3O  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

plans  for  another  meeting.  But  their  gypsy  lives  kept  them  apart, 
and  they  never  met  again. 

The  Mozarts  reached  Rome  in  time  to  hear  the  Holy  Week 
music,  and  there  (appropriately  enough)  Wolfgang  performed  one 
of  his  miracles.  A  staple  of  these  celebrations  was  the  performance 
in  the  Sistine  Chapel  of  Allegri's  famed  Miserere,  a  contrapuntal 
labyrinth  in  nine  voices.  After  hearing  it  once,  the  boy  made  a 
copy  from  memory,  a  feat  that  attracted  the  friendly  interest  of 
Clement  XIV  and  brought  a  shower  of  invitations  from  the 
princely  Roman  families.  Amid  all  this  excitement,  Wolfgang  took 
time  to  send  Nannerl  a  request  for  some  new  minuets  by  Michael 
Haydn.  After  less  than  a  month  in  the  Holy  City,  they  set  out 
nervously  (their  way  lay  through  banditti-infested  territory)  for 
Naples.  They  visited  Pompeii,  looked  at  Vesuvius  "smoking  furi- 
ously," and  found  the  right  patrons,  among  them  Sir  William 
Hamilton,  the  English  ambassador,  now  remembered  only  as  the 
husband  of  Lord  Nelson's  Emma. 

Returning  north  to  spend  the  summer  near  Bologna,  father  and 
son  stopped  in  Rome  for  a  fortnight.  The  Pope  (or  his  deputy)  in- 
vested Wolfgang  with  the  Golden  Spur,  which  his  father  described 
loftily  as  "a  piece  of  good  luck,"  observing  further,  "You  can 
imagine  how  I  laugh  when  I  hear  people  calling  him  Signor 
Cavalier  e"  The  fact  that  his  son  had  the  same  order  as  Gluck  was  a 
great  satisfaction  to  the  ambitious  Leopold,  who  for  some  time  in- 
sisted that  Wolfgang  use  the  title  in  his  signature.  The  boy  was  less 
:mpressed,  and  soon  dropped  the  appellation.  Signal  honors 
awaited  him  at  Bologna,  where  the  Accademia  Filarmonica 
waived  its  age  limit  of  twenty  years,  and  elected  him  to  member- 
ship after  another  rigorous  test.  At  Milan  he  rushed  to  completion 
his  Mitridate,  Re  di  Ponto,  an  opera  the  Governor  General  had  com- 
missioned during  the  Mozarts'  first  visit.  It  was  a  sure-fire  hit, 
packing  the  opera  house  for  twenty  nights. 

At  last,  after  more  than  two  years'  wandering  in  the  peninsula, 
the  wayworn  troupers  were  back  in  Salzburg  in  March,  1771.  In 
Mozart's  pockets  were  two  important  commissions — another 
opera  for  Milan  and  an  oratorio  for  Padua,  and  soon  a  letter  came 
requesting  a  dramatic  serenata  for  the  nuptials  of  another  of 
Maria  Theresa's  numerous  progeny.  Five  months  of  feverish  com- 
posing followed,  and  then  another  trip  to  Milan,  where  Mozart's 


MOZART  131 

serenata  more  than  held  its  own  against  the  last  of  the  aged  Basse's 
innumerable  operas,  drawing  a  typically  Pecksniffian  comment 
from  his  father:  "It  really  distresses  me  very  greatly,  but  Wolf- 
gang's serenata  has  completely  killed  Hasse's  opera."  But  the  old 
man,  whose  luscious  arias  had  been  the  consolation  of  princes, 
said  with  true  generosity,  "This  boy  will  throw  us  all  into  the 
shade."* 

The  day  after  the  Mozarts  returned  home,  the  old  Archbishop 
died.  It  was  a  sadder  event  than  they  realized:  his  successor  was 
the  forever-to-be-vilified  Hieronymus  von  Colloredo,  Bishop  of 
Gurk.  His  reputation  was  already  so  grim  that  at  the  news  of  his 
election  Salzburg  all  but  went  into  mourning.  Of  course,  his  pro- 
motion called  for  special  musical  services,  and  though  he  was 
an  archbishop,  opera  was  particularly  specified.  As  if  avenging 
the  future,  Mozart,  selecting  one  of  Metastasio's  most  threadbare 
librettos,  proceeded  to  write,  in  II  Sogno  di  Scipione,  the  worst  opera 
he  ever  composed.  Indeed,  it  was  so  infernally  dull  that  it  might 
well  have  roused  resentment  in  a  more  charitable  man  than  Von 
Colloredo.  After  another  bout  of  composing,  Mozart  went  back 
to  Milan  for  six  months.  His  new  opera,  Lucio  Silla,  was  a  triumph, 
and  partly  on  the  strength  of  it  the  Governor  General  tried  to 
wangle  a  court  appointment  for  him  at  Florence.  But  the  negotia- 
tions came  to  nothing,  and  father  and  son  heavyheartedly  pre- 
pared to  brave  what  difficulties  Salzburg  under  the  new  dispensa- 
tion had  in  store  for  them.  They  recrossed  the  Brenner  in  March, 
1773:  Mozart  bade  farewell  to  Italy  for  the  last  time.  Half  of  his 
life  was  over. 

The  Mozarts  soon  found  their  worst  fears  realized:  conditions 
in  Von  Colloredo's  Salzburg  were  intolerable.  There  was  no 
pleasing  this  martinet  of  the  Church.  Obviously,  if  Wolfgang  were 
to  realize  his — or  his  father's — ambitions,  it  would  have  to  be 
somewhere  else.  Remembering  the  unfailing  friendliness  of  Maria 
Theresa,  the  Mozarts  decided  to  try  Vienna  first.  The  Empress  was 
just  as  kind  as  ever,  but  that  was  all:  they  came  away  empty- 
handed,  as  balked  of  remunerative  employment  here  as  in  Italy. 
But  failure  did  not  dam  the  flow  of  Wolfgang's  pen:  both  in  Vienna 

*  Hasse,  who  had  been  a  friend  of  Johann  Sebastian  Bach  without  recognizing  his 
genius,  could  more  easily  appreciate  the  Italianate  style  of  the  archnaimic  Mozart. 


132  MEN     OF    MUSIC 

and  after  returning  home,  he  continued  to  pile  up  work  for  his 
future  editors. 

Before  the  end  of  1774,  however,  it  seemed  that  if  Mozart 
played  his  cards  well  he  might  soon  free  himself  from  the  crushing 
routine  of  the  Salzburg  court.  Strings  were  pulled,  and  a  commis- 
sion for  an  opera  arrived  from  the  Elector  of  Bavaria.  The  results 
were  the  same  as  usual:  La  Finta  giardiniera  delighted  its  hearers, 
but  Mozart  lingered  vainly  in  Munich.  There  was  nothing  to  do 
but  return  dispiritedly  once  again  to  Salzburg — and  compose, 
compose,  compose.  Although  he  could  not  know  it,  his  apprentice- 
ship was  over:  for  the  first  time,  he  began  to  produce  music  that  is 
of  as  much  interest  to  music  lovers  as  to  experts.  He  got  into  his 
stride  with  a  festival  play,  II  Re  pastore,  in  honor  of  an  archducal 
visit.  As  opera,  it  is  lifeless  stuff,  but  among  several  tasteful  arias  is 
one  that  still  gets  an  occasional  airing:  "Uamero,  saw  costante"  Five 
brilliant  concertos  for  violin  and  orchestra  followed.  Doubtless 
Mozart  wrote  them  for  himself,  a$  his  father  wanted  him  to  be- 
come the  foremost  violin  virtuoso  in  Europe.  So,  while  the  urge 
was  on  him,  the  mercurial  youth  wrote  these  five  masterpieces  of 
his  c 'gallant"  style — and  thereafter  practically  abandoned  the 
violin  concerto.  Graceful,  and  brimming  over  with  dash  and  brio, 
these  delectable  pieces  are  as  alive  today  as  they  were  on  the  day 
they  were  written,  and  violinists  like  Heifetz,  Szigeti,  and  Menu- 
hin  delight  in  playing  them. 

Up  to  1775,  Mozart's  compositions  were  remarkable  chiefly 
because  they  were  written  by  a  boy.  Those  who  take  the  trouble 
to  work  through  the  volumes  of  Wyzewa  and  Saint-Foix's  ex- 
haustive treatise  on  the  early  Mozart  will  find  this  statement  amply 
corroborated  by  the  musical  quotations.  Aside  from  the  fact  that 
any  child  composer  is  something  of  a  phenomenon,  Mozart  is- 
doubly  remarkable  for  the  fecundity  of  his  gift  at  such  an  early 
age.  On  the  other  hand,  though  this  stupendous  output  naturally 
abounds  in  hints  of  his  own  peculiar  genius,  it  is  primarily  the  work 
of  an  extraordinarily  facile  and  sensitive  mimic,  echoing  the  styles 
and  forms  of  everyone  from  Karl  Philipp  Emanuel  Bach  to  Hasse. 
But  this  early  music,  which  on  superficial  examination  may  seem 
merely  clever,  is  actually  more:  it  is  the  voice  of  someone  trem- 
bling on  the  brink  of  greatness,  and  only  awaiting  respite  from  pa- 
ternal Stakhanovism  to  realize  his  genius.  And  the  proof  of  this  is 


MOZART  133 

that  as  soon  as  his  father  could  no  longer  exhibit  him  as  a  freak, 
and  he  was  thus  allowed  a  period  of  comparative  leisure,  Mozart 
began  to  write  music  that  is  unmistakably  his  own.  As  late  as 
January,  1775,  the  influential  critic,  C.  F.  D.  Schubart,  was  writ- 
ing with  a  kind  of  skeptical  faith:  "Unless  Mozart  should  prove  to 
be  a  mere  overgrown  product  of  the  forcing-house,  he  will  be  the 
greatest  composer  that  ever  lived." 

The  transition  from  adolescence  to  manhood,  always  a  difficult 
phase,  is  a  dramatic  crisis  in  the  life  of  a  prodigy.  Inevitably,  there 
is  danger  that  his  artistic  development  will  not  match  his  physical 
growth.  This  was  the  peril  confronting  Mozart,  his  family,  and 
his  well-wishers  in  1 775.  There  is  nothing  sadder  or  more  grotesque 
than  a  grown  man  with  the  mind  and  talents  of  the  brilliant  child 
he  was,  and  it  may  be  assumed  that  during  these  crucial  early 
seventies,  while  the  pretty  little  boy  was  changing  into  a  pleasant 
but  not  very  attractive  youth,  people  were  nervously  wondering 
whether  this  fate  was  in  store  for  him.  They  had  found  it  easy  to 
believe  that  such  a  delightful  little  creature  was  a  genius;  at  nine- 
teen they  found  him  less  convincing.  This  short,  slight  fellow,  with 
his  shock  of  blond  hair  and  rather  too  prominent  aquiline  nose, 
was  really  rather  commonplace-looking — by  no  means  a  good  ad- 
vertisement for  his  parents,  who  had  been  called  the  handsomest 
couple  in  Salzburg.  Nor  was  Mozart  insensitive  to  the  change:  to 
compensate  for  his  insignificant  appearance,  he  began  to  affect 
embroidered  coats  and  an  excessive  amount  of  jewelry,  and  took 
special  pains  with  his  hair,  of  which  he  was  very  vain. 

His  well-wishing  but  apprehensive  friends  could  not  know  what 
was  happening  inside  of  Mozart,  for  excepting  his  changed  ap- 
pearance he  seemed  much  the  same  as  always.  His  almost  morbidly 
affectionate  nature  was  possibly  a  bit  less  intense — the  genial 
Mozart,  with  his  taste  for  boon  companions,  billiards,  dancing,  and 
good  wine,  was  emerging.  As  a  child  he  had  been  precociously 
aware  of  women's  good  looks  (and  as  quick  to  criticize  lack  of 
them),  and  even  before  he  was  out  of  his  teens  he  began  to  show 
evidence  of  a  sexual  urge  that  seems  at  times  to  have  been  exces- 
sive. Yet,  despite  decidedly  mature  tastes,  he  remained  tied  to  his 
father's  apron  strings.  His  relationship  to  this  domineering,  schem- 
ing, and  ambitious  man  is  a  puzzle  to  the  twentieth-century 
reader.  Until  his  twenty-fifth  year  it  never  entered  his  head  to 


134  MEN  °F  MUSIC 

question,  much  less  to  disobey,  Leopold  Mozart's  fiats  on  every 
subject  under  the  sun,  and  he  never  tired  of  saying  that  he  con- 
sidered his  father  "next  to  God."  Unfortunately,  this  touching 
attitude  was  partly  an  excuse  for  his  own  unwillingness  and  in- 
ability to  make  decisions  for  himself.  It  had  served  a  certain  pur- 
pose in  the  past,  but  was  no  weapon  for  the  struggles  of  the  future. 

In  Leopold  Mozart's  house,  religion  always  held  a  prominent 
place.  He  was  a  devout  and  unquestioning  Catholic,  and  assumed 
that  his  children  would  emulate  him.  And  Wolfgang,  during  his 
childhood,  was  certainly  as  observant  of  Catholic  practices  as  his 
father  could  wish.  But  his  religion  was  as  much  a  sort  of  mimicry 
as  was  his  mastery  of  every  musical  style.  As  he  matured,  he  did 
not  so  much  rebel  against  the  Church  as  lose  interest  in  it.  The 
bulk  of  his  religious  music  was  composed  early,  and  though  it  has 
found  many  admirers,  it  would  not  of  itself  have  placed  Mozart 
among  the  immortals.  The  paradox  is  that  after  he  had  lost  his 
formal  Catholic  faith,  he  wrote  really  great  religious  music  based 
on  a  personal,  and  by  no  means  orthodox,  mysticism.  His  early 
Masses  and  smaller  church  pieces  are,  at  their  worst,  trivial.  Even 
the  best  of  them — a  Missa  brevis  in  F  major  (K.  192)* — is  an 
operatic  and  often  skittish  composition.  Indeed,  its  relation  to 
faith  and  devotion  seems  remote — the  solemn  words  of  the  text  not 
infrequently  trip  to  the  gayest  of  Neapolitan  dance  tunes.  The 
statement  has  often  been  made  that  Mozart's  choral  technique 
rivals  that  of  Bach:  if  true,  this  is  an  interesting  fact,  which  may 
well  be  pondered  as  we  listen  to  the  empty  loveliness  of  the  Missa 
brevis  and  the  even  shallower  one  in  D  (K.  194). 

The  year  1776  and  most  of  1777  are  baffling  to  those  who  expect 
to  see  the  promise  of  the  violin  concertos  immediately  fulfilled. 
Much  of  the  music  belonging  to  this  period  is  perfunctory,  and 
uninspired  by  any  emotion  other  than  a  desire  to  have  done  with 
it.  Mozart,  as  we  shall  see,  was  capable  of  turning  out  a  master- 
piece at  short  order,  but  the  business  of  grinding  out  salon  pieces 
for  a  patron  whom  he  thoroughly  despised  was  beginning  to  sap 
his  strength  and  impair  the  freshness  of  his  talent.  Feeling  the  way 

*  Mozart's  hundreds  of  compositions  are  identified  by  their  numbers  in  Dr. 
Ludwig  von  KochePs  thematic  catalogue,  here  abbreviated  as  K.  A  new  edition, 
with  some  changes  in  numbering,  was  published  in  1937,  under  the  editorship  of  Dr. 
Alfred  Einstein.  As  this  valuable  revision  is  not  yet  in  general  use,  we  have  preferred 
the  old  numbering. 


MOZART  135 

he  did,  it  is  amazing  that  he  managed  to  produce  anything  above 
the  mediocre.  Yet,  to  this  period  belong  a  really  effective  clavier 
concerto  (K.  271)  and  the  "Haffner"  Serenade,  written  for  the 
marriage  of  Burgomaster  Haffner's  daughter.  This  Serenade,  which 
incidentally  is  longer  than  the  average  symphony,  is  in  reality  a 
suite  of  unrelated  pieces,  themselves  very  uneven  in  quality.  There 
are  moments,  however,  when  the  accents  are  unmistakably  those 
of  the  Mozart  of  the  great  symphonies. 

By  September,  1777,  Mozart  had  reached  a  point  at  which  he 
could  no  longer  bear  the  inactivity  of  Salzburg.  All  of  his  desires 
were  to  compose  operas  and  symphonies — and  Von  Colloredo 
would  have  none  of  them.  So  the  birds  of  passage  applied  once 
more  for  leave  of  absence.  When  the  Archbishop  curtly  refused, 
Leopold  Mozart  drew  up  a  formal  petition.  This  time,  their  mas- 
ter's  reply  was  to  dismiss  them  both  from  his  service,  though  he 
reconsidered,  and  allowed  the  father  to  remain.  As  Wolfgang  was 
now  twenty-one,  he  naturally  believed  that  he  would  be  allowed 
to  travel  alone.  But  his  hopes  were  dashed:  his  father  had  no  in- 
tention of  unleashing  him  without  a  family  guardian.  As  he  him- 
self could  not  go,  he  delegated  Frau  Mozart — a  bad  choice,  for  she 
was  neither  very  strong  nor  very  clever.  Mother  and  son  set  out 
for  Munich  on  September  23,  1777.  Suddenly,  Leopold  Mozart 
realized  that  he  had  forgotten  to  give  Wolfgang  his  blessing.  He 
rushed  to  the  window  to  outstretch  a  benedictional  hand — and 
saw  the  carriage  vanishing  in  the  distance. 

Five  weeks  later,  the  Mozarts3  carriage  rumbled  into  Mannheim, 
a  bumbling  little  town,  but  the  seat  of  the  Elector  Palatine's  profli- 
gate and  brilliant  court.  Here  they  remained  more  than  four  months, 
for  Mannheim  boasted  the  finest  band  in  Europe.  Under  the  direc- 
tion of  the  renowned  Johann  Stamitz  and  his  successors,  it  had  so 
revolutionized  ensemble  playing  that  it  has  been  called  the  father 
of  the  modern  orchestra.  Mozart,  who  came  in  at  the  tail  end  of 
this  development,  missed  nothing  of  it,  and  lost  no  opportunity  of 
hearing  these  famous  players.  The  performances  of  opera  in  Ger- 
man interested  him  even  more,  and  through  these,  fate  (never 
very  kind  to  Mozart)  introduced  him  to  Fridolin  Weber,  one  of 
those  curious  personages,  mediocre  in  themselves,  but  certain  of 
immortality  because  of  their  connections  with  the  great.  This  little 
man,  copyist  and  prompter  at  the  opera,  was  to  be  Carl  Maria  von 


136  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

Weber's  uncle  and  Mozart's  father-in-law.  In  1777,  Herr  Weber's 
greatness  was  all  in  the  future — but  he  had  a  family  of  daughters. 

Soon  Mozart's  letters  home  palpitated  with  praise  of  Aloysia 
Weber,  whom  he  painted  as  a  Rhenish  Venus  with  a  heavenly 
voice.  He  was  ready  to  abandon  everything,  and  in  the  combined 
role  of  teacher,  impresario,  composer,  accompanist,  and  lover, 
barnstorm  through  Italy  with  this  paragon,  who  would,  he  was 
sure,  captivate  Italian  hearts  forever.  But  he  did  not  reckon  with 
his  father:  the  awful  voice  spoke  from  Salzburg:  "Off  with  you  to 
Paris,  and  that  immediately!  Take  up  your  position  among  those 
who  are  really  great — aut  Caesar  aut  nihill"  Wolfgang  obeyed.  On 
March  14,  after  taking  leave  of  the  weeping  Webers,  Mozart  and 
his  mother  set  out  sadly  for  Paris.  Frau  Mozart  would  much  rather 
have  gone  home. 

But  Mozart  was  not  destined  to  be  a  Caesar  in  Paris,  which  was 
too  taken  up  with  the  quarrel  of  the  Gluckists  and  Piccinnists  to 
pay  any  attention  to  a  former  prodigy  with  no  stake  in  either  side. 
"People  pay  fine  compliments,  it  is  true,"  he  complained  to  his 
father,  "but  there  it  ends.  They  arrange  for  me  to  come  on  such 
and  such  a  day.  I  play,  and  hear  them  exclaim:  Oh,  c'est  unprodige, 
c'est  inconcevable,  c'est  etonnant,  and  with  that  good-by."  At  last,, 
however,  Mozart  found  one  noble  patron,  and  for  him  and  his 
daughter — virtuosos  both — he  composed  a  concerto  for  flute,  harp, 
and  orchestra  (K.  299)  abounding  in  delightful  themes,  despite  the 
fact  that  he  abhorred  both  flute  and  harp  as  solo  instruments. 
Marie  Antoinette,  who  had  done  so  much  for  "noire  cher  Gluck" 
insulted  Mozart  by  offering  him  an  ill-paid  organist's  job  at  Ver- 
sailles. His  mother's  mysterious  illness  added  to  his  worries.  In 
July  he  had  to  break  the  news  of  her  death  to  his  father  and  sister. 
Although  he  did  not  dissipate  his  energies  in  mourning,  neverthe- 
less the  appearance  of  his  genial  old  London  friend,  Johann  Chris- 
tian Bach,  must  have  been  welcome  to  the  lonely  youth.  But  Paris 
obviously  had  nothing  solid  to  offer  him — and  the  thought  of 
Aloysia  Weber  was  always  on  his  mind. 

Accordingly,  after  reluctantly  posting  his  acceptance  of  another 
court  appointment  his  father  had  wangled  for  him  in  Salzburg,* 
Mozart  turned  his  back  on  Paris.  Evidently  he  was  in  no  hurry  to 

*  Leopold  Mozart's  sly  hint  that  there  might  be  a  job  for  Aloysia  Weber  in  the 
choir  undoubtedly  helped  to  clinch  the  matter. 


MOZART  137 

keep  his  date  with  Von  Colloredo,  for  he  spent  four  months  on  the 
road.  Floods  detained  him  in  Strasbourg,  mere  sentimentality  in 
Mannheim  (for  the  Webers  had  already  proceeded  to  Munich  in 
the  Elector's  train) .  In  Mannheim,  however,  he  almost  wrote  two 
operas,  and  almost  became  a  conductor.  At  Munich,  where  he 
hoped  to  dally  long,  he  found  that  Aloysia  Weber  had  all  but  for- 
gotten him.  Not  even  a  sharp  reminder  from  Leopold  Mozart  that 
he  was  overdue  in  Salzburg  was  needed,  and  by  the  middle  of 
January,  1779,  a  very  dejected  young  man  had  returned  home. 

For  two  years,  Mozart  fretted  in  captivity.  He  was  court  Kon- 
zertmeister  and  organist,  but  despite  these  exalted  titles  was  no  bet- 
ter off  than  before.  Daily  the  rift  between  him  and  the  Archbishop 
grew  wider.  Worse,  he  began  to  realize  that  his  father  had  tricked 
him  into  returning  to  Salzburg,  and  though  the  old  affection  be- 
tween them  was  not  materially  impaired,  they  no  longer  trusted 
each  other.  It  is  not  at  all  strange  that  so  few  of  the  many  composi- 
tions of  these  two  years  show  Mozart  at  his  best.  The  most  notable 
exceptions  are  the  Sinfonia  Concertante  (K.  364),  his  only  Con- 
certo for  Two  Pianos  (K.  365),  and  the  Symphony  in  C  major 
(K.  338),  all  of  which  are  still  heard  occasionally.  The  first  of 
these  is  especially  fine — a  passionate,  deeply  felt  work  "not  at  all 
suited,"  as  Eric  Blom  has  observed,  "to  an  archiepiscopal  court." 

Mozart  was  still  lusting  after  the  fleshpots  of  opera,  and  probably 
with  the  idea  of  amateur  performance  in  Salzburg,  he  began  to 
amuse  himself  with  the  writing  of  that  curious  fragment  a  later 
editor  christened  £dide.  It  is  a  trifling  little  comedy — a  typical 
Singspiel — with  several  charming  airs  that  foreshadow  Mozart's 
masterpiece  in  this  genre — Die  Entfilhrung  aus  dem  SeraiL  Fortu- 
nately for  the  history  of  opera,  he  was  interrupted  by  a  long-desired 
invitation  to  compose  another  stage  work  for  Munich,  to  be  given 
during  the  carnival  of  1781.  The  result  was  Idomemo,  Re  di  Greta, 
a  tragic  opera  based  on  a  subject  from  Greek  mythology.  Mozart 
had  been  studying  Gluck,  but  unhappily  his  librettist  had  not  been 
studying  Calzabigi.  It  was  not  a  heaven-made  collaboration,  and 
the  composer  overcame  the  ponderousness  of  the  libretto  only  by 
slashing  it  unmercifully  and  writing  superior  music  for  what 
remained. 

Idomeneo  is  essentially  a  compromise — the  fusing  of  Gluck's  con- 
ception of  music  as  the  handmaid  of  drama  and  Mozart's  far  su- 


138  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

perior  gifts  as  an  absolute  musician.  It  shows  clearly  that  Mozart 
had  taken  the  lessons  ofAlceste  to  heart,  but  without  being  shackled 
by  them.  If  Gluck  ever  heard  Idomeneo,  he  must  have  been  shocked 
— and  a  bit  envious — at  the  way  his  young  rival  allows  himself  to 
be  seized  by  a  purely  musical  idea,  and  suspends  the  drama  while 
he  soars  aloft.  Such  goings-on  were  outside  of  Gluck's  theories — 
and  beyond  his  powers.  The  pointedly  severe  orchestral  introduc- 
tion conforms  to  the  Gluckian  canon,  but  several  of  the  bravura 
arias  might  have  made  the  older  man  wonder  if  he  had  lived  in 
vain.  And  he  would  have  been  quite  right  about  the  solos  in  the 
last  act,  which  are  decidedly  conventional  singers'  exhibition  pieces. 
On  the  strength  of  the  mild  success  of  Idomeneo>  which  was  first 
performed  on  January  29,  1781,  Mozart  decided  to  remain  in 
Munich  to  enjoy  the  carnival,  and  to  haunt  the  Elector's  court — 
for  he  still  hoped  against  hope  that  he  would  be  asked  to  stay. 
Then,  suddenly  in  mid-March,  he  was  summoned  to  join  the  Arch- 
bishop, who  had  taken  his  grim  face  to  Vienna  for  Maria  Theresa's 
funeral,  and  the  following  months  were  among  the  most  critical  of 
his  life.  It  was  at  once  apparent  that  the  brutal  churchman  was 
bent  on  humiliating  Mozart  in  every  possible  way:  he  was  treated 
like  a  menial,  made  to  eat  at  the  servants'  table,  and  addressed  in 
a  fashion  usually  reserved,  even  under  that  outlandish  caste  sys- 
tem, for  underscullions  and  ruffians.  Those  who  have  tried  to  find 
some  slight  palliation  for  .Von  Colloredo's  conduct  seem  to  forget 
that  he  was  generally  detested  even  by  his  fellow  nobles.  Now  his 
treatment  of  Mozart  made  him  an  object  of  ridicule  among  those 
who  felt  themselves  honored  by  the  composer's  presence  at  their 
table.  Agitated  letters  passed  almost  daily  between  Mozart  and  his 
father,  with  the  latter  playing  his  usual  timeserving  role.  Mozart 
was  particularly  annoyed  because  the  Archbishop  forbade  him  to 
play  elsewhere  than  at  his  own  palace.  Events  hurried  toward  a 
crisis.  On  May  9,  he  had  an  audience  with  Von  Colloredo,  who 
shouted  at  him  like  a  fishwife.  Mozart  rushed  to  his  lodgings,  and 
drafted  two  letters:  the  first,  to  the  Archbishop,  asked  that  his 
resignation  be  accepted  immediately;  the  second,  to  his  father, 
asked  for  moral  support.  The  Archbishop  deigned  no  reply,  and 
Leopold  Mozart's  letter,  after  hinting  that  his  son  was  doomed  to 
perdition,  called  upon  him  to  submit.  This  Mozart  had  no  inten- 
tion of  doing.  After  waiting  a  full  month  for  Von  Colloredo's  an- 


MOZART  139 

swer,  he  once  more  presented  himself  at  the  palace.  This  time  he 
was  kicked  out  of  the  room  by  one  of  the  Archbishop's  toadies. 
This  was  His  Grace's  way  of  accepting  the  resignation. 

Even  before  finally  breaking  with  the  Archbishop,  Mozart  had 
enraged  his  father  by  moving  to  an  inn  where  the  nomadic  Webers 
were  staying.  Fridolin  was  dead,  Aloysia  had  married  one  Lange, 
an  actor,  and  now  the  family  was  presided  over  by  a  slatternly 
drunken  mother.  Having  failed  to  carry  off  Aloysia,  Mozart  now 
began  to  court  her  younger  sister,  Constanze.  Soon  Vienna  hummed 
with  gossip  of  the  goings-on  at  The  Eye  of  God,  as  the  inn  was 
called,  and  the  evil  news  trickled  to  Salzburg.  A  thunderous  de- 
nunciation came  from  the  tireless  old  busybody.  Mozart  denied 
everything,  including  any  intention  of  marrying.  Evidently  refer- 
ring to  alleged  irregularities  with  Constanze,  he  wrote  in  July,  "If 
I  had  to  marry  every  girl  I've  jested  with,  I'd  have  at  least  two 
hundred  wives  by  now.5'  But  for  discretion's  sake,  he  changed  his 
lodgings.  Before  the  year  was  up,  however,  Leopold  received  the 
bad  news  that  Wolfgang,  in  the  novel  role  of  a  Galahad,  was  de- 
termined to  rescue  poor  Constanze  from  her  unappreciative  family. 
"She  is  not  ugly,35  he  wrote,  "but  at  the  same  time  far  from  beau- 
tiful. Her  whole  beauty  consists  in  two  small  black  eyes,  and  a 
handsome  figure.  She  has  no  wit,  but  enough  sound  human  sense 
to  be  able  to  fulfill  her  duties  as  a  wife  and  mother.55 

What  finally  decided  Mozart  to  brave  his  father's  wrath  was  not 
only  his  loneliness  (and  the  insistence  of  Constanze' s  guardian  that 
he  make  an  honest  woman  out  of  her*),  but  also  an  apparent  im- 
provement in  his  worldly  position.  He  had  a  few  pupils,  some  of 
his  compositions  had  been  published,  and  once  more  he  was  in 
demand  as  a  virtuoso.  Better  still,  in  July,  1781,  the  managers  of 
the  German  Opera — Josef  II's  pet  musical  project — handed  him  a 
libretto  to  set.  With  his  domestic  future  so  unsettled,  Mozart  was 
not  prepared  to  work  unremittingly  on  Die  Entfuhrung  aus  dem 
Serail,  however  dear  to  his  heart.  The  routine  trivia  of  a  busy 
musician's  life,  including  an  arduous  contest  with  the  pianist  Muzio 
Clementi  for  the  amusement  of  the  court,  he  could  take  in  his 
stride,  but  quite  as  unsettling  as  Constanze' s  limited  charms  was 

*  Constanze's  guardian  made  Mozart  sign  a  promise  to  marry  her  within  three 
years  or  give  her  a  life  annuity.  To  Constanze5  s  credit,  be  it  said  that  as  soon  as  the 
guardian  was  out  of  sight  she  tore  up  the  contract. 


MEN    OF    MUSIC 

his  meeting  with  Haydn,  which  was  followed  by  a  more  or  less 
complete  reorientation  of  his  art.  The  first  act  of  the  opera  went 
fast,  but  the  entire  score  was  not  finished  for  almost  a  year,  some  of 
the  delay  being  due  to  the  clumsiness  and  absurdities  of  the  pseudo- 
Oriental  libretto.  The  musical  cliques,  which  in  Vienna  prolifer- 
ated like  bacteria,  were  banded  against  him,  and  were  determined 
that  Die  Entfuhrung  should  not  be  produced.  Eventually,  Josef  II 
had  to  intervene,  and  command  its  performance.  The  night  of  the 
premiere,  July  16,  1782,  was  an  unmarred  triumph  for  Mozart:  the 
house  was  packed,  the  court  was  present,  and  number  after  num- 
ber was  encored.  During  the  rest  of  the  season,  the  management 
coined  money  in  countless  repetitions  of  the  new  opera. 

Scarcely  three  weeks  after  the  first  performance,  with  the  praise 
of  Vienna  ringing  in  his  ears,  Mozart  led  Constanze  to  the  altar 
at  St.  Stephen's. 

The  opera  that  had  made  the  future  seem  brighter  to  Mozart 
has  not  worn  well.  Die  Entfuhrung  belongs  to  that  suspicious  group 
of  works  that  are  called  great  merely,  it  seems,  because  they  are  by 
great  composers.  Furthermore,  its  musical  quality  has  been  exag- 
gerated because  of  its  importance  as  the  first  complete  Singspiel 
by  a  major  dramatic  composer.  There  are  fine  things  in  the  opera 
—the  trouble  is  that  they  are  in  all  sorts  of  styles.  In  the  entire 
piece,  Mozart,  with  his  keen  nose  for  drama,  developed  only  one 
completely  convincing  character — the  richly  farcical  Osmin.  Yet 
the  whole  business  proceeds  in  high  good  spirits,  which  for  the 
time  being  reconcile  us  to  a  succession  of  airs  in  every  style  from 
Neapolitan  to  Viennese  Turkish.  The  bits  from  Die  Entfuhrung  that 
recitalists  resuscitate  are  almost  as  lovely  as  anything  in  Mozart, 
but  hearing  them  out  of  their  context  leads  one  to  expect  the 
opera  as  a  whole  to  be  more  satisfying  than  it  is. 

The  success  of  Die  Entfuhrung  had  given  Mozart  courage  to  marry 
Constanze,  but  when  they  got  home  from  St.  Stephen's  they  found 
the  cupboard  bare.  It  was,  except  for  short  periods,  to  remain  that 
way  for  the  rest  of  Mozart's  life.  He  was  careless  and  extravagant; 
Constanze,  though  too  unimaginative  to  be  a  spendthrift,  was  an 
even  worse  manager  than  he.  Even  at  the  height  of  his  fame  (which 
was  far  more  considerable  than  many  sentimentalists  have  been 
willing  to  admit),  Mozart  never  made  money  in  large  sums.  When, 
shortly  after  a  special  performance  of  Die  Entfuhrung  arranged  by 


MOZART 

the  managers  of  the  German  Opera  at  Gluck's  request.,  the  aged 
autocrat  of  'the  music  drama  asked  the  Mozarts  to  his  splendid 
mansion  in  the  suburbs  of  Vienna,  the  disparity  of  their  worldly 
positions  must  have  been  painfully  apparent.  Their  own  home  was 
in  the  shabbiest  quarter  of  the  city,  in  a  narrow,  ill-smelling  lane. 

The  next  two  years  saw  Mozart  taking  what  advantage  he  could 
of  his  growing  fame.  Reading  the  roster  of  the  phenomenal  num- 
ber of  his  engagements  to  play  in  the  homes  of  the  highest  Vien- 
nese society,  it  is  something  of  a  mystery  that  he  did  not  accumu- 
late wealth.  For  instance,  in  five  weeks  of  1784,  he  played  nine 
times  at  the  magnificent  Count  Janos  Esterhazy's,  and  the  same 
year  Haydn  invited  him  to  appear  several  times  at  Prince  Miklds 
Esterhazy's  Vienna  house.  Furthermore,  besides  taking  part  in 
concerts  of  other  artists,  including  those  of  his  increasingly  famous 
sister-in-law,  Aloysia  Lange,  Mozart  began  to  give  subscription 
concerts  of  his  own,  which  were  attended  by  the  nobility  and  the 
diplomatic  corps  en  masse.  The  Emperor,  who  was  frequently 
present,  always  applauded  loudly  and  shouted  bravo.  As  a  host, 
Mozart  provided  musical  fare  of  indescribable  richness.  No  pro- 
gram was  complete  without  at  least  one  symphony,  one  or  two 
piano  concertos,  a  divertimento,  and  several  small  pieces,  all  topped 
off  with  an  improvised  fantasia.  This  last  always  brought  down  the 
house. 

Some  slight  conception  of  Mozart's  ability  as  a  keyboard  artist 
may  be  extracted  from  the  ecstatic  eulogy  of  an  early  biographer: 
"If  I  might  have  the  fulfillment  of  one  wish  on  earth,  it  would  be 
to  hear  Mozart  improvise  once  more  on  the  piano.  .  .  ."  The 
child  clavier  prodigy  had  perfectly  adapted  his  maturing  tech- 
nique to  the  demands  of  the  early  piano,  which,  however,  cannot 
be  compared  in  sonority,  volume,  or  flexibility  to  the  modern 
concert  grand. 

The  best  of  Mozart's  music  for  the  piano  alone,  with  the  excep- 
tion of  the  late  Fantasia  in  C  minor  (K.  475),*  was  written  before 

*  Bernard  Shaw's  adventures  with  this  Fantasia  in  the  London  of  the  nineties  are 
worth  quoting  in  full:  "Do  you  know  that  noble  fantasia  in  G  minor,  in  which 
Mozart  shewed  what  Beethoven  was  to  do  with  the  pianoforte  sonata,  just  as  in  Das 
Veilchen  he  shewed  what  Schubert  was  to  do  with  the  song?  Imagine  my  feelings 
when  Madame  Backer  Grondahl,  instead  of  playing  th:s  fantasia  (which  she  would 
have  done  beautifully),  set  Madame  Haas  to  play  it,  and  then  sat  down  beside  her 
and  struck  up  'an  original  part  for  a  second  piano,'  in  which  every  interpolation  was 
an  impertinence  and  every  addition  a  blemish.  Shocked  and  pained  as  every  one 


142  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

1779,  and  therefore  does  not  belong  to  the  high  noon  of  his  genius. 
The  sonatas  are,  with  several  notable  exceptions,  rather  light- 
weight works,  showing  a  complete  command  of  the  technical  re- 
sources of  the  time.  Some  of  them,  indeed,  show  little  else,  and  are 
full  of  empty  variational  passagework.  The  best,  however,  are 
among  the  permanent  delights  of  music.  The  most  familiar  is  prob- 
ably that  in  A  major  (K.  331),  consisting  of  a  gracious  theme  and 
variations,  a  decorous  but  almost  romantic  minuet,  and  the  now 
hackneyed  Rondo  alia  Turca,  which  needs  the  perfect  sympathy 
and  flawless  touch  of  a  master  to  rescue  it  from  banality.  But  the 
Sonata  in  A  minor  (K.  310)  has  the  most  body,  and  is  probably 
the  favorite  of  those  whose  conception  of  the  sonata  is  based  on 
the  massive  structures  of  Beethoven.  It  pulses  with  drama,  and  is 
painted  with  darker  colors  than  are  common  in  the  Mozartian 
palette. 

The  piano  concertos,  over  twenty  in  number,  are  more  reward- 
ing to  the  listener  than  the  sonatas,  and  are  incomparably  more 
important  historically.  While  no  one  man  can  accurately  be  re- 
ferred to  as  the  inventor  of  a  musical  form,  Mozart  did  such  a 
perfect  job  of  fusing  and  adapting  certain  elements  he  found  at 
hand  that  the  classical  concerto  for  piano  and  orchestra  may  be 
regarded  as  his  achievement.  In  the  sonatas,  on  the  other  hand, 
Mozart  merely  worked  out  the  ideas  of  Karl  Philipp  Emanuel 
Bach  and  Haydn  in  his  own  way.  On  the  piano  concertos,  which 
were  staples  of  his  musical  soirees,  he  lavished  his  most  exquisite 
care  and  unstinted  inventiveness.*  The  best  of  them  belong  to  the 
years  1784-86,  though  he  had  all  but  perfected  the  form  by  his 
twentieth  year.  Picking  first-magnitude  stars  from  a  galaxy  is  a 

who  knew  and  loved  the  fantasia  must  have  been,  there  was  a  certain  grim  ironic 
interest  in  the  fact  that  the  man  who  has  had  the  unspeakable  presumption  to  offer 
us  his  improvements  on  Mozart  is  the  infinitesimal  Grieg.  The  world  reproaches 
Mozart  for  his  inspired  variations  on  Handel's  'The  people  that  walked  in  dark- 
ness.' I  do  not  know  what  the  world  will  now  say  to  Grieg;  but  if  ever  he  plays  that 
'original  second  part*  himself  to  an  audience  equipped  with  adequate  musical  cul- 
ture, I  sincerely  advise  him  to  ascertain  beforehand  that  no  brickbats  or  other  loose 
and  suitably  heavy  articles  have  been  left  carelessly  about  the  room." 

— London  Music  in  1888—89  as  Heard  by  Corno  di  Bassetto 

*  The  piano  parts  of  the  concertos  are  often  notoriously  bare  in  outline.  When 
Mozart  played  a  piano  concerto  in  public — he  was  the  first  person  ever  to  do  so — he 
enriched  the  solo  part  with  ornament  and  other  improvisation.  It  was  not  until  Bee- 
thoven's time  that  it  was  thought  necessary  to  set  down  all  the  notes  to  be  played — 
and  even  he  once  sent  the  manuscript  of  his  G  minor  Concerto  to  the  publisher  with 
the  piano  part  missing.  He  had  forgotten  to  write  it  down ! 


MOZART  143 

fascinating  game  that  anyone  can  play,  and  among  the  Mozart 
piano  concertos  there  are  enough  masterpieces  to  go  around.  Some 
stargazers  favor  the  A  major  (K.  414),  small  but  perfect  in  design, 
and  full  of  youthful  charm.  The  B  flat  major  (K.  450)  is  a  Haydn 
joke  in  the  first  movement,  typically  Mozartian  variations  in  the 
second,  and  a  premonition  of  Schumann  (in  cap  and  bells,  of  all 
things!)  in  the  third.  The  A  major  (K.  488)  and  the  C  minor  (K. 
491)  were  written  during  March,  1786,  while  Mozart  was  finishing 
Le  Nozze  di  Figaro.  The  slow  movement  of  the  former  is  among  the 
most  touching  and  beautiful  music  ever  written,  diffusing  the 
serene  melancholy  of  "magic  casements,  opening  on  the  foam  of 
perilous  seas,  in  faery  lands  forlorn."  In  the  C  minor,  this  melan- 
choly has  deepened  into  gloom.  Sir  Donald  Tovey  calls  the  last 
movement  of  this  Concerto  "sublime,"  and  it  is  known  that 
Beethoven  was  profoundly  affected  by  it.  Anyone  who  can  listen  to 
this  C  minor  Concerto,  and  still  say  that  Mozart  is  heartless, 
simply  cannot  hear. 

What  Mozart,  pouring  out  incredible  musical  riches,  was  hoping 
for  was  not  more  opportunity  for  playing  in  the  houses  of  the  great. 
He  wanted  the  court  appointment  he  knew  he  deserved.  In  1783, 
tired  of  waiting,  he  began  to  toy  with  the  idea  of  trying  his  luck  in 
Paris  and  London,  but  his  father,  who  sat  sulking  in  Salzburg, 
fulminated  bitterly  against  this  proposed  gypsying.  Besides,  in 
June  Constanze  gave  birth  to  their  first  child,  a  boy.  At  this  point, 
Mozart  thought  it  high  time  for  his  father  and  Nannerl  to  meet  his 
wife,  and  so  the  very  next  month  he  and  Constanze  rushed  off  to 
Salzburg,  leaving  the  luckless  infant  in  the  care  of  a  wet  nurse.  It 
died  while  they  were  away.*  The  Salzburg  visit  was  a  failure,  and 
after  three  months  of  cool  amenities,  during  which  Mozart  toiled 
halfheartedly  at  two  never  completed  operas,  they  started  for 
home.  At  Linz,  they  found  old  Count  Thun,  whose  daughter-in- 
law  was  one  of  Mozart's  pupils,  preparing  for  a  fete.  He  asked 
Mozart  to  write  a  symphony  for  the  occasion,  and  with  the  alacrity 
and  sang-froid  of  a  conjuror  pulling  a  rabbit  out  of  a  hat,  he  pro- 
duced the  great  C  major  ("Linz")  Symphony  (K.  425). 

By  this  time — November,  1783 — Mozart  had  written  almost 
forty  symphonies.  Most  of  these  are  of  small  account,  and  show, 

*  In  all,  this  harum-scarum  couple  had  seven  children.  It  is  little  wonder  that  only 
two  survived. 


144  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

for  Mozart,  a  certain  slowness  in  realizing  the  full  possibilities  of 
the  symphonic  form.  Except  for  the  witty  but  superficial  "Paris" 
Symphony  (K.  297),  and  one  or  two  others,  his  most  characteristic 
symphonies  were  composed  after  his  meeting  with  Haydn  in  1781. 
The  effect  of  this  relationship  and  of  a  closer  knowledge  of  Haydn's 
symphonies  was,  curiously  enough,  to  make  Mozart  more  than 
ever  himself.  The  first  fruit  of  this  stimulus  was  a  second  serenade 
written  for  the  Haffner  family,  and  later  recast  in  the  form  of  a 
symphony.  The  "Haffner,"  in  D  major  (K.  385),  is  miniature  in 
size — and  perfect  from  beginning  to  end.  The  first  movement  is 
unique  in  Mozart  for  having  only  one  theme,  but  he  rings  so  many 
changes  on  this  that  the  effect  is  one  of  infinite  variety.  The 
minuet  is  the  formal  grace  of  the  rococo  in  essence;  it  enfolds  a 
middle  section  of  hushed  ecstasy  that  is  one  of  the  tenderest 
moments  in  music.  The  final  rondo,  which  Mozart  wanted  to  be 
played  "as  fast  as  possible,"  sounds  in  part  like  an  Ariel's  adapta- 
tion of  Three  Blind  Mice,  and  brings  the  "Haffner"  to  a  close  in  a 
rush  of  pell-mell  good  spirits.  The  "Linz,"  though  not  so  flawless, 
shows  Mozart  developing.  Here,  for  the  first  time,  he  tries  a  slow 
introduction — an  effect  he  was  to  turn  into  sheer  poetry  in  the  E 
flat  Symphony  (K.  543) .  The  almost  exotic  orchestral  color,  which 
might  be  misinterpreted  as  a  deliberate  experiment,  is  really  acci- 
dental— Count  Thun  had  trumpeters  and  drummers  in  his  band, 
but  no  flautists  or  clarinetists.  The  "Linz,"  unfortunately,  is  now- 
adays much  neglected:  one  of  the  foremost  living  musicologists  had 
to  confess  in  1935  that  he  had  heard  it  but  once. 

After  bidding  farewell  to  Count  Thun,  Mozart  returned  to 
Vienna,  and  for  more  than  a  year  nothing  broke  the  monotonous 
round  of  his  bread-and-butter  existence.  To  compensate  for  the 
staleness  of  life,  and  to  satisfy  his  yearning  for  friendship,  he  be- 
came more  and  more  interested  in  the  activities  of  a  Masonic  lodge 
he  had  joined  some  years  before.  Freemasonry  in  those  days  was 
not  the  stodgy,  perfunctory  institution  it  has  become — instead  of 
being  a  haven  for  backslappers,  it  was  a  refuge  for  liberal  thinkers 
and  artists,  Catholic  as  well  as  Protestant.  Mozart  took  Free- 
masonry very  seriously.  He  was  a  militant  proselytizer  for  the 
order,  and  even  succeeded  in  converting  his  bigoted  father  to  its 
tenets.  As  the  pious  Haydn  also  became  a  Mason  early  in  1785,  it 
is  possible  that  Mozart  had  won  him  over,  too.  Unfortunately,  the 


MOZART 


music  Mozart  composed  for  his  lodge  remains  buried  in  Kochel, 
and  so  it  is  impossible  to  comment  on  it.  A  funeral  march  is  said  to 
be  particularly  fine,  but  the  only  musical  result  we  can  judge  is  Die 
£auberfldte,  which  has  a  Masonic  libretto. 

In  February,  1785,  Leopold  Mozart  visited  Wolfgang  and  Con- 
stanze,  and  stayed  ten  weeks.  Sixty-six  years  had  somewhat  mel- 
lowed his  irascible  and  tyrannical  nature,  and  though  he  never 
completely  forgave  the  marriage,  his  son  and  daughter-in-law 
found  themselves  on  easier  terms  with  him.  He  was  much  im- 
pressed by  their  affluence  —  extremely  temporary,  unhappily  —  and 
delighted  in  watching  the  enthusiastic  response  to  Wolfgang's 
musical  prowess.  His  cup  of  gratification  overflowed  the  night  that 
the  great  Haydn  (with  two  barons  in  attendance)  called  on  the 
Mozarts  in  state.  Later  in  the  evening,  Ditters  von  Dittersdorf  and 
Wanhal  dropped  in,  and  then  four  of  the  most  eminent  musicians 
alive  sat  down  to  play  Mozart's  three  new  quartets.  Before  leaving^ 
Haydn  drew  the  elder  Mozart  aside,  and  said  solemnly  to  him,  "I 
declare  to  you  before  God,  and  as  an  honest  man,  that  your  son  is 
the  greatest  composer  I  know,  either  personally  or  by  name." 
Haydn  could  justly  take  pride  in  the  quartets  they  had  just  played, 
for  they  were  children  of  his  own  quartets.  No  one  realized  his  in- 
debtedness more  than  Mozart  himself,  for  in  dedicating  these  and 
three  other  quartets  to  Haydn,  he  said,  "From  Haydn  I  first 
learned  how  to  compose  a  quartet." 

This  memorable  evening  was  the  fulfillment  of  Leopold  Mozart's 
life,  which,  according  to  his  lights,  he  had  devoted  to  his  children. 
After  returning  to  Salzburg,  he  bqgan  to  fail  in  health,  and  died  in 
May,  1787^  without  having  seen  his  son  again. 

Those  who  pause  in  awe  before  the  vastness  of  the  Kochel 
catalogue,  with  its  hundreds  of  listings,  will  find  the  string  quartets 
a  comparatively  -easy  problem.  The  key  is  that  they  are  divided 
into  two  groups  —  those  written  between  1770  and  1773,  and 
those  written  in  1782  and  after.  Unless  you  are  a  professional 
musicologist,  you  may  forget  the  first  group  —  they  are  not  played 
often  because  they  contain  little  but  promise,  which  is  an  extremely 
flat  diet  for  a  musical  -evening.  That  Mozart  stopped  composing 
quartets  for  nine  years  better  to  ponder  the  true  esthetics  of  the 
form  is  most  unlikely,  What  happened  was,  as  we  know,  that  he 
met  Haydn  in  1  781,  and  during  the  next  four  years  wrote  the  set  of 


146  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

six  quartets  dedicated  to  him.  Nowhere,  not  even  in  the  sym- 
phonies, is  Haydn's  beneficial  effect  on  Mozart  so  apparent.  In- 
deed, in  the  first  of  the  "Haydn"  Quartets — the  G  major  (K.  387) 
— the  influence  forces  Mozart's  own  idiom  into  the  background. 
Coming  upon  this  quartet  unexpectedly  would  constitute  a  knotty 
problem  in  attribution.  Incidentally,  this  does  not  mean  that  it 
could  be  mistaken  for  anything  except  the  best  Haydn.  But  the 
second  of  the  set,  the  D  minor  (K.  421),  is  pure  Mozart,  though  in 
an  unusually  tragic,  almost  Beethovian,  mood.  It  is  classical  music 
with  a  future — and  that  future  is  romanticism,  with  its  glories  and 
mistakes.  The  sixth  of  the  "Haydn"  set,  the  C  major  (K.  465), 
raised  a  tempest  in  the  critical  teapot  that  has  not  subsided  yet. 
The  introduction  contains  a  discord.  The  effect  on  all  strata  of 
society  was  inconceivable:  a  prince  tore  up  the  parts,  a  printer  sent 
them  back  with  the  sharp  remark  that  they  contained  "obvious 
misprints,"  and  the  professional  critics  met  in  solemn  conclave, 
and  pronounced  Mozart  a  barbarian.  Only  Haydn  had  the  sense 
to  say,  "If  Mozart  wrote  thus,  he  must  have  done  so  with  good 
reason."  We  who  have  eaten  of  the  apples  of  modern  discord  can 
listen  to  the  C  major  Quartet  untroubled  by  anything  except  its 
beauty. 

Perhaps  the  critical  barrage  left  Mozart  a  sadder  man.  At  any 
rate,  he  never  again  ran  foul  of  the  pundits  in  the  same  overt  way. 
His  four  remaining  string  quartets  are  well  mannered  and  de- 
tached, genius  being  lavished  on  technical  polish  rather  than  on 
deep  expression.  The  last  three,  indeed,  are  courtly  and  beautifully 
surfaced — and  correctly  so.  They  were  composed  to  order  for 
Friedrich  Wilhelm  II  of  Prussia,  who  was  a  cello  virtuoso  in  a 
small  way,  which  explains  why  so  accomplished  a  craftsman  as 
Mozart  allowed  the  cello  part  occasionally  to  upset  the  balance  of 
the  ensemble.  The  "King  of  Prussia"  set  must  yield  on  all  counts 
to  the  "Haydn":  in  these  latter,  Mozart  showed  an  understanding 
of  the  separate  personalities  of  the  four  strings  that  no  other  com- 
poser— not  even  Beethoven — has  ever  surpassed.  Into  the  "Haydn" 
Quartets  he  poured  a  wealth  of  musical  ideas  not  inferior  in  kind  to 
those  with  which  he  built  his  great  symphonies  and  concertos. 

When,  late  in  1785,  Mozart  turned  again  to  writing  for  the  stage, 
he  was  vibrant  with  a  newly  perfected  command  of  contrapuntal 
idiom.  Der  Schauspieldirektor,  a  humorless  parody  of  theatrical  life, 


MOZART  147 

is  almost  too  trivial  to  justify  the  loving  care  Mozart  gave  it.  Evi- 
dently he  was  so  pleased  to  be  writing  in  the  theater  again  that 
he  used  this  dull  story  as  a  peg  on  which  to  hang  numbers  worthy 
of  a  better  idea.  Besides,  the  Emperor  had  sent  him  the  libretto, 
and  he  may  have  been  playing  politics,  particularly  as  his  formi- 
dable rival  Salieri  was  to  give  an  opera  of  his  own  at  the  same  court 
fete.  The  overture  and  concluding  quartet  of  Der  Schauspieldirektor 
have  a  richer  contrapuntal  fabric  than  Mozart  had  previously  used 
in  opera,  and  each  of  the  actors  is  assigned  music  that  cleverly 
lights  up  his  character.  But  even  with  these  advantages,  the  tiny 
opera  has  failed  to  survive  except  in  versions  (themselves  by  no 
means  popular)  that  Mozart  would  not  recognize. 

Der  Schauspieldirektor  was  but  an  interruption  in  the  creation 
of  one  of  Mozart's  masterpieces,  Le  Nozze  di  Figaro.  Not  long  after 
his  father's  return  to  Salzburg,  he  had  been  approached  by  Lorenzo 
da  Ponte  with  a  suggestion  that  he  do  the  music  for  Beaumarchais* 
Le  Manage  de  Figaro,  one  of  the  twin  peaks  of  French  bouffe  drama. 
There  were  all  sorts  of  objections  to  this  scheme,  but  they  were 
not  of  the  kind  to  stop  this  Jewish-born  priest,  whose  rise  from  the 
most  humble  origins  to  the  post  of  Latin  secretary  and  theater  poet 
to  Josef  II  had  given  him  confidence  in  his  star.  The  Emperor  had 
forbidden  performances  of  Beaumarchais'  play  because  of  its 
radical  political  implications,  and  it  was  thought  that  this  ban 
would  be  extended  to  an  opera  based  on  it.  Also,  Mozart  had 
reason  to  fear  that  Salieri  and  his  other  rivals  would  block  the 
staging  of  any  new  opera  from  his  pen.  Da  Ponte,  bold  in  his  role 
as  Metastasio's  admitted  successor,  was  equal  to  his  task:  he  won 
over  the  Emperor  by  sterilizing  the  play  politically,  and  stymied 
Mozart's  rivals.  Incidentally,  he  produced  the  best  libretto  that 
ever  came  Mozart's  way.  The  music  itself  was  finished  in  April, 
1786,  having  been  written  piecemeal  amid  a  welter  of  bread-and- 
butter  projects,  among  them  three  magnificent  piano  concertos. 
Le  Nozze  di  Figaro  was  produced  on  May  i,  and  was  greeted  with 
an  ovation  that  has  rarely  been  surpassed  in  the  annals  of  opera. 
Practically  every  number  was  encored,  and  cries  of  "Viva,  viva, 
grande  Mozart!"  came  from  all  parts  of  the  house. 

While  there  may  be  four  opinions  as  to  which  is  the  best  of 
Mozart's  operas,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  Figaro  teems  with 
more  memorable  music  than  any  of  the  others — indeed,  with  more 


148  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

than  almost  any  other  opera  ever  written.  From  beginning  to  end, 
the  succession  of  dazzling  numbers  is  bewildering.  To  hear  the 
opera  for  the  first  time  is  to  lose  much  of  its  dramatic  unity:  it 
sounds  too  much  like  a  mere  anthology  of  celebrated  melodies.  It 
takes  long  familiarity  with  Figaro  to  realize  fully  with  what  con- 
summate art  Mozart  has  combined  musical  beauty  and  dramatic 
truth.  This  breathless  pageant  of  beauty  begins  with  the  overture 
(now  almost  too  familiar) ,  which,  with  its  matchless  delicacy,  live- 
liness, and  wit,  sets  the  atmosphere  and  pace  of  what  is  to  follow. 
And  so  it  proceeds,  through  Figaro's  superb  martial  aria  in  the 
first  act,  the  Contessa's  and  Gherubino's  lovely  music  in  the 
second,  the  peerless  lament  of  the  Contessa  in  Act  III,  and  finally 
to  Susanna's  tender  love  song  in  the  last  act.  To  choose  a  favorite 
among  these  is  a  task — the  fact  that  so  many  people  know  "Voi  che 
sapete"  better  than  anything  else  in  Figaro  is  due  to  its  excessive 
whistleability. 

The  success  of  this  ribald  opera  did  not  improve  Mozart's  finan- 
cial position.  He  had  received  a  lump  sum  for  its  composition,  and 
this  he  ran  through  as  fast  as  possible.  He  was  living  way  beyond 
his  means,  dressing  himself  and  his  family  in  the  finest  style,  and 
occupying  part  of  a  mansion  in  a  good  quarter  of  Vienna.  His 
rather  hectic  private  life  was  likewise  a  drain  on  his  resources, 
physical  as  well  as  financial.  About  this  time,  he  began  a  series  of 
sordid  little  affairs  with  sundry  women  which  add  a  note  of  am- 
biguity to  his  otherwise  constant  affection  for  Constanze.  And  she, 
it  must  be  admitted,  was  not  like  Caesar's  wife,  and  often  had  to 
be  reproved  for  giving  gossips  something  to  talk  about. 

Mozart's  extravagant  scale  of  living  and  his  fitful  indulgences  re- 
quired some  sort  of  stable  income  that  Vienna  seemed  unwilling  to 
provide.  After  Figaro,  the  Emperor  was  as  usual  vociferous  in  his 
praise — but  no  official  post  was  forthcoming.  In  despair,  Mozart 
toyed  once  more  with  a  fantastic  idea  of  seeking  his  fortune  in 
England,  and  it  seems  that  only  a  warm  invitation  to  see  for  him- 
self how  well  Figaro  was  faring  in  Prague  kept  him  from,  this  ven- 
ture. He  accepted  with  alacrity  >  and  soon  he  and  Constanze,  with 
the  lordly  Thun  mansion  as  their  own,  were  receiving  a  hearty 
welcome  from  highborn  Praguers.  Their  reception,  in  fact,  was  so 
gratifying  that  it  must  have  crossed  Mozart's  mind  that  here  he 
might  be  both  understood  and  recompensed  according  to  his 
deserts.  His  presence  at  a  performance  of  Figaro  almost  started  a 


MOZART  149 

riot,  and  when  he  himself  conducted  it  some  days  later  the  plaudits 
of  the  audience  sounded  like  one  vast  claque.  Equally  successful 
were  his  two  concerts,  at  the  first  of  which  he  conducted  a  splendid 
new  symphony,  the  D  major,  or  "Prague35  (K.  504),  whose  propor- 
tions suggest  a  transition  from  the  smaller  perfections  of  the  "Haff- 
ner"  and  "Linz35  to  the  more  epic  structures  of  the  last  three  sym- 
phonies. Mozart  was  now  the  darling  of  Prague  society — a  state  of 
affairs  that  must  have  recalled  to  him  the  triumphs  of  his  child- 
hood. He  no  sooner  expressed  a  wish  to  write  an  opera  for  so  sym- 
pathetic a  public  than  the  delighted  impresario  who  had  im- 
ported Figaro  handed  him  a  contract.  He  had  to  leave  Prague 
without  the  elusive  appointment,  but  for  once  his  pockets  were 
stuffed. 

Vienna,  after  the  homage  of  Prague,  was  cold  indeed,  and 
Mozart  plunged  feverishly  into  the  business  of  the  new  opera.  Da 
Ponte  suggested  Don  Juan  as  a  subject,  and  (doubtless  to  get  the 
proper  atmosphere)  sat  down  with  a  bottle  of  Tokay  on  one  hand 
and  a  pretty  girl  on  the  other.  At  one  stage  of  the  writing,  when 
the  crosscurrents  of  passion  and  revenge  became  one  too  many  for 
him,  Da  Ponte  called  in  Casanova  for  expert  advice.  Mozart, 
while  tossing  off  the  best  of  his  string  quintets  and  the  luscious 
Sine  Heine  Nachtmusik,  began  to  rear  the  superb  structure  of  Don 
Giovanni.  In  the  midst  of  all  this,  he  received  a  visitor  who  must 
have  seemed  as  strange  to  him  as  the  Stone  Guest  did  to  Don  Juan. 
This  unappetizing  young  fellow,  who  looked  little  more  elegant 
than  a  Flemish  lout,  sat  down  at  the  piano,  and  improvised  with 
such  originality  that  Mozart  said  solemnly  to  some  other  guests, 
"Keep  your  eyes  on  him.  Some  day  he  will  give  the  world  some- 
thing to  talk:  about."  He  was  right:  his  caller  was  Ludwig  van 
Beethoven. 

In  September,  1787,  the  Mozarts  returned  to  Prague  for  two 
more  gala  months.  The  score  of  Don  Giovanni  was  still  unfinished, 
partly  because  Mozart  had  been  overworked,  and  partly  because 
he  had  to  consult  his  singers  before  putting  the  final  touches  on 
their  arias.  The  overture  was  the  last  number  composed,  and  the 
orchestra  had  to  read  it  at  sight  at  the  final  rehearsal.*  The  pre- 

*  Constanze,  years  later,  told  her  second  husband  that  Mozart  had  composed  the 
overture  the  night  before  the  final  rehearsal.  She  said  that  he  was  so  tired  that  she 
had  to  freshen  him  with  numerous  glasses  of  punch  and  the  reading  of  fairy  tales. 


150  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

miere,  on  October  29,  surpassed  the  triumphs  of  Figaro,  which  was 
still  a  prime  favorite  in  Prague.  Mozart's  appearance  in  the  or- 
chestra was  announced  by  a  trumpet  fanfare  that  might  have 
greeted  an  imperial  personage.  The  performers,  especially  the 
singers,  seemed  to  be  aware  that  they  were  making  history,  and 
made  the  presentation  electric  with  their  enthusiasm. 

Don  Giovanni  has  drawn  to  it  a  host  of  admirers  who  think  it 
the  greatest  opera  ever  written,  and  they  are  just  as  vociferous  as 
those  who  noisily  claim  this  honor  for  Tristan  und  Isolde  or  Pelttas  et 
Melisande.  Certainly,  it  is  a  very  exciting  opera,  with  its  many 
boldly  delineated  characters,  the  rush  of  events  toward  inevitable 
destruction,  the  shifting  from  comedy  to  tragedy  with  the  protean 
rhythm  of  life  itself,  and  the  bizarrerie  of  the  ghoulish  finale.  Don 
Giovanni  was  new  in  1787 — it  is  still  new.  The  Don  is  the  first  of  the 
countless  Byronic  heroes  who  were  to  crowd  the  operatic  stage 
during  the  nineteenth  century,  and  his  excesses  and  ruin  give  us  a 
foretaste  of  what  Weber  and  Meyerbeer  will  do  with  their  hellish 
librettos.  All  this  romantic  folderol  is  expressed  in  Mozart's 
highly  classical  idiom,  with  a  minimum  of  fustian — until  the 
finale,  when  the  Commendatore's  marble  statue  accepts  the  Don's 
invitation  to  dinner — with  dire  results.  Here  we  are  conscious  that 
the  nineteenth  century  is  only  thirteen  years  away,  and  the  Satanic 
fires  that  consume  the  wicked  hero's  palace  lick  at  the  very  struc- 
ture of  classicism  itself. 

But  those  who  hear  this  romantic  note  with  foreboding  have 
been  amply  compensated  in  the  earlier  scenes.  It  must  be  admitted 
that  the  overture  is  not  Mozart  at  his  best,  and  scarcely  prepares 
us  for  the  marvels  that  are  to  follow.  These  begin  with  Leporello's 
famous  catalogue  of  his  master's  infidelities,  a  masterpiece  ofbujfa 
and  bravura.  Ten  or  fifteen  minutes  later,  we  hear  "La  ci  darem 
la  mano"  a  duet  of  haunting,  tender  beauty.*  Almost  with  the  pro- 
fusion of  Figaro ,  brilliant  arias  and  dramatic  concerted  numbers 
follow.  "//  mio  tesoro"  with  its  tracery  of  florid  melody,  lays  claim 
to  being  the  most  beautiful  aria  in  the  tenor  repertoire.  But  the 

*  Re  the  connection  of  Don  Giovanni  with  the  romantic  movement,  it  is  worth  not- 
ing that  the  young  Chopin  was  so  enchanted  with  "La  ci  darem"  that  he  based  a  set 
of  variations  for  piano  and  orchestra  (Opus  2)  on  it.  And  it  was  this  work,  in  turn, 
that  fired  Schumann  to  write  his  first  published  musical  essay,  with  the  celebrated 
tag  line,  "Hats  off,  gentlemen,  a  genius !"  This  essay  set  off  the  romantic  revolt  in 
music  criticism. 


MOZART  151 

most  celebrated  music  from  Don  Giovanni  is  not  vocal — it  is  the 
Instrumental  minuet  that  closes  the  first  act.  The  boy  Mendelssohn 
gravely  informed  the  venerable  Goethe  that  this  minuet  was  the 
"most  beautiful  music  in  the  world.5'  And  though  we  have  heard  it 
played  on  everything  from  a  pipe  organ  to  a  hand  organ,  it  would 
not  be  difficult  to  agree  with  him. 

After  *tht  premiere  of  Don  Giovanni,  the  Mozarts  dallied  among  the 
appreciative  Praguers,  and  did  not  return  to  Vienna  until  Novem- 
ber 12.  Three  days  later,  Gluck  died,  and  a  month  later,  Josef 
II  appointed  Mozart  his  new  chamber  composer.  The  post  carried 
considerable  prestige,  but  Mozart  described  the  emolument  as  "too 
much  for  what  I  do,  and  too  little  for  what  I  could  do."  Gluck  had 
received  two  thousand  gulden  a  year;  the  emperor  gave  Mozart 
eight  hundred,  and  this  paltry  sum  was,  with  the  exception  of  a 
tiny  stipend  from  St.  Stephen's  that  he  began  to  receive  in  1791, 
the  only  assured  income  he  enjoyed.  For  a  time  he  squandered  his 
genius  turning  out  trivial  music  for  court  functions — charming 
dances  that  foreshadow  Johann  Strauss.  Altogether,  Mozart  was 
as  near  to  being  in  a  rut  as  he  ever  was  in  all  his  life.  His  feeling  of 
neglect  was  intensified  by  the  cool  reception  the  Viennese  ac- 
corded Don  Giovanni.  Also,  his  chronic  poverty  had  become  acute, 
and  he  now  began  that  series  of  begging  letters  to  a  fellow  Mason 
which  is  matched  in  the  annals  of  music  only  by  the  more  flagrant 
specimens  from  Wagner's  pen.  His  improdigality  far  outstripped 
his  friend's  patient  generosity,  and  when  the  funds  came  they  were 
mere  stopgaps. 

Despite  indications  to  the  contrary,  Mozart  was  on  the  edge  of 
the  most  miraculously  fecund  period  of  his  life.  A  few  weeks  after 
the  chilling  Vienna  first  night  of  Don  Giovanni,  and  while  his  rival 
Salieri  was  crowding  him  off  the  boards  with  a  very  successful 
opera,  Mozart  began  a  symphony.  As  if  seized  by  a  divine  frenzy, 
he  worked  for  six  weeks,  and  when  he  laid  down  his  pen,  he  had 
completed  his  three  unquestioned  symphonic  masterpieces.  There 
are  two  ways  of  interpreting  this  phenomenon:  either  Mozart 
escaped  into  music  from  the  sordidness  of  his  life,  or  his  misery  put 
him  into  the  vatic  state.  Interpreted  either  way,  these  three  last 
symphonies  are  the  triple  crown  of  eighteenth-century  orchestral 
music.  In  deference  to  Beethoven  alone,  it  is  a  moot  question 
whether  they  have  ever  been  surpassed. 


152  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

The  Beethoven  symphonies  are  great  as  music,  but  part  of  their 
enormous  popularity  is  due  to  the  way  they  lend  themselves  to 
extramusical  interpretation.  It  is  easy  to  read  into  them  the 
course  of  Beethoven's; — or  mankind's — struggles.  Mozart's  sym- 
phonies do  not  lend  themselves  to  such  interpretation,  and  perhaps 
for  that  reason  they,  like  Haydn's,  have  suffered  in  the  estimation 
of  the  more  romantic  types  of  concertgoers.  They  must  be  ap- 
proached, and  heard,  as  music  alone.  Almost  all  attempts  to  read 
vast  human  or  superhuman  meanings  into  Mozart  show  a  violent 
lapse  of  mental  discipline.  They  spring  from  a  refusal,  or  inability, 
to  recognize  the  intrinsic  condition  of  music  as  an  art,  and  end,  in 
that  final  reduetio  ad  absurdum  of  musical  determinism,  by  erecting 
a  certain  preconception  of  Beethoven's  symphonies  as  the  only 
ideal.  It  was  this  school  of  misthinkers  who  thought  they  were 
praising  Brahms  by  calling  his  First  Symphony  "Beethoven's 
Tenth,"  and  who,  vaguely  realizing  that  Mozart  was  a  first-rate 
composer,  have  read  all  sorts  of  strange  things  into  his  music, 
particularly  the  last  three  symphonies.  But  their  wrestlings  with 
Mozart's  pellucid  material  produce  singularly  ludicrous  results. 
For  instance,  just  as  they  are  beginning  to  revel  in  the  connota- 
tions of  the  vast  and  mysterious  slow  introduction  to  the  E  fiat 
Symphony,  their  idea-freighted  haze  evaporates,  and  they  are  left 
with  nothing  but  music. 

Mozart  has  left  no  richer  or  more  varied  music  than  these  last 
three  symphonies.  Each  of  them  abounds  in  inspired  musical  ideas, 
and  each  has  a  distinct  musical  character  of  its  own,  truly  amazing 
in  view  of  the  circumstances  of  their  composition.  After  the  slow 
grandeur  of  the  introduction,  the  E  flat  (K.  543}  >  which  has  been 
called  the  locus  classicus  of  euphony,  turns  out  to  be  a  gay,  even 
impudent,  work,  with  but  few  notes  of  pensiveness.  The  instru- 
mental color  is  especially  rich  and  full  of  contrasts,  with  the  wind 
instruments  playing  an  unusually  important  role — the  E  flat  was 
the  first  major  work  in  which  clarinets  were  prominently  used.  The 
lovely  minuet,  which  is  almost  as  famous  as  that  from  Don  Giovanni, 
is  already  half  a  scherzo — Beethoven  was  to  bring  the  symphonic 
scherzo  to  adulthood  in  his  Second  Symphony,  and  perfect  it  in  his 
Third.  The  G  minor  (K.  550)  has  suffered  somewhat  from  the 
fact  that  the  first  movement  is  perhaps  the  most  sheerly  beautiful 
music  ever  written,  and  thus  the  last  three  movements  have  too 


MOZART  153 

often  been  shoved  into  the  background  of  the  memory  like  poor 
relations.  Actually,  though  they  lack  the  inexplicable  magic  of 
that  wonderful  allegro,  they  do  their  full  share  toward  making 
the  G  minor  a  perfectly  integrated  work  of  art.  This  symphony, 
which  Eric  Blom  has  called  "the  work  in  which  classicism  and 
romanticism  meet  and  where  once  and  for  all  we  see  a  perfect 
equilibrium  between  them,"  is  the  most  troubled  of  Mozart's 
symphonies.  The  pensive  note  is,  for  once,  tinged  with  a  deeper 
melancholy  and  weariness.  After  it,  the  G  major  (EL  551)  is  un- 
troubled, even  resurgent.  It  happens,  under  the  meaningless 
pseudonym  of  the  "Jupiter/3  to  be  the  best  known  of  the  sym- 
phonies. Also,  it  is  the  most  patterned  and  classical  of  the  three:  the 
entire  structure  is  based  on  a  series  of  inspired  musical  axioms  as 
neat  and  spare  as  propositions  from  Euclid.  The  celebrated  finale 
intricately  combines  five  of  these  themes  with  a  wizardry  that 
gives  point  to  the  comparison  of  this  movement  to  a  musical  chess 
game.  The  whole  symphony  is  a  curious,  but  completely  successful, 
combination  of  grandeur  and  high  spirits.  Altogether,  this  last  of 
Mozart's  symphonies  has  abounding  strength  and  youthfulness, 
and  is  informed  throughout  by  an  athleticism  that  is  rare  in  the 
rest  of  his  work. 

It  is  not  too  strange  that  these  three  symphonies,  the  last  of 
which  was  completed  early  in  August,  1788,  seemingly  exhausted 
Mozart's  best  creative  powers,  and  brought  on  a  fallow  period  that 
lasted  almost  a  whole  year.  Needless  to  say,  he  did  not  completely 
stop  composing:  a  multitude  of  dances  and  minor  chamber  works 
flowed  from  his  pen,  some  of  them  only  hack  work.  He  also  began 
to  "fill  out"  the  instrumental  accompaniments  of  certain  of 
Handel's  oratorios,  notably  Messiah,  on  a  commission  from  Baron 
van  Swieten,  one  of  Vienna's  most  celebrated  musical  amateurs, 
who  later  furnished  the  Hbretto  for  Haydn's  The  Creation.  Pos- 
sibly too  much  obloquy  has  been  attached  to  these  refurbishings  of 
Handel,  but  they  certainly  belong  to  a  very  dubious  category:  it  is 
still  a  question  whether  any  composer,  however  great,  should  try- 
to  "complete"  another  composer's  work. 

In  April,  1789,  Mozart  set  out  on  a  brief  tour  as  the  guest  of  his 
pupil.  Prince  Karl  Lichnowsky.  He  played  successfully  before  the 
Saxon  court  at  Dresden,,  and  at  Leipzig  performed  on  the  very 
organ  that  Johann  Sebastian  Bach  had  used .  Greatly  moved,  the 


154  MEN  OF 

Thomascantor,  himself  Bach's  pupil,  had  the  choir  perform  Singef 
dent  Herrn.,  one  of  his  teacher's  six  surviving  motets.  This  so  trans- 
ported the  visitor  that  he  asked  to  see  the  parts,  exclaiming, 
"Here,  for  once,  is  something  from  which  one  can  learn."  The  next 
stop  was  Potsdam,  where  Frederick  the  Great's  cultivated  nephew 
gave  Mozart  the  same  eager  reception  his  uncle  had  accorded 
Bach.  Although  Mozart  criticized  the  King's  band,  and  heckled 
the  orchestra  during  a  performance  of  his  own  Entfiihrung,  Fried- 
rich  Wilhelm  tipped  him  generously,  and  commissioned  him  to 
compose  six  string  quartets  and  also  six  easy  piano  sonatas  for  the 
Princess  Royal.*  The  legend  that  Mozart  turned  down  the  munifi- 
cently paid  job  of  Kapellmeister  at  Potsdam  in  deference  to  Josef 
II  is  probably  sheer  fantasy.  If  he  did  anything  so  unlikely,  he 
might  have  felt  himself  rewarded  on  his  return  to  Vienna  (with 
his  pockets  mysteriously  empty),  when  the  Emperor  ordered 
another  opera  from  him  and  Da  Ponte.  Cosifan  tutte,  their  new  col- 
laboration, was  hurried  through  for  the  winter  season,  and  pro- 
duced on  January  2,  1790. 

Much  has  been  written  about  Cost  fan  tutte,  and  most  of  that 
much  about  its  libretto,  which  has  been  denounced  alternately  as 
indecent  and  shallow.  There  is  a  grain  of  truth  in  both  criticisms, 
but  only  because  these  elements  necessarily  have  their  parts  in  the 
making  of  a  really  comic  opera.  The  libretto  is  actually  quite 
adequate,  with  its  many  absurd  contretemps.  In  general  plan  it 
resembles  The  Two  Gentlemen  of  Verona — with  extra  characters  and 
complications.  It  is,  quite  appropriately,  the  most  rococo  of 
Mozart's  operas — a  carnival  of  madcap  frivolity  and  fun  from  start 
to  finish.  It  is  interesting,  if  irrelevant,  to  note  that  Cosifan  tutte  had 
its  premiere  just  when  the  horrors  of  the  French  Revolution  were 
beginning.  On  this  exceedingly  flimsy  basis,  it  has  been  called  the 
swan  song  of  the  callous,  pleasure-mad  aristocracy  of  the  eight- 
eenth century  (which  in  Austria  went  its  own  pleasure-mad,  cal- 
lous way  for  decades  after  the  French  Revolution) .  The  opera  is  a 
delightful  confection,  musically  like  the  sugar  icing  on  a  cuckold's 
wedding  cake.  There  are  those  who  think  it  the  best  opera  Mozart 
ever  wrote. 

Cost  fan  tutte  delighted  the  unscrupulous  Viennese.  Unfortu- 

*  Mozart  composed  only  three  "Kong  of  Prussia"  Quartets,  and  but  one  of  the 
sonatas. 


MOZART  155 

nately,  three  weeks  after  the  first  performance,  Josef  II  died. 
Again  Mozart's  hopes  were  dashed.  Leopold -II,  the  new  Emperor, 
was  violently  lukewarm  in  his  attitude  toward  music,  and  indiffer- 
ent to  Mozart,  who  was  not  included  in  the  entourage  summoned 
to  Frankfort  for  the  coronation.  Mozart's  actions  at  this  point 
were  hysterical.  Constanze  was  ailing,  and  required  expensive 
medical  care,  he  himself  had  only  just  recovered  from  a  serious  ill- 
ness, and  his  poverty  was  becoming  unbearable.  Yet  he  pawned 
the  few  valuables  he  had  left,  and  gallivanted  off  to  Frankfort 
with  the  idea  of  giving  concerts  while  the  city  was  crowded  with 
notables.  He  appeared  only  once?  when  he  played  the  so-called 
"Coronation"  Concerto  for  piano  and  orchestra  (K.  537),  which 
he  had  really  written  two  years  before.  As  usual,  there  was  much 
applause  but  small  financial  gain,  and  the  sad  tale  was  repeated 
wherever  he  stopped  to  play  on  his  way  home.  It  was  a  very  weary 
and  sick  man  who  reached  Vienna  in  November.  The  following 
month,  when  Haydn  came  to  see  him  before  leaving  for  London, 
Mozart  wept.  He  believed,  and  with  reason,  that  he  would  not  live 
to  see  his  beloved  friend's  return. 

The  early  months  of  1791  passed  uneventfully.  In  March, 
Mozart  ran  into  an  old  acquaintance  of  his  Salzburg  days,  Emanuel 
Schikaneder,  a  sort  of  theatrical  jack-of-all-trades,  who  at  the 
moment  was  staging  a  series  of  spectacle  plays  and  bawdy  farces  in 
a  large  but  flimsy  auditorium  outside  the  city  walls.  As  he  was  a 
brother  Mason,  Schikaneder  managed  to  induce  Mozart  to  set  a 
preposterous  sheaf  of  muddled  ideas  he  had  gathered  from  his 
reading  and  bound  together  with  ill-digested  Masonic  symbolism. 
Yet  this  potpourri  abounded  in  situations  and  characters  that 
Mozart  could  treat  effectively.  He  set  to  work  at  once  on  what  was 
to  be  his  last  opera,  Die  %auberflote,  and  as  Constanze  was  away 
taking  treatments  at  a  spa,  Schikaneder  provided  him  with  a  little 
workhouse  near  the  theater,  good  cheer,  and  jolly,  loose-living 
companions.  In  July,  while  he  was  still  toiling  on  the  score,  a 
stranger  approached  him  with  a  commission  to  write  a  Requiem 
by  a  set  date.  The  remuneration  was  inordinately  generous,  and 
the  anonymous  visitor  made  only  one  stipulation — absolute 
secrecy.  Mozart  agreed,  but  with  forebodings:  he  was  far  from 
well,  probably  running  a  fever,  and  the  cadaverous  stranger  may 


156  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

have  seemed  to  him  like  the  Devil  ordering  him  to  compose  his  own 
funeral  music. 

No  sooner  had  he  started  on  the  Requiem  than  a  third  com- 
mission arrived,  this  time  a  peremptory  request  to  compose  an 
opera  for  Leopold  II's  coronation  as  King  of  Bohemia  at  Prague. 
The  libretto  of  La  Clemenza  di  Tito.,  a  humdrum  revamping  of 
Metastasio,  offered  little  chance  to  even  so  resourceful  a  composer 
as  Mozart.  Also,  he  was  a  sick  man  living  on  his  will  power,  and 
had  to  complete  La  Clemenza  in  less  than  two  months.  To  make  him 
even  more  agitated,  just  as  he  was  stepping  into  the  Prague  coach 
the  cadaverous  stranger  reappeared,  and  asked  him  how  the 
Requiem  was  progressing.  Muttering  that  he  would  finish  it 
when  he  returned,  Mozart  got  inside,  and  with  a  strange  feeling 
that  all  was  not  well,  took  up  the  sketches  for  La  Clemenza,  the 
actual  writing  of  which  he  completed  in  Prague  in  eighteen  days. 
He  was  so  rushed  that  the  recitatives  had  to  be  entrusted  to  his 
friend  and  pupil,  Franz  Siissmayr.  At  its  premiere,  on  September  6> 
La  Clemenza  di  Tito  was  a  failure- — and  only  partly  because  the  court 
was  exhausted  after  the  rigors  of  the  coronation.  It  is  apiece  d*  occa- 
sion in  the  worst  sense  of  the  phrase.  Outside  of  an  impressive 
overture.,  a  brilliant  soprano  aria,  and  a  couple  of  duets,  it  clearly 
shows  the  strain  under  which  the  composer  was  working. 

Mozart  returned  to  Vienna  in  bad  health  and  dejected  spirits, 
which  did  not  prevent  him  from  pouring  his  failing  energy  into 
the  completion  of  Die  £auberfldte,  which  was  first  produced  at 
Schikaneder's  Theater  auf  der  Wieden  on  September  30.  At  first 
the  work  was  received  coldly,  but  so  rapidly  gained  in  popularity 
that  it  was  repeated  twenty-four  times  in  October  alone.  Its  ab- 
surd stage  business  was  probably  more  responsible  for  its  success 
than  the  music — today  it  is  the  other  way  round.  With  the  excep- 
tion of  Idomeneo,  it  is,  for  all  its  many  lapses  into  tomfoolery,  sus- 
tained on  loftier  heights  than  Mozart's  other  operas.  The  overture, 
a  work  of  the  most  solemn  beauty  despite  its  rapid  tempo,  elo- 
quently tells  us  that  we  are  to  hear  a  work  of  serious  import.  And 
so  it  is,  for  even  the  most  farcical  passages  had  originally  a  symbolic 
significance,  and  are  couched  in  Mozart's  most  sensitive  idiom. 
Die  %auberfl'6te  makes  use  of  many  musical  styles,  and  yet  achieves 
an  effect  of  unity.  The  fact  that  anything  can,  and  does,  happen  in 
this  Cloud-Cuckoo-Land  is  matched  by  the  variety  of  musical  ey- 


MOZART  157 

position.  And  though  the  dramatis  personae  are  but  symbols,  they 
run  the  widest  gamut  of  character  that  Mozart  ever  exploited  in 
one  opera,  from  the  grave,  almost  unctuous  priest,  Sarastro,  to 
that  delicious  eighteenth-century  Touchstone,  Papageno. 

Bernard  Shaw  has  somewhere  said  that  Mozart  gave  Sarastro 
the  only  music  that  would  not  sound  out  of  place  in  the  mouth  of 
God.  Be  that  as  it  may,  the  smug  high  priest  sings  two  of  the 
noblest  arias  ever  written  for  the  bass  voice — "0  Isis  und  Osiris" 
and  "In  diesen  heir  gen  Hdien"  the  first  of  which  has  a  majesty  and 
foursquareness  traceable  to  Mozart's  study  of  Handel.  The  Queen 
of  the  Night,  the  very  personification  of  evil,  curses  her  daughter* 
in  a  strikingly  florid  and  taxing  coloratura  aria,  "Der  holle  Roche" 
Listened  to  carelessly,  this  aria  sounds  much  like,  and  just  as 
empty  as,  the  "Bell  Song"  from  Lakme,  but  under  its  elegant  sur- 
faces a  dark  and  icy  fiendishness  lies  coiled.  The  Queen's  namby- 
pamby  daughter  and  the  birdman,  Papageno,  have  a  lusciously 
tender  duet,  "Eei  Manner^  welche  Liebefuhlen"  which  might  have 
escaped  from  the  most  amorous  pages  of  Figaro.  As  Schikaneder 
played  Papageno  in  the  original  production,  this  personage  has 
more  music  than  the  role  calls  for  dramatically,  but  Ms  songs  are 
farce  of  such  high  order  that  they  never  fail  to  bring  down  the 
house,  particularly  in  the  celebrated  "stuttering  duet5'!  with  his 
feather-covered  and  featherbrained  mate,  Papagena.  Thus,  Die 
%auberflote  has  something  for  every  taste*  But  the  final  appeal  of  this 
fairy  opera  with  a  moral  is  the  beauty,  range,  and  aptness  of  its 
music. 

With  this  last  of  his  operas  off  his  hands,  Mozart  collapsed.  He 
was  desperately  ill  (of  Blight's  disease,  it  has  been  conjectured)^ 
and  not  even  the  news  of  Die  ^auberftote^  growing  success  could, 
rouse  him  from  despondency,  Constanze's  absence  did  not  help:  in 
his  misery  and  torture,  he  needed  someone  with  him  constantly. 
He  turned  feverishly  to  the  Requiem,  and  worked  on  it  with 
desperate  concentration.  He  began  to  have  fainting  spells.  Fortu- 
nately, late  in  October  the  still-ailing  Constanze  returned,  bring- 

*  A  strange  situation  indeed,  considering  that  the  Queen  of  the  Night,  in  the 
libretto's  tortured  symbolism,  has  been  identified  with  the  family-loving  Maria 
Theresa. 

f  The  prolonged  ovation  that  greeted  this  duet,  one  memorable  evening  at  the 
Chicago  Auditorium,  held  Marcella  Sembrich,  as  the  Queen  of  the  Night,  in  the 
wings  so  long  that  she  refused  ever  again  to  sing  in  that  city. 


158  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

ing  her  youngest  sister  to  nurse  both  herself  and  Mozart.  She 
realized  how  sick  he  was,  and  unsuccessfully  tried  to  make  him 
stop  work  on  the  Requiem.  A  new  horror  now  gripped  his  mind: 
being  unable  to  diagnose  his  disease  naturally  (it  may  have  been 
nothing  more  than  overwork  and  malnutrition  combined),  he 
developed  a  fixed  idea  that  he  had  been  poisoned  by  Salieri.* 
Every  evening,  when  theater  time  came  around,  he  followed  in 
imagination  the  performance  of  Die  £auberflote,  timing .  it  with  a 
watch.  Within  a  few  weeks  it  was  evident  that  he  was  fatally  ill, 
and  yet  so  amazing  were  his  recuperative  powers  that  on  Novem- 
ber 15  he  finished  a  Masonic  cantata,  and  even  conducted  it  a  few 
days  later. 

Relapse  was  almost  immediate.  He  continued  to  work  fitfully  at 
the  Requiem  even  when  racked  with  pain.  Sxissmayr  and  other 
friends  came  in  occasionally  to  sing  parts  of  it  with  him.  On 
December  4,  during  one  of  these  gatherings,  just  as  they  were  be- 
ginning the  Lacrymosa,  Mozart  began  to  sob,  and  they  had  to  stop. 
Before  the  day  was  over,  he  was  partly  paralyzed.  A  priest  came  to 
administer  the  last  sacraments,  and  Mozart  said  good-by  to  his 
family.  He  then  gave  some  last  instructions  to  Siissmayr  about  the 
still-unfinished  Requiem,  and  to  the  very  end  seemed  preoccupied 
with  it,  trying  to  sing,  and  even  puffing  out  his  cheeks  in  an  at- 
tempt to  imitate  the  trumpets.  Just  after  midnight,  he  died  quietly. 
It  was  the  morning  of  December  5,  1791. 

Constanze,  too  shattered  to  think,  automatically  followed  the 
sensible  advice  of  the  penurious  Van  Swieten  to  bury  her  husband 
as  cheaply  as  possible.  On  December  6,  during  a  rainstorm  that 
prevented  both  Constanze  and  Mozart's  friends  from  going  to  the 
potter's  field,  his  body  was  cast,  with  the  remains  of  a  dozen  other 
paupers,  into  a  common  grave.  When  Constanze  tried  to  find  the 
spot  some  time  later,  no  one  could  tell  her  where  it  was.  Almost 
seventy  years  afterward,  the  city  of  Vienna  erected  a  fine  memorial 
on  the  probable  site. 

The  Requiem,  Mozart's  last  musical  testament,  remained  a  col- 
lection of  fragments  and  sketches  until  Constanze,  who  seems  to 
have  been  injected  with  a  strong  dose  of  good  sense  as  soon  as  her 

*  Pushkin  used  this  absurd  idea  as  the  basis  for  a  dramatic  duologue,  which 
Rimsky-Korsakov  later  made  into  an  opera.  Salieri  was  so  hounded  by  the  rumor 
that  he  took  the  trouble  on  his  deathbed  to  send  for  Ignaz  Moscheles,  and  officially 
deny  the  story. 


MOZART  159 

husband  died,  finally  entrusted  it  to  Siissmayr,  who  knew  more 
than  anyone  else  about  Mozart's  intentions  concerning  it.  Suss- 
mayr  filled  out  the  work  with  sections  of  his  own  composition,  but 
doubtless  oriented  to  his  master's  hints.  Thus,  the  present  work  is  in 
design  not  too  unlike  what  it  might  have  been  had  Mozart  lived  to 
complete  it — whatever  one  may  think  of  Sussmayr's  own  pas- 
sages. It  was  delivered  to  the  mysterious  stranger,  who  turned  out 
to  be  Count  Franz  von  Walsegg's  major-domo,  as  being  entirely 
by  Mozart.  The  Count  then  had  it  performed  as  a  composition  of 
his  own — which  had  been  his  original  intention.  Thus  the  Requiem 
came  into  the  world  as  a  double  forgery,  which  was  partly  revealed 
when  Constanze  allowed  it  to  be  performed,  and  then  published, 
under  Mozart's  name.  The  parts  that  are  unquestionably  Mozart's, 
notably  the  Kyrie,  are  passionate  and  tragic,  and  rise  to  moments 
of  great  beauty.  But  they  are  informed  by  the  hectic  glow  of  a  sick 
mind.  Let  us  face  the  facts  squarely:  much  of  the  Requiem  (when 
it  is  not  from  Sussmayr's  earnest  but  mediocre  pen)  is  tortured  in 
expression  and  painful  to  hear.  It  is  easy  to  believe  that  Mozart 
composed  this  twisted,  self-searching,  and  self-revealing  music 
with  his  own  funeral  in  mind.  It  was  played  thirty-six  years  later 
at  the  solemn  High  Mass  for  the  repose  of  the  soul  of  Ludwig  van 
Beethoven. 

Myths  die  hard,  and  bad  myths  are  just  as  tenacious  of  life  as 
good  ones.  Alexander  the  Great,  Leonardo,  and  Beethoven  have 
given  rise  to  myths  that  are  constantly  renewed  by  their  essential 
truth.  The  Mozart  myth  is  another  matter:  it  is  a  bad  myth  with 
just  enough  truth  in  it  to  make  it  linger  on.  It  presents  Mozart  as  a 
perpetual  child,  dowered  with  an  infallible  and  limitless  tech- 
nique, composing  a  great  variety  of  delightful  but  empty  music. 
Now,  Mozart  wrote  a  vast  deal,  much  of  which — almost  all,  in- 
deed, of  that  written  before  1780 — can  accurately  be  described  as 
delightful  but  empty.  And  even  some  of  his  finest  compositions  are 
marred  by  uninspired  passagework  which  has  about  as  much  sig- 
nificance as  a  Czerny  finger  exercise — in  this  respect,  Haydn,  who 
has  often  been  criticized  for  his  abuse  of  the  technical  cliche,  erred 
far  less  than  Mozart.  Yes,  the  myth  has  a  core  of  truth.  The  amaz- 
ing thing  is  that  it  has  persisted  whole  in  the  face  of  the  pure  gold 
that  it  overlooks.  The  simplest  of  the  many  possible  refutations  of 


l6o  MEN     OF     MUSIC 

the  eternal-child  myth  is  to  cite  the  last  three  symphonies,  which 
impinge  upon  almost  every  conceivable  emotion.  These  are  in- 
dubitably the  expressions  of  a  mature  and  abounding  personality. 
What  has  blinded  many  to  Mozart's  emotional  range  and  pro- 
fundity is  the  fact  that  its  expression  is  so  perfectly  disciplined:  they 
have  fallen  into  the  fatal  error  of  gauging  emotional  expression 
by  a  preconceived  norm — the  seeming  indiscipline  of  the  best 
romantic  art. 

A  more  serious  doubt  has  been  cast  on  Mozart's  place  as  the 
peer  of  Bach  and  Beethoven.  W.  J.  Turner,  who  yielded  to  none  in 
his  worship  of  Mozart,  was  the  most  perfectly  articulate  spokesman 
of  those  who  find  him  lacking  one  essential  which,  together  with 
his  other,  unquestioned,  qualities,  would  add  up  to  sublimity. 
Speaking  of  the  notorious  lapse  in  mood  (almost  inexplicable  on 
the  basis  of  taste  alone)  in  the  finale  of  the  G  minor  Quintet  (K. 
516),  he  said,  "That  finale  is  beyond  all  denial  inadequate.  Why? 
Because  after  the  poignant,  heart-breaking  intensity  of  the  slow 
movement  some  affirmation  of  the  soul  is  inexorably  demanded. 
Mozart  could  not  make  that  affirmation.  He  could  not  even  attempt 
to  make  it ...  he  had  no  faith,  he  could  not  lift  up  his  heart  and 
sing  from  the  bottom  of  that  abyss.  .  .  *  Therefore,  and  therefore 
only,  he  is  not  the  world's  greatest  composer."*  This  argument  is 
based  on  that  ethical  approach  (more  widely  held  in  the  nine- 
teenth century  of  Ruskin  and  Tolstoi  than  now)  which  conceives 
the  greatest  artist  to  be  he  who  struggles  most  desperately  in  the 
waste  places  of  the  soul,  and  emerges  singing  the  song  of  faith  and 
triumph.  Without  entering  into  the  validity  of  this  point  of  view,  it 
is  clear  that  to  those  who  hold  it,  Mozart  must  ever  seem,  in  this 
respect,  inadequate. 

However,  even  this  criticism  might  have  been  obviated  had 
Mozart  lived  but  a  few  years  longer.  The  last  years  of  his  life  saw 
his  art  deepening,  becoming  more  searching  of  self  and  things, 
turning  toward  those  sources  of  inspiration  that  can  lead  to  the 
hymning  of  life  entire.  What  these  sources  were,  it  is  as  impossible 
to  know  in  Mozart's  case  as  in  Beethoven's.  But  everything  in- 
dicates that  this  still-young  man,  who  so  sorely  needed  a  vacation 

*Thus  Turner  in  Volume  I  of  The  Heritage  of  Music  (London,  1927).  In  Mozart: 
the  Man  and  His  Works  (New  York,  1938)*  he  allowed  his  hero  no  limitations  at  all 


MOZART  l6l 

and  a  little  more  food,  had  not  yet  reached  the  summit  of  his 
genius,  and  was  on  the  verge  of  new  and  tremendous  under- 
takings. There  was  no  sign  of  abatement  in  that  matchless  flood  of 
musical  ideas,  he  was  the  greatest  musical  technician  of  all  times, 
and  he  died  at  thirty-six,  an  age  at  which  Bach  and  Beethoven 
were  still  preparing  for  their  supreme  masterpieces.  Mozart  died 
in  the  moment  of  victory — but  before  he  could  make  his  affirmation, 
as  he  himself  knew: 

"I  am  at  the  point  of  death.  I  have  finished  before  I  could  enjoy 
my  talent.  Yet  life  is  so  beautiful,  my  career  opened  so  auspiciously 
— but  fate  is  not  to  be  changed.  ...  I  thus  finish  my  funeral  song — 
I  must  not  leave  it  uncompleted." 


Chapter  VII 

Ludwig  van  Beethoven 

(Bonn,  December  16,  lyyo-March  263  1827,  Vienna) 


THE  history  of  music  offers  no  experience  comparable  to  that 
sense  of  an  expanding  universe  afforded  by  the  masterpieces  oi 
Ludwig  van  Beethoven.  With  the  advent  of  this  titanic  presence, 
there  is  an  abrupt  break  with  the  past  that  has  few  parallels  in  the 
entire  history  of  art.  The  essential  Beethoven  was  completely  un^ 
prepared  for.  His  great  predecessors,  from  Palestrina  to  Mozart, 
were  men  without  whom  the  musical  structure  he  found,  honored, 
and  changed  could  not  have  been  reared,  but  only  insofar  as  they 
gave  him  his  tools  was  he  in  their  debt.  These  men,  master  musi- 
cians though  they  were,  had  been  the  creatures  of  an  ordered  uni- 
verse. Their  reactions  to  it  had  been  as  various  as  their  characters; 
they  had  praised  it,  accepted  it,  or  disregarded  it — but  in  no  case 
did  they  question  it.  Even  Haydn,  who  was  Beethoven's  con- 
temporary for  almost  forty  years,  and  who  passed  the  fullness  of 
his  maturity  during  the  French  Revolution,  never  questioned  the 
ideas  of  the  times  that  had  molded  him.  But  Beethoven,  who  came 
of  age  at  the  very  high  noon  of  the  Terror,  passed  through  the 
refiner's  fire  of  this  crucial  chaotic  epoch:  the  flames  of  liberty, 
equality,  and  fraternity  blazed  hot  against  his  face,  and  seared  him 
for  life. 

Beethoven  is  the  first,  and  in  some  respects  the  only,  composer 
who  stepped  outside  the  frame  of  his  art,  to  live  wholly  and  hero- 
ically in  the  world.  He  could  not  be  content  merely  to  write  music: 
unrest  was  in  his  soul,  and  doubt  which  in  its  savage  intensity 
made  the  polite  skepticism  of  the  eighteenth  century  seem  puny. 
Thought  pursued  him  like  a  nemesis — he  could  not  get  away  from 
it.  His  wrestling  with  destiny,  not  only  his  own  but  that  of  man- 
kind, is  one  of  the  great  epics  of  the  modern  world:  he  told  it  in  a 
succession  of  mighty  works  which,  in  their  boundless  humanity 
and  immediacy  of  appeal,  have  never  been  equaled.  By  his 
struggles,  Beethoven  became  one  of  the  heroes  of  mankind;  by  his 
triumphs,  he  has  become  one  of  its  prophets. 

He  was  born  at  one  of  those  strange  moments  of  history  when 

162 


BEETHOVEN  163 

nature  spews  forth  genius  with  an  inexplicable  lavishness.  The 
time  was,  for  better  or  worse.,  fateful  for  the  shaping  of  life  and  art. 
Napoleon,  whose  ambitions  created  the  French  Empire  and  untold 
misery;  Wordsworth,  who  gave  the  new  age  a  voice;  Beethoven, 
who  lifted  music  to  a  new  grandeur — these  three  men,  born  within 
seventeen  months,  were  to  play  great  parts  in  the  vast  drama  that 
ushered  in  the  nineteenth  century.  Napoleon,  the  revolutionary, 
became  the  autocrat  of  Europe,  and  died  shorn  of  ideals  and  power 
alike;  the  generous-souled  Wordsworth  ended  up  a  timeserving 
poet  laureate;  Beethoven  alone  had  the  strength  and  the  integrity  to 
die  as  he  had  lived — faithful  to  the  daemon  that  had  moved  him. 
His  life  has  been  painted  as  a  tragedy,  but  he  had  the  only  kind  of 
success  that  could  really  have  mattered  to  him. 

The  times,  certainly,  were  propitious  for  shaping  the  sort  of 
stormy  genius  Beethoven  was,  and  his  heredity  and  early  environ- 
ment were  equally  so.  The  Beethovens  had  been  musicians  for  two 
generations:  Ludwig,  the  grandfather,  who  rose  to  be  Kapell- 
meister to  the  Elector  of  Cologne,  also  carried  on  a  thriving  wine 
business;  his  son  Johann,  a  singer  in  the  Elector's  choir,  was,  by  the 
time  of  his  marriage  to  a  young  widow,  more  celebrated  for  his 
drinking  than  for  his  voice.  Thus,  at  Ludwig's  cradle  there  were  as 
many  wicked  fairies  as  good  ones:  from  his  Grandfather  Beethoven 
he  inherited  a  certain  physical  toughness  on  which  he  could  rely 
to  see  him  through  the  energy-burning  crises  of  his  life,  as  well  as 
an  earnest  consciousness  of  good  and  evil.  To  his  Grandmother 
Beethoven  and  his  father,  both  of  whom  became  hopeless  drunk- 
ards, he  owed  those  erratic,  fevered  qualities  which  played  a  salient 
role  in  the  development  of  his  art,  and  which  always  made  him  a 
difficult  person. 

Beethoven  first  saw  the  light  of  day  in  Bonn,  and  in  this  lazy 
old  Rhenish  town  he  passed  a  miserably  unhappy  boyhood.  The 
Beethovens  were  desperately  poor:  Johannes  three  hundred 
florins  a  year  was  barely  sufficient  to  support  a  childless  couple, 
and  in  twenty  years  of  married  life  he  fathered  seven  children,  of 
whom  three  boys  reached  manhood.  Johann,  originally  a  genial 
fellow,  developed  swinish  habits  and  a  nasty  temper.  Yet  his 
father  believed  that  this  brute  had  lowered  himself  by  marrying 
a  mere  cook's  daughter,  though  to  the  Elector  musicians  and 
cooks  were  equally  servants.  Actually,  Frau  van  Beethoven  was 


164  MEN     OF    MUSIC 

many  cuts  above  her  husband — a  sympathetic  and  intelligent 
woman  whose  calm  acceptance  of  a  painful  status  quo  alone  kept  a 
semblance  of  order  in  the  household.  She  never  complained,  but  it 
is  little  wonder  that  she  was  never  seen  to  smile. 

There  was  never  any  question  which  parent  Beethoven  pre- 
ferred. To  him  his  mother  was  a  beneficent  deity — the  only  gra- 
cious thing  in  his  wretched  childhood.  Johann,  whose  treatment  of 
his  wife  was  insensitive,  was  harsh  and  unimaginative  in  his  deal- 
ings with  his  eldest  son.  In  his  frenzied  quest  for  a  further  source  of 
income,  he  hit  upon  the  idea  of  making  Ludwig  a  child  prodigy 
after  the  pattern  of  Mozart.  Leopold  Mozart  may  justly  be  accused 
of  putting  his  son  through  a  forcing-house,  but  his  method  was 
gentle,  and  he  was  motivated,  at  least  partly,  by  a  burning  love  for 
music.  But  to  Johaim  van  Beethoven  music  was  merely  a  trade 
and  he  set  Ludwig  to  learning  it— -he  evidently  thought  that 
Mozarts  could  be  produced  at  will.  He  himself  undertook  the  job 
of  turning  out  the  Wurderkind^  and  at  first  his  hopes  seemed  sure 
of  fulfillment,  for  at  six  the  boy  had  learned  to  perform  creditably 
on  the  piano  and  violin.  In  1778,  Johann  gave  the  public  its  first 
chance  to  hear  the  prodigy  he  had  been  preparing  for  them,  slyly 
announcing  Ludwig  as  two  years  younger  than  he  really  was.  The 
sole  resxilt  of  what  probably  was  a  fiasco  (in  view  of  the  complete 
silence  as  to  its  effect)  was  that  Ludwig  got  a  new  teacher.  But  this 
quavering  old  feEow  could  teach  him  nothing,  and  soon  yielded  to 
one  of  Johann's  rowdy  pals,  a  tenor  named  Pfeiffer  who  lodged  in 
die  same  house  as  the  Beethovens.  His  method  of  teaching  was 
unique:  he  would  come  roaring  home  in  the  middle  of  the  night 
after  a  round  of  the  taverns  with  Johann,  and  get  Ludwig  out  of 
bed  for  his  lesson.  The  picture  of  the  small,  sleepy  lad  pestered  by 
his  music  teacher  and  his  father  is  absurdly  like  that  of  the  im- 
mortal Dormouse  plagued  by  the  Mad  Hatter  and  the  March  Hare. 
No  wonder  Beethoven  was  an  indifferent  scholar  during  the  few 
years  he  attended  common  school!  Nor  was  the  proud  and  self- 
willed  lad  apt  to  respond  to  these  repressive  methods  as  his  father 
tad  hoped. 

And  yet,  develop  Beethoven  did,  though  too  slowly  for  a  bona 
fide  prodigy.  Teachers  came  and  went,  none  of  them  very  able  or 
inspiring,  and  a  time  arrived  when  these  ninth-raters  could  teach 
Mm  nothing.  He  was  ten  years  old  before  he  found  a  master  worthy 


BEETHOVEN  165 

of  his  talents — Christian  Gottlob  Neefe,  the  newly  appointed  court 
organist.  Neefe  was  a  conservative,  but  he  worshiped  music,  and 
his  taste  was  sure.  He  immediately  set  Beethoven  to  studying 
a  handwritten  copy  of  The  Well-Tempered  Clavichord,  then  still  un- 
published., and  thus  initiated  his  lifelong  interest  in  Bach.  Neefe 
believed  in  the  urchin;  he  educated  him  painstakingly,  and  stimu- 
lated his  natural  flair  for  composing  by  having  a  juvenile  effort 
published.  Beethoven  made  such  rapid  progress  that  in  1 783  Neefe 
said  in  a  magazine  article,  "If  he  goes  on  as  he  has  begun,  he  will 
certainly  become  a  second  Mozart."  After  a  year's  instruction, 
Beethoven  was  able  to  deputize  for  Neefe  at  the  organ;  after  Neefe's 
duties  became  heavier,  he  sometimes  led  the  opera  orchestra  from 
the  clavier.  The  job  was  unpaid,  the  experience  invaluable.  Beetho- 
ven never  forgot  Neefe's  unfailing  kindness.  In  1792,  with  a  touch 
of  characteristic  self-assurance  and  grandiloquence,  he  wrote  to  his 
old  teacher,  "I  thank  you  for  your  counsel  very  often  given  me  in 
the  course  of  my  progress  in  my  divine  art.  If  ever  I  become  a  great 
man,  yours  will  be  some  of  the  credit,"  and  the  delighted  Neefe 
published  the  letter  in  the  Berliner  Musik-^eitung. 

Beethoven  soon  got  his  first  big  chance.  In  1784,  the  Elector 
died,  and  Maria  Theresa's  youngest  son  succeeded  him.  In  the 
shuffling  of  appointments  that  ensued,  Neefe's  thirteen-year-old 
pupil  was  appointed  assistant  court  organist  at  a  salary  of  one 
hundred  and  fifty  florins  a  year*  Johann  van  Beethoven's  reactions 
must  have  mingled  relief  with  chagrin:  Ludwig  was  adding  to  the 
family  income,  but  the  Elector  seemingly  did  not  value  Johann's 
services  enough  to  raise  his  pay.  Young  Beethoven  did  his  job  so 
well  that  for  a  time  there  was  talk  of  his  taking  Neefe' s  place.  He 
began  to  lead  a  full  life  in  a  Bonn  that  was  reawakening  artistically 
and  intellectually  under  the  enlightened  rule  of  the  Elector  Maxi- 
milian Franz.  In  the  spring  of  1787,  Beethoven,  had  his  first  taste 
of  a  truly  cosmopolitan  culture,  when  he  visited  Vienna,  presum- 
ably on  funds  advanced  by  a  patron.  He  met  Mozart,  who  spoke 
flatteringly  of  his  playing,  and  possibly  gave  the  boy  lessons  in 
composition,  though  in  mourning  for  his  father  and  hard  at  work 
on  Don  Giovanni.  Beethoven  was  recalled  to  Bonn  by  news  of  his 
mother's  illness;  letters,  more  and  more  alarming,  reached  him 
on  the  road,  but  he  found  her  still  alive,  though  in  intense  agony. 


l66  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

She  was  in  the  last  stages  of  consumption,  and  died  a  few  weeks 
later. 

The  death  of  his  mother,  whom  Beethoven  had  adored,  brought 
on  the  first  of  those  emotional  crises  that  recurred  constantly 
throughout  his  life.  He  gave  way  to  gloomy  forebodings;  he  suf- 
fered from  attacks  of  asthma — the  neurotic's  disease  par  excellence 
— and  feared  that  it  would  develop  into  consumption.  Throughout 
life  Beethoven  was  fortunate  in  his  friends:  now  he  was  gradually 
coaxed  back  to  mental  health  by  the  sympathetic  interest  and  pa- 
tient care  of  the  noble  Von  Breuning  family,  the  first  in  that  pro- 
cession of  long-suffering  Samaritans  who,  despite  his  outbursts  of 
arrogance  and  downright  rudeness,  ministered  untiringly  to  his 
difficult  needs.  Frau  von  Breuning  was  a  second  mother  to  Beetho- 
ven, who  was  admitted  on  terms  of  absolute  equality  with  her  chil- 
dren to  the  cultural  freemasonry  of  their  fine  home.  He  passed 
through  its  portals  as  into  a  friendly  university,  and  there  laid  the 
foundation  for  the  obsessing  intellectual  interests  of  his  life.  Scarcely 
less  decisive  was  his  friendship  with  Count  Ferdinand  von  Wald- 
stein,  who  gave  him  his  first  piano,  and  generously  opened  his 
purse  when  the  finances  of  the  Beethovens  were  at  lowest  ebb. 
With  exquisite  tact,  he  pretended  that  these  moneys  were  gratui- 
ties from  his  friend  the  Elector. 

Beethoven  was  happy  until,  after  a  day .  of  court  duty  and  time 
with  his  friends,  he  turned  in  at  his  own  door  in  the  Wenzelgasse. 
There,  as  like  as  not,  he  would  find  his  father  in  a  drunken  stupor, 
and  his  two  younger  brothers  neglected  and  unfed.  Johann  van 
Beethoven  was  no  longer  a  responsible  person.  At  his  wits5  end,  in 
November,  1789,  the  nineteen-year-old  Ludwig  successfully  peti- 
tioned the  Elector  to  divert  half  of  Johann's  salary  to  himself,  and 
make  him  legal  head  of  the  family.  This  desperate  measure  worked, 
and  with  his  domestic  affairs  on  the  mend,  Beethoven  could  plunge 
wholeheartedly  into  his  increasingly  engrossing  duties.  The  Elec- 
tor, after  settling  the  troubled  finances  of  his  domains,  felt  himself 
justified  in  indulging  his  desire  for  a  large  musical  establishment. 
Considering  his  enormous  bulk  (he  eventually  became  the  fattest 
man  in  Europe),  his  energy  was  astonishing:  in  a  trice,  he  had  or- 
ganized an  operatic  troupe  and  an  orchestra  of  thirty-one  pieces 
that  rivaled  the  famous  Mannheim  ensemble.  Before  1792,  when 
it  was  dispersed,  the  opera  company  achieved  a  large  repertoire, 


BEETHOVEN  167 

including  works  by  Gluck,  Mozart,  and  Salieri.  Beethoven,  as  viola 
player  in  the  band,  came  to  know  intimately  a  wide  variety  of 
dramatic  music.  The  young  bear  was  well  liked  by  his  fellows,  and 
seems  to  have  played  a  leading  part  in  their  off-hours  fun. 

Toward  the  end  of  his  life  in  Bonn,  Beethoven  achieved  a  posi- 
tion of  local  eminence  out  of  proportion  to  his  accomplishments  as 
an-  instrumentalist.  This  can  only  have  been  due  to  many  of  his 
compositions  being  circulated  in  autograph  among  his  friends,  in- 
cluding some  that  were  not  published  until  years — in  some  cases, 
many  years — later  in  Vienna.  Neefe  was  not  the  only  one  in  Bonn 
who  thought  that  Beethoven  would  one  day  be  the  peer  of  Mozart. 
It  is  not  surprising,  then,  that  in  July,  1792,  when  Haydn  passed 
through  Bonn  on  his  return  from  London,  Beethoven  was  espe- 
cially commended  to  him.  Haydn  praised  a  cantata  that  Beethoven 
submitted  for  criticism,  and  encouraged  him  to  continue  his  stud- 
ies. This  kind  word  from  music's  dictator  released  a  spring  in 
Beethoven:  Vienna,  with  lessons  from  Haydn  practically  assured, 
irresistibly  beckoned  him.  Waldstein  and  Neefe  pled  his  case  with 
the  Elector,  who  consented  to  finance  the  hegira.  By  November, 
Beethoven  was  on  his  way — and  none  too  soon:  just  two  days  be- 
fore he  left  Bonn  forever,  the  Elector  himself  had  fled,  for  the 
troops  of  revolutionary  France  were  marching  on  his  capital. 

As  the  Elector's  troubles  delayed  the  payment  of  his  official  sti- 
pend, Beethoven  was  hard  pressed  at  first.  Only  a  fraction  of  the 
special  grant  ever  reached  him,  and  he  had  to  dig  into  his  small 
savings  to  make  ends  meet.  Things  were  complicated  by  his  fa- 
ther's death  in  December.  It  seemed  momentarily  that  the  pen- 
sion, which  had  been  earmarked  for  the  support  of  Beethoven's 
brothers,  would  be  stopped,  but  the  Elector,  after  returning  to 
Bonn,  continued  it  until  he  was  chased  out  again  in  1794.  Haydn 
charged  Beethoven  almost  nothing — five  sessions  with  him  came 
to  less  than  a  dollar.  But  Beethoven  was  dissatisfied:  apart  from  the 
difficulties  arising  from  their  totally  divergent  temperaments,  he 
was  annoyed  by  Haydn's  desultory  conduct  of  the  lessons.  The 
student  was  avid  to  crowd  in  as  much  learning  as  possible;  the 
master  was  preoccupied  with  a  new  repertoire  for  his  second  Eng- 
lish tour.  Beethoven  secretly  began  to  take  lessons  from  a  solid 
pedagogue.  Although  Haydn  invited  him  to  go  on  the  English  tour, 
it  nevertheless  seems  that  an  open  rupture  was  avoided  only  by 


l68  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

Haydn's  departure.  Perhaps  the  most  eloquent  comment  on  this 
abortive  association  of  two  great  musicians  is  Beethoven's  refusal 
to  put  the  phrase  "Pupil  of  Josef  Haydn"  on  some  of  his  early 
publications  when  his  old  teacher  requested  him  to  do  so.  That  no 
simple  explanation  covers  the  situation  is  proved  by  the  fact  that 
though  Beethoven  inscribed  his  first  three  piano  sonatas  to  Haydn, 
he  said  in  his  downright  way  that  he  had  never  learned  anything 
from  him, 

Beethoven  adapted  himself  to  Viennese  life  with  remarkable 
alacrity.  He  had  come  armed  with  many  valuable  letters  of  intro- 
duction from  Count  von  Waldstein  and  the  Von  Breunings,  and 
within  a  short  time  he  numbered  most  of  the  influential  patrons  of 
music  among  his  acquaintances-  The  doors  of  Vienna's  most  splen- 
did palaces  swung  open  to  Mm,  Prince  Lobkowitz,  Baron  van 
Swieten,  the  Esterhazys,  and  Prince  Karl  Lichnowsky  were  proud 
to  call  him  friend.  Within  little  more  than  a  twelvemonth  he  was 
installed  in  Lichnowsky's  fine  lodgings  in  the  same  house  where  he 
had  formerly  occupied  a  garret  room.  He  was  comparatively  afflu- 
ent: some  of  his  stipend  had  been  restored,  pupils  were  beginning 
to  seek  him  out,  aad  his  already  famous  improvising  made  him  a 
favorite  society  attraction.  The  seven  years  after  he  left  Bonn  were 
the  most  carefree  of  his  life.  He  was  still  the  same  "small,  thin, 
dark-complexioned,  pockmarked,  dark-eyed,  bewigged  young  mu- 
sician," who,  as  his  tireless  biographer,  Thayer,  says,  "journeyed 
to  the  capital  to  pursue  the  study  of  his  art  ..."  But  the  sinewy 
form  was  carefully,  even  elegantly^  tricked  out  in  the  most  fashion- 
able clothes  available. 

Beethoven  was  enjoying  society,  but  he  never  neglected  music 
for  a  moment.  He  was  taking  lessons  on  three  instruments,  study- 
ing counterpoint  with  the  noted  theorist,  Johann  Georg  Al- 
brechtsberger,  amplifying  sketches  made  in  Bonn,  and  composing 
new  works.  Into  the  notebooks  he  had  begun  to  keep  before  he  was 
out  of  his  teens,  he  now  began  to  crowd  that  welter  of  musical 
ideas,  in  all  stages  of  development,  which  make  the  notebooks 
comparable  to  Leonardo's.  To  examine  them  is  to  be  vouchsafed 
a  unique  opportunity  to  see  the  unfolding — hesitant,  baffled^  and 
inspired — of  genius.  Starting  with  what  may  seem  an  unpromising, 
even  banal,  sequence  of  notes,  adding  to  them,  subtracting,  em- 
phasizing, finally  perfecting,  Beethoven  worked — sometimes  for 


BEETHOVEN  169 

decades — at  these  viable  fragments.  Many  a  composition  which 
seems  like  the  product  of  a  single  mighty  inspiration  was  pieced  to- 
gether from  these  apparently  unrelated  sketches.  In  a  very  real 
sense,  it  may  be  said  that  from  the  very  beginning  of  his  creative 
life,  Beethoven  was  at  work  on  all  of  his  compositions.  There  is  evi- 
dence that  even  the  publication  of  a  masterpiece  (which  may  sound 
well-nigh  perfect  to  us)  did  not  free  Beethoven's  mind  of  the  prob- 
lems it  presented.  His  life  is  one  endless  quest  for  the  ideal  form 
that  would  completely  express  the  unity  he  had  envisioned  from 
the  beginning. 

Anyone  watching  the  progress  of  Beethoven's  career  during  those 
first  years  in  Vienna  would  have  been  almost  sure  to  assume  that 
he  was  well  on  the  way  to  becoming  the  leading  piano  virtuoso  of 
his  age.  He  routed  all  comers  who  dared  measure  their  powers 
against  his.  One  of  his  noted  rivals  once  burst  out  in  sernicomic 
exasperation,  "Ah,  he's  no  man — he's  a  devil.  He  will  play  me  and 
all  of  us  to  death.5*  His  improvisations,  which  were  the  sensation  of 
Vienna,  have  made  him  the  subject  of  thoughtless  and  invidious 
comparisons  with  Liszt,  whose  public  pianism  was  as  theatrical  as 
Beethoven's  was  grave  and  sincerely  emotional.  In  March,  1795, 
he  made  his  first  public  appearance  at  a  benefit  concert,  playing 
his  own  B  flat  Concerto  for  piano  and  orchestra,  which  he  had 
finished  two  days1  before.  His  fame,  which  had  hitherto  been  con- 
fined to  the  palaces  of  the  nobility,  now  became  public  property. 

During  the  next  three  years,  Beethoven  was  in  and  out  of  Vi- 
enna, often  in  Prince  Lichnowsky's  company,  playing  at  various 
places  in  Austria,  Germany,  and  Hungary.  Prague  took  to  him  as 
rapturously  as  it  had  to  Mozart,  and  there  he  probably  first  played 
his  G  major  Concerto  for  piano  and  orchestra.  The  B  flat  Con- 
certo, with  its  elegant  pretensions,  is  a  shallow  and  thankless  work, 
and  is  rightly  neglected.  The  C  major  represents  a  decided  ad- 
vance:* though  it  does  not  show  Beethoven  in  full  command  of 
his  own  style,  and  teems  with  echoes  of  Haydn  and  Mozart,  it  has 
just  as  many  touches  that  show  that  no  one  but  Beethoven  could 
have  written  it.  The  final  rondo  is  a  triumph  of  his  most  bravura 
style,  with  a  subtle  duality  of  character:  passages  of  delicate,  urbane 
wit  alternate  with  robust  hurly-burly  and  Papa  Haydn  cracking 

*  The  G  major  Concerto,  though  referred  to  as  the  First,  was  really  composed 
two  years  after  the  B  flat — the  so-called  Second, 


170  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

his  most  outrageous  jokes.  Beethoven  may  have  been  telling  the 
exact  truth  when  he  said  that  he  had  learned  nothing  from  Haydn's 
teaching,  but  that  he  learned  much  from  Haydn's  music  is  as  evi- 
dent in  the  C  major  Concerto  as  in  the  first  three  piano  sonatas 
(Opus  2).  Many  of  their  themes  are  pure  Haydn,  but  the  develop- 
ment is  Beethoven  in  its  direction  and  peculiar  unexpectedness:  it 
seems  as  if  he  faithfully  follows  his  model  up  to  a  certain  point,  and 
then  begins  to  reflect,  to  examine  the  themes  from  every  angle,  and 
to  tell  us  what  he  finds  in  them. 

Beethoven,  as  compared  with  Mozart,  evolved  slowly.  The  sec- 
ond group  of  piano  sonatas  (Opus  10),  published  when  he  was 
twenty-seven,  show  that  he  was  well  on  the  way  to  achieving  his 
own  characteristic  treatment  of  material,  but  had  not  yet  found 
the  sort  of  material  we  now  consider  typically  Beethovian.  If 
Mozart  had  died  at  twenty-seven,  he  would  still  be  regarded  as 
one  of  the  masters;  had  Beethoven  died  at  the  same  age,  he  would 
now  probably  be  forgotten — an  item  in  a  musical  dictionary.  The 
story  of  his  life  lends  weight  to  the  widely  held  theory  that  great 
art  flowers  out  of  suffering:  happiness  did  not  release  his  genius — 
only  when  he  began  to  suffer  was  its  whole  strength  unloosed.  In 
1798,  possibly  as  the  result  of  a  severe  illness,  he  began  to  have 
trouble  with  his  hearing.  At  first,  it  was  a  mere  humming  in  his 
ears,  and  he  paid  slight  attention  to  it.  But  it  recurred  again  and 
again,  and  he  began  to  brood  over  it,  to  consult  doctors.  Can  it  be 
more  than  coincidence  that  he  composed  the  Sonata  "Pathttique" 
at  this  time?  The  famous  ten-bar  introduction  is  precisely  the  sort 
of  material  around  which  the  vast  dramas  of  the  later  Beethoven 
were  to  be  built.  But  like  so  many  transitional  works,  it  lacks  in- 
evitability of  development.  Its  beauties  are  isolated,  and  much  is 
brought  forth  that  may  be  dismissed  as  fustian.  The  tragedy  is  still 
on  the  surface:  the  general  effect  is  one  of  attitudinizing,  the  final 
result  melodrama,  which  is  particularly  out  of  place  in  a  sonata. 

The  close  of  the  century  coincided  with  the  end  of  Beethoven's 
apprenticeship,  for  at  that  time  he  first  brought  forward  works  in- 
dicating beyond  question  that  greatness  was  in  him.  Within  three 
years,  he  was  to  stake  his  claim,  and  carve  out  a  province  un- 
matched in  its  variety  of  landscape,  from  broad  and  undulating 
champaigns  to  alps  of  most  terrific  grandeur.  On  April  2,  1800,  at 
the  first  of  his  own  public  concerts,  he  inaugurated  that  unparai- 


BEETHOVEN 

leled  series  of  nine  symphonies  which  are  still,  after  more  than  a 
century,  far  and  away  the  most  stupendous,  and  yet  familiar,  mas- 
terpieces in  this  form.  He  limited  the  program  to  Haydn,  Mozart, 
and  two  new  works  of  his  own — the  Septet  for  strings  and  wind 
instruments  and  the  First  (G  major)  Symphony.  The  Septet,  now 
seldom  heard,  had  such  a  persistent  success  that  in  later  years 
Beethoven,  who  did  not  regard  it  highly,  could  not  bear  to  hear  it 
praised.  It  is  a  pleasant,  melodious  creation,  lovingly  enough  con- 
structed, but  conventional  in  outline — definitely  second-rate  Beetho- 
ven. Nor  can  much  more  be  claimed  for  the  C  major  Symphony, 
which  is  light  in  caliber,  eighteenth  century  in  flavor.  It  is  a  tech- 
nically sure  first  essay,  but  the  problems  raised  are  relatively  sim- 
ple. For  all  its  charm  and  moments  of  cheerful  noisiness,  it  is 
merely  hear  able,  not  memorable,  music. 

The  First  Symphony,  which  today  strikes  us  as  a  Mozartian 
echo,  shocked  the  Viennese  at  whatever  points  the  real  Beethoven 
was  apparent.  He  himself  was  dissatisfied — for  different  reasons. 
In  1 80 1,  however,  he  quite  captivated  the  city  with  an  overture 
and  incidental  music  to  a  ballet.  Die  Geschopfe  des  Prometheus.  The 
cheery  little  overture,  also  derivative  from  Mozart,  is  still  occa- 
sionally heard.  These  lighthearted  illustrations  of  scenes  from  the 
life  of  a  suffering  demigod  are  (a  few  potboilers  aside)  almost 
Beethoven's  last  incursion  into  the  realm  of  the  frivolous.  The  very 
next  year,  he  said  decisively,  "I  am  not  contented  with  my  work 
so  far;  henceforth  I  shall  take  a  new  path." 

The  reasons  that  prompted  Beethoven  to  make  such  an  aggres- 
sive pronunciamento  are  as  simple — and  as  complex — as  those  which 
led  him  to  write,  in  October,  1802,  that  tortured,  almost  hysterical 
farewell  to  the  world  known  as  the  "Heiligenstadt  Testament"  be- 
cause it  was  written  while  he  was  rusticating  at  that  village  near 
Vienna: 

FOR  MY  BROTHERS  KARL  AND   [ JOHANN]  BEETHOVEN 

O  ye  men,  who  think  or  say  that  I  am  malevolent,  stubborn  or  mis- 
anthropic, how  greatly  do  ye  wrong  me,  you  do  not  know  the  secret 
causes  of  my  seeming,  from  childhood  my  heart  and  mind  were  disposed 
to  the  gentle  feeling  of  good  will,  I  was  even  ever  eager  to  accomplish 
great  deeds,  but  reflect  now  that  for  6  years  I  have  been  in  a  hopeless 
case,  aggravated  by  senseless  physicians,  cheated  year  after  year  in  the 


172  MEN     OF    MUSIC 

hope  of  improvement,  finally  compelled  to  face  the  prospect  of  a  lasting 
malady  (whose  cure  will  take  years,  or,  perhaps,  be  impossible),  born 
with  an  ardent  and  lively  temperament,  even  susceptible  to  the  diver- 
sions of  society,  I  was  compelled  early  to  isolate  myself,  to  live  in  loneli- 
ness, when  I  at  times  tried  to  forget  all  this,  O  how  harshly  was  I  re- 
pulsed by  the  doubly  sad  experience  of  my  bad  hearing,  and  yet  it  was 
impossible  for  me  to  say  to  men  speak  louder,  shout,,  for  I  am  deaf. 
Ah  how  could  I  possibly  admit  an  infirmity  in  the  one  sense  which  should 
have  been  more  perfect  in  me  than  in  others,  a  sense  which  I  once 
possessed  in  highest  perfection,  a  perfection  such  as  few  surely  in  my 
profession  enjoy  or  ever  have  enjoyed — O  I  cannot  do  it,  therefore  for- 
give me  when  you  see  me  draw  back  when  I  would  gladly  mingle 
with  you,  my  misfortune  is  doubly  painful  because  it  must  lead  to  my 
being  misunderstood,  for  me  there  can  be  no  recreation  in  society  of  my 
fellows,  refined  intercourse,  mutual  ex-change  of  thought,  only  just  as 
little  as  the  greatest  needs  command  may  I  mix  with  society,  I  must  live 
like  an  exile,  if  I  approach  near  to  people  a  hot  terror  seizes  upon  me,  a 
fear  that  I  may  be  subjected  to  the  danger  of  letting  my  condition  be  ob- 
served— thus  it  has  been  during  the  last  half  year  which  I  spent  in  the 
country,  commanded  by  my  intelligent  physician  to  spare  my  hearing 
as  much  as  possible,  in  this  almost  meeting  my  present  natural  disposi- 
tion, although  I  sometimes  ran  counter  to  it,  yielding  to  my  inclination 
for  society,  but  what  a  humiliation  when  one  stood  beside  rne  and  heard 
a  flute  in  the  distance  and  J  heard  nothing  or  someone  heard  the  shepherd 
singing  and  again  I  heard  nothing,  such  incidents  brought  me  to  the 
verge  of  despair,  but  little  more  and  I  would  have  put  an  end  to  my  life — 
only  art  it  was  that  withheld  me,  ah  it  seemed  impossible  to  leave  the 
world  until  I  had  produced  all  that  I  felt  called  upon  to  produce,  and  so 
I  endured  this  wretched  existence — truly  wretched,  an  excitable  bod/ 
which  a  sudden  change  can  throw  from  the  best  into  the  worst  state — 
Patience — It  is  said  I  must  now  choose  for  my  guide,  I  have  done  so,  I 
hope  my  determination  will  remain  firm  to  endure  until  it  pleases  the 
inexorable  parcae  to  break  the  thread,  perhaps  I  shall  get  better,  per- 
haps not,  I  am  prepared.  Forced  already  in  my  2 8th  year  to  become  a 
philosopher,  O  it  is  not  easy,  less  easy  for  the  artist  than  for  any  one  else 
— Divine  One  thou  lookest  into  my  inmost  soul,  thou  knowest  it,  thou 
knowest  that  love  of  man  and  desire  to  do  good  live  therein.  O  men, 
when  some  day  you  read  these  words,  reflect  that  ye  did  me  wrong  and 
let  the  unfortunate  one  comfort  himself  and  find  one  of  his  kind  who 
despite  all  the  obstacles  of  nature  yet  did  all  that  was  in  his  power  to  be 
accepted  among  worthy  artists  and  men.  You  my  brothers  Karl  and 
[Johann]  as  soon  as  I  am  dead  if  Dr.  Schmid  is  still  alive  ask  him  in  nry 


BEETHOVEN  173 

name  to  describe  my  malady  and  attach  this  document  to  the  history  of 
my  illness  so  that  so  far  as  is  possible  at  least  the  world  may  become 
reconciled  with  me  after  my  death.  At  the  same  time  I  declare  you  two 
to  be  the  heirs  to  my  small  fortune  (if  so  it  can  be  called) ,  divide  it  fairly, 
bear  with  and  help  each  other,  what  injury  you  have  done  me  you  know 
was  long  ago  forgiven.  To  you  brother  Karl  I  give  special  thanks  for  the 
attachment  you  have  displayed  toward  me  of  late.  It  is  my  wish  that 
your  lives  may  be  better  and  freer  from  care  than  I  have  had,  recom- 
mend virtue  to  your  children,  it  alone  can  give  happiness,  not  money,  I 
speak  from  experience,  it  was  virtue  that  upheld  me  in  misery,  to  it 
next  to  my  art  I  owe  the  fact  that  I  did  not  end  my  life  by  suicide — 
Farewell  and  love  each  other — I  thank  all  my  friends,  particularly 
Prince  Lichnowsky  and  Professor  Schmid — I  desire  that  the  instruments 
from  Prince  L.  be  preserved  by  one  of  you  but  let  no  quarrel  result  from 
this,  so  soon  as  they  can  serve  you  a  better  purpose  sell  them,  how  glad 
will  I  be  if  I  can  still  be  helpful  to  you  in  my  grave — with  joy  I  hasten 
toward  death — if  it  comes  before  I  shall  have  had  an  opportunity  to 
show  all  my  artistic  capacities  it  will  still  come  too  early  for  me  despite 
my  hard  fate  and  I  shall  probably  wish  that  it  had  come  later — but  even 
then  I  am  satisfied,  will  it  not  free  me  from  a  state  of  endless  suffering? 
Gome  when  thou  wilt  I  shall  meet  thee  bravely — Farewell  and  do  not 
wholly  forget  me  when  I  am  dead.  I  deserve  this  of  you  in  having  often 
in  life  thought  of  you  how  to  make  you  happy,  be  so — 

LUDWIG  VAN  BEETHOVEN 

Heiglnstadt  [sic],  [seal] 

October  6th, 
1802 

For  my  brothers  Karl  and  [  Johann] 
to  be  read  and  executed  after  my  death. 

Heiglnstadt,  October  loth,  1802,  thus  do  I  take  my  farewell  of  thee — 
and  indeed  sadly — yes  that  beloved  hope — which  I  brought  with  me 
when  I  came  here  to  be  cured  at  least  in  a  degree — I  must  wholly 
abandon,  as  the  leaves  of  autumn  fall  and  are  withered  so  hope  has  been 
blighted,  almost  as  I  came — I  go  away — even  the  high  courage — which 
often  inspired  me  in  the  beautiful  days  of  summer — has  disappeared — O 
Providence — grant  me  at  last  but  one  day  of  purejVy — it  is  so  long  since 
real  joy  echoed  in  my  heart — O  when — O  when,  O  Divine  One — shall  I 
feel  it  again  in  the  temple  of  nature  and  man — Never?  no — O  that 
would  be  too  hard. 

The  most  obvious  thing  about  this  tragic  document  (which  was 
never  sent,  but  was  found  among  Beethoven's  papers)  is  his  in- 


174  MEN  °F  MUSIC 

coherent  anguish  at  the  probability  that  he  would  go  completely 
deaf.  There  would  come  a  time,  he  knew,  when  he  nevermore 
would  hear — except  within  himself — the  music  that  was  his  reason 
for  being,  a  time  when  he  would  be  cut  off  from  the  world.  Reason 
enough,  then  for  such  an  outpouring!  But  the  "Testament"  yields 
up  another,  hidden  message  tending  to  corroborate  outside  evi- 
dence that  Beethoven  was  suffering  from  syphilis.  It  is  even  pos- 
sible that  he  believed  his  deafness  to  have  resulted  from  this  dis- 
ease, and  though  this  is  by  no  means  certain,  the  mere  supposition, 
to  one  of  Beethoven's  Calvinistic  morality,  might  well  have  made 
him  feel  that  he  was  being  judged.  That  his  most  valued  sense  was 
being  taken  away  from  him  because  of  a  moral  lapse  is  an  Aeschy- 
lean concept  that  would  have  been  peculiarly  native  to  Beethoven. 

There  are  people  who  still  refuse  to  believe  that  Beethoven  had 
syphilis.  It  is  true  that  the  evidence  against  them  is  overwhelming, 
but  they  are  armored  against  evidence  by  a  traditional  belief  that 
no  great  man  could  have  had  anything  so  shameful.  The  obvious 
evidence  is  medical  and  pharmaceutical;  the  more  subtle  is  psy- 
chological, and  can  be  marshaled  under  three  general  considera- 
tions. First,  Beethoven  had  a  psychopathic  abhorrence  of  women 
whose  morals  he  considered  too  free.  This  was  violent  enough  to 
make  him  interfere  absurdly  and  without  warrant  in  his  brother 
Karl's  life.  Second,  he  fell  in  love  with  a  series  of  highborn,  al- 
legedly pure  women,  whose  social  position,  he  knew,  automatically 
made  them  unavailable  to  him.  Third,  though  he  passionately  de- 
sired marriage,  in  part  because  he  believed  that  it  would  solve  all 
his  emotional  problems,  he  never  took  a  wife.  The  argument  that 
deafness  alone  would  have  seemed  to  him  an  insuperable  bar  to 
marriage  is  simply  inadmissible. 

Beethoven's  handicaps  served  to  give  his  attachments  a  strained, 
intense  quality.  He  was  desperately  seeking  something  he  often 
found,  but  could  never  possess.  The  women  who  flicker  through 
his  life  conform  inevitably  to  one  pattern;  he  who  commanded  a 
matchless  diversity  of  style  and  mood  in  his  art  was  enthralled  by 
an  unvarying,  rather  limited  type  of  woman.  His  beloved  ones  are 
little  more  than  girls,  untouched,  fresh,  of  noble  birth — and  not 
too  intelligent.  It  is  fruitless  to  catalogue  them,  and  more  fruitless 
to  linger  over  any  of  them:  they  are  less  individuals  than  symbols, 
and  not  one  of  them  exerted  a  permanent  personal  influence  on 


BEETHOVEN  175 

Beethoven's  life.  His  love,  however,  was  by  no  means  unrequited, 
and  it  was  said  that  this  massive,  rather  uncouth  man,  with  his 
painful  awkwardness  and  social  tactlessness,  could  make  conquests 
beyond  the  charms  of  an  Adonis. 

Countless  attempts  have  been  made  to  connect  certain  of  Beetho- 
ven's compositions  with  one  or  another  of  his  infatuations.  The 
"Moonlight"  Sonata  has  been  called  a  portrait  of  his  pupil,  the 
Contessa  GiuUetta  Guicciardi,  or  of  Beethoven's  feeling  for  her. 
Certainly  it  is  dedicated  to  her.  But  the  rest  of  the  interpretation 
is  a  perfect  example  of  putting  the  cart  before  the  horse.  Beetho- 
ven's notebooks  show  that  he  was  working  on  various  ideas  used  in 
the  "Moonlight"  over  a  period  of  years.  He  happened  to  com- 
plete it  in  the  high  noon  of  his  passion  for  the  Contessa,  and  there- 
fore offered  it  to  her  as  a  suitable  gage  of  h5s  love.  On  one  occasion, 
having  dedicated  his  Rondo  in  G  (let  the  romantic  reader  note  the 
key)  to  this  same  Giulietta,  he  rededicated  it  to  Prince  Lichnow- 
sky's  sister,  a  lady  with  whom,  as  far  as  we  know,  he  was  never  in 
love. 

Art  unquestionably  springs  from  emotion,  and  there  is  no  reason 
to  suppose  that  love  has  played  a  less  significant  part  in  the  en- 
gendering of  masterpieces  than  nature  worship  or  religious  devo- 
tion, Particularization  is  the  mistake,  and  can  go  to  the  length  of 
tacking  a  True  Story  libretto  onto  a  sublime  outpouring  of  the 
spirit.  The  problem  of  ascribing  definite  subject  matter  to  music* 
is  very  difficult,  and  had  best  be  left  to  radio  script  writers. 
There  can  be  no  question,  however,  that  the  man  who  is  peren- 
nially— and  hopelessly — in  love  will  write  quite  different  music 
than  either  he  who  loves  happily  or  he  who  loves  not  at  all.  Beetho- 
ven, who  was  perennially — and  hopelessly — in  love,  said  that  his 
most  enduring  passion  lasted  only  seven  months,  and  he  moved 
from  woman  to  woman  almost  as  rapidly  as  Casanova.  But  to  com- 
pare Casanova's  callous,  sense-driven,  and  insensate  tomcat  prowl- 
ing and  Beethoven's  tortured  questing  is  to  see  in  a  flash  the  exact 
antithesis  between  degradation  and  exaltation.  Beethoven's  loves 
were  brief  because  they  could  never  be  fulfilled — like  Orpheus,  he 
searched  the  face  of  every  woman,  but  forever  vainly.  While  he 
was  in  love,  he  was  deeply  in  love.  The  agony  of  joy  and  apprehen- 

*  In  one  very  real  sense,  the  only  subject  matter  of  music  is  the  themes  from  which 
it  is  constructed. 


MEN     OF    MUSIC 

sive  fear  into  which  a  momentary  illusion  of  having  come  to  the 
end  -of  his  quest  threw  him,  lies  revealed  in  lines  almost  as  painful 
to  read  as  the  "Heiligenstadt  Testament35 — the  famous  letter  to 
the  "Immortal  Beloved": 

July  6}  in  the  morning 

My  angel,  my  all,  my  very  self— only  a  few  words  today  and  at  that 
with  pencil  (with  yours) — not  till  tomorrow  will  my  lodgings  be  defin- 
itively determined  upon — what  a  useless  waste  of  time.  Why  this  deep 
sorrow  where  necessity  speaks — can  our  love  endure  except  through 
sacrifices — except  through  not  demanding  everything — can  you  change 
it  that  you  are  not  wholly  mine,  I  not  wholly  thine-  Oh,  God!  look  out 
into  the  beauties  of  nature  and  comfort  yourself  with  that  which  must 
be — iove  demands  everything  and  that  very  justly — thus  it  is  with  me  so 
far  as  you  an  concermd,  and  you  with  me.  If  we  were  wholly  united  you 
would  feel  the  pain  of  it  as  little  as  I.  My  journey  was  a  fearful  one;  I  did 
not  reach  here  until  4  o'clock  yesterday  morning;  lacking  horses  the 
post-coach  chose  another  route — but  what  an  awful  one.  At  the  stage 
before  the  last  I  was  warned  not  to  travel  at  night — made  fearful  of  a 
forest,  but  that  only  made  me  the  more  eager  and  I  was  wrong;  the 
coach  must  needs  break  down  on  the  wretched  road,  a  bottomless  mud 
roacj — without  sucfr  postilions  as  I  had  with  me  I  should  have  stuck  in 
the  road.  Esterhazy,  traveling  the  usual  road  hitherward,  "had  the  same 
fate  with  eight  horses  that  I  had  with  four — yet  I  got  some  pleasure 
out  of  it,  as  I  always  do  when  I  successfully  overcome  difficulties.  Now  a 
quick  change  to  things  internal  from  things  external.  We  shall  soon 
surely  see  each  other;  moreover,  I  cannot  communicate  to  you  the  ob- 
servations I  have  made  during  the  last  few  days  touching  my  own  life — 
if  our  hearts  were  always  close  together  I  would  make  none  of  the  kind. 
My  heart  is  full  of  many  things  to  say  to  you — Ah! — there  are  moments 
when  I  feel  that  speech  is  nothing  after  all — cheer  up — remain  my 
true,  my  only  treasure,  my  all  as  I  am  yours;  the  gods  must  send  us  the 
rest  that  which  shall  be  best  for  us. 

Your  faithful 

LUDWIG 

Evening,  Monday,  July  6 

You  are  suffering,  my  dearest  creature — only  now  have  I  learned  that 
letters  must  be  posted  very  early  in  the  morning.  Mondays,  Thursdays — 
the  only  days  on  which  the  mail-coach  goes  from  here  to  K.  You  are 
suffering— Ah!  wherever  I  am  there  you  are  also.  I  shall  arrange  affairs 
between  us  so  that  I  shall  live  and  live  with  you,  what  a  life!!!!  thus!!!! 
thus  without  you— pursued  by  the  goodness  of  mankind  hither  and 


BEETHOVEN  177 

thither — which  I  as  little  try  to  deserve  as  I  deserve  it.  Humility  of 
man  toward  man — it  pains  me — and  when  I  consider  myself  in  connec- 
tion with  the  universe,  what  am  I  and  what  is  he  whom  we  call  the  great- 
est— and  yet — herein  lies  the  divine  in  man.  I  weep  when  I  reflect  that 
you  will  probably  not  receive  the  first  intelligence  from  me  until  Satur- 
day— much  as  you  love  me,  I  love  you  more — but  do  not  ever  conceal 
your  thoughts  from  me — good-night — as  I  am  taking  the  baths  I  must 
go  to  bed.  Oh,  God!  so  near  so  far!  Is  our  love  not  truly  a  celestial  edi- 
fice— firm  as  Heaven's  vault. 

Good  morning,  on  July  7 

Though  still  in  bed  my  thoughts  go  out  to  you,  my  Immortal  Be- 
loved, now  and  then  joyfully,  then  sadly,  waiting  to  learn  whether  or 
not  fate  will  hear  us.  I  can  live  only  wholly  with  you  or  not  at  all — yes,  I 
am  resolved  to  wander  so  long  away  from  you  until  I  can  fly  to  your 
arms  and  say  that  I  am  really  at  home,  send  my  soul  enwrapped  in  you 
into  the  land  of  spirits. — Yes,  unhappily  it  must  be  so — you  will  be  the 
more  resolved  since  you  know  my  fidelity — to  you,  no  one  can  ever 
again  possess  my  heart — none — never — Oh,  God!  why  is  it  necessary 
to  part  from  one  whom  one  so  loves  and  yet  my  life  in  W  [Vienna]  is 
now  a  wretched  life — your  love  makes  me  at  once  the  happiest  and  the 
unhappiest  of  men — at  my  age,  I  need  a  steady,  quiet  life — can  that  be 
under  our  conditions?  My  angel,  I  have  just  been  told  that  the  mail- 
coach  goes  every  day — and  I  must  close  at  once  so  that  you  may  receive 
the  L.  at  once.  Be  calm,  only  by  a  calm  consideration  of  our  existence 
can  we  achieve  our  purpose  to  live  together — be  calm — love  me — today 
— yesterday — what  tearful  longings  for  you — you — you — my  life — my- 
all— farewell — Oh  continue  to  love  me — never  misjudge  the  most  faith- 
ful heart  of  your  beloved  L. 

ever  thine 
ever  mine 
ever  for  each  other. 

The  fact  that  the  person  to  whom  this  letter  was  directed  is  not 
known  makes  it  sound  like  a  cut-and-dried  emanation  of  the  ro- 
mantic Zeitgeist.  Its  writer  shows  himself  a  true  enfant  de  siecle,  but 
though  the  letter  rightly  belongs  to  the  nineteenth  century,  it  was 
a  real  heart's  cry  intended  for  a  real  woman,  and  so  escapes  the 
emotional  boundaries  of  a  particular  era.  Hundreds  of  pages  of 
fine  type  have  been  devoted  to  more  or  less  ingenious  guesses  as 
to  the  identity  of  this  "Immortal  Beloved."  Was  she  the  Contessa 
Giulietta?  Was  she  the  Contessa's  cousin,  Therese  von  Brunswick? 


178  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

Was  she  Goethe's  admired  friend,  Bettina  Brentano  von  Arnim? 
Or  was  she  any  one  of  a  dozen  others?  The  answer  is  still  anybody's 
guess. 

Despite  the  evidence  of  the  "Heiligenstadt  Testament"  and  the 
letter  to  the  "Immortal  Beloved/'  it  is  a  mistake  to  think  of  Beetho- 
ven in  a  constant  state  of  hopeless  despair  or  amorous  excitement. 
Until  within  a  few  years  of  his  death,  he  continued  to  lead  a  more 
or  less  normal  existence,  going  much  into  society  and  passing  many 
happy  hours  with  his  ever-widening  circle  of  friends.  His  eccen- 
tricities and  frequent  boorishness  were  interpreted  as  the  concomi- 
tants of  genius,  not  as  the  willful  posturing  of  a  mountebank.  He 
attained  a  certain  equilibrium  through  his  abounding  vitality  and 
broad  sense  of  humor.  Without  gorging  or  sousing,  he  enjoyed  the 
pleasures  of  the  table  as  much  as  any  man.  But  his  surest  way  of 
relief  was  a  ramble  in  the  country,  for  he  loved,  almost  worshiped, 
nature.  Finally,  there  was  always  the  magic  solace  of  composition. 
Beethoven  is  a  perfect  textbook  exemplar  of  the  modern  theory 
that  creation  is  in  part  the  sublimation  of  otherwise  unrelieved 
emotion.  If  this  is  always  kept  in  mind,  it  can  serve  to  fill  out  the 
seeming  eventlessness  of  his  biography,  which  from  early  in  the 
century  is  little  more  than  the  story  of  his  creative  activity. 

But  the  story  of  Beethoven's  creative  activity  is  not  without  snares 
and  pitfalls.  We  are  so  used  to  thinking  of  an  artist's  development 
as  proceeding  at  equal  pace  in  all  the  forms  he  handles  that  Beetho- 
ven jolts  our  entire  preconceived  scheme.  And  any  scheme  we  have 
is  further  complicated  by  the  division  of  his  works  into  three  peri- 
ods, suggested  by  early  critics  and  more  or  less  adhered  to  ever 
since.  The  dry  but  astute  Vincent  d'Indy  aptly  labeled  these  peri- 
ods "imitation,  externalization,  and  reflection."  It  would  indeed 
be  handy  if  we  could  tabulate  Beethoven's  compositions  under 
these  three  headings,  and  then  find  that  column  one  ended  at  such 
and  such  a  date,  and  so  on.  Unfortunately.,  this  is  impossible.  Not 
only  do  these  divisions  merge  imperceptibly,  but  as  Beethoven's 
method  was  one  of  trial  and  error,  and  as  he  came  to  some  forms 
later  than  others,  we  often  find  simultaneously  composed  works 
that  are  in  quite  different  stages  of  his  development.  For  instance, 
the  Piano  Concerto  in  C  minor  belongs  to  the  same  year  (1800)  as 
the  C  major  Symphony.  But  the  concerto  was  his  third,  the  sym- 
phony his  first;  the  symphony,  clearly  "imitation,"  is  tentative. 


BEETHOVEN  179 

afraid  of  the  personal.  The  C  minor  Concerto,  just  as  clearly  "ex- 
ternalization,"  is  assured  and  self-assertive.  The  sure  vigor  of  the 
first  movement,  the  exquisitely  made  largo,  with  its  hesitant,  medi- 
tative rhythms,  and  the  rushing,  pell-mell  rondo,  with  its  abrupt 
yet  artistically  satisfying  coda — here,  at  last,  is  Beethoven  in  ma 
persona. 

When  the  C  minor  Concerto  was  first  performed  at  a  public 
concert  on  April  5,  1803,  a  new  symphony — the  Second,  in  D 
major — was  also  on  the  program.  Here,  certainly,  were  two  works 
on  different  levels  of  self-realization,  though  it  may  be  doubted 
whether  even  the  many  connoisseurs  in  the  audience  recognized 
this  fact.  They  were  so  shocked  by  the  unbridled  vivacity  and  brio 
of  the  last  two  movements  of  the  symphony  that  they  failed  to  see 
that  it  was  still  essentially  a  classical  product,  while  the  more  mas- 
sive and  individual — but  somehow  quieter — concerto  was  really 
much  more  advanced.  Not  that  the  D  major  is  by  any  means  in- 
significant: the  larghetto  is  among  the  most  exquisite  of  slow  move- 
ments, Mozartian  in  its  purity  of  line,  but  richer  in  texture  and 
mellower  in  color;  the  coda  of  the  finale  is  no  perfunctory  perora- 
tion; rather,  it  is  a  considered  comment  on  material  previously 
heard  in  the  movement.  Judged  by  the  vast  architectonics  of  later 
codas,  it  sounds  rather  stereotyped,  and  must,  in  the  final  analysis, 
hold  its  place  as  a  kind  of  inspired  blueprint  of  things  to  come. 

The  Second  Symphony,  compared  with  the  First,  shows  exactly 
the  normal  development  one  would  expect  of  a  composer  who 
works  earnestly  at  his  job.  If  the  distance  between  these  two  is 
fixed  at  a  mile,  that  between  the  Second  and  Third  must  be  fixed 
at  a  light-year.  The  Third  Symphony  is  one  of  those  monumental 
achievements  that  at  first  leave  one  so  bewildered  that  the  im- 
mediate impulse  is  to  find  some  measuring  rod  that  will  make  them 
seem  more  approachable.  In  the  case  of  Beethoven's  Symphony  in 
E  flat  major,  which  surpasses  all  previous  symphonies  in  length,  it 
is  somehow  comforting  to  know  that  it  can  be  performed  in  forty- 
six  minutes  under  a  conductor  with  a  thorough  understanding  of 
the  composer's  intentions  and  a  nice  interpretation  of  his  tempo 
marks.  Further,  though  the  stature  of  the  Third  can  never  be  re- 
duced to  intimate  proportions,  it  brings  it  somewhat  nearer  to  re- 
alize that  its  mighty  effects  are  produced  by  the  same  orchestra 


l8o  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

Beethoven  had  used  previously,  augmented  by  a  single  additional 
horn. 

It  is  hard  to  describe  a  work  on  which  so  many  superlatives  have 
been  lavished.  Bernard  Shaw  said  that  the  first  movement  should 
be  played  by  giants  led  by  a  demigod.  Which  is  another  way  of 
saying  that  the  grandeur  of  this  allegro  makes  one  involuntarily 
think  of  superhuman  strength  as  the  only  motive  power  for  such 
an  enterprise.  The  second  movement  is  a  march — possibly  the 
most  solemn  and  fitting  funeral  music  ever  written — fitting,  that 
is,  at  the  funeral  of  a  genius:  it  would  dwarf  a  smaller  man.  In  the 
scherzo,  the  classical  minuet,  which  in  Haydn's  hands  had  begun 
to  outgrow  its  court  clothes,  finally  comes  of  age  in  an  outburst 
of  tempestuous  joy  suddenly  and  mysteriously  deadened  in  the 
threatening  drumbeats  of  the  coda.  The  finale  is  excessively  com- 
plicated, and  abounds  in  mysteries  of  form  to  which  no  man  may 
boast  the  key.  Briefly,  it  is  a  series  of  free  variations  on  a  theme 
from  Beethoven's  own  Prometheus  music,  interrupted  by  a  fugue 
and  topped  off  by  a  very  lengthy  coda.  Rivers  of  ink  have  been 
spilled  in  the  war  over  its  merits.  Some  of  the  imputed  formlessness 
of  romantic  music  has  entered  here:  those  who  like  the  finale  either 
take  the  formlessness  in  their  stride  or  claim  to  find  in  it  an  esoteric 
design  that  was  never  used  again;  those  who  dislike  the  finale  say 
that  they  do  so  because  it  is  formless.  There  can  be  little  doubt, 
however,  that  with  all  its  inherent  beauties,  it  falls  short  of  being 
a  perfect  culmination  to  the  three  preceding  movements. 

The  Third  Symphony  is  evolved  out  of  unpromising  and,  in 
many  instances,  quite  un-Beethovian  material.  But  the  develop- 
ment is  so  rich  and  unexpected  that  the  commonplaceness  of  the 
themes  is  discoverable  only  by  close  analysis,  and  it  is  in  this  pre- 
eminent grasp  of  the  resources  and  subtleties  of  elaboration  that 
the  E  flat  marks  a  tremendous  advance  not  only  in  Beethoven's 
career,  but  in  the  entire  history  of  music.  The  result  here  is  some- 
thing so  epic  that  it  would  be  necessary  to  call  it  "Eroica"  even  if 
no  hero  had  been  in  Beethoven's  mind  while  he  was  writing  it. 
But  the  root  inspiration  for  the  "Eroica"  actually  did  come  from 
something  outside  the  realm  of  music:  it  was  originally  intended, 
when  Beethoven  began  sketching  it  in  the  late  nineties,  as  a  paean 
to  Napoleon,  who  at  that  time  seemed  the  very  incarnation  of  the 
liberal  ideals  of  the  French  Revolution.  He  had  hardly  finished 


BEETHOVEN  l8l 

composing  it  when  he  learned  that  the  Corsican  had  crowned  him- 
self Emperor  of  the  French.  In  a  rage,  he  tore  the  name  of  the 
fallen  idol  from  the  title  page.  The  symphony  now  celebrates  "the 
death  of  a  great  man/5  but  in  1821,  when  Beethoven  heard  of 
Napoleon's  death,  he  declared,  "I  have  already  written  the  music 
for  that  catastrophe." 

Beethoven  outraged  convention  by  introducing  a  funeral  march 
into  a  symphony,  but  it  was  not  his  first  offense  of  the  kind.  Some 
years  before,  in  the  A  flat  major  Sonata  (Opus  26),  by  all  odds  the 
most  characteristic  he  had  yet  written,  the  third  movement  is  a 
somberly  grand  andante  entitled  "Funeral  March  on  the  Death 
of  a  Hero."  The  A  flat  major  is  further  remarkable  for  the  theme 
and  variations  with  which  it  begins,  for  in  these  Beethoven  goes 
far  beyond  the  scope  of  earlier  uses  of  this  device:  the  variations 
have  a  free,  improvisatorial  quality,  though  they  still  grow  out  of 
the  theme  rather  than  out  of  one  another  as  Brahms'  variations  do. 
But  this  free,  improvisatorial  quality  should  not  be  misconstrued: 
it  is  never  haphazard,  always  planned,  always  under  control. 
Beethoven  had  arrived  at  the  point  where  it  was  necessary  for  him 
to  modify  and  expand  already  existing  forms  so  they  could  hold 
his  ideas,  rather  than  compress  his  ideas  to  fit  the,  to  him,  cramped 
dimensions  of  the  forms  Mozart  and  Haydn  had  used  so  easily  and 
with  such  brilliant  success.  Both  his  next  two  sonatas  (Opus  27,  i 
and  2),  for  example,  he  marked  "quasi  una fantasia"  which  is  no 
idle  tag:  they  retain  only  a  few  formal  essentials  of  the  old  classical 
sonata,  and  take  off  into  the  unknown  whenever  the  composer  feels 
that  his  material  requires  it.  The  second  of  the  pair  is  the  all-too- 
famous  "Moonlight"  Sonata,  with  its  unfortunate  first  movement 
— an  adagio  sostenuto  which  must  once  have  been  hauntingly 
lovely,  but  has  been  played  dry.  It  tends  to  linger  in  the  memory, 
and  numb  us  to  the  sprightly  charm  of  the  allegretto  and  the  large 
dimensions  and  fine  architecture  of  the  presto. 

Among  the  three  sonatas  of  Opus  31,  composed  while  Beethoven 
was  hard  at  work  molding  the  "Eroica"  the  second  is  one  of  his 
most  magical  evocations.  There  is  not  an  uninspired  note  in  it, 
but  it  needs  a  Walter  Gieseking  to  reveal  its  passionate  vitality.  It 
is  put  together  like  a  drama:  the  first  movement,  with  its  agitated 
and  frequently  changed  tempos,  and  its  passages  of  almost  spoken 
soliloquy;  the  meditative,  intensely  personal  monologue  of  the  slow 


l82  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

movement;  the  fleet,  galloping  onrush  of  the  denouement  (among 
the  most  sheerly  clever  music  Beethoven  ever  composed) — -these 
are  the  perfectly  related  acts  of  an  inevitable  and  compelling  dra- 
matic sequence.  The  third  of  Opus  31  does  not  communicate  itself 
so  readily  as  the  second — of  somewhat  mixed  character,  it  has  less 
structural  inevitability.  This  gives  a  tentative  quality  to  a  work  of 
much  melodic  beauty. 

In  1804,  before  abandoning  the  sonata  for  some  years,  Beethoven 
composed  two  of  his  most  brilliant  virtuoso  pieces.  The  "Wald- 
stein"  and  "Appassionata"  have  with  reason  been  favored  by  con- 
cert pianists,  and  both  have  sure-fire  qualities  that  recommend 
them  just  as  positively  to  their  audiences.  The  first  of  these,  dedi- 
cated to  Beethoven's  old  Bonn  friend,  is  structurally  simple:  an 
energetic  allegro  (longer  than  many  a  complete  earlier  sonata) 
leads  through  a  brief,  poignant  adagio  into  what  is  possibly  Beetho- 
ven's most  celebrated  rondo.  The  three  movements  are  rather  like 
a  storm,  calm  under  a  still-lowering  sky,  and  then  sunlight.  The 
last  is  aerial  in  its  loveliness  and  bright  transparency,  and  Beetho- 
ven never  wrote  a  more  memorable  melody  to  project  exaltation. 
The  "Appassionato?"  has  been  made  to  carry  a  lot  of  pseudophilo- 
sophical  baggage,  Beethoven  having  begun  the  mystification  by 
saying,  "Read  Shakespeare's  Tempest"  when  questioned  about  its 
meaning.  This  is  excellent  literary  advice,  but  may  be  nothing 
more  than  a  red  herring  as  far  as  this  sonata  is  concerned.  The  first 
movement,  after  some  sullen  ruminations,  bursts  out  in  a  wild  and 
prolonged  Byronic  fury,  and  ends  in  mutterings  that  leave  us  with 
the  ominous  feeling  that  worse  is  yet  to  come;  the  explosion  is 
delayed  by  a  few  pages  of  exquisite  and  tragic  resignation,  which 
are  suddenly  broken  into — there  is  a  warning  lull,  and  then  a  rat- 
a-tat-tat  of  harsh  chords  fortissimo;  the  third  movement,  begin- 
ning quietly,  gathers  anger  and  speed,  rages  hysterically,  and  ends 
in  an  orgy  of  musical  fist-shaking. 

The  "Waldstein"  and  the c< 'Appassionato?*  opened  up  a  new  world 
of  sound.  They  could  not  have  been  conceived  for  the  clavier  or 
the  first  pianos,  and  they  still  tax  the  resources  of  the  modern 
concert  grand.  In  them,  Beethoven  came  to  the  full  realization 
that  the  piano  is  a  percussion  instrument. 

The  year  1804  is  even  more  important  as  marking  the  probable 
beginning  of  Beethoven's  only  opera,  Fidelio*  He  had  been  com- 


BEETHOVEN  183 

missioned,  possibly  as  early  as  1803,  by  Mozart's  last  impresario, 
Emamiel  Schikaneder,  to  compose  an  opera  for  his  Theater  an  der 
Wien.  Before  Beethoven  delivered  any  manuscript,  Schikaneder 
failed,  and  his  rival,  Baron  Braun,  director  of  the  Hoftheater, 
took  over  the  lease,  and  also  renewed  Beethoven's  contract. 
Josef  Sonnleithner,  the  secretary  of  the  Hoftheater,  a  cultivated 
but  uninspired  man,  supplied  a  libretto  that  fulfilled  the  com- 
poser's stringent  and  stuffy  demands  as  to  moral  unimpeach- 
ability and  lofty  tone.  It  is  a  story  of  conjugal  love  triumphant 
tinder  the  most  harrowing  circumstances  of  the  Terror — evidently, 
however,  nothing  was  stipulated  about  literary  excellence.  Bee- 
thoven was  so  enchanted  with  the  idea  of  setting  its  noble  message 
that  it  was  years  before  he  was  fully  aware  of  the  absurdities  of  the 
plot.  Meanwhile,  he  had  worked  fervently,  shuffled  and  reshuffled 
thousands  of  sketches  for  its  original  three  acts,  had  probably  com- 
posed one  overture,  discarded  it,  and  composed  another,  and 
finally  produced  it,  with  Vienna  full  of  a  French  army  of  occupa- 
tion who  could  not  understand  the  German  words  of  its  Spanish 
plot  (the  scene  had  been  shifted  to  Spain  for  reasons  of  state),  on 
November  20,  1805.  It  played  for  three  successive  nights,  and  was 
a  complete  failure. 

Beethoven's  friends  were  in  despair:  they  wanted  to  save  the 
opera,  and  finally  prevailed  on  him  to  authorize  certain  revisions, 
Stephan  von  Breuning,  whose  intimacy  with  the  composer  dated 
back  to  Bonn,  was  entrusted  with  reducing  the  three  acts  to  two, 
and  making  textual  revisions.  Equipped  with  a  new  overture — the 
magnificent  "Leonora"  No.  3 — the  opera  showed  signs  of  a  small 
success,  but  was  withdrawn  by  Beethoven  after  a  quarrel  with  the 
impresario.  It  lay  on  the  shelf  until  1814,  when  he  again  radically 
overhauled  the  score,  and  Georg  Friedrich  Treitschke,  the  noted 
dramatist,  performed  an  equally  serious  operation  on  the  text. 
This  time,  Fidelia  took  Vienna  by  storm,  and  was  selected  to  open 
the  next  season  at  the  Hofoper. 

Fidelio  (or,  as  it  was  called  until  1814,  Leonora}  is  known  by  its 
overtures  to  millions  who  have  never  heard  a  note  of  it  sung.  The 
four  overtures  constitute  a  neat  little  problem.  The  least  played, 
and  least  effective,  is  the  "Leonora"  No.  i.  It  may  well  have  been 
written  first,  though  there  is  a  theory  that  it  was  composed  in  1807 
for  a  special  performance  that  never  came  off;  there  is  no  evidence 


184  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

that  it  was  ever  played  during  Beethoven's  lifetime.  The  "Le- 
onora" No.  2  was  used  at  the  actual  premiere,  "Leonora"  No.  3  at 
the  r8o6  performances.  The  former  is  superb  in  many  respects, 
highly  dramatic  in  effect,  but  lacking  the  absolutely  perfect  pro- 
portions of  No.  3.  Besides,  the  working  out  of  its  middle  section  is 
rather  dry  and  academic.  No.  3  uses  some  themes  from  No.  2,  but 
develops  them  on  a  grander  scale  and  on  an  even  loftier  plane. 
The  entire  overture,  and  more  particularly  the  new  material,  is 
treated  with  an  unexampled  brilliance  that  has  served  largely  to 
make  "Leonora"  No.  3  the  most  popular  of  Beethoven's  overtures 
— in  effect,  a  kind  of  symphonic  poem  or  tenth  symphony  in  one 
movement.  But  though  No.  3  is  an  impressive  advance  over  No.  2 
from  a  sheerly  musical  point  of  view,  it  is  ruinous  as  an  introduc- 
tion to  the  opera.  "The  trouble  with  'Leonora'  No.  3,"  as  Tovey 
says,  "is  that,  like  all  great  instrumental  music  from  Haydn  on- 
wards, it  is  about  ten  times  as  dramatic  as  anything  that  could 
possibly  be  put  on  the  stage."  Beethoven  himself  undoubtedly 
came  to  realize  this,  for  in  1814  he  composed  still  one  more  over- 
ture— the  so-called  "Fidelio."  This  light,  generally  cheerful  piece 
is  an  excellent  curtain-raiser  for  the  rather  trivial  matter  of  the 
first  scenes,  and  is  still  used  to  open  the  opera.  As  performed  at  the 
Metropolitan,  Fidelio  interposes  "Leonora"  No.  3  between  the  first 
and  second  scenes  of  Act  II,  for  all  the  world  like  a  gigantic 
Mascagni  intermezzo.  We  owe  this  favor  to  the  dramatic  sapience 
of  Gustav  Mahler. 

Fidelio  is  a  comic  opera  with  an  excessive  amount  of  gloom  in 
the  middle  sections.  It  begins  with  some  broad  vaudeville  clown- 
ing and  closes  on  a  conventional  happy  ending.  A  more  per- 
functory story  cannot  be  imagined,  and  to  save  the  situation 
Beethoven  expanded  the  character  of  Leonora,  the  heroic  wife, 
until  she  bestrides  the  entire  opera  like  a  colossus.  Her  temporary 
sufferings  (which  have  a  way  of  seeming  endless)  almost  persuade 
us  that  the  drama  is  a  tragic  masterpiece.  It  is  for  her  that  Bee- 
thoven wrote  the  "Leonora"  No.  3,  and  it  is  for  her  that  he  de- 
signed the  most  effective  vocal  music.  The  rest  of  the  characters 
are  so  puppetlike  and  undifferentiated  that  the  best  that  can  be 
said  of  their  music  is  that  the  villain  Pizarro  gets  passages  express- 
ing Beethoven's  moral  indignation  at  his  character,  while  the  hero 
Florestan  is  made  to  sing  music  that  just  as  clearly  expresses 


BEETHOVEN  185 

sympathy  with  his  patiently  borne  tribulations.  Beside  these  straw 
men,  Leonora  seems  as  real  as  Carmen.  As  far  as  the  opera  as  a 
whole  is  concerned,  not  much  of  its  dramatic  effectiveness  would 
be  lost  in  a  truncated  performance  that  would  consist  of  "Leonora" 
No.  3  followed  by  the  heroine's  great  scena,  "Abscheulicher,  wo  eilst 
du  hin?"  If  the  man  whom  Beethoven  transfigured  in  the  "Eroica** 
could  only  have  been  Leonora's  mate,  what  an  opera  this  might 
have  been! 

All  sorts  of  loyal  excuses  have  been  advanced  to  prove  that 
Beethoven  was  a  great  composer  for  the  stage.  The  truth  is  that  he 
was  a  great  dramatic  musician — one  of  the  greatest  of  all  time,  in 
fact — but  he  completely  lacked  a  sense  of  the  stage.  Drama,  in  the 
deepest  sense,  he  fully  understood;  stage  business  was  beyond,  or 
beneath,  him.  Treitschke's  notes  on  the  1814  version  of  Fidelia 
furnish  eloquent  proof  of  Beethoven's  complete  ineptitude  in  this 
respect.  An  age  that  can  afford  to  neglect  Iphigenie  en  Tauride  does 
well  to  neglect  Beethoven's  only  opera. 

Beethoven  did  not  devote  1805  exclusively  to  working  on  Fidelio. 
That  same  year,  he  began  sketching  what  eventually  became  the 
Fifth  Symphony,  as  well  as  the  first  of  the  three  quartets  dedicated 
to  Count  Rasoumovsky,  and  what  is  probably  the  finest  of  his 
piano  concertos — that  in  G  major.  The  Fourth  Concerto  has  al- 
ways been  overshadowed  by  the  grandiose  effect  of  the  Fifth,  It 
declined  in  popularity  even  during  Beethoven's  lifetime,  and  was 
not  rescued  from  oblivion  until  1836,  when  Mendelssohn  played 
it  at  a  concert  in  Leipzig.  It  is  baffling  to  explain  why  it  has  not 
always  been  one  of  Beethoven's  most  popular  large  compositions, 
for  it  yields  to  none  of  the  others  in  immediacy  of  appeal.  It  is  in- 
gratiating, intimate  as  few  large  works  are.  Although  it  does  not 
offer  virtuosos  such  an  excellent  chance  to  show  off  as  the  Fifth,  it 
is  flawlessly  constructed,  original  in  detail,  and  inspired  in  melody. 
Beethoven  makes  history  by  opening  the  concerto  with  a  statement 
of  the  principal  theme  by  the  solo  instrument,  and  then,  with  the 
use  of  a  minimum  of  subsidiary  matter,  subjects  the  theme  to  one 
of  the  most  subtle  and  complex  developments  in  the  entire  course 
of  music.  Not  one  of  the  least  triumphs  of  this  use  of  the  whole 
armory  of  technique  is  that  the  result  does  not  sound  even  re- 
motely pedantic.  The  second  movement  is  a  dialogue  between  the 
orchestra  and  the  piano.  Liszt  compared  it  to  Orpheus  taming  the 


l86  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

beasts,  probably  because  the  gentle,  supplicating  solo  instrument 
finally  wins  over  the  myriad  voices  of  the  orchestra.  At  which 
point  the  rondo  begins  pianissimo,  gradually  working  into  a 
boisterous  rush  varied  by  a  transitional  theme  of  broad,  singing 
character,  utterly  romantic,  almost  Schumannesque  in  feeling. 

It  is  particularly  interesting  to  compare  the  Fourth  Concerto 
with  the  Fifth,  in  E  flat  major.  Although  written  four  years  later, 
this  last  of  Beethoven's  piano  concertos  is  much  less  arresting  and 
generally  less  interesting  musically.  The  name  "Emperor"  was 
tacked  onto  it  some  years  after  its  composition — but  not  by  Bee- 
thoven. It  is  possible  to  justify  this  nickname  by  the  rather  pom- 
pous, grandiloquent  character  of  the  first  and  third  movements — 
evidently  this  "Emperor"  was  a  Roman.  The  first  movement,  with 
its  beautiful  and  certainly  malleable  theme,  is  developed  impres- 
sively, but  at  such  great  length  that  it  ends  by  seeming  too  long — 
one  place  where  Beethoven's  "astronomical  punctuality"  was  not 
on  time.  The  adagio,  however,  for  all  its  air  of  improvisation,  ranks 
high  among  Beethoven's  profound  meditations,  and  is  the  real 
glory  of  the  "Emperor."  It  shades  insensibly,  and  by  a  stroke  of 
sheer  magic,  into  a  triumphant  rondo  that  is  a  fitting  culmina- 
tion to  a  virtuoso's  holiday.  With  all  deference  to  this  rather 
breath-taking  work,  it  is  to  be  hoped  that  a  day  will  come  when 
the  phrase  "Beethoven  piano  concerto"  will  not  inevitably  mean 
the  "Emperor." 

•  In  1806,  the  Emperor  (and  in  those  days  only  one  Emperor  was 
in  everyone's  mind)  was  lowering  over  Austria  and  the  German 
states  like  a  great  storm,  doing  a  thorough  job  of  unsettling  lives. 
Beethoven's  was  no  exception,  though  he  went  right  on  working  at 
a  couple  of  symphonies  and  the  "Rasoumovsky"  Quartets.  In 
October,  he  visited  Prince  Lichnowsky  at  his  Silesian  estate,  and 
found  French  officers  quartered  there.  This  in  itself  was  enough  to 
upset  him,  but  when  the  Prince  half-jokingly  threatened  to  lock 
him  up  if  he  refused  to  play  for  them,  Beethoven  forced  his  way 
out,  and  returned  to  Vienna  in  a  rage.  Arrived  home,  the  first 
thing  he  did  was  to  smash  a  bust  of  Lichnowsky.  He  soon  cooled 
down  sufficiently  to  focus  his  energies  on  a  piece  he  had  promised 
to  complete  before  Christmas.  Accordingly,  on  December  23,  the 
new  work,  unrehearsed  because  he  had  just  completed  it,  was  pre- 
sented during  a  singular  program.  Its  first  movement  was  a  feature 


BEETHOVEN  I7 

of  the  opening  half  of  the  entertainment,  and  the  second  and  third 
movements  were  given  during  the  second  half.  Intervening  was, 
among  other  compositions,  a  sonata  by  Franz  Clement,  played  on 
one  string  of  a  violin  held  upside  down.  Clement  was  also  the 
soloist  in  the  Beethoven,  playing  his  part  at  sight. 

The  composition  so  inauspiciously  introduced  was  the  D  major 
Violin  Concerto,  and  it  is  surely  no  wonder  that,  produced  under 
these  circumstances,  it  was  a  failure.  It  was  at  once  pronounced 
insignificant,  and  went  immediately  into  exile  from  the  concert 
hall.  Its  failure  may  have  deterred  Beethoven  from  ever  compos- 
ing another  violin  concerto.  Many  years  after  his  death,  Joseph 
Joachim,  whose  cadenzas  have  since  become  an  almost  integral 
part  of  the  concerto,  resuscitated  it,  and  helped  it  to  a  popularity 
that  has  never  waned,  beside  the  likewise  unique  essays  in  this 
form  by  Mendelssohn,  Tchaikovsky,  and  Brahms.  With  that 
"colossal  instinct"  which  so  often  moved  him  when  he  was  pioneer- 
ing, Beethoven  created  in  a  single  try  music  a  large  part  of  whose 
beauty  depends  on  its  peculiar  fitness  for  the  violin,  and  its  sensi- 
tive balancing  of  the  timbres  and  volumes  of  solo  instrument  and 
orchestra.  He  expanded  the  scope  of  the  violin  concerto  and,  with- 
out losing  sight  of  the  fact  that  he  was  writing  for  a  virtuoso, 
produced  something  without  a  trace  of  empty  show. 

The  Concerto  in  D  is  almost  deceptively  quiet,  and  its  melodies 
are  in  themselves  close  to  undistinguished.  There  is  a  minimum  of 
ornamentation,  except  in  the  seldom  fitting  cadenzas  that  virtuosos 
have  written  for  the  second  and  third  movements.  The  beauty  of 
the  Violin  Concerto  lies  deep,  and  for  many  performers  is  not 
get-at-able:  tone,  not  display,  is  its  secret.  It  has  been  said  from 
time's  beginning  that  a  performer  must  bring  some  profound 
understanding  to  his  task.  Nowhere  is  this  more  true  than  in  the 
Concerto  in  D.  Throughout  the  first  two  movements,  the  soloist  is 
given  the  rarest  opportunities,  for  in  them  Beethoven  has  woven 
unpromising  melodies  into  an  incomparably  rich  and  varied  tonal 
fabric  that  quite  transforms  them.  Only  the  rondo  thwarts  the 
performer,  for  even  Beethoven's  infinite  resourcefulness  was  balked 
by  the  essential  banality  of  its  principal  theme. 

In  1806,  no  less  than  three  symphonies  lay  in  Beethoven's  work- 
shop in  various  stages  of  development.  Of  these,  the  Fourth,  in 
B  flat  major,  was  completed  toward  the  end  of  the  year,  and  was 


l88  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

first  performed  the  following  spring.  The  Fifth,  in  G  minor,  and 
the  Sixth,  in  F  major,  were  both  finished  in  1808,  and  were  per- 
formed together  on  December  22  of  that  year.  This  all-Beethoven 
program  also  included  the  scena  for  soprano,  "Ah!  perfido"  sections 
of  a  Mass  composed  for  the  Esterhazy  family,  an  extempore  fantasy 
on  the  piano — and  the  premieres  of  the  Choral  Fantasy  and  the  C 
major  Piano  Concerto!  Everything  was  wretchedly  performed 
(there  had  been  no  complete  rehearsal  of  any  of  the  works),  the 
Theater  an  der  Wien  was  ice-cold,  and  the  program  lasted  four 
hours.  In  addition  to  being  a  physical  trial  to  the  audience,  it  be- 
came embarrassing  when  the  performers  broke  down  in  the  middle 
of  the  Choral  Fantasy  because  Beethoven  had  given  them  a  wrong 
cue.  All  was  calculated  to  send  the  audience  home  in  a  state  of 
mingled  awe  and  rage.  Beethoven,  however,  insisted  that  he  had 
merely  wanted  to  give  them  their  money's  worth. 

Fortunately,  the  rather  delicate  Symphony  in  B  flat  major 
had  made  its  debut  in  a  comparatively  light  program — consisting 
of  the  first  four  symphonies — less  than  three  hours  long.  Thus  it 
was  born  in  the  shadow  of  the  "Eroica"  where,  despite  its  own 
sufficing  beauties,  it  has  remained  ever  since.  There  is  a  myth  that, 
after  the  First  and  Second,  Beethoven's  even-numbered  sym- 
phonies are  inferior  to  the  odd-numbered.  The  truth  is  that  the 
odd-numbered  ones  are  epic,  the  even-numbered  lyric.  It  is  almost 
as  if  after  each  of  his  cosmic  labors,  the  titan  had  to  play.  The 
Fourth  scales  no  Himalayan  peaks,  wins  no  victories,  but  to  con- 
ceive of  it  as  made  up  of  inferior  stuff  is  to  commit  an  egregious 
error  of  judgment.  No  symphony  has  more  exquisite  proportions, 
and  one  would  have  to  go  to  Mozart  to  match  its  sheer  delicious- 
ness.  The  mysterious  introduction,  with  its  promise  of  something 
important  about  to  happen,  has  often  been  invested  with  a  deep 
significance  that  makes  far  too  much  of  what  it  really  is — a  prelude 
to  mischief.  The  cantabile  is  like  an  infinitely  tender  savoring  of 
happiness,  and  is  touched  with  that  slight  tinge  of  melancholy  en- 
gendered by  a  realization  that  of  all  things  happiness  is  the  most 
evanescent.  The  minuet  is  a  charming  dance,  and  the  finale, 
which  one  musical  pontiff  damned  as  "too  light/5  is  actually  just 
light  enough — witty  and  swift  exegesis  on  the  classical  allegro  of 
Haydn  and  Mozart.  It  is  all  as  easy  to  listen  to  as  folk  melody,  and 


BEETHOVEN  189 

is  the  product  of  a  technique  that  commanded  the  resources  of 
the  entire  past. 

The  Fifth  is  the  best  known  and  best  loved  of  Beethoven's  nine 
symphonies — therefore  the  best  known  and  best  loved  of  all 
symphonies.  The  reasons  for  its  outstanding  popularity  are  not  far 
to  seek:  its  comparative  simplicity  reduces  the  listener's  difficulties 
to  a  minimum;  the  music  is  never  dull,  it  is  spirited  and  eloquent — 
and  it  is  Beethoven  all  the  way.  In  short,  it  is  excellent  entertain- 
ment, in  the  best  sense  of  the  word.  The  renowned,  almost  notori- 
ous, and  in  themselves  undistinguished  four  notes  that  open  the 
symphony  with  a  defi,  lead  into  four  "movements  of  the  most 
eminently  whistleable  music  ever  composed.  And  it  is  a  fact  that 
thousands  of  people  who  say  that  they  abhor,  or  "do  not  under- 
stand," classical  music,  go  about  whistling  parts  of  the  Fifth 
Symphony.  It  is  definitely  not  a  work  around  which  a  fence  can  be 
built:  it  belongs  to  the  whole  world,  and  this  obvious  fact  has  made 
enemies  for  it  among  those  musical  snobs  who  delight  in  fencing 
off  the  great  masterpieces,  and  marking  them  "Private  Property." 

It  is  too  bad  that  we  cannot  share  the  emotions  of  those  who 
listened  to  the  C  minor  Symphony  when  it  was  new.  It  was  the 
Sacre  duprintemps  of  the  early  nineteenth  century,  and  seems  to  have 
affected  its  listeners  violently.  The  operatic  composer  Lesueur 
told  Berlioz,  "It  has  so  upset  and  bewildered  me  that  when  I 
wanted  to  put  on  my  hat,  I  couldn't  find  my  head."  The  years 
have  taken  from  the  Fifth  Symphony  only  one  thing — this  power- 
ful novelty.  But  we  can  still  revel  in  the  resilient,  athletic  rhythms 
of  the  first  movement,  with  its  brief  contrasting  moments  of 
melodic  questioning.  The  second  movement,  an  andante  with 
variations,  is  more  studied,  yet  it  sings  along  freely  and  with  en- 
chanting grace.  The  third  movement  is  one  of  the  most  effective 
of  all  scherzos,  from  the  ominous  first  theme  (favored  as  burglar 
music  by  pianists  in  the  days  of  the  silent  movies)  to  the  subdued 
but  still-lowering  close,  which  leads  without  interruption  into  the 
finale.  This  scherzo  is  notable  for  a  rare  bravura  passage  for  sup- 
pressed bass-violin  virtuosos,  wherein  Beethoven  shows  a  kinship 
to  Rabelais  in  an  episode  of  bumbling  and  sardonic  humor.  It  was 
undoubtedly  in  the  finale  that  M.  Lesueur  lost  his  head — certainly 
it  was  here,  after  the  repeated  warnings  of  the  scherzo,  that  Bee- 
thoven broke  loose.  The  symphony  ends  in  a  rout  of  victorious 


MEN    OF    MUSIC 

energy,  to  which  the  reappearance  of  parts  of  the  scherzo  adds  a 
note  of  terrible  piquancy.  The  superabundance  of  ideas  and  the 
diabolic  pace  are  still  breath-taking,  and  it  is  not  surprising  that 
Ludwig  Spohr,  the  same  pontiff  who  had  found  the  finale  of  the 
Fourth  "too  light/5  condemned  this  finale  as  "an  orgy  of  vulgar 
noise." 

The  Sixth,  or  "Pastoral/'  Symphony  is,  with  the  piano  sonata 
known  as  "Les  Adieux"  one  of  the  few  extended  compositions  that, 
by  his  own  confession,  Beethoven  built  around  a  program.  Now,  it 
is  quite  true  that  certain  composers,  notably  Debussy  and  Richard 
Strauss,  wrote  some  of  their  best  work  under  the  stimulus  of  a 
program.  It  is  equally  true  that  a  program,  when  used  merely  as  a 
point  of  departure,  rather  than  slavishly  followed,  liberated  their 
imaginations:  for  them  it  was  like  a  catalytic  agent  that  effected 
the  magic  rapport  between  them  and  their  material.  But  a  pro- 
gram seems  actually  to  have  limited  Beethoven,  and  neither  of  his 
large  program  pieces  belongs  with  his  best  work.  We  can  but 
wonder  at  the  staying  power  of  the  "Pastoral"  Symphony,  which 
should  long  ago,  as  Edward  J.  Dent  pointed  out  with  his  customary 
brutal  frankness,  have  been  retired  to  the  shelf.  There  are  plenty  of 
"good  things"  in  it — but  alas!  they  are  technical  excellences  that 
would  be  inevitable  in  any  mature  work  of  Beethoven's.  Most  of 
the  "Pastoral"  is  plain  dull,  and  one  can  only  suspect  that  those 
who  help  by  their  applause  to  keep  it  in  the  repertoire  really  de- 
light in  the  birdcalls,  the  rippling  brook,  and  the  storm  rather  than 
in  the  basic  themes  and  their  development.  Fortunately,  it  is 
possible  to  enjoy  Beethoven  and  the  country  separately  without  en- 
joying them  together  within  the  confines  of  the  F  major  Symphony. 

The  "Pastoral"  was  completed  and  first  performed  amid  the 
alarums  of  another  onslaught  against  Austria  by  Napoleon.  Before 
hostilities  were  renewed,  however,  Beethoven  (whose  efforts  to  find 
official  employment  in  Vienna  had  proved  vain)  received  an  at- 
tractive offer  from  Jerome  Bonaparte,  King  of  Westphalia,  to 
become  his  Kapellmeister  at  CasseL  For  a  time  he  entertained  seri- 
ously the  idea  of  emigrating,  and  what  finally  dissuaded  him  seems 
to  have  been,  not  patriotism,  but  abhorrence  of  the  reputedly  lax 
morals  of  Jerdme's  court.  The  rumor  that  Beethoven  might  leave 
Vienna  struck  consternation  into  the  hearts  of  his  noble  patrons. 
Three  of  them — the  Princes  Lobkowitz  and  Kinsky,  and  his  pupil 


BEETHOVEN  IQI 

and  newly  found  friend,  the  youthful  Archduke  Rudolf— put  then- 
heads  together,  and  decided  to  offer  him  a  yearly  income  from 
their  own  purses  if  he  would  promise  to  remain.  This,  with  a  small 
annuity  he  had  been  receiving  from  Prince  Lichnowsky  since  1800, 
might  have  added  enough  to  his  earnings  from  the  publication  of 
his  music  to  make  his  life  an  easy  one.  Unfortunately,  war  was  de- 
clared in  April,  1809,  and  ^e  value  of  Austrian  currency  was 
immediately  cut  in  half. 

Beethoven  decided  to  remain  in  Vienna  during  the  war,  but  the 
approach  of  the  French  meant  that  the  imperial  family  had  to  flee. 
The  composer  was  sincerely  attached  to  the  Archduke  Rudolf,  and 
mourned  his  departure  and  absence  in  the  first  two  movements  of 
the  second  of  his  extended  program  pieces — the  E  flat  major  Piano 
Sonata  (Opus  810);  he  wrote  a  third  movement  early  in  1810  to 
celebrate  the  Archduke's  return.  By  far  the  most  effective  part  of 
the  Sonata  "Les  Adieux"  is  the  first  movement,  with  its  ingenious 
development  of  the  introductory  three  notes  over  which  Beethoven 
wrote  the  word  "Le-be-wohl!"  which,  as  he  angrily  complained, 
was  a  far  more  tender  and  intimate  word  than  the  formal  French 
expression  his  publishers  substituted.  It  may  be  said  of  this  sonata 
that  though  it  was  deeply  felt,  its  program  inhibited  the  com- 
poser's finest  flights  of  creative  imagination.  Certainly,  it  is  far  in- 
ferior to  the  small  but  poignant  F  sharp  major  Sonata  (Opus  78), 
composed  somewhat  earlier.  Beethoven  himself  went  on  record  as 
preferring  the  F  sharp  to  the  even-in-his-time  overplayed  "Moon- 
light," which  it  strongly  resembles  in  mood  though  not  in  structure. 

There  was  a  seeming  lull  in  Beethoven's  activity  until  late  in 
1813,  when  the  Seventh  Symphony  was  first  performed.  The 
interim  was  taken  up  with  a  number  of — for  him — relatively  small 
projects.  Despite  his  now  almost  unbearable  deafness,  he  was  going 
so  assiduously  into  society  that  he  complained  of  no  I6nger  having 
time  to  be  with  himself.  After  the  death  of  Haydn  in  1809,  Bee- 
thoven  was  unquestionably  the  most  eminent  of  living  composers, 
and  therefore  one  of  the  principal  sights  of  the  town.  In  May,  1810, 
he  met  Bettina  Brentano,  then  but  twenty-five  years  old,  but  al- 
ready started  on  her  self-chosen  career  as  Goethe's  Aspasia.  He 
promptly  fell  as  hopelessly  in  love  with  her  as  she  had  fallen  in  love 
with  Goethe.  Doubtless,  her  enthusiasm  further  stimulated  what 
was  to  prove  his  lifelong  devotion  to  the  poet.  In  the  same  year,  he 


MEN    OF    MUSIC 

set  several  of  Goethe's  poems  and  completed  an  overture  and  inci- 
dental music  to  Egmont,  Goethe's  drama  of  the  ill-fated  champion 
of  Flemish  liberties  against  the  Spaniards.  The  incidental  music 
has  vanished  somewhere  behind  the  gates  of  horn  and  ivory,  but 
the  overture  has  held  its  own  quite  as  triumphantly  as  that  to 
Coriolanus.*  Like  the  tremendous  "Leonora"  No.  3,  each  of  these 
overtures  crystallizes  the  essence  of  the  drama  as  Beethoven  felt 
it.  It  seems  inconceivable  that  this  noble  and  profoundly  realized 
music  will  ever  be  crowded  from  the  repertoire.  Incidentally,  the 
overture  to  Egmont  concludes  with  an  electrifying  fanfare  for  the 
brass  that  actually  echoes  the  trumpet  flourishes  the  Duke  of  Alva 
ordered  so  as  to  drown  out  Egmont's  last  speech.  Here  Beethoven 
wrote  with  inflammatory  eloquence  what  might  have  been  a  mere 
perfunctory  effect — the  lion  of  aristocratic  Vienna  had  found  a 
program  that  liberated  him. 

In  1811,  Beethoven  met  a  man  who  was  destined  to  exercise  a 
mixed  influence  on  his  music.  This  was  Johann  Nepomuk  Malzel, 
the  renowned  inventor  of  the  "metronome,  and  the  contriver  of 
many  curious  machines  for  making  music.  Beethoven  at  first  took 
to  him  with  a  kind  of  innocent  fervor.  During  1812,  while  he  was 
busy  writing  the  Seventh  and  Eighth  Symphonies,  he  spent  much 
time  with  Malzel,  and  they  even  planned  to  tour  England  to- 
gether. Simultaneously,  the  inventor  was  perfecting  his  metronome, 
and  in  July,  at  what  was  originally  planned  as  a  farewell  dinner, 
Beethoven  and  his  friends  toasted  the  machine  in  a  round  that 
parodied  its  monotonous  ticking.  This  was  later  used  in  the  alle- 
gretto of  the  Eighth  Symphony.  But  their  plans  changed:  his 
brother  Karl  was  so  ill  that  Beethoven  was  afraid  to  leave  Austria, 
and  he  himself  was  in  such  wretched  health  that  he  went  to  take 
the  waters  of  various  Bohemian  spas,  where  he  also  hoped  to  al- 
leviate his  deafness. 

At  Toplitz,  where  the  royalty  and  haute  noblesse  of  Europe  con- 
gregated, Beethoven  first  met  Goethe.  They  held  each  other  in 
high  esteem,  but  got  on  each  other's  nerves.  Goethe,  supreme  poet 
and  philosopher  though  he  was,  stood  aside,  hat  in  hand,  as  his 
royal  friends  passed.  Beethoven  was  enraged  by  such  conduct. 
Bettina  Brentano  von  Arnim  attested  that  he  "with  folded  arms 
walked  right  through  the  dukes  and  only  tilted  his  hat  slightly 

*  By  one  H.  J.  von  Collin,  not  Shakespeare. 


BEETHOVEN 

while  the  dukes  stepped  aside  to  make  room  for  him,  and  all 
greeted  him  pleasantly;  on  the  other  side  he  stopped  and  waited 
for  Goethe,  who  had  permitted  the  company  to  pass  by  him  where 
he  stood  with  bowed  head.  'Well/  he  said,  'I've  waited  for  you  be- 
cause I  honor  and  respect  you  as  you  deserve,  but  you  did  those 
yonder  too  much  honor."5  As  for  Goethe,  he  commented  dryly, 
"His  talent  amazed  me;  unfortunately  he  is  an  utterly  untamed 
personality,  not  altogether  wrong  in  holding  the  world  to  be  de- 
testable, but  who  does  not  make  it  any  the  more  enjoyable  either 
for  himself  or  others  by  his  attitude.55 

Before  leaving  for  the  spas,  Beethoven  had  finished  the  Seventh 
Symphony;  the  Eighth  he  completed  at  Linz  in  the  fall  while  on  a 
visit  to  his  brother  Johann.  This  was  by  no  means  a  pleasure  trip: 
he  had  heard  that  Johann  was  mixed  up  with  a  loose  woman,  and 
he  spent  much  time  trying  to  persuade  him  to  mend  his  morals  and 
his  taste.  Failing,  he  had  recourse  to  the  religious,  civil,  and  penal 
authorities,  and  succeeded  in  driving  Johann  into  marriage  with 
the  disreputable  creature.  He  returned  to  Vienna  in  a  fury,  and 
seems  to  have  brooded  himself  into  inactivity  during  the  winter. 
In  May,  1813,  he  went  to  Baden,  near  Vienna,  and  it  was  there, 
while  making  a  last  despairing  attempt  to  find  a  cure  for  his  deaf- 
ness, that  news  reached  him  of  Wellington5 s  overwhelming  defeat 
of  Joseph  Bonaparte5s  troops  at  Vitoria. 

Malzel  had  also  heard  the  news,  and  his  shrewd  commercial 
mind  was  already  busy  with  its  possibilities  for  a  musician  who  was 
really  on  his  toes.  With  the  English  market  in  view,  he  asked  Bee- 
thoven to  write  a  battle  piece  for  one  of  his  musical  machines. 
Malzel,  who  seems  to  have  had  the  mind  of  a  modern  advertising 
man,  counted  on  the  popularity  of  Wellington,  the  fame  of  Bee- 
thoven, the  novelty  of  his  Panharmonicon,  and  the  patronage  of 
the  Prince  Regent,  which  was  to  be  secured  by  an  effulgent  dedica- 
tion. Beethoven  fell  in  with  the  scheme  with  childish  delight.  Ac- 
cordingly, after  various  false  starts  and  alterations  in  plan,  he  pro- 
duced the  notorious  composition  known  as  Wellington's  Victory,  or 
the  Battle  of  Vittoria  [sic],  also  occasionally  called  the  "Battle55 
Symphony.  Meanwhile  the  Austrians  and  their  allies  had  defeated 
Napoleon  at  Leipzig,  and  Malzel  saw  that  his  market  had  thus 
been  shifted  to  Vienna.  The  piece  was  already  all  set  for  the  Pan- 
harmonicon; he  now  persuaded  Beethoven  to  orchestrate  it,  and 


194  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

have  it  performed  at  one  of  the  many  charity  concerts  being 
planned  for  the  survivors  of  the  last  campaign.  He  shrewdly 
foresaw  that  it  would  take  the  town  by  storm,  and  that  once  its 
popularity  was  established,  it  would  coin  money  for  the  Pan- 
harmonicon. 

In  its  appeal,  Wellington's  Victory  far  surpassed  Malzel's  wildest 
dreams.  Vienna  responded,  not  enthusiastically,  but  deliriously, 
and  Beethoven,  already  the  most  famous  of  living  composers,  found 
himself,  after  its  premiere  on  December  8,  1813,  the  most  popular  as 
well.  It  seems  unlikely  that  calling  the  piece  the  Battle  of  Leipzig 
would  have  added  a  single  leaf  to  his  laurels.  Besides,  the  fact  that 
between  artillery  charges  and  cannon  shots  the  only  music  to  be 
heard  was  Britannia  Rules  the  Waves,  Malbrouck  s'en  va-t-en  guerre, 
and  God  Save  the  King  provided  three  insuperable  obstacles  to  a 
patriotic  change  of  title.  Some  faint  conception  of  this  atrocious 
potboiler — unquestionably,  as  the  late  Hendrik  Willem  van  Loon 
said,  the  worst  trash  ever  signed  by  a  supreme  genius — may  be 
achieved  by  imagining  a  mixture  of  the  "1812"  Overture  (with 
real  cannon)  and  Ernest  Schelling's  A  Victory  Ball  (with  rattling 
bones,  offstage  bugle,  and  bagpipes  full  orchestra  fff}* 

Almost  lost  amid  the  tumult  and  the  shouting  was  the  new  work 
that  began  the  concert  of  December  8 — the  Seventh  Symphony. 
Yet  it  was  well  liked  (the  allegretto  was  encored),  and  its  popu- 
larity has  grown  until  it  rivals  that  of  the  Fifth — there  are  signs  that 
it  may  soon  outstrip  its  overplayed  competitor,  f  The  Seventh  is  in 
some  respects  the  most  glorious  of  all  symphonies,  and  is  quite 
as  accessible  to  the  lay  listener  as  the  Fifth.  Its  characteristics  are 
even  more  readily  discernible:  its  rhythms  are  so  varied  and  em- 
phatic that  Wagner  called  it  the  "apotheosis  of  the  dance35;  it 
is  joyful  music  made  transcendent  by  a  vastness  of  plan  more 
usually  reserved  for  tragic  utterance;  finally,  it  glows  with  orches- 

*  Battle  pieces  were  inordinately  popular  during  the  late  eighteenth  and  early 
nineteenth  centuries.  The  most  famous  of  them  before  Beethoven's  time  was  The 
Battle  of  Prague  by  Franz  Koczwara,  whose  only  other  claim  to  fame  is  that  he 
hanged  himself  in  a  London  brothel. 

fThe  1938  poll  of  favorite  compositions  requested  by  the  patrons  of  WQXR,  a 
New  York  radio  station  devoted  chiefly  to  the  broadcasting  of  serious  music,  showed 
Beethoven's  Fifth  Symphony  in  first  place,  the  Seventh  in  second.  The  Fifth  was  re- 
quested in  23.9  per  cent  of  all  letters  received,  the  Seventh  in  18.3  per  cent.  Tchai- 
kovsky's Fifth  Symphony  was  in  third  place,  with  16.5  per  cent.  Beethoven's  Ninth, 
Third,  and  Sixth  were  respectively  fourth,  sixth,  and  twelfth  in  the  tabulation. 


BEETHOVEN  195 

tral  color.  This  does  not  mean,  of  course,  that  color  was  a  new 
thing  in  music—rMozart's  E  flat  Symphony  boldly  experimented 
with  the  instrumental  palette — but  here,  for  the  first  time,  color 
became  recognizably,  undeniably,  one  of  the  prime  elements  of 
esthetic  design,  in  its  way  as  important  as  melody,  harmony,  and 
rhythm.  The  subtle,  nervous  use  of  varying  volume,  with  an  in- 
tuitive grasp  of  the  protean  thing  it  can  be,  provides  a  chiaroscuro 
to  match  the  almost  Venetian  splendor  of  the  instrumental 
coloration. 

The  A  major  Symphony  is  remarkable  in  its  complete  freedom 
from  those  perfunctory  connective  passages  and  stereotyped  de- 
vices that  even  the  greatest  of  composers  have  indulged  in.  It  starts 
with  supreme  confidence,  and  this  endures  until  the  very  last  bar 
of  the  finale.  Never  was  Beethoven's  genius  more  fecund,  never 
more  exuberant.  The  largeness  of  the  introduction  sets  the  stage 
for  a  work  of  heroic  proportions,  and  leads  up  to  an  audacious  ex- 
cursion into  pure  rhythm,  which  at  the  verge  of  monotony  is 
salvaged  by  one  of  the  most  alluring  melodies  ever  written.  The 
second  movement  is  the  peerless  allegretto — a  stately  dance  whose 
insistent  rhythm  carries  the  curious  burthen  of  alternate  melan- 
choly and  triumph.  Once  heard,  its  melodies  can  never  be  for- 
gotten. The  scherzo  races  along  to  the  trio,  rests  there  during 
moments  of  supernal  peace,  and  resumes  its  headlong  flight.  The 
finale  is  a  reminder  that  Beethoven  was  a  Fleming — it  is  a  broad 
and  clamorous  kermis  (Tovey's  description  of  it  as  cca  triumph  of 
Bacchic  fury"  is  intolerable  geography:  it  is  no  more  Greek  than 
Breughel) . 

The  fate  of  the  Eighth  Symphony  proves  that  even  the  greatest 
of  geniuses  cannot  stretch  and  relax  with  impunity.  When  it  was 
introduced,  on  February  27,  1814,  it  was  inevitably  compared  with 
the  Seventh,  which  preceded  it  on  the  program,  and  pronounced 
small,  old-fashioned,  and  unworthy  of  the  master.  These  strictures 
merely  amused  Beethoven,  who  said  dryly  that  it  was  not  liked  as 
well  as  the  Seventh  because  it  was  better.  Now,  it  is  possible  to  in- 
terpret this  reply  as  mere  perversity,  but  there  is  stronger  reason  to 
suspect  that  it  was  largely  serious.  In  short,  Beethoven  implied 
that  it  was  the  measure  of  his  greatness  that  after  rearing  the 
mighty  structures  of  the  Seventh  Symphony  he  had  successfully 
created  something  as  gay  and  epigrammatic  as  the  Eighth.  But  the 


196  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

public  was  not  interested  in  his  recreations ,  and  -his  temerity  in 
introducing  the  F  major  on  the  heels  of  the  Seventh  almost  resulted 
in  its  complete  eclipse.  When  it  was  played,  the  allegretto  of  the 
Seventh  was  often  unfeelingly  injected  into  it  as  a  drawing  card. 
Even  today,  though  it  stands  on  its  own  merits,  the  Eighth  is  not 
one  of  the  most  popular  of  Beethoven's  symphonies.  The  first  three 
movements  are  definitely  light,  but  never  lightweight,  and  show 
what  Beethoven  could  do  as  late  as  1812  with  the  classical  idiom  of 
Haydn  and  Mozart.  It  is  more  than  a  little  ironical  that  the  al- 
legretto of  the  Seventh  should  have  been  used  to  salvage  a  sym- 
phony that  already  boasted  one  of  the  most  delightful  allegrettos 
ever  composed.  Had  Haydn  heard  the  ticking  of  Malzel's  metro- 
nome he  might  very  well  have  parodied  it  in  this  same  delightful 
fashion.  But  once  the  fourth  movement  begins,  all  bets  are  off,  and 
the  "little  symphony"  (Beethoven's  own  words)  gradually  expands 
into  a  spacious  essay  on  the  dynamics  of  pure  joy  and  godlike 
laughter.  There  are  those  who  feel  that  this  increase  in  scale  over- 
balances the  rest  of  the  symphony.  Certainly  it  lacks  the  flawless 
design  of  the  Fourth,  for  example,  but  this  should  not  prevent  any- 
one from  taking  delight  in  the  beauty  of  the  separate  movements 
which,  moreover,  cohere  by  the  pervading  joyousness  of  the 
motives. 

In  the  spring  of  1814,  after  the  successful  revival  of  Fidelia, 
Beethoven  was  at  the  height  of  his  worldly  career,  and  for  a  year 
and  a  half  he  was  sustained  on  a  dizzy  peak  of  eminence  and  popu- 
larity. Events  conspired  to  make  him  for  this  brief  season  the  ob- 
ject of  more  adulation  from  personages  of  exalted  rank  than  has 
ever  fallen  to  the  lot  of  any  other  composer.  On  November  i,  with 
Bonaparte  safely  immured  on  Elba,  the  Congress  of  Vienna  con- 
vened to  restore  the  status  quo  ante  bellum,  and  Vienna  swarmed 
with  half  the  royalty  and  nobility  of  Europe.  Beethoven  received 
invitations  to  all  social  events  of  any  importance,  and  everywhere 
he  was  honored  as  a  lion,  yielding  precedence  only  to  the  Allied 
sovereigns  and  Talleyrand.  The  Austrian  government  now  allowed 
him  the  use  of  the  two  halls  of  the  Redoutensaal  for  a  series  of  con- 
certs, and  he  himself  sent  invitations  to  the  sovereigns  and  other 
great  dignitaries.  Six  thousand  people  were  packed  into  the  halls 
at  the  first  concert,  and  more  than  half  that  number  at  the  second. 
The  financial  results  of  these  and  other  concerts  were  most  gratify- 


BEETHOVEN 

ing,  and  Beethoven  was  able  to  Invest  considerable  sums  in  bank 
shares.  Yet,  even  in  the  midst  of  his  triumphs,  he  must  have  been 
much  troubled — and  considerably  isolated — by  his  ever-increasing 
deafness,  which  that  same  spring  had  forced  him  to  abandon  en- 
semble playing  forever. 

The  year  1815  opened  promisingly  enough,  for  Beethoven's  suits 
against  the  heirs  of  Prince  Kinsky,  and  against  Prince  Lobkowitz, 
for  defaulting  on  his  pension  were  finally  settled  in  his  favor,  and 
without  impairing  his  relations  with  those  distinguished  families. 
Now  the  agreement  of  1809  was  once  more  substantially  in  effect: 
the  Archduke  Rudolf  continued  to  pay  his  share,  and  this,  with  the 
other  two  shares,  seemed  to  assure  Beethoven  an  annual  income  of 
3400  florins  until  his  death.  He  was  going  to  need  that — and  more. 

From  the  earliest  days  of  his  affluence,  Beethoven  had  become 
embroiled  in  complicated  money  arrangements  with  his  brothers, 
particularly  Karl,  who  had  managed  some  of  his  dickerings  with 
music  publishers.  Certain,  of  Beethoven's  friends  believed  not  only 
that  his  brothers  were  taking  advantage  of  him,  but  that  Karl,  to 
whom  he  had  lent  large  sums,  was  actually  dishonest.  Stephan  von 
Breuning  took  it  upon  himself  to  warn  him  against  KarPs  weak 
financial  morals.  The  result  was  to  align  Beethoven  more  than 
ever  on  the  side  of  the  accused,  and  to  cause  a  rift  of  more  than 
ten  years  in  his  friendship  with  Von  Breuning.  This  was  a  severe 
blow,  for  only  the  year  before  death  had  separated  him  from  his 
beloved  patron,  Prince  Lichnowsky.  And  now,  in  November,  1815, 
an  even  heavier  blow;  Karl  van  Beethoven  died,  leaving  a  widow 
whom  the  composer  thoroughly  detested,  and  a  nine-year-old  son 
whose  guardianship  he  shared  with  the  mother. 

Beethoven  immediately  transferred  to  his  nephew  Karl  all  the 
blind  affection  he  had.felt-for  the  father.  On  the  other  hand,  his 
dislike  of  the  widow  was  so  violent  and  neurotic  that  he  made  every 
effort  to  keep  her  (whom  he 'extravagantly  termed  the  "Queen  of 
the  Night")  from  taking  any  part  in  her  son's  education.  The 
conflict  between  these- two.  strong- willed  people  dragged  on  for 
several  years,  with  mother  and  uncle  in  alternate  possession  of  the 
boy.  At  last,  on  January  7,  1820,  Beethoven  was  declared  sole 
guardian.  The  results  of  this  legal  war  were  deleterious  to  all 
parties  concerned:  the  widow  was  permanently  embittered;  young 
Karl,  after  being  the  ball  in  this  weird  game  of  battledore  and 


MEN    OF    MUSIC 

shuttlecock,  grew  up  a  thoroughly  maladjusted  young  man  whose 
tragic  inability  to  cope  with  life  darkened  his  uncle's  last  years; 
finally,  Beethoven,  in  the  full  vigor  of  his  creative  powers,  had  the 
productivity  of  four  years  gravely  curtailed.  Even  at  this  late 
date,  it  seems  only  fair  to  make  a  plea  for  the  poor  nephew  who 
has  been  so  ridiculously  blackened  by  many  of  Beethoven's 
biographers.  At  an  age  when  he  needed  a  normal  family  back- 
ground, he  had  to  live  either  with  a  mother  who  was  none  too 
good  or  with  an  uncle  whose  deafness  and  difficult  temperament 
made  him  positively  an  unfit  companion  for  a  child.  No  wonder, 
then,  that  Karl,  who  seems  to  have  been  nothing  more  sinister 
than  a  poor  booby,  made  a  mess  of  his  life,  contracting  enormous 
debts  he  could  not  meet,  making  a  feeble  attempt  at  suicide,  and 
finally  escaping  into  the  obscurity  of  a  private's  berth  in  the  army. 

On  November  16,  1815,  the  very  day  after  his  brother  Karl's 
death,  Beethoven  had  received  the  freedom  of  the  City  of  Vienna, 
an  honor  that  made  him  thenceforth  tax-exempt.  He  appeared 
occasionally  in  public  to  conduct  various  performances  of  his 
works,  but  went  less  and  less  into  society.  His  deafness  had  become 
all  but  complete.  Late  in  1816  he  was  further  cast  down  by  the 
death  of  Prince  Lobkowitz,  though  the  almost  simultaneous  ar- 
rival of  a  handsome  grand  piano — a  tribute  from  the  English 
maker,  Broadwood — somewhat  buoyed  him  up.  Multitudinous 
worries  and  a  series  of  minor  ailments  served  to  interrupt  the  flow 
of  large  orchestral  pieces  that  had  not  only  made  him  the  idol  of 
musical  Europe,  but  had  placed  an  ample  income  at  his  disposal. 
The  death  of  Lobkowitz  reduced  his  annual  pension  by  seven 
hundred  florins,  and  for  the  first  time  in  years  he  was  hard  pressed. 
It  was  not  until  1823  that  he  was  able  to  complete  two  large  works 
that  would  not  only  improve  his  financial  position,  but  would  also 
consummate  his  fame. 

The  small  works  that  were  the  chief  fruits  of  the  decade  before 
1823 — five  of  the  most  stupendous  piano  sonatas  ever  written — 
were  unfortunately  not  likely  to  win  their  audience  at  once.  With 
them,  Beethoven  entered  his  third  period,  which  was  characterized 
by  an  idiom  that  for  a  long  time  was  not  only  thought  difficult  to 
understand,  but  in  certain  quarters  was  actually  interpreted  as  a 
falling-off  of  his  powers.  Some  modern  critics  stiU  resent  the  fact 
that  Beethoven  used  so  advanced  a  musical  language  almost  a 


BEETHOVEN 

century  before  their  graphs  of  musical  development  show  that 
anyone  could  arrive  at  it.  Briefly,  the  most  recognizable  elements  of 
this  new  style  are  a  vast  increase  in  size  and  scope,  and  the  use 
of  elaborate  contrapuntal  devices.  These  sonatas  are  the  most 
truly  serious  and  profoundly  thought-out  works  ever  written  for 
the  piano — they  are  symphonies  for  a  solo  instrument. 

The  world  had  to  wait  almost  ten  years  after  the  Eighth  Sym- 
phony to  hear  Beethoven's  only  great  orchestral  work  in  his  third 
manner — the  "Choral"  Symphony.  There  was  no  comparable 
pause  between  the  E  minor  Sonata  (Opus  90)  and  that  in  A  major 
(Opus  101),  which  ushered  in  the  last  five  sonatas.  Opus  90, 
though  mainly  an  unpretentious  work  glowing  with  romantic 
feeling,  contains  hints  of  the  new  elements  Beethoven  was  prepar- 
ing to  introduce  into  the  sonata.  Less  than  two  years  later,  they 
showed  themselves  well  abloom.  Opus  101  opens  with  a  decep- 
tively lyrical  passage,  but  soon  sacrifices  the  more  superficial 
aspects  of  its  singing  style  to  what  can  almost  be  called  a  com- 
mentary thereon,  characterized  by  intense  concentration  of  bar- 
to-bar  development.  Here,  in  this  first  movement,  we  can  examine 
at  leisure  the  very  articulations  of  this  strange  third  style  which 
can  be  analyzed  rigorously  and  yet  remain  baffling.  Possibly  the 
simplest  way  of  explaining  it  is  to  say  that  Beethoven  finally  evolved 
an  exact  musical  language  for  expressing  the  hidden  sources  of 
the  emotions.  It  is  a  language  of  ellipses  and  compressions,  and 
demands  unwavering  attention  if  it  is  to  be  understood.  The  evolu- 
tion of  this  idiom  was  no  pedantic  feat.  It  grew  naturally  from  an 
overpowering  need:  it  was  the  only  medium  Beethoven  could  use 
to  convey  the  most  important  and  complex  ideas  he  ever  had. 

The  five  sonatas  of  this  group  have  as  palpable  a  family  re- 
semblance as  Mozart's  last  three  symphonies.  They  are  of  varying 
lengths,  even  (be  it  admitted)  of  varying  degrees  of  success.  But 
every  one  of  them — well,  not  quite  every  one — has  miraculous 
unity.  The  exception  is  that  veritable  "red  giant"  of  the  musical 
universe — the  * 'Hammerk lavier"  Sonata,  in  B  flat  major  (Opus  106). 
The  "Hammerklavier"  is  too  long,  and  at  some  point  in  every  move- 
ment its  great  poetry  fades  into  the  listless  scientific  prose  of  the 
experimentalist.  In  fact,  if  this  were  the  last  of  Beethoven's  sonatas, 
its  prolixity,  its  not  infrequent  dullness,  and  its  almost  gaseous 
diffuseness  might  justifiably  be  explained  by  his  deafness.  But  the 


200  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

"Hammerklavier"  was  composed  in  1818,  and  was  followed  by  three 
sonatas  that  are  unquestioned  masterpieces.  The  lyrical  E  major 
(Opus  109)  found  Beethoven  more  sensible  about  the  exigencies 
of  space,  and  more  realistic  about  his  audiences.  The  A  flat  major 
(Opus  no)  is  positively  genial  in  its  accessibility:  it  is  almost  as 
easy  to  listen  to  as  the  great  sonatas  of  the  second  period.  Every 
part  of  it  is  of  "heavenly"  length:  Beethoven  never  showed  more 
tact  than  when  he  dictated  the  exquisite  proportions  of  the  adagio, 
and  was  never  more  apt  in  recapturing  the  vitality  of  an  almost 
spent  form  than  in  the  robust  fugue.  The  last  sonata,  in  C  minor 
(Opus  1 1 1)3  is  indeed  the  end  that  crowns  the  work — a  majestic 
farewell  to  a  musical  form  whose  full  powers  he  had  been  the  first 
to  call  forth.  From  the  first  notes  of  the  cosmic  defi  that  introduces 
the  maestoso  to  the  last  light-saturated  strophes  of  the  arietta 
Beethoven  proves  himself  music's  greatest  thaumaturge.  In  the 
realm  of  musical  history,  it  is  not  easy  to  be  dogmatic,  but  it  may 
be  affirmed  positively  that  Beethoven  here  set  the  limits  of  the 
piano  sonata.  No  other  composer  has  even  remotely  approached 
it  in  amplitude  of  conception,  perfection  of  design,  vigor  of  move- 
ment, and  lightness  of  detail. 

But  Opus  1 1 1  was  not  Beethoven's  farewell  to  the  piano.  He  had 
an  even  more  gigantic  work  up  his  sleeve,  the  circumstances  of 
whose  conception  were  fated  to  produce  a  monstrosity.  Anton 
DiabeUi,  a  music  publisher,  sent  a  banal  waltz  of  his  own  composi- 
tion to  fifty  different  composers  (including  little  Franz  Liszt),  ask- 
ing each  to  contribute  a  variation  on  it.  Beethoven,  in  a  burst  of 
bravado,  himself  wrote  thirty-three  variations  on  the  silly  little 
theme,  and  exhausted  most  possibilities  of  the  variation  form, 
the  resources  of  the  piano,  and  the  patience  of  his  audience.  The 
"Diabelli"  Variations  are  Beethoven's  Kunst  der  Fuge:  they  are 
played  as  infrequently,  are  as  invaluable  as  textbook  examples, 
and,  despite  scattered  beauties,  are  supportable  in  performance 
only  to  experts. 

While  Beethoven  was  completing  his  last  great  sonatas,  he  was 
also  at  work  on  a  solemn  High  Mass  to  be  used  at  the  installation 
of  his  friend  Archduke  Rudolf  as  Archbishop  of  Olmiitz.  He  began 
the  Mass  in  1818,  and  worked  feverishly  at  it  through  the  summer 
of  that  year  and  the  »next.  But  it  was  far  from  ready  when  the 
Archbishop  was  consecrated  early  in  1820,  and  Beethoven  did  not 


BEETHOVEN  2OI 

finish  it  until  almost  three  years  had  passed.  On  February  27, 
1823,  he  was  able  to  announce  that  he  had  completed  the  Missa 
Solennis.  It  had  been  intended  for  Cologne  Cathedral,  with  whose 
vast  interior  Beethoven  had  been  familiar  as  a  child;  actually  it  was 
first  heard  in  St.  Petersburg,  at  a  private  performance  financed 
by  Prince  Nikolai  Galitzin.  The  date  was  April  6,  1824,  and 
Vienna  did  not  hear  it  until  a  month  later,  and  then  only  in  an 
absurdly  truncated  form,  with  Beethoven  conducting.  It  was 
neglected  during  the  few  remaining  years  of  his  life,  and  its  place 
in  the  repertoire  dates  from  its  resurrection  by  Heinrich  Dorn, 
Schumann's  teacher,  for  the  Rhenish  Music  Festival  of  1844.  ^' 
though  it  has  remained  a  concert  favorite  on  the  Continent,  it  is 
doubtful  that  even  there  it  has  ever  been  completely  performed  as 
part  of  a  church  service. 

Like  the  B  minor  Mass,  the  Missa  Solennis  is  unthinkable  as 
liturgical  accompaniment:  it  would  dwarf  rather  than  enhance 
the  rite.  It  is  ironical  that  two  of  the  greatest  of  all  composers  used 
the  service  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  for  the  creation  of  works 
so  formidable  in  size  that  the  Church  cannot  take  advantage  of 
them.  Both  of  these  masterpieces  require  such  lavish  batteries  of 
performers  that  even  as  concert  works  they  can  be  presented 
adequately  only  at  festivals  or  by  the  most  generously  endowed  of 
metropolitan  orchestras  and  choral  groups.  But  here  the  resem- 
blance between  these  Masses  ends:  the  Lutheran  Bach,  the  simple 
town  cantor,  wrote  incomparably  the  more  reverential  one; 
Beethoven,  the  merely  perfunctory  Catholic,  carrying  the  load  of 
doubt  engendered  by  the  intellectual  and  social  turmoil  of  the  late 
eighteenth  century,  approached  the  very  words  of  the  Mass  in  a 
spirit  Anton  Rubinstein  stigmatized  as  criticizing  and  disputa- 
tious. Beethoven's  ever-immanent  faith  was  in  the  heroic  poten- 
tialities of  mankind,  and  that  was  the  faith  whose  triumph  he  had 
hymned  in  his  great  secular  works.  He  went  right  on  composing 
magnificent  music  when  he  turned  to  a  sacred  text,  but  his  search- 
ing point  of  view  was  not  deflected  by  the  character  of  the  subject 
matter.  It  is  little  wonder,  then,  that  his  illustrations  of  the  liturgy 
fail  to  carry  that  conviction  of  an  all-embracing  faith  in  the  tradi- 
tional Trinity  which  shines  forth  from  the  masterpiece  of  the  trans- 
parently devout  Bach. 

Musicians,  except  for  Beethoven's  most  unquestioning  idolaters, 


2O2  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

find  the  Missa  Solennis  just  as  hard  a  nut  to  crack  as  does  the 
orthodox  believer.  Throughout,  it  is  subtly  and  nobly  conceived, 
and  informed  by  a  musical  imagination  at  its  healthiest  and  most 
daring.  Again  and  again  it  rises  to  climaxes  of  incredible  power 
and  beauty.  But  it  rises,  alas!  with  a  forgetfulness  of  the  limitations 
of  the  human  voice  that  reduces  some  of  Beethoven's  grandest 
ideas  to  magnificent  might-have-beens.  For  example,  the  gigantic 
fugue,  "Et  mtam  venturi"  that  comes  at  the  end  of  the  Credo  is  per- 
fect on  paper,  but  never  comes  fully  to  life  in  performance.  Paul 
Bekker  has  argued  that  the  fault  lies  with  the  singers:  he  says  that 
they  are  lazy,  careless,  incompetent.  Although  singers  rarely  de- 
serve any  defense,  here  is  one  place  where  common  sense  easily 
takes  the  stand  in  their  behalf.  Just  as  Beethoven,  finally  immured 
in  his  tower  of  deafness  precisely  when  his  musical  ideas  were  be- 
coming incomparably  elaborate,  well-nigh  metaphysical,  had 
written  for  the  piano  music  that  became  less  and  less  pianistic,  so  in 
the  Missa  Solennis  he  wrote  music  that  is  truly  unvocal — music 
whose  ideal  projection  depends  not  on  the  singers'  intelligence,  but 
on  supervoices  of  inconceivable  range  and  staying  power.  The 
discrepancy  between  conception  and  practical  results  arose  from 
the  simple  fact  that  Beethoven's  deafness  cut  him  off  from  the 
realities  of  performance.  For  years  he  had  to  answer  in  his  head 
the  question  of  what  voices  and  instruments  could  do. 

In  1812,  the  year  of  the  Seventh  and  Eighth  Symphonies,  Bee- 
thoven had  already  planned  one  in  D  minor.  This  came  to  nothing 
at  the  time,  but  five  years  later  he  began  again.  Another  six  years 
elapsed  during  which  he  worked  at  it  in  desultory  fashion,  and  it 
was  not  until  the  summer  of  1823  that  he  finally  dropped  every- 
thing else  in  order  to  complete  it.  One  section  caused  him  almost 
insuperable  difficulties:  in  his  youth  he  had  been  moved  by 
Schiller's  Ode  to  Joyy  and  as  early  as  1796  he  had  begun  to  make 
sketches  for  a  setting  of  it.  The  decision  to  make  this  choral  setting 
the  last  movement  of  the  D  minor  Symphony  came  late,  and 
brought  with  it  the  knotty  problems  of  how  to  connect  it  with  the 
third  movement  and — even  more  important — of  how  to  make  it 
seem  an  integral  part  of  the  symphony.  As  the  summer  of  1823 
deepened,  he  labored  at  the  vast  composition  like  one  possessed.  At 
last,  on  September  5,  he  declared  the  Ninth  Symphony  complete, 
though  he  actually  went  on  perfecting  certain  details  for  months. 


BEETHOVEN  203 

Beethoven  was  badly  in  need  of  money  at  this  time  because  of 
his  nephew,  and  this  situation  led  him  to  embark  on  a  career  of 
double-dealing.  Before  the  Missa  Solennis  was  completed,  he  had 
promised  it  to  half  a  dozen  publishers  and  sold  it  to  a  seventh. 
His  manipulation  of  the  Ninth  Symphony  was  even  more  devious* 
In  1822,  in  return  for  a  consideration  of  £50,  he  had  promised  his 
next  symphony  in  manuscript  to  the  Philharmonic  Society  of 
London:  the  Society  took  this  to  mean  that  they  would  be  the  first 
to  perform  a  work  dedicated  to  them.  In  the  meantime,  Beethoven 
had  promised  the  premiere  to  Berlin,  and  so  had  thoughtfully  dedi- 
cated the  symphony  to  the  King  of  Prussia.  The  next  episode  in  the 
saga  of  the  "Choral"  Symphony  was  his  pleased  yielding  to  the 
demands  of  a  committee  of  Viennese  admirers  that  the  work  be 
first  performed  in  Vienna.  Beethoven  stuck  to  the  letter  of  his 
agreement  with  the  London  group,  however,  and  sent  them  the 
autograph  score.  The  field  was  thus  narrowed  to  Vienna  when 
fresh  complications  arose.  "  After  an  amount  of  bargaining  and  de- 
lay and  vacillation  which  is  quite  incredible,"  says  Grove,  "partly 
arising  from  the  cupidity  of  the  manager,  partly  from  the  ex- 
traordinary obstinacy  and  suspiciousness  of  Beethoven,  from  the 
regulation  of  the  censorship,  and  from  the  difficulties  of  the 
music,"  the  premiere  finally  took  place  May  7,  1824,  on  the  same 
program  with  the  shamefully  abbreviated  version  of  the  Missa 
Solennis  already  mentioned.  The  "Choral"  Symphony  aroused 
frenzied  applause,  which  Beethoven,  with  his  back  to  the  audience, 
neither  heard  nor  saw.  Not  until  he  was  turned  around  to  face 
a  riot  of  appreciation  did  he  know  that  his  Ninth  Symphony  was 
a  success.  But  after  finding  that  his  profit  for  the  evening  was  only 
450  florins,  he  went  home  in  a  rage  and  spent  the  night  fully 
dressed.  Thus,  amid  circumstances  quite  as  comic  as  tragic,  the 
most  controversial  of  all  symphonies  was  ushered  into  an  un- 
suspecting world. 

To  discuss  the  Ninth  Symphony  at  all,  in  view  of  the  welter  of 
conflicting  opinions — ranging  from  the  truly  worshipful  ardor  of  a 
Paul  Bekker  through  the  palaverings  of  heavy  snobs  to  the  cold 
dislike  of  any  number  of  sincere  people  who  have  their  reasons — 
requires  a  vast  girding-up  of  the  loins.  Briefly,  the  idolaters  con- 
ceive of  the  Ninth  as  a  constant  and  ineffable  soaring  into  the 
musical  empyrean  until,  at  the  height  of  the  choral  finale,  to  quote 


2O4  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

Bekker,  "A  giddiness  of  spiritual  intoxication  seems  to  seize  the 
mind,  and  this  greatest  of  all  instrumental  songs  of  life  closes  with 
dithyrambic  outcry,  to  echo  forever  in  the  hearts  of  mankind." 
Sir  W.  H.  Hadow,  usually  so  restrained  in  his  enthusiasms,  goes 
Bekker  one  better:  "When  the  chorus  enters  it  is  as  though  all  the 
forces  of  humanity  were  gathered  together:  number  by  number 
the  thought  grows  and  widens  until  the  very  means  of  its  expres- 
sion are  shattered  and  we  seem  no  more  to  be  listening  to  music 
but  to  be  standing  face  to  face  with  the  living  world."  It  is  not 
possible  to  question  the  sincerity  of  great  students  who  consum- 
mate their  listening  experience  in  rhapsodies  of  this  sort,  but  all  too 
many  of  us  have  failed,  after  anxious  listening,  to  find  that  "echo" 
in  our  hearts.  Further,  having  gone  to  a  concert  hall  to  listen  to 
music,  and  having  heard  for  three  movements  some  of  the  best 
ever  written,  it  is  reasonable  to  complain  of  having  this  pleasure 
suspended,  and  of  "no  more  . . .  listening  to  music.  . .  ."  Finally,  it 
is  impossible  not  to  allow  the  suspicion  to  creep  across  our  minds 
that  the  reason  we  are  not  listening  to  music  is  simply  that  Bee- 
thoven, here  as  little  at  ease  with  voices  as  in  the  Missa  Solennis,  did 
not  succeed  in  translating  his  conception  into  musical  terms.  This 
is  the  more  lamentable  because  the  main  theme  he  wasted  on  the 
pompous  claptrap  of  Schiller  is  of  a  Bachian  severity  and  mag- 
nificence.* The  Ninth  Symphony  rouses  and  fulfills  our  highest 
expectations  for  three  movements  and  part  of  a  fourth,  and  ends  in 
a  cataclysmic  anticlimax. 

The  story  of  Beethoven's  life  after  1824  is  simply  told:  it  is 
marked  by  anxiety  over  his  nephew's  reckless  course,  an  ever- 
increasing  absorption  in  money  matters  (so  his  nephew  would  be 
well  provided  for  after  his  death),  and  growing  ill  health.  Musi- 
cally, these  years  were  occupied  with  the  composition  of  five 
massive  string  quartets,  the  sketching  of  a  tenth  symphony,  and 
various  smaller  projects.  Socially,  with  his  deafness  complete,  Bee- 
thoven was  just  about  as  difficult  as  ever,  quarreling  and  making 
up  with  his  friends  in  his  usual  impetuous  way.  He  fell  in  with  one 

*  Some  conductors  have  solved  the  difficulties  of  performing  the  choral  move- 
ment by  omitting  it.  This  may  be  indefensible  by  the  strictest  artistic  standards,  but 
at  least  it  assures  the  first  three  movements  of  adequate  rehearsal.  The  traditional 
procedure  is  to  overrehearse  the  choral  movement  (which  ends  by  defeating  the 
singers  anyway)  and  slight  the  first  three  movements,  with  the  result  that  everyone 
leaves  the  performance  dissatisfied. 


BEETHOVEN  205 

Holz,  a  jolly  young  violinist  of  expansive  habits,  whom  Beethoven's 
older  friends  jealously  suspected  of  leading  the  master  astray.  In  a 
measure,  their  fears  turned  out  to  be  reasonable,  for  conviviality 
was  scarcely  the  best  regime  for  an  aging  man  probably  in  an  ad- 
vanced stage  of  a  serious  liver  complaint.  His  nephew's  attempted 
suicide  in  the  summer  of  1826  all  but  prostrated  him — and  left  him 
an  old  man.  Taking  Karl  with  him,  he  spent  an  agitated  autumn 
in  the  country  with  his  prosperous  brother  Johann.  Already,  he 
felt  his  own  end  approaching,  and  the  uncertainty  of  Karl's  future 
haunted  him.  He  pled  incessantly  with  Johann  to  make  Karl  his 
heir,  and  these  discussions,  which  from  first  to  last  were  fruitless 
(as  Johann  reasonably  pointed  out,  he  still  had  a  wife),  culminated 
in  a  violent  quarrel.  Dragging  Karl  along,  Beethoven  fled  pre- 
cipitately to  Vienna  in  an  open  carriage,  and  there  he  arrived  on 
December  2.  He  went  straight  to  bed  with  a  raging  fever,  and 
never  rose  again. 

Shortly  after  his  fifty-sixth  birthday,  Beethoven  quarreled 
fiercely  with  Karl.  They  were  not  reconciled  when  the  youth  was 
summoned  to  join  his  regiment,  and  he  never  saw  his  uncle  again. 
Now,  however,  Johann  and  his  despised  wife  arrived  to  care  for 
their  great  relative.  In  his  last  days,  he  was  not  alone:  among  his 
many  visitors  was  Franz  Schubert,  whose  songs  he  perused,  and 
declared  to  be  works  of  genius.  A  set  of  Handel  arrived  as  a  gift 
from  London,  and  he  paged  through  it  in  an  ecstasy  of  delight: 
years  before  he  had  declared  that  "Handel  is  the  greatest  of  us 
all."  Late  in  February,  1827,  after  he  had  been  tapped  five  times 
for  dropsy,  all  hope  of  his  recovery  was  abandoned.  He  lingered 
for  almost  a  month.  On  March  24,  the  sublime  questioner  received 
the  last  sacrament,  and  almost  immediately  the  death  struggle  be- 
gan. It  lasted  for  more  than  two  whole  days,  and  Beethoven  was 
often  in  acute  agony.  On  March  26,  1827,  a  strange  storm  broke 
over  Vienna — snow  and  hail  followed  by  thunder  and  lightning 
which  roused  the  dying  man.  He  opened  his  eyes,  shook  his  fist  at 
the  sky,  and  died. 

The  master  who  had  metamorphosed  so  many  phases  of  music 
devoted  the  last  few  years  of  his  life  to  the  shaping  of  five  string 
quartets  which  not  only  changed  the  face  of  chamber  music,  but 
also — with  destiny's  rare  inexorable  logic — consummated  his  own 


2O6  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

achievement.  Dryden  nobly  said  of  Shakespeare  that  "he  found 
not  but  created  first  the  stage.35  And,  without  disparaging  Beetho- 
ven's great  predecessor  it  may  be  truly  said  that  he  created  mod- 
ern music.  In  no  department  of  his  thought  is  this  more  easily 
perceptible  than  in  the  chamber  music,  at  which  he  had  been 
working  from  his  prentice  years.  He  wrote  a  bewildering  variety 
of  chamber  pieces,  among  them  sonatas  for  violin  and  piano  and 
cello  and  piano,  quartets  and  a  quintet  for  strings  and  piano,  vari- 
ous compositions  for  wind  instruments  and  strings,  and  trios,  quar- 
tets, and  a  quintet  for  strings  alone.  Scarcely  any  of  these  are  un- 
rewarding, and  a  few — notably  the  "Kreutzer"  Sonata  for  violin 
and  piano,  with  its  superb  first  and  second  movements  and  trifling 
finale — have  achieved  wide  popularity.  But  the  string  quartet  was 
the  only  chamber  ensemble  he  wrote  for  in  every  stage  of  his 
artistic  development,  and  in  his  quartets  can  be  traced  with  won- 
derful clarity  the  record  of  his  changing  attitude  toward  the  ever 
more  elaborate  problems  he  set  himself. 

The  first  six  string  quartets  (Opus  18),  composed  about  1800, 
are  the  children  of  Haydn  and  Mozart.  They  are  light  and  charm- 
ing works,  touched  with  a  fitful  melancholy  that  barely  disturbs 
their  eighteenth-century  serenity.  They  sound  like  the  exquisitely 
polished  work  of  an  accomplished  musician  with  no  plans  of  his 
own  for  the  future.  An  occasional  touch  of  brusquerie,  a  petulant 
turn  of  phrase,  alone  suggest  that  their  young  composer  is  not  so 
well  mannered  as  he  should  be.  Of  the  six,  only  one — the  fourth — 
is  in  a  minor  key;  it  is,  beside  the  lighthearted  five,  almost  a 
changeling:  its  loveliness  has  a  remote  and  archaic  quality. 

A  half  dozen  years  passed,  and  Beethoven  composed  the  mag- 
nificent set  of  three  quartets  (Opus  59)  for  Count  Rasoumovsky, 
Prince  Lichnowsky's  brother-in-law.  They  belong  to  the  period  of 
the  "Eroica"  and  the  "Appassionato,"  and  are  not  unnaturally 
works  of  conflict  and  passion.  Still  structurally  orthodox,  they  are 
as  romantic  in  content  as  the  first  set  of  quartets  is  classical.  They 
are  the  direct  ancestors,  in  coloration  and  feeling,  of  the  chamber 
music  of  the  rest  of  the  century  down  to  Brahms.  The  first  "Rasou- 
Hiovsky"  opens  with  a  lush  and  alluring  melody  on  the  broadest 
lines:  it  might  easily  be  the  theme  song  of  the  romantic  movement. 
The  piercingly  sweet,  introspective  adagio  is  one  of  the  first  hints 
in  music  of  that  self-pity  which  was  to  echo  intolerably  through  the 
trasic  cadences  of  Piotr  Ilvich  Tchaikovskv.  Here,  if  anvwhere.  is 


BEETHOVEN 

that  often  described  but  seldom  captured  legendary  hero — Beetho- 
ven, the  Emperor  of  Sturm  und  Drang.  Only  two  years  after  these 
three  highly  personal  masterpieces,  he  wrote,  almost  simultane- 
ously with  the  "Emperor"  Concerto,  the  brilliant  "Harp"  Quartet 
(Opus  74) .  It  fits  in  with  the  old-fashioned  virtuoso's  idea  of  the 
string  quartet  as  a  showpiece  for  a  first  violinist  accompanied  by 
three  far  less  important  players.  Beethoven  closed  the  quartets  of 
his  second  period  with  a  transitional  work  (Opus  95)  that  Men- 
delssohn called  the  most  typical  thing  he  ever  wrote — a  strange 
judgment.  It  partakes  of  the  easily  projected  emotional  qualities  of 
the  "Rasoumovsky"  group  and  of  the  more  abstract  sublimation 
of  emotion  characteristic  of  the  last  five  quartets. 

These  last  five*  are  considered  difficult  to  understand.  The  sen- 
suousness  and  warm  emotionalism  of  the  middle  period  have  van- 
ished. Compared  with  the  "Rasoumovsky,"  for  instance,  they  are 
cold  and  severe.  The  strict  four-movement  form  of  the  earlier  quar- 
tets has  been  abandoned  for  a  freer  design  whose  unity  is  not  at 
once  apparent.  The  musical  thinking  is  both  complex  and  spare: 
ornamentation  has  been  excised  with  Dorian  severity,  and  every- 
thing is  surrendered  to  essentials.  This,  certainly,  is  abstract  music 
in  excelsis,  and  its  bareness  of  effect  would  at  times  be  insupportable 
were  it  not  mitigated  by  contrapuntal  weaving  that  in  complexity 
and  effectiveness  rivals  that  of  Bach.  It  is  not  easy  to  come  away 
from  a  first  hearing  of  these  quartets  with  a  desire  to  hear  them 
again.  But  if  we  do  survive  the  first  shock  of  this  ascetically  shaped 
art,  and  go  back  to  it  again  and  again,  we  are  almost  certain  to  end 
up  thinking  the  last  five  quartets  among  the  most  soul-satisfying 
music  ever  composed. 

So,  from  the  apparently  innocent  mimicry  of  Haydn  and  Mozart, 
Beethoven  had  traveled  as  long  a  road  as  any  artist  ever  trod.  If 
today  he  is  the  most  universally  cherished  of  all  musicians,  it  is 
because  in  the  course  of  this  heroic  pilgrimage  he  created  some- 
thing enduring  for  every  sort  and  condition  of  man.  He  failed  often, 
but  in  the  one  overpowering  ambition  of  his  life  he  succeeded  su- 
premely: for  the  humanity  he  loved  so  much  he  left  a  testament  of 
beauty  with  a  legacy  for  every  man. 

*  The  opus  numbers  are  127,  130,  131,  132,  and  135.  In  addition,  the  Grosse  Fuge* 
originally  the  last  movement  of  Opus  130,  is  now  published  separately  as  Opus  133. 
Beethoven  wrote  a  new  finale  for  Opus  130  because  the  fugue  was  sharply  criticized 
hv  M«  fri^nH«  a«  ton  liftAw  fnr  the  rest  of  the  auartet. 


Chapter  VIII 

Carl  Maria  von  Weber 

(Eutin,  December  i83  iy86-June  5,  18263  London) 


"T  TERY  little  is  done,  nowadays,  to  disabuse  us  of  the  idea  that 
V  Carl  Maria  von  Weber  wrote  three  overtures,  a  piano  con- 
certo, a  notable  salon  piece — and  nothing  more.  Occasionally  a 
prima  donna  with  the  right  physique  trots  out  one  of  his  tempestu- 
ous arias,  or  a  conductor  in  an  archeologizing  frame  of  mind 
disinters  one  of  his  less-known  overtures.  Thus  Igor  Stravinsky, 
not  satisfied  with  proving  that  the  numbers  on  Tchaikovsky's  sym- 
phonies actually  mean  something,  and  that  a  Third  preceded  the 
Fourth,  began  an  epochal  experiment  of  keeping  a  Carnegie  Hall 
audience  awake  throughout  an  entire  concert  by  playing  a  Turan- 
dot  overture  by  Weber.  In  general,  it  was  well  received,  and  the 
subscribers  went  home  content  to  know  that  Weber  had  composed 
something  besides  the  overtures  to  Der  Freischittz,  Euryanthe.,  and 
Oberon>  the  Conzertstuck,  and  the  Invitation  to  the  Dance. 

Except  for  a  few  great  arias  that  are  ever  fresh,  but  are  heard  all 
too  rarely  today,  time  has  winnowed  wisely  in  the  case  of  Weber. 
The  best  of  him  is  precisely  what  is  most  familiar.  A  tour  through 
his  piano  works  is  a  depressing  excursion:  the  country  at  its  grand- 
est is  little  better  than  undulating,  and  the  romantic  tarns  and 
craggy  peaks  turn  out  to  be  mirages.  It  is  no  joke  to  be  left  high 
and  dry  in  the  midst  of  a  Weber  piano  sonata.  His  output  was  not 
large,  and  too  much  of  it  consists  of  patriotic  part  songs  that  may 
have  been  popular  in  Hitler's  Germany  for  reasons  that  would 
not  give  them  a  hearing  elsewhere.  Nor  do  his  songs  for  solo  voice 
have  any  vitality.  It  may  be  stated  that  Weber  wrote  two  Masses, 
admirable  in  sentiment  and  sound  in  construction,  which  have 
been  read  through  with  approbation  by  his  biographers — and  are 
never  performed.  Of  his  nine  operas,  only  three  hold  their  place, 
and  that  precariously.  What  remains  of  Weber's  once  lofty  reputa- 
tion is  dwindling  rapidly.  It  is  becoming  apparent  that  he  was 
little  more  than  a  talented  showman  who  happened,  at  a  strategic 
moment,  to  epitomize  the  Zeitgeist,  or  its  trappings,  more^obviously 
than  any  other  musician  of  his  time. 


WEBER  2O9 

Weber  came  of  that  same  family  from  which  Mozart  took  his 
wife — a  roving,  shiftless,  and  talented  tribe  who  might  well  have 
been  the  prototypes  of  Sanger's  Circus.  His  father.,  having  failed  to 
discover  a  genius  among  his  first  brood,  remarried  at  the  age  of 
fifty-one,  and  thus  begot  Carl  Maria,  who  was  born  at  Eutin,  near 
Liibeck,  in  1786.  His  mother  was  eighteen  at  Carl  Maria's  birth, 
and  a  dozen  years  of  her  husband's  thoughtless  and  well-nigh 
brutal  treatment  sufficed  to  kill  her.  Old  Franz  Anton,  on  the  other 
hand,  was  something  of  a  personage,  and  like  Buckingham,  "in  the 
course  of  one  revolving  moon,  was  chemist,  fiddler,  statesman,  and 
buffoon.53  He  dabbled  in  lithography  with  its  inventor,  the  emi- 
nent Senefelder,  sat  at  ease  among  the  orchestral  strings,  had  the 
ear  of  the  Elector  Palatine  in  weighty  financial  matters,  and  played 
Tyl  Eulenspiegel  on  the  side.  Unhappily  for  his  relatives,  this  self- 
styled  Baron  fancied  himself  most  as  the  impresario  of  a  traveling 
theatrical  company,  and  more  latterly  as  the  father-nursemaid  of 
another  Mozart.  Nursemaid  he  was,  but  scarcely  a  tender  one:  the 
life  of  the  road  permanently  injured  Carl  Maria,  who  had  inher- 
ited his  mother's  frailness  and  nervous  instability  rather  than  his 
father's  rugged  health  and  bouncing  spirits. 

Practically  snatched  from  his  swaddling  clothes  to  be  rushed 
over  the  face  of  Germany,  the  intended  prodigy,  after  a  makeshift 
musical  education  acquired  on  the  run,  miraculously  achieved  his 
twelfth  year.  He  took  a  few  lessons  from  Michael  Haydn  in  Salz- 
burg, and  there  Franz  Anton  pompously  brought  out  the  boy's 
first  published  work,  six  little  fugues.  These,  as  well  as  an  opera 
that  has  been  lost — in  fact,  all  of  Weber's  juvenile  and  youthful 
efforts — were  feeble  products  of  the  forcing-house.  The  signs  were 
that  Carl  Maria  was  far  from  a  genius,  and  so  his  father  (who  had 
lately  added  the  unearned  title  of  major  to  his  von  and  other  pre- 
tensions) claimed  all  the  more  loudly  that  he  was.  The  unadorned 
facts  are  that  he  had  become  an  excellent  pianist  for  his  age,  had 
picked  up  the  rudiments  of  composition  without  knowing  exactly 
what  to  do  with  them,  and  had  already  acquired  in  the  theater 
itself  that  inexhaustible  knowledge  of  stagecraft  that  was  to  be  his 
salient  asset  as  an  operatic  composer.  While  other  boys  were  play- 
ing at  marbles  or  hopscotch,  Carl  Maria  was  sniffing  grease  paint 
and  powder,  dodging  sceneshifters,  and  absorbing  the  theater's 
multifarious  lore  and  rule  of  thumb. 


2IO  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

Weber's  first  performed  opera — Das  Waldmadchen — dates  from 
1800,  and  though  he  himself  later  dismissed  it  as  immature  stuff., 
it  was  produced  as  far  afield  as  St.  Petersburg,  and  actually  had 
considerable  success  at  Vienna.  It  fell  flat  at  its  premiere.,  however, 
and  the  boy  had  to  work  hard  and  wait  some  years  to  get  a  hearing 
for  a  second  opera,  which  was  even  less  encouragingly  received 
than  Das  Waldmadchen.  Meanwhile,  probably  realizing  that  he  was 
trying  to  make  bricks  without  straw,  he  began  to  study  theory,  at 
first  alone,  and  then  in  Vienna  under  the  fashionable  and  ingratiat- 
ing Abbe  Vogler,  whom  Browning  has  immortalized  alongf  lines 
that  give  no  true  picture  of  a  man  who  was  little  more  than  a 
dilettante  and  quack.  The  choice  of  Vogler  is  typical  of  old  Weber's 
lavish  inattention  to  matters  that  required  serious  thought.  But  the 
Abbe,  though  not  a  painstaking  teacher,  had  a  flair  for  communi- 
cating his  catholic  tastes.  Besides,  he  had  powerful  connections, 
and  his  boys  had  a  way  of  getting  the  plums  while  the  charges  of 
worthier  pedagogues  went  neglected.  Thus,  before  Weber  was 
eighteen  years  old,  he  found  himself  conductor  of  the  opera  at 
Breslau.  To  serve  the  Abbe's  brash  young  favorite,  many  older  and 
more  experienced  men  were  passed  over,  and  there  were  plenty  of 
soreheads. 

Weber  was  not  happy  in  Breslau.  While;  still  in  Vogler' s  en- 
tourage in  Vienna,  he  had  found  a  friend  in  one  Gansbacher,  a 
talented  wastrel  who  passed  on  his  frivolous  tastes  to  Weber.  Natu- 
rally, Carl  Maria  found  a  provincial  capital  tame  after  the  flesh- 
pots  of  Vienna,  and  finally,  in  an  excess  of  boredom,  tried  to  bring 
those  fleshpots  to  Breslau,  dissipated  as  wildly  as  the  small  re- 
sources of  the  town  permitted,  and  ended  by  smothering  himself 
under  a  burden  of  debt.  Although  he  was  a  delightful  com- 
panion, and  had  somehow  (certainly  not  from  his  noble  father), 
acquired  the  instinctive  good  manners  of  a  gentleman,  he  got  off  on 
the  wrong  foot  with  the  Breslauers.  He  revealed  himself  at  once  as 
a  masterly  conductor,  but  exacted  such  rigid  discipline  that  his 
company  soon  came  to  resent  him.  Worse,  his  innovations  ran  into 
money,  and  he  fell  foul  of  the  tightfisted  business  mauagement. 
Only  the  regisseur  saw  that  Weber  was  a  man  of  vision,  and  tried 
vainly  to  arbitrate  the  difficulties.  Furthermore,  he  presented  Weber 
\vith  a  fantastic  and  highly  romantic  libretto — Rubezahl — which  he 
worked  at  feverishly,  but  never  completed. 


WEBER  2JI 

Weber  spent  many  pleasant  hours  with  other  young  musicians., 
playing  the  piano  and  talking  shop.  These  soirees  usually  ended 
with  his  friends  sitting  back  and  listening  to  Weber  sing.  He  had 
a  fine  tenor  voice,  and  commonly  accompanied  himself  on  the 
mandolin,  to  which,  strange  to  relate,  he  was  excessively  devoted. 
These  recitals  came  abruptly  to  an  end.  One  evening,  a  friend 
called  at  his  lodgings  to  try  over  the  recently  completed  overture 
to  Rubezahl,  and  found  Weber  lying  unconscious  on  the  floor:  he 
had  accidentally  swallowed  some  acid  used  in  his  chemical  dab- 
blings — he,  like  his  father,  was  interested  in  lithographing  music. 
When  he  recovered,  his  singing  voice  was  ruined,  and  he  could 
barely  speak  above  a  whisper. 

Weber  resigned  his  Breslau  position  in  1806;  and  found  a  tem- 
porary stopgap  as  musical  director  at  Duke  Eugen  of  Wtirttem- 
berg's  Silesian  residence.  Weber  moved  in  with  his  aging  father 
and  an  aunt,  and  spent  several  delightful  months,  during  which  he 
composed  his  only  two  symphonies,  both  in  C  major,  and  a  miscel- 
lany of  other  now  forgotten  music.  But  the  approach  of  Napoleon 
broke  up  this  idyl  in  less  than  a  year,  and  Eugen  went  off  to  the 
wars,  not,  however,  before  securing  Weber  a  snug  post  in  Stuttgart 
as  secretary  to  his  brother  Ludwig.  From  the  beginning,  this  posi- 
tion was  fraught  with  difficulties:  his  was  the  thankless  task  of  man- 
aging the  tangled  finances  and  answering  the  elaborate  corre- 
spondence of  a  debauched  and  despised  younger  brother,  whose 
absurd  escapades  and  dizzy  extravagances  were  surpassed  only  by 
those  of  King  Friedrich  himself.  Weber  soon  found  himself  swim- 
ming with  the  luxurious  tide,  and  discovered  that  his  income  would 
not  adequately  support  himself  and  his  father.  Kingly  favor  was 
needed,  but  kingly  favor  was  denied  one  whose  painful  duty  it  was 
to  be  constantly  nagging  for  the  wherewithal  to  stave  off  Ludwig's 
creditors.  Insensibly  the  King  came  to  associate  Weber  with  his 
brother's  thriftlessness,  and  matters  were  not  helped  when  Weber 
vented  his  own  spleen  at  this  injustice  by  playing  broad  practical 
jokes  on  the  King.  Once  he  was  actually  arrested  when  he  mali- 
ciously misdirected  a  washerwoman,  who  had  asked  him  the  way 
to  the  laundry,  into  the  King's  presence.  Friedrich  only  waited  for 
a  pretext  to  rid  himself  of  this  hateful  lackey,  whose  title  of  baron 
(which  to  the  end  of  his  days  Weber  innocently  sported)  gave  him 
free  and  constant  access  to  the  court.  In  1810  the  occasion  came  in 


212  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

a  mix-up  over  some  misappropriated  funds,  the  details  of  which 
are  still  unclear.  At  any  rate,  old  Franz  Anton  seems  to  have  been 
guiltily  involved.  On  February  26,  father  and  son  were  banished 
perpetually  from  Friedrich's  dominions. 

The  decree  of  banishment  staggered  Weber  for  more  reasons 
than  one.  First,  he  had  become  entangled  with  Margarethe  Lang, 
a  young  singer  at  the  opera,  whose  accommodating  morals  had 
drawn  him  into  a  tender  alliance.  Second,  he  had  found  some 
kindred  spirits — dilettantes  like  himself — who  had  a  great  passion 
for  art,  and  an  even  greater  passion  for  the  bottle.*  Finally,  after 
taking  his  old  score  of  Das  Waldmddchen  from  the  shelf,  and  rewrit- 
ing it  almost  completely  under  the  name  of  Sylvana,  he  had  it  in 
rehearsal  when  the  blow  fell.  Now,  with  so  many  important  issues 
at  stake,  this  must  have  seemed  like  being  cast  out  of  paradise,  and 
the  effect  was  to  chasten  Weber,  who  suddenly  realized  that  he  had 
been  squandering  precious  time.  With  a  new  solemnity,  he  rededi- 
cated  himself  to  his  art.  He  was  twenty-three  years  old. 

There  now  began  a  confused  period  in  Weber's  life,  for  he  had 
no  definite  employment,  and  had  to  make  a  living  mainly  as  a 
concert  pianist.  After  settling  his  father  at  Mannheim  (the  tireless 
old  scamp  was  threatening  a  third  marriage  at  the  age  of  seventy- 
six),  he  removed  to  Darmstadt  so  as  to  renew  relations  with  the 
Abbe  Vogler,  who  led  the  court  band  there.  He  saw  Gansbacher 
again,  and  struck  up  a  warm  friendship  with  another  of  Vogler's 
proteges,  one  Jakob  Liebmann  Beer,  who  was  to  make  a  noise — 
a  very  loud  noise — in  the  world  as  Giacomo  Meyerbeer.  Contact 
with  this  talented  young  trickster,  who  at  seventeen  was  already 
more  famous  than  Weber,  stimulated  him  to  feverish  activity.  Mu- 
sical ideas  crowded  his  mind,  many  of  which  did  not  mature  into 
action  until  years  later,  notably  the  main  theme  of  the  Invitation  to 
the  Dance  and  some  ballet  motives  eventually  used  in  Oberon.  More 
important,  he  toyed  with  the  idea  of  using  the  Freischutz  legend  for 
an  opera.  He  finally  got  a  hearing  for  Sylvana  at  Frankfort  in  Sep- 

*  The  friends  called  their  association  Fausts  Hollenfahrt — Faust's  Ride  to  Hell — 
and  addressed  each  other  under  fantastic  names,  thus  foreshadowing  Schumann  and 
his  Damdsbund  (page  297).  They  wrote  musical  criticism  for  periodicals,  discussed 
literature  and  folklore,  and  shared  their  romantic  dreams  and  fancies.  It  was  all 
as  heavily  German  as  Weber's  nickname — Krautsalat.  Haydn  and  Mozart  would 
have  oeen  ill  at  ease  in  such  company,  but  the  romantics  down  through  Wagner 
would  have  felt  at  home  among  them. 


WEBER  213 

tember,  1810,  mainly  to  empty  seats,  for  only  the  sternest  devotees 
of  music  could  tear  themselves  away  from  a  field  outside  the  town, 
where  the  generously  proportioned  Mme  Blanchard  was  making  a 
balloon  ascent.  The  premiere  of  Sjlvana  turned  out  to  be  nothing 
more  than  a  quiet  family  affair:  Weber  conducted;  his  mistress, 
Margarethe  Lang>  was  the  first  soprano;  his  future  wife,  Caroline 
Brandt,  sang  the  title  role.  Undeterred  by  the  public  inattention  to 
his  operatic  career>  he  finally  completed,  after  many  distractions, 
a  comic  Singspiel  of  lusty  vigor,  Abu  Hassan.,  the  frolicsome  over- 
ture to  which  is  still  occasionally  played.  It  was  first  produced  at 
Munich  in  June,  1811,  and  the  response  was  such  that  Weber  felt 
he  had  not  been  working  in  vain.  Therefore^  it  is  aE  the  more 
strange  that  he  did  not  begin  work  on  another  opera  for  more  than 
six  years. 

Old  Franz  Anton  died  in  April,  1812,  and  left  Weber  alone  in 
the  world.  Although  his  father  had  caused  him  endless  trouble,  and 
had  been  a  constant  drain  on  his  meager  resources,  Weber  sin- 
cerely missed  him.  He  felt  cast  adrift  without  a  rudder,  though  in- 
deed the  externals  of  his  life  were  sufficiently  brilliant.  He  was 
acclaimed  everywhere  as  a  leading  pianist  and  conductor,  moved 
with  ease  in  the  highest  society  of  the  day,  and  was  admittedly  in 
the  forefront  of  that  astounding  galaxy  of  genius  and  talent  that 
was  striving  to  create  a  characteristic  German  Kultur  out  of  the 
wreckage  left  by  Napoleon.  Weber's  relations  with  his  famed  con- 
temporaries were  not  always  amicable:  for  instance,  he  and  Goethe 
seem  never  to  have  hit  it  off.  On  the  other  hand,  he  had  a  brief 
but  cordial  friendship  with  the  macabre  E.  T.  A.  Hoffmann.  With 
Ludwig  Spohr,  the  most  renowned  German  violinist  of  the  day,  he 
became  fast  friends  after  the  most  unpromising  beginning. 

Weber's  wanderings  were  brought  to  an  unexpected  close  in 
January,  1813,  while  he  was  stopping  in  Prague  on  his  way  to 
Italy.  He  was  just  preparing  for  a  two-year  tour  that  would  take 
him  farther  afield  than  usual,  when  an  extraordinarily  attractive 
offer  was  made  him:  the  direction  of  the  opera  at  a  salary  of  two 
thousand  gulden,,  with  an  annual  benefit  guaranteeing  him  an 
extra  thousand.  He  was  promised  a  vacation  of  two  or  three  months 
every  year,,  and — most  important  of  all — he  was  to  be  allowed  com- 
plete freedom  of  action  in  running  the  opera.  Weber  accepted  at 
once,  and  set  out  energetically  to  get  a  fine  company  together.  This 


214  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

turned  out  to  be  a  major  job,  for  his  predecessor  had  let  the  insti- 
tution, which  in  Mozart's  day  had  been  one  of  the  finest  in  Europe, 
run  to  rack  and  ruin,  and  now  almost  all  new  singers  had  to  be 
engaged — among  them,  significantly,  Caroline  Brandt.  During  his 
three  years'  tenure,  Weber  literally  regenerated  the  Prague  opera 
in  all  its  departments.  With  his  unequaled  firsthand  knowledge  of 
the  stage,  he  was  everywhere,  supervising  the  painting  of  the 
scenery,  criticizing  the  cut  and  color  of  the  costumes,  keeping  a 
shrewd  eye  on  the  box  office,  and  handling  all  phases  of  the 
publicity,  from  elegantly  worded  feuilletons  for  the  newspapers  to 
downright  ballyhoo  in  the  handbills.  His  regime,  from  a  musical 
point  of  view,  was  unqualifiedly  brilliant:  he  opened  with  a 
splendid  reading  of  Fernand  Cortez>*  a  grand  opera  on  a  heroic 
scale,  which  was  then  the  rage  of  Europe,  and  during  the  season 
mounted  no  less  than  twenty-four  newly  studied  and  perfectly 
coached  operas  and  Singspiels. 

To  secure  these  impressive  results  at  Prague,  Weber  exacted 
strict  discipline — he  was  always  something  of  a  martinet — and 
squandered  his  small  reserves  of  physical  energy.  His  precarious 
hold  on  good  health  slackened,  and  from  this  time  until  the  day  of 
his  death  he  was  never  really  well.  He  was  probably  born  tuber- 
cular; caravan  life  weakened  the  child,  dissipation  the  youth,  and 
overwork  the  man.  Moreover,  his  health  was  further  impaired  by 
the  emotional  storms  he  was  weathering  with  difficulty:  after 
breaking  off  with  Margarethe  Lang  (a  long  and  painful  process), 
he  had  begun  seriously  to  woo  Caroline  Brandt,  but  found  her 
intractable. 

In  the  summer  of  1814,  after  slowly  winning  back  some  of  his 
strength  at  a  Bohemian  spa,  Weber  proceeded  to  Berlin  for  the 
celebration  of  the  King  of  Prussia's  triumphal  entry  into  his  capital 
after  the  Allies5  victorious  march  on  Paris.  He  was  carried  along  on 
the  mounting  wave  of  patriotism,  and,  indeed,  had  some  share  in 
the  fetes.  He  gave  a  gala  concert  attended  by  the  King  and  the 
court,,  and  conducted  a  well-received  revival  of  Sylvana.  Some 
years  before,  he  had  summed  up  the  Prussian  temperament  as  "all 

*  Its  composer,  Gasparo  Luigi  Pacifico  Spontini  (i  774-1 85 1 ),  is  now  remembered 
chiefly,  if  at  all,  by  La  Vestale,  which  rated  a  Metropolitan  performance  as  recently 
as  1925.  He  shared  with  Cherubim  the  task  of  carrying  the  traditions  of  classical 
opera  into  the  nineteenth  century. 


WEBER  215 

jaw  and  no  heart/*  but  now  glad  faces,  singing  enthusiasm,  and  in- 
fectious patriotic  fervor  had  metamorphosed  Berlin  into  something 
infinitely  attractive.  When  he  left  for  a  hunting  trip  with  the  Grand 
Duke  of  Gotha,  the  vision  of  a  victorious  people  continued  to 
haunt  him,  and  he  sat  down  and  wrote  choral  settings  for  ten 
poems  from  Karl  Theodor  Korner's  Leyer  und  Schwert.  These  ran 
through  Germany  like  wildfire,  and  soon  Weber  was  almost  as 
much  a  hero  as  Korner,  who  had  been  killed  in  action  against  the 
French  at  the  age  of  twenty-two.  Little  more  than  a  year  later, 
after  pondering  the  news  of  Waterloo,  Weber  gave  vent  to  another 
fervid  patriotic  effusion — the  cantata  Kampf  und  Sieg,  which  was 
first  performed  at  Prague  in  December,  1815,  and  almost  equaled 
Leyer  und  Schwert  in  popularity.  These  were  truly  occasional  pieces, 
for  they  have  long  since  vanished.  In  1815,  however,  it  seemed 
that  great  ideas  could  have  no  more  eloquent  voice,  and  when, 
after  the  premiere  of  Kampf  und  Sieg,  old  General  von  Nostitz  re- 
marked to  Weber,  "With  you  I  hear  nations  speaking;  with 
Beethoven  only  big  boys  playing  with  rattles,"  he  was  voicing  the 
consensus.  Still,  it  should  be  noted  that  the  General  was  but  com- 
paring two  mediocre  compositions,  for  by  "Beethoven"  he  meant 
Wellington's  Victory. 

Weber  resigned  from  the  direction  of  the  Prague  opera  in 
September,  1816:  he  felt  that  he  had  accomplished  as  much  as  he 
could,  and  besides,  the  local  musicians  were  so  unfriendly  to  one 
they  considered  an  upstart  foreigner  that  he  had  never  been  happy 
there.  He  was  idle  for  only  a  few  months,  during  which  he  angled 
for  the  post  of  Kapellmeister  at  Berlin,  one  of  the  few  juicy  plums 
available.  Just  when  he  realized  that  he  was  wasting  his  time  in 
Berlin — the  job  there  was  to  go  begging  for  three  years  under  an 
indifferent  interim  man,  and  then  fall  to  Spontini — he  received 
notice  that  Friedrich  Augustus,  King  of  Saxony,  desired  him  to 
organize  the  performance  of  German  opera  at  Dresden.  After  some 
initial  bickering,  Weber  accepted  the  onerous  duty  on  condition 
that  he  be  put  on  an  equal  footing,  both  as  to  title  and  salary,  with 
Francesco  Morlacchi,  director  of  the  flourishing  Italian  opera. 
Doubtless  confident  that  he  would  have  his  own  way,  he  set 
energetically  to  work,  and  even  produced  his  first  opera— Etienne- 
Nicolas  MehuPs  Joseph — before  the  King  gave  way.  It  must  be 
remembered  that  Weber's  task  at  Dresden  was  even  more  difficult 


2l6  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

than  at  Prague,  for  here  he  had  to  create  everything  from  the 
ground  up.  But  the  results  were  so  satisfactory  that  in  September, 
1817,  less  than  a  year  after  he  arrived,  his  appointment  was  con- 
firmed for  life. 

It  all  sounds  like  a  success  story,  but  Dresden  was  no  bed  of 
roses  for  Weber.  The  King  respected  him,  but  he  was  never  on 
terms  of  friendly  intimacy  with  the  royal  family  or  the  court.  His 
position  was  somewhat  ambiguous:  his  great  work  as  a  composer 
lay  ahead  of  him,  and  at  this  period  he  was  known  chiefly  as  the 
fashioner  of  epidemically  popular  choruses,  an  efficient  conductor 
and  master  of  stagecraft,  and  a  pianist  of  eminence.  Even  when  the 
enormous  success  of  Der  Freischutz  made  him  as  well  known  in 
Germany  as  Beethoven,  the  Dresdeners  had  difficulty  in  believing 
that  their  German  Kapellmeister  was  a  really  important  man.  The 
indifference  of  the  King  and  the  court  was  more  than  matched  by 
the  hostility  of  the  Italian  company  and  its  intriguing  and  malin- 
gering director,  bold  in  his  certainty  that  Friedrich  Augustus  pre- 
ferred his  kind  of  music.  It  is  difficult  to  believe  that  Weber,  with 
his  frail  physique  and  waning  energy,  could  have  breasted  this  tide 
of  opposition  alone.  He  was  buoyed  up  by  the  assurance  that 
Caroline  Brandt  would  at  last  become  his  wife.  From  a  rather 
frivolous  soubrette  with  a  trivial  attitude  toward  music  and  a  hazy 
notion  of  Weber's  potentialities,  she  had  developed  into  a  woman 
of  strong  character  and  mature  understanding,  willing  to  forgo 
her  career  in  opera  in  order  to  fulfill  Weber's  exacting  specifica- 
tions for  a  wife.  They  were  married  in  Prague  on  November  4, 
1817. 

More  important — at  least  for  posterity — was  the  fact  that  on 
July  2  of  that  same  year,  Weber  began  the  composition  of  Der 
Freischutz.  He  had  been  chewing  this  legend  over  in  the  cud  of  his 
memory  for  years,  and  in  February,  1817,  had  written  joyfully  to 
Caroline,  "Friedrich  Kind  is  going  to  begin  an  opera-book  for  me 
this  very  day.  The  subject  is  admirable,  interesting,  and  horribly 
exciting.  .  .  .  This  is  super-extra,  for  there's  the  very  devil  in  it.  He 
appears  as  the  Black  Huntsman;  the  bullets  are  made  in  a  ravine 
at  midnight,  with  spectral  apparitions  around.  Haven't  I  made 
your  flesh  creep  upon  your  bones?"  And  yet,  after  this  outburst  of 
enthusiasm,  Weber's  work  on  his  pet  idea  was  absurdly  dilatory:  at 
the  end  of  ifi  1 7  he  had  completed  only  one  aria  and  sketched  a  few 


WEBER  217 

scenes;  in  1818  he  devoted  exactly  three  days  to  Der  Freischutz; 
in  March,  1819,  he  took  one  day  off  to  write  the  finale  of  the  first 
act,  and  then  laid  the  score  aside  for  six  months.  In  September,  he 
resumed  work,  this  time  seriously,  and  on  May  13,  1820,  blotted 
the  last  notes  of  the  overture,  which  he  had  left  until  the  end.  It  is  a 
strange  tale,  this  story  of  the  composition  of  the  germinal  master- 
piece of  romantic  opera,  and  in  it  we  may  read  how  the  incubus  of 
Weber's  dilettantism  almost  stifled  his  first  major  creative  effort. 
His  tragedy  was  that,  at  a  time  when  he  most  needed  serious  train- 
ing, he  was  exposed  to  the  pedagogical  chicane  of  the  Abbe  Vogler, 
and  now  he  had  no  appetite  for  sustained  hard  work  and  no  un- 
faltering technique  just  when  his  inspiration  most  cried  out  for 
them. 

Weber's  slow  progress  with  Der  Freischutz  was  partly  due  to  the 
press  of  his  labors  at  the  opera,  which  were  made  even  heavier  by 
Morlacchi's  frequent  absences,  and  the  consequent  demands  on 
Weber's  time  at  the  Italian  opera.  Then,  too,  his  official  position 
obliged  him  to  write  occasional  large  compositions  for  court  func- 
tions and  national  fetes,  notably — to  celebrate  the  fiftieth  anni- 
versary of  the  King's  accession — a  jubilee  cantata  whose  arias  are 
effective  in  the  Haydn  oratorio  tradition,  and  are  still  occasionally 
sung.  Furthermore,  he  frittered  away  what  leisure  he  had  in  the 
composition  of  a  number  of  more  or  less  charming  salon  pieces, 
including  that  hardy  perennial,  Invitation  to  the  Dance.,  which  gave 
hints  to  both  Chopin  and  Johann  Strauss,  and  which  has,  indeed,, 
far  more  historical  than  musical  significance. 

After  Der  Freischutz  was  completed,  more  than  a  year  elapsed 
before  it  was  produced.  Forewarned  by  the  cold  indifference  of  the 
ruling  powers  at  Dresden  toward  his  aspirations  as  a  composer, 
Weber  promised  his  new  opera  to  Berlin,  and  Count  Briihl,  in- 
tendant  of  the  court  theater  there,  had  assured  him  that  it  would 
be  used  to  inaugurate  the  new  Schauspielhaus  in  the  spring  of 
1820.  But  the  opening  of  the  theater  was  postponed  for  a  year,  and 
Weber,  calm  in  the  conviction  that  he  had  written  a  masterpiece* 
and  that  its  production  would  establish  his  name  forever,  spent  his 
summer-vacation  months  in  an  extended  and  strenuous  tour  with 
his  wife.  Their  route  carried  them  into  Denmark,  and  at  Copen- 
hagen they  were  feted  by  the  royal  family.  They  did  not  return  to 
Dresden  until  November.  Meanwhile,  Weber  was  busy  composing: 


2l8  MEN     OF    MUSIC 

no  fewer  than  three  big  compositions  intervened  between  the  com- 
pletion of  Der  Freischutz  and  its  premiere.  The  first  of  these  was  an 
overture  and  incidental  music  to  Preciosa,  a  gypsy  drama  based  on 
a  novel  by  Cervantes.  The  music,  charming  and  atmospheric,  is 
one  of  the  first  attempts  by  a  foreigner  to  imitate  Spanish  rhythms 
and  color;  it  is  a  precursor  of  an  eminent  line  followed  by  such 
men  as  Rimsky-Korsakov,  Bizet,  Debussy,  and  Ravel.  The  music 
created  a  furore  in  Berlin,  and  served  to  pave  the  way  for  Der 
Freischutz.  Weber  next  tried  his  hand  at  a  comic  opera,  likewise 
with  a  Spanish  setting,  but  though  he  worked  at  it  on  and  off  for 
two  years,  Die  drei  Pintos  was  finally  laid  aside  incomplete. 

Weber's  third  big  enterprise  was  the  still-famous  Conzertstuck^ 
one  of  the  most  popular  piano  concertos  written  in  the  nineteenth 
century.  Actually  composed  in  his  spare  hours  during  the  re- 
hearsals of  Der  Freischutz,  the  Conzertstilck  was  finished  the  very 
morning  of  the  opera's  premiere,  when  Weber,  sitting  down  to  the 
piano,  played  the  entire  concerto  for  his  wife  and  proteg6  and 
pupil,  Julius  Benedict,  meanwhile  reciting  the  highly  romantic  but 
stereotyped  program  on  which  it  is  based:  a  medieval  lady  is  pining 
to  death  for  her  knight,  absent  in  the  Holy  Land;  she  sees  a  vision 
of  him  dying,  and  just  as  she  is  sinking  back  in  a  deathly  swoon, 
horns  are  heard,  and  her  hero  bursts  into  the  room.  "She  sinks  into 
his  arms" — mark  of  expression:  con  molto  fuoco  e  con  leggier ezza. 
It  is  all  very  effective,  especially  the  march  of  the  returning  war- 
riors and  the  swift  weaving  of  triumphant  love  harmonies  on 
which  the  curtain  falls.  Weber,  as  one  of  the  greatest  pianists  of  the 
time,  knew  how  to  write  music  that  was  at  once  dramatic  and 
pianistic,  though  certain  effects,  particularly  the  glissando  oc- 
taves when  the  knight  enters  the  lady's  chamber,  are  difficult  to 
achieve  with  the  heavier  action  of  the  modern  grand  piano.  The 
Conzertstiick,  exciting,  showy,  and  but  a  step  above  the  superficial, 
is  no  longer  much  played. 

When  Weber  arrived  in  Berlin  to  rehearse  Der  Freischutz^  he 
found  the  whole  town  given  over  to  the  cult  of  Spontini,  who  had 
lately  been  installed  as  tsar  of  all  the  musical  activities  there.  More- 
over, Spontini  was  preparing  to  launch  the  German  premiere  of 
his  own  Olympie  on  a  supercolossal  scale,  doubtless  hoping  by  this 
Hollywood  stroke  to  make  the  capital  his  forever.  And  its  success 
more  than  confirmed  the  worst  fears  of  Weber's  friends:  Olympic, 


WEBER  2ig 

with  its  huge  and  expensive  scenic  display,  stupefied  the  Berliners 
into  submission.  With  the  fate  of  romantic  opera  hanging  in  the 
balance,  Weber  alone  persisted  in  believing  that  all  was  well,  and 
went  calmly  and  methodically  ahead  with  his  preparations.  It  is, 
then,  all  the  more  remarkable  that,  badgered  by  his  wife  and 
friends,  and  about  to  measure  swords  with  the  reigning  favorite, 
he  was  able  to  compose  the  Conzertstuck  between  rehearsals.  He 
was  right;  his  friends  were  wrong.  On  the  evening  of  June  18,  1821, 
Berlin  heard  Der  Freischutz — and  Spontini  was  dethroned.  The 
decision  was  never  even  momentarily  in  doubt:  the  overture  was 
encored,  and  with  every  succeeding  number  the  temperature  of 
the  audience  seemed  to  rise  until,  at  the  end,  Weber  was  accorded 
an  ovation  unparalleled  in  the  annals  of  the  town.  Among  the 
celebrities  who  witnessed  the  victory  of  musical  romanticism  were 
Heine,  E.  T.  A.  Hoffmann,  and  Felix  Mendelssohn.  The  apt  if 
embarrassing  finale  for  Weber  was  being  crowned  with  a  laurel 
wreath,  at  three  o'clock  in  the  morning,  by  Hoffmann,  himself 
one  of  the  founding  fathers  of  romanticism. 

Within  six  months,  Der  Freischutz  was  given  to  shouting  audi- 
ences all  over  Germany.  On  October  3,  Vienna  set  its  seal  of  ap- 
proval on  it  quite  as  decisively  as  Berlin,  and  the  following  January 
Dresden  partly  wiped  off  its  indebtedness  to  Weber  by  a  demon- 
stration that  resembled  a  riot.  Romanticism,  essentially  a  great 
popular  movement,  had  long  been  awaiting  a  musical  document  to 
match  its  achievements  in  the  other  arts,  and  here  it  was.  Every- 
thing about  Der  Freischutz  appealed  to  the  German  people:  it  was 
emotional  to  the  point  of  melodrama;  it  exploited  the  supernatural 
and  the  macabre;  it  glorified  purity  (Agathe  is  the  ancestress  of 
Parsifal — and  of  the  Dumb  Girl  of  Portici),  and  it  spun  its  tale 
chiefly  in  the  easily  understood  popular  idiom  of  the  day.  In  short, 
it  was  German  through  and  through — or  so  it  seemed  to  its 
listeners  in  1821,  though  nowadays  not  a  little  of  it  sounds  like 
snippets  of  Rossini,  whom  Weber  detested  as  the  archfiend  of  the 
meretricious.  The  still  immensely  popular  overture  is  practically 
a  potpourri  of  the  best  things  in  the  opera,  and  a  truncated  version 
of  Der  Freischutz  based  on  these  would  slight  little  of  value.  Yet,  a 
severe  critic,  used  to  the  glib  craftsmanship  of  even  our  least 
talented  composers,  might  describe  this  overture  as  "one  damn 
thing  after  another,"  for  nowhere  is  Weber's  musical  joinery  more 


220  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

obvious  or  less  successful.  At  least  two  of  the  arias  likewise  endure: 
Max's  lyric  "Durch  die  Walder"  has  afresh  and  spontaneous  quality 
and  a  real  infusion  of  the  forest  glade;  Agathe's  dramatic  yet 
meditative  "Leise,  leise"  is,  with  a  single  exception,  Weber's  most 
inspired  music  for  the  soprano  voice. 

The  critics  had,  with  few  exceptions,  received  Der  Freischutz 
rapturously.  Among  the  dissenters,  however,  stood  the  pontifical 
Ludwig  Tieck,  an  eminent  theoretician  of  the  arts,  and  Weber's 
friend  Spohr.  They  complained  that  it  was  only  a  Singspiel  in  a 
new  idiom,  and  that  it  lacked  both  the  unity  and  largeness  of 
effect  that  bespeak  a  master.  Weber  was  so  nettled  that  when  he 
received  from  Domenico  Barbaia  a  commission  from  the  Karnt- 
nerthortheater  in  Vienna,  he  sat  down  cold-bloodedly  to  write  a 
true  grand  opera — to  prove,  in  short,  that  he  was  not  merely  a 
man  with  a  genius  for  melody,  but  also  a  master  of  his  craft.  He 
started  off  on  the  wrong  foot  by  accepting  a  libretto  that  reads  like 
a  hoax  by  Robert  Benchley,  actually  from  the  pen  of  a  Dresden 
poetess,  Helmine  von  Chezy.  Weber  made  her  revise  the  script 
nine  times,  and  then  gave  up  in  despair.1*  On  December  15,  182 1, 
he  began  to  compose  Euryanthe^  which  was  finished  in  less  than  a 
year,  but  was  not  mounted  until  October  25,  1823.  Vienna,  then 
being  served  Rossini's  sparkling  champagne  by  the  amiable  bottler 
himself,  gave  the  composer  of  Der  Freischutz  a  respectable  welcome 
at  the  pvemiere  of  his  new  opera — and  turned  again  to  Italian  de- 
Hghts.  Weber  was  in  despair,  and  began  to  doubt  himself.  He  even 
admitted  that  some  of  Rossini's  stuff  was  good.  For  him,  depres- 
sion could  go  no  farther.  He  returned  to  Dresden,  and  for  fifteen 
months  his  pen  was  allowed  to  gather  rust. 

In  view  of  the  fairly  uniform  unpopularity  ofEuryanthe,  it  seems 
that  the  Viennese  reaction  was  justified.  Performances  are  rare: 
the  opera  has  not  been  produced  in  the  United  States  since  Tos- 
canini  made  a  valiant  attempt  to  force  it  back  into  the  Metro- 
politan repertoire  after  twenty-seven  years'  neglect,  on  December 
19,  1914,  with  Frieda  Hempel  in  the  name  part.  It  was  later 
revived  at  Salzburg,  when  W.  J.  Turner,  after  agreeing  that  "the 

*  The  absurdity  of  the  libretto  may  be  judged  from  the  fact  that  the  action 
hinges  on  an  event  that  takes  place  before  the  opera  really  begins.  To  acquaint  the 
audience  with  these  cogent  matters,  the  conscientious  Weber  hit  on  the  scheme  of 
raising  the  curtain  during  the  overture,  and  showing  this  necessary  prologue  in  a 
Idbleau  vivant. 


WEBER  221 

music  never  falls  below  a  certain  high  level  of  craftsmanship  and 
even  of  invention/5  pronounced  the  opera  as  a  whole  "curiously 
uninspired  and  unmoving."  Mr.  Turner's  dislike  of  romantic 
music  is  well  known.  However,  Edward  J.  Dent,  with  no  parti  pris% 
s*ays,  "Ewytmtke  .  .  .  contains  much  beautiful  music,  but  it  is  so 
badly  constructed  that  it  has  always  been  a  failure."  Mr.  Turner 
and  Professor  Dent  represent  the  consensus.  Sir  Donald  Tovey,  on 
the  other  hand,,  is  strongly  aligned  with  the  minority.  What  his 
arguments  amount  to  is  that  if  the  libretto  is  refashioned  com- 
pletely, and  some  of  the  music  is  deleted  or  transposed,  and  some 
slight  additions  are  made,  the  result  can  be  highly  effective.  Even 
if  his  contention  is  correct>  it  merely  confirms  the  general  judg- 
ment that  Weber  failed  in  Euryanthe  to  show  that  he  was  a  master 
of  his  craft.  Its  living  fragments  are  fewer  than  those  of  Der  Frei- 
schutz:  only  the  overture,  a  spirited  and  high-flown  pastiche  whose 
moments  of  lyric  beauty  and  melodic  pageantry  hint  at  what  we 
would  be  missing  if  Weber's  accomplishment  had  but  matched  his 
intentions.  Ironically ,  no  one  has  better  summed  up  the  general 
feeling  about  Euryanthe  than  Schubert,,  himself  a  notorious  offender 
as  a  craftsman:  "This  is  no  music.  There  is  no  finale,  no  concerted 
piece  according  to  the  rules  of  art.  It  is  all  striving  after  effect.  And 
he  finds  fault  with  Rossini!  It  is  utterly  dry  and  dismal." 

Weber  returned  to  Dresden  with  but  a  single  happy  memory  of 
his  stay  in  Vienna — the  cordial  friendliness  of  Beethoven,  whose 
music  he  had  at  last  come  to  appreciate.  He  had  lately  staged 
Fidelio  with  loving  care  after  consulting  the  master  about  every 
difficult  point,  and  had  become  a  leading  interpreter  of  his  piano 
sonatas.  Beethoven  expressed  great  admiration  for  Der  Freischiltz, 
and  assured  Weber  that  he  would  have  attended  the  first  night  of 
Euryanthe  if  he  had  not  been  deaf.  But  it  needed  more  than  Bee- 
thoven's admiration  to  bolster  up  Weber's  flagging  spirits,  his 
mortally  wounded  self-esteem.  Tuberculosis  was  gaining  on  him  so 
rapidly  that  his  horrified  friends  saw  him  become  an  old  man  in 
the  course  of  a  few  months.  During  r824  he  stuck  close  to  his  offi- 
cial duties,  and  it  was  at  about  this  time  that  the  young  Wagner, 
"with  something  akin  to  religious  awe,"  saw  the  thin  stooped 
figure  going  to  and  from  rehearsals  at  the  opera,  and  occasionally 
stopping  in  to  talk  with  Frau  Geyer,  the  boy's  mother.  That 
summer,  however,  Weber  received  an  invitation  from  Charles 


222  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

Kemble,  that  "first-rate  actor  of  second-rate  parts/'  who  was  then 
the  lessee  of  Covent  Garden,  to  compose  an  opera  in  English  for 
London.  After  protracted  negotiations,  the  bait  was  increased — 
Benedict  says  to  £1000 — and  Weber  could  not  refuse,  even  when 
his  doctor  warned  him  that  only  complete  idleness  could  assure 
him  of  living  more  than  a  few  months:  he  had  to  think  of  the 
future  of  his  wife  and  son.  Moreover,  Caroline  was  well  advanced 
in  her  second  pregnancy.  He  wrote  Kemble  his  acceptance,  and 
energetically  set  about  learning  English,  to  such  effect  that  within 
a  year  he  was  speaking  it  fluently. 

Weber  began  to  compose  his  last  opera — Oberon.,  or  The  Elf 
King's  Oath — on  January  23,  1825.  The  libretto,  an  adaptation  by 
an  English  Huguenot,  James  Robinson  Planche,  of  an  English 
translation  of  a  German  version  of  an  old  French  romance,  ar- 
rived at  Weber's  house  piecemeal,  and  so  the  composer  was  long 
left  in  the  dark  as  to  the  final  direction  of  the  drama  he  was  il- 
lustrating. The  story  of  Oberon  is  as  complicated  as  that  of  Eury- 
antke,  and  even  sillier  (after  the  first  performance,  Planche  said  to 
Weber,  "Next  time  we  will  show  them  what  we  really  can  do"!). 
The  scene  shifts  bafflingly  from  fairyland  to  Charlemagne's  court 
to  Baghdad,  while  true  love  remains  true  in  the  face  of  the  most 
preposterous  temptations.  The  setting  of  this  lamentable  farrago 
was  pursued  throughout  1825,  and  the  following  February  Weber, 
with  Oberon  all  but  complete,  left  Dresden  on  his  last  journey.  He 
stopped  off  at  Paris  to  visit  Cherubini  and  Auber,  and  to  make  his 
peace  with  Rossini.  The  pathetic  scene  between  the  two  men  is 
vividly  described  by  the  generous  Italian: 

"Immediately  the  poor  man  saw  me  he  thought  himself  obliged 
to  confess  .  .  .  that  in  some  of  his  criticisms  he  had  been  too  severe 
on  my  music.  .  .  .  'Don't  let's  speak  of  it,'  I  interrupted. .  .  .  'Allow 
me  to  embrace  you.  If  my  friendship  can  be  of  any  value  to  you,  I 
offer  it  with  all  my  heart.  .  .  .' 

"He  was  in  a  pitiable  state:  livid  in  the  face,  emaciated,  with  a 
terrible,  dry  cough — a  heartrending  sight.  A  few  days  later,  he  re- 
turned to  ask  me  for  a  few  letters  of  introduction  in  London.  Aghast 
at  the  thought  of  seeing  him  undertake  such  a  journey  in  such  a 
state,  I  tried  to  dissuade  him,  telling  him  that  he  was  committing 
suicide,  nothing  less.  In  vain,  however.  CI  know,'  he  answered, 


WEBER  223 

CI  shall  die  there;  but  I  must  go.  I  have  got  to  produce  Oberon  in 
accordance  with  the  contract  I  have  signed;  I  must  go.5" 

Warmed  by  Rossini's  magnanimity,  and  inspired  by  the  lavish 
praises  of  Cherubim,  whom  he  revered,  Weber  left  Paris  on  March 
2,  and  was  in  London  three  days  later,  making  his  headquarters  at 
the  house  of  Sir  George  Smart,  a  distinguished  conductor.  The 
next  day  he  went  to  inspect  Covent  Garden,  and  was  recognized 
and  warmly  cheered  by  the  audience — Der  Freischutz  was  the  rage 
of  London,  and  at  one  time  had  been  playing  simultaneously  at 
three  theaters.  A  few  days  later,  rehearsals  began,  and  Weber  at 
once  realized  that  he  had  found  his  ideal  company.  Braham  and 
Paton,  respectively  the  Max  and  the  Agathe  of  the  first  English 
Freischutz,  were  secured  for  the  roles  of  the  lovers,  and  the  scarcely 
less  important  role  of  Fatima  was  entrusted  to  Mme  Vestris — 
precisely  the  kind  of  stellar  cast  a  devotee  of  opera  would  give  his 
soul  to  have  heard.  Weber  appreciated  Braham  so  much  that  he 
broke  a  lifelong  rule,  and  wrote  two  special  tenor  numbers  for  him. 
The  rehearsals  went  beautifully,  and  the  first  performance,  on 
April  12,  1826,  was  felt  by  Weber  to  have  approached  perfection. 
The  audience  thought  so  too,  and  he  was  able  to  write  with  deep 
thanksgiving  to  his  beloved  Caroline: 

"Thanks  to  God  and  to  His  all-powerful  will  I  obtained  this 
evening  the  greatest  success  of  my  life.  The  emotion  produced  by 
such  a  triumph  is  more  than  I  can  describe.  To  God  alone  belongs 
the  glory.  When  I  entered  the  orchestra,  the  house,  crammed  to  the 
roof,  burst  into  a  frenzy  of  applause.  Hats  and  handkerchiefs  were 
waved  in  the  air.  The  overture  had  to  be  executed  twice,  as  had 
also  several  pieces  in  the  opera  itself.  At  the  end  of  the  representa- 
tion,, I  was  called  on  the  stage  by  the  enthusiastic  acclamations  of 
the  public;  an  honor  which  no  composer  had  ever  before  obtained 
in  England." 

Oberon  is  not  really  an  opera.  It  is,  rather,  a  drama  with  inci- 
dental music:  when  the  action  is  going  on,  the  music  is  stilled,  and 
the  music,  paradoxically,  weaves  its  atmospheric  spells  only  when 
the  action  is  suspended.  It  is  therefore  not  surprising  that  it  has 
failed  to  hold  the  stage.  The  only  vocal  number  still  popular  is 
"Ocean,  thou  mighty  monster,"  a  gigantic  soprano  scena  which  ad- 
mirably displays  at  its  best  Weber's  magnificent  if  reckless  han- 
dling of  the  human  voice,  and  which  foreshadows  in  effect  if  not 


224  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

in  style  those  epic  battles  Wagner  staged  between  voice  and  or- 
chestra. Its  melody,  too,  is  the  climax  of  the  most  popular  of 
Weber's  overtures,  by  far  the  most  nicely  constructed  of  his  purely 
orchestral  pieces.  Much  of  the  other  music  in  Oberon  is  thoroughly 
delightful  as  well  as  dramatically  clever,  and  there  is  no  reason  to 
believe  that  a  concert  version  omitting  the  spoken  dialogue  would 
not  be  popular.  Salvaging  the  libretto  itself  is  quite  out  of  the 
question. 

The  dying  man  became  a  favorite  not  only  of  the  populace  hut 
also  of  the  Duchess  of  Kent  (who  was  not  fashionable,  even  though 
her  daughter  Victoria  was  almost  certain  to  become  Queen  of 
England),  and  of  certain  other  minor  royalties.  Possibly  as  a  result 
of  this.,  the  nobility  held  aloof,  and  on  the  few  occasions  when  Carl 
Maria  von  Weber  appeared  as  a  pianist  at  fashionable  gatherings, 
he  was  >used  scurvily,  made  to  sit  apart  from  the  guests,,  refused  the 
common  politeness  of  silence  while  he  played,  and  in  every  way 
treated  as  the  inferior  of  the  Italian  -singers  who  were  the  rage  of 
the  day.  But  the  pay  was  good,  and  to  the  very  end  Weber  was 
obsessed  by  the  necessity  of  leaving  his  family  well  provided  for. 
Unfortunately,  a  concert  on  the  proceeds  of  which  he  had  relied 
was  scheduled  for  Derby  Day — May  26 — and  many  of  the  most 
famous  musicians  in  England  performed  mainly  to  empty  seats. 

This  was  Weber's  last  appearance  in  public.  Daily  he  grew 
weaker,  and  though  preparations  for  his  return  to  Germany  pro- 
ceeded apace,  it  was  soon  apparent  to  all  but  the  dying  man  him- 
self that  his  own  prophecy  to  Rossini,  that  he  would  die  in  Eng- 
land, was  about  to  come  true.  On  the  morning  of  July  6y  1826,  a 
servant  found  him  dead  in  bed.  He  was  not  yet  forty  years  of  age. 
He  was  buried  in  London  in  the  presence  of  a  tremendous  crowd, 
and  rested  there  until  1844,  when  his  wife  petitioned  to  have  his  re- 
mains brought  back  to  the  family  vault  in  Dresden.*  Wagner,  who 
had  been  one  of  the  leaders  in  the  movement  to  ,get  Weber's  body 
for  -Gernmany,  arranged  from  Euryanthe  the  special  music  for  the 
reinterment,  and  delivered  a  stirring  oration  at  the  tomb. 

Today  we  hear  so  little  of  Weber's  music  that  it  is  easy  to  forget 
how  strongly  he  influenced  other  composers.  With  a  literary  bent 

*  The  intendant  of  the  opera  was  against  the  whole  idea  on  the  grounds  that  it 
might  furnish  a  precedent  for  exhuming  the  body  of  any  Dresden  Kapellmeister  who 
happened  to  die  out  of  town. 


WEBER  225 

as  marked  as  Schumann's,  he  gave  to  his  operas — the  most  char- 
acteristic, and  certainly  the  most  important,  products  of  his  .genius 
— a  definitely  extramusical  quality  that  asserted  itself  in  innova- 
tions of  varying  degrees  of  merit,  but  all  broadly  suggestive  to 
rebels  and  questioners  of  the  past.  His  interest  in  folklore,  par- 
ticularly in  its  more  violent  and  macabre  aspects,  his  excessive 
nationalism,  and  his  hankering  after  the  overwrought  had,  to- 
gether and  separately,  a  vast  progeny.  Schumann,  Berlioz,  Chopin, 
and  Liszt  marched,  at  one  time  or  another,  under  his  flamboyant 
banner.  He  poured  new  color  into  the  orchestra.  Looking  at  every 
field  of  composition  through  exaggeratedly  theatrical  eyes,  ke 
composed  acres  of  now  unplayed  virtuoso  pieces,  themselves  too 
essentially  febrile,  too  dependent  on  mere  surface  effects,  to  last, 
but  which  gave  strong  hints  to  Liszt  and  others  of  his  stripe. 
Weber's  final  epitaph  must  be,  however,  that  he  made  German 
opera  respectable.  With  a  bold  gesture,  he  turned  his  hack  on  the 
past,  and  on  the  ridiculous  fallacy  that  German  opera  must  be 
Italian  or  it  could  not  be  good.  Weber's  stand  gave  courage  to 
Wagner  when  he  needed  it,  and  nothing  more  fitting  can  be  con- 
ceived than  the  forger  of  Der  Ring  des  Nibelungen  pronouncing  the 
panegyric  on  the  composer  of  Euryanthe* 


Chapter  IX 

Gioacchino  Antonio  Rossini 

(Pesaro,  February  29,   lygs-November   13,   1868,  Paris) 


IN  MARCH,  1860,  a  young  composer  who  was  desperately  trying  to 
win  the  battle  of  musical  Paris,  made  a  respectful  call  on  a 
portly  old  gentleman  who.,  having  won  that  battle  many  years 
before,  now  sat  godlike  above  the  strife  and  storm.  Later,  the 
creator  of  Der  Ring  des  Mbelungen,  recollecting  this  meeting,  de- 
clared that  his  host  was  "the  only  person  I  had  so  far  met  in  the 
artistic  world  who  was  really  great  and  worthy  of  reverence.5' 
Nowadays  we  would  think  twice  before  speaking  in  such  terms  of 
the  composer  of  The  Barber  of  Seville — for  Wagner's  host  was 
Rossini — and  the  very  fact  that  Weber's  greatest  successor  as 
champion  of  German  opera  so  emphatically  expressed  his  esteem 
for  one  whom  his  master  had  regarded  as  a  fabricator  of  tawdry 
and  frivolous  tunes  makes  us  feel  that  the  current  low  opinion  of 
Rossini  (precisely  Weber's)  needs  revising.  As  that  opinion  is  based 
largely  on  performances  of  the  overtures  to  William  Tell  and  Semira- 
mide  by  brass  bands,  for  which  they  were  not  written,  and  overen- 
thusiastic  renditions  of  the  "Largo  al  factotum"  it  has  not  un- 
naturally overlooked  the  excellent  musical  ideas  in  which  those 
pieces  abound.  Wagner's  opinion,  on  the  other  hand,  grew  out  of 
an  acquaintance  with  many  of  Rossini's  operas  sung  by  the  great- 
est singers  of  the  time.  Wagner's  opinions  were  seldom  haphazard, 
and  though  he  was  equally  well  acquainted  with  the  operas  of 
Donizetti,  there  is  no  record  that  he  ever  expressed  any  admiration 
for  the  composer  of  Lucia  di  Lammermoor. 

Whether  Weber  or  Wagner  was  nearer  the  truth  about  Rossini's 
music,  the  man  himself  is  one  of  the  most  fascinating  figures  in 
the  history  of  the  arts.  He  began  his  unusual  career  by  being  born 
on  the  last  day  of  a  leap-year  February.  His  father  combined  the 
offices  of  town  trumpeter  and  inspector  of  slaughterhouses  at 
Pesaro,  a  little  Adriatic  seaport;  his  mother,  a  baker's  daughter, 
was  extremely  pretty,  and  from  her  Gioacchino  inherited  his  good 
looks.  The  Rossinis  quite  equaled  the  Webers  in  nomadic  habits, 
and  while  they  wandered  from  theater  to  theater,  Giuseppe  play- 

226 


ROSSINI  227 

ing  the  horn  and  Anna  singing,  the  boy  was  left  with  relatives  in 
Pesaro.  He  grew  up  like  a  weed,  had  practically  no  schooling,  and 
was  nothing  more  than  a  street  arab.  His  first  music  teacher  played 
the  piano  with  only  two  fingers,  and  went  to  sleep  during  lessons. 
Item:  not  much  progress  was  made,  and  there  seemed  to  be 
method  to  his  father's  apprenticing  him  to  a  blacksmith  after  the 
family  was  reunited  in  the  village  of  Lugo.  But  Gioacchino  showed 
a  new  tractability,  also  a  vast  yearning  for  more  musical  instruc- 
tion. So  he  was  turned  over  to  a  priest,  who  taught  him  to  sing  and 
inspired  him  with  such  a  love  of  Haydn  and  Mozart  that  he  be- 
came known,  later  on,  as  "the  little  German." 

Removal  to  Bologna  meant  better  teachers,  though  not  always 
more  congenial  ones.  Rossini  learned  several  instruments,  and  his 
fresh  soprano  voice  was  in  much  demand,  mainly  in  churches.  It  is 
recorded,  too,  that  in  1805  he  played  a  child's  role  in  an  opera.  The 
next  year,  the  Accademia  Filarmonica  elected  him  a  fellow,  just 
as  they  had  his  idol  Mozart,  thirty-six  years  before,  at  precisely  the 
same  age.  Gratified,  he  enrolled  at  the  Liceo,  and  entered  the 
counterpoint  class  of  Padre  Mattei,  a  redoubtable  pedant  whose 
method  was  to  treat  his  pupils  as  so  many  peas  in  a  pod,  and  who 
almost  killed  Rossini's  enthusiasm.  Not  quite,  however,  for  he  be- 
gan to  compose,  and  even  won  a  medal  in  counterpoint.  But  he  did 
not  finish  his  course,  as  his  family's  growing  destitution  made  it 
necessary  for  him  to  skip  fugue  in  order  to  help  support  them  by 
various  musical  odd  jobs. 

Rossini  was  eighteen  when  he  left  the  Liceo,  and  fairly  ill 
equipped  to  hang  out  his  shingle  as  a  professional  composer.  That 
did  not  hinder  him  from  accepting  a  commission  to  do  a  one-act 
opera  for  the  Teatro  San  Mose  at  Venice.  American  subjects  seem 
to  be  too  exotic  for  Italian  composers:  the  Canadian  villain  of  La 
Cambiale  di  matrimonio  is  about  as  credible  as  the  cowpunchers  of 
Puccini's  The  Girl  of  the  Golden  West,  and  the  music  cannot  be  very 
much  worse.  The  tiny  opera  was  a  success,  and  so  Rossini,  with 
coins  jingling  in  his  pockets  and  his  head  in  the  clouds,  returned 
to  Bologna.  Never  was  so  popular  and  prolific  a  talent  launched 
with  so  little  fanfare.  San  Mose  was  not  one  of  the  really  big  houses, 
but  the  applause,  that  November  night  in  1810,  gave  Rossini  the 
idea  that  opera  could  be  a  profitable  business.  As  with  George 
Sand  and  her  novels,  composing  operas  was  as  easy  for  him  as 


228  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

turning  on  a  faucet:  during  the  next  nineteen  years  he  composed 
almost  forty  of  them,  sometimes  at  the  rate  of  five  a  year.  Within 
six  years  of  his  debut  at  Venice,  he  had  achieved  performances  at 
both  of  Italy's  leading  theaters — the  San  Carlo  at  Naples  and  La 
Scala  at  Milan — and  had  written  the  most  popular  opera  of  the 
nineteenth  century. 

After  a  false  start  in  1 8 1 1,  Rossini  produced,  the  next  year,  three 
successes  and  three  failures — all  equally  forgotten,  though  Tos- 
canini  has  a  fondness  for  the  overture  to  La  Scala  di  seta — a  brightly 
colored  puppy  chasing  its  tail.  Another  of  them — La  Pietra  del 
paragone — was  mounted  at  La  Scala  in  the  autumn,  and  was 
Rossini's  first  important  success.  In  the  overture  occurs  the  earliest 
of  those  long  crescendos  which  eventually  degenerated  into  a  mere 
mannerism,  but  which  created  a  great  furore  at  the  time.  The  de- 
vice was  not  original  with  this  master  of  musical  trickery:  he  had 
lifted  it  from  others  who  did  not  know  its  strength,  but  it  helped 
largely  in  securing  fifty  performances  for  La  Pietra  del  paragone 
the  first  season.  With  Napoleon's  recruiting  sergeants  active 
throughout  Lombardy,  it  was  lucky  for  Rossini  that  the  general 
commanding  in  Milan  was  a  devotee  of  La  Pietra:  he  exempted  its 
composer  from  service — a  lucky  break  for  the  French  army, 
Rossini  said..  A  rich  crop  of  false  stories  has  grown  up  about  many 
of  those  early  operas,  but  the  truth  of  one  story  that  sounds  like  a 
myth  is  attested  by  the  score  itself.  Finding  that  a  certain  contralto 
had  only  one  good  note  in  her  voice — middle  B  flat — be  wrote  for 
her  an  aria  in  which  the  orchestra  carries  the  melody  while  she 
repeats  B  flat  ad  infinitum.  The  audience  (who  customarily  chat- 
tered and  ate  sherbet  at  that  given  point  in  the  second  act  when 
the  poor  seconda  donna  stepped  forward  to  do  her  stint)  applauded 
in  a  rapture,,  the  singer  was  transported  at  being  noticed  at  all, 
and  the  composer  patted  himself  on  the  back. 

Rossini  wrote  only  four  operas  in  1813,  the  first  of  which — R 
Signor  Bruschino—vfa.&  first  produced  in  the  United  States  in  De- 
cember, 1932,  at  the  Metropolitan,  as  a  curtain  raiser  to  Richard 
Strauss3  Elektm—z.  clever  stroke  of  musical  contrast  that  left  the 
conservatives  in  the  audience  with  an  uneasy  feeling  that  they 
had  won  a  famous  victory.  The  libretto  is  a  wearisome  comedy  of 
errors  based  on  willfully  mistaken  identities,  which  Rossini  has 
honored  with  a  delicious  and  lighthearted  score.  As  it  abounds  m 


ROSSINI  229 

outrageously  bujfa  effects,  the  Venetians  suspected  that  he  was  pok- 
ing fun  at  them,  and  would  have  none  of  Mr.  Bruschino  and  his 
son.  Offenbach  revised  it  for  the  frivolous  Parisians  of  the  Second 
Empire;  they  took  it  to  their  hearts,  and  today  it  is  the  earliest  of 
Rossini's  operas  likely  to  remain  in  the  roster.  Far  different  was  the 
effect  on  the  Venetians  of  Tancredi^  a  serious  opera  cut  on  rather 
grandiose  lines,  and  based  on  Voltaire  out  of  Tasso.  The  overture, 
though  borrowed  from  an  earlier  opera,  smote  the  first-nighters 
with  an  impact  of  spurious  freshness,  and  one  of  the  arias — "D£ 
tanti  palpiti" — caught  like  wildfire,  and  overnight  became  a  public 
nuisance.  In  Tancredi,  Rossini  took  a  hint  from  Mozart,  and  began 
to  give  the  orchestra  a  more  important  and  expressive  role  than 
Italian  composers  usually  did.  His  next  offering  to  Venice,  which 
he  now  held  completely  in  thrall,  was  a  comedy — Ultaliana  in 
Algeri.  Pitts  Sanborn  has  called  this  delicious  entertainment,  with 
its  echoes  of  Haydn,  Mozart,  and  Ciniarosa,  "one  of  the  glories  of 
Rossini's  youthful  years,  when  melodies  bubbled  as  birds  sing, 
when  his  slyness  and  his  incomparable  wit  had  all  of  their  joyous 
recklessness."  The  overture  has  survived  precisely  because  it 
crystallizes  those  qualities. 

At  twenty-one  the  Swan  of  Pesaro  (for  such  was  the  nickname  of 
this  stout,  floridly  handsome  young  man  with  a  pleasing  tenor 
voice)  was  the  most  successful  composer  in  Italy,  and  though  he 
never  made  a  fortune  until  he  left  the  country,  he  was  already  sup- 
porting himself  and  his  parents  in  comfort.  And  now,  with  two 
tremendous  hits,  he  felt  established.  His  next  three  operas  were 
flops,  more  or  less  deservedly.  About  the  third  of  these  Rossini 
himself  had  no  illusions:  he  always  had  a  tender  spot  in  his  heart 
for  the  Venetians  for  listening  to  it  in  silent  martyrdom  rather 
than  throwing  brickbats  at  him.  Possibly  because  of  a  feeling  that 
he  might  be  going  stale,  he  retired  to  Bologna  for  several  months  to 
be  with  his  parents  (his  devotion  to  his  mother  was  always  mor- 
bidly intense)  and  to  think  things  out.  This  last  was  a  difficult  job, 
considering  that  as  a  result  of  Bonaparte's  escape  from  Elba  the 
town  was  soon  swarming  with  Murafs  insolent  troopers.  Rossini's 
solitude  was  rudely  but  welcomely  invaded  by  Domenico  Barbaia, 
a  preposterous  fellow  who  had  risen  from  the  scullery  to  the  direc- 
tion of  Italy's  most  important  opera  houses.  He  now  bestrode  the 
musical  life  of  Naples  like  a  colossus,  and  had  come  to  offer  Rossini 


230  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

— nay,  to  dictate  that  he  take — a  position  as  his  chief  of  staff.  The 
terms  were  fair  enough,  and  by  the  middle  of  1815  Rossini  was 
established  in  his  new  home. 

Never  did  Rossini  play  his  cards  better.  Realizing  that  Barbaia's 
Spanish  mistress,  Isabella  Colbran,  was  the  real  power  at  the  San 
Carlo,  he  soon  was  on  such  a  footing  with  her  that  supplanting  the 
impresario  in  her  affections  was  merely  a  matter  of  waiting  for  the 
strategic  moment.  He  set  out  cold-bloodedly  to  compose  an  opera 
— Elisabetta,  regina  £ Inghilterra — that  would  display  the  special 
qualities  of  her  voice  and  acting  ability.  The  sumptuously  cos- 
tumed role,  teeming  with  situations  that  ill  befit  a  virgin  queen, 
gave  her  a  wonderful  chance  to  show  off  her  statuesque  beauty. 
Colbran  played  the  part  to  the  hilt:  her  acting  rather  than  his 
music  captured  Naples  for  Rossini.  Probably  the  most  signal  proof 
of  the  diva's  affection  for  him  was  that  she  allowed  him  to  write 
out  the  vocal  ornaments  in  her  arias.  This  simple  action,  which 
today  is  taken  for  granted,  seemed  revolutionary  to  singers  ac- 
customed to  embellish  their  melodic  line  with  improvised  orna- 
ments that  sometimes  completely  distorted  it. 

With  Venice,  Milan,  and  Naples  in  his  pocket,  Rossini  took  a 
leave  of  absence,  and  laid  siege  to  Rome.  But  for  a  siege  one  needs 
siege  guns — and  he  had  provided  himself  with  birdshot.  The 
Romans  hissed  his  insultingly  careless  offering,  and  the  perpe- 
trator of  the  outrage  sent  his  mother  a  drawing  of  a  large,  straw- 
covered  bottle  known  throughout  Italy  as  &  fiasco.  Fortunately  for 
him,  he  had  signed  the  contract  for  his  second  Roman  opera  be- 
fore this  rashly  ventured  premiere.  This  time  he  himself  selected  the 
libretto — a  version  of  Beaumarchais5  Le  Barbier  de  Seville — and 
worked  on  it  with  such  ardor  that  within  a  fortnight  he  had  pro- 
duced a  complete  opera.  One  of  the  reasons  that  he  finished  it  so 
expeditiously  was  that  he  borrowed  numbers  from  five  of  his  earlier 
operas.  However,  the  new  material  is  so  fresh,  so  apparently 
eternal,  that,  even  with  his  wholesale  plagiarizings  from  himself, 
his  accomplishment  remains  a  miracle.  Verdi,  himself  an  occa- 
sional high-speed  artist,  only  partly  explained  it  away  by  saying 
that  Rossini  must  have  been  revolving  the  music  in  his  mind  long 
before  he  began  to  write  it  down. 

First  produced  at  the  Teatro  di  Torre  Argentina  on  February 
20,  1816,  The  Barber  of  Seville  was  a  resounding  failure.  Out  of 


ROSSINI  231 

deference  to  the  aged  Giovanni  Paisiello,  who  for  almost  half  a 
century  had  held  musical  sway  over  Naples,  and  whose  setting  of 
the  same  Beaumarchais  libretto  had  once  been  popular,  and  was 
still  well  known  in  Italy,  Rossini  introduced  his  own  version  under 
the  title  of  Almaviva,  ossia  V  inutile  precauzione.  Useless  precaution  it 
was,  indeed,  for  Paisiello  from  his  very  deathbed — he  died  early 
the  following  June — seems  to  have  posted  a  claque  in  the  house  in 
order  to  strangle  the  opera  in  its  cradle.  With  the  help  of  several 
ludicrous  accidents,  Paisiello's  plotting  ruined  the  first  night. 
Rossini  rushed  home  sure  that  all  was  lost,  though  \vhen  some 
friends  came  to  console  him  he  was  asleep — or  pretending  to  be. 
The  next  night  he  absented  himself  on  a  plea  of  illness.  This  time 
his  friends  roused  him  with  better  news:  the  Romans  had  showrn  a 
measured  but  definite  liking  for  The  Barber.  Other  cities  made  up 
for  Rome's  reticence.  Within  a  season  or  two,  it  became  the  rage 
of  Italy,  and  then — in  a  space  of  but  few  years — of  Europe.  On 
November  29,  1825,  ^ess  than  ten  years  after  its  premiere,  it  reached 
New  York* — the  first  opera  to  be  sung  there  in  Italian — brought 
thither  by  Manuel  Garcia,  the  original  Almaviva  of  the  Rome 
cast.  It  became  the  most  popular  opera  of  the  nineteenth  century, 
and  though  newer  operas  have  forced  it  from  first  place,  it  shows 
no  signs  of  being  shelved.  Today  Rossini's  Barber  is  more  than  a 
century  and  a  quarter  old,  and  still  in  the  best  of  health. 

As  one  of  the  two  signal  triumphs  of  the  pure  buffa  spirit  in 
music,  The  Barber  of  Seville  ranks  with  Le  Nozze  di  Figaro.  Both  are 
based  on  Beaumarchais — they  are,  in  fact,  Books  I  and  II  of  the 
same  great  story — but  there,  in  the  deepest  sense,  the  resemblance 
ends.  Where  Mozart  is  delicate  and  witty,  Rossini  is  deft  and 
comic.  Both  the  Austrian  and  the  Italian  are  sophisticated,  but  of 
Rossini's  of-the-world  worldliness  there  is  no  trace  in  Mozart.  Le 
Nozze  rises  to  ineffable  tenderness  in  its  love  scenes;  The  Barber  is 
supremely  the  music  of  gallantry — gay,  mocking,  kno\ving,  of  un- 
flawed  superficiality.  Best  to  sum  up  the  difference  between  these 
two  masterpieces,  one  must  call  in  the  aid  of  metaphysics:  The 
Barber  is  a  great  opera  bujfai  Le  Nozze  is  a  great  opera  in  the  buffa 
style. 

The  Barber  abounds  in  music  which  for  sheer  gaiety,  brio,  and 
irreverence  has  never  been  surpassed.  Hardened  operagoers  will 

*  An  abridged  version  had  been  presented  there  as  early  as  1819. 


232  MEN    CXF    MUSIC 

not  be  inclined  to  dispute  the  statement  that  it  is  one  of  a  pitiably- 
meager  number  of  operas  that  are  long  but  seem  short.  The  pace  is 
breathless,  from  the  brilliant  overture*  to  the  hearty  finale  where 
all  loose  ends  are  tied  together  in  the  tidiest  way  possible.  That 
immortal  piece  of  nose-thumbing,  the  "Largo  al  factotum"  comes 
dangerously  early  in  the  first  act,  but  what  follows  is  so  good  that 
there  is  no  sense  of  anticlimax.  A  half  hour  later  comes  "Una  voce 
poco  fa"  an  extravagant  but  singularly  apt  outburst  of  vocal 
bravura.  A  fine  bass  aria  (Rossini  was  one  of  the  first  to  use  this 
voice  importantly  in  opera)  known  as  the  "Calumny  Song"  was 
made  the  focal  point  of  a  remarkable — possibly  (since  it  tended  to 
upset  the  equilibrium  of  the  opera  as  a  whole)  a  too  remarkable — 
performance  by  the  late  Feodor  Chaliapin.  To  list  the  good  things 
in  The  Barber  would  be  to  name  substantially  every  number  in  it. 
However,  some  absurdities  have  crept  in,,  notably  in  the  "Lesson 
Scene."  Rossini  had  written  some  very  effective  music  for  the  con- 
tralto who  created  the  role  of  Rosina,  but  when  it  was  transposed 
for  coloratura  soprano  (then,  as  now,  wanting  to  outdo  the  flute), 
the  original  music  was  discarded,  and  the  Rosina  of  the  occasion 
allowed  to  choose  her  own,  her  own  usually  being  anything  suffi- 
ciently gymnastic  and  unmusical.  That  superb  showwoman^ 
Adelina  Patti,  considered  by  oldsters  as  the  greatest  of  Rosinas, 
first  discovered  that  she  could  actually  interpolate  such  an  anach- 
ronistic, and  voice-resting,  ditty  as  Home,  Sweet  Home,  and  get 
away  with  it.  She  had,  in  fact,,  nothing  quite  so  sure-fire  in  her  bag 
of  tricks. 

Back  in  Naples  after  The  Barber,  Rossini  rested.  In  September, 
he  brought  out  a  flop,  and  then,  toward  the  end  of  the  year,  burst 
forth  like  a  nova,  composing — in  the  six-month  period  from  De- 
cember, 1816,  to  May,  1817 — three  of  his  finest  scores.  Colbran 
was  by  now  his  obsession,  and  he  strove  to  find  a.  role  that  would 
display  the  more  pathetic  side  of  her  histrionic  ability.  That  of 
Desdemona,  in  Shakespeare's  Othello,  seemed  promising.  So  far,  so 
good.  But  next,  as  if  bent  upon  proving  that  bis  choice  of  an  effec- 
tive libretto  for  The  Barber  had  been  utterly  fortuitous,  he  allowed  a 
highborn  hack  to  tinker  with  the  story.  The  resulting  ravages, 
briefly,  were  these:  the  Moor  was  reduced  to  a  bundle  of  nerves, 

*  Not  the  original  one,  which  was  lost  soon  after  the  first  Rome  season.  What  we 
hear  had  done  service,  for  two,  earlier  operas  before  being  attached  to.  Tk&  Barber. 


ROSSINI  233 

lago  became  a  Relentless  Rudolph,  and  Desdemona  became  even 
more  feeble-minded  than  she  is  in  Shakespeare.*  Rossini  lavished 
on  this  pitiable  makeshift  some  of  his  most  beautiful  music,  par- 
ticularly in  the  third  act  (which  the  librettist  had  tampered  with 
least)  ,  and  everything  about  Otello  bespeaks  his  earnest  devotion  to 
the  task  of  creating  a  serious  opera.  Here,  for  the  first  time,  Italian 
opera  caught  up  with  the  up-to-date  productions  of  the  French  and 
German  composers:  the  piano-supported  recitative  was  abandoned 
for  continuous  orchestral  background,  thus  permitting  whole 
scenes  to  be  conceived  as  uninterrupted  musical  units.  Otello  was 
for  more  than  half  a  century  one  of  the  most  popular  operas  of  the 
standard  repertoire,  and  might  still  be  sung  today  if  it  had  not  been 
superseded  by  one  of  the  masterpieces  of  Verdi's  old  age,  which, 
moreover,  had  the  advantage  of  a  superb  libretto  by  Arrigo  Boito. 

In  La  Cenerentola,  produced  at  Rome  on  January  25,  1817,  Ros- 
sini recoiled  from  seriousness  as  far  as  possible,  reverting  to  buff  a. 
As  he  had  a  lifelong  aversion  to  representing  the  supernatural 
on  the  stage  (in  sharp  contradistinction  to  Weber),  he  instructed 
his  tame  librettist  to  excise  the  fairy  element  from  this  version  of 
the  Cinderella  legend,  and  so  left  the  heroine  little  more  than  a 
poor  slavey  who  outwits  her  flashy,  scheming  sisters  and  dishonest 
father  at  their  own  game.  La  Cenerentola  is  definitely  something  not 
to  take  the  children  to.  The  score  is  second  only  to  that  -of  The 
Barber  in  gaiety  and  glitter,  and  though  the  libretto  leaves  much 
to  be  desired,  the  opera  is  good  entertainment  from  beginning  to 
end.  Unfortunately,  Cinderella  needs  a  florid  mezzo  voice  of  a 
sort  that  is  all  but  extinct,  and  since  the  death  of  Conchita  Su- 
pervia  no  one  has  attempted  to  sing  the  role.  Another  reason  for 
the  opera's  disappearance  from  the  stage  is  that  it  belongs,  as  one 
of  Rossini's  early  biographers  said,  "to  the  composite  order  of 
operatic  architecture3  J:  that  is,  much  of  it,  including  the  overture, 
is  borrowed  indiscriminately  from  his  earlier  operas,  and  therefore 
does  not  fit  the  spirit  of  La  Cemrentola.  He  even  called  in  another 
composer  to  supply  two  arias. 

In  May,  1817,  Rossini  made  a  triumphal  return  to  La  Scala 

*  The  modern  dislike  of  unhappy  endings  is  not  modern.  At  many  performances 
of  Otello^  it  was  found  necessary  to  close  with  a  reconciliation  scene  between  the 
Moor  and  Ms  bride.  When  the  tragedy  was  allowed  to  run  its  course,  the  audience 
turned  the  action  into  farce  by  audibly  warning  Desdemona  that  Othello  was  coin- 
ing to  strangle  her. 


234  MEN   OF 

with  the  third  opera  of  this  notable  group — La  Gazza  ladra,  a 
picaresque  tale  of  a  thieving  magpie.  As  he  was  in  disgrace  with  the 
Milanese  as  the  result  of  two  consecutive  failures  in  their  city,  he 
took  special  pains  with  all  details  of  this  new  work.  He  found  a 
story  with  wide  variety  of  appeal — it  contains  almost  all  type  dra- 
matic situations  except  pure  tragedy — and  set  it  not  only  with 
inspired  intuition  but  also  with  an  intelligent  grasp  of  the  subtle 
relationships  of  character,  incident,  and  music.  He  gave  such  un- 
precedented importance  to  the  orchestra  that  Stendhal,  his  first 
biographer,  complained  of  the  heaviness  of  the  scoring:  up  to  this 
point  he  had  yielded  to  none  in  his  worship  of  Rossini,  but  from 
now  on  he  insisted  on  regarding  him  (with  qualifications)  as  an 
angel  who  had  been  tempted  by  the  Germans,  and  had  fallen.  But 
surrendering  to  the  Germans  was  not  a  mortal  sin  in  1817,  and 
soon  La  Gazza  was  being  sung  from  one  end  of  Europe  to  another. 
In  1833  this  ubiquitous  magpie  came  ashore  at  New  York,  and 
warbled  under  the  aegis  of  no  less  a  personage  than  Mozart's  erst- 
while librettist,  Lorenzo  da  Ponte,  and  was  used  to  inaugurate  the 
city's  first  Italian  opera  house,  at  Church  and  Leonard  Streets. 
Given  an  adequate  cast.  La  Gazza  could  be  successfully  revived 
today:  the  overture  (which  really  has  a  bearing  on  what  follows) 
has  a  symphonic  solidity  and  a  distinction  of  contour  that  place  it 
alongside  that  to  William  Tell,  while  many  of  the  arias  and  con- 
certed numbers  are  among  the  best  Rossini  ever  contrived.  La 
Gazza  might  well  have  passed  the  tests  of  so  severe  a  critic  as  Gluck, 
so  sensitively  does  the  music  further  the  action. 

Little  in  the  next  five  years  of  Rossini's  life  need  detain  anyone 
except  the  professional  student  of  musical  history.  He  wrote  a 
dozen  operas,  most  of  which  were  successful.  Their  titles  mean 
about  as  much  to  us  now  as  those  of  Irving  Berlin's  musical  come- 
dies will  mean  to  our  great-grandchildren.  The  music  is,  in  most 
cases,  as  dead  as  the  librettos,  though  Rossini  later  transformed 
two  of  the  scores  into  extraordinarily  successful  French  operas. 
Many  of  these  productions  he  devised  as  stellar  vehicles  for  Isa- 
bella Colbran,  who  by  this  time  was  openly  his  mistress,  apparently 
with  Barbaia  complaisant.  As  Colbran's  voice  and  beauty  were 
both  fading,  and  as,  on  the  other  hand,  Rossini  was  the  darling  of 
Italy,  it  will  be  understood  why  Barbaia  had  so  little  difficulty  in 
seeing  everything  and  saying  nothing.  Probably  he  was  as  tired  of 


ROSSINI  235 

Colbran  as  Naples  was.  On  more  than  one  occasion,  the  excitable 
Neapolitans  flared  out  against  the  aging  Spanish  passion  flower 
whose  tiresome  singing  out  of  tune  they  could  more  easily  forgive 
than  her,  and  Barbaia's,  espousal  of  the  unpopular  royalist  cause. 
Her  sultry  wiles  as  the  Lady  of  the  Lake,  in  a  curious  version  that 
poor  Walter  Scott  would  never  have  recognized,  merely  aroused  a 
derisive  demonstration  Rossini  thought  was  directed  against  him- 
self. A  stagehand  appeared  with  a  request  that  he  take  a  bow. 
Rossini  knocked  the  fellow  down,  and  left  at  once  for  Milan, 
where  he  told  everyone  that  La  Donna  del  lago  had  been  a  bang-up 
success.  This  was  (he  thought)  a  lie.  Meanwhile,  however,  news  of 
the  acclamation  that  greeted  La  Donna's  second  night  had  reached 
Milan,  and  Rossini's  bitter  jest  at  himself  missed  fire. 

On  July  20,  1820,  the  Neapolitans  revolted,  and  drove  Ferdi- 
nand I  from  his  capital,  also  eventually  affecting  the  fortunes  of 
Barbaia,  Colbran,  and  Rossini.  Barbaia,  as  an  avowed  favorite  of 
the  King,  was  temporarily  ruined,  and  began  to  lay  plans  for 
emigrating;  Colbran,  whose  fortunes  still  depended  on  his,  suffered 
further  eclipse;  finally,  Rossini,  tired  of  Naples  anyway,  wras  only 
waiting  for  his  contract  to  run  out,  and  used  the  crowd's  hostility 
to  his  friends  as  a  good  excuse  for  leaving.  The  trio  lingered  in 
Naples  until  February,  1822,  when  Rossini  took  farewell  of  the 
San  Carlo  with  %elmira,  a  score  with  which  he  had  taken  particular 
pains.*  It  was  a  triumph  even  Colbran  seems  to  have  shared,  and 
she  and  Rossini  left  in  a  blaze  of  glory.  The  very  day  after  %elmra 
closed,  they  started  for  Vienna,  where  Barbaia  had  found  a  new 
and  lucrative  berth  for  himself.  They  broke  their  journey  at 
Bologna,  and  there,  on  March  16,  1822,  Gioacchino  Antonio 
Rossini  made  Isabella  Angela  Colbran  a  married  woman.  Whether 
he  married  her  out  of  deference  to  his  mother's  prejudice  in  favor 
of  legitimacy,  or  because  she  had  a  tidy  annual  income,  remains  an 
open  question:  doubtless  both  factors  swayed  Rossini  in  his  deci- 
sion. What  is  certain  is  that  by  the  time  he  got  around  to  marrying 
Colbran,  the  great  days  of  their  romance  were  past.  He  was  thirty, 
she  thirty-seven. 

A  week  after  their  wedding,  the  Rossinis  were  in  Vienna.  The 
dashing  maestro^  fame  was  already  at  the  boiling  point  there,  and 

*  Not,  however,  out  of  love  for  the  Neapolitans.  %elmira  had  been  devised  espe- 
cially for  Vienna,  and  he  was  using  th**,  San  Carlo  merely  as  a  tryout  house. 


236  MEN     OF    MUSIC 

he  had  only  to  make  his  entry  into  the  city  to  carry  all  before  him. 
There  were,  of  course,  anti-Rossinians,  but  they  soon  found  that 
the  most  exasperating  thing  about  Rossini  was  that  it  was  im- 
possible to  fight  him:  he  disarmed  his  enemies  with  a  smile.  Several 
of  his  operas  ware  produced  with  such  success  that  the  sick  and 
nervous  Weber,  struggling  with  the  score  of  Euryanthe,  was  seized 
with  alarm — it  boded  ill  that  German  opera  was  being  betrayed 
in  its  very  citadel.  Vienna  was  soon  in  the  throes  of  Rossiniosis: 
everyone  from  emperor  to  artisan  had  the  symptoms — a  feverish 
rurn-tum-tum  in  the  head  and  a  tripping  tongue.  Austria's  most 
notable  musicians  were  not  immune.,  Schubert  succumbed,  and 
even  Beethoven,  who  was  seeing  no  one,  allowed  the  charmer  to 
wait  upon  him.  The  titan  warned  Rossini  to  stay  away  from 
serious  opera,,  and  advised  him  to  "give  us  plenty  of  Barbers" 
Rossini,  literally  under  the  spell  of  the  "Eroica"  which  he  had  just 
heard  for  the  first  time,  and  outraged  by  the  sordidness  of  Bee- 
thoven's surroundings  and  his  apparent  neglect,,  tried  vainly  to 
persuade  his  own  rich  admirers  to  join  him  in  providing  hand- 
somely for  the  greatest  of  living  composers.  Rossini's  Viennese 
visit  ended  with  a  testimonial  banquet  at  which  he  was  presented 
with  a  silver  vase  containing  thirty-five  hundred  ducats. 

Rossini  was  now  so  famous  that  Metternich  invited  him  to  at- 
tend that  extraordinary  gathering  of  high  society  known  to  history 
as  the  Congress  of  Verona,  pointing  out  that  naturally  the  God  of 
Harmony  was  needed  for  its  success.  Here,  then,  while  the  Holy 
Alliance  dawdled  over  the  Greek  Question  and  the  Spanish  Ques- 
tion and  the  Italian  Question,  Rossini  served  up  a  series  of  com- 
pletely uninspired  cantatas  fitting  to  the  occasion.  He  met  Alexander 
I,  sang  at  a  party  at  the  Duke  of  Wellington's,  and  received  a  large 
collection  of  snuffboxes.  The  Congress  of  Verona  was  not  a  suc- 
cess, musically  or  politically. 

The  hero's  next  destination  was  Venice,  the  scene  of  his  debut. 
His  return  was  inglorious.  The  Venetians  hissed  the  indifferent 
vehicle  he  had  chosen  for  his  reappearance*  though  it  appears  that 
their  real  venom  was  aimed  at  Signora  Rossini,  whose  now 
mediocre  voice  was  not  improved  by  a  throat  ailment.  Rossini 
retired  sulking  to  his  palazzo,  and  in  thirty  days  composed  one  of 
his  longest,  most  carefully  constructed,  and  impressive  works. 
This  was  his  last  Italian  opera,  Semiramide^  the  pompous  but  work- 


ROSSINI  237 

able  libretto  of  which  was  furnished  by  that  same  Gaetano  Rossi 
who  had  perpetrated  the  flimsy  nothing  on  which  he  had  first 
tried  his  hand  thirteen  years  before.  On  the  gore  and  incest  of 
Rossi's  monumental  chronicle  of  Babylon's  sensational  queen  and 
her  lover-son,  Rossini  turned  his  full  battery  of  tricks:  a  large 
patchwork  overture  in  quasi-Weberian  style,  vocal  fioriture  of  the 
most  shameless  sort,  a  monstrous  example  of  his  own  peculiar 
crescendo.  These  did  not  suffice  for  the  shattering  effect  at  which 
he  was  aiming,  so  he  put  a  brass  band  on  the  stage.  It  may  not 
sound  so,  but  all  this  was  calculated  to  a  nicety:  after  its  premiere 
on  February  3,  1823,  Semiramide  ran  solidly  for  a  month  at  the 
Fenice,  and  for  several  decades  was  everywhere  considered  Ros- 
sini's chef-d'oeuvre.  There  was  something  in  it  that  got  in  people's 
blood;  it  went  capitally,  it  seems,  with  deep  draughts  of  after- 
dinner  port,  three-decker  romances,  the  Exposition  of  1851,  and 
the  opening  of  the  Crystal  Palace.  But  all  things  pass — even  the 
Crystal  Palace — and  Semiramide  passed  with  the  follies  of  our 
grandparents.  With  quite  amazing  good  taste,  the  Metropolitan 
has  refrained  from  reviving  it  since  1895,  when  the  combined 
talents  of  Melba,  Scalchi,  and  Edouard  de  Reszke  failed  to  re- 
establish it.  Paging  through  its  yellowed  score  is  like  ransacking  a 
what-not:  there  are  some  pretty  and  affecting  odds  and  ends,  but 
an  awful  lot  of  trash.  As  to  the  famous  overture,  it  is  almost  as 
popular  as  that  to  William  Tell.,  and  is  possibly  one  tenth  as  good. 
But  even  it  is  losing  concert  status,  and  is  fast  becoming  a  mere 
brass-band  fixture. 

Composing  Semiramide  silenced  Rossini  for  more  than  two  years, 
and  the  rest  of  Europe's  professional  operatic  composers  breathed  a 
sigh  of  relief.  He  was  by  all  odds  the  most  talked-of  musician  in 
the  world,*  and  was  besieged  by  bids  for  his — and,  tactfully, 
Signora  Rossini's — services.  He  accepted  one  from  the  King's 
Theater  in  London,  probably  intending  to  settle  permanently  in 
England,  On  his  way,  however,  he  saw  Paris,  and  glimpsed  some- 
thing better.  The  charm  of  Parisian  life  and  the  possibility  of  be- 
coming the  arbiter  of  French  music  were  uppermost  in  his  mind 

*  In  1823,  Rossini  could  boast  that  twenty-three  of  his  operas  were  running  in 
various  parts  of  the  world.  The  Sultan  of  Turkey  instructed  his  brass  band  to  play 
selections  from  them,  and  in  far-off,  chaotic  Mexico  one  of  them  was  given  at  Vera 
Cruz.  They  were  the  favorite  music  of  Italy,  Russia,  Portugal,  Spain,  and  South 
America. 


238  MEN     OF    MUSIC 

during  the  extremely  uncomfortable  Channel  crossing  and  on  his 
arrival  in  London — it  was  a  hellishly  cold  December  day,  and  he 
had  caught  a  chill.  During  the  season  he  made  175,000  francs, 
was  repeatedly  honored  by  George  IV,  and  was  lavishly  enter- 
tained by  everyone  that  mattered.  The  King  made  a  special  trip 
up  from  Brighton  to  hear  his  fat  friend  sing  at  the  Duke  of  Well- 
ington's house.  Some  of  the  more  serious  Londoners  were  an- 
noyed at  this  expensive  dawdling:  though  his  operas  were  running 
(he  even  sometimes  deigned  to  conduct),  and  he  pretended  to  be 
writing  a  new  opera  for  them  (which  never  materialized) ,  as  far 
as  they  could  see  he  had  become  just  another  Italian  singer.  The 
only  new  work  he  actually  gave  London  was  a  vocal  octet  called 
The  Plaint  of  the  Abuses  on  the  Death  of  Lord  Byron.  While  he  was 
getting  rich  on  the  English,  and  philosophically  doing  nothing 
about  the  shambles  which  was  English  music  in  the  year  1824, 
he  was  negotiating  with  the  French  ambassador  to  return  to  Paris 
and  assume  direction  of  the  Theatre  Italien. 

During  Rossini's  brief  tenure  of  office  at  the  Italien,  he  devoted 
most  of  his  time  to  learning  French  and  studying  Parisian  taste  in 
music.  He  showed  Paris  how  his  own  music  should  be  performed, 
successfully  introducing  several  operas  not  heard  there  before,  and 
winning  his  audience  over  to  others  they  had  disliked  under  earlier 
conductors.  He  launched  Meyerbeer  on  his  career  as  the  eventual 
idol  of  Paris  by  producing  the  best  of  that  parvenu's  Rossinian 
operas  in  1825.  But  as  a  composer  he  himself  seems  to  have  been  in 
a  period  of  slothfulness.  While  at  the  Italien  his  sole  new  offering 
was  a  one-act  opera-cantata — II  Viaggio  a  Reims — which,  more- 
over, was  nothing  but  a  pastiche  of  much  old  material,  a  few  new 
numbers,  and  arrangements  of  seven  national  anthems.  First  pro- 
duced on  June  19,  1825,  •#  Viaggio ,  which  died  after  its  third  per- 
formance, celebrated  Charles  X's  coronation  progress  to  Rheims, 
and  is  notable  for  two  departures  from  Rossini's  usual  tact:  he  set 
an  event  in  French  history  to  Italian  words,  and  its  single  act  lasted 
three  hours. 

Not  unnaturally,  Rossini  was  criticized  as  a  trifler,  and  was  com- 
pared unfavorably  with  serious  people  like  Spontini  and  Weber, 
who  disdained  pastiches.  But  in  Paris,  at  least,  he  had  reasons  for 
idleness.  He  was  ill  and  unnerved  by  the  insecurity  of  his  position, 
for  his  contract  at  the  Italien  was  for  but  eighteen  months.  He  was 


ROSSINI  239 

wheedled  into  something  like  his  old  activity  only  by  a  brevet  from 
Charles  X  as  premier  compositeur  du  roi  et  inspecteur  general  du  chant  en 
France,  a  reward  for  his  rehabilitating  labors  at  the  Italien.  Digging 
down  into  his  luggage,  Rossini  extracted  the  manuscript  of 
Maometto  II,  a  second-rate  opera  that  had  persistently  failed.  This 
he  all  but  rewrote  to  the  words  of  a  new  French  libretto,  and  in- 
troduced it  at  the  Opera  on  October  9,  1826,  under  the  title  of 
Le  Siege  de  Corinthe.  Three  factors  assured  its  success:  the  dramatic 
intensity  of  the  music,  a  superb  cast,  and  a  French  libretto  il- 
lustrating an  incident  in  the  Greek  struggle  for  independence  from 
the  Turks.  As  the  Greek  cause  was  very  fashionable  in  Paris  at 
the  time,  and  Rossini  was  well  aware  that  most  of  the  enthusiasm 
at  the  premiere  was  inspired  by  the  cause  and  not  the  music,  he 
tactfully  refrained  from  taking  a  bow.  Soon,  however,  Le  Siege 
established  itself  on  its  musical  merits,  and  Rossini  became  a  suc- 
cessful French  composer. 

The  exacting  standards  of  his  French  confreres  and  audiences 
were  salient  in  shaping  the  unusually  solid  construction  of  Le 
Siege,  and  may  have  been  partly  responsible  for  his  delay  in  writing 
a  large  work  for  the  French  stage.  He  realized,  no  doubt,  that  he 
could  no  longer  get  by  with  his  careless  Italian  formulas.  For  the 
first  time  he  boldly  abandoned  his  elaborate  vocal  ornamentation 
and  superficial  tricks  for  a  larger  architecture  and  a  simpler 
melodic  line.  His  next  effort,  a  resetting  of  Mose  in  Egittoy  which  ii* 
its  Italian  form  had  already  won  favor  in  Paris,  showed  even  more 
clearly  that  Rossini  had  been  converted  to  careful  workmanship. 
Here,  with  a  libretto  completely  lacking  in  fad  appeal,  he  tri- 
umphed more  signally.  Called  simply  Mo'ise,  it  opened  at  the 
Opera  on  March  26,  1827.  ^n  effect  partly  opera,  partly  cantata, 
Mo'ise  is  yet  a  work  of  quite  notable  unity.  Its  choral  writing  is 
often  magnificent,  the  culminating  point  being  the  prayer  of  the 
Jews  for  safe  passage  through  the  Red  Sea.  These  choruses  were  its 
fortune  in  England  when,  because  of  the  prudishness  that  forbade 
Biblical  personages  being  depicted  on  the  stage,  Moise  was  adapted 
there  as  an  oratorio.  It  put  the  final  stamp  of  unqualified  official 
and  popular  approval  on  Rossini.  The  venerable  and  austere 
Cherubini,  from  his  throne  at  the  Conservatoire,  declared  magis- 
terially that  he  was  pleasantly  surprised.  And  Balzac  looked  up 


240  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

from  the  composition  of  La  Comedie  humaine  to  pronounce  Mo'ise  "a 
tremendous  poem  in  music." 

Rossini  should  have  been  supremely  happy — but  he  was  not. 
During  the  final  rehearsals  of  Mom,  he  heard  that  his  mother  had 
died.  He  was  still  tenderly  devoted  to  her,  and  recovered  slowly 
and  painfully  from  the  shock.  He  was  lonely,,  and  now,  desperately 
seeking  some  living  tie  with  his  mother,  invited  his  father  to  come 
and  live  with  him  in  Paris.  From  Isabella  he  asked  no  solace:  a 
coldness  had  grown  up  between  them,  and  for  years  she  had  been 
living  at  her  villa  near  Bologna.  His  father's  presence  gradually 
produced  the  desired  effect:  Rossini  roused  himself  from  his  stupor 
of  grief,  and  admitted  to  himself  that  as  the  ruler  of  musical  Paris 
he  owed  something  to  his  subjects.  He  called  in  Eugene  Scribe, 
the  most  famous  of  French  librettists,  and  together  they  concocted 
a  comic  opera,  Le  Comte  Ory.  No  new  work  had  been  heard  from 
Rossini's  pen  for  seventeen  months,  and  the  first-night  audience 
gave  Le  Comte  an  ovation  on  August  20,  1828.  It  betrays  the  com- 
poser's growing  Frenchification:  it  is  elegant  rather  than  brilliant, 
graceful  rather  than  brisk.  It  contains  much  delightful,  and  some 
really  fine,  music,  notably  the  orchestral  prelude  to  the  second  act, 
which  is  decidedly  Beethovian  in  quality.  But  the  Comte  lacks  The 
Barber's  peculiar  magic.  It  has  never  been  popular  outside  France, 
and  today  if  it  is  ever  revived  elsewhere  (which  seems  unlikely),  it 
will  be  as  a  mere  historical  curiosity — an  ancestor  of  the  still- 
popular  light  operas  of  Offenbach. 

Having  now  successfully  produced  three  French  operas  of  his 
own,  and  fortified  with  a  bank  account  that  allowed  him  to  indulge 
any  whim,  Rossini  decided  that  he  wanted  to  devote  all  his 
energies  to  the  writing  of  opera.  He  petitioned  Charles  X  for  the 
cancellation  of  his  contract,  and  the  granting  of  a  new  one  along 
the  following  lines:  he  promised  to  compose  five  operas  over  a 
ten-year  period,  for  each  of  which  he  was  to  receive  fifteen  thou- 
sand francs  and  a  benefit  performance;  upon  the  expiration,  laps- 
ing, or  voiding  of  this  contract  he  was  to  receive  a  life  pension  of 
six  thousand  francs  per  annum.  With  the  King  and  his  ministers 
mulling  over  these  memoranda,  Rossini  retired  to  the  palatial 
country  seat  of  his  friend,  the  banker  Aguado,  and  began  work  on 
the  first  of  these  proposed  operas.  Fondly  recalling  how  the  fash- 
ionable interest  in  the  rights  of  small  nations  had  clinched  the 


ROSSINI  241 

success  of  Le  Siege  de  Corinthe,  he  selected  Schiller's  Wilhelm  Tell 
for  dissection  by  a  trio  of  French  librettists.  They  did  a  singularly 
ugly  piece  of  work,  excelling  in  vast  deserts  of  inactivity  and  flat,, 
unrealized  characterization.  To  this  listless  fabrication  Rossini 
blithely  attached  some  of  his  most  expressive,  and  certainly  his 
most  somber,  music.  This  time  he  firmly  disdained  to  use  any  old 
material.  He  labored  over  his  script  for  at  least  six  months,  and 
then  put  it  into  rehearsal  at  the  Opera.  A  series  of  delays,  more  or 
less  accurately  explained  in  the  press,  raised  anticipation  to  fever 
pitch.  The  truth  was  that  Rossini  was  himself  postponing  the 
premiere:  he  was  using  William  Tell  as  a  lever  to  force  the  signing 
of  the  contract,  and  even  threatened  to  withdraw  the  work  unless 
he  had  his  way.  Charles  X  acceded  in  April,  1829,  and  so,  on 
August  3,  Paris  heard  Rossini's  monstrous  five-acter  for  the  first 
time. 

From  the  very  beginning,  the  response  to  William  Tell  must  have 
been  unique  in  Rossini's  experience:  the  people  listened  with 
cold  respect;  the  critics  raved.  And  such,  with  minor  exceptions, 
has  been  its  history  ever  since.  In  its  original  form  it  was  insup- 
portable to  the  audience,  and  after  a  few  performances  drastic 
cuts  were  made.  One  by  one  the  acts  were  sheared  off,  until  finally 
only  Act  II  was  given.  This  process  of  erosion  got  under  Rossini's 
skin.  Years  later,  he  met  the  director  of  the  Opera  on  the  street. 
"We're  giving  the  second  act  of  Tell  tonight,"  the  director  said 
brightly.  "What!  the  whole  act?"  Rossini  replied.  The  bitterness 
of  this  jest  was  too  keen  to  be  relieved  by  the  praises  of  Bellini, 
Mendelssohn,  Wagner,  Verdi,  and  even  Berlioz,  bitterest  of  anti- 
Rossinians. 

The  low  level  of  expressiveness  in  the  operas  of  the  time  accounts 
for  much  of  the  critical  enthusiasm.  Tell  has  solid  virtues — earnest- 
ness, some  psychological  verisimilitude,  a  certain  understanding  of 
the  architecture  of  large  musical  forms.  Wagner  told  Rossini 
that  in  it  he  had  previsioned — "accidentally,"  Wagner  explained 
— some  Wagnerian  theories  of  music  drama.  Whether  or  not  Tell  is 
indeed  a  spiritual  ancestor  of  Der  Ring  des  Nibelungen,  it  certainly 
foreshadows  Wagner's  symphonic  conception  of  opera.  When  he 
was  composing  Tell,  Rossini  was  profoundly  influenced  by  the 
music  of  Beethoven.  Unfortunately,  this  led  him  to  make  many  of 
the  same  mistakes  his  idol  had  made  in  Fidelio.  There  are  passages 


MEN    OF    MUSIC 

in  Tell  that  sound  like  excerpts  from  a  symphony  with  an  irrele- 
vant vocal  obbHgato  tacked  on.  And  yet  the  score  is  not  without 
moments  of  singular  beauty.  The  second  act,  besides  being  the 
least  offensive  in  the  libretto,  contains  the  largest  proportion  of 
these,  and  Rossini  always  felt  sure  that  it  would  survive,  along 
with  the  third  act  of  Otello  and  The  Barber  of  Seville  in  its  entirety. 
Telly  even  cut  down  to  three  acts,  is  too  unwieldy  for  modern  taste, 
but  there  is  no  reason  why  a  concert  condensation  made  up  of 
Act  II,  with  a  few  other  such  expressive  numbers  as  Tell's  prayer 
from  Act  III  and  Arnold's  lovely  air  from  Act  IV,  "Asile  keredi- 
taire"  would  not  be  perennially  fresh  and  popular.  Now,  however, 
with  performances  of  Tell  so  few  and  far  between,  what  we  have  to 
judge  it  by  is  the  overture,  a  work  of  great  charm  and  attractive- 
ness. It  is  beyond  question  the  most  popular  music  Rossini  ever 
composed.  It  shows  that  Beethoven  could  really  benefit  him  when 
taken  lightly. 

Rossini  was  thirty-seven  years  old.  At  the  height  of  his  creative 
powers,  and  in  adequate,  if  not  hearty,  health,  he  had  thirty-nine 
more  years  to  live.  The  acknowledged  autocrat  of  opera,  he  now 
went  into  self-imposed  retirement,  and  never  again  wrote  for  the 
operatic  stage.  Except  for  inconsequential  chirpings,  he  broke  his 
silence  only  twice,  with  the  Stabat  Mater  and  the  Petite  Messe 
solennelle,  two  religious  works  in  his  early  buffa  style. 

There  is  no  simple,  adequate  explanation  for  this  strangest  of 
all  abdications.  Our  natural  impulse  is  to  take  Rossini's  own  words 
about  the  matter.  The  trouble  is  that  he  told  different  things  to 
different  people  on  the  few  occasions  when  he  deigned  to  explain, 
and  thus  contrived  effectually  to  throw  dust  in  the  eyes  of  pos- 
terity— a  sport  at  which  he  was  singularly  adept.  Sometimes  he 
seems  shamelessly  to  have  pulled  his  questioner's  leg,  as  when 
he  said  that  he  would  have  gone  on  writing  if  he  had  had  a  son. 
He  told  Wagner  that  composing  forty  operas  in  twenty  years  had 
exhausted  him^  and  besides,  there  were  no  singers  capable  of  per- 
forming even  them.  Again,  he  explained  that  he  quit  when  melo- 
dies no  longer  sought  him,  and  he  had  to  seek  them— which  sounds 
absurd  in  view  of  the  fertile  melodiousness  of  the  Stabat  Mater.  So 
we  are  forced  to  piece  together  our  own  reasons  for  Rossini's 
retirement.  What  superficially  started  it  was  the  Revolution  of 
1830,  which  overthrew  Charles  X,  seemingly  invalidated  Rossini's 


ROSSINI  243 

contract,  and  placed  on  the  throne  Louis-Philippe,  who,  the  com- 
poser complained,  cared  only  for  the  operas  of  Gretry.*  His  agita- 
tion over  the  (to  him)  black  political  situation  was  increased  by  his 
realization  that  he  might  have  to  share  his  throne  with  Meyerbeer, 
whose  star  was  then  rapidly  rising  in  the  musical  firmament. 
Rossini  would  not  compete,  or — what  seems  more  likely — he  could 
not. 

For  shortly  after  the  production  of  William  Tell,  Rossini's  neu- 
rosis caught  up  with  him:  it  had  revealed  itself  shyly  as  early  as 
1816,  after  the  cold  reception  of  The  Barber  of  Seville;  political 
disturbances  and  musical  rivalry  brought  it  to  a  head,  and  he 
became  more  and  more  touchy,  increasingly  hysterical.  In  1836  he 
first  boarded  a  train,  collapsed  with  fright  during  the  brief  ride 
from  Antwerp  to  Brussels,  and  was  carried  from  the  coach  in  a 
faint.  By  1848  he  was  practically  bedridden,  sometimes  on  the 
verge  of  insanity,  and  so  he  stayed  for  eight  years.  Some  attempt 
has  been  made  to  suggest  that  his  neurasthenia  and  physical  de- 
pression had  a  venereal  origin,  but  advanced  veneriens  do  not  rise 
from  their  beds,  at  the  age  of  sixty-four,  to  spend  the  last  twelve 
years  of  their  lives  making  dignified  carnival.  Which  is  exactly 
what  Rossini  did. 

In  1832,  Rossini  met  Olympe  Pelissier,  a  fascinating  French 
courtesan,  and  began  the  Stabat  Mater — by  far  the  most  important 
events  of  the  last  thirty-six  years  of  his  life.  Olympe  had  come  to 
him  with  unimpeachable  references,  having  been  the  mistress  of  a 
French  peer,  an  Anglo-American  magnate,  and  the  painter 
Vernet.  Soon  she  was  indispensable  to  him,  and  in  1847, two  years 
after  Isabella  had  died  with  Rossini's  name  on  her  lips,  they  were 
married.  For  twenty-one  years  Olyrnpe  was  Rossini's  faithful  and 
much-appreciated  wife,  and  their  domestic  bliss  was  so  unclouded 
as  to  be  positively  uninteresting  to  read  about. 

The  story  of  the  composition  of  the  Stabat  Mater  leads  one  to  be- 
lieve that  with  the  right  kind  of  wheedling  Rossini  might  have 
continued  to  write  operas.  In  1831  he  visited  Madrid  as  Aguado's 
guest,  and  was  requested  by  one  of  his  host's  clerical  friends  to 
compose  a  Stabat  Mater.  He  was  so  indebted  to  the  banker  that  he 

*  He  was  in  good  company.  Henry  Adams  tells  how  the  sixth  president,  who  was 
devoted  to  Gretry's  music,  used,  after  he  failed  of  re-election,  to  go  about  muttering 
"0,  Richard!  o  mon  roy!  Vunivers  fabandonne"  from  the  great  baritone  aria  in  Richard 
Coeur-de-lion.  But  then,  John  Qiuncy  Adams  was  always  an  eccentric. 


244  MEN   OF  MUSIC 

could  not  refuse.  Accordingly,  as  soon  as  he  returned  to  Paris,  he 
composed  the  first  six  sections;  then,  feeling  indisposed,  he  asked 
Tadolini,  conductor  at  the  Theatre  Italien,  to  complete  the  task. 
The  manuscript  was  thereupon  turned  over  to  the  Spanish  priest 
on  the  understanding  that  it  would  never  leave  his  hands.  But  the 
priest  died,  and  his  heirs  sold  the  Rossini-Tadolini  script  to  a 
French  publisher,  who  informed  Rossini  of  his  intention  to  market 
and  produce  it.  The  composer  was  furious,  and  at  once  sold  all 
rights  to  the  work  to  his  own  publisher  for  six  thousand  francs. 
Meanwhile,  he  began  to  replace  Tadolini's  efforts  with  his  own, 
and  finally,  on  January  7,  1842,  Paris  heard  another  Rossini 
premiere,  after  almost  thirteen  years  of  silence.  The  soloists  included 
the  incomparable  Giulia  Grisi,  the  romantic  Mario,  and  Tam- 
burini,  the  greatest  bass-baritone  of  the  period.  Paris  again  bowed 
to  the  old  wizard:  Heine  pronounced  Rossini's  liturgical  style 
superior  to  Mendelssohn's,  and  one  of  the  critics  reached  back  to 
the  first  performance  of  Haydn's  Creation  for  a  comparison.  All 
contemporary  sources  except  one  indicate  that  Paris  went  wild 
over  the  Stabat  Mater:  three  days  after  the  premiere,  Mme  d'Agoult 
wrote  to  Liszt  that  it  was  not  much  of  a  success. 

The  Stabat  Mater  is  a  fine  theatrical  composition  which  is  by  no 
means  out  of  place  when  performed  in  a  gay  baroque  church.  Sir 
W.  H.  Hadow  (who  was  no  prude)  flatly  called  it  "immoral,"  but 
so,  too,  by  Protestant  standards  are  some  of  the  Masses  of  Haydn 
and  Mozart.  So,  too,  pre-eminently  is  Pergolesi's  great  Stabat, 
which  Rossini  admired  so  inordinately  that  he  hesitated  to  court 
comparison  with  it  by  writing  one  himself.  It  is  partly  a  matter  of 
geography,  partly  a  matter  of  time.  We  have  come  to  recognize  a 
standard  of  expressiveness  which  may  be  interpreted  as  unimagina- 
tively as  the  letter  that  killeth,  but  which  has  the  virtue  of  demand- 
ing at  least  a  minimum  relationship  between  words  and  music.  By 
this  standard  Rossini's  Stabat  Mater  is  tasteless.  It  is  best  listened  to 
as  fragments  of  a  serious  opera,  for  as  illustrations  of  the  feelings 
of  Mary  as  she  stood  at  the  foot  of  the  cross  it  is  ridiculous — almost 
a  travesty  of  the  touching  thirteenth-century  poem  on  which  it  is 
based. 

Rossini  was  not  on  hand  for  the  premiere  of  the  Stabat  Mater.  After 
the  Revolution  of  1830,  he  loitered  in  Paris  for  six  years,  doing 
little  except  watch  with  troubled  eyes  the  Meyerbeer  comet  sweep- 


ROSSINI  245 

ing  the  heavens.  After  February  29,  1836,  the  date  of  the  first 
performance  of  Les  Huguenots,  and  Rossini's  forty-fourth  birthday 
as  well,  the  upstart's  following  equaled  his  own,  and  he  had  little 
wish  to  remain  in  Paris.  Moreover,  he  had  won  a  lawsuit:  his  con- 
tract with  the  deposed  Charles  X  was  adjudged  valid  for  the  rather 
silly  reason  that  the  King  had  signed  it  in  person,  and  his  pension 
of  six  thousand  francs  was  reapproved.  By  October,  1836,  Rossini 
was  in  Italy,  and  there  he  remained  for  almost  twenty  years.  For 
the  first  twelve  of  these  he  lived  chiefly  in  Bologna,  taking  an  ac- 
tive part  in  local  musical  politics,  and  presiding  like  a  benevolent 
despot  over  the  Liceo  Musicale,  to  which  he  made  lavish  grants. 
He  might  have  vegetated  there  until  his  death  if  in  1848  some  town 
radicals  had  not  staged  a  demonstration  against  him,  on  the 
grounds  that  he  was  a  bloated  conservative.  This  so  intimidated 
Rossini  and  Olympe,  who  were  both  ill  at  the  time,  that  they  fled 
to  Florence  the  next  day.  Rossini  soon  took  to  his  bed,  and  there 
for  the  next  eight  years,  physically  and  mentally  wretched,  he  re- 
mained. And  then,  another  flight,  this  time  from  the  Tuscan  cli- 
mate and  the  bungling  methods  of  Italian  doctors. 

Rossini  and  Olympe  drove  into  Paris  on  a  May  day  in  1855.  He 
was  an  apparently  broken  man,  and  for  more  than  a  year  those 
who  were  eager  to  do  him  homage  wondered  whether  he  had  re- 
turned to  Paris  only  to  die.  In  the  summer  of  1856,  he  was  trans- 
ported— somehow — to  Germany,  to  see  whether  taking  the  waters 
would  ease  his  last  days.  His  friends  had  gloomily  witnessed  his 
departure,  and  thought  that  was  the  last  they  would  ever  see  of 
him.  The  next  thing  they  knew  he  was  back,  and  had  opened  a 
large  apartment  at  2,  rue  de  la  Chaussge  d'Antin — a  memorable 
address  in  the  history  of  Parisian  society.  For  twelve  years — in  the 
winter  in  town,  in  the  summer  at  his  suburban  villa  at  Passy — he 
settled  down  to  the  business  of  enjoying  himself  and  making 
Olympe  happy.  His  Saturday  nights  became  a  Paris  institution, 
and  to  be  seen  there  gave  a  cachet  that  attendance  at  the  court  of 
Napoleon  the  Little  could  not.  The  story  of  Rossini's  life  became 
that  of  musical  and  artistic  Paris.  Only  the  salon  of  the  Princess 
Mathilde,  with  Taine  and  Sainte-Beuve  as  twin  deities,  compared 
with  Saturday  night  at  the  Rossinis'.  A  list  of  his  courtiers  becomes 
plethoric:  Wagner,  Liszt,  Verdi,  Patti,  Clara  Schumann,  Saint- 


246  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

Saens.  .  .  .  Properly  to  celebrate  his  own  follies,  the  shameless  old 
gentleman  settled  his  wig  on  his  bald  pate,  and  composed  a  box  of 
musical  bonbons,  mostly  for  piano  solo,  which  he  called  Peches  de 
vieillesse.  One  of  them  is  Miscarriage  of  a  Polish  Mazurka,  another  A 
Hygienic  Prelude  for  Morning  Use.,  titles  that  call  to  mind  the  amusing 
nonsense  of  Erik  Satie.  Naturally,  the  Petite  Messe  solennelleyWritttn 
in  the  summer  of  1863,  is  more  dignified  stuff.  It  lasts  two  hours, 
and  has  some  ravishing  moments,  notably  a  touching  duet  for 
soprano  and  mezzo  that  would  melt  the  heart  of  the  stoniest 
operagoer. 

In  1868,  it  being  a  leap  year,  Rossini  was  able  to  celebrate  his 
seventy-sixth*  birthday  on  February  29.  It  was  his  last.  He  was 
beginning  to  fail.  On  September  26  he  gave  his  last  Saturday 
soiree.  In  October  he  was  dying  of  old  age  and  a  complication  of 
ills — catarrh,  a  weak  heart,  a  painful  fistula.  The  fistula  was  at- 
tacked vainly,  septic  poisoning  set  in,  and  hope  was  abandoned. 
He  had  been  a  lax  communicant,  and  Pius  IX  (with  all  his  own 
troubles)  was  so  worried  for  the  repose  of  Rossini's  soul  that  he  sent 
the  papal  nuncio  to  Passy  to  administer  extreme  unction.  This 
annoyed  and  frightened  Rossini,  though  he  submitted.  So,  with 
accounts  squared,  he  passed  away  on  November  13,  1868 — a 
Friday.  Olympe  fell  across  the  body,  sobbing  hysterically,  "Ros- 
sini, I  shall  always  be  worthy  of  you." 

Much  has  happened  to  tarnish  the  glory  of  Rossini's  name  since 
the  day  when  Marietta  Alboni  and  Adelina  Patti  lifted  their 
voices  at  his  funeral  in  the  "Quis  est  homo"  from  the  Stabat  Mater. 
What  Chorley  said  as  early  as  1862 — "II  Tancredi  is  already  old, 
without  being  ancient" — now  applies  emphatically  to  almost  all  of 
Rossini's  operas.  Alone  The  Barber  of  Seville  remains  preternaturally 
young  and  supple,  miraculously  unwithered  by  the  years.  Bee- 
thoven hit  the  nail  on  the  head  when  he  advised  Rossini  to  write 
"more  Barbers"  His  failure  to  follow  this  advice  led  him  eventually 
to  found  modern  French  grand  opera — and  so  we  are  occasionally 
treated  to  at  least  a  three-act  view  of  that  wondrous  historical 
curiosity,  William  Tell.  But  today  opera  means  mainly  Wagner 

*  Purists,  allowing  for  the  fact  that  1800  was  not  a  leap  year,  will  relish  the  final 
absurdity  of  Rossini's  career — dying  more  than  three  years  before  his  nineteenth 
birthday. 


ROSSINI  247 

and  Verdi,  both  of  whom  learned  something  from  Rossini.  Much 
wider  might  be  Rossini's  province  if  his  taste  had  been  surer,  his 
intelligence  more  disciplined,  his  disregard  of  the  intellect  less 
profound.  He  would  have  composed  less,  and  the  quality  of  what 
he  composed  would  have  been  higher.  And,  who  knows? — he 
might  even  have  written  a  serious  opera  as  good  as  The  Barber  of 
Seville. 


Chapter  X 

Franz  Peter  Schubert 

(Vienna,  January  31,  lygy-November  19,  18283  Vienna) 


AFTER  enjoying  the  excellent  theater  of  Rossini's  life,  with  its 
incomparable  and  surprising  last  act,  it  is  shocking  to  turn  to 
the  sordid  little  playlet  in  which  Franz  Peter  Schubert  acted  the 
pathetic  stellar  role.  At  first  blush,  Stendhal's  savage  epitome  of 
man's  fate — "He  lived,  he  suffered,  he  died" — seems  to  fit  Schu- 
bert perfectly.  But  unlike  Rossini,  who  for  all  his  success  spent 
twenty  years  commiserating  himself,  Schubert  apparently  never 
even  realized  that  he  was  suffering.  In  those  rare  moments  when 
he  was  not  composing,  and  had  a  chance  to  think  things  over,  he 
sensed  that  life  was  hard.  But  by  and  large  his  life,  which  seems  a 
tragedy  to  us,  did  not  seem  one  to  him.  The  fact  that  a  richly  en- 
dowed natural  genius  should  have  been  a  pauper,  humiliating 
himself  constantly  to  earn  less  than  a  living,  is  so  unbearable  that 
addicts  of  the  peculiar  sort  of  magic  Schubert  alone  was  able  to 
weave,  refusing  to  face  the  harsh  reality  of  his  life,  have  romanti- 
cized him  into  the  hero  of  Blossom  Time.  But  there  is  no  evidence 
that  Schubert  himself  ever  felt  his  penury  more  acutely  than  when 
he  was  casting  around  vainly  for  the  insignificant  trifle  he  needed 
for  a  walking  tour.  Even  his  death  at  the  age  of  thirty-one,  pos- 
sibly before  his  powers  had  reached  their  full — even  his  death, 
which  to  us  seems  so  tragic,  so  wasteful,  was  robbed  of  its  terror  for 
him,  for  he  had  no  premonition  of  it,  and  until  the  very  end  was 
living  in  the  moment  as  he  always  had. 

Schubert  had  no  thought  but  music.  Furthermore,  he  had  no 
time  for  anything  else.  The  place  of  friends  in  Schubert's  life  has 
been  much  emphasized  by  biographers,  and  yet  his  attitude  to 
them  was  affectionately  wayward,  a  shade  this  side  of  perfunctory. 
As  enthusiasts  for  his  music,  they  impinged  upon,  but  never  en- 
tered, his  private  universe.  And  this  private  universe — what  was 
it?  It  was  nothing  less  than  a  reservoir  of  the  imagination  fed  from  a 
thousand  freshets,  constantly  welling  over,  constantly  tapped,  con- 
stantly renewed.  Within,  there  was  seldom  room  for  anything  ex- 
cept melody  and  the  need  to  use  it  poetically.  At  this  point,  the 

248 


SCHUBERT  249 

contrast  with  Beethoven  is  instructive:  no  such  freshets  poured  into 
the  dark  tarn  of  his  imagination,  and  his  notebooks  prove  that  his 
store  of  the  raw  matter  of  music  was,  compared  with  Schubert's, 
meager.  But  in  the  tortured  process  of  shaping  his  ideas,  Bee- 
thoven's spacious  intellect,  focused  savagely  and  indomitably  on 
the  material,  was  quickened  by  the  ideal  of  perfection.  Beethoven 
had  his  vast  failures,  but  when  he  succeeded,  the  conscious  creative 
labor  had  been  gauged  perfectly  to  the  highest  potency  of  the 
musical  ideas.  This  sort  of  creative  labor  was  foreign  to  Schubert, 
though  not  necessarily  beyond  his  capabilities.  He  "whelmed" — 
his  own  word — his  ideas  down  on  paper,  and  then  tossed  the  paper 
into  a  drawer.  The  pressure  of  new  musical  ideas  left  him  no  peace 
for  the  perfecting  of  those  he  had  already  noted  down. 

It  is  no  accident  that  this  man,  to  whom  melody  came  more 
easily  than  speech,,  to  whom,  indeed,  it  was  literally  as  natural  as 
singing  is  to  birds,  should  have  excelled  in  the  writing  of  songs.  For 
a  song,  more  than  any  other  musical  form,  can  be  set  down  in  one 
lyrical  inspiration.  Schubert  looked  at  any  poem,  good,  bad,  or  in- 
different, and  instantly  a  melody  came  into  his  head.  And  nothing 
could  stop  a  melody  when  it  was  on  its  way.  Take,  for  example,  the 
almost  incredible  story  of  the  composition  of  Hark,  Hark,  the  Lark! 
On  a  summer  afternoon  in  1826,  Schubert  was  sitting  in  a  noisy 
beer  garden,  and  idly  turning  over  the  pages  of  a  German  transla- 
tion of  Shakespeare.  All  of  a  sudden  he  exclaimed,  "The  loveliest 
melody  has  just  come  into  my  head !  If  I  only  had  some  music  paper 
with  me! .  . ."  One  of  his  friends  drew  a  few  staves  on  the  back  of  a 
menu,  and  there  and  then  Schubert  wrote  this  perfect  song.  After  a 
song  was  written — and  in  seventeen  years  he  wrote  over  six  hun- 
dred lieder  in  just  about  this  way — it  was  to  all  intents  and  pur- 
poses done  with.  An  occasional  tidying  up  of  purely  mechanical  de- 
tails, and  that  was  all.  Even  when  he  produced  several  settings  of 
the  same  poem,  he  was  not  trying  to  perfect  the  original  setting. 
A  new  tune,  and  not  necessarily  an  intrinsically  better  or  more  ap- 
propriate one,  had  come  into  his  head. 

The  fact  that  more  than  a  tenth  of  his  songs  are  set  to  poems  by 
Goethe  is  apt  to  lead  the  unwary  into  believing  that  Schubert  had 
a  taste  for  only  the  best  in  poetry.  Actually  he  was  so  indiscriminate 
in  his  choice  of  lyrics  that  he  might  almost  have  said  with  Rossini, 
"Give  me  a  laundry  list,  and  I  will  set  it  to  music."  Some  of  his 


250  L    MEN    OF    MUSIC 

best  songs  are  set  to  doggerel.  Ninety  poets  or  versifiers  are  repre- 
sented in  the  collected  edition  of  his  songs,  and  of  these  a  scant  two 
dozen  have  achieved  some  measure  of  immortality  in  their  own 
right.  Schubert  did  not  need  good  verse,  nor  is  there  much  evi- 
dence that  he  recognized  it  when  he  saw  it.  The  spineless  plati- 
tudes of  Rellstab's  Standchen,  which  he  selected  in  the  last  year  of  his 
life,  served  him  just  as  effectively  as  Goethe's  moving  dramatic 
ballad,  Der  Erlkonig,  which  he  discovered  at  the  age  of  eighteen. 
What  he  needed  was  a  mere  peg  on  which  to  hang  a  melody.  His 
adoring  friends  knew  this,  and  were  not  above  exploiting  it  with 
brutal  good  humor,  locking  him  up  in  a  room  with  any  volume  of 
verse  that  happened  to  be  at  hand.  The  number  of  songs  he  set 
down  under  these  strange  conditions  was  limited  only  by  the 
length  of  his  imprisonment.  And  as  he  himself  was  wont  to  say, 
"To  complete  one  song  is  to  begin  another." 

Wilhelm  Miiller,  to  whose  verses  Schubert  wrote  his  two  major 
song  cycles,  was  a  sentimentalist  of  small  talent.  Schubert  merely 
happened  on  a  copy  of  the  Milllerlieder  in  1823,  and  there  is  no  evi- 
dence to  show  that  he  realized  the  twenty  poems  of  his  first  cycle — 
Die  Schone  Mullerin — were  drivel.  Indeed,  four  years  later,  he  set 
two  dozen  more  of  Miiller's  lyrics  in  a  cycle  called  Die  Winterreise. 
Yet,  in  some  respects,  these  cycles  are  among  Schubert's  most 
remarkable  achievements,  and  though  separate  songs  in  them  may 
be  judged  on  their  own  merits,  the  effect  of  hearing  the  cycles  in 
totality  is  cumulative,  and  distinctly  heightens  their  impressive- 
ness.  Another  collection  of  fourteen  songs  was  published  post- 
humously under  the  title  ofSchwanengesang,  but  it  has  no  real  unity. 
It  includes  such  dramatic  pieces  as  Der  Atlas  and  Die  Stadt,  as  well 
as  the  haunting  Doppelganger,  which  has  been  called  the  finest  of 
Schubert's  songs. 

But  most  of  Schubert's  six  hundred-odd  lieder  were  written 
separately.  Almost  a  quarter  of  them  are  still  often  sung.  The 
Gramophone  Shop  Encyclopedia  of  Recorded  Music  lists  no  fewer  than  127 
separate  songs,  some  of  them  in  a  baffling  number  of  recordings  of 
both  the  original  and  various  arrangements  and  transcriptions. 
Stdndchen  and  Ave  Maria,  to  cite  the  most  flagrant  examples  of  over- 
supply,  have  been  recorded  more  than  fifty  times  apiece,  including 
a  carillon  version  and  one  for  the  Hawaiian  guitar.  To  millions  of 
otherwise  unmusical  people,  the  very  name  of  Schubert  signifies 


SCHUBERT  251 

song.  The  reasons  are  simple,  at  least  as  regards  the  most  popular 
of  his  lieder:  they  run  a  comparatively  small  gamut  of  emotions  in 
easily  apprehensible  terms;  they  sing  of  love,  nature,  religious  de- 
votion, death;  their  melodies  have  a  way  of  staying  in  the  memory, 
and  without  being  in  the  least  catchy  or  vulgar,  have  an  intimacy 
of  appeal  that  one  can  match  only  in  folk  melody. 

In  the  Ave  Maria,  in  which  the  Queen  of  Heaven  descends  from 
her  pedestal,  and  becomes  the  sympathetic  confidante  of  the  poor 
peasant  maiden,  Schubert  never  once  makes  a  misstep  in  a  situa- 
tion so  susceptible  of  vulgarization  and  mawkish  overstatement. 
The  musical  means  are  amazingly  simple:  the  long  flowing  melody 
ranges  but  an  octave,  and  the  accompaniment — an  insistent, 
repetitive  figure — depends  for  its  magical  effect  on  subtle  har- 
monic shifts.  The  joyful  celebration  of  Hark,  Hark,  the  Lark!,  the 
elegant  precision  of  Who  Is  Sylvia?  (an  exquisite  hybrid  all  around, 
being  neither  typical  Schubert  nor  typical  Shakespeare),  the 
somber  hopelessness  of  Am  Meer,  the  serene  peace  of  Du  bist  die 
RuK — all  testify  to  his  sureness  as  a  poet  of  the  lyrical  or  contempla- 
tive. And  Schubert  could  be  a  great  storyteller.  The  Erlkonig  is  in 
effect  a  tiny  opera;  it  has,  at  least,  the  best  qualities  of  a  magnifi- 
cent operatic  scena,  so  well  has  it  caught  the  spirit  of  Goethe's 
melodramatic  ballad.  It  needs  a  thoughtful  artist  to  interpret  the 
Erlkonig,  to  differentiate  the  various  personages  of  the  story  with- 
out caricaturing  them.  Ernestine  Schumann-Heink  made  it  one  of 
the  great  dramatic  songs  of  the  world. 

For  fathering  the  lied,  Schubert  was  perfectly  endowed,  and 
the  ancestral,  tentative  efforts  of  Mozart  and  Beethoven  do  not 
detract  from,  but  rather  emphasize,  the  bold  and  effortless  origi- 
nality of  his  creation.  The  great  lieder  composers — Schumann, 
Robert  Franz,  Brahms,  Hugo  Wolf,  Richard  Strauss — have  all 
been  deeply  influenced  by  his  songs,  and  even  in  evolving  the 
idiosyncrasies  of  their  own  mastery  have  by  no  means  rejected  all 
Schubertian  touches.  No  one  has  ever  denied  that  Schubert 
breathed  life  into  the  song.  But  the  matchless  natural  gifts  that 
were  adequate  for  that  act  of  creation  were  not  in  themselves 
enough  to  deal  with  the  less  tractable  elements  of  the  larger 
musical  forms.  He  needed  also  an  intellectual  grasp  of  complex 
materials,  a  willingness  to  wrestle  with  the  knotty  problems  arising 
from  them,  and  a  thorough  training  in  musical  theory.  In  varying 


252  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

degrees,  he  lacked  these  requisites,  and  so  was  grounded  incon- 
tinently on  his  most  daring  and  promising  flights.  What  a  thorough 
training  would  have  given  him  can  only  be  guessed  at,  particu- 
larly since  there  are  reasons  for  suspecting  that  he  would  not  have 
been  amenable  to  such  a  discipline.  It  might  have  been  a  sturdier 
understanding  of  big  musical  ideas  and  a  taste  for  wringing  the  most 
from  them. 

What  is  certain  is  that  Schubert,  for  various  reasons,  did  not 
have  that  training.  Born  in  1797  in  Vienna,  then  the  musical 
capital  of  Europe,  he  was  the  son  of  a  desperately  poor  school- 
master. At  the  age  of  seven,  after  he  had  picked  out  a  few  tunes  on 
the  piano  without  instruction,  his  father  and  his  brother  Ignaz, 
amateurs  both,  began  respectively  to  teach  him  the  ABC's  of  the 
violin  and  piano.  His  aptitude  and  eagerness  soon  outstripped 
their  lessons,  and  he  was  turned  over  to  the  Kapellmeister  of  the 
parish  church,  who  trained  his  piping  voice,  but  largely  let  the 
boy's  musical  education  run  itself.  In  1808,  he  became  a  chorister 
in  the  court  chapel,  and  was  accepted  as  a  student  at  the  training 
school  attached  to  it.  Although  Salieri,  its  director,  had  raised 
the  school's  prestige,  it  actually  provided  only  the  sketchiest 
musical  education.  Schubert  left  it  with  a  certain  grasp  of  orches- 
tral playing  and  directing,  and  some  familiarity  with  the  music  of 
Haydn  and  Mozart,  and  possibly  that  of  Beethoven.  Except  for  a 
few  private  consultations  with  Salieri,  who  warned  him  not  to  set 
the  verses  of  Goethe  and  Schiller,  and  personally  excised  any 
stray  echoes  of  Haydn  and  Mozart  he  detected  in  the  boy's  com- 
positions, this  ends  the  tale  of  Franz  Peter  Schubert's  musical 
education.  Just  before  his  death  in  1828  he  was  planning  to  begin 
lessons  in  counterpoint. 

Schubert's  years  at  the  chapel  school  failed  to  give  him  a  solid 
foundation  in  theory,  but  it  was  there  that  he  found  the  nucleus 
of  that  circle  of  adoring  friends  who  not  only  gained  for  his  music 
what  currency  it  had  during  his  lifetime,  but  also  were  largely 
responsible  for  his  being  able  to  keep  body  and  soul  together  as 
long  as  he  did.  It  was  by  the  happiest  chance  that,  wretched  urchin 
though  he  was — shy,  awkward,  shabbily  dressed,  almost  ugly- 
he  drew  to  himself  the  sympathetic  regard  of  a  few  of  the  older 
boys,  chief  among  whom  was  Josef  von  Spaun.  When  he  was  about 
twelve  or  thirteen,  Schubert  first  felt  the  urge  to  compose,  and  at 


SCHUBERT  253 

this  critical  time  Von  Spaun  generously  pressed  upon  him  the 
music  paper  he  could  not  afford  to  buy.  Among  his  prentice  pieces 
were  several  string  quartets,  which  he  composed  for  performance 
by  a  little  chamber  group  consisting  of  his  father,  two  of  his 
brothers,  and  himself.  They  met  regularly  Sundays  and  holidays. 
Such  gatherings  delighted  the  elder  Schubert,  who  did  not  even 
mind  being  brought  to  book  by  Franz  for  his  technical  lapses.  For 
some  time,  the  old  schoolmaster  regarded  his  son's  talent  as 
pleasant  and  harmless,  but  when  it  began  to  interfere  with  the 
boy's  studies,  and  he  began  to  fear  that  Franz  was  not  the  stuff  of 
which  schoolmasters  are  made,  he  blew  up.  Franz  refused  to 
abandon  his  ruling  passion,  and  his  father  forbade  him  the  house. 
In  1812,  however,  Frau  Schubert  died,  and  in  the  course  of  the 
family  mourning  there  was  a  good  deal  of  weeping  on  shoulders, 
and  the  erring  son  was  quite  naturally  forgiven — without  promises 
on  either  side.  Schubert  seems  to  have  been  only  mildly  fond  of  his 
mother,  and  when  his  father  remarried,  he  transferred  his  affection 
easily  to  his  stepmother. 

In  1813,  Schubert's  voice  broke,  and  like  Haydn,  sixty-four 
years  earlier,  he  became  useless  to  the  choir.  While  Haydn  had 
been  turned  brutally  into  the  streets  of  Vienna,  Schubert  had  two 
courses  open  to  him:  to  accept  a  foundation  scholarship  or  to  take  a 
teaching  job  in  his  father's  school.  As  the  former  involved  going 
on  with  studies  that  bored  this  bespectacled,  studious-looking, 
but  thoroughly  unintellectual  youth,  he  chose  to  teach.  He  must 
have  known  the  drudgery  that  awaited  him,  but  schoolteachers 
were  exempt  from  military  service,  he  would  not  have  to  study 
any  more,  and  he  would  have  plenty  of  leisure  for  composition. 
For  three  years  he  served  as  his  father's  assistant,  and  be  it  said 
that  this  period,  when  he  doubtless  was  getting  three  square  meals 
a  day  as  well  as  a  certain  stipend,  was  the  most  miserable  of  his 
life.  Against  all  his  natural  instincts,  he  went  about  his  petty  daily 
tasks  with  a  stolid  persistence,  and  only  rarely  gave  vent  to  the 
rage  that  was  consuming  him.  He  hated  the  school  and  everything 
about  it — the  damp  urchins,  the  ill-smelling  classroom,  the  mad- 
dening rote  of  elementary  teaching. 

Deficient  Schubert  may  have  been  in  intellect,  but  certainly  not 
in  courage  and  persistence.  In  this  most  unpromising  milieu, 
from  1813  to  1 8 1 6,  he  attempted  almost  every  form  of  composition, 


254  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

setting  down  string  quartets,  five  symphonies,  sonatas  for  piano 
and  violin,  Masses  and  other  church  music,  eight  stage  works  of 
varying  lengths  and  intentions  (but  all  dismal),  and  more  than 
two  hundred  and  fifty  songs.  Much  of  this  output  is  unimportant 
judged  by  the  standards  of  anyone  not  writing  an  exhaustive 
treatise  on  the  works  of  Schubert.  But  many  of  the  songs  are  fresh 
and  perfectly  realized,  and  several  are  masterpieces:  a  boy  of 
seventeen  composed  Gretchen  am  Spinnrade^  a  boy  of  eighteen  Der 
Erlkonig.  The  miracle  of  Schubert's  creation  of  the  lied  becomes 
all  the  more  miraculous  when  it  is  considered  that  though  he  went 
on  to  compose  many  other  kinds  of  song,  he  never  composed  any 
finer  than  these,  and  for  a  very  simple  reason:  these  are  perfect. 
Among  the  other  work  is  one  of  the  most  fragrant  and  guileless 
tributes  ever  paid  by  a  young  composer  to  his  great  predecessors — 
the  Fifth  Symphony,  in  B  flat  major.  Only  a  very  sophisticated 
pair  of  ears,  hearing  it  for  the  first  time,  could  distinguish  it  from 
Mozart  when  he  is  most  like  Haydn.  There  is  nothing  in  it  that 
would  have  surprised  Mozart:  it  is  thoroughly  classical  in  struc- 
ture, and  for  the  most  part  in  feeling.  Its  originality— just  enough 
to  give  piquancy — is  the  songlike  quality  of  some  of  the  themes  and 
the  romantic  tints  in  the  andante.  As  a  passing  phase,  ancestor 
worship  that  produces  symphonies  like  Schubert's  B  flat  major  is 
all  right. 

After  three  years'  teaching  in  his  father's  school,  Schubert  ap- 
plied for  the  post  of  musical  director  at  Laibach,  a  provincial 
capital  about  two  hundred  and  fifty  miles  from  Vienna.  He  was 
refused,  and  as  there  seemed  no  relief  imminent,  he  took  the  revo- 
lutionary step  of  quitting,  and  so  began  a  Bohemian,  happy-go- 
lucky  kind  of  life  that,  except  for  two  brief  attempts  at  conven- 
tionality, he  never  abandoned.  First  to  take  the  innocent  under  his 
wing  was  the  gay  and  temperamental  Franz  von  Schober,  an 
Austro-Swedish  law  student  of  good  family.  Von  Schober  not  only 
provided  lodgings  and  food  for  Schubert,  but  also  began  to  show 
him  the  town.  He  had  an  apt  pupil  in  the  short,  stocky  youth,  and 
within  a  few  years  Schubert  was  seeing  more  of  the  town  than  was 
good  for  him.  Of  much  more  moment  was  Von  Schober's  bringing 
into  the  jealously  exclusive  clique  of  young  artists  who  called  them- 
selves Schubertians  the  eminent  baritone,  Johann  Michael  Vogl, 
who  was  more  than  a  generation  older  than  the  rest  of  them.  It 


SCHUBERT  255 

was  this  strong-willed  and  widely  admired  artist,  known  for  the 
severity  of  Ms  taste,  who  brought  Schubert's  songs  their  first  fame, 
introducing  them,  on  every  possible  occasion,  at  the  most  fashion- 
able parties  in  Vienna.  Nor  was  this  all:  lie  persuaded  the  Karnt- 
nerthortheater  to  risk  ordering  an  opera  from  Schubert.*  t 

Yogi's  wirepulling  at  the  Karntnerthor  was  typical  of  the  solici- 
tude of  the  Schubertians  for  the  pygmy  god  around  whom  they 
revolved.  They  were,  in  their  way,  as  remarkable  as  Beethoven's 
patrons.  Without  an  Archduke  Rudolf  or  rich  socialites  like  the 
Princes  Lobkowitz  and  Kinsky,  the  Schubertians  made  up  in 
energy  and  devotion  what  they  lacked  in  prestige  and  wealth.  The 
affluent  and  courted  Vogl  was  in  every  way  an  exception  among- 
them.  The  others  were  young  men  trying  to  get  along  in  the  world 
— even  the  dilettante  Von  Schober  toyed  with  various  careers. 
During  his  short  life  Schubert  lodged  with  various  of  them,  and 
somehow,  some  way,  they  saw  to  it  that  he  was  usually  fed  and 
usually  supplied  with  a  piano,  music  paper,  and  plenty  of  verses 
by  themselves  or  better  poets.  With  them,  the  shy  and  awkward 
composer  let  himself  go,  and  rather  fancied  himself  strolling 
through  the  streets  of  Vienna  at  the  head  of  these  devoted  hench- 
men, whom  he  treated  with  a  kind  of  rough  affection. 

Most  of  the  Schubertians  are  now  mere  names,  even  the  once 
famous  Moritz  von  Schwind,  who  painted  a  Schubertiade,  one  of  the 
get-togethers  at  which  a  few  guests  were  permitted  to  share  with 
the  Schubertians  the  pleasure  of  hearing  some  new  works  by  their 
idol.  There  was  Beethoven's  friend  Anselm  Hiittenbrenner,  and 
his  brother  Josef,  who  for  a  time  literally  waited  on  Schubert  hand 
and  foot.  There  was  Johann  Mayrhofer,  a  poetaster  of  antique 
cast  whose  immortality  is  secure  only  because  Schubert  made 
songs  of  forty-seven  of  his  melancholy  verses.  There  was  Von 
Spaun,  Schubert's  first  benefactor  and  lifelong  friend,  and  finally 
the  courtly  Eduard  von  Bauernfeld,  who  came  late  into  the  circle. 
Of  all  these,  Schubert  seems  to  have  cared  most  for  the  carefree 
and  sparkling  Von  Schober  and  the  gloomy  and  neurotic  Mayr- 
hofer,  who  ended  his  unhappy  life  by  jumping  out  of  a  window  for 
the  extremely  surrealist  reason  that  he  was  afraid  of  getting 
cholera.  Becoming  a  Schubertian  was  something  of  an  honor,  and 

*  This  opera,  Die  %willingsbruder}  was  duly  performed  for  six  nights,  and  then,  like 
the  rest  of  Schubert's  listless  stage  pieces,  fell  into  deserved  desuetude. 


256  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

rather  more  of  a  task,  for  not  only  did  the  initiates  guard  the  circle 
jealously,  but  Schubert  himself  was  punctilious  about  the  qualifica- 
tions of  would-be  joiners.  "What  can  he  do?"  was  his  invariable 
question  when  a  new  name  was  mentioned. 

In  the  summer  of  1818,  Schubert  gave  up  his  freedom  for  a  brief 
period  of  bond  servitude  as  music  teacher  at  Zelesz,  a  Hungarian 
seat  of  Count  Janos  Esterhazy.  At  first,  the  novelty  of  life  in  a 
well-ordered  and  lavishly  appointed  establishment  appealed  to 
him,  and  he  was  enraptured  by  the  beauty  of  the  countryside.  Un- 
happily, he  was  treated  like  a  servant,  ate  apart  from  the  family 
with  the  maids  and  scullions,  and  had  to  associate  with  people 
whose  musical  standards  were  low.  Shortly  he  was  sending  self- 
commiserating  notes  to  the  Schubertians,  and  picturing  himself  as 
an  exile  from  the  Eden  that  was  Vienna.  But  even  when  Zelesz  was 
becoming  really  hateful,  life  had  compensations:  ".  .  .  the  cham- 
bermaid very  pretty,  and  often  in  my  company  .  .  ." 

When  Schubert  returned  to  Vienna,  his  only  prospect  of  earn- 
ing a  few  coppers  was  that  of  giving  lessons  to  the  Esterhazys,  who 
lived  in  the  city  during  the  winter.  His  father,  who  had  always 
regarded  Franz'  Bohemianism  as  a  prolonged  vacation,  now 
thought  it  high  .time  for  him  to  return  to  schoolteaching.  When 
Schubert  flatly  refused,  they  quarreled  violently,  and  for  three 
years  were  not  on  speaking  terms.  Franz'  stepmother,  with  great 
common  sense,  refused  to  recognize  this  silly  business,  and  when- 
ever he  was  really  in  desperate  straits,  reached  down  into  her 
money  stocking  to  help  him  out.  Meanwhile  he  skirted  the  abyss 
of  pauperism  with  his  friends  clutching  at  his  coattails.  Again  he 
lived  wherever  he  could  work  and  sleep;  again  the  manuscripts 
piled  up;  again  his  little  affairs  were  in  a  chaos,  to  which  Anselm 
Hiittenbrenner  vainly  tried  to  impart  some  order.  There  were 
signs,  however,  that  the  Schubertians  might  not  have  him  long  as 
their  private  property.  On  February  28,  1819,  on  the  program  of  a 
public  concert,  there  was,  for  the  first  time,  a  Schubert  song — the 
plaintive  Schafers  Klagelied,  which  received  a  benevolent  pat  on  the 
back  from  the  formidable  Allgemeine  musikalische  ^eitung  of  Leipzig. 
Vogl,  too,  continued  his  yeoman  work,  and  that  summer  went  on  a 
walking  tour  through  Upper  Austria  with  Schubert.  They  made 
their  headquarters  at  the  old  rococo  town  of  Steyr,  where  they 
were  entertained  by  a  local  musical  enthusiast  who  suggested  that 


SCHUBERT  257 

Schubert  use  the  theme  of  Die  Forelle — that  vivacious  apostrophe 
to  a  flashing  brook  trout  which  is  still  a  favorite  Schubert  lied — in  a 
chamber  work.  In  a  twinkling,  Schubert  sat  down,  and  wrote  out 
the  four  string  parts  of  a  piano  quintet.  Then,  without  making  a 
complete  score,  he  had  it  performed  for  his  host,  himself  playing 
the  piano  part,  which  he  had  not  yet  had  time  to  write  down. 

This  was  the  incomparable  Piano  Quintet  in  A  major.  The 
earliest  of  Schubert's  chamber  works  still  played,  it  outranks  in 
popularity  even  the  piano  quintets  of  Schumann  and  Brahms. 
The  "Forellen"  Quintet  is  a  rarity  of  its  kind,  for  people  who  insist 
loudly  that  they  "can't  stand"  chamber  music  yield  at  once  to  its 
ingratiating  charms.  Although  the  gay  and  guileless  melody  of 
the  song  is  used  only  in  the  theme  and  variations  of  the  fourth 
movement,  its  darting  rhythms  pervade  the  entire  five  movements. 
It  is  impossible  to  conceive  of  more  easily  accessible  music.  It  is 
picturesque  in  the  exact  sense  of  the  word,  and  in  many  places 
the  idea  of  rippling  water  and  gleaming  fish  occurs  voluntarily 
to  the  mind.  It  is  romantic  music,  too,  and  its  moments  of  poign- 
ancy are  something  absolutely  new  in  music,  so  intimate  and 
personal  are  they.  It  is,  of  course,  the  music  of  youth.  These  quali- 
ties rather  than  any  masterly  design  give  it  a  kind  of  unity,  and 
tend  to  conceal  the  diffuseness  from  which  the  "Forellen"  like  al- 
most every  other  extended  work  of  Schubert's,  suffers. 

The  "Forellen"  Quintet  is  easily  the  best  known  of  Schubert's 
numerous  chamber  works,  and  few  of  the  others  can  be  mentioned 
alongside  it.  These  few,  except  for  a  lovely  fragment — the  Quarlett- 
satz,  in  C  minor — belong  to  the  last  years  of  his  life.  Two  piano 
trios,  lovely  in  every  particular,  emphasize  how  effective  the 
piano  was  in  helping  Schubert  successfully  to  overcome  miscalcula- 
tions in  design  and  instrumentation  that  often  baffled  him  when 
composing  for  strings  alone.  The  last  three  of  his  fourteen  string 
quartets  are  quite  likely  to  survive  as  delightful  and  easily  under- 
stood examples  of  a  genre  that  is  still  considered  somewhat  esoteric. 
Possibly  the  reason  they  are  so  readily  got  at  is  that  Schubert 
either  misunderstood  or  never  gave  a  thought  to  the  problems  of 
design  and  balance  involved  in  writing  for  four  strings.  His  quartets 
are  really  more  of  his  songs,  with  two  violins,  viola,  and  cello  sub- 
stituted for  voice  and  piano.  He  was  haunted  by  song  in  and  out  of 
season,  and  had  the  greatest  difficulty  in  relinquishing  the  song 


258  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

quality  and  coming  to  grips  with  the  special  demands  of  instru- 
mental media.  Only  the  captious  can  stand  out  against  the  sheer 
melodic  beauty  of  the  A  minor  Quartet  or  the  more  somber,  more 
reflective  one  in  D  minor,  part  of  which  is  based  on  his  own  song, 
Tod  und  das  Madchen.  The  trouble  with  these  beautiful  collections  of 
melody  is  that  they  are  not  string-quartetistic,  as,  for  example, 
those  of  Mozart  and  Beethoven  pre-eminently  are.  The  same  lack 
of  insight  into  the  personality  of  his  medium,  and  the  same  failure 
to  exploit  its  potentialities  to  the  full,  ,mar  even  the  fine  String 
Quintet  in  G  major,  which  shows,  however,  that  in  the  year  of  his 
death  Schubert  was  beginning  seriously  to  tackle  the  special 
problems  of  string  ensembles.  This  is  no  happy,  feckless  effusion, 
no  mere  outpouring  of  song  set  down  for  five  strings:  it  is  richly 
various,  thoughtful,  bold  in  harmonic  combinations,  and  shows 
that  the  instruments  had  some  say  in  dictating  texture  and  melody. 
In  1820^  two  of  Schubert's  ill-fated  operas  reached  the  stage. 
The  first  was  a  failure,  and  just  when  the  second  was  showing  signs 
of  mild  success,  the  management  of  the  Theater  an  der  Wien, 
where  it  was  running,  went  bankrupt  Vienna  was  at  the  feet  of 
Rossini,  and  both  the  Italian  and  his  theatrical  manager  were 
minting  money  from  his  operas.  It  was  in  the  vain  hope  of  divert- 
ing some  of  this  golden  stream  into  his  own  pockets  that  Schubert, 
himself  an  ardent  Rossinian,  wrote  operas.  Nor  was  he  easily  dis- 
couraged: his  pathetic  attempts  to  interest  the  Viennese  in  his 
operatic  talents  extended  over  a  ten-year  period,  and  as  late  as 
1823  he  was  doggedly  writing  these  often  grandiose  stage  pieces — 
one  of  them,  Fierrabras,  runs  to  a  thousand  pages  of  manuscript. 
When  Weber  was  in  Vienna  in  1822,  he  discussed  with  Schubert, 
who  so  greatly  admired  Der  Frdschutz  that  he  went  around  hum- 
ming snatches  of  it,  the  possibility  of  mounting  one  of  his  operas. 
The  following  year,  however,  Schubert  told  Weber  exactly  what 
he  thought  ofEuryantke — "not  enough  melody,  Herr  von  Weber" — 
and  that  avenue  was  closed.  Apparently  the  absurdities  of  Helmine 
von  Chezy's  libretto  for  Ewyantke  did  not  feaze  Schubert,  for  that 
same  year  he  agreed  to  furnish  an  overture  and  incidental  music 
for  another  of  her  high-flown  plays — Rosamunde,  Furstin  von  Cypern^ 
which  made  its  debut  at  the  Theater  an  der  Wien  on  December  20, 
1823.  It  ran  two  nights,  and  was  discontinued  forever.  Much  of  the 
music  is  delicious,  and  the  piquant  G  major  ballet,  a  sort  of  cousin- 


SCHUBERT  259 

german  to  the  equally  famous  F  minor  Moment  musical,  trips  along 
with  inimitable  delicacy.* 

Schubert  made  little  or  no  money  from  the  stage.,  and  while  he 
toiled  for  it,  carelessly  threw  away  a  small  fortune.  On  March  7, 
1821,  at  a  charity  concert  at  the  Karntnerthortheater  sponsored 
by  Ignaz  Sonnleithner,  a  noted  musical  patron,  Der  Erlkbnig  was 
sung  in  public  for  the  first  time.  Yogi's  superinterpretation  had  to 
be  repeated,  and  thereupon  Leopold  Sonnleithner,  Ignaz'  son,  be- 
lieving that  the  song  could  be  published  with  profit  for  Schubert, 
approached  several  music  publishers  with  the  idea.  He  was  turned 
down,  and  accordingly  induced  three  of  his  friends  to  help  him 
underwrite  a  private  edition  of  one  hundred  copies.  They  were  put 
on  display  at  a  musical  soiree,  and  by  the  end  of  the  evening  were 
all  sold.  During  the  course  of  the  year,  six  more  folios  containing 
nineteen  songs  were  issued  by  this  private  publishing  group.  Out 
of  the  profits  not  only  were  Schubert's  debts  paid,  but  he  was  also 
presented  with  a  considerable  sum  of  money.  Had  he  held  on  to 
the  copyright,  he  might  have  had  a  comfortable  income  for  life. 
But  he  was  without  a  trace  of  business  acumen,  and  in  1823 — 
seemingly  because  he  no  longer  wished  to  be  bothered  with  peri- 
odic settlings  of  account  with  Anton  Diabelli,  who  had  engraved 
and  printed  the  seven  folios — he  sold  the  plates  and  copyrights  to 
the  publisher  for  the  equivalent  of  $350.  He  had  thoughtlessly 
thrown  away  the  best  chance  he  ever  had  to  earn  a  decent  liveli- 
hood. 

As  some  palliation  for  this  act  of  sheer  stupidity,  it  can  be  urged 
that  when  Schubert  wrote  away  his  rights  in  February,  1823,  he 
was  desperate.  During  the  preceding  year  he  had  begun  to  ail,  and 
by  New  Year's  the  illness  declared  itself  so  violently  that  he  was 
taken  to  a  hospital.  He  was  suffering  from  syphilis,  evidently  in  an 
advanced  stage,  for  in  a  brief  time  he  lost  much  of  his  hair,  and 
had  to  wear  a  wig.  He  was  thereafter  from  time  to  time  under  the 
care  of  venereal  specialists.  As  long  as  he  pursued  the  proper  treat- 
ment, he  seemed  well  enough,  but  the  careless  fellow  was  quite  as 
incapable  of  adhering  to  a  strict  health  regimen  as  he  was  of  ap- 
plying himself  to  a  stiff  problem  in  the  esthetics  of  composition. 
He  would  dissipate,  overdrink,  neglect  his  medicine,  and  the  dis- 

*  The  Rosamunde  music,  long  forgotten,  was  unearthed  in  Vienna  in  1867  by  Sir 
Arthur  Sullivan  and  Sir  George  Grove. 


MEN    OF    MUSIC 

ease  would  prostrate  him.  Eventually  his  hitherto  sunny  disposi- 
tion succumbed  to  the  strain:  he  had  moods  of  irritability,  of 
moroseness  and  gloom,  alternating  with  outbursts  of  bravado.  Occa- 
sionally he  vented  his  despair  in  his  music,  so  much  so  indeed  that 
a  Vienna  musical  organization  wrote  him  a  polite  note,  begging 
him  to  make  his  compositions  less  gloomy. 

Schubert  had  a  right  to  be  gloomy.  With  the  autumn  of  1822, 
bad  luck  came  to  hound  him:  his  health  was  on  the  downgrade, 
the  managers  consistently  refused  to  stage  his  operas,  and  the  Ge- 
seilschaft der  Musikfreunde  blackballed  him  for  membership.  Yet 
it  was  about  this  time  that  he  was  offered  the  post  of  organist  at 
the  imperial  chapel,  and  refused  it  for  no  more  apparent  reason 
than  that  he  did  not  want  to  tie  himself  down  in  any  way.  His 
election  as  honorary  member  of  the  musical  societies  of  Graz  and 
Linz  was  some  compensation  for  the  slight  from  Vienna.  It  is  not 
known  how  he  showed  his  appreciation  to  Linz,  but  to  Graz  he 
decided  to  present  a  symphony.  He  set  to  work  in  October,  1822, 
wrote  two  movements,  sketched  a  third  and  fourth,  orchestrated 
nine  bars  of  the  third  movement — a  scherzo — and  then  suddenly 
tired  of  the  whole  thing  and  sent  it  to  Graz.  There  it  eventually 
passed  into  the  hands  of  Anselm  Hiittenbrenner,  who  tucked  it 
away  in  his  desk  for  forty-three  years.  Hiittenbrenner  was  an  an- 
cient when  Johann  Franz  von  Herbeck,  the  conductor  of  the  Vi- 
enna Geseilschaft  concerts,  looked  him  up  in  Graz  in  1865,  hinting 
that  he  would  like  to  present  a  new  work  by  Schubert.  "I  have 
many  of  his  manuscripts,"  was  Hiittenbrenner's  reply,  which,  in 
view  of  the  fact  that  the  whereabouts  of  many  Schubert  works  is 
still  unknown,  may  be  deemed  significant.  Hiittenbrenner  handed 
Von  Herbeck  the  manuscript  of  the  1822  symphony,  and  it  was 
first  performed  on  December  17,  1865,  at  a  Geseilschaft  concert. 

The  c 'Unfinished"  Symphony,  thus  happily  unearthed,  is  the 
noblest  fragment  in  music.  It  is  certainly  the  most  popular  of 
Schubert's  orchestral  works.  Only  six  years  had  elapsed  since  the 
B  flat  Symphony,  that  beautiful  and  perfectly  behaved  bow  to  the 
past,  and  in  the  interval  he  had  composed  a  transitional  symphony 
of  no  great  distinction.  The  "Unfinished,"  actually  Schubert's  sev- 
enth, shows  a  development  of  his  own  characteristic  symphonic 
idiom  that  is  as  baffling  to  uncritical  Schubert  devotees  as  to  text- 
book critics.  While  the  Fifth  Symphony  was  but  a  classical  re- 


SCHUBERT  26l 

creation,  the  "Unfinished"  is  undilute  Schubert — romantic  music 
from  beginning  to  end.  The  first  movement  opens  gloomily  and 
agitatedly  (a  sort  of  spiritual  pacing  the  floor),  and  then  moves  by 
an  inspired  coup  de  theatre  into  one  of  his  most  opulent  and  poignant 
melodies.*  It  is  possibly  the  most  famous  single  movement  in  sym- 
phonic literature,  for  reasons  by  no  means  disgraceful  to  the  popu- 
lar taste:  no  amount  of  hackneying  has  been  able  to  destroy  its 
fresh  and  wistful  charm.  The  second  movement  is  not  so  indispu- 
tably eternal — a  happy  inspiration,  yes,  but  wanting  the  breath- 
taking white  magic  of  the  first.  Critics  have  stood  on  their  heads 
trying  to  prove  that  these  two  movements  in  themselves  constitute 
a  musical  whole,  but  without  derogation  to  what  Schubert  found 
enthusiasm  to  compose,  it  can  be  stated  dogmatically  that  they  do 
no  such  thing.  They  are  as  clearly  part  of  a  larger  design  as  the 
choir  of  Beauvais  is  part  of  a  great  cathedral  church  that  was  never 
built.  The  "Unfinished"  Symphony  is  indeed  the  noblest  fragment 
in  music. 

After  the  final  wrecking  of  his  operatic  career,  Schubert  went 
again,  in  May,  1824, to  Sta7  with  th-e  Esterhazys  at  Zelesz.  Here  he 
seems  to  have  occupied  the  same  servile  position  he  had  six  years 
before.  This  did  not  prevent  him,  legend  has  it,  from  raising  his 
eyes  to  a  daughter  of  the  house,  the  seventeen-year-old  Countess 
Karolin.  Never  has  a  larger  bubble  been  blown  from  a  smaller 
pipe,  for  the  story  that  Schubert  was  deeply  enamored  of  this  high- 
born adolescent  rests  flimsily  on  two  statements,  only  one  of  which 
can  be  authenticated.  It  is  said  that  the  Countess  once  asked  him 
why  he  had  never  dedicated  anything  to  her,  and  he  replied, 
"Why,  because  everything  is  dedicated  to  you."  Certain  it  is  that 
he  wrote  to  Moritz  von  Schwind:  "In  spite  of  the  attraction  of  a 
certain  star,  I  am  longing  most  terribly  for  Vienna."  The  first  re- 
mark, if  it  was  ever  made,  is  a  piece  of  stereotyped  gallantry;  the 
expression  in  the  letter  is  hardly  that  of  a  lovelorn  man.  In  the 
meager  tale  of  Schubert's  loves,  there  is  far  more  likelihood  that 
he  was  deeply  attached  to  Therese  Grob?  who  as  little  more  than  a 
child  had  sung  in  one  of  his  early  Masses.  He  continued  to  walk 
out  with  her  for  some  years,  but  in  1820  she  married  a  rich  middle- 

*  By  torturing  the  rhythm  of  this  melody  into  waltz  time,  and  setting  it  to  moronic 
words,  the  perpetrators  of  Blossom  Time  evolved  one  of  the  great  smash-hit  ballads  of 
all  time. 


262  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

aged  baker,  presumably  after  realizing  that  Schubert  would  never 
be  able  to  support  her.  He  himself  once  remarked  that  he  would 
have  married  Therese  if  his  finances  had  permitted.  After  1822, 
when  his  disease  manifested  itself,  Schubert  never  again  spoke  of 
marrying.  There  is  no  evidence  that  being  denied  the  joys  of  do- 
mesticity ever  bothered  him  very  much:  here,  as  in  his  relations 
with  his  friends,  he  was  too  absorbed  in  music  to  have  any  strong 
desire  to  divide  his  allegiance. 

The  year  1825  was>  after  all  the  troubles  of  the  past  few  years, 
one  of  singular  happiness  for  Schubert.  His  health  was  much  im- 
proved, he  managed  to  sell  some  of  his  songs  for  a  fair  price — 
Artaria  paid  him  the  equivalent  of  $100  for  his  settings  of  Walter 
Scott,  including  the  famous  Ave  Maria* — and  in  the  summer  he 
again  tramped  through  Upper  Austria  and  the  Tirol  with  Vogl. 
Sir  George  Grove,  the  music  lexicographer,  firmly  believed  that 
while  at  Gastein  Schubert  completed  a  "Grand  Symphony"  in  C 
major.  If  he  did,  it  is  lost.  But  among  the  music  he  certainly  com- 
posed on  this  trip  was  the  Piano  Sonata  in  A  minor  (Opus  42). 

Schubert's  piano  music  is  a  microcosm  of  his  virtues  and  vices 
as  a  composer.  The  larger  works — the  two  fantasias  and  the  sona- 
tas— are  much  less  often  heard  than  the  smaller  ones,  and  not 
merely  because  they  offer  more  technical  problems.  They  are  far 
less  successful.  In  the  sonatas,  Schubert  stuck  manfully  to  classical 
form,  adorned  it  with  lovely  melodies,  and  just  when  a  Mozart  or 
a  Beethoven  would  have  been  most  absorbed  in  the  possibilities  of 
development  and  recapitulation,  succumbed  to  boredom.  His  re- 
grettable procedure  was  to  lengthen  the  movement  without  adding 
anything;  for  instance,  he  seems  often  to  have  conceived  of  re- 
capitulation as  nothing  but  slavish  repetition  in  another  key.  Such 
maundering  is  ruinous  to  the  design,  and  no  amount  of  inspired 
melody  can  triumph  over  it.  Of  his  more  than  twenty  sonatas,  not 
one  lacks  moments  of  poignant  lyricism — and  not  one  lacks  desert 
wastes.  Of  special  loveliness  are  one  in  A  major  (Opus  120)  and 
one  in  A  minor,  both  belonging  to  1825;  on  a  m°re  majestic  scale 
are  the  three  so-called  <eGrand  Sonatas,"  all  written  in  the  year  of 
Schubert's  death,  more  intellectual  in  their  contours,  richer  in  tex- 
ture, and  altogether  more  profound  in  material.  They,  too,  have 
their  moments  of  high  enchantment:  the  rondo  of  the  A  major  and 

*  The  words  are  a  German  translation  of  Ellen's  prayer  from  The  Lady  of  the  Lake. 


SCHUBERT  263 

the  andante  sostenuto  of  the  B  flat  major  come  immediately  to 
mind.  Of  the  two  fantasias,  the  "Wanderer"  is  the  more  often  dis- 
cussed and  the  less  played:  it  is  an  interminable,  dreary  piece  of 
music  with  a  certain  grandiosity  that  often  enough  degenerates 
into  meaningless  and  apparently  automatic  shuttling.  The  G  major 
Fantasia,  a  far  superior  piece,  has  a  minimum  of  padding  and 
many  exquisite  pages,  including  a  minuet  as  lovely  in  its  way  as 
that  from  Don  Giovanni. 

The  smaller  piano  works — impromptus,  moments  musicaux,  waltzes, 
and  other  dances — are  another  matter.  Just  as,  despite  the  songs  of 
his  predecessors,  Schubert  may  be  said  without  exaggeration  to 
have  created  the  lied,  so,  too,  he  may  be  said  to  have  created  the 
kind  of  short  piano  piece  on  which  Schumann,  Chopin,  and  Brahms 
lavished  some  of  their  loveliest  inspirations.  Freed  from  the  bond- 
age of  classical  forms,  Schubert  abandoned  himself  completely  to 
his  melodies.  These  pieces  are  almost  never  too  long,  for  their 
length  was  truly  dictated  by  the  requirements  of  the  material.  They 
are  uncomplicated,  transparent,  easy  to  listen  to,  and  a  delight  to 
play.  Some  of  them  are  as  lyric  as  the  little  pieces  Mendelssohn 
called  Lieder  ohne  Worte;  others  are  pure  dance,  ancestors  of  the 
waltzes  of  Chopin  and  Brahrns;  finally,  certain  of  the  impromptus 
have  a  dramatic  character  that  Schubert  did  not  often  attain.  The 
repertoire  will  never  be  too  crowded  for  these  small  but  perfect 
compositions,  some  of  which  are  already  locked  enduringly  in  the 
hearts  of  mankind. 

Many  of  these  delectable  trifles  were  among  the  flood  of  compo- 
sitions that  issued  without  stint  from  Schubert's  pen  during  the 
otherwise  almost  completely  uneventful  last  three  years  of  his  life. 
Two  fine  string  quartets  belong  to  1826,  during  which,  on  a  single 
day,  he  tossed  off  Hark,  Hark,  the  Lark!  and  Wha  is  Sylvia?  The  great 
song  cycle  Die  Winterreise  came  in  1827,  t^e  string  quintet,  the 
"Grand  Sonatas,"  and  the  songs  later  collected  as  Schwanengesang 
in  1828.  Schubert's  finances  were  again  all  but  nonexistent,  and 
his  health  was  bad.  He  had  fallen  once  more  into  a  careless  way  of 
living,  drinking  freely,  keeping  late  hours,  and  neglecting  his  treat- 
ments, and  so  had  frequent  relapses.  He  tried  halfheartedly  to  bet- 
ter his  position,  but  in  vain.  The  post  ofvice-Hofkapellmeister  slipped 
through  his  fingers:  he  was  not  a  favorite  at  court.  The  conductor- 
ship  of  the  Kamtnerthortheater,  which  was  almost  in  tlte  bag. 


MEN    OF    MUSIC 

went  to  another  because  Schubert  refused  to  play  local  politics. 
And  so  on — an  increasingly  depressing  chronicle.  Early  in  March,, 
1827,  Anselm  Hiittenbrenner  showed  the  dying  Beethoven  a  large 
number  of  Schubert's  songs,  which  so  filled  him  with  generous  ad- 
miration that  he  burst  out  excitedly:  "Certainly  Schubert  has  the 
divine  spark!"  At  Beethoven's  request,  Schubert  went  twice  to  see 
him,  the  first  time  with  Hiittenbrenner.  Then  it  was  that  Beetho- 
ven is  reputed  to  have  said  to  them:  "You,  Anselm,  have  my  mind, 
but  Franz  has  my  soul.5'  On  Schubert's  second  visit,  Beethoven 
was  too  weak  to  talk,  and  the  motions  he  made  were  pathetically 
futile.  Schubert  was  overcome  with  emotion,  and  rushed  from  the 
house.  Three  weeks  later  he  was  a  torchbearer  at  Beethoven's 
funeral. 

The  year  1828  began  propitiously.  Schubert's  health  was  defi- 
nitely better,  he  sold  a  few  compositions  at  a  tithe  of  their  value, 
and,  besides,  he  seems  to  have  been  planning  an  unusually  long- 
range,  large-scale  program  of  work.  He  began  with  a  cantata  along 
Handelian  lines  (he  appears  to  have  fallen  heir  to  Beethoven's 
Handel  scores,  and  to  have  been  studying  them),  and  in  March, 
on  the  anniversary  of  Beethoven's  death,  gave  his  first  and  only 
public  concert,  the  program  being  made  up  exclusively  of  his  own 
works.  He  was  so  well  received  that  it  is  a  wonder  he  never  tried 
the  experiment  again.  With  the  proceeds — rather  more  than  $150 
— he  lived  high  for  a  while,  and  it  is  characteristic  of  his  careless 
generosity  that  he  went  a  second  time  to  hear  Paganini  merely  for 
the  pleasure  of  treating  a  friend  even  poorer  than  himself. 

March,  1828,  was  doubly  remarkable,  for  it  was  also  then  that 
Schubert  began  the  composition  of  the  C  major  Symphony,  which 
many  consider  his  masterpiece.  It  was  written  at  breakneck  speed, 
put  into  rehearsal  by  the  Gesellschaft  der  Musikfreunde,  and  then 
shelved  as  too  long  and  too  difficult.  It  lay  among  his  brother 
Ferdinand's  papers  until  1838,  when  it  was  rescued  by  Robert 
Schumann,  and  handed  over  to  Mendelssohn,  who  first  performed 
it  at  Leipzig  the  same  year.  In  rejecting  the  C  major  Symphony, 
the  Gesellschaft  was  right  in  one  respect:  no  amount  of  referring  to 
it  as  "the  symphony  of  heavenly  length"  can  alter  the  fact  that 
it  is  far  too  long.  Yet  there  is  ample  evidence  that  Schubert,  doubt- 
less because  his  friends  constantly  urged  him  to  study  Beethoven's 
methods  of  work,  labored  over  this  symphony.  The  21 8-page  man- 


SCHUBERT  265 

uscript  is  by  no  means  the  miraculously  fair  copy  he  usually  pro- 
vided: it  is  starred  with  erasures  and  penknife  marks — second  and 
third  thoughts,  corrections. 

The  C  major  Symphony  is  Schubert's  masterpiece,  but  not  a 
Schubertian  masterpiece.  It  is  a  big,  impressive  work,  often  rest- 
less and  impassioned,  dark  and  tragic  in  its  harmonies,  and  alto- 
gether planned  on  a  vastness  of  scale  that  the  impatient  Schubert 
must  have  needed  a  new  stamina  to  handle.  It  is  orchestrated  with 
unusual  care  and  boldness,  and  shows  an  exquisite  sensitivity  to 
the  color  range  of  the  instruments  separately  and  in  combination. 
Schubert  aimed  at  new  effects,  and  achieved  them  with  ease  and 
a  minimum  of  miscalculation — the  "digression"  for  trombones 
pianissimo  in  the  first  movement  is  a  peculiarly  magical  example. 
The  main  themes  throughout,  particularly  the  first  subjects  of  the 
andante  and  the  andante  con  moto,  are  the  stuff  of  which  great 
music  can  be  made,  utterly  beautiful  in  themselves  and  susceptible 
of  infinite  development.  But  alas!  it  was  again  on  the  rock  of  de- 
velopment that  Schubert  foundered.  After  proving  conclusively 
that  he  could  write  page  after  page  of  great  symphonic  music,  he 
seems  to  have  unfocused  his  attention  on  the  extremely  difficult 
business  at  hand,  and  to  have  lapsed  into  a  vein  of  irrelevant  gar- 
rulousness.  Thus,  the  C  major  concludes  on  a  maundering,  incon- 
sequential note  after  a  beginning  as  promising  as  any  symphony 
ever  had. 

As  we  have  seen,  the  C  major  Symphony  was  but  one  great 
work  in  a  year  of  great  works.  Poverty  and  adversity  seemed  to 
spur  Schubert  on.  By  the  summer  of  1828,  he  realized  sadly  that 
he  would  have  to  forgo  his  vacation  in  the  country:  "Money  and 
weather  are  both  against  me,"  he  wrote  with  bitter  humor.  In 
September,  however,  he  was  so  run  down  that  his  physician  in- 
sisted on  more  fresh  air  and  exercise.  Accordingly,  he  took  a  brief 
walking  tour  in  the  Viennese  countryside,  lived  abstemiously,  and 
felt  a  new  access  of  animal  spirits.  Nevertheless,  on  his  return  home, 
he  was  at  once  stricken  by  his  old  complaint,  this  time  accompa- 
nied by  dire  mental  concomitants:  he  thought  that  he  was  being 
poisoned;  he  walked  around  for  hours  in  a  complete  daze.  Amid 
this  agony  of  mind  and  body,  the  passion  for  his  art  burned  un- 
damped. Only  a  fortnight  before  the  end,  he  arranged  to  take  les- 
sons in  counterpoint  from  Simon  Sechter,  an  eminent  theorist  who. 


266  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

twenty-seven  years  later,  was  to  become  the  teacher  of  Anton 
Bruckner.  On  November  n,  he  wrote  a  pathetic  letter  to  Von 
Schober,  telling  him  of  violent  nausea  and  asking  for  some  novels 
by  James  Fenimore  Cooper.  Three  days  later,  he  was  able  to  dis- 
cuss a  new  libretto,  but  by  evening  was  delirious.  The  next  day 
this  new  turn  for  the  worse  was  diagnosed  as  typhus,  the  type  dis- 
ease of  city  slums.  In  his  feverish  ravings  he  uttered  the  name  of 
Beethoven:  apparently,  to  Schubert's  poor  tortured  mind,  the  fact 
that  Beethoven  was  not  with  him  meant  that  he  had  been  buried 
alive.  The  agony  finally  ended  on  Wednesday,  November  19,  1828. 
They  buried  him  the  following  Friday.  He  who  had  in  his  life- 
time of  genius  earned  less  than  the  equivalent  of  $3000,  left  an 
"estate"— old  clothes  and  old  music,  mostly — too  small  to  pay  for 
even  the  poorest  funeral.  His  father  and  his  brother  Ferdinand 
strapped  themselves  to  bury  him  where  they  were  convinced  he 
would  have  preferred  to  be — as  near  Beethoven's  grave  as  possi- 
ble. Early  in  1829,  from  the  proceeds  of  some  special  concerts,  a 
monument  was  erected  back  of  the  grave,  with  the  following  epi- 
taph from  the  pen  of  Schubert's  friend  the  poet  Grillparzer: 

MUSIC   HAS   HERE   ENTOMBED    A   RICH   TREASURE 
BUT   STILL   FAIRER  HOPES 

The  epitaph  caused  violent  controversies  at  the  time,  but  in  the 
main  it  was  eminently  fair.  Today  no  one  denies  that  much  of 
Schubert's  music  is  "a  rich  treasure,"  and  those  who  are  realistic 
even  about  their  idols  will  admit  that  "still  fairer  hopes"  is  equally 
just — and  not  merely  in  the  way  Grillparzer  meant  it.  He  was 
mourning  for  this  Keats  of  music,  cut  off  thus  untimely.  We  mourn, 
too,  that  (unlike  Keats)  Schubert,  with  perhaps  the  richest  natural 
endowment  ever  vouchsafed  a  musical  artist,  used  it  with  complete 
success  only  in  the  realm  of  the  song.  He  was,  as  Liszt  said  of  him, 
"the  most  poetic  of  all  musicians."  Had  he  but  been  the  most 
musicianly  as  well,  he  might  indeed  be  where  he  would  most  want 
to  be — next  to  Beethoven. 


Chapter  XI 

Felix  Mendelssohn-Bartholdy 

(Hamburg>  February  3,  iSog-November  4,  1847,  Leipzig) 


story  of  Felix  Mendelssohn  is  that  of  a  Prince  Charming. 
JL  When  he  was  born,  amid  the  rejoicings  and  Gemuthlichkeit  at- 
tending the  birth  of  an  heir  to  a  prosperous  Jewish  family,  the  good 
fairies  were  ranged  around  his  cradle.  One  of  them  gave  him 
riches,,  another  beauty,  another  charm.  Their  sisters  on  the  other 
side  of  the  cradle  were  not  to  be  outdone,  and  from  them  the  baby 
received  genius,  a  capacity  for  hard  work,  a  noble  character,  and 
a  strong  constitution.  The  conclave  of  fairy  godmothers  was  about 
to  break  up  in  complacent  jollification  when  a  silvery  but  unfa- 
miliar voice  was  heard:  it  belonged,  alas!  to  a  fairy  whom  they  had 
thoughtlessly  forgotten  to  invite.  In  the  most  dulcet  of  tones,  she 
declared  that  she,  too,  had  a  gift  for  the  child-  "Throughout  his 
life,"  she  purred,  "I  shall  see  to  it  that  he  does  everything  easily 
and  without  effort."  Her  more  dull-witted  sisters  thought  this  the 
best  gift  of  all.  The  brighter  ones  merely  pursed  their  lips. 

Mendelssohn's  is  the  happiest  life  in  musical  history.  He  was 
brought  up  in  a  cultivated  household  by  sympathetic  parents  who 
from  the  very  beginning  fostered  his  musical  ambitions.  At  a  ten- 
der age  he  enjoyed  the  intimate  friendship  of  the  undisputed  lit- 
erary dictator  of  Europe,  and  all  his  life  he  had  many  warm — and 
influential — friends  whose  principal  object  in  life  seems  to  have 
been  to  serve  him.  Success  came  to  him  in  the  fullest  measure  at 
an  absurdly  early  age,  and  at  twenty-six  he  occupied  the  most  im- 
portant post  in  musical  Germany.  He  married,  without  the  slight- 
est opposition,  the  woman  of  his  choice — a  pretty,  intelligent,  and 
talented  girl  with  whom  he  led  a  life  of  unblemished  happiness, 
heightened,  moreover,  by  five  delightful  children.  Before  reaching 
young  middle  age,  he  was  the  most  revered  composer  in  Europej 
and  just  when  the  first  real  clouds  appeared  on  the  horizon  of  his 
happiness,  he  died  speedily  and  without  pain. 

Mendelssohn's  ancestry  was  distinguished.  His  grandfather, 
Moses  Mendelssohn,  was  called  "the  modern  Plato":  one  of  his 
philosophical  books  had  been  translated  into  at  least  eight  lan- 

267 


268  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

guages,  and  Mirabeau,  in  the  midst  of  stage-managing  the  French 
Revolution,  found  time  to  praise  it.  His  lifelong  battle  to  effect  a 
sympathetic  understanding  between  Jews  and  Christians  was  waged 
so  eloquently  that  his  son  Abraham,  Felix5  father,  became  a  Lu- 
theran, appending  Bartholdy  to  his  surname  to  distinguish  himself 
from  Mendelssohns  still  adhering  to  the  Jewish  faith.  This  estima- 
ble man,  a  successful  banker  and  connoisseur  of  ideas,  had  a  lively 
sense  of  his  own  sterling  mediocrity:  after  Felix  had  become  fa- 
mous he  once  gently  complained,  "I  used  to  be  the  son  of  my 
father,  and  now  I'm  the  father  of  my  son." 

Abraham  Mendelssohn  married  a  rich,  amiable,  and  intelligent 
girl,  and  they  set  up  housekeeping  at  Hamburg.  Their  first  child 
was  a  girl,  Fanny,  who  became  a  talented  pianist  and  a  composer 
of  sorts.  Felix  appeared  next  on  the  scene.  When  he  was  three 
years  old,  the  family  fled  to  Berlin  in  the  path  of  Napoleon's  Rus- 
siabound  legions,  and  there  it  was  that  the  tiny  lad  began  his 
studies.  There  was  nothing  provincial  or  restricted  about  the  cur- 
riculum laid  down  by  the  doting  but  thoughtful  parents  for  their 
wonderful  children.  Their  days  were  crowded  with  lessons  of  all 
sorts — piano,  violin,  harmony,  drawing,  languages — so  crowded, 
in  fact,  that  Felix  later  said  that  he  lived  in  anticipation  of  Sunday, 
for  that  meant  he  would  not  have  to  get  up  at  five  o'clock  in  the 
morning  to  work.  Nevertheless,  he  responded  to  this  cramming 
system  as  a  duck  does  to  water,  and  in  a  very  short  time  was  sitting 
easily  among  the  adults,  discussing  the  most  learned  questions  with 
the  gravity  of  the  young  Jesus  disputing  with  the  rabbis  of  the 
Temple.  Nor  was  his  moral  education  likely  to  be  neglected  in  so 
comprehensive  a  schooling:  here,  too,  he  seems  to  have  had  a 
natural  adaptability — he  never  had  to  struggle  to  be  good.  A  work 
schedule  that  would  drive  a  modern  child  berserk  produced  only 
the  happiest  results  in  him,  doubtless  because  the  family  also  knew 
how  to  have  a  good  time.  There  is  testimony  galore — the  Men- 
delssohns entertained  lavishly  and  often — that  the  house  resounded 
with  gaiety  and  fun.  There  were  plenty  of  games,  plenty  of  good 
talk,  plenty  of  good  things  to  eat.  Plenty,  indeed,  was  the  keynote 
of  the  Mendelssohn  home,  and  the  center  of  all  its  activity  was  the 
boy  Felix — a  slender,  high-strung  child,  with  great  dark  eyes  and 
a  mop  of  curly  brown  hair,  mercurial,  sensitive,  bubbling  over 
with  high  spirits. 


MENDELSSOHN  269 

Felix  quickly  established  himself  as  Mozart's  only  rival  as  far  as 
musical  precocity  was  concerned.  On  October  28,  1818,  he  made 
his  first  public  appearance,  as  a  pianist  in  a  concerto  for  two  horns 
and  piano.  For  some  time  he  had  been  taking  harmony  and  com- 
position lessons  from  Carl  Friedrich  Zelter,  the  director  of  the 
Singakademie,  which  he  entered  in  1819  as  an  alto.  By  the  end  of 
the  next  year,  when  he  was  eleven  years  old,  he  had  composed 
more  than  sixty  separate  pieces,  among  them  a  cantata  and  a  little 
Lustspiel  in  three  scenes.  The  next  five  years  teem  with  incredible 
musical  productivity,  and  even  before  this  period  reached  its  term, 
Mendelssohn  had  achieved  a  facility  and  finish  of  technique  be- 
yond which  progress  was  impossible.  The  difference  between  his 
now  unplayed  juvenilia  and  the  best  works  of  his  maturity  is  that 
the  former  spin  out  prosy  commonplaces  with  uncanny  adroitness 
while  the  latter  have  real  distinction  of  musical  idea.  A  C  minor 
Symphony,  actually  the  thirteenth  he  had  composed,  but  the  first 
he  was  willing  to  own  up  to,  is  very  occasionally  revived:  it  is 
pleasant,  uneventful  stuff,  with,  however,  a  minuet  of  considerable 
verve  and  grace.  Meanwhile,  the  lad  developed  rapidly  as  a  pian- 
ist, and  in  1824  Ignaz  Moscheles,  at  thirty  already  a  most  distin- 
guished virtuoso  and  pedagogue,  was  persuaded  to  give  him  a  few 
lessons.  Moscheles  agreed  with  extreme  diffidence,  saying,  cTf  he 
wishes  to  take  a  hint  from  me  as  to  anything  new  to  him,  he  can 
easily  do  so;  but  he  stands  in  no  need  of  lessons."  Already  FeHx 
was  a  poised  and  competent  conductor.  For  some  years,  it  was  the 
Mendelssohns'  custom  to  give  musical  parties  on  alternate  Sun- 
days, when  the  children*  joined  a  small  group  of  professional  mu- 
sicians in  programs  that  always  included  at  least  one  of  Felix3 
compositions.  Even  while  still  too  short  to  be  seen  above  the  in- 
struments without  standing  on  a  stool,  the  boy  always  took  the 
baton  on  these  occasions. 

In  May,  1821,  Mendelssohn  met  Weber,  who  was  in  Berlin  su- 
perintending the  rehearsals  of  Der  Freischiltz,  and  was  present  at 
the  memorable  premiere  that  ushered  in  a  new  era  in  German  music. 
Responding  excitedly  to  the  novel  style,  with  its  glowing  color  and 
romantic  atmosphere,  he  conceived  a  lifelong  admiration  for  Weber, 
whose  idiom  he  adapted  lavishly,  particularly  in  his  overtures. 

*  There  were  two  children  younger  than  Fanny  and  Felix:  Rebecka,  who  sang, 
and  Paul,  who  played  the  cello. 


27O  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

After  meeting  Weber,  Mendelssohn  within  a  very  few  years  was  on 
friendly  terms  with  many  of  the  most  famous  personages  in  Eu- 
rope, In  November,  1821,  he  visited  Weimar  for  the  first  time,  and 
spent  more  than  a  fortnight  as  Goethe's  guest.  When  they  first  met, 
Goethe  asked  the  boy  to  play  something  for  him.  "Shall  it  be  the 
most  beautiful  music  in  the  world?"  Felix  asked,  as  he  sat  down  to 
the  piano  and  played  the  minuet  from  Don  Giovanni.  The  relation- 
ship between  the  seventy-two-year-old  philosopher-poet  and  the 
twelve-year-old  composer  was  neither  artificial  nor  perfunctory: 
it  was  a  real  friendship  that  lasted  until  Goethe's  death  in  1832. 
Several  years  later,  Mendelssohn  accompanied  his  father  to  Paris, 
where  he  made  many  new  acquaintances,  among  them  Rossini 
and  Meyerbeer.  The  formidable  Cherubini,  after  astounding  his 
confreres  by  approving  of  the  lad,  with  austerely  pedantic  con- 
descension invited  him  to  set  a  Kyrie  for  five  voices  and  orchestra. 
Mendelssohn,  who  was  a  polite  child,  did  so,  and  contented  him- 
self with  saying  of  the  old  Italian  that  he  was  an  "extinct  volcano, 
still  throwing  out  occasional  flashes  and  sparks,  but  quite  covered 
with  ashes  and  stones.1'  For  French  music  in  general  he  felt  noth- 
ing but  the  most  profound  scorn. 

Only  one  magnifico  stood  out  against  Mendelssohn's  overwhelm- 
ing charm  and  precocious  gifts:  Spontini,  still  smarting  from  his 
defeat  at  Weber's  hands,  used  his  all-powerful  position  in  Berlin  to 
prevent  Die  Hochzeit  des  Camacho,  a  two-act  opera  Felix  had  com- 
pleted on  his  return  from  Paris,  from  being  given  at  the  Kofoper. 
Spontini,  who  was  mortally  afraid  of  new  talent,  tried  to  discour- 
age him  with  pompous  criticism.  "My  friend,5'  he  said,  pointing  to 
the  dome  of  a  church,  "you  lack  big  ideas — big  like  that  dome." 
Maybe  Spontini  was  right:  Mendelssohn  himself  was  disappointed 
in  the  opera  when  it  finally  reached  the  stage  in  1827,  and  was  not 
noticeably  crushed  when,  despite  popular  acclaim,  it  was  with- 
drawn after  the  premiere.  Even  the  overture,  still  heard  now  and 
then,  is  a  jejune  bit. 

Up  to  1826  Mendelssohn's  compositions  had  not  unnaturally 
been  distinguished  by  little  more  than  facility  and  earnestness. 
Wunderkinder  have  a  disheartening  way  of  petering  out,  and  even 
though  no  composer  except  Mozart  did  much  of  importance  be- 
fore he  was  twenty,  Mendelssohn's  admirers  must  already  have 
been  wondering  whether  the  seventeen-year-old  was  to  develop 


MENDELSSOHN 

into  something  more  than  a  surpassingly  competent  third-rater. 
They  had  not  long  to  wait,  for  even  then  he  was  working  on  a 
masterpiece.  He  and  his  sisters  had  been  reading  Shakespeare,  and 
a  whole  new  world  of  magic  had  been  opened  up  to  him.  Nothing 
fired  his  imagination  more  than  the  lightness  and  elfin  fantasy  of 
A  Midsummer  Night's  Dream.  He  set  down  his  musical  impressions 
in  a  piano  duet,  which  sounded  so  promising  that  he  decided  to 
orchestrate  it  as  an  overture.  It  was  first  performed  privately  in 
the  Gartenhaus  of  the  Mendelssohns'  new  home  at  3,  Leipziger- 
strasse,  for  many  years  a  rendezvous  of  musicians  and  artists  from 
all  over  Europe.  Six  months  later,  in  February,  1827,  Felix  drove 
more  than  eighty  miles  through  a  blinding  snowstorm  to  conduct 
the  public  premiere  at  Stettin. 

The  overture  to  A  Midsummer  Nigkfs  Dream  became  during  Men- 
delssohn's life,  and  has  ever  since  remained,  the  best  loved  of  his 
purely  orchestral  compositions.  After  a  few  evocative  chords,  it 
opens  with  a  rippling  staccato  figure  that  instantly  sets  the  scene  in 
Fairyland,  and  for  the  most  obvious  of  reasons — no  mortal  could 
dance  to  this  aerial  rhythm.  Momentarily  the  dance  is  interrupted 
by  a  sweetly  dissonant  chord,  there  is  a  hint  of  hurly-burly,  and  we 
hear  the  horns  of  Duke  Theseus.  He  and  his  train  pass  by;  the 
dancers  resume,  only  to  be  crowded  from  the  scene  by  the  mortal 
lovers.  With  nice  calculation,  Mendelssohn  has  given  these  young 
people  a  more  earthbound  theme,  a  broadly  romantic  melody  of 
Weberian  character  that  not  only  affords  a  telling  musical  con- 
trast, but  also  beautifully  points  up  their  muddled  loves.  What  can 
be  more  natural  at  this  point  than  to  introduce  a  reference  to 
Bottom  and  the  other  clownish  actors  by  a  rustic  dance  with  the 
veriest  hint  of  peasant  buskins?  The  rest  of  the  overture  is  made  up 
of  recapitulation  and  development  of  these  themes.  All  is  exqui- 
sitely designed,  thought  out  with  flawless  logic,  and  reverently 
adapted  to  the  spirit  of  Shakespeare's  play.  The  harmonies  through- 
out are  bold  without  being  obtrusive.  They  were  revolutionary  in 
Mendelssohn's  time,  and  have  only  now  become  commonplaces. 
The  orchestration  is  equally  original.  Of  this  overture,  Bernard 
Shaw,  in  1892,  wrote  with  evident  surprise:  "One  can  actually  feel 
the  novelty  now,  after  sixty-six  years."  And  today,  after  almost 
sixty  years  more,  though  we  can  no  longer  experience  it  as  a  nov- 


272  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

elty,  its  true  originality  keeps  it  fresh.  Altogether,  it  is  an  amazing 
composition  for  a  boy  of  seventeen. 

It  is  all  the  more  amazing  when  considered  as  merely  one  of  the 
coruscations  of  a  life  abnormal  only  in  its  extreme  activity.  Before 
the  overture  was  finished,  Mendelssohn  had  matriculated  at  the 
University  of  Berlin,  where  he  listened  with  relish  to  Hegel's  lec- 
tures on  the  esthetics  of  music.  Moreover,  he  went  about  building 
his  physique  as  conscientiously  as  his  mind,  and  became  a  fine 
swimmer  and  rider.  He  danced  elegantly,  played  a  stiff  game  of 
billiards,  and  bowled  on  the  green.  In  short,  he  had  the  accom- 
plishments of  a  gentleman,  and  the  graces  as  well.  The  world  of 
art  and  fashion  came  to  3,  Leipzigerstrasse,  and  as  Mendelssohn 
reached  young  manhood,  he  assumed  with  ease  a  leading  role  in 
these  gatherings,  and  bore  with  equanimity  the  penalty  of  being 
the  cynosure  of  all  eyes.  With  his  great  musical  future  almost  upon 
him,  he  became  a  better  than  mediocre  water-colorist,  and  de- 
veloped his  linguistic  aptitude  (he  was  the  first  to  translate  Terence 
into  German  in  the  original  meter).  If  in  these  early  years  he.  was 
not  the  most  famous  person  at  the  parties,  he  was  the  most  preco- 
cious in  genius,  the  most  varied  in  talent.  The  conversation  must 
have  been  worth  listening  to:  Heine's  alone  would  have  made  any 
soiree  memorable,  and  the  presence  of  Alexander  von  Humboldt, 
scientist  and  world  traveler,  Bettina  von  Arnim,  Wilhelm  Miiller, 
Hegel,  and  the  macabre  Paganini,  trailing  clouds  of  spurious  glory, 
guaranteed  variety. 

As  if  this  were  not  enough,  Mendelssohn,  in  the  last  months  of 

1827,  formed  a  choir  of  sixteen  picked  voices  to  meet  weekly  at  his 
home  and  practice  the  Matthew  Passion.  Even  as  a  child,  he  had 
been  passionately  devoted  to  the  neglected  masterpieces  of  the  old 
Thomascantor,  and  now  was  stung  into  action  by  the  casual  re- 
mark of  another  musician  that  "Bach  is  a  mere  arithmetical  exer- 
cise." Mendelssohn  knew  the  Passion  by  heart,  and  soon  his  own 
enthusiasm  was  communicated  to  the  little  group.  By  the  end  of 

1828,  they  were  determined  that  the  work  should  be  given  by  the 
Singakademie,  where  his  old  teacher,  Zelter,  still  reigned  as  direc- 
tor. Despite  Mendelssohn's  own  feeling  that  the  work's  huge  phys- 
ical requirements  and  the  indifference  .of  the  public  were  cogent 
arguments  for  not  pushing  production  plans,  in  which  opinion  he 
was  supported  by  his  family  and  several  of  his  friends,  he  allowed 


MENDELSSOHN  273 

his  own  devotion  to  the  music  and  the  crusading  zeal  of  the  versa- 
tile actor-singer,  Eduard  Devrient,  to  propel  his  reluctant  feet  to 
the  Singakademie,  where  he  hesitatingly  stammered  out  the  pro- 
posal. At  first,  Zelter  was  opposed,  but  when  Devrient  joined  his 
own  pleas  to  Mendelssohn's,  the  day  was  won.  Zelter,  having  given 
his  word,  threw  the  whole  force  of  the  Singakademie  behind  the 
production.  The  public  was  so  curious  about  the  novel  doings  that 
it  flocked  to  the  rehearsals.  For  the  performance  itself,  on  March 
n,  1829,  with  Mendelssohn  conducting,  more  than  a  thousand 
were  turned  away.  It  was  the  first  performance  of  the  Matthew 
Passion  outside  Leipzig  since  Bach's  death  almost  eighty  years 
before. 

From  these  casual  beginnings  sprang  the  dissemination  of  what 
has  proved  the  most  fruitful  musical  influence  of  modern  times. 
Others,  including  Schumann,  soon  joined  the  cause  of  Bach — it 
really  was  a  cause  in  those  days — and  within  a  century  Bach  has 
changed  in  the  public  mind  from  "a  mere  arithmetical  exercise33 
to  a  position  where  he  is  acclaimed,  with  pardonable  inaccuracy, 
as  the  Father  of  Music.  We  who  take  our  Bach  for  granted  as  one 
of  the  staples  of  popular  musical  entertainment  can  scarcely  re- 
alize that  Mendelssohn  and  his  scant  cohorts  were  in  the  most  real 
sense  pioneers:  the  first  steps  in  this  revival  took  courage,  and  often 
aroused  antagonism.  There  was  even  some  display  of  hostility 
against  Mendelssohn  over  the  first  performance  of  the  Passion.  For- 
tunately, he  was  fully  aware  of  the  importance  of  the  task  he  was 
undertaking,  and  was  resolved  to  brook  no  opposition  in  ppeaching 
his  new  gospel.  He  was  proud  of  his  part  in  the  business,  and  once 
pointed  out  that  "it  was  an  actor  and  a  Jew  who  restored  this 
great  Christian  work  to  the  people."  This  seems  to  have  been  the 
only  time  he  ever  referred  to  his  race,  for  having  been  baptized  a 
Lutheran,  he  always  thought  of  himself  as  a  Christian. 

After  conducting  a  second  performance  of  the  Matthew  Passion 
on  Bach's  birthday  s  Mendelssohn  took  ship  for  England,  embark- 
ing at  Hamburg  and  reaching  London  four  days  later.  He  arrived 
at  the  height  of  the  opera  season,  and  for  a  time  did  nothing  but 
frequent  Covent  Garden  and  the  theaters.  He  heard  Malibran  as 
Desdemona  in  Rossini's  Otello;  he  saw  Kemble  as  Hamlet,  and 
deplored  the  performance — too  many  cuts  for  such  a  strict  Shake- 
spearean. It  was  not  until  late  in  May  that  he  got  around  to  making 


274  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

his  English  debut,  conducting  his  own  C  minor  Symphony  from 
the  piano  at  a  Philharmonic  concert.  It  was  a  heart-warming  oc- 
casion, especially  after  the  recent  hostility  of  a  bloc  of  Berlin  mu- 
sicians— act  one,  in  fact,  of  that  long-drawn-out  love  affair  between 
Mendelssohn  and  the  English  public  that  is  still  going  strong.  A 
few  days  later,  dressed  in  "very  long  white  trousers,  brown  silk 
waistcoat,  black  necktie,  and  blue  dress  coat,35  he  played  Weber's 
Conzertstuck  "with  no  music  before  him,"  as  The  Times  put  it.  Ev- 
erywhere the  crowds  succumbed  to  his  charm,  and  soon  he  was 
writing  home,  "London  life  suits  me  exactly":  the  English  did  not 
know  much  about  music,  but  they  knew  what  they  liked,  and  they 
liked  Mendelssohn.  As  the  trip  to  England  was  originally  planned 
by  his  father  as  but  the  first  stage  in  a  grand  tour,  in  the  summer 
Mendelssohn  toured  Scotland  and  Wales,  whose  wild  scenery  and 
ruined  abbeys  gave  him  ideas  that  he  later  used  in  such  musical 
landscapes  as  those  in  the  "Scotch"  Symphony  and  FingaVs  Cave. 
Toward  the  end  of  the  year,  he  was  back  in  the  cooler  atmosphere 
of  Berlin,  with  his  reputation  completely  established  in  the  British 
Isles.  He  was  not  yet  twenty-one  years  old. 

Nursing  a  lame  knee  sustained  in  a  carriage  accident  in  London, 
Mendelssohn  improved  the  shining  hours  by  composing  the  "Ref- 
ormation" Symphony  to  commemorate  the  tercentenary  of  the 
Augsburg  Confession.  It  turned  out  to  be  solid,  pompous  music 
with  a  setting  of  Ein  feste  Burg  imbedded  in  the  last  movement. 
Political  and  religious  disturbances  prevented  its  performance  in 
Germany  in  1830;  the  good  sense  of  a  Paris  orchestra  let  it  get  no 
farther  than  rehearsal  in  1832;  today  a  revival  of  this  windy  tract 
is  rightly  resented. 

Early  in  1830,  Mendelssohn  was  offered  a  specially  created  pro- 
fessorship of  music  at  the  University  of  Berlin,  but  refused  it: 
Switzerland  and  Italy  remained  to  be  done,  and  the  last  thing  in 
the  world  he  wanted  was  to  be  tied  down.  An  undignified  case  of 
measles  delayed  his  departure,  but  in  May  he  was  at  last  ready. 
Halting  at  Weimar  for  what  proved  to  be  his  last  visit  with  Goethe, 
and  stopping  en  route  at  the  best  houses  and  consorting  with  the 
best  people,  he  proceeded  by  such  easy  stages  that  he  did  not  ar- 
rive in  Rome  until  November.  Here  he  visited  the  art  museums, 
haunted  the  Sistine  Chapel,  and  duly  astonished  the  Roman  mu- 
sicians with  his  fluid  musicianship.  He  could  not  get  the  Gregorian 


MENDELSSOHN  275 

chant  through  his  Lutheran  head — in  fact,  the  subtleties  of  the 
Roman  service  were  incomprehensible  to  his  irascibly  Protestant 
temper.  He  managed  to  unearth  a  few  fine  things  in  Palestrina,  as 
he  admitted  to  Baini,  the  most  erudite  of  latter-day  Palestrinians. 
In  general,  however,  Rome  wore  as  alien  an  aspect  to  Mendelssohn 
as  it  had  to  an  Augustinian  monk  named  Martin  Luther,  three 
hundred  years  before.  Appropriately,  it  was  in  this  winter  city 
that  he  completed  the  first  version  of  the  somber  FingaVs  Cave. 

Naples  appealed  to  him  more — though  even  there  he  longed  for 
London — and  its  lightness  and  unthinking  gaiety  echo  through 
some  of  his  later  compositions.  After  six  weeks'  delicious  dawdling, 
Mendelssohn  remembered  that  he  was  a  German,  and  started 
north.  In  Milan  he  played  Mozart  to  the  composer's  son  Karl.  In 
Switzerland  he  amazed  some  monks  by  introducing  them  to  the 
organ  fugues  of  Bach,  a  composer  previously  unknown  to  them. 
September  found  him  hobnobbing  with  the  King  of  Bavaria  in 
Munich,  where  he  composed,  and  played  for  the  first  time,  his 
second-rate  G  minor  Piano  Concerto.  Before  Christmas  he  was  in 
Paris,  which  proved  less  susceptible  to  his  charms  than  London. 
The  Societe  des  Concerts  du  Conservatoire  did  the  overture  to  A 
Midsummer  Nighfs  Dream,  balked  at  the  "Reformation"  Symphony 
— and  left  Mendelssohn  severely  alone  for  eleven  years.  The  cool- 
ness of  Paris  was  disheartening  enough,  but  here,  too,  he  received 
news  that  Goethe  had  died  at  Weimar.  Around  Mendelssohn  in 
Paris  shone  the  glitter  of  mid-nineteenth-century  music:  Liszt,  him- 
self to  rule  at  Weimar  before  many  years  had  passed,  Chopin^ 
Meyerbeer,  and  Ole  Bull,  half  genius,  half  charlatan,  heir  to  Paga- 
nini's  crown.  Mendelssohn  lingered  in  Paris  for  four  months,  living 
the  life  of  a  well-behaved  society  butterfly,  but  completely  failing 
to  establish  himself  musically. 

In  April,  1832,  Mendelssohn  reached  London  again.  The  "smoky 
nest"  he  had  pined  for  in  Naples  now  showed  its  fairest  face,  and 
one  he  had  not  previously  seen:  the  weather  was  balmy,  the  lilacs 
were  in  blossom — and  he  fell  more  than  ever  in  love  with  the  city. 
He  was  received  with  open  arms,  and  responded  by  a  fine  burst  of 
musical  activity,  playing  both  piano  and  organ  in  public,  arrang- 
ing various  of  his  pieces  (notably  Book  I  of  the  Lieder  ohm  Worte) 
for  publication,  and  composing  the  Capriccio  brillant,  a  clever  bra- 
vura piece  for  piano  and  orchestra.  Most  important,  on  May  14, 


276  MEN     OF    MUSIC 

the  Philharmonic  performed  the  "Hebrides"  Overture.  Mendels- 
sohn was  not  satisfied  with  it:  he  at  once  revised  it  radically,  and 
by  the  end  of  June  had  finished  what  was  essentially  a  new  work. 
Known  under  a  variety  of  titles,  among  them  FingaVs  Cave,  the 
''Hebrides"  Overture  disputes  place  with  that  to  A  Midsummer 
Nighfs  Dream  in  quality.  We  have  the  composer's  own  testimony 
that  the  lapping  figure  with  which  it  opens  came  into  his  mind 
during  his  visit  to  Fingal's  Cave  in  the  remote  Hebrides.  Wagner, 
with  his  genius  for  trivializing  the  truth,  sneeringly  called  the  over- 
ture an  aquarelle.  Actually,  it  is  one  of  the  great  seascapes  of  music. 
The  severity  and  aptness  of  the  themes,  unquestionably  among 
Mendelssohn's  happiest  inspirations,  the  utter  sufficiency  of  the  de- 
velopment, and  the  uncanny  balancing  of  the  instruments — all 
contribute  to  a  formal  perfection  that  has,  as  Tovey  says,  "the  vital 
and  inevitable  unexpectedness  of  the  classics."  In  the  "Hebrides" 
Mendelssohn  wins  the  right  to  be  called  a  great  composer,  for 
starting  with  material  of  surpassing  beauty  and  originality,  he  lov- 
ingly molds  it  into  a  form  exactly  suited  to  its  requirements. 

Mendelssohn  was  still  in  London  when  news  reached  him  of 
Zelter's  death:  this  meant  that  the  directorship  of  the  Singakade- 
mie,  a  post  of  great  prestige,  was  open.  On  returning  to  Berlin,  he 
indicated  that  he  would  accept  the  position  if  elected,  but  refused 
to  push  his  candidacy  against  that  of  Carl  Friedrich  Rungenhagen, 
long  Zelter's  first  aide.  It  turned  out  that  assuming  this  passive 
role  was  the  most  tactful  thing  Mendelssohn  could  have  done:  he 
was  not  liked  among  the  petty,  spiteful  musicians  of  the  Prussian 
capital,  and  Rungenhagen' s  election  was  all  but  certain  from  the 
beginning.  Mendelssohn  accepted  his  overwhelming  defeat  calmly, 
but  it  clouded  his  temper,  and  made  him  eager  to  leave  Berlin  for  a 
more  congenial  arena.  An  offer  to  conduct  the  important  Lower 
Rhine  Festival  at  Diisseldorf  the  following  spring  assuaged  his 
vexed  spirit.  Close  on  its  heels  came  a  most  flattering  bid  from  the 
London  Philharmonic,  accompanied  by  a  hundred-guinea  order 
for  a  new  symphony  and  other  pieces.  He  at  once  began  complet- 
ing an  A  major  symphony  he  had  begun  in  Italy  in  1831.  Oddly 
enough  for  so  facile  a  composer,  the  process  caused  him  acute 
agony  of  mind.  He  literally  wrestled  with  the  materials,  and  did 
not  lay  his  pen  aside  until  March  13,  1833. 

The  "Italian"  Symphony,  produced  in  (for  Mendelssohn)  such 


MENDELSSOHN  277 

long-drawn-out  travail,  shows  no  sign  of  effort.  Its  inspired  spon- 
taneity never  flags,  and  in  a  certain  sense  the  pace  never  falters. 
It  begins  with  an  allegro  and  ends  with  a  presto,  and  though  the 
middle  movements  are  in  slower  tempos,  the  information  is  subtly 
conveyed  that  the  rapid  pace  will  shortly  be  resumed.  This  sense  of 
a  pervasive  motion  germane  to  the  character  of  the  symphony  as  a 
whole  is  not  unique  with  Mendelssohn,  but  as  one  element  of  unity 
he  has  used  it  here  with  a  complete  success  that  has  often  eluded 
more  profound  musical  thinkers.  Yet  the  "Italian"  Symphony  does 
not  lack  variety:  the  first  movement  rushes  along  with  gay  and 
assertive  impetuosity;  the  andante  is  a  processional,  dignified  but 
not  solemn,  with  a  staccato  suggestion  that  the  marchers  are  im- 
patient to  get  on  to  the  lighter  business  of  the  day;  they  do  so  via 
a  lyrical  but  practical  moderato — and  go  into  their  dance.  It  is 
one  of  the  enigmas  of  musical  history  that  Mendelssohn  was  never 
satisfied  with  this  saltarello,  and  until  his  death  nursed  hopes  of 
revising  it.  Fortunately,  he  never  touched  it,  for  it  is  perfect  as  it 
stands — the  most  lighthearted  and  swift-footed  of  all  symphonic 
dances.  In  hearing  it,  one  thinks  immediately  of  that  other  great 
symphonic  dance  of  a  more  robust  people — the  gigantic  kermis 
that  closes  the  A  major  Symphony  of  Ludwig  van  Beethoven.  Men- 
delssohn's is  a  supremely  fitting  conclusion  to  an  "Italian"  sym- 
phony. 

First  produced  under  the  composer's  baton  on  May  13,  1833, 
the  "Italian"  delighted  the  Londoners,  and  when  three  days  later 
he  left  to  keep  his  date  at  Dtisseldorf,  it  was  with  a  promise  to  re- 
turn immediately  the  Rhine  Festival  was  over.  Exalted  by  the 
triumph  of  a  work  of  which  he  had  entertained  the  darkest  mis- 
givings, he  carried  all  before  him  at  Diisseldorf.  It  has  been  said 
that  Mendelssohn  was  the  first  conductor  to  play  upon  the  or- 
chestra as  upon  a  single  instrument,  and  his  Rhenish  debut  was 
indeed  impressive.  The  programs  included  Beethoven's  "Pastoral" 
Symphony,  his  own  noisy  "Trumpet"  Overture,  and  a  complete 
performance  of  Israel  in  Egypt  in  its  original  form — something  of  a 
slap  at  the  Berlin  Singakademie,  which  had  lately  felt  called  upon 
to  reorchestrate  Handel.  Mendelssohn's  pleasure  over  the  warm 
recognition  of  his  talents  was  intensified  by  the  fact  that  his  father, 
who  had  begun  to  lose  his  sight,  was  able  to  be  present.  It  knew  no 
bounds  when  that  recognition  took  the  form  of  an  invitation  to 


MEN     OF    MUSIC 

become  musical  director  at  Diisseldorf  for  three  years.  Mendels- 
sohn accepted  at  once,  and  after  several  weeks  in  London  with 
his  father — a  frank  vacation  they  both  enjoyed — returned  to  the 
scene  of  his  new  activities. 

With  his  accustomed  energy,  Mendelssohn  rolled  up  his  sleeves, 
and  began  to  reorganize  Diisseldorf  music  from  top  to  bottom. 
First  came  the  church  music:  "Not  one  tolerable  solemn  mass,  and 
not  a  single  one  of  the  old  Italian  masters;  nothing  but  modern 
dross"  was  to  be  found  in  the  town,  so  he  drove  to  Elberfeld,  Bonn, 
and  Cologne,  and  within  a  few  days  was  back  with  a  carriageload 
of  Palestrina,  Di  Lasso,  Pergolesi,  and  Leonardo  Leo.  After  that, 
there  were — at  least  during  Mendelssohn's  incumbency — no  more 
"scandalous"  Masses  heard  in  Diisseldorf.  He  was  successful  in 
raising  the  standard  of  music  heard  in  the  concert  rooms,  but  at 
the  opera  house  he  struck  a  snag.  He  mounted  Don  Giovanni  and 
Le  Nozze  di  Figaro,  Cherubini's  Deux  Journees,  and  Egmont  with 
Beethoven's  incidental  music.  But  the  opera  audiences  objected  to 
the  severity  of  his  taste,  and  also  to  the  scaling-up  of  the  prices. 
There  was  a  little  revolution  in  Diisseldorf,  and  Mendelssohn  re- 
signed from  active  direction  of  the  opera  before  he  was  deposed. 
Opera  had  never  been  his  metier:  his  own  tentative  experiments 
had  been  failures,  and  like  Beethoven,  he  objected  to  the  loose 
tone  of  most  librettos.  This  new  rebuff  steeled  him  in  a  resolve  to 
turn  to  the  more  genial  atmosphere  of  the  oratorio.  The  very 
month  he  resigned  from  the  opera  he  began  working  in  this,  to 
him,  new  field,  sketching  the  outlines  of  an  ambitious  work  to  be 
known  as  St.  Paul.,  which  took  two  years  to  complete. 

In  general,  Mendelssohn's  life  at  Diisseldorf  was  extremely  happy, 
with  only  the  pettiest  of  difficulties  to  surmount:  the  greatest  crisis 
was  at  the  opera,  and  its  seemingly  disappointing  outcome  came 
actually  as  a  relief  to  him.  As  a  composer,  however,  he  was  rather 
disposed  to  rest  on  his  laurels.  When  one  is  twenty-five,  and  al- 
ready world-famous,  there  can  seem  little  reason  for  hurry.  A  bland 
but  unimportant  overture — Die  schbne  Melusine — a  Rondo  brillant  for 
piano  and  orchestra,  and  some  pleasant  songs  are  the  outstanding 
productions  of  his  Diisseldorf  years.  One  of  the  songs  is  the  luscious 
and  ever-popular  setting  of  Heine's  Auf  Flugeln  des  Gesanges,  now 
heard  more  often  in  Liszt's  piano  transcription  than  in  the  original. 
Its  treacly  effusiveness  and  the  almost  embarrassing  sentimentality 


MENDELSSOHN  279 

of  its  melodic  Ene  make  one  thankful  that  Mendelssohn  did  not 
waste  much  time  on  lieder. 

Early  in  1835  there  came  to  Mendelssohn,  in  his  pleasant  pro- 
vincial backwater,  an  invitation  that  he  could  not  refuse:  Leipzig 
wanted  him  for  the  Gewandhaus  concerts.  The  negotiations  lead- 
ing to  his  acceptance  of  this  offer  show  him,  on  one  hand,  as  a 
close,  even  a  hard,  bargainer,  and  on  the  other,  as  almost  neu- 
rotically anxious  lest  he  injure  someone's  position  and  sensibilities. 
Once  the  deal  was  closed,  he  took  it  easy  until  June,  when  he  con- 
ducted the  Lower  Rhine  Festival  at  Cologne  with  great  acclama- 
tion, coming  away  with  a  fat  fee  and  a  complete  edition  of  Handel, 
presented  to  him  by  the  festival  committee.  In  August,  he  took  up 
his  new  duties  at  Leipzig,  and  explored  the  social  possibilities  of 
the  town.  Chopin  came  to  visit  him,  and  together  the  pair  found 
their  way  to  the  home  of  Friedrich  Wieck,  a  noted  music  teacher 
whose  sixteen-year-old  daughter  Clara  was  already  one  of  the  most 
famous  pianists  in  Europe.  There,  too,  they  met  a  moody  and 
silent  young  man  named  Robert  Schumann,  the  editor  of  a  radical 
musical  sheet,  and  composer  of  a  piano  suite  called  Carnaval.  At 
the  Gewandhaus  Mendelssohn  found  more  than  a  satisfactory  band, 
and  his  Leipzig  debut  as  a  conductor  passed  without  mishap.  The 
audience  was  more  than  polite  to  his  own  early  "Meeresstille"  Over- 
ture— rather  a  trifle  for  opening  so  important  a  concert — and 
shouted  its  bravos  after  each  movement  of  Beethoven's  Fourth 
Symphony.  While  there  were  varying  opinions  as  to  Mendelssohn's 
ability  as  a  conductor,  there  is  no  doubt  that  he  whipped  up  the 
Gewandhaus  orchestra  into  the  most  efficient  in  Europe.  He  was 
persevering,  earnest,  and  reverent  toward  the  intentions  of  the 
composers  he  conducted.  Furthermore,  he  was  on  friendly  terms 
with  his  men,  and  always  got  their  enthusiastic  co-operation.  The 
most  serious  charge  leveled  at  him  was  that  he  tended  to  rush 
certain  tempos.  Berlioz,  Schumann,  and  Wagner  complained  bit- 
terly of  his  treatment  of  Beethoven,  whose  works  appeared  con- 
stantly on  his  programs.  Chorley,  who  was  devoted  to  Mendelssohn, 
said  that  on  the  podium  he  was  "lively  rather  than  certain,'5  and 
there  seems  no  doubt  that  this  liveliness  contributed  largely  to  his 
tremendous  popularity  as  a  conductor. 

In  October,  shortly  after  his  debut  at  the  Gewandhaus,  Men- 
delssohn went  off  for  a  two-day  holiday  in  Berlin  with  his  Mend 


28o  MEN     OF    MUSIC 

Moscheles.  Never  had  the  Leipzigerstrasse  house  been  gayer,  de- 
spite the  fact  that  its  host  was  now  quite  blind.  It  was  the  last  time 
Mendelssohn  ever  saw  his  father,  for  little  more  than  a  month 
later,  he  received  news  that  the  old  man  had  died  in  his  sleep.  This 
was  a  heavy  blow,  for  he  had  been  deeply  attached  to  him.  It  did 
not,  however,  materially  affect  his  life.  "The  only  thing  that  now 
remains  is  to  do  one's  duty/5  he  wrote  solemnly.  "I  shall  now  work 
with  double  zeal  at  the  completion  of  St.  Paul,  for  my  father  urged 
me  to  in  the  very  last  letter  he  wrote  me." 

Mendelssohn  had  originally  contracted  to  give  Frankfort  the  first 
hearing  of  St.  Paul  in  November,  1835.  But  n*s  father's  death  had 
naturally  slowed  down  his  work  all  along  the  line,  and  the  oratorio 
was  not  finished  until  spring.  He  used  it,  instead,  to  lead  off  at  the 
Lower  Rhine  Festival  at  Diisseldorf  that  May.  The  soloists  were 
professionals,  but  most  of  the  r  72  men  in  the  orchestra  and  of  the 
chorus  of  364  voices  were  amateurs.  The  performance  was  rough: 
the  professionals,  like  an  embattled  minority,  tried  to  do  their  best, 
but  at  the  end  Mendelssohn  was  not  wholly  satisfied  with  either 
the  day's  work  or  St.  Paul  itself.  "Many  parts  caused  me  much 
pleasure,"  he  wrote,  "others  not  so;  but  I  learned  a  lesson  from  it 
all,  and  hope  to  succeed  better  the  next  time  I  write  an  oratorio." 
If  St.  Paul  did  not  please  its  own  composer,  there  seems  little  reason 
to  linger  over  this  unsatisfactory  incense  offering  to  Bach.  It  was 
tremendously  popular  throughout  the  nineteenth  century,  particu- 
larly in  England,  but  it  is  now  more  often  scornfully  talked  about 
(by  persons  who  can  never  have  heard  a  note  of  it)  than  performed. 
There  are  certain  solemn  works  so  foreign  to  modern  taste,  and 
because  of  their  length  so  boring,  so  absurdly  amusing,  or  so  in- 
furiating, that  it  is  now  impossible  to  do  them  justice.  Among 
these,  like  one  of  the  prosy  heroes  of  The  Dunciad>  St.  Paul  stands 
well  in  the  forefront.  It  was  a  fine  experience  to  hear  Schumann- 
Heink  proclaim  "But  the  Lord  is  mindful  of  His  own,"  which  is 
but  one  of  several  effective  numbers  buried  in  the  score,  but  only  a 
now  unforeseeable  revolution  in  taste  could  revive  the  oratorio  in 
its  entirety. 

After  the  festival  was  over,  Mendelssohn  went  to  Frankfort  to  do 
some  substitute  conducting.  He  was  coddled  in  the  charming  home 
atmosphere  of  the  versatile  Ferdinand  Hiller,  whose  house  was  as 
much  a  rendezvous  of  artists  as  that  of  the  Mendelssohns  in  Berlin. 


MENDELSSOHN 

Among  those  he  met  was  Rossini,  c 'sitting  there — as  large  as  life, 
in  his  best  and  most  amiable  mood."  Now  it  was  the  charmer's 
turn  to  be  charmed.  He  wrote  to  his  mother  that  anyone  who  did 
not  think  Rossini  a  genius  had  but  to  listen  to  his  conversation.  But 
it  was  at  the  home  of  a  Mme  Jeanrenaud  tLat  Mendelssohn  was 
most  often  seen.,  and  at  first  there  were  whispers  that  he  was  court- 
ing this  attractive  young  widow.  A  troubled  Mendelssohn  then 
left  for  a  month  at  the  seashore  to  think  things  out,,  after  which, 
with  his  mind  completely  made  up,  he  returned  to  Frankfort,  and 
requested  the  hand,  not  of  Mme  Jeanrenaud,  but  of  her  seventeen- 
year-old  daughter,  Cecile  Charlotte  Sophie.  The  betrothal  was  an- 
nounced in  September,  and  six  months  later,  on  March  28,  1837, 
they  were  married  at  the  Walloon  French  Reformed  church,  of 
which  the  deceased  M.  Jeanrenaud  had  been  pastor. 

Mendelssohn's  married  life  was  one  of  idyllic  happiness,  though 
his  wife  seems  to  have  been  a  woman  of  rather  trivial  tastes.  Five 
children,  all  of  whom  outlived  their  father — one  of  the  daughters, 
indeed,  into  the  twentieth  century — literally  blessed  their  union, 
for  Mendelssohn  was  a  doting  parent  who  delighted  in  the  guileless 
ways  of  small  children.  The  Mendelssohns,  in  short,  were  an  exact 
pattern  of  everything  expected  of  the  Victorian  gentleman  and  b^s 
family. 

In  August,  Mendelssohn  had  to  tear  himself  away  from  his  wife. 
England  was  clamoring  for  him,  and  he  had  promised  to  conduct 
the  Birmingham  Festival  that  year.  While  staying  in  London,  he 
played  the  organ  several  times,  and  once  at  St.  Paul's  drew  such 
huge  crowds  that  the  verger  took  the  drastic  step  of  disconnecting 
the  beDows  in  the  middle  of  a  Bach  fugue:  it  was  the  only  way  the 
church  could  be  emptied.  Many  of  Mendelssohn's  contemporaries 
believed  that  this  slight,  elegant  man  was  the  greatest  organist  of 
the  time.  At  Birmingham,  St.  Paul  was  acclaimed  by  enthusiastic 
thousands:  Handel's  rival — in  popularity — had  appeared.  Scarcely 
less  frenzied  was  the  applause  that  greeted  Mendelssohn's  own 
playing  of  the  D  minor  Piano  Concerto  he  had  composed  especially 
for  the  occasion.  If  it  seems  inconceivable  to  us  that  any  audience 
could  go  wild  over  this  merely  perfect  and  well-mannered  music, 
it  must  be  remembered  that  it  was,  on  this  occasion,  being  played 
by  a  magician.  For  this  incredible  man  was  also  in  the  very  front 
rank  of  the  pianists  of  his  day — we  have  as  witnesses  not  merely  the 


MEN    OF    MUSIC 

Indiscriminate,  pious  English  press,  but  Ms  best-qualified  contem- 
poraries: Clara  Schumann,  Joachim,  Killer,  and  many  others.  Ber- 
lioz declared  that  Mendelssohn  was  even  able  to  convey  "an  ac- 
curate idea"  of  instrumental  color  by  playing  an  orchestral  score 
on  the  piano — an  amazing  tribute  from  one  who  detested  the  piano, 
and  was  himself  an  unrivaled  master  of  the  orchestral  palette. 

The  next  few  years  were  uneventfully  prosperous  for  Mendels- 
sohn. The  Gewandhaus  concerts  wrere  soon  known  throughout 
the  length  and  breadth  of  Europe,  for  not  only  was  the  orchestra 
itself  first-rate,  but  Mendelssohn  was  pronouncedly  hospitable  to 
newr  compositions  of  merit  or  striking  originality.  When  Berlioz 
visited  Leipzig,  early  in  1843,  Mendelssohn  devoted  an  extra  con- 
cert to  the  Frenchman's  music,  which  he  thoroughly  detested.  All 
the  leading  virtuosos  of  the  time  performed  under  his  baton:  Bach's 
Triple  Concerto,  for  instance,  was  heard  once  with  Hiller,  Liszt, 
and  Mendelssohn,  while  another  time  Clara  Schumann  and  Mo- 
scheles  joined  him  in  playing  it.  His  fine  taste  was  revealed  in  the 
selection  of  his  programs,  his  rare  musical  scholarship  in  the  resur- 
rection of  the  classics  of  the  past. 

Most  of  the  compositions  Mendelssohn  wrote  during  the  first  few 
years  after  his  marriage  need  detain  no  one.  Although  amply  sup- 
plied with  the  familiar  finish  and  gloss,  they  were  too  bloodless  to 
survive  into  this  century.  The  overture  to  Victor  Hugo's  Ruy  Bias 
is  very  much  an  exception.  Describing  the  play's  rodomontade  as 
"detestable  and  more  utterly  beneath  contempt  than  you  could 
believe/5  Mendelssohn  softly  acceded  to  the  solicitations  of  the 
Theatrical  Pension  Fund  of  Leipzig  that  he  provide  curtain  music 
for  their  production  of  it  in  1839.  In  three  days,  he  turned  out  in  a 
fit  of  annoyance  at  both  himself  and  the  Fund  one  of  the  most 
bang-up  overtures  of  his  career.  It  has  absolutely  no  relation  to 
Hugo's  tragic  villains  and  victims.  It  is,  in  fact,  little  short  of 
rollicking,  except  for  a  few  sinister  chords  that  seem  to  have  been 
injected  into  die  score  for  the  joke  of  the  thing.  It  has  outlasted 
many  of  Mendelssohn's  attempts  at  grander  and  more  profound 
effects.  In  1840,  the  quatercentenary  of  the  invention  of  printing 
drew  from  him  one  of  his  most  solemn  and  self-conscious  flights — 
the  vast  symphony-cantata  known  in  Germany  as  the  Lobgesang, 
to  English  festival  audiences  as  the  Hymn  of  Praise.  The  use  of  a 
battery  of  soloists,  chorus,  orchestra,  and  organ  could  not  cover  up 


MENDELSSOHN  283 

the  fact  that  here  Mendelssohn  was  out  of  his  depth.  What  was 
intended  to  be  solemn  sounds  pompous;  what  was  meant  to  be 
moving  too  often  sounds  like  schoolgirl  rhetoric;  and  when  the 
forces  mass  in  a  bid  for  overwhelming  grandeur,  the  result  is  a 
cavernous  grandiloquence.  If  Mendelssohn  had  to  be  judged  solely 
on  the  merits  of  his  imitations  of  the  greatest  designs  of  Bach  and 
Handel.,  he  would  be  written  down  as  a  second-rater. 

After  a  sixth  visit  to  England,  during  which  the  Hymn  of  Praise 
was  triumphantly  presented  at  the  Birmingham  Festival,  Men- 
delssohn returned  to  Leipzig  in  full  anticipation  of  continuing  his 
happy  life  there.  It  was  not  to  be.  Within  a  few  months,  his  brother 
Paul  appeared  on  the  scene  as  an  emissary  from  Friedrich  Wilhelm 
IV,  King  of  Prussia.  Having  just  ascended  the  throne,  and  being 
desirous  of  raising  the  cultural  level  of  Berlin,  the  monarch  had 
drawn  up  plans  for  a  mammoth  academy  of  the  arts.  It  was  to  be 
divided  into  four  sections — painting,  sculpture,  architecture,  and 
music — a  commanding  figure  was  to  direct  each  division,  and 
Friedrich  Wilhelm  was  determined  to  have  Mendelssohn  among 
his  directors.  The  salary  offered  was,  even  to  a  man  of  Mendels- 
sohn's more  than  comfortable  means,  attractive.  But  he  was  highly 
dubious  about  the  great  scheme,  and  very  reluctant  to  leave  Leip- 
zig. Negotiations  dragged  along  interminably,  but  by  May,  1841, 
he  was  settled  in  Berlin,  where  he  had  promised  to  remain  for  a 
year.  He  came  on  his  own  terms,  with  no  feeling  that  the  arrange- 
ment was  final.  He  was  allowed  to  retain  the  formal  direction  of 
the  Gewandhaus,  though  for  practical  reasons  his  friend  Ferdinand 
David  was  appointed  temporary  conductor. 

Once  in  Berlin,  Mendelssohn  found  the  King  an  autocrat  whose 
mind  teemed  with  a  thousand  abortive  ideas,  and  who  wanted  him 
at  his  beck  and  call  every  minute.  Mendelssohn's  misgivings  about 
the  proposed  academy  were  justified  at  once:  it  simply  failed  to 
materialize,  and  the  composer  found  himself  metamorphosed  into 
the  King's  Kapellmeister,  a  position  he  held  concurrently  with  the 
Gewandhaus  directorate  for  the  rest  of  his  life.  Friedrich  Wil- 
helm's  grandiose  schemes  involved,  among  other  things,  the  re- 
suscitation of  great  dramas,  and  for  the  production  of  several  of 
them  Mendelssohn  was  commissioned  to  write  incidental  music. 
Of  that  to  Antigone  and  to  Oedipus  Coloneus  not  a  note  is  now  to  be 


284  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

heard,  but  that  to  Racine's  Athalie  has  fared  somewhat  better:  a 
stirring  "War  March  of  the  Priests"  is  still  played. 

The  production  of  Mendelssohn's  next  masterpiece  was  reserved 
for  his  beloved  Leipzig.  At  the  Gewandhaus,  on  March  3,  1842, 
he  conducted  a  companion  piece  to  the  "Italian"  Symphony — tlic 
"Scotch"  Symphony,  in  A  minor,  which  he  had  begun  in  Italy 
eleven  years  before.  Like  the  "Hebrides"  Overture,  it  was  a  result 
of  his  artistically  fruitful  trip  to  Scotland  in  1829.  More  varied  in 
mood,  and  technically  more  showy  than  the  earlier  of  the  two 
"national"  symphonies,  it  lacks  the  bright  spontaneity  and  effort- 
lessness of  the  "Italian."  \Vhereas  the  earlier  of  the  symphonies  had 
been  Italian  only  by  courtesy,  its  Latin  flavor  residing  mainly  in 
its  lightheartedness  and  the  use  of  a  Neapolitan  dance  rhythm  in 
the  last  movement,  the  "Scotch"  Is  clearly  programmatic.  Not 
only  are  the  harmonic  intervals  suggestive  of  those  in  Scotch  folk 
music,  but  the  melodies  themselves  are  so  reminiscent  of  Highland 
folk  tunes  that  the  chief  theme  of  the  second  movement  has  been 
described  as  an  echo  of  Charlie  Is  My  Darling.  The  symphony  opens 
with  a  broad  landscape  painting  in  Mendelssohn's  best  style:  this 
passage,  little  more  than  sixty  bars  long,  serves  to  set  the  scene, 
after  which  we  at  once  hear  a  minor  melody  as  Scotch  as  heather. 
There  is  a  sudden  thundershower — Mendelssohn's  attempt  at  real- 
Ism,  though  clever,  sounds  a  bit  amusing  nowadays — the  storm 
dies  down,  and  the  movement  closes  with  a  brief  return  to  the 
peaceful  landscape  of  the  opening.  The  second  movement  is  a 
dancing  vivace,  the  third  a  rather  unexpected  return  to  Germany* 
— a  wishy-washy  affair  withal,  with  deplorable  excursions  into 
pseudo  grandeur.  The  fourth  movement  is  quite  as  effective  as  the 
marvelous  saltarello  of  the  "Italian"  Symphony — a  wild  dance  of 
rude  Highlanders  who  stamp  furiously  into  a  smug  coda  that  closes 
the  symphony.  A  marred  masterpiece. 

In  May,  1842,  Mendelssohn,  accompanied  by  his  wife,  crossed 
over  to  England.  He  conducted  the  "Scotch"  Symphony  at  a  Phil- 
harmonic concert  to  such  wild  applause  that  the  grateful  directors 
tendered  him  a  fish  dinner  at  Greenwich.  Summoned  to  Bucking- 
ham Palace,  he  was  requested  by  Queen  Victoria  and  Prince  Albert 
to  play  a  miscellany  of  German  trifles.  Mendelssohn  was  a  man 
after  their  own  hearts,  and  soon  was  asked  back.  This  time  the 

*  Though  it  is  said  to  have  been  inspired  by  his  meditations  at  Holyrood  Castle 


MENDELSSOHN  285 

Queen  graciously  granted  him  permission  to  dedicate  the  "Scotch" 
Symphony  to  her.  He  could  not  have  been  wholly  indifferent  to 
this  mark  of  royal  favor,  but  he  was  in  general  disinclined  to  put 
much  stock  in  the  condescension  of  kings. 

From  the  King  of  Saxony,  however,  Mendelssohn  obtained  some- 
thing he  really  did  want:  a  decree  founding  a  conservatory  of 
music  at  Leipzig.  Almost  simultaneously,  he  received  notice  that 
he  had  been  appointed  general  music  director  to  the  King  of 
Prussia,  and  was  on  the  point  of  leaving  for  Berlin  to  settle  all 
details  when  the  news  came  that  his  mother  had  died.  He  spent  a 
cheerless  holiday  season  at  3,  Leipzigerstrasse,  which  had  now  be- 
come his  property,  and  returned  to  Leipzig  to  immerse  himself  in 
the  details  incident  to  the  establishment  of  the  conservatory.  He 
persuaded  Schumann  to  share  the  piano  and  composition  classes 
with  him;  David  was  selected  to  teach  violin  and  orchestral  en- 
semble, while,  as  a  graceful  gesture  to  his  predecessor  at  the  Ge- 
wandhaus,  he  insisted  that  Pohlenz  (who,  however,  died  before 
the  conservatory  opened)  head  the  department  of  singing.  On 
April  3,  1843,  the  new  institution,  temporarily  located  in  the  Ge- 
wandhaus,  was  formally  inaugurated,  and  under  Mendelssohn's 
energetic  supervision  became  within  a  few  years  a  fine  music  school. 

But  Mendelssohn's  hold  on  these  scenes  of  congenial  activity  was 
becoming  all  too  tenuous.  In  August,  he  was  commanded  to  speed 
up  incidental  music  for  three  of  the  dramas  involved  in  the  King 
of  Prussia's  apotheosis  of  the  stage.  This  entailed  a  tremendous 
spending  of  energy,  for  not  only  did  Mendelssohn  have  to  complete 
a  large  amount  of  music,  but  he  had  to  arrange  and  rearrange 
plans  for  the  actual  productions  according  to  the  sequence  of  the 
King's  whims.  Finally,  after  unprecedented  stewing  and  fretting,, 
the  first  of  them — Antigone — took  place  in  September.  A  month 
later,  on  October  14,  A  Midsummer  Nighfs  Dream  was  given  at  the 
Neue  Palais,  Potsdam.  Shakespeare  was  at  once  voted  to  be  in  bad 
taste  (though  some  believed  that  he  had  merely  translated  a  Ger- 
man play  into  English),  but  the  music  enchanted  everyone,  as  it 
has  continued  to,  down  to  this  day.*  Using  the  overture  he  had 
composed  seventeen  years  before,  Mendelssohn  added  to  it  thir- 

*  Except,  of  course,  in  Nazi  Germany,  where  pure  Aryan  music  was  supplied  by 
one  Theo  Knobe!  after  Richard  Strauss  admitted  his  inability  to  improve  on 
Mendelssohn. 


286  MEN     OF    MUSIC 

teen  new  numbers  of  almost  uniform  effectiveness,  the  result  being 
a  pattern  of  what  incidental  music  should  be.  Several  of  the  pieces, 
wrenched  from  their  context — where  their  aptness  adds  immeas- 
urably to  their  charm — are  among  the  most  familiar  music  ever 
written.  The  triumphant,  delightfully  trashy  Wedding  March — 
for  the  Victorias  and  Alberts  of  all  eternity— has  been  played  lit- 
erally millions  of  times,  usually  as  a  pendant  to  the  more  solemnly 
mawkish  Bridal  Chorus  from  Lohengrin.  But  it  is  more  than  un- 
likely that  the  Funeral  March,  with  its  mock-tragic  strains,  will 
ever  accompany  a  single  corse  to  its  sepulture.  The  Intermezzo 
and  the  Nocturne  have  their  devotees.  Quite  as  spontaneous  and 
inspired  as  the  Overture  itself  is  the  Scherzo — an  aerial  moto  per- 
petuo  of  gossamer  texture,  the  sprightliest  of  all  possible  illustra- 
tions of  the  word  "Mendelssohnian." 

Forced  against  his  wishes  into  a  position  of  musical  dictatorship 
in  Berlin,  Mendelssohn  found  that  he  would  have  temporarily  to 
resign  the  Gewandhaus  direction  to  Hiller.  In  November,  he 
moved,  lock,  stock,  and  barrel,  to  Berlin,  and  set  up  his  household 
at  3,  Leipzigerstrasse.  A  most  unpleasant  winter  followed,  during 
which  the  composer  was  harassed  by  piddling  official  duties  that 
vexed  his  spirit  and  depleted  his  strength.  By  spring  things  had 
come  to  such  a  pass  that  he  decided  to  give  up  his  house.  The  city 
had  become  hateful  to  him.  In  May,  leaving  his  family  in  Frank- 
fort, he  went  to  London  for  an  eighth  visit,  and  conducted  the  last 
six  conceits  of  the  Philharmonic  season.  One  unfortunate  incident 
marred  this  visit:  among  the  novelties  he  intended  to  introduce 
were  Schubert's  G  major  Symphony  and  his  own  Ruy  Bias  Over- 
ture. At  rehearsals  the  orchestra  responded  so  coldly  to  the  Schu- 
bert that  he  withdrew  not  only  it,  but  also  the  overture.  In  gen- 
eral, however,  he  was  idolized.  The  Philharmonic  had  never  ended 
their  season  so  happily:  they  were  able  to  put  £400  away  in  a 
reserve  fund,  and  Mendelssohn  himself  rejoined  his  family  with 
his  pockets  bulging  with  money  he  did  not  need.  He  idled  away 
the  rest  of  the  summer  in  the  country,  and  in  September  grudg- 
ingly returned  to  Berlin,  He  was  not  well,  and  sensing  that  his 
malaise  was  due  to  the  combination  of  duties  that  bored  him  and  a 
city  he  had  come  to  detest,  he  finally  persuaded  the  King  to  re- 
lease him  from  any  except  an  honorary  tenure  of  his  official  posts. 
He  was  back  in  Frankfort  before  the  holidays,  and  there  he  re- 


MENDELSSOHN  287 

mained  In  stubborn  isolation  until  September,  1845,  even  refusing 
to  budge  for  the  first  performance  of  Ms  Violin  Concerto  at  the 
Gewandhaus  on  March  13. 

The  E  minor  is  the  most  popular  of  all  violin  concertos,  and  that 
Mendelssohn,  who  had  an  innocent,  almost  childlike  love  of  ap- 
plause, was  not  at  its  highly  successful  premiere  is  ironical.  Yet  he 
himself,  five  years  before  it  was  finished — it  was  begun  in  1838 — 
had  been  assured  by  Ferdinand  David  that  it  would  stand  with 
Beethoven's  as  one  of  the  two  big  concertos  for  violin.  And,  allow- 
ing for  its  smaller  proportions,  for  its  suaver  and  more  feminine 
contours,  that  is  exactly  where  it  stands.  The  E  minor  is  as  slick  as 
a  whistle  with  a  lyric  note,  and  the  mere  expertness  of  its  fashion- 
ing is  not  the  least  part  of  its  perennial  attractiveness.  Here,  in 
truth,  is  a  work  of  "heavenly  length33:  the  themes  have  a  beautiful 
punctuality  of  statement  and  development;  there  is  not  a  moment 
of  malingering  in  the  concerto,  not  a  bar  of  padding.  No  better 
lightweight  music  has  ever  been  written:  it  is  ineffably  sweet,  ten- 
der, lyrical — and  heartless.  In  some  undefinable,  but  unmistakable, 
way  it  just  escapes  real  greatness.  It  is  a  masterpiece  of  a  musician 
of  genius  but  not  of  a  great  man. 

In  September,  1845,  tiie  Mendelssohns  returned  to  Leipzig, 
Felix  apparently  much  the  better  for  his  months  of  rest.  The  Ge- 
wandhaus concerts  began  in  October.  The  season  was  an  especially 
brilliant  one,  during  which  Jenny  Lind,  to  whom  Mendelssohn 
was  devoted,  made  her  first  Leipzig  appearance.  He  threw  himself 
with  a  new  energy  into  his  teaching  at  the  conservatory.  He  was 
worshiped  by  his  students  as  by  his  audiences,  and  stood  in  happy 
contrast  to  the  shy  and  self-absorbed  Schumann,  who  in  one  year 
had  proved  a  complete  failure  as  a  teacher.  Except  for  occasional 
bursts  of  temperament,  Mendelssohn's  way  with  his  students  was 
affable,  easygoing,  chatty,  and  thorough.  He  kept  up  a  running 
fire  of  comment,  often  of  a  witty  nature.  One  of  his  favorite  meth- 
ods of  teaching  was  to  write  a  musical  theme  on  a  blackboard,  and 
then  have  each  of  the  pupils  add  a  counterpoint  to  it.  On  one 
occasion,  when  the  last  man  up  was  unable  to  add  anything  more 
to  the  theme,  Mendelssohn  asked  sharply,  "Can't  you  tell  where 
to  put  the  next  note?'3  The  student  shook  his  head,  and  Mendels- 
sohn said  in  a  relieved  voice,  "That's  good!  Neither  can  I." 

Mendelssohn's  resumption  of  his  Leipzig  duties  was  coincident 


288  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

with  the  last  stages  of  the  largest-scale  creative  effort  of  his  career 
— the  composition  of  the  oratorio  Elijah.,  which  he  had  begun  to 
think  about  as  early  as  1837.  Now,  with  but  the  finishing  touches 
lacking,  it  was  promised  to  the  Birmingham  Festival.  Putting  on  a 
work  of  such  vast  proportions  required — ideally,  at  least — many 
rehearsals,  but  unfortunately  he  was  detained  in  Leipzig  until 
about  ten  days  before  the  premiere.  Conducting  the  Lower  Rhine 
Festival  at  Aachen,  and  a  German-Flemish  celebration  at  Cologne, 
the  arrangement  of  an  all-Spohr  program  at  the  Gewandhaus, 
with  the  vain  old  violinist  quartered  on  him  and  the  already  for- 
midable and  sharply  critical  Wagner  on  the  scene — all  this,  and 
much  more,  Mendelssohn  had  to  edge  in  before  he  could  leave  for 
his  ninth  visit  to  England.  It  was  an  unusually  hot  summer,  and 
it  was  a  very  tired  Mendelssohn  who  arrived  at  Birmingham,  only 
three  days  before  the  premiere.  Fortunately,  Moscheles  had  been 
invaluable  in  rehearsing  the  soloists.  And  in  the  scant  seventy-two 
hours  allotted  to  him,  Mendelssohn  worked  miracles.  He  had  his 
reward:  the  world  premiere  of  Elijah,  on  the  morning  of  August  26, 
1846,  was  the  crowning  success  of  his  life.  He  was  able  to  write  to 
his  brother  Paul  with  pardonable  exultation:  "During  the  whole 
two  hours  and  a  half  that  it  lasted,  the  two  thousand  people  in 
the  large  hall,  and  the  large  orchestra,  were  all  so  fully  intent  on 
the  one  object  in  question,  that  not  the  slightest  sound  was  to  be 
heard  among  the  whole  audience,  so  that  I  could  sway  at  pleasure 
the  enormous  orchestra  and  choir  and  also  the  organ  accompani- 
ments. .  .  .  No  work  of  mine  ever  went  so  admirably  the  first  time 
of  execution,  or  was  received  with  such  enthusiasm,  by  both  the 
musicians  and  the  audience,  as  this  oratorio." 

The  roar  of  acclamation  that  greeted  Elijah  that  sultry  August 
morning  almost  a  century  ago  has  been  equaled,  if  not  outdone,  a 
hundred  times  since,  particularly  in  England,  where  the  oratorio 
stands  next  to  Messiah  in  the  popular  affection  and  as  a  festival 
staple.  The  British  Empire  would  not  be  the  British  Empire  if  a 
year's  suns  went  by  without  shining  down  on  a  performance  of 
Elijah.  America  is  not  so  oratorio-loving,  and  in  recent  years,  at 
least,  the  B  minor  Mass  and  the  Matthew  Passion  have  been  per- 
formed here  more  often  than  Elijah,  which  is  unknown  to  thou- 
sands of  our  music  lovers.  Of  the  many  recordings  of  excerpts  of 
the  work,  more  than  ninety-five  per  cent  (including,  of  course,  the 


MENDELSSOHN  289 

complete  recording)  are  by  British  artists.  Nor  is  it  probable  that 
more  performances  of  Elijah  would  win  many  new  friends  for  it 
here.  It  is  long  and  windy,  with  interminable  passages  of  false 
eloquence.,  highfalutin  rectitude,  and  bloody  Jehovistic  dogma. 
The  many  fine  lyric  pages  tend  to  get  lost  amid  this  turgidity. 
Elijah  lasts  two  hours  and  a  half:  during  the  first  half  it  sounds  like 
a  tolerably  good  imitation  of  Bach  and  Handel,  but  by  the  end  of 
the  second  half  it  is  likely  to  sound  like  an  intolerably  bad  imita- 
tion. Why  the  English  like  not  only  Elijah,  but  tenth-rate  imita- 
tions of  it  by  their  own  composers  as  well,  is  a  problem  that  for 
years  engaged  the  attention  of  George  Bernard  Shaw,  without  his 
being  able  to  find  an  answer  to  it.  To  own  recordings  of  "If  with 
all  your  hearts,"  the  solemn  "It  is  enough,"  and  CCO  rest  in  the 
Lord,"  one  of  the  most  moving  of  all  contralto  arias,  and  to  ab- 
stain strictly  from  complete  performances  of  the  oratorio,  is  man's 
whole  duty  toward  Elijah. 

Mendelssohn,  in  his  hour  of  greatest  triumph,  returned  exhausted 
to  Leipzig.  Niels  W.  Gade,  as  his  deputy  at  the  Gewandhaus, 
henceforth  conducted  most  of  the  concerts.  At  the  conservatory, 
Mendelssohn  resumed  his  teaching  conscientiously  but  without  his 
old  enthusiasm.  He  revised  parts  of  Elijah.,  and  began  an  opera  on 
the  Lorelei  legend  for  Jenny  Lind,  which,  however,  was  left  a 
fragment.  In  the  spring  of  1847,  he  returned  to  England  for  his 
tenth,  and  last,  visit,  Joachim  accompanying  him  in  the  role  of 
sympathetic  special  nurse.  He  was  foolhardily  wasteful  of  his 
strength,  and  within  a  fortnight  conducted  a  command  symphonic 
program  in  London  and  six  performances  of  Elijah — four  in  Lon- 
don alone.  At  Buckingham  Palace,  Victoria  and  Albert  kept  the 
ailing  man  at  the  piano  for  two  hours.  Furthermore,  he  fulfilled 
many  social  obligations,  and  was  among  those  who  heard  Lind 
win  London  at  a  single  performance  at  Her  Majesty's.  After  a  fare- 
well call  on  the  Queen,  Mendelssohn  crossed  over  to  the  Continent 
the  next  morning.  At  the  Prussian  border  he  was  mistakenly  de- 
tained as  a  Dr.  Mendelssohn  wanted  for  political  underground  ac- 
tivity, and  was  subjected  to  several  hours  of  wearisome  questioning 
before  he  was  allowed  to  proceed  to  Frankfort.  He  felt  intense 
vexation,  but  this  soon  gave  place  to  tragic  depression.  Being  told 
abruptly  that  his  sister  Fanny  had  died,  he  shrieked,  and  fell  un- 


2gO  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

conscious  to  the  floor.  He  had  raptured  a  blood  vessel  in  his  head, 
and  from  that  moment  he  was  a  dying  man, 

By  June  Mendelssohn  had  rallied  enough  to  take  a  vacation  in 
Switzerland,  where  he  did  no  composing,  but  filled  his  water-color 
sketchbooks  with  the  scenery  around  Interlaken.  Lingering  there, 
he  did  not  return  to  Leipzig  until  September.  Great  plans  filled 
his  head — a  production  of  Elijah  in  Vienna  with  Jenny  Lind,  vast 
new  compositions,  the  coming  season  of  the  Gewandhaus.  But  an 
insidious  depression  mastered  him,  and  he  was  forced  to  give  up 
his  duties  and  settle  down  where  he  had  ruled  as  king,  in  the  un- 
familiar role  of  private  citizen.  Early  in  October,  he  paid  a  call  on 
his  friend  Livia  Frege,  one  of  the  most  eminent  of  German  lieder 
singers,  to  request  her  to  sing  over  the  last  set  of  songs  he  had 
composed.  She  left  the  room  for  candles,  and  returned  to  find 
Mendelssohn  in  agony.  He  was  borne  back  to  his  own  house,  where 
leeches  were  applied.  Within  a  few  days  he  seemed  better,  and 
before  the  month  was  over  was  even  able  to  take  a  walk  with  his 
wife.  But  the  will  to  live  was  gone,  the  recovery  but  apparent.  Two 
apoplectic  strokes  left  him  unconscious,  and  on  Thursday  night, 
November  4,  1847,  he  died  in  the  presence  of  his  grief-stricken  rela- 
tives and  friends,  including  Moscheles  and  David.  He  was  not  yet 
thirty-nine  years  old. 

When  the  Wagner-Liszt  regime  came  into  power,  Mendelssohn's 
was  one  of  the  first  reputations  to  be  put  to  the  ax.  Liszt  was  at 
least  well  disposed  toward  Mendelssohn,  but  Wagner,  though  he 
never  came  to  blows  with  him  during  his  lifetime,  vilified  him  and 
his  music  unmercifully.  The  Wagnerians,  quick  to  take  a  cue  from 
their  master,  belittled  his  memory  on  every  possible  occasion — 
and  this  campaign  of  denigration  is  still  being  carried  on  by  that 
large  and  faithful  band  who  judge  music  by  its  degree  of  Wagner- 
ishness.  It  is  a  campaign  conducted  actually  without  rules,  but  with 
a  fine  show  of  reasonableness.  They  declare  that  Mendelssohn  is 
trivial,  and  prove  it — by  pointing  to  the  most  inane  and  vapid 
effusions  of  his  pen.  By  judging  him  on  the  basis  of  such  Lieder  ohm 
Worte  as  those  known  as  the  "Spring  Song"  and  "Consolation/' 
by  the  Wedding  March  from  A  Midsummer  Nigkfs  Dream,  and  by 
Auf  Flveeln  des  Gesanges,  they  do  as  grave  disservice  to  truth  as  if 


MENDELSSOHN  2QI 

they  were  to  evaluate  Schumann  by  Traumerei,  Sibelius  by  the 
Valse  triste — or  Wagner  by  the  "Evening  Star." 

Now,  there  is  no  doubt  that  Mendelssohn  wrote  a  great  deal  of 
either  merely  adequate  or  plainly  bad  music.  His  chamber  works 
belong  mainly  to  the  former  category,  though  the  piano  trios  par- 
ticularly are  deft,  amiable.,  and  even  endearing.  Most  of  his  piano 
music  belongs  to  the  second  category,  though  there  are  notable 
exceptions:  the  scherzolike  Rondo  capricdoso;  the  E  minor  Prelude 
and  Fugue,  with  its  Bachian  dynamics;  the  ingeniously  devised  and 
hauntingly  lovely  Variations  serieuses,  and  a  very  few  of  the  Lieder 
ohm  Worte.  The  piano  did  not  often  evoke  Mendelssohn's  happiest 
inspirations,  nor  did  he  treat  it  with  the  sure  mastery  he  possessed 
over  the  orchestra.  It  seems  that  in  writing  most  of  the  Lieder  ohne 
Worte  he  was  enslaved  by  sentimental  moods  that  dulled  his  critical 
sense.  Their  indisputable  originality  as  brief  statements  of  mood  is 
apt  to  be  overlooked  nowadays,  mainly  because  as  sheer  music 
they  are  overshadowed  by  so  many  later  romantic  piano  pieces  of 
similarly  intimate  character. 

It  is  fair,  however,  to  judge  Mendelssohn  on  the  basis  of  his  best 
orchestral  works.  The  man  who  wrote  the  "Italian"  and  "Scotch" 
Symphonies,  the  Violin  Concerto,  the  overture  and  incidental 
music  to  A  Midsummer  Might's  Dream,  and  the  "Hebrides"  and 
Ruy  Bias  Overtures  need  have  no  fear  for  his  laurels.  He  was 
not,  like  Mozart  or  Schubert,  a  composer  of  the  happiest  inspira- 
tions, or  like  Beethoven,  a  musical  thinker  of  the  most  profound 
order.  Nor  did  he,  for  all  his  understanding  love  of  Bach  and 
Handel,  scale  the  heavens.  No,  Mendelssohn  was  of  a  smaller 
order  all  around,  but  with  enough  discipline  and  scope  to  escape 
being  a  petit  maitre.  A  flawless  master  of  the  technique  of  his  art,  he 
succeeded  in  pouring  the  new  wine  of  romanticism  into  the  old 
classical  bottles.  And  though  his  vintage  is  never  quite  heady 
enough,  it  sparkles,  warms  without  intoxicating,  and  exhales  a 
rare  bouquet. 


Chapter  XII 

Robert  Schumann 

(Zwickau,  June  8,  i8io-July  29,  1856,  Endenich) 

We  all  have  a  deep  regard  for  Schumann;  but  it  is  really  not  in 
human  nature  to  refrain  from  occasional!))  making  it  dear  that 
he  was  greater  as  a  musical  enthusiast  than  as  a  constructive 
musician. — George  Bernard  Shaw:  Music  in  London. 


KJBERT  SCHUMANN  is  the  central  figure  in  the  musical  romanti- 
cism of  the  nineteenth  century.  He  first  attracted  the  attention 
of  Europe  as  a  revolutionary  critic.  Long  before  he  was  able  to  get 
a  hearing  for  his  own  radical  compositions,  he  had  published  a 
rhapsodic  welcome  to  Chopin — he  called  the  article  "Hats  Off, 
Gentlemen,  a  Genius!"  Almost  a  quarter  of  a  century  later,  in  his 
last  published  utterance,  he  saluted  a  struggling  nobody  by  the 
name  of  Johannes  Brahms.  He  was  the  untiring  prophet  of  the 
romantic  ideal  in  music. 

Heredity  accounts  for  much  in  Schumann's  life;  its  pattern  was 
set  before  he  was  born.  His  father's  health  was  chronically  bad 
before  marriage,  and  became  progressively  worse  after  it.  His 
mother  was  gloomy  and  morose,  sparing  of  affection,  and  morbidly 
conventional.  His  sister  Emilie,  whom  his  first  biographer,  Von 
Wasielewski,  described  with  unconscious  humor  as  the  victim  "of 
an  uncurable  melancholy,  which  gave  unmistakable  signs  of  quiet 
madness,"  drowned  herself  at  the  age  of  twenty.  His  three  brothers 
died  young.  His  own  mental  instability  manifested  itself  as  early 
as  his  twenty-third  year. 

Schumann's  heredity  was  bad  enough;  growing  up  in  the  un- 
healthy jungles  of  German  romanticism  made  its  tragic  outcome 
inevitable.  Brought  into  the  world  during  the  Sturm  und  Drang  of 
Napoleon's  struggle  for  world  dominion — his  birthplace  was  near 
the  principal  theater  of  the  war — Schumann  grew  up  under  the 
influence  of  a  gifted  but  immoderate  father.  August  Schumann 
was  cultivated,  fervid,  and  obscure — a  publisher,  journalist,  and 
novelist,  and  a  translator  of  Byron,  In  short,  a  stock  romantic 
figure.  He  lived  in  a  kind  of  creative  rage,  and  once  confessed  that 

292 


SCHUMANN  293 

reading  Young's  Night  Thoughts  had  brought  him  "near  madness" 
in  his  youth,  though  this  was  obviously  literary  affectation:  his 
reason  was  not  affected. 

Schumann's  first  eighteen  years  were  passed  in  Zwickau,  where 
he  received  a  conventional  schooling  and  was  graduated  credit- 
ably from  the  Gymnasium.  He  began  to  play  the  piano  and  to 
compose  in  his  sixth  year,,  and  in  his  eleventh  was  directing  the 
school  band.  Throughout  Europe  everyone  was  earnestly  playing 
piano  duets,  and  he  was  no  exception.  With  the  local  bandmaster's 
son,  he  raced  through  arrangements  of  Beethoven's  symphonies 
and  pieces  by  Haydn,  Mozart,  Weber,  Hummel,  and  Czerny  to 
such  effect  that  August  Schumann  presented  his  twelve-year-old 
son  with  a  grand  piano.  Now  the  lad  reveled  more  than  ever  in  the 
piano  music  available  in  a  stodgy  provincial  town,  while  at  the 
home  of  the  prosperous  Garus  family  he  heard  the  best  chamber 
music.  His  father  did  not  doubt  Robert's  ability,  and  solicited  the 
powerful  but  still  accessible  Weber  to  superintend  the  boy's  musi- 
cal education.  Although  Weber  was  amiable,  for  some  reason  the 
plan  fell  through. 

August  Schumann's  death  in  1826  was  doubly  unfortunate,  for  it 
occurred  just  as  he  was  planning  to  send  Robert  to  better  teachers 
than  Zwickau  afforded,  and  it  left  the  boy  in  the  hands  of  his 
unimaginative  and  straitlaced  mother.  Under  her  chilling  in- 
fluence his  musical  ambitions  temporarily  waned.  At  this  time  he 
did  everything  carelessly,  vaguely,  without  plan:  he  wrote  fugitive 
verses,  took  long  walks,  and  read  Jean  Paul  Friedrich  Richter,  the 
most  overwrought  of  German  litterateurs.  He  acted,  that  is,  like  a 
typical  adolescent  of  this  improbable  pre-i830  period. 

It  was  this  moonstruck  dreamer  whom  Johanna  Schumann  now 
decided  to  force  into  the  legal  profession.  Accordingly,  in  March, 
1828,  he  matriculated,  studiosus  juris,  at  the  University  of  Leipzig. 
Henceforth  his  life  was  to  be  devoted  to  music. 

For,  with  scarcely  a  perfunctory  bow  to  the  study  of  law,  Schu- 
mann returned  to  his  versifying  and  piano  playing.  Professor 
Carus  had  also  removed  to  Leipzig;  at  his  home  Schumann  met, 
among  other  celebrities,  Friedrich  Wieck,  whose  knowledge  of 
music  and  musical  technique  was  boundless.  Contact  with  this  gifted 
pedagogue  revived  the  lad's  musical  ambitions.  He  formally  en- 
rolled as  Wieck's  pupil.  This  association  was,  from  the  beginning, 


294  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

not  entirely  happy.  Schumann  could  have  little  fault  to  find  with 
the  teaching  that  had  produced,  in  Wieck's  nine-year-old  daughter 
Clara,  the  most  noted  child  prodigy  in  Europe,  and  there  is  no 
doubt  that  he  struggled  to  master  the  difficulties  of  pianism.  But  he 
infuriated  his  farsighted  teacher  by  neglecting  theory.  Also,  he 
practiced  when  he  wished,  therefore  unsystematically,  and,  as  a 
substitute  for  more  formal  studies,  read  the  scores  of  the  best  music 
of  all  periods.  He  also  took  part  in  chamber  ensembles,  and  began 
to  study  the  music  of  Schubert,  at  the  news  of  whose  death,  on 
November  19,  1828,  he  burst  into  tears. 

The  favorite  reading  of  this  despiser  of  theory  was  The  Well- 
Tempered  Clavichord.  He  admired  Bach  intensely,  and  was  among 
the  first  to  recognize  the  "mysterious  depth  of  sentiment"  behind 
the  contrapuntal  miracles.  But  unfortunately,  Bach  and  Jean  Paul 
happened  to  have  been  born  on  March  21,  and  the  coincidence 
was  to  place  Schumann  in  an  absurd  position.  On  that  day,  in  1 850, 
in  a  public  speech,  he  invoked  them  together  as  "the  immortal 
rulers  of  music  and  poetry."  When  someone  objected  to  this 
grotesque  bracketing,  he  left  the  hall  in  a  rage. 

Wieck  suddenly  dismissed  Schumann,  ostensibly  because  he  had 
no  time  for  teaching,  but  more  probably  because  the  boy*s  sporadic 
enthusiasms  irritated  him.  Schumann  decided  to  leave  Leipzig  for 
Heidelberg.  In  that  most  romantic  of  Rhenish  towns,  his  life  was 
easy  and  attractive,  but  he  soon  missed  Wieck's  instruction,  and 
began  a  three-cornered  negotiation  with  his  mother  and  his 
teacher,  begging  to  be  allowed  to  return  to  Wieck.  Although  he 
had  glimpsed  some  of  the  "majesty  of  jurisprudence"  at  Heidel- 
berg, he  longed  for  music  as  some  men  long  for  a  mistress,  and  now 
decided  to  abandon  the  law  forever.  Fortunately,  Wieck  had  faith 
in  his  potentialities  as  a  pianist,  and  eventually  told  the  skeptical 
mother  that  in  three  years  he  would  make  her  son  a  great  virtuoso, 
the  peer  of  Moscheles  and  Hummel.  Johanna  Schumann  con- 
sented. 

Schumann  interrupted  his  stay  in  Heidelberg  with  a  trip  to 
Italy  in  the  autumn  of  1829.  He  spoke  enthusiastically  of  Pasta,  the 
soprano  for  whom  Bellini  wrote  Jiorma  and  La  Sonnambula^  but  this 
was  almost  his  only  reference  to  the  artistic  opulence  of  the  South, 
though  his  letters  palpitate  with  the  business  of  passing  sentimental 
attachments.  He  did  not  return  empty-handed  to  Leipzig,  for  in 


SCHUMANN  295 

Heidelberg  he  had  composed  parts  of  the  Papillons,  still,  unde- 
servedly, among  the  most  popular  of  his  compositions.  The 
quality  of  these  rather  banal  pieces  recalls  some  of  Schubert's 
waltzes,  though  they  are  much  less  graceful.  Their  basic  unity, 
despite  much  that  has  been  said  and  written  about  it,  may  still  be 
considered  the  composer's  secret;  relating  them  to  a  masked  ball  in 
Jean  Paul's  Flegeljahre>  as  Schumann  did,  is  now  a  task  for  the 
musical  archeologist.  Nor  was  he  successful  in  his  last-minute  at- 
tempt to  unify  the  Papillons  by  ending  it  with  two  of  the  pieces 
combined  contrapuntally. 

Back  in  Leipzig,  Schumann  took  up  his  residence  in  the  house 
where  Wieck  lodged.  The  prospect  of  becoming  as  brilliant  as 
Moscheles,  whose  playing  had  dazzled  him  as  a  small  boy, 
spurred  him  on  to  fantastic  efforts.  He  even  invented  a  device  for 
keeping  the  fourth  finger  of  his  right  hand  inactive  while  he  prac- 
ticed, evidently  hoping  that  this  curious  procedure  would  over- 
come the  laws  of  nature,  and  make  the  fourth  finger  as  strong  as 
the  others.  To  his  horror,  the  favored  finger  tended  to  retain  this 
artificial  position  when  free.  Despite  the  most  elaborate  and  ex- 
pensive treatment,  the  disability  persisted,  and  he  was  forced  to 
renounce  the  alluring  career  of  a  concert  artist. 

Schumann  turned  to  composition  and  theory  as  a  solace,  finding 
in  Heinrich  Dorn — later  famous  for  his  supposed  antagonism  to 
Wagner — a  welcome  successor  to  the  sometimes  irascible  Wieck. 
Late  in  1832,  he  conducted  part  of  a  G  minor  symphony  at 
Zwickau.  His  townspeople  received  the  fragment  coldly,  though 
Schumann  said  that  the  same  piece  won  him  "many  friends  among 
the  greatest  musical  connoisseurs'5  when  repeated  at  Leipzig  the 
following  June.  He  was  not  discouraged  by  the  public's  reaction, 
and  worked  unceasingly  at  various  compositions,  especially  the 
Studien  nach  Caprwen  von  Paganini,  which  he  erroneously  believed  to 
prove  his  command  of  theory.  In  the  midst  of  this  activity,  he  lost 
his  sister-in-law  Rosalie,  whom  he  loved  deeply,  and  this  shock 
precipitated  the  first  overt  symptoms  of  his  mental  instability.  It  is 
even  said  that  during  the  night  of  October  17,  1833,  the  distracted 
man  tried  to  throw  himself  from  the  fourth  floor  of  his  lodgings. 
We  know  for  a  certainty  that  from  this  time  on  he  always  insisted 
on  ground-floor  rooms. 

Then  suddenly,  abruptly,  everything  was  changed.  Schumann 


296  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

began  to  become  conscious  of  another  side  of  his  own  romantic 
nature.  He  fell  in  love — not  once,  but  twice.  Clara  Wieck  was 
growing  up,  and  noticing  this,  he  began,  almost  insensibly,  to  feel 
toward  her  something  more  than  the  easy  affection  of  an  elder 
brother.  Of  course,  she  was  only  fifteen,  and  yet,  when  she  left 
Leipzig  to  study,  he  felt  lost.  The  habit  of  love  was  upon  him,  and 
he  could  not  shake  it  off.  Among  Wieck's  pupils  was  Ernestine  von 
Fricken,  "physically  luxuriant,  emotionally  strongly  developed, 
and  intellectually  insignificant."  A  girl  with  these  qualifications 
might  well  appeal  to  any  man,  but  Schumann  had  to  romanticize 
her  into  a  sort  of  Madonna  with  a  milk-white  soul.  He  even 
thought  for  a  time  of  marrying  her. 

But  this  hectic  interlude  was  a  substitution  gesture.  Clara's 
image  persisted,  and  Schumann  learned  that  Ernestine  had  de- 
ceived him  about  her  social  status.  She  was  not  the  rich  daughter 
of  Baron  von  Fricken,  but  his  bastard,  and  poor.  The  double  draw- 
back was  too  much.  Instead  of  his  daughter,  Schumann  took  from 
the  baron  a  theme  in  C  sharp  minor,  on  which  he  wrote  his  varia- 
tions known  as  the  Etudes  symphoniques. 

Artistically,  too,  1834  was  one  of  great  activity  for  Schumann: 
he  composed  the  Etudes  symphoniques  and  began  the  CarnavaL  With 
a  group  of  friends,  he  founded  the  New  ^eitschrift  fur  Musik,  and 
overnight  became  the  most  advanced  music  critic  in  Europe. 

Twenty  years  later,  when  the  night  of  madness  was  closing  in 
on  Schumann,  his  last  accomplished  work  was  the  preface  to  a 
selection  from  his  critical  writings,  many  of  which  had  appeared  in 
the  ZjAtschrift.  In  this  salute  to  the  past,  the  tiring  mind  was  mo- 
mentarily refreshed,  and  less  than  two  months  before  the  doors 
of  a  madhouse  shut  behind  him,  he  re-created  with  unsullied 
freshness  the  ardent  youth  of  the  idealistic  thirties. 

"At  the  close  of  the  year  1833,"  he  wrote,  "a  number  of  musi- 
cians, mostly  young  men,  went  together  every  evening  in  Leipzig, 
apparently  by  mere  chance  and  for  social  intercourse,  but  no  less 
for  an  exchange  of  ideas  in  regard  to  the  art  which  was  their  meat 
and  drink — music.  It  cannot  be  said  that  the  musical  condition  of 
Germany  at  that  time  was  very  satisfactory.  On  the  stage  Rossini 
still  flourished,  while  Herz  and  Hiinten  held  almost  exclusive 
sway  on  the  piano.  And  yet  but  a  few  years  had  passed  since  Bee- 
thoven, Carl  Maria  von  Weber,  and  Franz  Schubert  were  in  our 


SCHUMANN  297 

midst.  Mendelssohn's  star  was  indeed  in  the  ascendant,  and  won- 
derful things  were  rumored  of  a  Pole  named  Chopin,  but  the 
latter  excited  no  lasting  influence  till  later.  One  day  the  thought 
flashed  upon  the  young  hotheads:  let  us  not  stand  idly  by;  let  us 
set  to  work,  and  strive  to  improve  matters,  so  that  the  poetry  of 
Art  may  once  more  be  held  in  honor.  Thus  arose  the  first  pages  of 
a  new  journal." 

The  %eitschrift  confirmed  the  growing  fame  of  Schubert  and  Men- 
delssohn, helped  to  found  that  of  Chopin  and  Robert  Franz,  and 
introduced  the  names  of  Berlioz  and  Brahms.  Its  contributors  in- 
cluded, besides  Schumann  himself,  Wieck,  Wagner,  Dorn,  and 
many  others  whose  names  were  hidden  under  the  fantastic  noms  de 
guerre  Schumann  invented  for  them.  The  publication  of  the  %dt- 
schrift,  important  though  it  was,  constituted  in  Schumann's  eyes 
only  one  of  the  activities  of  the  Davidsbundler,  "an  association,"  he 
said,  "existing  only  in  the  imagination,  whose  members  are  recog- 
nizable less  by  outward  signs  than  by  inward  resemblance.  It  will 
be  their  endeavor,  by  word  and  by  deed,  to  dam  up  the  tide  of 
mediocrity." 

The  Carnaval,  completed  in  1835,  was  the  most  comprehensive 
musical  expression  of  the  Davidsbundler.  It  is  based  on  four  notes: 
A,  S  (E  flat  in  German  notation),  C,  and  H  (B  natural).  These 
notes  had  a  double  significance  for  the  composer:  they  represent 
the  only  musical  letters  in  SCHumAnn,  and  ASCH,  the  Bohemian 
home  of  Ernestine  von  Fricken.  In  sending  a  copy  of  the  Garnaml 
to  Moscheles  after  its  publication  in  1837,  Schumann  wrote,  "To 
figure  out  the  Masked  Ball  will  be  child's  play  to  you;  and  I  need 
hardly  assure  you  that  the  putting  together  of  the  pieces  and  the 
superscriptions  came  about  after  the  composition." 

Apart  from  its  alleged  literary  program,  the  Carnaval  has  no 
unity,  and  we  may  interpret  the  letter  to  Moscheles  as  a  kind  of 
elaborate  fake  invented  by  Schumann  to  quiet  his  own  artistic  con- 
science. Like  the  Papittons,  the  Carncwal  suffers  from  a  lack  of  or- 
ganic integration.  Contemporary  opinion  divided  sharply  over  its 
merits:  Liszt  proclaimed  it  one  of  the  greatest  works  he  knew; 
Chopin  declared  that  it  was  not  music.  It  is  the  most  popular  of 
Schumann's  piano  compositions  despite  its  flaws.  When  all  deduc- 
tions have  been  made,  the  rewards  to  the  listener  are  incalculably 
rich.  The  pieces  are  tone  portraits  and  moods  limned  by  a  sym- 


208  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

pathetic  and  generous  musical  intelligence.  They  range  from  the 
tender  sentiment  of  Eusebius  through  the  frenzied  enthusiasm  of 
Paganini  to  the  booming  heroics  of  the  Marche  des  Dauidsbundler,  and 
include  such  high  pastiche  as  Chopin,  and  a  waltz — Lettres  dansantes 
— worthy  to  be  placed  with  the  finest  of  Schubert  and  Chopin.  The 
Schumannesque  quality  persists  throughout — a  note  of  personal 
idiosyncrasy  colors  the  Carnaval  from  the  Preambule  to  the  Marche, 
all  exuberant,  warm,  and  boldly  rhythmic. 

The  Etudes  symphomques  are  altogether  less  successful.,  and  Schu- 
mann himself  was  rightly  skeptical  of  their  appeal  to  the  public. 
Audiences  received  them  coldly,  and  they  had  to  wait  for  Anton 
Rubinstein,  fifty  years  after  their  composition,  to  establish  them. 
These  frequently  overrobust  pieces  are  dedicated  to  the  pallid  Wil- 
liam Sterndale  Bennett,  the  Caspar  Milquetoast  of  English  music, 
and  one  of  Schumann's  mistaken  enthusiasms.  The  most  successful 
part  of  the  Etudes  symphoniques  is  the  grandiosely  conceived  finale, 
for  which  Schumann  wisely  added  to  Von  Fricken's  theme  one 
from  an  opera  by  the  popular  romantic  Heinrich  Marschner.  Al- 
though this  suffers  as  much  as  the  other  parts  from  "too,  too  solid 
blocks  of  chords,"  it  is,  in  effect,  an  amazingly  sustained  flight. 

In  1835  the  musical  life  of  Leipzig  was  quickened  by  the  arrival 
of  Mendelssohn  to  become  director  of  the  Gewandhaus  concerts. 
All  succumbed  to  his  genius  and  charm,  but  the  heart  of  Schu- 
mann went  out  to  him  ever  more  unreservedly.  A  friendship  sprang 
up  between  them  that  endured,  with  minor  frictions,  until  Men- 
delssohn's death.  While  Schumann  considered  Mendelssohn  god- 
like both  as  man  and  artist,  his  hero  was  more  reserved:  he  judged 
Schumann  a  musical  dilettante,  and,  worse,  one  who  wrote  about 
music.  He  nevertheless  performed  many  of  Schumann's  orchestral 
works  brilliantly,  and  so  did  Mm  an  invaluable  service. 
^Schumann's  love  for  Clara  Wieck  was  growing  constantly  (as 
was  hers  for  him),  and  about  the  beginning  of  1836  he  determined 
to  marry  her.  Four  years  earlier,  Johanna  Schumann  had  been 
won  by  the  girl's  charming  manner,  and  had  said,  "Some  day  you 
must  marry  Robert/'  but  at  that  time  neither  Robert  nor  Clara 
had  taken  his  mother's  words  seriously.  His  final  break  with  Er- 
nestine von  Fricken  occurred  in  January,  1836,  and  his  mother's 
death  the  following  month  may  have  recalled  her  prophetic  words. 
In  any  event,  these  happenings  made  his  need  for  companionship 


SCHUMANN  299 

peremptory.  When  Wieck  saw  that  Clara  reciprocated  Schumann's 
love,  he  reacted  violently,  spitefully  adducing  Schumann's  poverty 
and  intemperance  (he  had  spent  too  much  money  on  beer  and 
champagne),  though,  oddly  enough,  ignoring  what  would  have 
been  a  reasonable  objection — his  mental  instability.  Behind  Wieck's 
attitude  looms  his  real  fear  that  Clara,  whom  he  regarded  as  his 
creation  and  chattel,  would  be  diverted  from  her  career.  He  shud- 
dered to  think  of  her  "with  the  perambulator." 

At  first^  Wieck's  opposition  was  not  wholly  unjust,  but  in  time 
Schumann's  conduct  and  prospects  improved  so  as  to  make  the 
ostensible  objections  absurd.  Although  Clara  had  been  packed  off 
to  Dresden  to  make  her  forget  Schumann,  that  miracle  did  not 
happen.  The  lovers  met  during  one  of  Wieck's  absences,  and  Wieck, 
hearing  of  this,  forbade  Schumann  all  access  to  his  house.  Further, 
he  told  Clara  that  he  would  shoot  her  suitor  if  he  persisted.  There 
actually  followed  an  eighteen-month  interval  during  which  the 
lovers  were  both  in  Leipzig,  yet  completely  cut  off  from  each  other. 
Clara  had  to  hold  her  faith  in  Schumann  against  the  mendacity 
and  malice  of  both  her  father  and  her  stepmother,  and  the  intoler- 
able situation  was  further  complicated  by  the  ambiguous  friend- 
ship of  Carl  Banck,  once  one  of  the  Davidsbundler.  He  seems  to  have 
misrepresented  Clara  to  Schumann,  and  to  have  described  her  as 
a  frivolous  girl  with  no  capacity  for  true  love. 

On  August  13,  1837,  Clara  gave  a  concert  at  Leipzig,  and  on  the 
program  was  an  F  minor  sonata  that  Schumann  had  dedicated  to 
her  the  year  before.  He  described  it  as  his  heart's  cry  for  her,  and 
Clara  caught  the  message,  for  she  wrote,  "Did  you  not  think  that  I 
played  it  because  I  knew  no  other  way  of  showing  something  of 
my  inmost  heart9  I  could  not  do  it  in  secret,  so  I  did  it  in  public." 
The  lovers  managed  to  communicate  with  each  other,  and  on  the 
following  day  became  formally  betrothed.  They  agreed  that  on 
Clara's  eighteenth  birthday  Schumann  should  again  write  to  her 
father.  The  letter,  with  its  dignified  statement  of  the  composer's 
position  and  prospects,  evoked  an  unsatisfactory  reply,  and  Schu- 
mann's interview  with  Wieck  some  days  later  was  violent  in  tone 
and  discouraging  in  outlook.  Schumann  and  Clara  decided  to  re- 
sort to  law  if,  at  the  end  of  two  years  more,  her  father  still  withheld 
his  consent. 

Wieck's  next  move  was  to  take  Clara  on  a  highly  successful  con- 


30O  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

cert  tour  to  Prague  and  Vienna,  which  kept  her  away  until  the 
following  May.  She  met  her  great  rivals,  Liszt  and  Thalberg,  in 
Vienna,  and  was  feted  in  a  manner  that  might  have  turned  a  less 
level  head.  But  not  Clara's — even  though  Liszt,  in  his  eagerness  to 
meet  her,  threw  his  calling  card  in  at  the  window.  Her  letters  to 
Schumann  continued,  and  though  both  these  and  his  answers  re- 
flected passing  doubts,  their  love  endured,  and  on  her  return  to 
Leipzig  they  were  able  to  meet  with  considerable  freedom  despite 
Wieck's  obduracy.  They  decided  to  marry  in  1840,  come  what 
might. 

One  thing  was  certain:  Clara  would  come  to  Schumann  without 
a  dowry.  This  situation,  then  very  unusual,  was  so  heightened  by 
Wieck's  contempt  for  Schumann  as  a  man  of  affairs  (only  a  go- 
getter  like  himself  would  have  pleased  him)  that  the  composer  con- 
cluded that  he  himself  must  provide  a  dowry.  His  modest  income 
suited  a  bachelor  who  knew  where  to  borrow  money,  but  not  the 
husband  of  Clara  Wieck.  His  only  asset  with  possibilities  of  rapid 
increase  was  the  Zjeitschrift,  but  he  felt  that  its  location  in  Leipzig 
was  against  it.  He  had  always  wanted  to  visit  Vienna,  which  he 
believed  to  be  a  city  of  music  lovers,  and  the  idea  of  moving  the 
Zjdtschrift  there  gave  him  a  good  excuse. 

And  when  he  saw  Vienna  in  the  autumn  of  1838,  he  was  in- 
clined to  like  it.  His  spirits  soared  when  he  found  a  pen  on  Beetho- 
ven's grave  and  received  the  great  C  major  Symphony  from  the 
hands  of  Schubert's  brother.  He  met  Liszt  and  Thalberg,  and  saw 
Taglioni  dance,  but  soon  realized  that  Vienna,  under  crazy  Fer- 
dinand I,  was  not  the  place  for  the  ^eitschnft.  Far  from  worship- 
ing at  the  shrines  of  Mozart,  Beethoven,  and  Schubert,  the  Vien- 
nese were  concerned  with  the  politics  of  petty  cliques.  The  strict 
censorship  would  have  made  the  liberal  ^eitschrift  unwelcome  there, 
wHle  the  lack  of  a  central  musical  authority  like  Mendelssohn's  at 
Leipzig  seemed  to  Schumann  an  even  more  serious  drawback. 

Early  in  1839,  news  of  Ms  brother  Eduard's  serious  illness  re- 
called Schumann  to  Leipzig.  While  he  was  en  route,  according  to 
a  letter  he  wrote  Clara,  CCI  heard  a  whole  choral  of  trumpets — he 
died  just  at  that  time.  .  .  ."  Clara,  of  course,  could  not  see  (as  we 
can)  that  this  "choral  of  trumpets"  was  the  first  of  the  auditory 
hallucinations  that  were  to  attend  the  disintegration  of  Schumann's 
mind. 


SCHUMANN  3OI 

Clara  was  not  in  Leipzig  to  comfort  him,  for  in  January  she  had 
set  out  for  Paris.  Wieck,  for  the  first  time,  did  not  accompany  her: 
he  wanted  her  to  realize  the  discomforts  involved  in  securing  con- 
certs without  his  help.  If  he  expected,  in  this  tortuous  way,  to 
prove  his  indispensability,  he  had  misjudged  his  daughter.  Vexa- 
tion there  was,  but  more  for  him  than  for  Clara;  the  French  tour 
was  a  measured  success.  She  met  Heine,  dined  with  Meyerbeer, 
and  founded  many  lasting  friendships.  Yet  she  was  far  from  happy, 
for  her  father's  letters  were  persecutional,  her  lover's  often  re- 
proachful and  doubting.  Back  in  Leipzig,  she  united  with  Schu- 
mann in  one  more  friendly  attempt  to  gain  Wieck's  consent  to 
their  marriage — she  was  still  not  yet  of  age.  They  finally  had  to  go 
to  law.  Wieck  barred  his  doors  to  his  famous  daughter,  and  went 
so  far  as  to  endanger  her  career  and  Schumann's  by  slander.  The 
case  dragged  on  until  his  objections  were  reduced  to  one — intem- 
perance— and  that  had  to  be  proved  within  six  weeks.  Schumann 
was  vindicated,  Mendelssohn,  among  others,  being  ready  to  testify 
for  him.  Almost  simultaneously,  the  University  of  Jena  gave  him 
an  honorary  doctorate.  Wieck  then  withdrew  his  formal  opposi- 
tion. 

Robert  Schumann  and  Clara  Wieck  were  married  on  Septem- 
ber 12,  1840. 

"Truly,  from  the  contests  Clara  cost  me,  much  music  has  been 
caused  and  conceived,"  Schumann  wrote  to  Dorn.  And  even 
though  it  seems  likely  that  these  "contests"  hastened  the  progress 
of  Schumann's  mental  trouble,  the  fact  remains  that  the  stormy 
years  of  the  courtship  did  bring  forth  his  most  ambitious  contribu- 
tions to  piano  literature,  including  Die  Davidsbundlertanze,  the  Fan- 
tasiestucke,  the  Kinderscenen,  the  Krdsleriana,  and  the  C  major  Fanta- 
sie.  Of  his  best  works  for  piano  alone,  only  one — the  Album  fur  die 
Jugend — was  composed  after  his  marriage,  and  that  because  he  had 
become  a  family  man,  and  wrote  these  pieces  for  his  own  children. 

Despite  the  popularity  of  the  Papillons  and  the  Carnaval,  the  es- 
sence of  Schumann  as  a  composer  for  the  piano  is  in  the  best  pages 
of  the  Fantasiestucke  and  the  Kreisleriana.  With  what  James  Huneker 
preached  as  "the  greater  Chopin,"  they  are  romantic  piano  music 
at  its  finest — until  the  advent  of  Brahms.  Chopin  has  intense  Slavic 
passion,  Gallic  edge,  poignant — if  sometimes  saccharine — lyricism; 
Schumann  is  drenched  with  Teutonic  qualities:  broad  sentiment, 


3O2  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

Evdy  humor,  domestic  charm.  He  translates  the  "poetry  of  every- 
day life"  into  music.  To  the  transparent  sweetness  and  naivete  of 
Schubert  he  adds  an  intense  psychological  preoccupation. 

Few  people  nowadays  care  to  listen  to  the  Fantasiestucke  or  the 
Kind&rscenen  in  their  entirety.  Schumann  himself  thought  them  too 
long  for  public  performance,  and  often  spoke  of  individual  pieces 
as  complete  in  themselves.  Furthermore,  he  favored  some  against 
others,  Even  the  most  prejudiced  classicist  or  modernist  must  sur- 
render to  the  passionate  sweep  of  In  der  Nacht  or  the  warm  humor 
of  Grillen:  in  these,  as  in  other  short  pieces  and  in  sections  of  the 
Krdsleriam,  Schumann  speaks  to  us  most  intimately  and  persua- 
sively. In  the  faded  pages  of  the  Kinderscenen,  the  intimate  note 
persists,  but  the  unrelieved  Gemuthlichkdt  is  unbearable,  rising  to 
irritating  pitch  in  the  hackneyed  Trdumerei.  The  trouble  with  the 
Traumerei  is  not  that  it  is  hackneyed  (so  are  Beethoven's  Fifth  and 
"HandeFs  Largo"),  but  that  it  is  spineless  and  cloying. 

Schumann  intended  the  C  major  Fantasie  as  his  contribution 
toward  the  raising  of  funds  for  a  Beethoven  memorial,  which  may 
explain  its  unusually  large  proportions.  It  contains  many  fine  pages, 
but  lacks  architecture.  It  is  full  of  typically  Schumannesque  epi- 
grams, delightful  in  themselves,  but  out  of  place  in  so  extended  a 
composition.  But  Schumann's  lasting  fame  as  a  composer  depends 
neither  on  the  Fantasie  nor  on  the  sonatas,  which  are  resurrected 
rarely — and  even  then  too  often. 

Just  as  his  courtship  of  Clara  evoked  Schumann's  finest  piano 
works,  so,  in  the  year  of  his  marriage,  it  brought  forth  almost  all 
his  great  songs.  It  was  as  though  he  suddenly  needed  a  more  per- 
sonal idiom  than  the  piano,  and  so  went  to  the  poetry  of  Heine, 
Von  Chamisso,  and  other  poets  and  poetasters  for  the  sentiments 
germane  to  his  love.  Among  these  verses  he  found  much  drivel, 
some  of  which  he  set  as  fastidiously  as  the  real  poetry.  However, 
the  emotional  range  of  these  magnificent  song  sequences  makes 
them  a  glorious  epithalamium  for  Clara. 

In  Schumann's  hands,  the  accompaniment  of  the  lied  achieves 
equal — sometimes  more  than  equal— status  with  the  voice,  and  the 
meaning  of  the  lyric  dictates  the  entire  shaping  of  the  music.  But 
lie  often  approached  the  lied  too  pianistically,  treating  the  human 
voice  as  though  it  possessed  the  flexibility  and  range  of  a  keyboard. 
For  this  reason,  some  of  his  songs  are  best  sung  by  a  phenomenal 


SCHUMANN  303 

mezzo-soprano  or  baritone.  The  accompaniments  are  always  rich 
and  varied,  frequently  of  great  harmonic  interest.  The  excellent 
English  musicologist,  Francis  Toye,  has  even  said  that  "a  little  gem 
like  the  piano-epilogue  to  the  Dickterliebe,  so  satisfying,  so  exactly 
right,  remains,  perhaps,  the  most  striking  attribute  of  Schumann's 
as  a  song-writer!" 

The  songs  range  from  a  great  dramatic  narrative  like  Die  beiden 
Grenadiere  to  Erstes  Grun,  a  trifle  packed  with  almost  insupportable 
poignancy,  and  include  such  radiations  of  pure  genius  as  Der  Nuss- 
baum,  Ich  grolle  nicht,  Die  Lotusblume,  Widmung,  and  others  less  fa- 
miliar but  no  less  masterly.  In  his  greatest  lieder,  Schumann 
achieved  a  melodic  line  which,  if  not  so  spontaneous  as  Schubert's, 
has  a  deeper  and  more  intellectual  configuration.  In  them,  as  in 
the  Carnaval  and  the  Fantasiestucke,  the  psychological  closeness  is 
startling.  Not  only  does  the  music  match  the  words  with  exquisite 
sensitivity,  but  it  has  profound  overtones  not  to  be  echoed  until 
the  days  of  Hugo  Wolf  and  Richard  Strauss. 

Schumann's  life  as  a  composer  was  divided  into  periods  by  abrupt 
changes  of  interest.  He  had  abandoned  the  piano  for  the  lied;  now 
he  began  to  write  for  orchestra.  As  early  as  1839  he  had  written 
to  Dorn:  "I  often  feel  tempted  to  crush  my  piano;  it's  too  narrow 
for  my  thoughts.  I  really  have  very  little  practice  in  orchestral 
music  now;  still  I  hope  to  master  it."  In  his  past  was  the  fragment 
of  a  G  minor  symphony  that  had  met  with  such  meager  success 
that  he  never  completed  it.  During  the  nine  years  between  its  per- 
formance and  the  writing  of  the  B  flat  major  ("Spring")  Sym- 
phony in  1841,  he  had  probably  yearned  more  than  once  to  com- 
pose in  this  larger  form.  The  "Spring"  Symphony  not  unnaturally 
exhibits  traces  of  a  fine  frenzy  (at  least  for  two  movements,  after 
which  it  collapses).  It  was  outlined  at  the  piano  in  four  days,  the 
orchestration  followed  at  once,  and  it  was  performed  less  than 
two  months  later  at  a  Gewandhaus  concert,  with  Mendelssohn 
conducting.  The  parts  baffled  the  musicians,  who  were  hostile  to 
the  work — and  not  without  reason,  for  Schumann  often  wrote  awk- 
wardly for  instruments  other  than  the  piano. 

Nevertheless,  this  ambitious  flight  established  Schumann  as  a 
"serious5'  composer.  Mendelssohn  had  lavished  great  care  on  the 
performance,  and  Schumann  could  write  with  pardonable  exag- 
geration that  it  had  been  "received  as  no  other  since  Beethoven." 


304  MEN  OF  MUSIG 

Its  respectable  success  spurred  him  on,  and  shortly  afterward  he 
composed  the  D  minor  Symphony.  This  prematurely  Tchaikov- 
skyan  work  failed  to  catch  the  public,  and  was  completely  revised 
ten  years  later.  Wagner  heard  Liszt  and  an  accomplice  play  a  four- 
hand  arrangement  of  this  revision,  and  pronounced  it  banal — to 
the  distress  of  Liszt,  who  was  trying  to  promote  cordial  relations 
between  Wagner  and  Schumann. 

Musicographers  have  justifiably  called  1842  Schumann's  cham- 
ber-music year,  for  the  best  of  his  chamber  works  belong  to  it.  The 
Piano  Quintet,  one  of  the  happiest  of  his  inspirations,  was  greeted 
effusively  by  Mendelssohn,  usually  positively  stingy  with  praise.  It 
is,  indeed,  the  most  sustainedly  great  chamber  writing  between 
Beethoven  and  Brahms,  and  remains  a  favorite  with  audiences. 
Lush  in  harmony  and  richly  varied  in  theme,  this  romantic  mas- 
terpiece has  a  remarkable  immediacy  of  appeal.  Here,  as  in  only 
one  other  extended  composition,  Schumann's  touch  is  mysteri- 
ously sure:  he  had  found  the  form  his  material  demanded.  The 
string  quartets  were  much  less  successful,  and  only  the  Piano  Quar- 
tet shows  something  of  the  genius  that  shaped  the  Quintet. 

It  is  little  wonder  that  this  debauch  of  composition  in  new  forms 
brought  on  what  Schumann  called  "nerve  exhaustion":  in  three 
years  he  had  composed  thirty  of  the  148  works  published  with  opus 
numbers.  His  appointment,  the  following  year,  to  teach  piano  and 
composition  at  the  newly  founded  Leipzig  conservatory  brought 
distraction  from  his  labors,  as  well  as  needed  source  of  income. 
(His  family  was  growing;  the  second  of  his  eight  children  was  born 
in  1843.)  Mendelssohn  had  been  named  head  of  the  conservatory, 
and  Schumann  looked  forward  eagerly  to  his  work  there.  But  he 
was  an  impossible  teacher — shy,  taciturn,  and  erratic;  his  failure 
to  create  a  rapport  with  his  students  sprang  from  the  same  cause  as 
Ms  failure  as  a  conductor:  his  obliviousness  to  everything  except 
what  was  going  on  in  his  own  head.  He  remained  on  the  staff  little 
more  than  a  year,  and  then  suffered  a  complete  nervous  break- 
down. 

Schumann's  teaching  was  interrupted  when  he  went  with  Clara 
on  a  tour  through  Russia,  and  by  the  composition  of  Die  Paradies 
und  die  Peri,  an  intolerably  dull  and  sugary  business  for  chorus  and 
orchestra  based  on  the  second  part  of  Thomas  Moore's  fake-Ori- 
ental epic,  Lalla  Rookh — according  to  Schumann  "one  of  the  sweet- 


SCHUMANN  305 

est  flowers  of  English  verse."  This  work  had  some  scant  success  in 
Germany,  but  nowhere  else,  for  it  exemplifies  most  of  Schumann's 
faults  and  his  uncertain  taste.  The  Russian  tour  was  a  financial 
success  for  Clara,  and  Schumann  was  welcomed  as  the  champion 
of  romanticism.  But  he  did  not  improve  in  health,  and  reacted 
petulantly  to  Clara's  enormous  fame  and  popularity. 

There  has  been  a  conspiracy  among  the  Schumann^  right- 
thinking  biographers  to  agree  uniformly  that  their  marriage  was 
an  unqualified  success.  Such,  however,  was  by  no  means  the  case. 
Clara  frequently  suffered  from  not  being  able  to  practice  for  fear 
of  disturbing  Schumann  in  the  throes  of  creation,  and  from  not 
being  able  to  tour  because  he  disliked  her  being  away.  He  never 
reconciled  himself  to  the  anomaly  of  the  composer  being  less  popu- 
lar than  the  performer.  His  wife  stood  with  liszt  and  Thalberg  on 
the  dizziest  heights  of  pianistic  fame,  and  it  quite  naturally  irked 
him  to  be  referred  to  as  "Clara  Schumann's  husband.5*  Clara  saw 
it  as  her  duty  to  act  as  a  buffer  between  Schumann  and  the  out- 
side world,  and  there  is  no  doubt  that  she  did  that  duty  with  high- 
minded — and  deadly — efficiency.  But  Schumann,  instead  of  a  buf- 
fer, needed  a  bridge  to  reality.  Already,  for  lack  of  free  contact 
with  outsiders,  he  was  peopling  his  own  private  world  with  phan- 
tasms which,  as  time  went  on,  became  increasingly  evil. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  from  an  exclusively  romantic  point 
of  view  Schumann's  marriage  was  successful.  The  idea  that  it  was 
conducive  to  either  his  artistic  or  mental  well-being  belongs  to  the 
world  of  fable. 

On  his  return  from  Russia,  Schumann  gave  way  to  the  most 
ominous  melancholy,  and  for  a  time  wavered  perilously  near  to 
insanity.  He  gave  up  all  connection  with  the  Zjdtschrift,  and  re- 
signed from  the  conservatory.  His  despair  when  Mendelssohn  en- 
trusted the  Gewandhaus  directorship  to  Gade  was  not  relaxed  by 
his  exaggerated  respect  for  the  Dane  (he  called  one  of  Gade's 
cantatas  "the  most  important  composition  of  our  modern  times") . 
His  moroseness  over  this  slight  may  well  have  been  aggravated  by 
some  realization  of  his  own  inadequacy  as  a  conductor.  Clara  says 
that  "he  gave  himself  up  for  lost."  The  waters  of  Carlsbad  did  not, 
and  could  not,  help  him:  he  was  suffering  from  an  osseous  growth 
that  exerted  increasing  pressure  on  his  brain,  though  this  fact  was 
not  revealed  until  a  post-mortem  examination.  It  was  agreed  that 


306  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

only  a  complete  change  of  scene  could  save  him.  Accordingly,  in 
October,  1844,  the  Schumanns  removed  to  Dresden. 

At  first,  Schumann  lived  in  complete  seclusion,  but  gradually  the 
ease  and  gaiety  of  Dresden  life  drew  him  from  his  solitude,  and  he 
began  to  meet  many  artists  and  musicians.  Wagner,  then  Kapell- 
meister at  the  court  theater,  had  not  yet  achieved  his  characteristic 
style,  and  Schumann  therefore  found  something  good  to  say  of  his 
work.  However,  he  was  not  carried  away  by  Wagner  at  any  time, 
and  years  later  wrote  of  him:  "He  is,  to  express  myself  briefly,  not 
a  good  musician;  he  has  no  understanding  for  form  and  euphony. 
.  .  .  The  music  apart  from  the  representation  is  poor,  often  quite 
amateurish,  empty,  and  repellent.  .  .  ."  Much  more  uniformly 
genial  was  Schumann's  association  with  Ferdinand  Hiller,  until  he 
went  to  Dusseldorf  a  leader  of  Dresden  musical  society.  Hiller,  a 
musical  handyman  in  the  noblest  tradition,  proved  a  loyal  and 
admiring  friend,  always  ready  to  use  his  strategic  position  to  help 
his  unworldly  friend. 

Schumann's  health  varied,  but  generally  it  seemed  improved. 
Not  so  the  state  of  his  mind.  By  this  time  even  a  semblance  of  calm 
on  Ms  part  depended  on  the  course  of  his  life  running  without  a 
single  hitch.  Unfortunately,  he  lost  an  infant  son  in  1847,  an^  two 
years  later  his  last  remaining  brother  died.  Mendelssohn's  death, 
also  in  1847,  affected  him  even  more  intensely,  for  Schumann's 
admiration  of  him  had  been  tinged  with  an  almost  religious  awe. 
His  old  torments  now  returned  increased.  He  suffered  from  lapses 
of  memory;  he  heard  premonitory  voices;  he  fell  easily  into  melan- 
choly and  despair,  and  his  temporary  recoveries  became  more  and 
more  laborious.  Yet  he  kept  on  composing  indomitably,  though 
many  of  the  works  completed  in  Dresden  show  evident  signs  of 
waning  power  and  growing  mental  confusion.  The  most  important 
compositions  of  this  period  are  Genoveva,  the  Album  fur  die  Jugend, 
the  Piano  Concerto,  and  Manfred. 

Gmoveva  is  a  musical  curiosity,  important  only  as  Schumann's 
single  opera.  "Do  you  know  what  is  my  morning  and  evening 
prayer  as  an  artist?5*  he  had  asked.  "German  opera."  Yet  he  selected 
the  legend  of  Genevieve,  the  patron  saint  of  Paris,  for  his  libretto. 
Unfortunately,  Genevieve  had  none  of  those  loose  moments  that 
made  St.  Thais  a  suitable  operatic  subject.  Furthermore,  Schu- 
mann, in  rewriting  the  libretto,  took  away  from  her  the  few  dra- 


SCHUMANN  307 

matic  qualities  she  possessed.  Wagner,  with  real  friendliness,  tried 
vainly  to  point  out  what  was  wrong.  When  the  opera  was  first  per- 
formed at  Leipzig,  with  the  composer  conducting,  the  consensus 
was  that  he  had  no  dramatic  gift.  The  single  important  dissenter 
seems  to  have  been  Spohr,  who  mistakenly  supposed  that  Genoveva 
carried  out  his  own  operatic  theories.  Schumann,  however,  was 
heartened  by  the  polite  applause  of  critics  and  audience.  He  did 
not  realize  that  opera  was  decidedly  outside  the  range  of  his  gifts, 
and  that  of  Genoveva  only  the  overture,  which  has  some  good  mo- 
ments, would  survive. 

The  much  finer  Manfred  music  has  likewise  vanished  from  the 
stage,  largely  because  Byron  had  neglected  to  make  his  poem 
stageable.  The  overture,  however,  is  sure  to  last:  the  music,  though 
unrelievedly  somber,  is  passionate  and  dramatic;  the  harmonies 
are  gorgeous  and  yet  subtle,  and  the  whole  atmosphere  is  quintes- 
sentially  romantic.  It  is,  beyond  question,  the  most  successful  of 
Schumann's  works  for  orchestra  alone.  With  superb  tactlessness,  he 
planned  to  dedicate  his  setting  of  Byron  to  Queen  Victoria.  For- 
tunately for  both  parties,  this  plan  fell  through. 

The  Piano  Concerto,  dedicated  to  Hiller,  and  possibly  the  best 
known  in  the  standard  repertoire,  was  first  performed  by  Clara. 
It  was  for  her  an  occasion  of  the  greatest  rejoicing:  she  had  always 
wanted  a  "large  bravura  piece"  from  her  husband.  When  the 
Concerto  was  performed  in  Leipzig,  the  Gewandhaus  patrons  (then 
the  most  enlightened  on  the  Continent)  were  already  thoroughly 
acquainted  with  Schumann's  ideas,  but  it  took  this  definitive  ex- 
pression of  them  to  evoke  the  Leipzigers5  unqualified  enthusiasm, 
The  Piano  Concerto  offered  them  an  experience  for  whose  equal 
they  had  to  reach  back  to  Beethoven.  The  opening  allegro,  which 
had  had  an  independent  existence  since  1841  as  a  fantasia  for 
piano  and  orchestra,  is  unstintedly  opulent  in  melody,  and  rises  to 
moments  of  sheer  rhapsody.  Its  cadenza,  far  from  interrupting  the 
mood  of  the  whole  movement,  sustains  it — which  makes  it  a  rarity 
among  piano  cadenzas.  The  intermezzo  is  more  restrained  and 
contemplative,  and  the  marvelously  varied  rhythms  of  the  finale 
mount  and  mingle  in  a  paean  of  unrestrained  joy.  These  elements 
combine  to  produce,  in  the  A  minor  Concerto,  the  sovereign  ges- 
ture of  musical  romanticism. 

The  Album  fur  die  Jugend,  a  collection  of  forty-three  brief  pieces, 


308  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

is  often  misleadingly  bracketed  with  the  Kinderscenen,  on  the  grounds 
that  both  are  music  of  childhood.  The  Kmderscenen,  composed  ten 
years  earlier,  is  a  grown  man's  reverie  of  his  own  childhood;  the 
Album  is  actually  for  children— sharp  little  pictures  that  might  ap- 
peal to  any  child.  In  view  of  Schumann's  mental  torments,  their 
marked  darity  of  outline  is  baffling.  They  are  no  more  than 
charming  trifles,  but  are  important  as  the  ancestors  of  thousands 
of  repulsive  Httle  pieces— those  "Dolly's  Lullabies"  and  "Birdie's 
Boatsongs"  that  are  the  staples  of  the  musical  kindergarten. 

Schumann  continued  to  compose  for  the  piano,  but  without  his 
name  on  them  those  earnest  marches,  fugues,  and  Albumbldtter 
would  never  have  found  homes  even  in  music  libraries.  But  once 
more,  and  inexplicably,  he  produced  a  masterpiece  for  the  piano — 
one  unlike  anything  he  had  done  before.  Vogel  als  Prophet,  from  the 
Waldscenm,  is  an  enigma,  with  all  the  magical  quality  and  strange 
beauties  of  a  changeling.  Years  later,  Claude  Debussy  heard  the 
same  faery  note,  and  musical  impressionism  was  born. 

By  the  middle  of  1850  the  Schumanns  were  thoroughly  dissatis- 
fied with  Dresden,  where  the  composer^  talents  went  unrecognized 
by  court,  artists,  and  public  at  large.  When  Wagner  lost  his  post  as 
Kapellmeister  because  of  his  part  in  the  revolutionary  outbreaks  of 
1848-9,  Schumann  was  passed  over  in  choosing  his  successor.  He 
abandoned  aU  hope  of  securing  a  good  musical  position  in  Dres- 
den. Happily,  however,  the  directorship  of  the  Diisseldorf  Ge- 
sangverein  fell  vacant  when  HiHer  left  to  become  town  musician 
at  Cologne,  Before  leaving  Diisseldorf,  he  recommended  Schu- 
mann for  this  honorable  enough  post,  which  carried  an  annual 
stipend  of  seven  hundred  thaler.  Schumann  hesitated  (he  still 
hoped  for  bigger  things  at  Vienna  or  Berlin) ,  but  by  August  it  was 
clear  that  Diisseldorf  was  the  best  he  could  expect,  and  he  accepted 
Killer's  proposal. 

After  a  rosy  beginning.,  Schumann  got  on  badly  with  the  Diis- 
seldorfers.  His  conducting  rapidly  became  notorious.  He  was  in- 
competent, so  lost  in  a  dreamworld  of  his  own  that  he  could  not 
even  beat  time  accurately.  Of  course,  the  subtleties  of  conducting 
— those  attributes  of  a  truly  great  conductor — were  entirely  beyond 
Mm.  On  one  occasion  he  went  on  automatically  waving  his  baton 
after  a  composition  was  finished.  Another  time,  a  member  of  the 
Gesangverein  complained  to  Qara  of  Schumann's  apathetic  gen- 


SCHUMANN  309 

tleness.  The  more  Intelligent  Diisseldorfers,  who  had  expected  a 
bold  and  valiant  David$bundlery  were  overtly  disappointed  in  the 
taciturn  and  antisocial  composer,  whose  actions  at  the  conductor's 
desk  seemed  to  insult  their  musical  sophistication.  The  bickering 
between  Schumann  and  his  committeemen  is  at  once  tragic  and 
comic,  and  is  given  a  satiric  twist  by  the  good  burghers*  natural 
desire  to  get  their  money's  worth.  Although  most  of  the  time  only 
so  in  name,  Schumann  remained  director  of  the  Gesangverein 
until  the  autumn  of  1853. 

Of  almost  fifty  works  composed  during  the  Diisseldorf  period, 
only  one,  the  E  flat  major  ("Rhenish")  Symphony,  is  still  much 
played.  What  charm  it  has  reflects  Schumann's  very  warm  feeling 
toward  his  new  home.  But  its  interminable  length — it  is  five  move- 
ments long — is  too  sparsely  populated  with  good  things,  and  its 
windy  transitions  show  Schumann's  self-criticism  working  less  than 
ever.  It  is  hard  to  judge  the  Faust  music,  written  over  a  period  of 
years,  and  completed  in  Diisseldorf,  for  it  is  never  performed.  As 
it  is  possible  to  hear  any  number  of  respectable  but  uninspired 
cantatas  every  few  years,  the  complete  silence  of  Schumann's  Faust 
tells  an  eloquent  tale  in  a  novelty-hungry  world.  Not  a  bar  of  this 
music  is  available  in  recordings.  And  though  the  learned  Dr. 
Philipp  Spitta  avers  that  "up  to  the  latter  half  of  the  last  chorus 
it  is  a  chain  of  musical  gems,  a  perfectly  unique  contribution  to 
concert  literature,*'  the  elaborate  score  looks  far  from  promising. 

The  Dusseldorf  compositions  reveal  one  thing  all  too  clearly: 
the  drying  up  of  Schumann's  inspiration.  They  show,  instead  of 
profound  conviction,  a  pedantic,  classicizing  tendency  and  a  tech- 
nical facility  not  at  all  characteristic  of  his  best  efforts.  Many  of 
them  are  choral,  and  are  as  empty  and  sentimental  as  the  verses 
to  which  they  were  written. 

Meanwhile,  shadows  were  falling  more  deeply  on  Schumann's 
mind.  Years  before,  he  had  heard  ghostly  voices,  but  only  at  rare 
intervals.  Now  these  auditory  sensations  multiplied  and  became 
painful,  though  it  was  not  until  the  beginning  of  1854  that  the 
process  of  disintegration  became  so  manifest  that  Clara,  who  had 
been  very  reluctant  to  admit  that  her  husband  was  anything  more 
than  moody,  became  alarmed  for  his  sanity.  Fortunately  for  her, 
Brahms  had  appeared  in  September,  1853,  and  both  the  Schu- 
manns  were  won  over  by  the  young  viking  with  his  massive  blond 


MEN    OF    MUSIC 

mane  and  awkward,  unaffected  manner.  Schumann  roused  him- 
self long  enough  to  greet  Brahms  with  the  ardor  of  youth.  And 
now,  in  his  desire  to  help  this  young  man,  whose  genius  he  at  once 
recognized,  and  whom  he  rather  pathetically  saw  as  someone  "sent 
by  God"  to  carry  on  his  own  work,  be  bethought  himself  of  the 
%dtschrift.  It  had  passed  into  the  hands  of  Franz  Brendel,  who  was 
wholeheartedly  devoted  to  the  Neo-German  school  of  Wagner  and 
Liszt,  and  therefore  unalterably  opposed  to  Schumann.  However, 
he  sent  Brendel  a  high-flown  but  prophetic  article  on  Brahms,  and 
the  editor  felt  obliged  to  print  this  last  message  from  the  magazine's 
illustrious  founder. 

^Respite  from  final  darkness  was  granted  until  February,  1854, 
and  these  last  months  in  Diisseldorf  were  gladdened  for  Schumann 
by  the  warm  friendship  of  Brahms  and  Joseph  Joachim,  the  latter 
of  whom  the  Schumanns  had  met  as  a  child  more  than  ten  years 
before.  Schumann  amused  himself  with  table  tapping,  a  frighten- 
ing symptom  in  one  whose  intelligence  and  understanding  had,  up 
to  this  time,  been  sane  and  firm  despite  his  growing  melancholy. 
Strangely  enough,  Clara  did  not  see  the  significance  of  the  new 
toy.  In  fact,  she  treated  the  whole  situation  rather  lightly.  And 
possibly  she  cannot  be  blamed,  for  Schumann  after  his  arrival  at 
Diisseldorf  had  been  ostensibly  "cured."  And  so  he  stayed,  with 
some  lapses,  until  the  final  stage  of  his  malady.  As  late  as  the  last 
months  of  1853,  ke  was  a^e  to  accompany  Clara  on  a  Dutch  tour, 
during  which  he  enjoyed  himself.  They  were  back  in  Diisseldorf 
by  Christmas,  and  the  January  of  1854  passed  uneventfully. 

On  February  6,  Schumann  wrote  to  Joachim:  "I  have  often 
written  you  with  sympathetic  ink,  and  between  these  lines,  too, 
there  is  a  secret  writing  which  will  afterwards  be  revealed.  .  .  . 
Music  is  silent  at  present,  externally  at  least.  .  .  .  And  now  I 
must  close.  Night  is  beginning  to  fall-"  And  darkness  was  indeed 
closing  in  upon  him.  The  auditory  hallucinations  developed  with 
alarming  rapidity.  He  heard  choirs  of  angels,  cries  of  demons.  The 
spirits  of  Schubert  and  Mendelssohn  appeared,  and  gave  him  a 
theme,  which  he  noted  down.  Voices  whispered.  He  could  not 
sleep.  On  the  twenty-fourth,  he  disposed  of  his  fortune  and  works, 
and  bade  a  touching  farewell  to  Clara,  now  heavy  with  their  eighth 
child.  On  the  twenty-sixth,  he  left  the  house,  walked  to  the  Rhine, 
and  threw  himself  in.  He  was  brought  home  still  alive  some  hours 


SCHUMANN  311 

later  by  strangers  who  had  managed  to  get  him  to  shore,  and  the 
facts  were  carefully  hidden  from  Clara  in  view  of  her  pregnancy. 

On  March  4,  Schumann  was  removed  at  his  own  request  to  a 
sanatorium  at  Endenich,  near  Bonn.  He  was  never  to  return  home. 
At  times  a  ray  of  light  penetrated  his  clouded  mind.  He  did  some 
musical  arrangements,  and  noted  down  quotations  for  his  pro- 
jected Dichtergarten,  which  he  intended  to  be  a  compendium  of  the 
best  remarks  on  music  from  all  the  greatest  writers.  He  had  lucid 
intervals,  during  some  of  which  Brahms  was  with  him.  But  in  less 
than  two  years  all  hope  of  his  recovery  was  abandoned.  He  lin- 
gered, often  in  acute  pain  and  anguish,  until  July  29,  1856,  when 
he  died  in  the  arms  of  Clara,  who  had  previously  refrained  from 
seeing  him  for  fear  of  aggravating  his  condition.^ 

"I  saw  him  in  the  evening,  between  six  and  seven,"  she  wrote. 
"He  smiled  at  me  and  put  his  arms  around  me  with  great  diffi- 
culty, for  he  had  almost  lost  control  of  his  limbs.  Never  shall  I 
forget  that  moment.  I  would  not  give  that  embrace  for  all  the 
treasures  on  earth.55  The  next  day  he  was  buried  in  the  cemetery 
at  Bonn,  and  Clara,  Hiller,  Brahms,  and  Joachim  were  present  at 
the  ceremony. 

Schumann  has  been  called  a  great  music  critic  so  often  that  it  is 
annoying  to  discover  that  he  was  nothing  of  the  sort.  When,  in 
183 1,  he  penned  his  first  critical  effusion,  he  was  a  young  man  with 
a  small  literary  gift  and  an  overwhelming  enthusiasm.  His  critical 
method  was  certainly  the  strangest  ever  used:  it  was  based  exclu- 
sively on  impulse.  An  examination  of  his  so-called  critical  writings 
discloses  a  depressing  mixture  of  praise  for  the  best,  the  good,  the 
mediocre,  and  the  positively  bad.  His  fame  as  a  critic  rests  on  the 
happy  chance  that  he  began  his  career  by  gushing  over  the  young 
Chopin,  and  closed  it  by  doing  the  same  service  for  Brahms. 

Schumann  was  ever  betrayed  by  his  uncertain  taste.  Most  of  his 
enthusiasms  were  for  men  whose  names  are  today  as  deservedly 
dead  as  the  Herzes  and  Huntens  he  himself  reprobated  in  the 
prologue  to  his  collected  writings.  Even  Meyerbeer,  one  of  his  few 
hatreds,  deserved  better  at  his  hands  than  such  mediocrities  as 
Gade  and  Sterndale  Bennett.  Wagner  baffled  him  completely,  even 
though  he  heard  nothing  later  than  Tannhauser.  Hero  worship  im- 


312  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

pelled  him  to  overpraise  not  only  the  less  inspired  works  of  Men- 
delssohn, but  also  the  trifling  imitations  of  Mendelssohn's  satellites. 

But  Schumann's  worst  fault  as  a  critic  is  that  he  does  not  criti- 
cize. He  effuses,  he  palavers,  he  strikes  a  pose,  occasionally  he 
vituperates;  he  almost  never  describes  or  analyzes.  Even  when  he 
is  talking  about  a  composition  like  Mendelssohn's  St.  Paul,  his  dis- 
course is  lyric  rather  than  critical.  If  by  some  chance  every  score 
of  this  oratorio  were  to  be  destroyed,  nothing  Schumann  said  about 
it  would  help  us  to  recapture  its  quality.  He  always  says,  "I  like" 
or  "I  do  not  like" — rarely  does  he  say  anything  more. 

Schumann  was  not  a  true  critic  of  other  men's  music,  and  he 
was  not  a  true  critic  of  his  own.  He  understood  the  piano,  and  his 
happiest  and  most  characteristic  pages  were  composed  for  that  in- 
strument. He  did  not  understand  the  special  character  of  the 
chamber  ensemble  and  the  orchestra,  and  in  writing  for  them  too 
often  treated  them  as  expanded  pianos.  Even  in  the  field  of  the 
lied,  where  he  has  few  peers,  he  did  not  unfailingly  give  the  human 
voice  music  best  adapted  to  its  peculiar  genius.  Schumann  was 
fecund  in  musical  ideas,  but  his  way  of  expressing  them  seems  often 
to  have  been  determined  by  nothing  more  cogent  than  the  genre 
that  was  his  passion  at  the  moment. 

Everything  points  to  Schumann's  inability  to  cope  with  this 
problem  of  musical  choice.  Closely  allied  to  it  is  the  failure  of  his 
attempts  to  project  his  ideas  on  a  large  scale.  His  material  is  in- 
tensely subjective,  and  is  suited  just  to  those  short  pieces  and 
passages  which,  in  fact,  represent  him  at  his  best.  He  lacked  that 
sense  of  large  design  which  would  have  enabled  him  successfully 
to  relate  several  of  these  fragments  in  a  symphony  or  sonata.  There 
is  much  sound  wisdom  in  Bernard  Shaw's  wisecrack  about  the 
desirability  of  boiling  down  all  the  Schumann  symphonies  into  a 
potpourri  called  "Gems  from  Schumann."  There  are  many  mo- 
ments of  great  harmomc>  rhythmic,  and  melodic  beauty  in  his 
larger  compositions,  but  his  way  of  stringing  unrelated  fragments 
together  does  not  make  for  that  feeling  of  inevitability  that  is  the 
hallmark  of  the  greatest  music.  Bu,ta  of  course,  Schumann  was  not 
one  of  the  greatest  composers. 

Schumann's  position  is,  rather,  a  high  one  among  masters  of  the 
second  rank.  A  few  of  his  works  are  sure  to  survive — the  Quintet,, 
the  Piano  Concerto,  the  overture  to  Manfred?  the  best  of  his  songs 


SCHUMANN  313 

and  piano  pieces.  In  them  his  peculiar  genius  is  at  its  flood — in  the 
daring  rhythms,  the  somber-textured  harmonies,  the  melodies  that 
distill  their  essence  in  bittersweet  epigrams.  These  are  not  the 
utterances  of  a  god.  Schumann's  special  magic  is  his  disturbing 
nearness  to  us.  And  he  is  most  disturbing  because,  once  heard,  he 
can  never  be  forgotten.  He  is  the  voice  of  romance. 


Chapter  XIII 

Frederic-Francois  Chopin 

(Zelazowa-Wola,  February  22,  1810— 
October  ij,  1849,  Paris) 


THERE  are  still  many  people  who  persist  in  thinking  of  Chopin 
as  a  more  or  less  inspired  dilettante  and  cvoker  of  small  musical 
moods.  Yet,  he  was  the  most  truly  original  of  all  composers.*  He 
arrived  almost  immediately  at  a  personal  idiom  that  is  absolutely 
unmistakable — an  original  style  so  pervasive  that  a  fragmentary 
bar  or  two  will  serve  to  identify  a  composition  as  his.  With  a  rare 
sense  of  what  kingdom  he  could  make  his  own,,  he  chose  to  write 
music  for  the  piano.  He  never  composed  an  opera  or  an  oratorio, 
never  a  symphony,  never  even  a  string  quartet.  These  large  forms 
he  left  to  others,  and  cultivated  his  own  garden.  He  worked  in  a 
dozen  or  more  forms,  several  of  them  of  his  own  creation.  He  is  the 
composer  par  excellence  of  inexhaustible  variety  in  infinite  detail. 
Nor,  except  when  he  tried  to  force  his  idiosyncratic  poetry  into 
some  larger  classical  form,  did  his  Flaubertian  feeling  for  the  mu- 
sical mot  juste  interfere  with  his  respect  for  the  architecture  of  a 
composition  as  an  entity. 

Chopin  has  never  lacked  champions,  but  there  is  no  doubt  that 
his  intelligent  self-limitation  has  acted  adversely  on  his  fame.  The 
very  pervasiveness  of  his  idiom  has  acted  no  less  adversely.  In  a 
certain  limited  sense,  all  of  his  music  sounds  alike:  in  their  peculiar 
melodic  line  and  rhythms,  their  acid-sweet  harmonic  sequences, 
their  persistent  trend  to  the  minor,  and  their  lavish  use  of  orna- 
mentation, the  oeuvres  completes  of  Frederic-Frangois  Chopin  are  a 
singular  phenomenon  whose  component  parts  have  a  deceptive — 
and,  to  some,  a  monotonous — similarity.  The  elements  that  shaped 
his  musical  language  are  easy  to  isolate.  Partly  Polish,  he  was  the 
first  to  introduce  a  Slavic  note  into  Western  music — the  experi- 
ments of  earlier  composers,  who  cast  Slavic  folk  melodies  into  the 
absorbent,  neutralizing  classical  mold,  do  not  affect  the  argument. 

*  This  chapter  is  written  on  the  assumption  that  Chopin  was  a  great  composer — 
this  as  a  warning  to  any  violent  dissenters  from  this  opinion.  The  writers  know  that 
no  argument  however  good,  would  make  these  dissenters  change  their  minds. 

314 


CHOPIN  315 

He  was  a  neurotic,  and  his  music  often  expresses  a  hypersensitive, 
decadent,  and  rather  feminine  personality.  Further,  he  lived  in  a 
time  and  place  overfriendly  to  the  flowering  of  such  a  personality, 
and  therefore  it  is  no  accident  that  this  pampered  Pole  who  spent 
most  of  his  creative  life  in  Paris  wrote  the  most  characteristic  mu- 
sical illustrations  of  French  romanticism. 

Chopin  is  always  spoken  of  as  a  Polish  composer.  With  more 
justice,  he  could  be  called  a  French  composer.  His  mother  was 
Polish,  he  spent  the  first  twenty  years  of  his  Ufe  in  Poland,  and  he 
was  always  violently  patriotic — from  a  safe  distance.  On  the  other 
hand,  his  father  was  French,  and  it  was  in  France,  under  French 
influences,  that  he  wrote  most  of  the  music  by  which  he  is  today 
remembered.  Nicolas  Chopin,  his  father,  was  an  emigre  who  had 
been  stranded  in  Warsaw  by  the  failure  of  the  French  snuff  manu- 
facturers for  whom  he  had  worked.  Becoming  a  tutor  in  the  home 
of  Count  Skarbek,  he  had  married  the  Countess'  lady  in  waiting, 
Justina  Krzyzanowska,  herself  of  noble  birth.  Fred6ric-Frangois, 
their  second  child  and  only  son,  was  born  on  February  22,  1810, 
at  Zelazowa-Wola,  a  small  village  near  Warsaw,  where  the  Skar- 
beks  had  a  country  place.  The  Chopins  shortly  removed  to  War- 
saw, Nicolas  began  teaching  in  several  schools  (he  soon  opened  a 
successful  tutoring  academy  of  his  own),  and  their  home  became 
a  favorite  resort  of  artists  and  intellectuals.  They  were  neither  poor 
nor  rich — always  comfortable,  with  money  enough  for  an  occa- 
sional small  luxury.  Nicolas  was  a  flautist,  Justina  a  singer  of  pleas- 
ing voice,  and  the  eldest  child,  Ludwika,  played  the  piano.  We 
must  conceive  of  music,  then,  as  always  going  on  in  this  pleasant 
household,  and  of  the  fond  parents  violently  distressed  when  they 
saw  that  their  infant  son  reacted  with  floods  of  tears  to  the  sound 
of  music.  They  thought  he  hated  it,  and  it  was  only  when  he 
began  to  pick  out  tunes  on  the  piano  that  they  realized  he  had 
been  crying  for  joy.  They  had  a  hysteric  on  their  hands,  not  a 
music  hater. 

And  so,  at  the  age  of  six  Frederic  began  to  take  lessons  from  a 
solid  and  withal  sympathetic  Czech  piano  teacher,  Adalbert  Zywny, 
for  whom  he  always  entertained  a  lively  feeling  of  gratitude.  Zywny 
was  a  devotee  of  Bach,  and  trained  the  boy  on  The  Well-Tempered 
Clavichord,  thus  giving  a  firm  foundation  -to  his  pianism.  Not  the 
most  brilliant  of  virtuoso  prodigies,  Frederic  nevertheless  publicly 


316  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

played  a  concerto  on  his  eighth  birthday.  The  noblemen,  and  even 
more  the  noblewomen,  who  made  up  the  audience  were  enchanted 
by  the  tiny,  winsome  child,  and  from  that  day  until  his  death 
Chopin  was  the  darling  of  the  Polish  haute  noblesse— -an  excellent 
buffer  against  the  cruel  world.  He  took  to  his  noble  admirers  as 
much  as  they  to  him.  One  of  his  childish  pleasures  was  being  taken 
in  Grand  Duke  Constantine's  carriage  to  a  party  at  the  palace. 
He  not  unnaturally  became  a  snob,  and  instead  of  his  snobbishness 
leaving  him,  it  throve  as  he  matured,  and  remained  one  of  his  less 
pleasant  traits.  It  must  be  admitted,  however,  that  Polish  society 
at  that  time  was,  with  all  its  absurd  prejudices,  among  the  most 
highly  cultivated  in  Europe,  having  a  genuine  interest  in  the  arts, 
particularly  music  and  poetry. 

Frederic  began  to  dabble  with  little  compositions  of  his  own 
almost  as  soon  as  he  could  play  the  piano.  His  father,  without  any 
demur,  sent  him  to  Joseph  Eisner,  the  best  composition  teacher  in 
Warsaw,  and  a  widely  known  and  all  too  prolific  composer.  This 
was  the  happiest  of  choices,  for  one  of  Eisner's  favorite  maxims 
(which  should  be  emblazoned  over  the  door  of  every  music  school) 
was:  "It  is  not  enough  for  a  student  to  equal  or  surpass  his  master; 
he  should  create  an  individuality  of  his  own."  He  instantly  recog- 
nized that  Chopin's  were  no  usual  gifts,  and  allowed  him  what 
certain  austere  critics  have  considered  too  much  leeway  in  devel- 
oping them.  Chopin  realized  his  debt  to  Eisner,  and  the  bond  be- 
tween them  lasted  throughout  his  life.  These  lessons  with  Zywny 
and  Eisner  constituted  his  entire  formal  education,  with  the  excep- 
tion of  three  years  at  the  Warsaw  Lycee,  where  he  took  no  interest 
in  Ms  courses.  He  passed  them  by  the  skin  of  his  teeth,  and  was 
graduated  at  the  age  of  seventeen — a  slender,  dandified,  effeminate 
boy,  whose  pallor  and  feeble  physique  told  of  a  hothouse  life  di- 
vided between  the  music  room  and  the  salons  of  high  society. 

Chopin  craved  adventure,  adventure  to  him  meaning  life  as  it 
was  lived  in  the  cosmopolitan  centers  of  Europe.  In  1828,  he  got 
a  glimpse  of  Berlin  as  the  guest  of  a  family  friend  who  went  there 
to  attend  a  scientific  congress  presided  over  by  the  eternal  Alex- 
ander von  Humboldt.  He  stared  wistfully  at  Spontini  and  Men- 
delssohn, but  was  too  timid  to  introduce  himself.  He  reveled  in  the 
sumptuous  stagings  of  several  operas,  and  wrote  home  that  Han- 
del's Ode  for  St  Cecilia's  Day  "most  nearly  approaches  my  ideal  of 


CHOPIN  317 

sublime  music."  After  this  tactful  and  far  from  intoxicating  four- 
week  introduction  to  the  great  world  beyond  the  Polish  frontier, 
Chopin  was  back  in  Warsaw  absorbed  in  musical  study  and  com- 
position. The  advent  of  Johann  Nepomuk  Hummel,  that  phenom- 
enal ambassador  of  the  eighteenth  century  to  the  nineteenth,* 
aroused  the  lad's  restlessness;  that  of  Paganini  made  it  intolerable. 
Furthermore,  he  was  racked  by  all  the  torments  of  calf  love:  the 
object  of  his  passion  was  a  pretty  soprano,  but  Chopin  had  not 
the  courage  to  declare  himself,  and  merely  suffered  and  talked 
about  his  "ideal." 

Nicolas  Chopin  decided  that  such  agony  and  nostalgia  should 
be  indulged,  and  accordingly,  in  the  summer  of  1829, tlle  money 
for  a  Viennese  trip  was  somehow  found.  In  Vienna,  Frederic  suc- 
cumbed gracefully  to  a  slender  success.  He  found,  to  start  with, 
that  a  publisher  was  on  the  verge  of  issuing  his  variations  for  piano 
and  orchestra  on  "La  ci  darem"  from  Don  Giovanni.  Then  he  was 
persuaded,  almost  against  his  will,  to  give  a  concert  "in  a  city 
which  can  boast  of  having  heard  a  Haydn,  a  Mozart,  and  a  Bee- 
thoven." He  was  needlessly  nervous,  for  the  concert  was  so  success- 
ful that,  a  week  later,  he  had  to  give  another.  The  critics  were 
extremely  friendly,  and  there  was  a  flurry  in  the  female  dovecotes. 
There  were  a  few  dissenters:  Moscheles  said  his  tone  was  "too 
small,"  and  one  woman  was  heard  to  say,  "It's  a  pity  he's  so 
insignificant-looking." 

Chopin  returned  home  sighing  more  woefully  than  ever  for  his 
soprano  and  bored  to  death  with  the  attractions  of  Warsaw.  His 
letters  to  Titus  Wojciechowski,  the  confidant  of  his  maidenly  hopes 
and  fears,  quiver  with  self-pity  and  verbal  breast-beating.  This  no 
doubt  thoroughly  masculine  young  man  seems  to  have  been  for 
some  years  a  surrogate  for  the  girls  Chopin  lacked  the  boldness  to 
speak  out  to.  There  is  something  decidedly  ambiguous  about  these 
letters,  with  their  kisses,  embraces,  and  wheedling  sentimentality, 
gently  chiding  "my  dearest  life" — Titus! — for  his  unresponsive- 
ness.  There  is  no  suggestion  of  the  overtly  abnormal  anywhere  in 
Chopin's  life,  and  indeed  he  outgrew  his  effusive  outpourings  to 
men  friends,  but  without  developing  into  an  aggressive  male.  It  is 

*  The  pupil  of  Haydn,  Mozart,  and  Salieri,  and  the  friend  of  Beethoven,  he 
*aiight,  among  other  notabtti,  Czerny,  Hiller,  and  Thalberg. 


MEN    OF    MUSIC 

Impossible  fully  to  understand  his  music  unless  we  recognize  the 
generous  feminine  component  in  his  nature. 

Warsaw  held  Chopin  for  little  more  than  a  year,  during  which 
time  he  fretfully  and  vaguely  made  and  unmade  plans  for  the 
future.  He  thrice  played  successfully  in  public,  the  third  time  with 
his  pretty  soprano  as  assisting  artist — which  may  well  have  been 
the  climax  of  his  intimacy  with  her.  At  last  he  made  up  his  waver- 
ing mind:  on  November  i,  1830,  he  left  Warsaw.  He  was  still 
vague  about  his  plans,  his  itinerary  was  "parts  unknown,"  but  for 
the  time  being  he  was  going  to  Vienna  with  Titus  WojciechowskL 
As  he  passed  through  his  birthplace,  Eisner  had  a  cantata  sung 
in  his  honor,  and  did  not  (despite  a  legend  to  the  contrary) 
present  him  with  an  urnful  of  Polish  earth — an  appropriate  gift, 
it  would  have  been  for  Chopin  never  returned  home. 

Vienna  amazed  and  annoyed  Chopin  by  turning  an  exceedingly 
cold  shoulder.  The  publisher  who  had  been  so  nice  to  him  on  the 
previous  trip  still  wished  to  sponsor  certain  of  his  compositions — 
if  he  could  get  them  for  nothing.  His  former  friends  were  either 
bankrupt  or  sick  or  out  of  town.  And  scarcely  had  Chopin  and 
Titus  settled  down  before  they  heard  that  the  Poles  had  rebelled 
against  the  Russian  tyranny.  Titus  was  off  at  once  to  fight  for 
Poland,  and  Frederic,  after  weeping  for  a  day,  decided  to  follow 
him.  En  route  he  changed  his  mind,  and  within  a  few  days  was 
back  in  his  comfortable  lodgings.  It  seems  more  than  odd  that  the 
bereft  youth  remained  for  over  six  months  in  a  city  that  was  not 
only  indifferent  to  him,  but  which,  after  the  rebellion  broke  out, 
became  violently  anti-Polish.  In  July,  1831,  Chopin  was  again  on 
the  road,  with  no  destination  except  a  vague  feeling  that  he  might 
end  up  in  London.  At  Stuttgart  he  heard  that  the  Russians  had 
retaken  Warsaw,  which  seems  to  have  surprised  as  well  as  agitated 
Mm,  though  fortunately  he  received  letters  from  his  family  that 
banished  his  more  horrific  visions.  Late  in  September,  he  arrived 
in  Paris,  intending  merely  to  see  the  sights  and  meet  the  important 
musicians.  Instead,  he  stayed  for  the  rest  of  his  life. 

The  slight,  blond-haired  young  Pole  with  the  prominent  aqui- 
line nose,  who  arrived  on  the  Parisian  scene  in  the  second  year  of 
Louis-Philippe's  reign,  already  had  a  small  fame.  He  was  known 
in  his  homeland  and  in  a  few  cities  outside  as  a  pianist  whose  deli- 
cate style  and  exquisite  nuances  made  overhearing  him  in  a  large 


CHOPIN 

hall  something  of  a  problem.  He  was  by  now  the  composer  of  several 
ambitious  piano  works  with  orchestral  accompaniment,  not  to 
speak  of  a  number  of  smaller  pieces  for  piano  alone.  The  history 
of  Chopin's  development  as  a  composer  indicates  that  these  or- 
chestral works — all  written  before  he  was  twenty-one — were  little 
more  than  shrewd  bids  for  recognition  in  a  musical  world  whose 
snobbish  arbiters  were  inclined  to  look  askance  at  anyone  who 
had  not  a  symphony  or  an  opera,  or  at  least  a  concerto,  to  his 
credit.  A  composer  of  mere  piano  pieces  had  no  chance  to  enter 
this  charmed  circle.  Chopin  knew  this,  got  the  required  big  works 
off  his  chest,  and,  with  his  reputation  established,  turned  exclu- 
sively to  the  solo  pieces  in  which  he  knew  his  strength  lay. 

No  man  ever  made  a  wiser  decision.  Chopin  had  no  talent  for 
orchestration,  no  real  understanding  of  the  deeper  issues  involved 
in  composing  a  work  in  several  movements:  he  lacked  the  long 
breath  needed  for  such  an  enterprise.  Schumann's  mistaken  chori- 
ambics  over  the  "La  d  darem"  Variations  come  under  the  heading 
of  clairvoyance  rather  than  of  criticism.  The  two  piano  concertos 
are  both  played,  but  no  one  has  ever  been  satisfied  with  them. 
Numerous  musical  mechanics  have  tried  their  hands  at  viriKzing 
the  orchestration,  once  so  successfully  that  the  piano  part  itself 
had  to  be  reinforced.  No  amount  of  tinkering,  however,  could  ever 
give  either  of  them  more  than  a  surface  unity.  It  is  true,  but  by  no 
means  complimentary,  to  say  that  the  concertos  are  at  their  best 
when  they  most  nearly  resemble  Chopin's  solo  pieces,  when,  in 
short,  he  forgets  the  orchestra  (which  he  often  does),  and  writes  a 
sprightly  waltz  or  rondo.  Separate  movements  of  these  concertos 
could  easily  be  made  into  solo  pieces  without  loss  of  effectiveness — 
and  possibly  with  gain  in  the  allegro  vivace  of  the  F  minor  or  the 
rondo  of  the  E  minor.  Among  the  many  reasonable  criticisms  lev- 
eled at  the  Chopin  concertos,  no  one  has  impugned  their  melodic 
charm,  insinuating  adornments,  or  persuasive  rhythms.  They  are 
not  great  music,  but  they  are  very  pleasant  to  listen  to. 

So  we  may  gather  that  Chopin  at  once  stepped  into  a  respect- 
able if  not  distinguished  niche  in  Parisian  musical  life.  Paris,  in 
the  early  thirties  of  the  nineteenth  century,  was  the  capital  of 
artistic  Europe.  Cherubini  was  still,  despite  his  Italian  name,  the 
grand  old  man  of  French  music,  and  the  popular  composers  were, 
after  Rossini,  who  led  the  field  by  a  long  stretch,  Meyerbeer, 


32O  MEN    OF    MTJSIG 

Auber,  and  Louis  H6rold,  whose  %ampay  produced  just  after  Cho- 
pin's arrival,  gave  him  a  phenomenal  popularity  that  was  cut 
short  by  Ms  premature  death  two  years  later.  Vincenzo  Bellini, 
the  composer  oiNormay  though  already  a  great  name,  was  not  to 
arrive  on  the  scene  until  1833,  when  he  and  Chopin,  so  alike  in 
melodic  style,  and  sharing  a  passion  for  Mozart,  formed  a  friend- 
ship that  lasted  until  the  young  Sicilian's  death  in  1835.  Berlioz 
was  shaking  his  fierce  red  locks  at  the  dried-up  elders  of  classicism. 
Franz  Liszt,  youthful  and  dreamy  as  in  Ingres3  poetic  drawing, 
divided  honors  at  the  keyboard  with  Friedrich  Kalkbrenner,  a 
massively  correct  pedant  who  once  told  Chopin  that  he  might  do 
something  for  his  playing  if  Chopin  would  but  study  with  him  for 
three  years*  At  the  Opera  the  galaxy  included  such  luminaries  as 
Malibran  and  Pasta,  Rubini  and  Lablache.  No  less  brilliant  was 
the  literary  scene,  where  the  already  aged  Chateaubriand,  with 
many  years  of  literary  doddering  before  him,  was  yielding  to  the 
ultraromanticists  led  by  Victor  Hugo,  the  colossus  of  the  future, 
whose  hectic  Hernani  was  the  defi  of  the  young  fanatics.  Balzac  was 
established,  Stendhal  was  at  the  height  of  his  powers,  and  Gautier, 
Dumas,  and  Merim£e  were  on  the  ascent  Heine,  with  his  puny, 
ailing  body  and  flashing  mind,  was  in  Paris  squeezing  out  the  ut- 
most rapture  from  the  pseudo  revolution  of  1830.  Over  painting, 
the  coldly  disciplined  genius  of  Ingres  exercised  a  chilling  dic- 
tatorship; the  youthful  opposition  was  rallying  around  Delacroix, 
whose  tumultuous  canvases  scandalized  the  official  salons. 

Everywhere  classicism  was  in  retreat  Music  alone  awaited  its 
first  out-and-out  romantic  masters:  two  of  them — Chopin  and 
Liszt — were  at  hand. 

To  make  his  name  weigh  in  such  a  splendid  artistic  society  was, 
at  first,  no  easy  task,  Chopin  was  next  to  penniless,  but  there 
seemed  no  doubt  that  among  the  many  publics  Paris  could  offer, 
there  must  be  one  for  him.  A  debut  concert,  arranged  for  Decem- 
ber, 1831,  was  postponed  until  late  January.  Then  the  critic 
F6tis,  who  had  a  strong  aversion  to  praising  anyone,  shouted  his 
approval,  and  Mendelssohn,  though  he  was  wont  to  speak  con- 
descendingly of  the  composer  as  "Chopinetto,"  warmly  applauded 
the  pianist*  The  concert  enhanced  Chopin's  reputation  among 
musicians,  but  only  a  few  Polish  emigres  had  bought  tickets,  and  his 
pockets  remained  empty.  Three  months  later,  he  played  with 


CHOPIN  321 

equally  depressing  financial  results  at  a  fashionable  charity  con- 
cert, and  was  so  dejected  that  he  decided  to  move  to  America.  Un- 
fortunately for  the  muse  of  comic  history,  Chopin  never  had  a 
chance  to  add  another  by  no  means  needed  note  of  color  to  An- 
drew Jackson's  United  States.  Fortunately  for  him,  he  accidentally 
met  Prince  Valentin  Radziwill.,  who  was  aghast  at  the  idea  of 
Chopin  departing  for  such  savage  shores.  He  persuaded  him  to  try 
his  luck  at  Baron  Jacques  de  Rothschild's.  There,  amid  some  of  the 
best  names  in  the  Almanack  de  Gotha,  he  conquered  Parisian  society, 
and  came  away  with  a  prince,  a  princess,  a  duchess,  and  a  count  as 
his  sponsors.  As  a  result,  with  engagements  to  play,  and  with  plenty 
of  lessons  at  twenty  francs  a  head,  his  financial  problems  were 
solved  for  over  a  decade. 

Chopin  never  deplored  the  inroads  of  society  on  his  time:  he  had 
a  well-developed  frivolous  side,  adored  the  company  of  beautiful 
women  of  rank,  and  unfolded  all  his  petals  in  a  really  select 
gathering.  Once  he  had  entree,  he  gave  much  attention  to  the 
business  of  cutting  a  fine  figure  in  Parisian  high  society.  He  kept  his 
own  carriage,  was  something  of  a  clotheshorse,  and  in  many  re- 
spects was  quite  like  one  of  the  young  swells  of  the  Jockey  Club. 
His  social  vices  were  characteristic  of  the  highborn  Pole  domiciled 
in  Paris:  he  was  snobbish  to  the  point  of  stupidity,  and  often 
treated  those  he  considered  his  inferiors  with  brusque  discourtesy. 
Of  a  part  with  this  was  his  fanatical  contempt  for  Jews — unless 
they  happened  to  be  Rothschilds,  a  Mendelssohn,  or  a  Heine. 
He  used  the  epithets  "Jew95  and  "pig*5  interchangeably  for  any- 
one who  incurred,  even  unwittingly,  his  disfavor.  Ever  a  sensitive 
plant,  imbibing  his  impressions,  and  most  of  his  nonmusical  ideas, 
from  his  immediate  ambience,  Chopin  did  not  think  out  these 
absurd  attitudes,  but  accepted  them  as  unthinkingly  as  he  did  the 
fashion  of  wearing  yellow  gloves. 

The  Chopin  of  the  overheated  ballrooms  with  countless  count- 
esses moving  in  the  candlelight  was  the  composer  of  the  valses — 
less  than  a  score  spaced  over  almost  twenty  years.  There  are 
valses  in  all  moods — gay,  insouciant,  disdainful,  delce  far  nimte, 
somber,  languorous,  pensive — all  evoking  the  ballroom  and  the 
spirit  of  the  dance.  Only  rarely,  however,  are  they  truly  dance 
music,  and  never  are  they  valses  in  the  good,  forthright  Johann 
Strauss  tradition.  They  have  rhythm,  and  when  this  rhythm  is  not 


322  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

too  vagrant,  parts  of  them  could  be  used  in  a  ballroom.  As  it  is, 
several  of  them  have  been  orchestrated  for  ballet — witness  those  in 
that  appalling  choreographic  museum  called  Les  Sylphides.  It  takes 
a  ballet  dancer,  disciplined  to  cope  with  all  manner  of  musical 
surprise,  to  follow  the  subtle  retards  and  accelerations  of  Chopin's 
perplexing  conception  of  unchanging  three-four  time.  The  valses 
are  really  just  what  Chopin  intended  them  to  be — piano  pieces, 
salon  pieces  to  be  played  intimately.  They  are  all  charming,  many 
of  them  enjoy  world-wide  popularity,*  some  of  them  have  moments 
of  exquisite  tenderness  and  meditation.  Yet,  with  the  possible  ex- 
ception of  the  C  sharp  minor,  they  are  without  the  special  tang 
and  color  of  Chopin,  the  revolutionary  of  the  pianoforte.  The 
valses  are  Chopin's  trivia. 

The  truth  is  that  the  valses,  having  their  source  in  no  deep  emo- 
tions, but  bubbling  off  the  surface  of  Chopin's  life,  could  never 
rise  above  charm.  Yet,  he  could  make  other  dance  forms  the 
vehicles  of  eloquent  emotion.  Such  were  the  polonaise  and  the 
mazurka,  where  the  fact  that  they  were  Polish  dances  touched  off  a 
complex  of  personal  feelings — patriotism,  homesickness,  pride  of 
race,  a  realization  of  exile — that  make  them  spiritually  sincere, 
artistically  creative  as  the  valses  almost  never  are. 

The  polonaise,  which  in  Liszt's  deft  but  insensitive  hands  be- 
came an  omnibus  of  piano  effects,  in  Chopin's  was  a  magnificent 
catch  at  lofty  and  poetic  moods.  In  this  superb  dozen  of  epic 
dances — great  vigorous  dances  for  noble  men — it  is  hard  to  find 
the  Chopin  whom  John  Field  (himself  a  minor  poet  at  the  key- 
board) described  as  "a  sickroom  talent"  With  the  exception  of  the 
clangorous  "Afilitaire,"  the  polonaises  have  seldom  won  the  great 
popular  favor  they  deserve:  they  are  too  difficult  for  any  except  the 
strongest  and  most  agile  virtuoso;  they  are  entirely  beyond  the 
reach  of  the  amateur  who  can  manage  a  valse  or  a  prelude.  Yet, 
even  a  long-neglected  polonaise  can  be  dusted  off,  and  used  by  a 
great  pianist  to  bring  down  the  house.  In  capable  hands  they  are 
absolutely  sure-fire.  The  main  reason  for  this  is  that,  apart  from 
their  specific  musical  beauties,  they  are  amazingly  exciting.  Three 
of  them  tower  above  the  rest,  and  belong  definitely  to  the  greater 
Chopin.  These  big  works  require  such  a  wide  range  of  dynamics, 

*  In  one  case,  at  least,  unfortunately.  Of  the  so-called  "Minute5'  Valse,  in  D  flat, 
James  Huneker  said  that  "like  the  rich,  It  is  always  with  us." 


CHOPIN  323 

and  teem  with  so  many  fortisslmos  and  sforzandos,  that  it  is  im- 
possible to  imagine  their  own  composer,  with  his  feeble  attack, 
doing  them  justice.  Chopin  often  said  that  he  "heard"  certain  of 
his  compositions  only  when  Liszt  played  them  for  him,  and  these 
three  giants  must  have  been  among  them.  The  F  sharp  minor 
Polonaise  is  a  tortured,  stormy  introspection  divided  into  two  parts 
by  a  whispering  aside  in  mazurka  style — an  enigmatic  pause  that, 
in  addition  to  supplying  vivid  dramatic  contrast,  suggests  nostalgia 
and  bittersweet  musings.  The  A  flat  Polonaise  is  a  triumphant 
composition;  occasionally  called  the  "Heroic,"  it  almost  equals 
the  "Militaire"  in  popularity.  It  is  as  outward-turned  as  the  F 
sharp  minor  is  inward-searching.  It  represents  the  joy,  completely 
impersonal,  of  great  issues  happily  decided.  There  remains  the 
Polonaise-Fantaisie,  likewise  in  A  flat,  vast,  ambiguous,  and  less 
structurally  well  knit  than  most  of  Chopin's  piano  pieces.  After 
some  difficulty  in  getting  started — it  makes  three  false  starts  (a 
Lisztian  trick) — it  vaporizes  beautifully  for  several  pages,  which 
are  studded  with  quasi-Schumannesque  epigrams,  achieves  a 
satisfactory  climax,  collapses,  and  inconsequentially  sets  off  on 
another  tack  and  works  up  into  one  of  the  most  effective  climaxes 
in  all  of  Chopin. 

For  expressing  more  intimate  and  evanescent  moods  than  seem 
native  to  the  polonaise,  Chopin  turned  to  another  Polish  dance — 
the  mazurka.  He  wrote  fifty-six  mazurkas  of  amazing  variety,  but 
almost  all  intensely  Slavic  in  feeling.  Many  have  recourse  to  the 
most  exotic  harmonies  and  melodic  intervals.  The  way  they  break 
the  rules,  sometimes  to  produce  an  authentic  Slavic  effect,  some- 
times out  of  sheer  disdain,  infuriated  the  theorists  of  the  day.  Even 
the  much  freer  rules  of  modern  harmony  might  not  admit  some  of 
these  strange  progressions,  but  the  ear — music's  best  arbiter — 
allows  them  because  they  seem  to  arise  inevitably  out  of  the  whole 
design  and  context  of  the  music.  Lovely,  haunting,  eerily  seductive 
though  they  are,  the  mazurkas  have  never  been  concert  hits,  not 
because  audiences  would  not  like  them,  but  because  they  offer  few 
big  chances  to  heroic  virtuosos.  This  is  perhaps  just  as  well:  the 
mazurkas  would  lose  some  of  their  bloom  at  the  hands  of  keyboard 
giants  in  the  wide  spaces  of  the  concert  hall.  They  need,  far  more 
than  the  valses,  and  quite  as  much  as  the  preludes,  the  small  room, 
the  right  time,  the  personal  touch.  Among  the  fifty-six,  you 


324  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

are  bound  to  find  at  least  one  that  will  fit  your  mood  (unless 
you  long  to  overturn  a  dictator  or  improve  your  game  of  golf)  ,  and 
the  technical  difficulties  are  not  formidable  enough  to  keep  you 
from  expressing  yourself  adequately.  There  are,  as  Huneker  said, 
Chopin  mazurkas  that  are  "ironical,  sad,  sweet,  joyous,  morbid, 
sour,  sane  and  dreamy" — moocis  for  any  man. 

It  is  not  easy  to  picture  this  master  of  moods  as  a  piano  teacher, 
however  fashionable.  Yet,  from  1832  on,  much  of  his  everyday  life 
was  a  pedagogue's,  and  the  strange  thing  is  that  he  seems  to  have 
relished  teaching.  It  led  him  to  the  best  houses.  Oddly  enough, 
not  one  of  his  known  pupils  became  a  great  pianist,  though  there  is 
a  legend  that  Louis  Moreau  Gottschalk,  that  Creole  Don  Juan  of 
the  keyboard,  studied  with  Mm.  This  story  is  supported  by  the 
fact  that  Gottschalk  introduced  Chopin's  music  in  America.  The 
most  promising  pupil  Chopin  ever  had  was  a  child  prodigy  who 
died  at  the  age  of  fifteen,  and  of  whom  Liszt  said,  "When  he  starts 
playing,  I'll  shut  up  shop."  But  most  of  Chopin's  pupils  were 
dilettante  aristocrats  of  both  sexes,  female  predominating. 

It  was  left  for  Chopin  the  composer,  through  two  sets  of  twelve 
etudes,*  to  become,  after  Bach,  the  most  inspired  of  keyboard 
pedagogues.  Bach,  in  seeking  to  establish  the  perfect  relationships 
of  the  tempered  scales,  produced  forty-eight  preludes  and  fugues 
that,  besides  being  inherently  beautiful,  are  still  the  classic  touch- 
stone of  piano  pedagogy.  Chopin,  who  always  limbered  up  for  his 
own  concerts  by  playing  from  The  Well-Tempered  Clavichord,  made, 
in  the  etudes,  a  series  of  field  maps  of  the  territories  he  had  had  to 
explore  in  order  to  enlarge  the  range  of  piano  technique.  In  almost 
every  one  of  them  he  dealt  with  a  problem,  or  related  problems, 
incidental  to  the  new  kind  of  music  he  was  composing,  and  there  is 
plenty  of  internal  evidence,  despite  the  multifarious  programs 
that  have  been  suggested  for  various  etudes,  that  they  were  de- 
liberately designed  as  exercises  for  overcoming  specific  difficulties. 
The  study  in  thirds  (Opus  25,  No.  6)  and  the  tremendous  one  in 
octaves  (Opus  25,  No.  10)  reveal  their  teaching  purposes  at  a 
glance.  But  even  such  a  demoniac  outburst  as  the  "Revolutionary" 
(Opus  10,  No.  12)  is  easily  analyzed  as  "a  bravura  study  of  the 

*  For  the  three  supplementary  etudes,  published  in  1840  as  part  of  F6tis  and 
Moscheles*  Mlthode  des  metkodes pour  h piano >9  there  have  been  many  apologists,  though 
they  are  the  least  strong  of  Chopin's  studies. 


CHOPIN  325 

very  highest  order  for  the  left  hand."  In  a  few,  the  specific  problem 
is  not  so  easily  isolated,  but  it  is  always  there.  Yet  Edward  Dann- 
reuther  absent-mindedly  stated  that  Chopin's  etudes  "have  no 
didactic  purpose" :  he  seems  to  have  been  duped  by  their  musical 
quality  into  believing  that  they  could  not  have  had  a  practical 
inception.  But  that  is  the  miracle  of  the  etudes:  in  setting  forth  the 
technical  problems,  Chopin  invariably  created  music  that  could 
stand  on  its  own  merits.  The  best  of  the  etudes,  indeed,  are  among 
the  finest  compositions  for  the  piano.  It  has  been  truly  said  that  he 
who  can  play  the  Chopin  etudes  can  play  anything  in  modern 
piano  literature.  Nor  does  this  refer  merely  to  technique. 

When  Chopin  was  not  teaching  or  composing  or  attitudinizing 
gracefully  in  candlelit  salons,  he  was  competing  with  other  famous 
pianists  of  the  day.  Early  in  1833,  he  appeared  with  Liszt  on  a 
benefit  program  for  Harriet  Smithson,  the  mediocre  Irish  actress 
who  had  kindled  a  forest  fire  of  passion  in  Berlioz'  heart.  The 
next  year  he  played  at  a  concert  given  by  Berlioz  himself,  though 
he  once  said  maliciously  of  the  mad  Hector's  music  that  anyone 
was  fully  justified  in  breaking  off  with  the  man  who  wrote  it. 
Meanwhile,  other  pianists  were  bringing  certain  of  his  own  com- 
positions (precisely  those  that  are  more  or  less  forgotten  today) 
before  the  public,  not  only  in  Paris,  but  in  Germany.  Clara  Wieck 
and  Liszt  were  among  his  early  interpreters. 

Little  more  than  two  years  after  he  was  prepared  to  stake  every- 
thing on  a  melodramatic  expedition  to  America,  Chopin  had  be- 
come one  of  the  most  famous  men  in  Paris.  His  compositions  were 
eagerly  sought  after  by  publishers,  and  yet  it  is  curious  that  one  of 
his  most  popular  pieces,  the  Fantaisie-Impromptu,  though  com- 
posed at  this  time,  was  not  published  until  six  years  after  his  death. 
As  most  of  his  posthumous  compositions  were  those  he  considered 
unworthy  of  publication,  can  it  be  that  he  had  small  use  for  this 
favorite?  The  sloppy  cantabile  (which,  almost  unchanged,  was  to 
become  the  epidemic  Tm  Always  Chasing  Rainbows)  lends  color  to 
this  supposition,  though  the  sheer  rhythmical  inspiration  of  the 
allegro  agitato  and  presto  more  than  compensates  for  it.  The  whole 
piece  has  a  brilliant  improvisational  quality  that  makes  it  a  true 
impromptu:  the  word  "Fantaisie"  was  a  meddlesome  afterthought 
by  the  publisher. 

In  May,  1834,  with  money  secured  hastily  by  selling  a  valse  be- 


MEN    OF    MUSIC 

hind  his  regular  publisher's  back,  Chopin  went  with  Hiller  to  the 
Lower  Rhine  Festival  at  Aix-la-Chapelle.  Mendelssohn  was  there 
in  high  spirits,  and  after  the  festival  was  over  bore  them  off  to 
Diisseldorf.  He  was  enthusiastic  if  ambiguous  about  Chopin's 
playing:  "As  a  pianoforte  player  he  is  now  one  of  the  very  first — 
quite  a  second  Paganini.  ..."  But  the  classicist  in  Mendelssohn 
added  that  Chopin  often  lost  sight  "of  time  and  calmness  and  real 
musical  feeling":  in  those  days  the  Pole's  "leaning  about  within 
the  measure" — his  notorious  rubato — was  a  revolutionary  novelty 
not  yet  dulled  by  volumes  of  discussion.  Evidently  Mendelssohn 
never  understood  its  real  function.*  And,  indeed,  he  was  of  two 
minds  about  Chopin  the  composer,  finding  him  "discordant" 
and  too  mannered,  though  admitting  his  soulfulness — a  dubious 
compliment  that  Chopin  returned  by  damning  Mendelssohn's 
works  in  Mo.  Nor  was  Chopin  more  appreciative  of  Schumann, 
whom  he  met  during  his  last  visits  to  Germany  in  1835  and  1836. 
In  view  of  Schumann's  continuing  service  to  Chopin's  reputation, 
the  unhappy  fellow  might  have  hoped  for  something  better  at  his 
hands  than  the  cold  remark  that  "Carnaval  is  hot  music  at  all." 

The  year  1835  was  one  of  the  stormiest  in  Chopin's  life.  In  the 
first  place,  he  became  deeply  depressed  by  the  public's  tepid  reac- 
tion to  his  playing — he  foolishly  matched  his  salon  touch  against 
Liszt's  thunderous  pianism  in  large  halls,  and  naturally  cut  a  poor 
figure.  In  early  April,  the  two  of  them  played  at  a  charity  concert, 
and  the  applause  for  Chopin  was  almost  as  delicate  as  Ms  playing. 
He  concluded  gloomily  that  he  had  better  stick  to  composing,  and 
said  unhappily  to  Liszt:  "I  am  not  fitted  to  give  concerts.  The 
crowd  intimidates  me;  I  feel  asphyxiated  by  its  breath,  paralyzed 
by  its  curious  look,  dumb  before  the  strange  faces;  but  you,  you 
are  destined  for  the  crowd,  because  when  you  do  not  captivate 
your  public,  you  have  the  wherewithal  to  overpower  it."  A  spite- 
ful remark.  Was  he  implying  that  what  Liszt  could  not  do  legiti- 
mately, he  accomplished  with  sex  appeal  and  piano-pounding? 
After  this,  Chopin  rarely  played  in  public.  His  reputation  as  a  key- 
board sorcerer  depends  almost  exclusively  on  the  reports  of  friends 
and  fellow  musicians  who  heard  him  play  his  own  compositions  at 
private  musicales. 

*  It  remained  for  Berlioz,  the  unflinchiag  breaker  of  rules,  to  castigate  Chopin 
primly  for  his  rubato,  saying:  "Chopin  could  not  play  in  strict  time." 


CHOPIN  327 

The  figure  Chopin  cut  at  these  aristocratic  gatherings  healed 
whatever  wounds  his  vanity  suffered  at  the  hands  of  the  larger 
public.  He  was  a  male  coquette — there  are  abundant  traces  of 
coquetry  in  his  lighter  pieces — and  many  of  his  usually  inconclu- 
sive romances  began  as  he  poured  out  his  ardent  Slavic  soul  at  the 
keyboard  and  swept  his  susceptible  audience  with  his  lustrous 
eyes.  There  was  something  about  this  slight,  poetic-looking  ex- 
quisite that  would  have  made  conquests  easy  for  him  if  he  had  had 
more  sheer  male  drive.  But  so  shrinking  was  he  that  the  woman 
had  to  be  the  aggressor,  and  there  is  good  reason  for  believing  that 
he  did  not  have  his  first  sexual  experience  until  1834  or  1835,  when 
he  was  seduced  by  a  misunderstood  wife,  the  talented  and  glam- 
orous Countess  Delphine  Potocka.  There  was  real  affection  be- 
tween them,  but  the  liaison  was  cut  short  when  her  jealous  hus- 
band, by  stopping  her  allowance,  forced  her  to  return  to  Warsaw. 

Apparently  while  suffering  from  this  deprivation,  Chopin  went 
to  Carlsbad  to  visit  his  parents.  After  two  happy  months,  not 
realizing  that  they  would  never  meet  again,  he  left  them  and  went 
on  to  Dresden  to  see  the  Wodziiiski, family,  friends  of  his  child- 
hood. There,  or  the  following  year  atTMarienbada  he  seems  to  have 
offered  marriage  to  the  youthful  Countess  Marja  Wodzinska, 
though  evidently  without  being  passionately  in  love  with  her. 
The  details  of  the  affair,  about  which  so  many  doleful  conjectural 
pages  have  been  printed,  remain  extremely  obscure.  Certain  it  is 
that  Count  Wodziiiski  objected  to  a  musician  son-in-law,  but  just 
as  certainly  Chopin  for  two  years  looked  forward  to  marrying 
Marja.  He  was  longing  for  a  wife  and  home — the  specific  Marja 
was  a  secondary  consideration.  In  1837,  while  he  still  considered 
himself  plighted  to  her,  she  made  it  clear,  by  the  cold  tone  of  her 
letters,  that  marriage  was  out  of  the  question. 

If  these  abortive  relationships,  these  yearnings  for  romance, 
these  searchings  for  lasting  love,  have  a  musical  gloss,  it  is  pre- 
eminently in  the  nocturnes*  Unlike  the  mazurka  or  polonaise,  the 
nocturne  is  a  fluid  mood  piece,  not  a  distinct  musical  form.  What 
gives  Chopin's  nocturnes  their  family  resemblance  is  precisely 
their  yearning,  searching,  often  darkling  mood.  In  the  hand"  of 
Haydn  and  Mozart,  a  notturno  had  been  an  orchestral  serenade. 
John  Field,  the  Irish  virtuoso  who  was  St.  Petersburg's  most  fash- 
ionable piano  teacher  in  the  early  nineteenth  century,  published 


328  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

the  first  piano  pieces  to  be  called  nocturnes,  by  which  he  meant 
evocations  of  night  moods,  and  Chopin,  who  knew  Field,  ap- 
propriated the  idea.  Field,  to  judge  by  his  sane,  pellucid  nocturnes, 
felt  the  same  by  night  as  by  day.  Not  so  Chopin,  whose  moods 
deepened  as  the  shades  of  night  fell.  His  nocturnes  are  the  music 
of  exacerbated  nerves.  Their  sickly  phosphorescence  illumines  the 
jungle  places,  the  tropical  miasmas  of  his  psyche.  They  express  not 
only  Chopin  the  thwarted  lover,  but  Chopin  the  neurotic,  the 
ambivalent,  the  decadent.  The  most  flagrant  ones  would  be  ap- 
propriately heard  in  a  hothouse.  Almost  all  of  them  are  harmoni- 
cally lush — "fruity,"  Huneker  called  one  of  them.  At  least  two  are 
Chopin  in  the  grand  manner — the  C  sharp  minor  (Opus  27,  No.  i) 
acid  the  C  minor,  the  latter  one  of  his  finest  inspirations,  if  the  least 
nocturnelike,  with  its  sonorous  Mendelssohn-o^m-Wagner  tri- 
umphal march  and  the  magical  doppio  movimmto  with  its  strangely 
Brahmsian  motion.  In  some  respects,  the  nocturnes,  which  so  often 
exaggerate  his  idiosyncrasies  to  the  point  of  caricature,  are  the 
most  Chopinesque  of  all  his  works.  They  have  ended  by  doing  a 
disservice  to  his  reputation,  for  it  is  upon  oversentimentaHzed 
interpretations  of  them  by  oversentimental  pianists  that  the  con- 
ception of  Chopin  as  "the  Polish  tuberose"  chiefly  rests. 

An  excellent  corrective  for  this  one-sided  conception  of  Chopin 
is  furnished  by  the  four  scherzos,  the  most  human  and  variable  of 
which — that  in  B  flat  minor — was  published  the  very  year  his  hope 
of  settling  down  with  the  Wodzinska  was  dashed.  The  scherzos  are 
stalwarts,  and  the  first  three  are  works  of  impassioned  vigor.  Like 
the  three  giant  polonaises,  they  demand  great  strength,  a  bravura 
technique,  and  an  understanding  of  musical  Byronics.  They  have 
little  if  any  likeness  to  earlier  scherzos,  which  developed  out  of  the 
minuet,  and  which,  in  the  hands  of  Beethoven,  became  pieces  of 
titanic  playfulness.  They  are  almost  equally  distant  from  Men- 
delssohn's gossamer  adaptation  of  the  classical  scherzo.  Indeed, 
it  is  difficult  to  understand  why  Chopin  called  these  four  moody 
pieces  scherzos  at  all.  The  first  one,  for  example,  might  just  as 
well  be  called  War  and  Peace.  But  instead  of  criticizing  his  arbi- 
trary naming,  we  ought  rather  to  enjoy  them  as  prime  examples  of 
musical  energy  at  high  speed  (they  are  all  marked  presto),  and 
be  thankful  that  their  creator  did  not  shackle  them  together  witibi 


CHOPIN  329 

unnatural  bonds,  and  call  the  whole  a  sonata — a  thing  he  was 
quite  capable  of  doing. 

In  composition  Chopin  could  find  release  for  ordinary  emo- 
tional pressures,  but  in  the  case  of  Marja  Wodzinska  he  could  not 
thus  exorcise  the  specter  of  his  shattered  hopes.  His  health  suffered, 
and  he  sank  into  ominous  lethargy.  When  he  did  not  rally,  two  of 
his  friends  coaxed  him  into  going  with  them  to  London.  They  were 
gone  less  than  a  fortnight — but  long  enough,  it  has  been  said,  for 
the  combination  of  English  weather  and  his  lowered  vitality  to 
impair  Chopin's  congenitally  weak  lungs.  He  returned  home 
suffering  in  body  and  mind,  and  might  well  have  surrendered 
himself  completely  to  despair  and  disease  if  the  entire  course  of  his 
life  had  not  been  changed  by  one  of  the  most  remarkable  women 
of  the  nineteenth  century — George  Sand.  They  had  met  in  the 
winter  of  1836  at  the  home  of  Liszt's  mistress,  the  Countess 
d'Agoult,  and  were  on  friendly  terms  even  before  his  ill-advised 
English  journey.  Almost  immediately  after  his  return,  they  were 
seen  everywhere  together.  By  the  summer  of  1838,  they  were  so 
intimate  that  they  spent  their  vacation  together  at  Nohant,  her 
chateau  in  the  Loire  country.  Thus  began  the  most  publicized 
love  affair  in  musical  history. 

In  the  game  of  love,  the  febrile  Frederic  was  no  match  for  this 
Semiramis  of  letters.  Mme  Sand  came  of  a  line  of  great  lovers: 
Augustus  the  Strong  of  Saxony  was  her  paternal  great-great- 
grandfather. Her  mother's  father  sold  turtledoves  in  the  streets  of 
Paris.  She  herself  was  illegitimate — by  a  month.  Although  site 
married  a  baron  and  bore  him  two  children,  her  present  fame  rests 
largely  on  her  affairs  with  a  singular  cavalcade  of  distinguished 
men,  which  in  no  way  interfered  with  her  frightening  productivity 
as  a  writer.  She  was  at  least  as  famous  in  her  day  as  George  Eliot, 
but  whereas  the  Englishwoman  had  to  content  herself  with  the 
author  of  an  indifferent  book  on  Aristotle,  Sand  tried  and  dis- 
carded, besides  a  few  anonymities,  Merimee,  De  Musset,  and 
Chopin.  Among  those  who  literally  worshiped  her  not  only  as  a 
priestess  of  letters  but  also  as  a  humanitarian,  feminist,  and  nature 
cultist  were  such  diverse  personages  as  Heine,  Balzac,  Sainte- 
Beuve,  Flaubert,  Arnold,  George  Eliot,  and  Elizabeth  Barrett 
Browning — who  knelt  to  Mss  her  hand  when  they  were  introduced. 
Six  years  Chopin's  senior,  she  was,  at  the  time  of  their  meeting,  at 


330  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

the  height  of  her  fame,  a  woman  of  wide  sympathies,  powerfully 
male  in  intelligence,  but  devouringly  maternal  in  her  attitude  to- 
ward her  lovers. 

At  first  Chopin  had  found  Mme  Sand  repellent,  but  before  he 
knew  precisely  what  was  happening  to  him,  her  enveloping  sym- 
pathy had  lapped  him  in  the  mother  love  he  yearned  for.  He  be- 
came enslaved.  Nothing  else  explains  a  man  so  prim  about  moral 
appearances  (he  broke  off  friendly  relations  with  Liszt  because  he 
had  used  Chopin's  rooms  for  an  assignation)  going  off  to  spend  the 
summer  with  this  dumpy  sibyl,  for  it  was  as  much  as  a  young  man*s 
reputation  was  worth  to  be  seen  in  her  company  in  those  days.  He 
then  threw  discretion  farther  to  the  winds,  and  spent  a  wet,  miser- 
able winter  with  her  on  the  island  of  Majorca.  Chopin  was  des- 
perately ill  during  this  nightmarish  honeymoon:  he  and  Mme 
Sand  and  her  children  were  objects  of  vengeful  suspicion  by  the 
superstitious  natives  (primarily  because  they  did  not  go  to  church), 
and  were  starved  into  seeking  refuge  at  an  abandoned  monastery, 
where  they  put  up  for  several  wretched  months.  His  ill-heated, 
damp  cell  and  the  vile  food  again  wrecked  his  health,  and  when 
finally  they  made  their  escape  from  the  island,  Chopin,  suffering 
constantly  from  hemorrhages,  was  carried  aboard  the  stinking 
freighter  in  an  advanced  stage  of  phthisis.  Eventually  the  weary 
travelers  put  in  at  Marseilles,  and  there  Chopin  recuperated 
slowly  before  returning  to  Nohant  for  the  summer. 

A  novelist,  faced  with  the  problem  of  solving  the  fate  of  so 
wrecked  a  hero  as  Chopin  was  when  he  landed  at  Marseilles, 
might  be  excused  for  incontinently  killing  him  off.  Not  being  a 
fictionist's  puppet,  Chopin  chose  to  live  ten  years  more.  Not  only 
that,  he  brought  back  with  him  from  Majorca,  besides  two  polo- 
naises and  a  ballad e3  the  twenty-four  preludes  of  Opus  28.  It  is 
not  known  how  many  of  these  were  actually  composed  there — 
probably  but  a  very  few — but  certainly  most  of  the  business  of 
"selecting,  filing,  and  polishing"  them  was  done  on  the  island.  It 
was,  in  fact,  by  promising  to  deliver  a  book  of  preludes  that 
Chopin  had  received  the  wherewithal  for  the  Majorca  trip.  Like 
the  nocturnes,  the  preludes  do  not  have  a  formal  character  of 
their  own.  They  are,  again,  mood  pieces,  but  there  is  good  reason 
to  play  them  as  a  group,  for  they  are  arranged,  like  the  preludes 
and  fugues  of  The  Well-Tempered  Clavichord,  in  key  sequence,  one  in 


CHOPIN  331 

every  possible  major  and  minor  key.  They  range  in  length  from 
that  sketch  for  "the  funeral  march  of  nations5'  in  C  minor  to  the 
turbulent,  rampaging  B  flat  minor,  in  mood  from  the  truly  happy 
D  major  to  the  Caliban's  face  in  A  minor.  The  preludes,  if  they 
have  any  family  resemblance  at  all,  lie  between  the  improvisatory 
nocturnes  and  the  etudes  with  their  masterly  free  working-out  of 
technical  problems.  Several  of  them  are  extremely  popular,  no- 
tably the  brooding,  sunless  E  minor,  the  yearningly  sad  B  minor, 
the  tiny  mazurkalike  A  major,  the  so-called  "Raindrop"  Prelude, 
with  its  muffled  march  of  dead  monks  (George  Sand's  idea),  the 
solemn  C  minor,  and  the  rippling,  open-air  F  major.  The  nine- 
teenth, in  E  flat  major,  is  one  of  the  most  light-shot  pages  Chopin 
ever  composed — its  swirling  rhythms  are  as  graceful  as  those  of  a 
Botticelli  drapery. 

The  refining  of  these  preludes  had  been  somehow  accomplished 
in  the  sordid  misery  of  the  Majorca  winter.  Now,  after  the  healing 
months  in  Marseilles  and  Nohant,  Chopin  returned  to  Paris  and 
entered  upon  one  of  the  most  productive  periods  of  his  life.  He  was 
unquestionably  much  in  love  with  Mme  Sand,  and  through  her 
achieved  a  kind  of  emotional  stability  he  had  craved  and  needed. 
His  work  benefited:  "His  melodies  are  purer,  his  rhythms  more 
virile,  his  harmonies  richer,"  William  Murdoch  has  noted.  "Some- 
thing has  happened  that  has  broadened  every  idea,  made  nobler 
every  inspiration  and  given  greater  shape  to  every  conception." 
Settled  down  in  Paris  in  the  same  house  with  Mme  Sand,  Chopin 
worked  at  his  art  with  a  passion,  a  concentrated  fervor  that,  in  the 
brief  space  of  two  years,  produced  a  spate  of  splendid  new  pieces, 
many  of  them  on  an  unwontedly  large  scale.  The  first  to  see  the 
light  of  day  after  the  preludes  was  that  amazing  suite  of  pieces 
Chopin  chose  to  call  the  B  flat  minor  Sonata.*  Hearing  it  for  the 
first  time,  Schumann  declared,  "To  have  called  this  a  sonata  must 
be  reckoned  a  freak,  if  not  a  piece  of  pride;  for  he  has  simply  yoked 
together  four  of  his  maddest  children.  .  .  ."  The  first  two  move- 
ments are  Beethovian  in  scope,  though  scarcely  in  character,  the 
first  breathless  and  disturbed,  with  musing  episodes  quickening 
finally  into  a  gigantic  crescendo;  the  second  a  vigorous,  stormy, 
impassioned  scherzo  that  demands  muscles  of  steel  for  an  eloquent 

*  Chopin  had  already  made  one  desperate  attempt  to  write  a  true  classical  sonata 
— in  C  minor— -and  failed. 


332  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

reading.  These  two  movements  glow  and  give  off  sparks.  What, 
however,  can  be  said  of  the  next  part — the  famed  Marche  furiebre, 
with  its  sudden  and  irrelevant  heavy-footedness?  Some  pianists 
play  it  with  such  magic  (though  even  they  cannot  relate  it  to  the 
rest  of  the  sonata)  that  we  momentarily  forget  that  it  is  Chopin  at 
his  worst.  Self-conscious  mourners  plod  along  in  their  secondhand 
mourning^  bells  toll,  somewhere  a  voice  is  calling.  ...  A  trio  in  D 
flat  major  that  cuts  the  march  in  two  is  pure  sugar.  The  fourth 
movement  is  a  whirring  toccata,  classic  in  shape  but  not  in  har- 
mony. Played  pianissimo  and  in  one  color,  it  brushes  the  ears  like 
the  ghost  of  music. 

The  second  and  best  of  Chopin's  three*  impromptus  came  hard 
on  the  heels  of  the  B  flat  minor  Sonata.  Not  as  carefree  or  as  truly 
Irnprovisational  as  the  previously  published  one  in  A  flat,  and  free 
of  the  overexotidsm  of  the  nocturnelike  G  flat  major  published 
later,  the  F  sharp  major  Impromptu  seems  to  be  telling  a  story — 
but  a  musical  story  that  needs  no  program.  It  is  difficult  to  think  of 
this  as  an  impromptu:  it  is  more  like  a  lovingly  planned  ballade, 
various  in  mood,  bafflingly  unified  in  design,  dramatic  in  build-up 
and  impact.  In  the  four  ballades,  the  middle  two  of  which  were 
also  published  in  this  same  period  of  renascence,  Chopin  actually 
wrote  program  music.  The  specific  story  of  each  matters  not  at  all, 
for  though  they  have  a  storylike  quality  they  are  persuasive  and 
sufficient  as  absolute  music.  The  G  minor,  endowed  with  one  of  the 
most  insinuating  of  melodies,  explores  in  many  directions,  has  its 
moments  of  victory,  soars  aloft  on  an  ethereal  valse  tune,  and  seems 
about  to  end  as  it  began  when  the  irruption  of  some  vast  and 
indomitable  force,  tragic  in  effect  and  blind  in  fury,  wreaks  its 
havoc  in  some  of  music's  grandest  and  most  powerful  dynamics. 
The  second  ballade,  in  F  major,  which  has  been  called  "mysteri- 
ous," is,  after  this,  a  poor  thing.  The  A  flat  is  elegant,  suave,  a 
society  dandy — the  favorite  of  all  the  ballades.  It  is  beautiful,  in- 
gratiating, slight  The  last  ballade — the  F  minor — is  a  nocturne  in 
excelds^  storied  in  some  fabulous  south.  Its  emotional  climate  shifts 
from  calm  to  a  threat  of  storm.  The  calms  of  its  Eden  seduce  but 
cloy,  yet  the  storm  is  magnificent  when  it  breaks.  Altogether  a 
superb  if  enigmatic  composition. 

Finally,  the  very  keystone  of  Chopin's  greater  art  belongs  to  this 

*  Four,  if  the  Fantaisie- Impromptu  is  counted. 


CHOPIN  333 

remarkable  period  of  unstinted  creativeness.  The  F  minor  Fan- 
taisie  has  been  called  "a  Titan  in  commotion/3  and  all  sorts  of 
programs  have  been  suggested  for  it,  one  more  absurd  than  the 
other,  as  if  Chopin  could  not  have  reared  this  vast  fabric  without 
binding  it  together  with  trivial  anecdotage.  Even  he  himself  had  a 
program  for  it — according  to  Liszt,  whose  biography  of  Chopin 
must  be  taken  as  a  floral  tribute  rather  than  a  source  of  informa- 
tion.* The  Fantaisie  is  a  big  composition  in  every  sense:  the  themes 
axe  not  only  very  beautiful  but  also  extremely  malleable  and 
susceptible  to  development;  the  large  design  is  carried  out  with 
complete  success,  sustained  by  passionate  and  unfaltering  in- 
tellectual attention.  This  masterly  composition  finally  refutes  Sir 
W.  H.  Hadow's  careless  statement  that  "in  structure  Chopin  is  a 
child  playing  with  a  few  simple  types,  and  almost  helpless  as  soon 
as  he  advances  beyond  them."  Woe  to  the  brash  pianist  who  at- 
tacks the  Fantaisie  as  if  it  were  what  its  name  might  imply — a 
piece  with  only  vague  formal  unity!  He  must  realize  that  the 
Fantaisie  has  an  architecture  of  its  own  as  discoverable  and  as 
cogent  to  its  interpretation  as  that  of  a  classical  sonata.  When 
played  by  an  artist  who  thinks  as  well  as  moves  his  fingers,  the 
Fantaisie  emerges  in  all  its  three-dimensional  grandeur  as  one  of 
the  most  dramatic,  impressive,  and  satisfying  works  ever  written 
for  the  solo  piano. 

The  creative  effort  that  had  produced  within  two  years  such  a 
ponderable  and  splendid  part  of  Chopin's  lifework  was  super- 
human in  a  man  who  was  slowly  dying.  It  could  not  be  kept  up. 
The  story  of  his  life  after  1841  is  one  of  decline,  and  for  six  years  its 
pattern  was  unvarying.  Every  summer  he  went  to  Mme  Sand's 
chiteau  at  Nohant,  where  her  sensible  nursing  helped  him  gather 
strength  for  the  autumn  and  winter  season  in  Paris.  Every  winter 
he  had  a  few  pieces  ready  for  his  publishers,  and  he  always  had 
strength  enough  to  quarrel  with  them  over  terms.  Otherwise  these 
years  passed  almost  without  incident,  unless  they  be  judged  in 
terms  of  a  day-by-day  history  of  the  Parisian  salon.  Twice  Chopin 
came  out  of  his  retirement.  Like  Achilles  sulking  in  his  tent,  he  had 
for  years  held  aloof  from  the  concert  stage  of  his  beloved  Paris. 

*  A  floral  tribute,  however,  with  some  malodorous  and  poisonous  blooms.  Part  of 
this  book  is  said  to  come  from  the  pen  of  one  of  Liszt's  last  mistresses,  Princess 
Carolyne  Sayn-Wittgenstein. 


334  MEN  OF  MUSIG 

Suddenly,  on  April  26,  1841,  he  appeared  In  a  semipublic  concert 
with  the  great  soprano,  Laure  Cinti-Damoreau,  who  had  created 
Mathilde  In  William  TdL  The  privileged,  selected  audience — 
mostly  his  aristocratic  friends  and  pupils — received  him  raptur- 
ously. The  next  year,  on  February  21,  he  gave  another  concert, 
this  time  with  his  friend  Pauline  Viardot-Garcia,  one  of  the  most 
intelligent  singers  of  the  age. 

In  1844,  his  father  died,  and  news  of  this,  together  with  the 
growing  tension  between  him  and  Mme  Sand,  prostrated  Chopin. 
Every  year  he  submitted  himself  to  the  now  painful  ordeal  of 
Nohant,  seeing  in  her  less  and  less  the  mistress,  more  and  more  the 
nurse  and  strong-willed  mother.  Her  son  and  daughter  were  grow- 
ing up,  and  Chopin  often  disagreed  with  Mme  Sand  over  house- 
hold politics,  even  taking  the  children's  part  against  her.  Troubled 
and  increasingly  weakened  by  his  disease,  he  turned  over  fewer 
and  fewer  compositions  to  his  publishers  each  year.  Yet,  as  late 
as  1845,  he  signed  the  fine  B  minor  Sonata.  Here,  the  vigor  and 
passion  of  the  "four  maddest  children"  of  the  B  flat  minor  Sonata 
have  all  but  vanished.  In  their  place  is  a  mastery  of  form  that  is 
eminently  satisfying,  real  adequacy  in  the  art  of  deploying  materi- 
als over  the  skeleton  of  a  design.  The  scene  Is  varied.  The  turbu- 
lent introduction,  lyrical,  dewy,  exquisitely  modulated  episodes,  a 
light  yet  dynamic  scherzo,  a  pensive  elegiac  largo,  and  a  sweeping 
finale  that  is  a  first-rate  bravura  number  in  its  own  right — these 
are  the  Interrelated  components  of  the  best  of  Chopin's  three 
sonatas.  The  B  minor  Sonata  was  the  last  of  Chopin's  great  works, 
for  neither  the  rather  Debussyan  Berceuse  nor  that  perfect  music 
for  the  full  flood  of  love — the  Barcarolle — can  be  called  great. 
Henceforth  Chopin  was  to  be  submerged  by  his  personal  tragedy. 

In  1847,  after  signs  that  it  might  drag  on  wearily  until  one  of 
them  died,  his  romance  with  George  Sand  came  to  an  abrupt  end. 
Those  who  choose  to  regard  her  as  the  villain  of  the  piece  say  that 
Chopin  took  umbrage  at  the  publication  of  her  novel  Lucrezia 
Floriani,  in  which  he  was  caricatured  under  the  guise  of  the  epicene 
Prince  Karol.  This  is  not  so.  He  read  Lucrezia  as  Sand  wrote  it,  and 
took  no  offense.  Rather,  she  maneuvered  herself  into  the  position 
of  the  injured  party,  using  as  a  pretext  Chopin's  siding  with  her 
daughter,  Solange,  in  a  complicated  family  quarrel.  Unfortu- 
nately for  sentimental  historians,  the  final  battles  of  the  war  were 


CHOPIN  335 

waged  by  mail,  Chopin  having  left  Nohant  for  Paris.  The  separa- 
tion meant  little  to  the  woman:  she  was  strong,  at  the  height  of 
her  powers,  very  much  absorbed  in  the  liberal  causes  she  had 
espoused — and  she  was,  anyway,  tired  of  Chopin.  To  him  it  was 
quite  literally  a  deathblow:  she  had  preserved  a  certain  pattern 
in  his  life,  provided  him  with  a  home.  He  saw  her  but  once  again, 
and  then  by  accident,  on  which  occasion  he  had  the  honor  to  tell 
Sand  that  she  had  become  a  grandmother.*  When  he  was  on  his 
deathbed,  she  tried  to  see  him,  but  was  refused  admittance  by  his 
friends. 

For  some  years  Sand  had  been  addressing  him  playfully  as  "my 
dear  corpse" :  now  he  truly  looked  like  one — an  ailing  wisp  of  a 
man  who  weighed  less  than  a  hundred  pounds.  His  purse,  too,  was 
almost  empty,  and  though  every  added  exertion  meant  agony,  he 
had  to  do  something  to  fill  it.  His  friends  and  publishers  persuaded 
him  to  give  a  concert.  On  February  16,  1848,  he  made  his  first 
public  appearance  in  six  years,  playing  a  long  and  taxing  pro- 
gram, including  the  piano  part  in  his  Cello  Sonata,  the  last  ex- 
tended work  he  composed.  The  concert  was  a  great  social  and 
financial  success.  Chopin  played  exquisitely,  but  almost  fainted 
after  the  last  number.  It  was  his  farewell  to  the  Paris  public,  which 
in  this  case  consisted  of  royal  dukes,  members  of  the  peerage,  and 
Chopin's  pupils. 

That  brilliant  gathering  in  the  Salle  Pleyel  was  one  of  the  last 
great  social  events  of  the  Orleanist  monarchy:  eight  days  later,  the 
bourgeois  Louis-Philippe  and  his  dowdy  Queen  were  no  longer 
rulers  of  France.  Chopin  viewed  the  revolution  with  spiteful  dis- 
favor: he  feared  that  a  republican  France  meant  that  the  nobles 
would  emigrate,  and  his  sources  of  income  would  be  further  re- 
duced. At  this  juncture,  his  devoted  friend  and  pupil,  Jane  Wil- 
helmina  Stirling,  a  Scotswoman  of  ample  means,  induced  him  to  go 
to  England.  She  took  care  of  all  details  of  the  trip,  and  hired  rooms 
for  him  in  London,  where  he  arrived  late  in  April,  1848.  He  played 
privately  at  several  fine  houses,  refused  an  invitation  from  the 
Philharmonic — "I  would  rather  not — they  want  classical  things 
there,"  he  wrote — and  met  shoals  of  celebrities,  including  Carlyle 

*  Solange  had  quarreled  with  her  mother,  but  not  with  Chopin,  who  thus  was 
often  favored  with  the  first  news  of  intimate  family  matters — in  this  case,  the  birth  of 
Solange's  first  child. 


336  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

and  Dickens.  At  first,  the  critics  and  musicians  were  inclined  to 
welcome  Chopin,  but  as  he  evinced  such  a  decided  preference  for 
playing  privately,  their  enthusiasm  cooled,  and  he  was  set  down  as 
a  society  snob.  He  grew  more  and  more  unhappy.  Critical  un- 
friendliness, bad  weather,  and  ever-waning  health  added  to  his 
depression.  He  longed  for  the  lost  peace  of  Nohant. 

The  well-intentioned  Miss  Stirling,  who  seems  to  have  been  in 
love  with  Chopin,  now  prescribed  a  visit  to  Scotland.  This  was  not 
so  bad  during  the  summer,  but  he  lingered  there  until  well  into  the 
harsh  northern  autumn,  giving  mildly  successful  concerts  in  Man- 
chester, Glasgow,  and  Edinburgh,  and  expending  what  little 
strength  he  had  left  in  a  round  of  calls  on  titled  friends.  At  the 
end  of  October,  convinced  that  he  was  dying,  he  returned  to 
London.  A  flicker  of  humor  remained:  "I  have  not  yet  played  to 
any  Englishwoman  without  her  saying  to  me,  'Leik  water**  They 
all  look  at  their  hands,  and  play  the  wrong  notes  with  much  feel- 
ing. Eccentric  folk.  God  help  them.55  Humor  remained,  yes,  but 
will  power  was  gone.  He  was  wheedled  into  playing  at  a  Polish 
ball.  It  was  a  three-ring  circus,  and  nobody  paid  the  slightest  at- 
tention to  him.  Even  the  press  completely  ignored  this  last  un- 
fortunate public  appearance.  It  was  November  16,  1848. 

In  January,  Chopin  returned  painfully  to  France.  As  his  train 
neared  Paris,  he  mused  bitterly  on  that  ill-advised  hegira  from 
wMch  he  was  returning.  "Do  you  see  the  cattle  in  that  meadow?35 
he  asked  his  valet.  "They've  more  intelligence  than  the  English.'5 
When  he  arrived,  he  took  it  as  a  last  evil  omen  that  the  only  doctor 
in  whom  he  had  confidence  had  died  in  his  absence.  No  longer 
able  to  teach,  much  of  the  time  unable  even  to  sit  up,  Chopin  had 
no  way  of  earning  a  living.  Income  he  had  none^  for  he  had  always 
sold  his  compositions  outright — on  a  royalty  basis  he  would  have 
been  assured  of  a  handsome  living.  He  was  well-nigh  destitute 
when  two  of  his  wealthy  women  friends  came  forward,  one  of 
them,  the  Countess  Obreskov,  secretly  paying  half  his  rent.  The 
other  was  the  pathetically  faithful  Miss  Stirling,  who  sent  him 
25,000  francs,  of  which  he  seems  to  have  kept  about  half,  and  re- 
turned the  rest.  His  hosts  of  friends  were  unceasingly  attentive. 
Delacroix,  though  stiff  and  unbending  with  most,  showed  Chopin 
a  brothers  affection.  His  own  sister  Ludwika  and  her  husband 

*  The  Italicized  words  represent  Chopin's  phonetic  attempt  at  English* 


CHOPIN  337 

came  from  Poland  to  attend  him.  Daily,  the  princesses  and  count- 
esses whose  company  he  so  adored  came  to  pay  homage  to  the 
dying  man. 

Out  of  the  past,  almost  as  if  the  last  act  of  the  drama  of  Chopin's 
life  demanded  her  presence.,  came  Delphine  Potocka.  When  they 
had  met,  many  years  before,  she  had  enchanted  him  with  the 
thrilling  quality  of  her  voice,  and  now  one  of  his  few  pleasures 
was  to  hear  her  sing.  A  few  days  before  he  died,  she  came  to  his 
bedside,  and  sang  an  aria  by  his  beloved  Mend  Bellini.  Chopin  was 
fully  aware  that  his  days  were  numbered.  With  perfect  composure, 
he  asked  his  sister  to  burn  his  unpublished  manuscripts.  "I  owe  it 
to  the  public  and  myself  to  publish  only  my  best  works,"  he  ex- 
plained. "I  have  kept  to  this  resolution  all  my  life — I  wish  to  keep 
to  it  now."  As  the  end  approached,  he  was  tormented  by  the  fear 
of  being  buried  alive,  and  one  of  his  last  acts  was  to  scrawl  a  note 
asking  that  his  body  be  cut  open  before  burial.  On  the  night  of 
October  16,  1849^  a  Polish  priest  gave  him  extreme  unction.  His 
doctor  then  asked  him  whether  he  was  suffering,  and  he  whispered, 
"Plus" — no  longer.  He  died  early  the  following  morning. 

At  Chopin's  request  part  of  the  Mozart  Requiem  was  sung  at 
his  funeral  in  the  Madeleine.  Lablache,  who  had  sung  the  bass 
part  at  Beethoven's  funeral,  now  sang  it  at  Chopin's.  The  great 
world  of  society  and  art  attended  reverently,  and  among  those 
who  followed  the  hearse  to  Pere  Lachaise  were  Meyerbeer  and 
Delacroix-  A  year  later,  at  Jane  Stirling's  request^  Polish  earth 
was  sprinkled  over  the  grave. 


Chapter  XIV 

Louis-Hector  Berlioz 

(La  Cote-Saint-Andre.,  December  11,  i8o3-March  83 
1869,  Paris) 

He  is  not,  perhaps,  as  great  as  Cervantes,  but  he  is  as  great 
as  Don  Quixote.  Only  very  silly  people  will  take  him  seri- 
ously, but  they  are  not  as  silly  as  the  people  who  don't. 
— Sir  Donald  F.  Tovey:  Essays  in  Musical  Analysis,  VI. 


£i  YMBOLIC  of  the  slowness  of  widespread  appreciation  for  the 
O  music  of  Hector  Berlioz  is  the  fact  that  the  first  consider- 
able English  book  about  him  was  published  in  1934,  sixty-five 
years  after  his  death.  This  is  even  more  significant  when  com- 
pared with  the  posthumous  fate  of  those  four  of  his  most  dis- 
tinguished contemporaries  who  died  after  him:  Wagner,  Liszt, 
Brahms,  and  Verdi.  Almost  before  they  had  breathed  their  last 
breath,  the  presses  had  begun  to  groan  under  the  vast  load  of 
commentaries  and  biographies.  Their  music  was  being  played 
everywhere  (as  it  still  is),  as  was  Tchaikovsky's.  Yet  each  of  these 
five  men  outlived  Berlioz  by  many  years,  Wagner  by  fourteen, 
Verdi  by  thirty-two.  Each  was  securely  established  in  recognized 
greatness,  while  Berlioz  maintained  a  precarious  fame  during 
his  lifetime  only  by  his  persistence  in  pushing  his  own  com- 
positions. To  this  day  he  remains  the  least  played  and  the  least 
understood  of  the  great  composers  of  the  past  two  hundred  and 
fifty  years. 

In  about  equal  parts,  Berlioz  suffered  from  his  position  in 
time  and  from  his  artistic  idiosyncrasies.  During  the  artistically 
pinched  days  of  the  Bourbon  restoration  he  early  developed 
into  a  full-blown  romantic — and  came  into  unequal  conflict 
with  the  chilly  musical  autocracy  headed  by  the  austere,  classi- 
cizing Cherubim.  As  a  French  romantic  he  had  no  predecessors, 
and  in  France  he  found  no  disciples  to  translate  for  a  wider 
public  his  admittedly  difficult  idiom.  It  was  an  idiom  difficult 
both  to  grasp  and  to  convey.  The  melodic  line  so  protracted 
as  to  require  concentrated  listening,  the  highly  personal  har- 
monic concept,  and  that  nervous,  dramatic  movement  from  idea 

338 


BERLIOZ  339 

to  idea  which  at  first  hearing  seems  fragmentary:  these  have 
proved  a  stumbling-block  to  an  easy  acceptance  of  what,  on  ac- 
quaintance, turns  out  to  be  some  of  the  most  beautiful  music 
ever  written.  Thus  did  Berlioz  hold  off  audiences.  And  to 
musical  organizations  of  all  sorts  he  offered  quite  as  effective 
excuses  for  resistance:  he  early  acquired  a  reputation — only 
occasionally  deserved — of  composing  huge  compositions  calling 
for  equally  huge  forces.  Impresarios  and  conductors,  faced  with 
what  seemed  to  them  unreasonable  and  overexpensive  de- 
mands, were  blind  to  that  perfect  choice  and  balance  of  instru- 
ments and  voices  which  justified  those  demands.  Nor  was  Berlioz 
a  Richard  Wagner,  able  by  sheer  force  of  character,  scheming, 
and  mystical  egotism  to  impose  his  art  upon  a  reluctant  world. 

Berlioz  was  born  on  Sunday,  the  nineteenth  day  of  Frimaire, 
in  the  twelfth  year  of  the  French  Republic — five  months  before 
Napoleon  Bonaparte  decreed  the  creation  of  the  First  Empire; 
he  lived  almost  long  enough  to  see  the  extinction  of  the  Second. 
During  his  lifetime,  France  suffered  from  an  unparalleled  series 
of  political  vicissitudes,  from  the  splendors  of  Napoleon  I  through 
the  jitters  of  Louis  XVIII  and  Charles  X  and  the  doldrums  of 
Louis-Philippe  to  the  transparent  glories  of  Louis-Napoleon. 
Yet  Berlioz  fought  on  no  barricades,  wrote  no  political  pam- 
phlets. In  a  political  world  politics  moved  him  not  at  all.  From 
his  early  adolescence  he  existed  in  two  dimensions:  as  artist  and 
as  lover. 

It  was  in  a  small  village  near  Grenoble,  in  Dauphiny,  that 
Berlioz  was  born  to  Louis  Berlioz,  physician,  and  his  wife, 
Marie-Antoinette-Josephine  Marmion.  He  was  the  first  of  six 
children,  three  boys  and  three  girls;  only  Hector  and  two  of  his 
sisters  grew  to  maturity,  and  he  outlived  them  all.  Dr.  Berlioz,, 
who  provided  a  moderately  comfortable  living  for  his  family, 
was  a  man  of  some  intellectual  attainments,  which  meant  that 
he  was  a  revolutionary  and  a  freethinker.  He  once  served  as 
mayor  of  the  village,  where  he  was  known  for  his  affable  dis- 
position and  even  temper.  Mme  Berlioz  was  a  devout  Catholic 
who  tried  earnestly  to  pass  on.  her  faith  to  her  children.  With 
Hector,  at  least,  she  succeeded  only  temporarily,  and  he  in- 
stinctively disagreed  with  her  bigoted  opinion  of  poets,  the- 
atrical peoples  and  musicians.  With  both  parents  he  quarreled 


MEN  OF  MUSIG 
early  over  his  independent  decision  to  take  up  music  as  a  career, 
though  Ms  father  had  not  objected  to  his  learning  the  rudiments 
of  the  art  as  an  amateur. 

Dr.  Berlioz  had  high-handedly  decided  that  his  eldest  son 
was  to  become  a  physician,  but  so  rapid  had  been  Hector's 
progress  as  an  amateur  composer  that  shortly  after  his  sixteenth 
birthday  he  had  put  together  a  potpourri  on  Italian  airs  and 
sent  it  to  a  publisher  in  Paris.  And  indeed  he  had  already  a 
rather  impressive  musical  equipment:  he  could,  as  W.  J.  Turner 
summarized  it,  "sing  well  at  sight .  .  .  play  the  flute,  the  flageo- 
let, the  guitar,  the  drum.  .  -  ."  A  quintet  for  flute  and  strings 
composed  about  a  year  later  could  not  mate  the  elder  Berlioz 
relent:  Hector  was  entered  in  the  Ecole  de  Medicine  in  Paris 
in  1821.  He  could  not  face  the  ghastliness  of  the  dissecting 
room.  "When  I  entered  that  fearful  human  charnel  house, 
littered  with  fragments  of  limbs,  and  saw  the  ghastly  faces  and 
cloven  heads,  the  bloody  cesspool  in  which  we  stood,  with  its 
reeking  atmosphere,  the  swarms  of  sparrows  fighting  for  scraps, 
and  the  rats  in  the  comers  gnawing  bleeding  vertebrae,  such 
a  feeling  of  horror  possessed  me  that  I  leaped  out  of  the  window, 
and  fled  home  as  though  Death  and  all  his  hideous  crew  were 
at  my  heels/'  The  inevitable  happened,  and  soon  he  was  skip- 
ping classes  to  study  scores  and  haunt  the  Opera. 

From  this  period  dated  Berlioz's  passion  for  Gluck,  founded 
upon  the  tremendous  impression  produced  by  a  performance 
oilphigenu  en  Tauride.  "I  vowed  as  I  left  the  Op6ra  that  I  would 
be  a  musician  come  what  might,  despite  father,  mother,  uncles, 
aunts,  grandparents,  and  friends."  Indeed,  some  time  before 
1823  he  urgently  informed  his  father  of  his  decision,  and  a  few 
months  later  was  accepted  as  a  private  pupil  in  theory  and 
composition  by  Jean-Frangois  Lesueur,  For  this  amiable  tradi- 
tionalist Berlioz  never  lost  his  appreciative  devotion.  Although 
lie  worked  doggedly  at  music,  composing  and  studying  the 
compositions  of  the  great  masters  of  the  past,  it  was  not  until 
1826  that  the  Conservatoire  opened  its  doors  to  this  fractious 
innovator  whose  music  was  not  at  all  to  the  taste  of  its  director, 
the  stifihecked  Cherubini.  Meanwhile,  Berlioz  did  everything 
to  convince  his  father  that  he  was  a  dutiful  son  (did  he  not  secure 
his  bachelier  Is  sciences  physiques  in  1824?)  and  deserved  to  get  his 


BERLIOZ  341 

big  chance.  In  1825,  ^7  g°ing  heavily  into  debt,  he  managed  to 
secure  the  first  public  performance  of  one  of  his  compositions — 
a  Mass,  most  of  which  he  later  destroyed. 

Living  on  an  allowance  that  could  be  stopped  at  his  father's 
whim,  Berlioz  looked  around  frantically  for  ways  of  supplement- 
ing this  meager  sum.  For  instance,  he  began  to  write  those 
reviews  which  eventually  were  to  make  him  one  of  the  great 
forces  in  Continental  music  criticism.  He  took  an  occasional 
pupil  in  voice,  flute,  or  guitar.  But  his  one  real  hope  was  the 
hope  of  any  young  French  composer:  winning  the  Prix  de 
Rome,  with  its  reclame,  its  guarantee  of  performance — and  its 
four  years  of  freedom  from  financial  worry*  He  was  to  make 
five  attempts  before  winning  it.  The  first  time*  in  1826,  he  was 
cast  out  at  the  preliminary  examination.  Dr.  Berlioz  could  not 
understand  his  failure^  and  Hector  had  to  rush  back  to  La 
C6te-Saint-Andre  to  argue  his  case  through  a  series  of  stormy 
sessions.  Finally  he  won  a  grudging  permission  to  return  to 
Paris  for  a  restricted  period,  diiring  which  he  might  become  a 
pupil  at  the  Conservatoire.  The  fiat  was:  no  success,  no  allow- 
ance. Oddly,  Cherubim  surpassed  himself  in  unbending — he 
actually  broke  a  rule  by  allowing  Berlioz  to  enter  the  class  in 
theory  and  Lesueur's  in  composition,  simultaneously  instead  of 
seriatim,  in  view  of  Berlioz's  later  adoration  of  Beethoven,  it 
is  interesting  that  his  fugue  and  counterpoint  professor  was 
Anton  Reicha,  Beethoven's  exact  contemporary  and  his  col- 
league in  the  electoral  orchestra  at  Boras. 

Just  as  life  seemed  a  little  less  stormy,  several  blows  fell  at 
once.  Hector's  chief  creditor,  out  of  sheer  kindness  of  heart, 
wrote  to  Dr.  Berlioz,  saying  that  the  repayment  of  the  money 
advanced  for  the  performance  o£  the  Mass  was  proving  a  terrible 
strain  on  his  son.  The  righteous  doctor  repaid  it  in  full  and 
temporarily  cut  off  his  son's  allowance.  Not  hesitating  at  all, 
Berlioz  decided  to  live  on  the  scraps  from  teaching  and  music- 
reviewing,  and  right  up  to  1828,  when  he  won  second  place 
in  the  Prix  de  Rome  competition,  he  lived  precisely  this  way. 
But  his  life  was  further  complicated  by  his  passion  for  the 
Anglo-Irish  actress,  Harriet  Constance  Smithson.*  Just  after  his 

*  Berlioz  always  referred  to  her  as  Henriette;  she  is  familiar  to  readers  of  the 
English  program  notes  of  the  Symphonic  fantasttque  as  Henrietta  of  the  idfafixe. 


342  MEN   OF   MUSIC 

second  rejection  for  the  Prix  (the  committee  declared  his  can- 
tata La  Mort  fOrplue  unplayable,  a  decision  confounded  by 
the  success  of  later  performances),  he  went  to  the  Paris  first 
night  of  Charles  Kemble's  production  of  Hamlet.  While  this 
new  revelation  of  Shakespeare  (as  a  source  of  romanticism) 
had  a  traceable  effect  on  many  personages  who  are  known  to 
have  been  in  the  audience,  including  Dumas  pere,  Victor  Hugo, 
Sainte-Beuve,  Vigny,  Gerard  de  Nerval,  and  Delacroix,  it  shat- 
tered Berlioz. 

Just  as,  a  dozen  years  before,  a  boy  of  twelve,  he  had  become 
hopelessly  infatuated  at  first  sight  with  Estelle  Duboeuf,  a  girl 
six  years  his  elder,  and  had  idealized  her  beyond  recognition, 
to  the  point  at  which  even  her  symbolic  value  to  him  is  blurred, 
so  now  he  transformed  Hemiette  from  a  mediocre,  rather  plain- 
looking  woman  of  twenty-seven  into  a  fantastic  paragon  of  age- 
less delight.  Part  of  Estelle's  hold  on  his  imagination  had  been 
derived  (he  long  believed)  from  her  having  worn  pink  shoes, 
a  glamorous  fact  to  which  Berlioz  clung  throughout  the  years 
as  to  a  fetish.  Now  he  undoubtedly  confused  Henriette  with 
the  heroine  she  played,  investing  her  somewhat  colorless  per- 
sonality with  the  poetry  of  Ophelia.  From  that  moment  he 
acted  like  one  demented,  casting  himself  in  the  role  of  Hamlet. 
Until  October,  1833,  when  he  finally  persuaded  Henriette  to 
become  Mme  Berlioz,  he  alternately  raged,  moped — and  forgot 
to  do  either.  The  incredible  part  of  Berlioz's  mania  was  that 
it  was  not  until  less  than  one  year  before  their  marriage  that  he 
met  his  Ophelia  in  the  flesh.  Long  before  Dowson,  he  had  dis- 
covered the  art  of  being  faithful  to  Cynara  in  his  fashion.  He 
pretended  that  he  had  written  the  history  of  his  tempestuous 
emotions  about  Henriette  in  the  pages  of  the  Symphonie  Jan- 
tastique>  though  the  timetable  of  its  composition  partly  con- 
tradicts him. 

In  May,  1828,  Berlioz  gave  a  concert  of  his  own  music  at  the 
Conservatoire,  Cherubini  muttering  monumentally  to  the  last. 
The  program  consisted  of  the  Waverley  Overture,  extracts  from 
the  opera  Les  Francs-Juges,  the  cantata  Scene  kero'ique:  La  revolu- 
tion grecque,  and — replacing  La  Mort  d'OrpMe>  withdrawn  at 
the  last  minute  so  as  not  to  insult  the  sensibilities  of  Cherubini 
and  his  colleagues — the  Resztmxit  from  the  Mass.  Schumann, 


BERLIOZ  343 

who  thought  Waverley  delightful,  professed  to  find  in  it  remi- 
niscences of  Mendelssohn,  which  to  Berlioz  would  have  been 
a  dubious  compliment.  All  that  survives  of  Les  Francs-Juges  in 
its  original  form  is  the  familiar  overture.  Ringing  with  the  fan- 
fares Berlioz  loved,  it  is  touched  with  Weberian  romanticism, 
though  its  rhythms  and  orchestration  are  characteristic  of 
Berlioz  himself.  The  success  of  the  concert  was  sufficient  to 
lift  his  spirits  a  little,  and  he  was  sustained  on  a  lofty  plain  by 
his  first  reading  of  Goethe's  Faust  in  Gerard  de  NervaTs  transla- 
tion. His  enthusiasm  led  him  at  once  to  begin  sketching  the 
series  of  musical  incidents  that  he  was  to  publish,  as  his  Opus  i, 
the  following  year  as  Huit  Scenes  de  Faust.  This  Ernest  Newman 
once  called  "the  most  marvelous  Opus  i  that  any  composer  .  .  . 
ever  produced,  .  .  ."  On  the  other  hand,  Berlioz  was  dispirited 
by  his  third  failure  to  gain  the  Prix  de  Rome,  though  this  time 
his  effort,  a  cantata  called  Herminie  and  based  on  episodes  from 
Tasso's  Gerusalemme  liberata,  gained  him  the  second  prize,  a  gold 
medal  whose  value  he  so  deprecated  that  he  later  pawned  it. 
Perhaps  even  more  infuriating  were  the  results  of  the  1829 
competition,  when  still  another  Berlioz  cantata — La  Mart  de 
Cleopatre — so  baffled  the  jury  by  its  intransigent  originality  that 
no  prize  was  awarded. 

Meanwhile,  Berlioz's  passion  for  Henriette  waxed  and  waned 
— and  waxed  again.  As  no  response  to  his  epistolary  protesta- 
tions of  fiery  longing  came  from  her,  it  became  essential  for  him 
to  exorcise  her  image.  This  he  did  by  the  best  of  all  methods: 
early  in  1830  he  burned  out  his  passion  in  a  masterpiece  of 
musical  confession,  the  Symphonie  jantastique,  which,  with  the 
later  autobiographical  melologue,  LeUo,  is  subtitled  "Episode 
de  la  vie  (fun  artiste"  Although  this  gigantic  five-movement 
work  was  put  together  within  four  months,  parts  of  it  were 
composed  earlier,  being  transferred  to  it  with  little  change  from 
Les  Francs-Juges  and  a  never  completed  Faust  ballet;  the  melody 
of  the  idee  fixe  itself  was  adapted  from  Herminie. 

As  his  best-known  composition,  the  Symphonie  fantastique 
has  tended  to  crystallize  the  legend  of  a  Berlioz  who  bears  small 
relation  to  the  mature  artist  who  created  such  restrained  works 
of  genius  as  Romeo  et  Juliette  and  Les  Troyens.  For  this,  Berlioz 
himself  was  largely  responsible,  for  few  were  able  to  resist  the 


344  MEN  OF  MUSIC 

extravagant  self-advertisement  that  is  Ms  printed  program  for 
this  work.  As  a  document  comparable  in  importance  to  Bee- 
thoven's letter  to  the  "Immortal  Beloved,"  this  program  must 
be  quoted  in  full: 

A  young  musician  of  morbid  sensibility  and  ardent  imagination 
is  in  love,  and  has  poisoned  himself  with  opium  in  a  fit  of  despera- 
tion. Not  having  taken  a  lethal  dose,  he  falls  into  a  long  sleep  in 
which  he  has  the  strangest  dreams,  wherein  his  feelings,  sentiments, 
and  memories  are  translated  by  his  sick  brain  into  musical  ideas  and 
figures.  The  beloved  woman  herself  has  become  a  melody  that  he  finds 
and  hears  everywhere  as  an  idee  fixe. 

First  Movement.  Reveries,  Passions. 

First  he  remembers  the  uneasiness  of  mind,  the  aimless  passions, 
the  baseless  depressions  and  elations  that  he  felt  before  he  saw  the 
object  of  his  adoration,  then  the  volcanic  love  that  she  instantly  inspired 
in  him,  his  delirious  agonies,  his  jealous  rages,  his  recovered  love,  his 
consolations  of  religion. 

Second  Movement.  A  Ball. 

He  meets  his  beloved  at  a  ball  in  the  midst  of  the  tumult  of  a  bril- 
liant festival. 

Third  Movement.  Pastoral  Scene. 

On  a  summer  evening  in  the  country  he  hears  two  shepherds  play- 
ing a  Ranz  des  Vaches  in  dialogue.  This  pastoral  duet,  the  place,  the 
gentle  sound  of  wind  in  the  trees,  a  few  recently  conceived  grounds  of 
hope,  all  tend  to  give  a  new  calm  to  his  heart  and  a  brighter  color  to 
his  thoughts.  But  She  appears  again.  His  heart  misses  a  beat;  he  is 
troubled  by  grievous  forebodings.  What  if  she  should  deceive  him?  .  .  . 

One  of  the  shepherds  resumes  his  simple  lay;  the  other  does  not 
answer.  The  sun  sets.  Distant  thunder.  Solitude.  Silence. 

Fourth  Movement.  March  to  the  Scaffold. 

He  dreams  that  he  has  killed  his  beloved;  that  he  is  condemned  to 
death  and  led  to  the  place  of  execution.  The  procession  moves  to  a 
march,  now  gloomy  and  wild,  now  brilliant  and  grand,  during  which 
the  dull  sound  of  heavy  footsteps  folows  abruptly  upon  the  noisiest 
outbursts. 

At  last  the  idee  fixe  reappears  for  a  moment,  as  a  last  thought  of  love, 
cut  short  by  the  stroke  of  death, 


BERLIOZ 


345 


Fifth  Movement.  Dream  of  a  Witches'  Sabbath. 

He  finds  himself  in  a  witches5  sabbath,  in  the  midst  of  a  frightful 
crowd  of  ghosts,  sorcerers,  and  all  manner  of  monsters  assisting  at 
his  entombment.  Weird  noises,  groans,  bursts  of  laughter,  distant 
cries  echoed  by  others.  The  Beloved  Melody  enters  again,  but  it  has 
lost  its  noble  modesty;  it  has  become  a  vulgar  dance-tune,  trivial  and 
grotesque.  SHE  has  come  to  the  witches'  sabbath. 

Roars  of  joy  at  her  arrival.  She  joins  in  the  devilish  orgies.  Funeral 
bells,  parody  of  the  Dies  Irae.  Round  dance  of  the  witches.  The  round 
dance  and  the  Dies  Irae  are  heard  together. 

Psychologically,  the  most  significant  permutation  of  the  idee 
fixe  (Henriette-Ophelia's  motive)  is  its  vulgarization  in  the  last 
movement:  this  meant  that  Berlioz  had  released  himself  tempo- 
rarily from  the  actress's  spell.  Musically,  the  idee  fixe  serves  to 
bind  together  the  five  movements,  which  could  not  easily  be 
related  in  any  other  manner.  This  use  of  a  label  motive,  though 
not  original  with  Berlioz  (it  had  been  used  in  the  earliest  operas, 
and  Mozart  had  notably  exploited  it  in  Don  Giovanni},  was  to 
have  a  sensible  influence  on  his  contemporaries  and  successors. 
Liszt,  Wagner,  Tchaikovsky,  Cesar  Franck,  and  Richard  Strauss 
all  seized  upon  this  device*  Not  only  did  Berlioz,  by  the  power 
of  his  creative  vision,  naturalize  it  in  instrumental  music,  but 
he  also  rescued  it  from  its  perfunctory  role  as  a  mere  ticket,* 
making  it  a  malleable^  protean  agent  of  the  musical  imagina- 
tion. 

In  judging  the  Symphonic  Jantastique^  it  is  wise  not  to  con- 
fuse the  music  with  its  somewhat  overwrought  program.  Like 
all  great  creations,  it  must  be  judged  in  terms  of  the  art  to 
which  it  belongs.  As  music,  then,  the  Symphoniey  if  not  quite 
transcendent  in  the  hierarchy  of  Berlioz's  work,  would  alone 
entitle  him  to  a  place  far  above  that  of  the  merely  accomplished 
technicians  with  whom  he  competed3  and  near  that  of  the 
masters  he  revered.  The  first  movement,  though  thoughtfully 
conceived,  does  not  presage  the  many  remarkable,  moving^  and 
novel  effects  of  what  follows;  the  second,  based  largely  on  one 
of  Berlioz's  long-breathed,  enchanting  melodies,  has  a  rhythmic 

*  The  label  motive  has,  of  course,  now  become  the  debased  commonplace  of 
every  screen  composer. 


346  MEN   OF  MUSIC 

interest  quite  surpassing  that  of  any  earlier  waltz  and  equaling 
the  later  complexities  of  Ravel  and  Richard  Strauss;  the  third 
movement,  which  pays  its  respects  to  Beethoven's  "Pastoral/3 
could  be  cited  as  the  locus  classicus  of  romantic  melancholy; 
the  "March  to  the  Scaffold"  is,  of  course,  one  of  the  most  excit- 
ing of  Berlioz's  inspirations— here  the  program  could  almost  be 
written  from  the  music,  and  nothing  could  better  the  descrip- 
tion of  its  pace  than  Berlioz's  own  "now  gloomy  and  wild,  now 
brilliant  and  grand";  the  finale  apotheosizes  the  Berlioz  of  the 
flaming  locks,  the  extravagant  emotionalist  he  pretended  to 
believe  himself  to  be — only  here  and  in  Harold  en  Italie  can  be 
found  the  macabre  figure  that  so  many  believe  falsely  to  be  the 
essential  Berlioz,  How  the  echoes  of  this  last  movement  went 
ringing  down  the  century  can  best  be  detected  in  such  a  work 
as  Mussorgsky's  A  Night  on  Bald  Mountain. 

One  result  of  the  catharsis  effected  in  Berlioz  by  composing 
the  Symphonic  jantastique  was  that  of  his  finding  an  Henriette- 
substitute.  She  turned  out  to  be  the  cacophonously  named 
Marie  Moke,  an  eighteen-year-old  pianist  with  whom  Ferdinand 
Hiller  was  in  love.  Marie,  even  at  this  tender  age,  was  some- 
thing of  a  loose  woman,  and  was  willing  to  listen  to  Berlioz. 
In  later  years,  as  Mme  Gamille  Pleyel,  she  became  a  most 
eminent  pianist,  and  it  is  at  least  possible  that  Berlioz,  more 
romantic  than  carnal,  was  enraptured  less  by  the  girl  than  by 
the  artist.  He  found  a  Shakespearean  label  for  her  too,  and 
among  his  intimates  was  wont  to  refer  to  her  as  Ariel,  a  long 
remove  from  Ophelia,  but  quite  as  sexless.  At  first  Mile  Moke's 
mother  looked  with  extreme  disfavor  on  the  penniless  suitor, 
but  when  his  cantata  La  Mart  de  Sardanapale  finally  won  for  him 
the  Prix  de  Rome  she  quickly  changed  her  mind.  By  the  end  of 
1830  Hector  and  Marie  were  engaged  to  be  married,  though  it 
was  cautiously  stipulated  that  the  marriage  should  not  occur 
until  Marie  was  twenty-one. 

And  indeed,  momentarily  fortune  seemed  to  smile  on  the 
newly  crowned  prize-winner.  Sardanapale  was  successfully  per- 
formed at  its  dress  rehearsal,*  as  was,  somewhat  later,  Berlioz's 
fantasy  for  orchestra,  chorus,  and  two  pianos,  on  Shakespeare's 

*  At  the  performance  on  October  30,  the  final  section  was  not  played  because 
the  wind  instruments  missed  their  cue — a  characteristically  BerHozian  mishap. 


BERLIOZ  347 

Tempest.  It  is  symbolic  of  the  close  association  of  much  of  Berlioz's 
early  music  with  his  personal  life  that  the  Tempest  fantasy  was 
inspired  by  Mile  Moke  (her  former  love,  Hiller,  was  one  of 
the  pianists  when  it  was  performed),  and  was  later  incorpo- 
rated into  L£Ko,  a  farrago  that  commented  on  his  affair  with  her 
much  as  the  Symphonie  Jantastique  had  commented  on  that  with 
Henriette.  Then,  on  December  5,  the  Symphonie  Jantastique  was 
given  with  great  success,  under  the  baton  of  Frangois  Habeneck, 
at  the  Conservatoire.  The  audience  included  Fetis,  Spontini, 
Meyerbeer,  and  Liszt.  The  "Marche  au  supplice"  was  encored,  and 
Liszt,  wrote  Berlioz,  "carried  me  off,  as  it  were  by  force,  to 
dine  with  him,  overwhelming  me  with  the  most  vigorous 
enthusiasm."  Even  more  gratifying  to  Berlioz's  starved  vanity 
was  Spontini's  friendliness:  not  content  with  declaring  that 
Beethoven  alone  could  have  equaled  the  "Marche  au  supplice"  this 
reigning  god  of  music  signalized  his  young  friend's  twenty-seventh 
birthday  by  presenting  him  with  an  inscribed  score  of  Olympie, 
worth,  the  recipient  carefully  noted,  125  francs. 

Although  Italy  was  next  on  the  schedule  for  a  Prix  de  Rome 
winner,  it  scarcely  beckoned.  Berlioz  had  no  desire  to  leave  his 
Ariel,  who  might  well  flit  as  readily  to  another  as  she  had  flitted 
to  him  from  Hiller.  But  in  order  to  keep  the  prize  pension,  a 
year's  residence  in  Italy  was  necessary.  He  tore  himself  away, 
paid  a  farewell  visit  to  his  family,  and  arrived  in  Rome  early 
in  March,  1831.  He  was  prepared  to  dislike  Rome,  and  he  did. 
He  called  Italy  "a  garden  peopled, by  monkeys/*  The  truth  is 
that  his  emotional  state  did  not  permit  him  to  appreciate  any- 
thing except  the  luxuries  of  introspection.  Staying  at  the  Villa 
Medici,  where  the  Academic  de  France  was  located,  scarcely 
long  enough  to  meet  its  director,  the  painter  Horace  Vernet,* 
and  his  fellow-students — who  ribaldly  nicknamed  him  Father 
Joy  because  of  his  lugubrious  expression — he  rushed  back  to- 
ward France  after  spending  several  pleasant  days  with  Men- 
delssohn. There  had  been  no  word  from  Marie,  and  his  inten- 
tion was  to  return  to  Paris.  Fortunately  for  him,  bad  news 
caught  up  with  him  at  Florence:  a  letter  from  Mme  Moke  an- 

*  Vernefs  portrait  of  Mendelssohn,  painted  at  this  time,  is  reproduced  facing 
page  255. 


348  MEN     OF    MUSIC 

nounced  her  daughter's  marriage  to  Camille  Pleyel,  the  piano- 
manufacturer. 

At  this  juncture,  Berlioz  behaved  like  the  hero  of  a  farce- 
melodrama.  In  his  Memoires  he  wrote  that  his  decision  was 
made  instantly:  "It  was  to  go  to  Paris,  where  I  must  kill  with- 
out mercy  two  guilty  women  and  one  innocent  man  [the  female 
Mokes  and  himself]/'  His  weapons  were  two  pistols,  laudanum, 
and  strychnine.  But  he  had  no  intention  of  being  recognized, 
and  purchased  also  the  costume  of  a  lady's  maid  as  a  disguise. 
At  Genoa  he  found  that  he  had  lost  the  disguise,  and  promptly 
replaced  it.  Apparently  he  tried  to  do  away  with  himself,  an 
action  that  in  a  measure  dispelled  the  black  humors.  At  Nice, 
then  still  Italian  territory,  he  had  a  change  of  heart.  He  wrote 
Vernet  to  retain  his  name  on  the  list  of  pensionnaires  of  the 
Villa  Medici.  Vemet  sent  a  friendly  reply,  and  Berlioz  settled 
down  to  a  vacation  in  Nice,  where  he  composed  the  overture 
Le  Roi  Lear.  Before  returning  to  Rome  in  June  he  had  also 
begun  the  sketches  for  Lelioy  ou  Le  retour  a  la  vie,  which  as  its 
subtitle  indicates,  he  conceived  as  a  pendant  to  the  Symphonie 
fantastique.  Before  leaving  Italy  in  May,  1832 — he  somehow 
evaded  the  stipulation  that  he  remain  in  Rome  for  two  years — 
he  had  completed  Lelio  and  composed  Rob  Roy,  an  overture, 
It  is  significant  that  during  his  eighteen  months  in  Italy  he  laid 
at  least  some  of  the  plans  for  all  of  his  important  future  works. 

After  spending  some  months  with  his  family,  Berlioz  re- 
turned to  Paris  armed  to  battle  once  again  for  fame  and  fortune. 
December  9,  1832,  turned  out  to  be  one  of  the  most  important 
days  of  his  life:  that  afternoon  he  gave  a  concert  that  included 
the  Fantastique  and  Lelio.  The  presence  of  Harriet  Smithson 
in  the  audience  made  the  choice  of  works  truly  symbolic,  for 
the  first  of  them  dramatized  Berlioz's  unrequited  passion  for 
her,  and  the  second,  signifying  his  "return  to  life"  after  a  vain 
attempt  to  secure  a  substitute,  implied  that  the  return  had  been 
to  her.  Unfortunately  for  him,  her  recent  attempt  to  recapture 
the  favor  of  Paris  had  been  a  failure,  and  she  was  -consequently 
all  too  ready  to  listen  to  his  renewed  advances.  At  this  point  the 
extravagant,  romantic  Berlioz  of  legend  became  a  slave  to 
duty.  It  is  quite  obvious  that  now  his  protestations  were  in- 
spired less  by  passion  than  by  pity,  and  indeed  he  seems  like  a 


BERLIOZ  349 

man  acting  the  role  of  a  knight  errant.  They  met,  he  proposed, 
their  families  objected  (her  sister  even  going  so  far  as  to  tear  up 
a  marriage  contract).  During  this  prolonged  tempest,  Berlioz 
for  the  second  time  tried  suicide,  this  time  by  poison,  but  had 
the  forethought  to  provide  himself  with  an  emetic.  But,  domes- 
tic results  apart,  the  concert  of  December  9  brought  him  great 
reclame,  Dumas  pfa,  Hugo,  and  Paganiai  were  in  the  audi- 
ence, and  the  concert  had  to  be  repeated  three  weeks  later. 
This  recognition,  under  ordinary  circumstances^  might  have 
inspired  Berlioz  to  passionate  creative  activity,  but  he  was  so 
taken  up  with  Henriette's  welfare  that  he  concentrated  during 
1833  on  planning  to  rescue  her  from  fate.  In  his  spare  time 
he  planned  an  assault  on  the  Opera  by  sketching  Beatrice  et 
Benedict—which  he  completed  thirty  years  later. 

Some  of  these  plans  were  not  without  interest.  Early  in  1 833, 
after  Henriette  had  added  a  broken  leg  to  her  disabilities,  Ber- 
lioz organized  a  benefit  concert  for  her.  He  besought  the  help 
of  his  old  friend  Liszt  and  of  Chopin,  whom  he  had  just  met.  * 
The  profits  of  this  concert  were  scarcely  a  stopgap.  The  finan- 
cial picture  stayed  bleak,  but  perversely  Berlioz  insisted  on  mar- 
riage. Earlier  in  the  year  he  had  steadfastly  refused  to  carry 
out  another  Prix  de  Rome  stipulation,  a  stay  in  Germany;  now 
he  threatened  Henriette  with  imminent  departure  thither  un- 
less she  married  him  at  once.  She  capitulated,  and  finally,  after 
he  had  borrowed  three  hundred  francs  on  which  to  marry,  he 
made  her  keep  her  promise  on  October  3-f  His  obligations  to 
this  flighty,  unintelligent,  and  rather  unpleasant  woman,  for- 
merly sentimental*  were  now  legal.  Thenceforth^  but  for  a  brief 
interval,  their  life  together  was  to  be  scarcely  mitigated  torture. 

Berlioz's  plans  for  Henriette  did  not  cease  with  their  mar- 
riage, He  next  tried  to  reintroduce  her  to  theatergoers,  but  so 
poor  was  her  performance  that  he  was  forced  to  realize  that  their 
menage  (swelled  in  August,  1834,  by  the  birth  of  a  son,  Louis) 

*  At  first  it  seemed  that  Berlioz  and  Chopin  were  to  become  friends*  But  Chopin 
soon  cooled — Berlioz  was  too  radical  for  him  musically  and  too  flamboyant  for  him 
personally.  In  January,  1836,  however,  they  were  on  sufficiently  amicable  terms  for 
Chopin  to  assist  Berlioz  in  making  a  piano-duet  arrangement  of  the  overture  to 
Le$  Francs-  Juges. 

f  Eight  days  after  the  wedding,  Berlioz  wrote  his  friend  Humbert  Ferrand  that, 
to  his  gratification,  he  had  discovered  Henriette  to  be  "as  virginal  as  possible1* — 
aussi  merge  gtfil  soil  possible  de  Fetre. 


35°  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

had  to  be  supported  by  his  efforts  alone — a  blessing  in  disguise, 
for  now  followed  another  period  of  feverish  concert-giving,  re- 
view-writing, and  composing  on  a  large  scale.  It  may  have  been 
after  the  very  successful  concert  of  December  22,  1833  (or  it 
may  have  been  on  December  9,  1832),  that  Paganini  made  his 
first  public  obeisance  to  Berlioz.  Then  he  suggested  that  Ber- 
lioz provide  him  with  a  piece  to  display  his  talents  as  a  virtuoso 
on  a  newly  acquired  Stradivarius  viola.  But  Berlioz  was  not  the 
man  to  compose  virtuoso  pieces  to  order:  the  project — tenta- 
tively entitled  Les  Derniers  Instans*  de  Marie  Stuart — gradually 
evaporated,  though  the  solo  viola  in  Harold  en  Italie,  begun 
shortly  afterward,  was  undoubtedly  its  indirect  result.  Remi- 
niscences of  Berlioz's  travels  in  Italy  soon  fused  with  his  ram- 
blings  in  Byron  to  produce  one  of  his  most  spectacular  concert 
works,  which  was  completed  in  June,  1834.  Before  the  year  was 
out,  Harold  had  been  performed  three  times  with  great  success, 
and  Berlioz  had  begun  an  opera  based  on  episodes  from  the  life 
of  Benvenuto  Cellini. 

In  L&liOj  Berlioz  had  exhibited  himself  in  his  most  fantastic 
phase;  with  Harold  en  Italie,  after  a  final  Byronic  fling,  i.e  bade 
farewell  to  attitudinizing.  He  was  never  one  to  do  things  by 
halves,  and  Lelio  is,  formally  speaking,  a  monstrosity,  a  jerry- 
built  structure  of  shreds  and  patches.  Because  it  is  designed  for 
a  non-singing  actor,  as  well  as  for  mostly  invisible  soloists, 
chorus,  and  orchestra,  Lelio  should  be  produced  in  a  theater. 
It  requires  theatrical  properties,  among  them  a  couch  where 
L61io  can  recline  while  reading  a  book,  pistols,  and  a  skull, 
Lelio  is  not  only  Hamlet,  he  is  also  Berlioz,  and  he  is  even  Ber- 
lioz's imaginary  self — a  combination  of  personalities  that  needs 
a  juggler's  rather  than  an  actor's  ability.  Lelio  is  a  protracted 
monologue — a  "monodrame  lyrique"  as  Berlioz  also  called  it 
— interrupted,  usually  without  cause,  by  dramatic  trumpery 
set  to  various  unrelated  pieces  of  music  from  his  files.  These 
latter  include  snippets  of  the  Fantastique,  a  setting  for  tenor 
solo  of  Goethe's  poem  "Der  Fischer"  and  the  fantasia  on  Shake- 
speare's Tempest.  For  a  chorus  of  shades  he  reached  back  to 
Cleopatre,  one  of  his  unsuccessful  Prix  de  Rome  submissions. 

*  This  curious  word  reflected  a  momentary  trend  toward  simplified  spelling* 


BERLIOZ  351 

From  the  critical  consensus  that  little  of  Lelio  is  memorable, 
at  least  the  Tempest  fantasia  must  be  excepted:  not  only  did 
Berlioz  describe  it  as  "new,  tender,  sweet,  and  surprising/*  but 
those  who  have  been  fortunate  enough  to  hear  one  of  its  rare 
performances  have  remarked  upon  its  charm. 

Whereas  Lelio  was  destined  for  almost  instant  oblivion  (it  is 
notable  that  Liszt,  who  alone  seems  to  have  had  an  interest  in 
keeping  it  alive,  made  stringent  cuts  when  he  staged  it  at  Wei- 
mar in  1855),  Harold  en  Italie  needs  only  a  first-rate  violist  to 
keep  it  perennial  in  the  repertoire.  Seldom  does  one  of  its  four 
movements  descend  from  a  high  level  of  unceasing  musical  in- 
ventiveness. Its  materials  are  both  attractive  and  beautifully 
calculated  as  parts  of  a  large  composition.  Indeed,  Harold, 
which  came  so  close  after  Lelio,  is  as  perfectly  designed  as  Lelio 
is  chaotically  strung  together.  Materials  and  design  alike  are 
made  luminous  by  the  subtle  balance  and  justness  of  the  instru- 
mentation. The  solo  viola  is  so  discreetly  blended  with  the 
orchestra  as  to  give  Harold  more  the  character  of  a  symphony 
than  that  of  a  concerto — Chopin,  who  vehemently  denigrated 
the  formal  structures  of  Berlioz,  might  have  found  a  lesson  in  it. 

Harold  en  Italie  is  one  of  the  central  romantic  masterpieces, 
a  judgment  easily  bolstered  by  examining  each  of  its  four  move- 
ments in  turn.  The  first,  "Harold  in  the  Mountains,  Scenes  of 
Melancholy,  Happiness,  and  Joy,"  is  precisely  a  classical  state- 
ment of  romantic  melancholy.  The  theme  given  out  by  the  solo 
viola,  hauntingly  wistful  and  unmistakably  Berlioz,  is  used  as 
a  signature  in  all  the  movements.  In  the  second,  "March  of 
Pilgrims  Singing  Their  Evening  Hymns,"  there  are  a  sobriety 
and  a  solemnity  that  portend  a  new  dimension  in  their  com- 
poser. It  is  an  unmonotonous  monotony,  achieving  variety  by 
the  slightest  of  shifts.  Part  three,  the  "Serenade  of  an  Abruzzi 
Mountaineer  to  His  Mistress,"  exploits  the  wind  choirs  in  pro- 
ducing effects  that  are  both  tender  and  exciting.  Quite  as  re- 
markable are  the  supple  use  of  innately  naive  rhythmic  patterns 
in  triple  time  and  the  never-ceasing  harmonic  surprises,  which 
are  at  no  time  vulgarly  shocking.  The  finale,  "Orgy  of  Brig- 
ands, Recollections  of  the  Preceding  Scenes,"  is  not  in  quality 
up  to  the  other  parts,  and  undeniably  has  its  moments  of  the 


352  MEN     OF    MUSIC 

kind  of  fiistian  and  bombast  that  do  not  fit  even  an  orgy  of 
brigands.  During  these  the  solo  viola,  which  otherwise  in  this 
movement  is  used  only  in  startling  and  touchingly  lovely  remi- 
niscences of  the  earlier  movements,  is  silent.  The  actual  orgy 
is  merely  effective  theater  music.  Because  of  its  thematic  rela- 
tion to  the  earlier  movements,  the  fourth  movement  has  been 
compared,  doubtless  as  a  compliment,  to  the  choral  movement 
of  Beethoven's  Ninth — like  it,  the  least  integrated  portion  of 
the  symphony  of  which  it  is  a  part.  Fortunately,  the  somewhat 
shoddy  concluding  pages  of  Hardd  do  not  affect  retroactively 
the  earlier  beauties  of  this  splendid  creation. 

Now,  and  for  some  years  to  come,  the  Berlioz  family,  which 
had  moved  to  a  small  house  in  Montmartre,  was  in  sore  straits. 
The  way  ahead  was  not  clear.  Knowing  full  well  that  musical 
Paris  would  not  take  seriously  a  composer  who  had  not  had  an 
operatic  success,  Berlioz  worked  hard  on  the  score  of  Benvenuto 
Cellini,  even  though  the  libretto  had  been  declined  by  the 
Op€ra-Gomique.  To  support  his  wife  and  son,  he  slaved  at  jour- 
nalism, which  he  loathed,  and  continued  to  give  his  artistically 
rewarding,  but  financially  unsuccessful,  concerts.  It  was  during 
this  period  that  he  finished,  from  sketches  begun  some  years 
earlier,  Le  Cinq  mai,  a  cantata  on  the  death  of  Napoleon.  This 
was  set  to  a  poem  of  Pierre-Jean  de  Beranger,  and  for  the  most 
part  Berlioz  experienced  no  difficulty  in  its  composition.  These 
banal  lines,  however,  proved  a  stumbling-block; 

Poor  soldier,  I  shall  see  France  again, 
My  son's  hand  shall  dose  my  eyes* 

Before  leaving  Rome  in  1832,  Berlioz  had  been  wandering 
absentmindedly  along  the  Tiber  one  day  and  slipped  into  the 
river.  At  first  he  was  alarmed,  but  soon  realized  that  getting 
wet  was  the  worst  that  could  happen  to  him.  At  this  juncture, 
the  musical  theme  for  the  difficult  lines  came  to  his  mind,  again 
exemplifying  the  tragicomic  element  that  often  accompanied 
his  creative  activity.  Yet  the  copious  lyrical  outpouring  of  this 
period  is  seemingly  devoid  of  that  autobiographical  dimension 
which  adds  piquancy  to  a  view  of  his  large  orchestral  works. 
Such  luscious  songs  as  La  Captive,  Villanelle,  Absence,  and  Le  Spectre 


BERLIOZ  353 

de  la  rose*  have  no  program  beyond  their  own  texts.  They  are 
immediately  communicative. 

At  the  beginning  of  1836,  Berlioz  scarcely  knew  which  way 
to  turn,  for  he  had  now  received  the  final  installments  of  Ms 
Prix  de  Rome  pension.  More  than  ever  did  he  feel  the  neces- 
sity of  finishing  Benvewto  Cellini,  and  his  income  as  critic  for 
the  Journal  des  debats  was  insufficient.  But  in  the  spring  his 
Mend  the  dramatist  Ernest  Legouv6  lent  him  two  thousand 
francs,  and  even  Dr.  Berlioz  (whose  wrath  at  the  Smithson 
mesalliance  had  been  mitigated  by  the  arrival  of  a  grandson 
named  after  himself)  sent  him  a  small  sum.  And  he  was  getting 
a  foothold  at  the  Opera  through  his  association  with  the  power- 
ful Bertin  family,  which  controlled  the  Journal  des  debats,  the 
official  newspaper  of  the  Orleanist  regime.  He  helped  Louise- 
Angelique  Bertin  to  professionalize  her  opera  Esmeralda^  for 
which  Victor  Hugo—  taking  episodes  from  his  own  Notre-Dame 
de  Paris  —  had  provided  the  libretto.  Esmeralda  failed,  but  Ber- 
lioz had  succeeded  in  two  of  his  objectives;  he  had  put  the  Ber- 
lins further  in  his  debt  (needless  to  say,  his  review  of  Esmeralda 
in  the  Journal  was  not  unfavorable),  and  he  now  had  a  foot 
inside  the  Opera.  In  March,  1837,  that  debt  began  to  be  paid 
off,  when  the  minister  of  the  interior  commissioned  Berlioz  to 
compose  a  requiem  for  the  commemoration  of  the  victims  of 
the  infernal  machine  used  in  1835  by  the  Italian  anarchist 
Fieschi  in  his  unsuccessful  attempt  on  the  life  of  Louis-Philippe. 
The  Commission  was  valued  at  four  thousand  francs,  and  the 
only  stipulation  the  composer  made  was  that  he  be  guaran- 
teed five  hundred  performers.  The  minister  demurred,  and  they 
finally  compromised  at  four  hundred  and  fifty. 

Writing  to  Liszt  on  May  22,  1837,  Berlioz  said  that  he  had 
completed  the  Requiem,  but  the  autograph  score  is  dated  June 
29.  Even  if  the  latter  is  the  true  date  of  completion,  the  period 
of  time  is  astonishingly  short  for  the  achievement  of  so  vast  and 
so  magnificent  a  work.  Berlioz  said  that  ideas  for  it  crowded  on 


*  The  last  three  of  these  belong  to  the  fine  sooag-cyde  JVuftr  d*£tft  set  to  poems 
by  Theophile  Gautier5  and  composed  in  1834.  The  others  in  the  cycle  are  Sur  les 
lagunes,  Au  dmiture^  and  I}lle  income  Ail  six  were  rearranged  in  1841,  and  later 
orchestrated. 


354  MEN  OF 

him  so  fast  that  he  was  obliged  to  invent  a  musical  shorthand. 
However,  the  Requiem^  or  Grande  Messe  des  marts  as  it  is  some- 
times called,  contains  ideas  from  earlier  works.  For  instance, 
the  renowned  Tuba  Mirum  borrows  from  Berlioz's  earlier 
Resurrexit,  and  there  must  be  imbedded  in  the  fabric  of  the 
Requiem  material  from  one  of  his  most  fantastic  aborts,  Le 
Dernier  Jour  du  monde.*  No  doubt  Berlioz  was  hurrying  toward 
a  deadline  that  would  allow  sufficient  rehearsal  time  for  the 
Requiem  to  be  performed  on  the  second  anniversary  (July  28, 
1837)  of  the  Fieschi  attempt.  His  haste  was  wasted:  official  pro- 
crastination staved  off  performance  until  Bertin  took  a  hand  in 
the  proceedings.  But  even  he  might  not  have  succeeded  had  not 
the  death  of  a  popular  general  necessitated  a  government 
memorial.  Eager  to  stop  Berlin's  cries  of  rager  the  ministry  of 
the  interior  scheduled  the  Requiem  for  performance  at  the 
Invalides  on  December  4.  When  the  last  echo  of  the  tympani 
had  died,  Berlioz  began  actively  to  wait  for  the  promised  four 
thousand  francs.  He  had  to  wait  an  unreasonably  long  time,  but, 
as  W.  J.  Turner  wrote3  **. . .  he  was  probably  paid  quicker  than 
anybody  else  would  have  been,  as  his  capacity  for  making  a  fuss 
and  his  physical  endurance  in  making  it  were  alike  more  than 
normal/* 

Even  with  the  modification  of  forces  imposed  by  the  minis- 
try, the  Messe  des  morts  calls  for  a  stupendous  number  of  per- 
formers if  it  is  to  be  given  as  Berlioz  conceived  it — surely  the 
only  way  to  give  it.  It  demands  eighty  sopranos,  eighty  altos, 
sixty  tenors,  seventy  basses,  fifty  violins,  twenty  Violas,  twenty 
cellos,  eighteen  doublebasses,  four  flutes,  two  oboes,  two  English 
horns,  eight  bassoons,  four  clarinets,  twelve  horns,  four  cornets, 
twelve  trumpets,  sixteen  trombones,  six  ophicleides  (now  re- 
placed by  tubas),  sixteen  tympani,  two  side  drums,  four  gongs, 
and  five  pairs  of  cymbals.  The  contention  that  Berlioz  might  have 
achieved  Ms  effects  with  smaller  means  is  irrelevant:  the  point 

*  Conceived  first  as  an  oratorio  and  then  as  a  three-act  grand  opera,  this  apoc- 
alyptic conception  concerned  the  machinations  of  an  antichrist  finally  discomfited 
by  the  coming  of  the  true  Christ,  after  which,  as  Berlioz  wrote:  <cThe  piece  should 
not,  Bor  can  it,  be  carried  further."  It  was  to  have  soloists,  choruses,  and  two  orches- 
tras totaling  more  than  two  hundred  and  sixty  instrumentalists.  When  the  director 
of  the  Opera  finally  rejected  the  proposed  work,  Berlioz's  comment  was:  "He  dare 
not  accept  &w 


BERLIOZ  355 

is  that  he  achieved  them  with  these,  achieved  them,  too,  with- 
out a  touch  of  vulgarity  or  blatancy.  It  is  merely  unfortunate 
that  the  size  of  these  forces  will  always  prevent  the  Requiem 
from  becoming  familiar  in  full  dress.  Those  who  have  heard  it 
in  actual  performance — a  tiny  group — count  it  among  the  super- 
lative musical  experiences  of  their  lives.  For  instance,  Schumann 
said  of  one  section:  "This  Offertory  surpasses  all!"  And  W.  J. 
Turner,  admitting  that  the  single  performance  he  had  heard  was 
"good  without  being  adequate/'  said  of  another  section:  "There 
is  nothing  even  in  Verdi's  magnificent  Requiem  to  compare 
with  this  Tuba  mirum.  It  is  an  apocalyptic  vision  unparalleled, 
unimagined  before  or  since  in  music." 

The  premiere  of  the  Requiem  was  so  successful  that,  for  the 
first  time  in  his  life,  Berlioz  tasted  true  fame.  His  various  projects 
were  pushed  ahead  by  this  new  reclame,  and  soon  he  learned 
that  Benvenuto  Cellini  had  been  accepted  by  the  Opera,  though 
unhappily  it  could  not  be  scheduled  until  new  operas  by  Auber 
and  Hal6vy  could  be  staged.  There  was  some  organized  opposi- 
tion, largely  because  of  Berlioz's  connection  with  the  govern- 
ment paper.  Anyhow,  it  was  not  until  September  10,  1838,  that 
his  music  was  heard  for  the  first  time  at  the  Opera.  The  overture 
was  applauded;  the  rest  of  Benvenuto  Cellini  was  hissed.  Grimly, 
Berlioz  pretended  that  the  reaction  to  the  second  and  third 
performances  was  better,  but  even  if  this  was  true  the  cause  of 
the  opera  was  hopeless  after  Gilbert  Duprez,  the  leading  tenor, 
dropped  out.  The  opera  was  sung  once  more  four  months  later, 
and  that  was  all. 

Be  it  said  that  it  would  have  taken  a  mature  Mozart  who 
had  already  threaded  his  way  through  the  mazes  of  Die  Dauber- 
fiote  to  make  anything  of  the  complex  libretto  provided  by 
L6on  de  Wailly  and  Auguste  Barbier.  By  1844,  Berlioz,  perhaps 
convinced  that  Cellini  would  never  be  given  again,  worked  up 
some  of  its  most  attractive  melodies  and  fused  them  together 
into  the  dashing  and  ever-popular  overture,  Carnaval  romain. 
In  1851,  however,  Liszt,  then  musical  director  at  Weimar, 
expressed  a  desire  to  stage  the  opera  there.  Originally  Cellini 
had  been  a  two-acter;  to  Weimar,  Berlioz  delivered  a  three-act 
version  for  which  Peter  Cornelius  provided  a  German  text. 


356  MEN     OF    MUSIC 

Liszt  made  the  opera  successful,  and  he  frequently  repeated  it. 
Germany,  indeed,  continued  to  appreciate  Cellini,  though  it 
has  never  been  naturalized  elsewhere.  Outside  Germany,  Ben- 
mnuto  Cellini  is  not  likely  to  be  heard  (except  for  a  pious,  patriotic 
French  revival  now  and  then),  and  except  for  Le  Carnaval 
romain  only  the  original  overture  to  the  opera  itself  can  be  known 
to  a  large  audience. 

Berlioz's  despair  over  the  reception  of  Cellini  was  aggra- 
vated by  a  further  disappointment,  this  time  from  an  official 
quarter:  he  had  applied  for  the  professorship  in  harmony  at 
the  Conservatoire,  and  had  been  turned  down.  The  reason 
given  was  that  he  could  not  play  the  piano.*  The  blow  was 
softened,  somewhat  later,  by  his  appointment  as  assistant 
librarian  of  the  Conservatoire.  But  what  really  lifted  him  from 
his  despondency  resulted  from  Paganinfs  presence  at  a  per- 
formance of  Hardd  en  Italie.  The  satanic  violinist  was  hearing 
for  the  first  time  music  he  had  indirectly  inspired.  He  knelt  at 
Berlioz's  feet,  an  act  followed,  two  days  later,  by  a  more  sub- 
stantial gesture:  by  his  young  son  he  sent  Berlioz  a  draft  on  the 
Rothschild  bank  for  20,000  francs,  accompanying  it  with  the 
following  letter: 

My  dear  Friend, — Beethoven  is  dead,  and  Berlioz  alone  can  revive 
him.  I  have  heard  your  divine  compositions,  so  worthy  of  your  genius, 
arid  beg  you  to  accept,  in  token  of  my  homage,  twenty  thousand  francs, 
which  will  be  handed  to  you  by  the  Baron  de  Rothschild  on  presenta- 
tion of  the  enclosed. — Your  most  affectionate  friend,  Nicolb  PaganinL 

While  it  is  not  beyond  the  bounds  of  credibility  that  Paganini 
was  giving  away  his  own  money,  It  has  been  said  that  the  real 
source  of  the  gift  was  the  Bertin  family,  who  had  tactfully  used 
Paganini  as  their  agent  in  order  to  spare  Berlioz's  sensibilities. 
Freed  for  a  time  from  journalistic  hackwork  and  the  specter 
of  penury,  Berlioz  used  the  first  nine  months  of  1839  to  com- 
pose the  richest  of  his  tributes  to  Shakespeare.  This  was  the 
"dramatic  symphony,**  Rom^o  et  Juliette ,  which  he  gratefully, 
if  inappropriately,  dedicated  to  Paganini.  When,  with  Berlioz 

*  Berlioz  was  entirely  free  of  the  increasing  nineteenth-century  tendency  to 
think  in  terms  of  the  piano.  He  thought  directly  in  orchestral  terms,  and  he  suffers 
more  than  most  in  piano  transcription. 


BERLIOZ  357 

conducting,  it  was  performed  by  two  hundred  instrumentalists 
and  singers  at  the  Conservatoire  on  November  24,  1839,  it  was 
so  enthusiastically  received  that  he  repeated  it  twice  during 
December,  each  time  in  slightly  revised  form.  While  success 
elated  his  spirits,  his  finances  were  not  substantially  improved: 
the  three  concerts  netted  him  only  eleven  hundred  francs. 

Because  Romeo  et  Juliette  is  still  rarely  performed,  a  legend 
persists  that  it  is  a  formless  and  extremely  uneven  collection 
of  scenes.  Familiarity  with  this  music  teaches  that,  despite  the 
modicum  of  truth  in  this  legend,  this  delicately  strung  necklace 
of  beautifully  fashioned  musical  effects  has  quite  as  much  formal 
unity  as  certain  of  Berlioz's  works  that  have  achieved — one 
almost  wonders  how — the  canon  of  respectability.  The  totality 
of  Romeo  is  much  more  than  a  matrix  in  which  are  imbedded 
the  scintillant  Queen  Mab  scherzo,  the  ecstatic  Love  Scene, 
the  gaily  tumultuous  Grand  Fete  at  the  Gapulets',  and  other 
sections  of  varying  quality.  Rather,  it  is  the  dramatic  succession 
of  the  episodes  and  their  final  congruity  (not  necessarily  Shake- 
speare's), reverently  achieved.  The  element  that  inimical  critics 
have  sneeringly  castigated  as  fragmentariness  is  really  an 
exquisite  use  of  music's  unique  ability  to  be  all  suggestiveness 
and  evocation.  It  had  been  enough  for  a  Bellini  to  have  set 
the  feuds  of  the  Capulets  and  the  Montagues:  Berlioz's  music 
is  about  quite  another  thing — Shakespeare's  poetry.  This  is  the 
secret  of  his  grand  isolation  as  a  program  composer.  He  neglected 
the  events  and  concerned  himself  with  what  music  can  best 
complement,  atmosphere  and  essence.  If  Romeo  et  Juliette  has 
flaws,  they  come  precisely  at  those  moments  when  Berlioz 
deserts  atmosphere  and  essence  for  other  dimensions.  Thus,  the 
long  moral  tract  intoned  by  Friar  Laurence  has  a  Meyerbeerian 
orotundity  that  is  true  to  the  words  sung,  but  momentarily 
blighting  to  the  overall  spirit.  Fortunately,  the  effect  of  this 
curiously  inept  official  laying  of  the  funeral  wreaths  is  soon 
obliterated  by  the  memory  of  the  sweet  and  grave  intensity  of 
the  earlier  sections  of  this  unquestionable  masterpiece. 

Although  no  government  position  opened  up  for  Berlioz, 
it  seemed,  in  1839  and  1840,  as  though  France  had  begun  to 
consider  him  a  national  asset.  First  he  was  made  a  Chevalier 


358  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

of  the  Legion  of  Honor,  and  then  he  received  anotner  big 
commission,  this  time  to  supply  music  to  accompany  the  re- 
interment of  patriots  who  had  fallen  during  the  July  revolu- 
tion ten  years  before.  His  various  ideas  quickly  cohered  into 
the  largest  composition  ever  written  for  military  band,  the 
Symphonie  funebre  et  triomphale.  Berlioz,  who  feared  the  usual  mis- 
haps attendant  on  public  ceremonies,  took  the  precaution  of 
asking  a  large  assembly  of  notables  to  the  final  rehearsal. 
Fortunately  so,  for  he  reports  that,  as  played  during  the  parade 
on  July  28,  the  Symphonie  was  all  but  drowned  out  by  the  clamor 
of  the  crowd  and  finally  by  the  beating  of  fifty  drums  as  a  bored 
corps  of  the  Garde  National  marched  off.  And  all  this  despite 
the  enormous  forces  collected  to  give  full  weight  to  the  Symphonie 
— augmented  military  band  and  a  chorus  of  two  hundred  voices. 

The  Symphonie  funebre  et  triomphale  is  truly  a  carefully  executed 
piece  ^occasion.  Gone  from  it  are  the  subtleties  and  niceties  of 
Berlioz's  orchestral  writing,  and  gone  too  are  those  delicately 
related  episodes  which  are  at  the  core  of  his  dramatic  idiom. 
Here  he  submerged  himself  and  dedicated  his  unparalleled 
instrumental  technique  strictly  to  the  business  at  hand — to  a 
rhythmically  dignified  Marche  funebre,  an  appropriate  Oraison 
funebre  with  an  extensive  and  telling  trombone  solo,  and  a 
jubilant  Apotheose.  Wagner,  who  heard  a  somewhat  revised 
version  of  the  Symphonie,  thought  it  the  best  of  Berlioz's  works  up 
to  that  time,  and  wrote  of  the  Apotheose,  with  its  mighty  fan- 
fares: "Berlioz  has  a  gift  for  popular  writing  of  the  best  kind. 
I  felt  that  every  urchin  with  a  blue  blouse  and  a  red  bonnet 
would  understand  this  music  thoroughly."  It  is  amusing  that 
Wagner  had  been  content  to  dismiss  the  Berlioz  of  Romeo  et 
Juliette  as  "devilishly  smart."* 

After  the  Symphonie  funebre  et  triomphale,  Berlioz  did  not  com- 
plete a  major  work  for  six  years.  This  artistic  inactivity  reflected 
the  sad  state  of  his  domestic  affairs,  giving  point  to  the  oft- 
repeated  idea  that  he  was  dogged  by  ill  luck  a  large  part  of 
his  life.  Just  when  he  was  beginning  to  receive  substantial 

*  The  first  complete  American  performance  of  the  Symphonie  funebre  et  triomphale 
was  given  on  the  Mall  in  Central  ?ark,  New  York,  by  the  Goldman  Band>  on  June 
23>  1947- 


BERLIOZ  359 

worldly  recognition,  his  marriage  to  the  Henriette  of  his  dreams 
went  to  pieces.  In  eight  years  she  had  become  a  fat,  blowsy, 
and  shrewish  woman  whose  sole  virtue  was  loyalty  to  him,  but 
a  loyalty  perverted  by  jealousy  into  a  vice.  Her  tantrums  left 
Berlioz  limp  and  drove  their  seven-year-old  son  into  hysterics. 
Sentimentality  alone  held  Berlioz  to  her,  but  finally  increasing 
separation  became  essential  to  his  peace  of  mind — and  he 
foolishly  fled  to  the  arms  of  another  woman  with  whom  he  was 
to  repeat,  with  little  change,  the  cycle  of  Henriette.  This  woman 
was  Marie-Genevieve  Martin,  who  for  the  operatic  stage  had 
adopted  the  name  of  Marie  Recio.  Berlioz  first  heard  her  in  the 
role  of  Ines  in  Donizetti's  La  Fauorita,  and  was  more  impressed 
by  her  fine  figure  than  by  her  middling  voice.  By  1842,  when  he 
set  out  for  Brussels,  she  accompanied  him  as  his  mistress.  Now 
his  financial  difficulties  were  complicated  by  the  necessity  of 
keeping  up  two  households.  He  soon  came  to  realize  that  he  had 
exchanged  one  shrew  for  another,  but  so  inextricably  was  he 
held  in  Marie's  toils  that  within  seven  months  of  Henriette's 
death,  in  1854,  he  married  her. 

Now  succeeded  a  long  period  of  wanderings  throughout 
Europe,  possibly  calculated  as  much  to  escape  his  domestic 
troubles  as  to  enhance  his  fame  and  fill  his  pockets.  Also,  two 
failures  wounded  him  deeply:  first,  he  did  not  succeed  to 
the  Institut  chair  left  vacant  by  the  death  of  Cherubini;  second,, 
he  was  passed  over  for  the  inspectorship  of  singing  in  the  primary 
schools*  Unless  he  was  to  devote  his  time  to  journalism,  it 
seemed  to  Berlioz  that  the  only  hope  lay  outside  France.  After 
two  concerts  in  Brussels  in  December,  1842,  he  made  what  was 
largely  a  triumphal  tour  through  Germany,  not  returning  to 
Paris  for  five  months.  He  was  rightly  acclaimed,  for  as  a  conduc- 
tor he  was  without  a  peer.  En  route,  he  met,  or  renewed  ac- 
quaintance with,  Schumann,  Meyerbeer,  Wagner,  and  Men- 
delssohn. With  the  last,  who  disliked  Berlioz's  music  violently, 
he  exchanged  batons.  He  was  delighted  to  learn  that  some  of  his 
compositions  had  found  great  favor  in  Germany,  notably  the 
overture  to  Les  Francs-Juges,  parts  of  the  Fantastique,  and  the 
cantata  Le  Cinq  mat. 

From  May,  1843,  Berlioz  remained  in  France  for  over  two 


360  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

years2  during  which  time  he  composed  the  Carnaval  romatn  and 
the  first  version  of  the  Corsaire  overture  (La  Tour  de  Nice), 
published  his  Traite  de  F  instrumentation  et  £  orchestration  (which 
he  listed  among  his  musical  works  as  Opus  10)  and  Voyage 
musical  en  Allemagne  et  en  IUdie>  the  first  installments  of  his  pun- 
gent musical  reminiscences,*  He  was  often  outside  Paris,  no 
doubt  recuperating  from  too  much  of  Henriette  (the  generously 
provided-for  invalid  never  ceased  to  throw  out  martyr's  ten- 
tacles) and  from  too  much  of  Marie  and  her  Spanish  mother. 
By  August3  1845,  Berlioz  was  sufficiently  calm  to  represent 
the  Journal  des  debits  at  the  unveiling  of  the  Beethoven  monu- 
ment at  Bonn.  There,  again,  he  was  warmly  greeted  by  Liszt, 
who  had  enlisted  his  help,  some  years  before,  to  raise  a  part 
of  the  miserly  sum  that  France  contributed  to  the  memorial. 
There,  too,  he  witnessed  the  tumultuous  scenes  that  succeeded 
on  Liszt's  calling  attention  to  the  regrettable  phenomenon  of 
French  parsimony. 

Thus  far,  Berlioz's  nomad  years  had  borne  small  fruit,  Now, 
during  1846,  a  year  marked  by  the  adulation  of  crowds  in 
Austria,  Bohemia,  Germany,  and  Hungary,  and  by  the  gift  of 
a  purse  of  eleven  hundred  francs  from  the  mad  Emperor 
Ferdinand  (who  confessed  himself  "amused"),  he  found  time 
to  work  out  the  revision  of  that  remarkable  Opus  i,  Huit  Scenes 
ck  Faust  (1828-29).  At  IBBS  along  the  way,  in  jolting  postchaises, 
wherever  he  could  snatch  a  few  minutes  alone,  he  thought  and 
sketched,  transforming  that  cantata  with  solo  numbers  into  the 
"dramatic  legend"  he  called  La  Damnation  de  Faust.  Some  dis- 
parate elements  went  into  its  fabrication*  For  instance,  he  took 
the  liberty  of  transporting  Faust  to  the  plains  of  Hungary  in 
order  to  include  his  orchestral  version  of  the  traditional  Hun- 
garian Rakoczy  Marchy  written  in  one  night  at  Vienna  for  use 

*  Berlioz  salvaged  other  considerable  portions  of  his  journalistic  work  in  three 
enchanting  nuaccUarri.es  of  criticism  and  gossip:  Les  Soirees  de  I'otchestre  (1853),  Les 
Grotesques  de  la  musique  (1859),  and  A  trovers  Chants  (1862).  Parts  of  the  Voyage 
musical  were  mosaicked  into  the  M&moires.  Witty  and  acute,  and  abounding  in 
memorable  phrases,  and  prophetic  judgments,  these  writings,  in  a  century,,  have 
lost  none  of  their  vitality.  They  have  the  fascination  of  fiction  (and,  indeed,  Berlioz 
was  not  averse  to  creating  a  legend  so  as  to  point  a  moral)  and  the  solidity  of  great 
criticism.  In  the  use  of  the  printed  word,  he  is  not  the  peer  of  Schumann  and 
Wagner,  but  their  master. 


BERLIOZ  361 

at  Budapest  some  days  later.  Finished  in  October,  La  Damna- 
tion^ at  its  first  performance,  in  Paris  on  December  63  only  half 
filled  the  Op6ra-Comique,  and  was  received  coldly.  Two  weeks 
later,  its  second  performance  was  an  utter  failure.  At  this  point 
Berlioz,  again  let  down  by  the  Paris  he  so  loved,  may  have 
wished  that  he  had  not  prevented  his  name  from  being  placed 
in  nomination  for  the  directorship  of  the  Imperial  Chapel  in 
Vienna. 

Time  was  when  it  was  relatively  easy  to  hear  La  Damnation 
de  Faust  even  outside  France,  but  now,  paradoxically,  with 
the  vogue  for  Berlioz  increasing,  it  has  dropped  outside  the 
plans  of  our  musical  dictators,  in  this  apparently  sharing  the 
fate  of  all  but  a  few  works  that  partake  of  the  nature  of  oratorio. 
Nor  is  it  any  longer  heard  adapted  as  an  opera.  Few  losses  to 
the  variety  and  vitality  of  the  repertoire  are  greater,  for  it  con- 
tains some  of  Berlioz's  most  dramatic  pages.  If  in  Romeo  et 
Juliette  Berlioz's  music  is  about  the  poetry  of  Shakespeare,  in 
La  Damnation  de  Faust  it  is  as  little  as  possible  about  Goethe's 
philosophico-poetic  melange.  In  its  best  sections,  Berlioz  has, 
in  fact,  Shakespeareanized  Goethe.  World-famous,  in  addition 
to  the  Rakoczy  March^  and  always  to  be  heard,  are  the  Minuet 
of  the  Will-o'-the- Wisps  and  the  Dance  of  the  Sylphs,  but  equally 
alluring  is  much  of  the  vocal  music,  especially  Marguerite's 
wistful  soliloquy,  Le  Rot  de  ThuU^  Faust's  sumptuous  invoca- 
tion, "Immense  nature"  and  MephistopMles'  lush  and  seduc- 
tive "Void  des  roses"  La  Damnation  de  Faust  is  an  album  of 
wonderfully  poetic,  economically  composed  scenes,  almost 
always — not  usually  a  Berliozian  merit — of  heavenly  length.  Of 
all  these  composers,  great  or  otherwise — Liszt,  Wagner,  Gounod, 
and  Boito  included — who  have  gone  to  the  Faust  story  for 
inspiration  (or  puzzlement),  Berlioz,  at  least  in  returning  richly 
laden,  is  facile  princeps. 

In  1847,  Berlioz  tried  his  luck  in  Russia,  conducting  in  St. 
Petersburg,  Moscow,  and  Riga.  Throughout  this  tour,  his 
artistic  success  was  monumental,  his  profits  satisfactory.  A 
piquant  note  was  added  by  a  passing  and  innocent  romance 
with  a  young  Russian  corset-maker  (his  taste  in  women  was 
never  to  gain  in  relevance):  this  was  probably  a  necessary 


362  MEN      OF      MUSIC 

respite  from  the  complaints  of  the  now-paralyzed  Henriette 
and  the  tirades  of  the  shrewish  Marie.  Returning  toward  France, 
Berlioz  lingered  at  Berlin  to  conduct  a  performance  of  La 
Damnation  de  Faust  under  the  double  patronage  of  Friedrich 
Wilhelm  IV  and  Meyerbeer.  The  Prussian  king  complimented 
him,  but  the  higher  critics  were  incensed  by  what  they  con- 
sidered his  cavalier  treatment  of  Goethe,  and  sulked  loftily.  He 
returned  to  Paris  with  one  tenth  of  the  i5O,ooo-franc  profit 
Balzac  had  prophesied  for  the  tour,  commenting  dryly:  "This 
great  mind  had  the  weakness  of  seeing  fortunes  everywhere  .  .  ." 
A  summer  visit  to  La  C6te-Saint-Andr6  prepared  him  for  the 
disasters  of  the  coming  season. 

By  November  Berlioz  was  in  England  for  the  first  time,  having 
been  engaged  by  Louis- Antoine  Jullien,  one  of  the  prime  fan- 
tastics  of  the  age,*  to  conduct  four  concerts  and  a  season  of 
opera  at  Drury  Lane,  including  the  world  premiere  of  a  three- 
act  opera  composed  especially  for  this  English  season.  Although 
Jullien's  plans  were  on  an  unrealistically  vast  scale,  his  arrange- 
ment with  Berlioz,  apparently  generous,  was,  on  analysis,  on 
the  cautious  side:  £400  for  the  opera-conducting,  £400  for  the 
concerts,  and  £800  for  the  new  opera — if  it  reached  a  seventieth 
performance.  As  it  worked  out,  Berlioz  touched  only  the  first  of 
these  moneys,  for  shortly  Jullien  was  suffering  from  one  of  his 
numerous  bankruptcies.  The  opera  season  had  opened  aus- 
piciously with  the  triumphant  success  of  Lucia  di  Lammermoor, 
but  the  profits  were  quickly  eaten  up  by  fees  to  the  expensive 
official  window-dressing  (Sir  Henry  Bishop  and  others,  whom 
Jullien  had  ostentatiously  engaged  to  advise  him).  By  January, 
1848,  the  season  could  be  chalked  up  as  a  failure.  But  Berlioz 
remained  stubbornly  in  London:  he  liked  the  English,  and  was 
dismayed  at  the  idea  of  returning  to  a  revolution-torn  France 
(Louis-Philippe  was  overthrown  in  February,  and  not  until 
December  were  conditions  somewhat  stabilized  by  the  election 

*  THs  madman  was  a  strange  compound  of  the  best  and  the  worst.  He  had  such 
a  reverence  for  Beethoven  that  he  would  conduct  his  works  only  with  a  jeweled 
baton  and  wearing  a  pan:  of  white  kid  gloves  handed  to  him  on  a  silver  salver  just 
before  the  performance.  He  was  once  barely  dissuaded  from  publishing  a  setting 
•of  the  jLord's  Prayer  with  this  legend  engraved  on  the  title  page:  "Words  by  Jesus 
Christ;  Music  by  Juilien." 


BERLIOZ  363 

of  Louis-Napoleon  as  president).  He  was  not  inactive,  and 
between  two  successful  concerts  he  began  to  put  together  those 
Memoires  which  give  him  pre-eminence  as  a  musical  litterateur. 
When  he  finally  returned  to  Paris  in  July,  The  Musical  Times, 
anticipating  the  fame  Berlioz  was  later  to  enjoy  in  England, 
commented:  "We  feel  that  a  great  and  original  mind  has  gone 
from  among  us/' 

The  Paris  to  which  Berlioz  returned  was  in  its  doldrums,  and 
it  was  difficult  to  give  concerts  or  work  as  a  musical  journalist. 
Fortunately,  his  financial  prospects  brightened.  In  July  his  father 
died,  and  he  could  hope  eventually  to  receive  a  legacy  of 
130,000  francs.  In  the  meanwhile,  he  could  borrow  against  this. 
In  November,  too,  any  fears  he  may  have  entertained  about  his 
relations  to  the  new  regime  were  quieted  when  the  National 
Assembly,  which  had  cut  off  his  salary  at  the  Conservatoire, 
voted  him  five  hundred  francs  to  encourage  his  efforts  as  a  com- 
poser, and  his  position  in  the  Conservatoire  library  was  con- 
tinued. By  1849,  &e  was  again  hard  at  work  as  critic  for  the 
Journal  des  debats  and  the  Gazette  musicale.  The  composition 
of  a  Te  Deum  was  proceeding  simultaneously:  possibly  the 
waxing  of  Louis-Napoleon's  star  gave  Berlioz  the  not  unnatural 
hope  that  mighty  events  might  soon  be  commemorated  by 
mighty  music.  But  the  third  Bonaparte  was  apathetic  to  art,  and 
this  enormous  work  for  three  choirs,  orchestra,  and  organ  had 
to  wait  six  years  for  a  performance,  when,  in  the  Church  of 
Saint-Eustache,  Berlioz  conducted  it,  on  April  30,  as  a  prelude 
to  the  opening  of  the  Exposition  Universelle  of  1855.  As  a 
comment  on  Berlioz's  shrewd  and  economic  borrowings  from 
himself,  it  is  amusing  to  note  that  parts  of  the  Te  Deum  date 
back  to  sketches  for  an  apotheosis  of  Napoleon  I,  which  had 
been  pondered  in  Italy  in  1832. 

The  Te  Deum  is  one  of  those  too-numerous  compositions  of 
Berlioz's  about  which,  as  a  listening  experience,  it  is  all  but 
impossible  to  write  at  first  hand.  Examination  of  the  score  and 
the  testimony  of  musical  observers  of  the  past  easily  persuade 
us  that  the  Te  Deum  should  be  resurrected.  Berlioz  himself 
called  the  Judex  crederis>  its  seventh  section,  "my  most  gran- 
diose creation,"  and  Tom  S.  Wotton,  one  of  the  most  sapient 


364  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

of  Berliozians,  pronounced  it  "amongst  the  greatest  movements 
in  music,"  adding  that  "it  alone  should  place  Berlioz  amongst 
the  supreme  masters  of  the  art,"  Apparently  it  is  a  high  spot  in 
the  music  of  terror,  the  opposite  number  to  Michelangelo's 
Last  Judgment.  Not  all  of  the  eight  sections  of  the  Te  Deum 
are  of  this  oppressive  mightiness;  several  of  them  are  of  per- 
suasive lyrical  beauty.  Throughout,  Berlioz  makes  the  most 
discreet  use  of  his  big  choral  batteries,  reserving  them  for  the 
true  dimaxes.  And  the  use  of  the  organ,  too,  marks  Berlioz's 
supremacy  in  the  understanding  of  instruments:  not  merely 
does  it  add  its  diapasons  to  the  most  tremendous  cascades  of 
sound,  but  it  is  also  used  tenderly  as  a  solo  performer,  notably 
in  the  prelude  to  the  second  section,  Tibi  omnes.  As  any  Te 
Deum  is  in  a  real  sense  a  puce  d'oc^asion,  Berlioz's  might  lose 
some  of  its  effectiveness  if  given  apart  from  a  large  celebration 
of  a  jubilant  nature.  * 

While  in  England,  Berlioz  had  been  impressed  by  the  Phil- 
harmonic Society,  the  conduct  of  whose  instrumentalists  he 
excepted  from  his  condemnation  of  the  casualness  of  English 
musicians.  In  1850,  he  attempted  to  establish  its  counterpart 
in  Paris.  The  first  concert  of  the  Societ6  Philharmonique  was 
given  on  February  19,  with  the  nineteen-year-old  Joachim  as 
soloist;  little  more  than  a  year  later,  on  March  25,  1851,  the 
Soci6t€,  soon  to  breathe  its  last,  presented  Berlioz's  new  choral 
work3  ominously  entitled  La  Menace  des  Francs.  More  impor- 
tant, during  this  period  Berlioz  was  working  on.  La  Fuite  en 
Egypte^  eventually  to  become  the  second  part  of  L'Enfance  du 
Christ.  He  tried  out  part  of  La  Fuite  late  in  1850,  incidentally 
perpetrating  a  malicious  practical  joke  on  the  critical  pundits 
of  the  French  capital.  He  announced  this  little  chorus  of  shep- 
herds as  the  work  of  "Pierre  Ducre,  music-master  of  the  Sainte- 
Ghapelle  in  Paris  in  the  seventeenth  century" — and  only  one 
critic  seemed  to  imply  that  Ducre  was  a  figment  of  Berlioz's 
imagination:  Leon  Kreutzer2  probably  tipped  off  by  the  joker 
himself,  remarked  in  the  Gazette  musicale  that  this  music  "was 

*The  Te  Deum,  conducted  by  Walter  Daroroschj  was  sung  at  the  opening  of 
Music  (later  Carnegie)  Hall,  New  York,  on  May  5^  1891. 


BERLIOZ  365 

very  happily  modulated  for  a  period  when  they  scarcely  modu- 
lated at  all/5 

After  the  failure  of  the  Soci6t6  PMharmonique,  Berlioz  was 
sent,  as  the  official  representative  of  French  music,  to  the  Great 
Exhibition  of  1851,  held  in  London's  new  Crystal  Palace.  While 
in  England,  he  completed  negotiations  to  become  for  six  years 
the  conductor  of  the  New  Philharmonic  Society,  a  post  he 
assumed  the  following  year.  He  must  have  gone  to  London  that 
time  with  some  reluctance,  for  on  March  20,  1852,  Liszt  staged, 
at  Weimar,  the  first  performance  of  Benvenuto  Cellini  since 
its  original  failure  thirteen  years  before.  Four  days  later,  at 
Exeter  Hall,  Berlioz  led  the  orchestra  of  the  New  Philharmonic 
Society  in  its  first  concert,  presenting  the  first  four  parts  of 
Romeo  et  Juliette  in  English  translation.  Another  concert  was 
a  more  dramatic  occasion:  he  conducted  excerpts  from  La  Ves- 
tale  with  a  baton  brought  to  London  by  Spontini's  widow,  and 
which  the  great  classicist  had  used  in  directing  the  operas  of 
Gluck  and  Mozart.  On  April  28,  Berlioz's  program  included 
Weber's  Conzertstuck,  with  the  piano  solo  confided  to  his  former 
inamorata,  Mme  Camille  PleyeL  Things  went  badly  during  the 
Weber,  but  after  this  lapse  of  years  it  is  impossible  to  tell  whether 
her  charge  that  the  conductor  had  bungled  the  accompaniment 
was  true  or  catty.  No  doubt,  however,  about  Berlioz's  stature 
as  a  conductor  was  left  after  two  magnificent  readings  of  Bee- 
thoven's Ninth  Symphony.  Yet,  though  the  press  was  wildly 
laudatory  and  the  glories  of  these  concerts  lingered  in  the  minds 
of  musical  London  for  years,  the  season  ended  with  a  deficit, 
and  Berlioz's  contract  lapsed. 

Fortunately,  the  disappointment  of  the  London  venture  was 
mitigated  by  Liszt's  decision  to  set  aside  a  week  in  November, 
1852,  for  a  Berlioz  festival.  At  Weimar,  Berlioz  was  lionized 
wherever  he  went,  and  Benvenuto  Cellini,,  Romeo  et  Juliette,  and 
the  first  two  parts  of  La  Damnation  cte  Faust  (Cellini  under  Liszt's 
baton,  the  others  led  by  the  composer)  were  received  with  the 
applause  that  his  music  was  eliciting  throughout  Germany.  At 
a  banquet,  the  Grand  Duke  of  Saxe-Weimar  bestowed  upon 
him  the  Order  of  the  Falcon.  This  uninterrupted  ovation  was 
the  beginning  of  a  series  of  visits  to  Germany  that  lasted  until 


366  MEN     OF    MUSIC 

September,  1856.  In  the  midst  of  his  triumphs,  Berlioz's  cool- 
headed  wit  did  not  desert  him:  he  noted  that  when  Bettina  von 
Arnim,  the  now-decrepit  lady  who  had  been  Beethoven's  friend 
and  Goethe's  Egeria,  called  on  him,  she  said  that  she  had  come 
"not  to  see  me,  but  to  look  at  me."  His  German  canonization 
may  be  said  to  have  taken  place  when  he  conducted  two  Gewand- 
haus  concerts  in  December,  1853:  Liszt,  Brahms,  Cornelius, 
Joachim,  Raff,  and  Eduard  Remenyi  were  in  the  audience.  This 
unreserved  acclaim  must  have  intensified  Berlioz's  mortification 
when,  at  the  height  of  his  German  triumph,  the  news  came  to 
him  that  he  had  again  been  passed  over  for  a  seat  in  the  Institut, 
lor  a  nonentity  as  usual. 

On  March  3, 1 854,  the  official  Mme  Berlioz  finally  died.  Three 
days  later,  Berlioz  wrote  to  his  son,  now  an  apprentice  seaman: 
"You  will  never  know  what  we  have  suffered  from  one  another, 
your  mother  and  I  ..."  Considering  the  circumstances,  it  is 
not  at  all  strange  that  he  was  able,  less  than  a  month  later,  to 
conduct  a  concert  at  Hanover  with  vigor  and  success.  All  in 
all,  Henriette's  death  was  a  great  release,  and  after  a  decent 
interval  he  married  Marie  Recio.  Again  he  wrote  to  Louis: 
"This  liaison,  as  you  will  readily  understand,  had  become 
indissoluble  from  the  mere  facts  of  its  duration;  I  could  neither 
live  alone  nor  abandon  the  person  who  had  been  living  with 
me  for  fourteen  years."  This  sounds  like  a  conscientious  man's 
excuse  for  a  bad  habit  he  could  not  relinquish,  and  Marie  is 
never  mentioned  by  name  in  the  Memoires.  In  the  meantime, 
another  official  post  had  eluded  his  grasp  when  Liszt  and  Hans 
von  Billow  failed  to  get  him  appointed  to  the  Hoftheater  at 
Dresden — and  this  despite  the  superb  series  of  concerts  Ber- 
lioz had  just  conducted  there.  Yet  1854  was  important  to  him 
for  more  than  the  death  of  Henriette  and  his  marriage  to 
Marie:  before  it  was  over  he  had  completed  the  Memoires  (except 
for  a  few  later  additions)  and  VEnfance  du  Christ. 

At  the  Salle  Herz,  Paris,  on  December  10,  1854,  Berlioz  con- 
ducted the  premiere  of  this  oratorio  or  "sacred  trilogy,"  the 
first  of  his  works  for  which  he  wrote  the  entire  text.  Its  success 
was  so  immediate  and  unmixed  (five  performances  in  Paris 


BERLIOZ  367 

and  three  in  Brussels  in  four  and  a  half  months)  that  Berlioz 
was  almost  embittered  by  it,  as  he  felt  that  it  tended  to  cast 
doubt  retroactively  on  the  quality  of  earlier  works  composed 
in  quite  different  spirit.  For  VEnfance  du  Christ  is  primarily 
meditative  and  pastoral,  and  is  often  lighted  by  a  sort  of  antique, 
lyrical  grace.  The  scoring  is  delicate,  the  orchestra  small. 
The  first  section,  Le  Songe  d'Herode,  centers  on  the  obsessive  fears 
of  the  neurasthenic  King  of  Judaea,  and  ends,  with  a  dramatic 
change  of  scene,  in  the  manger  at  Bethlehem,  where  a  choir 
of  angels  warns  Mary  and  Joseph  to  flee.  Part  two,  La  Fuite 
en  Egypte^  consists  of  a  brief  overture  followed  by  two  sections 
of  extraordinary  beauty:  L' 'Adieu  des  bergers,  a  piercingly  sweet 
vocal  melodic  line  exquisitely  caressed  by  the  oboe,  and  Le 
Repos  de  la  Sainte-Famille>  the  tenor-narrator's  simple  comment 
on  a  poignantly  touching  situation.  The  third  section  of  VEn~ 
fance  is  called  L'Arrivie  a  Sais*  Here  Mary  and  Joseph  seek 
lodging,  knocking  vainly  at  doors  until  at  the  home  of  the 
Ishmaelites  they  are  finally  admitted.  This  pitiable  situation  is 
made  the  most  of,  and  the  section  ends  in  a  choral  epilogue 
about  which  Berlioz  himself  wrote  ecstatically:  "It  seems  to  me 
to  contain  a  feeling  of  infinite,  of  divine  love/' 

Berlioz's  friendship  with  Liszt  reached  its  height  during  1855 
and  1856.  He  made  three  visits  to  Weimar,  the  first  time  to 
attend  another  Berlioz  week,  for  which  Raff  had  written  a 
Latin  cantata  in  his  honor.  He  found  a  new  intimate  in  Liszt's 
mistress,  Princess  Carolyne  Sayn-Wittgenstein,  a  woman  with  a 
vigorous  cast  of  mind,  a  busy  pen,  and  a  quenchless  box  of 
black  cigars — a  true  original  for  whom  Berlioz  felt  a  kinship. 
It  was  in  April,  1855,  that  she  forthrightly  directed  him  to 
compose  an  opera  based  on  the  Aeneid,  thereby  pulling  together 
various  ideas  that  had  been  floating  around  in  his  mind.  These 
concerned  the  composition  of  a  big  opera,  a  project  that  he 
himself  had  at  times  vaguely  connected  with  his  childhood 
worship  of  Virgil.  For  one  month  short  of  three  years  he  was 
to  be  intermittently  at  work  on  the  libretto  and  score  of  what 
turned  out  to  be  a  five-act  opera,  Les  Troyens.  Before  it  was 
finished,  Berlioz  had  again  conducted  in  London,  had  composed 


368  MEN   OF   MUSIC 

L'lmpfrialt,*  a  cantata  for  the  closing  of  the  Paris  Exposition 
(which  the  Te  Deum  had  ushered  in),  and  had  received  a  gold 
medal  from  Napoleon  III.  Intellectually,  he  was  refreshed  by 
several  meetings  with  Wagner,  who  at  this  period  reciprocated 
his  feelings.  Finally,  his  ego  was  elated  by  that  prize  after  which 
he  had  so  long  yearned,  election  to  the  Institut,  in  which  he 
succeeded  to  the  fauteuil  left  vacant  by  the  death  of  Adolphe 
Adam. 

Although  Berlioz  by  this  time  enjoyed  some  financial  security, 
this  was  outweighed  by  increasing  torture  from  what  his  phy- 
sicians called  "neuralgia  of  the  stomach/'  a  vague  term  that 
precise  modern  medical  nomenclature  does  not  recognize. 
Doubtless  this  was  a  neurasthenic  condition  brought  on  by 
thwarted  ambition  and  exacerbated  by  hopes  delayed.  Never- 
theless, Les  Trcyens  progressed.  He  discussed  the  finest  points 
with  Princess  Sayn-Wittgenstein  by  letter,  but  the  final  text  was 
as  completely  his  own  as  the  music.  The  entire  five-act  opera 
lay  complete  on  his  desk  by  March,  1858.  Then  began  the  grim, 
disheartening  fight  to  have  it  produced.  At  first  it  seemed  that 
the  Op6ra  would  mount  it3  perhaps  even — like  Tannhauser — 
at  Napoleon  IIFs  behest. 

Suddenly,  and  rather  paradoxically,  after  the  failure  of 
Tannhauser  (which  must  have  seemed  to  the  directorate  a  most 
radical  work),  the  Opera  decided,  in  June,  1861,  to  stage  Les 
Troyens.  Then  for  almost  two  years  the  directors  kept  Berlioz 
dangling,  and  at  one  time  definitely  scheduled  the  staging  for 
March,  1863.  While  he  alternately  hoped  and  despaired, 
tragedy  and  success  were  his  ia  equal  portions.  In  1 860,  partly 
to  relieve  his  nerves,  he  had  accepted  a  commission  to  compose 
a  comic  opera,  and  had  elected  to  write  his  own  libretto  to 
Shakespeare's  Much  Ado  About  Nothing,  calling  it  Beatrice  et 
Benedict.  This  was  for  Baden-Baden,  the  cosmopolitan  spa  whose 
music  festivals,  sponsored  by  the  proprietor  of  the  casino,  Berlioz 
iiad  been  conducting  since  1856.  Beatrice  et  Benedict,  completed 
in  the  spring  of  1862,  was  presented  successfully  at  the  festival 
the  following  August,  but  in  June,  Berlioz's  second  wife  had 

*  Perhaps  "dusted  off**  is  a  better  phrase,  for  Ulmperide  appears  to  have  been 
identical  with  Le  Dix  decembrey  presented  earlier  that  year. 


BERLIOZ  369 

died  suddenly,  and  he  conducted  in  physical  pain  and  mental 
anguish.  As  the  crucial  month  of  March,  1863,  came  and  went, 
and  the  Opera  failed  to  stage  Les  Troyens^  the  weary  composer 
began  to  listen  to  the  entreaties  of  Leon  Carvalho,  who  wished 
to  stage  a  section  of  the  long  opera  at  his  Theitre-Lyrique. 
Berlioz,  who  above  all  wished  to  hear  his  opera  performed 
before  he  died,  agreed  with  misgivings.  Then  he  went  to  Weimar, 
where  Beatrice  et  Benedict  was  sung  in  German  translation.  In 
June  he  conducted  L'Enfance  du  Christ  at  the  Lower  Rhine 
Festival  at  Strasbourg.  Finally,  on  November  4,  the  last  three 
acts  of  Les  Troyens — rearranged  as  five  acts,  and  provided  with 
a  prologue  especially  written  to  acquaint  the  audience  with  the 
preceding  two  acts — reached  the  stage  as  Les  Troyens  a  Carthage.  * 
It  had  a  dress  rehearsal  and  twenty-one  performances.  This 
was  the  only  part  of  his  great  opera  that  Berlioz  ever  heard,  and 
it  was  not  until  twenty-one  years  after  his  death  that  Felix 
Mottl,  Wagnerian  extraordinary,  nobly  staged  Les  Troyens  whole5 
though  in  German,  at  Karlsruhe. 

The  spirit  of  Les  Troyens  is  as  far  removed  from  that  of  the 
Sympkonie  Jantastique  and  Lelia  as  music  could  well  be  and 
still  be  recognizably  the  same  composer's.  Here  at  last  is  Ber- 
lioz's eloge  to  Gluck,  the  more  glorious  because  so  long  medi- 
tated. This  is  not,  in  any  sense  that  Weber,  Schumann,  or  the 
young  Berlioz  himself  would  have  admitted,  romantic  music; 
it  is  a  classical  work  with  romantic  touches  derived  faithfully 
from  Virgil — or  it  is  a  romantic  work  in  classical  leading- 
strings.  At  all  events,  it  exists  to  confound  those  who  would 
rigorously  parcel  off  areas  with  little  signs  marked  "classical** 
and  "romantic." 

This  tremendous  tale  of  the  taking  of  Troy,  the  loves  of 
Dido  and  Aeneas,  and  Aeneas's  departure  to  keep  his  date  with 
destiny  (as  the  opera  closes,  the  chorus  chants,  "Rome!  Rome!" 
and  the  Capitol  looms  in  the  background  like  a  Mediterranean 
Valhalla)  runs  for  four  hours  and  a  half,  not  counting  inter- 
missions. Opera  managers,  willing  to  subject  their  patrons  to 
Parsifal  at  least  once  a  year,  can  find  reasons  for  depriving  these 
same  patrons  of  Berlioz's  masterpiece.  Therefore,  it  is  possible 

*  The  fiist  part,  given  alone,  is  known  as  La  Prise  de  Troie* 


370  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

to  judge  the  quality  of  Les  Troyens  only  from  the  printed  score, 
from  excerpts,  whether  recorded  or  heard  in  the  concert  hall, 
and  from,  the  reports  of  those  fortunate  musical  observers  who 
heard  the  Karlsruhe  performance  of  1890  or  the  Glasgow  revival 
of  1935,  the  latter  disclosing  it,  as  Sir  Donald  Tovey  testified, 
"as  one  of  the  most  gigantic  and  convincing  masterpieces  of 
music-drama/5  Even  a  knowledge  of  Les  Troyens  confined  to 
Hylas's  "Vallan  sonore"  Aeneas's  "Inuliles  regrets"  the  Marche 
troyenne,  and  the  Chasse  rqyale  et  orage  would  persuade  us  to 
echo  this  pronouncement.  Les  Troyens,  quite  as  much  as  Rom'eo 
et  Juliette,  leads  inevitably  to  the  conclusion  that  Berlioz  was 
the  greatest  French  composer  between  Rameau  and  Debussy. 
Les  Troyens  would  have  been  a  fitting  capstone  to  Berlioz's 
career.  In  it,  as  Cecil  Gray  wrote,  ".  .  .  he  is  a  classical  master 
in  the  pure  Latin  tradition;  the  volcanic,  tempestuous  energy 
of  the  early  works  gives  place  to  a  majestic  dignity  and  restraint 
worthy  of  Sophocles  himself,  and  to  a  serenity  and  sweetness 
that  can  only  be  called  Virgilian."  But  though  it  was  the  last  of 
his  major  works  to  reach  performance,  Beatrice  et  Benedict  was 
the  last  of  them  to  be  composed.  This  two-acter  is  both  an 
opera-comique  in  the  French  sense  (it  has  spoken  dialogue)  and 
a  comic  opera  in  the  English  sense  (it  is  amusing  and  has  a  happy 
ending).  Again,  though  Beatrice  et  Benedict  has  been  compared 
by  W.  J.  Turner  to  such  masterpieces  of  the  comic  spirit  as 
Le  Nozze  di  Figaro,  The  Barber  of  Seville,  and  Falstaf,  it  has  been 
almost  utterly  neglected,  and  must  be  judged,  as  we  are  forced 
to  judge  Les  Troyens,  chiefly  at  second  hand.  Its  overture  is 
light  and  deft,  a  pleasant  concert  number,  but  by  110  means  so 
ingeniously  conceived  and  executed  as  many  of  the  scenes  in 
the  opera.  It  would  be  pleasant  to  record  that  this  light,  witty 
music  reflected  an  eventide  serenity  like  that  reflected  in  Verdi's 
Falstaf:  that  it  was  written  in  the  depths  of  spiritual  malaise 
makes  it  almost  a  miracle.  One  of  its  most  charming  scenes  is 
built  around  an  idea  added  to  the  story  by  Berlioz — the  rehearsal 
of  a  fugal  epithalamium  by  inept  singers  and  instrumentalists. 
In  part  reminiscent  of  the  drolleries  of  the  "Lesson  Scene"  in 
The  Barber,  this  also  recalls  the  Beckmesser  episodes  in  Die 
Meister singer,  for  it  can  be  interpreted  as  Berlioz's  way  of  getting 


BERLIOZ  371 

back  at  the  petty  pedantries  of  academic  music  professors  and 
critics. 

Berlioz's  creative  life  ended  with  Beatrice  et  Benedict,  but  his 
emotional  struggles  were  still  not  resolved.  Publicly,  he  pro- 
ceeded slowly  to  an  apotheosis,  refuting  in  advance  the  legend, 
manufactured  by  sentimental  biographers,  that  he  was  without 
honor  in  his  lifetime.  In  private  he  was  a  lonely  and  tortured 
man.  His  wants  tended  by  Marie's  mother,  he  focused  his 
unquenchable  hopes  momentarily  on  a  young  girl  whom  he 
met  some  time  in  1863.  But  Amelie — no  more  is  known  of  her 
than  her  first  name — died  too,  and  Berlioz  was  again  left  alone. 
He  poured  out  his  moods  in  letters  to  his  son  Louis,  who,  despite 
his  unstable  temperament,  was  rising  in  the  merchant  marine. 
In  the  autumn  of  1864  his  melancholy  drew  him  to  revisit  the 
scenes  of  his  childhood — to,  in  fact,  the  Estelle  country.  He 
was  seized  by  an  urge  to  see  his  early  ideal  again  (the  idee  fixe 
of  the  Fantastique  was  as  much  her  signature  as  Henriette- 
Ophelia's),  and  somehow  sought  her  out  at  Lyons.  The  grand- 
motherly Mme  Fornier  was  polite  and  sympathetic,  but  ob- 
viously mystified.  When  he  mentioned  the  well-remembered 
pink  shoes,  she  denied  ever  having  owned  any — perhaps  they 
seemed  improper  to  her.  Anyhow,  with  due  caution,  she  allowed 
Berlioz  to  correspond  with  her,  and  even  sent  him  her  portrait. 
Here  was  no  answer  to  his  loneliness.  There  was  no  answer. 

The  young  Berlioz  had  felt  himself  separated  from  his  fellows 
by  his  fiery  romanticism;  now,  at  the  end  of  his  career  he  must 
have  appeared  as  austerely  classical  as  Cherubim  himself. 
Thus  the  inevitable  sum  at  the  end  of  every  equation  was  lone- 
liness. For  instance,  though  Liszt  visited  him  in  Paris,  and  their 
relations  were  superficially  friendly,  they  had  really  split  on 
the  problem  of  Wagner.  Little  broke  the  monotony  of  Berlioz's 
life.  He  had  ample  time  to  suffer  and  think.  In  1866,  he  con- 
ducted La  Damnation  de  Faust  at  Vienna.  In  1867,  no  doubt  as  an 
antidote  to  the  anguish  caused  by  the  death,  in  Havana,  of 
his  son  (a  victim  of  yellow  fever),  he  consented,  though  a  dying 
man,  to  undertake  an  onerous  conducting  tour  in  Russia.  His 
success  in  St.  Petersburg  and  Moscow  was  clamorous,  and  both 
the  nationalists  and  the  Rubinstein-Tchaikovsky  group  paid 


372  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

him  all  honor.  By  February,  1868,  he  was  back  in  Paris,  but 
restlessness  and  increasing  ill  health  drove  him  south.  At  Monte 
Carlo  he  suffered  a  serious  fall  from  the  effects  of  which  he  never 
recovered.  The  year  left  to  him  is  chiefly  a  record  of  physical 
and  mental  disintegration.  In  August  he  dragged  himself  to 
Grenoble  to  attend  the  unveiling  of  a  statue  of  Napoleon. 
There,  during  a  festival  in  his  honor,  he  was  presented  with  a 
silver-gilt  wreath,  the  immemorial  tribute  to  a  conqueror.  It  was 
his  last  journey.  He  died  at  Paris  on  March  8,  1869. 

Camille  Saint-Saens  once  complained  that  "Berlioz's  miseries 
were  the  result  of  his  hankering  after  the  impossible,"  and  some 
of  his  well-wishers  and  apologists  have  inherited  that  tendency. 
They  not  only  wish  Mm  to  receive  his  very  considerable  dues — 
they  also  wish,  by  scarce-veiled  implication,  to  elevate  him  to 
the  rank  of  Bach,  Mozart,  and  Beethoven.  Mussorgsky,  who 
looked  at  music  through  a  special  lens,  spoke  of  "Beethoven 
the  thinker  and  Berlioz  the  super  thinker."  This  can  be  a  double- 
edged  truth,  and  some  of  Berlioz's  frustrations  (and  those  of  his 
admirers)  can  be  attributed  to  diseased  thinking.  He  was  indeed 
"sicklied  o'er  by  the  pale  cast  of  thought,"  at  least  as  far  as  his 
hopes  and  ambitions  were  concerned.  As  a  result,  the  absurd 
claims  of  such  an  idolater  as  WJ/Turner  (willing  to  tear  down 
all  but  Mozart  in  order  to  build  "up  his  hero)  are  counterbal- 
anced by  the  grudging,  niggling  admissions  of  critics  and  biog- 
raphers who  are  apparently  attracted  to  Berlioz  only  by  his 
outre  qualities.  In  fact,  some  of  his  critics  loathe  him  almost  as 
much  as  many  Boswellians  loathe  their  subject. 

What  is  the  truth?  Admitting  that  Berlioz  was  a  supreme 
orchestrator,  a  melodist  of  surpassing  originality,  and  a  harmonic 
inventor  worthy  to  follow  in  the  line  of  Rameau,  he  nevertheless 
suffers  from  having  to  be  labeled  as  one  of  the  great  originals  of 
music.  What  to  some  extent  negated  the  effectiveness  of  these 
great  gifts  was  megalomania,  producing  vast,  impressive — but 
too  often  inchoate  and  distended — structures.  A  formal  sense 
of  humility  (which  in  relation  to  music  itself  he  never  denied) 
would  have  salvaged  a  thousand  brilliant  musical  ideas  by 
putting  them  in  a  framework  of  proper  relations.  Then  Lelio, 


BERLIOZ  373 

VEnfance  du  Christ,  Les  Troyens,  Romeo  et  Juliette  even,  would  not 
continue  to  exist  merely  as  fabulously  stocked  museums  from 
which  individual  jewels  are  abstracted  for  temporary  display. 
Berlioz,  the  supreme  critic,  the  hard  worker,  the  galley-slave 
of  the  Journal  des  debats,  was  not  consistently  severe  enough  with 
himself  in  the  final  phase  of  composition — the  fusing  of  a  work 
as  an  artistic  entity.  The  mot  unique  et  juste  is  always  found — but 
not  always  its  use. 


Chapter  XV 

Franz  Liszt 

(Raiding,  October  22,  i8n-July  31,  1886,  Bayreuth) 


TTISZT,  more  than  any  other  major  figure  of  the  romantic  move- 
JL *  ment,  is  a  creature  of  legend.  Born  while  Halley's  comet  was 
coursing  through  the  heavens,  he  came  out  of  the  almost  fabled 
land  of  Hungary,  the  home  of  gypsies  and  werewolves  and  Ester- 
hazys,  a  pianist  of  such  dazzling  powers  that  there  seemed  to  be 
something  supernatural  about  him.  He  was  subject  to  cataleptic 
fits  and  religious  ecstasies.  He  had  been  kissed  by  Beethoven.  The 
Parisians  called  him  the  ninth  wonder  of  the  world — who  or  what 
the  eighth  was  does  not  develop.  He  was  beautiful  beyond  the 
ordinary  manner  of  man,  and  at  a  tender  age  began  his  career  as 
the  great  lover  of  the  century.  Noblewomen  were  his  specialty:  by 
a  countess  he  had  three  illegitimate  children;  he  all  but  married  a 
partly  divorced  princess  by  special  decree  of  the  Vatican,  and 
when  he  was  over  sixty  a  Polish-Cossack  countess — his  castoff 
mistress — threatened  to  put  poison  in  his  soup.  Having  made  a 
large  fortune  as  a  virtuoso,  at  the  height  of  his  fame  he  decided 
to  play  only  for  charity,  and  to  teach  for  nothing.  At  the  point 
where  his  loves  became  too  complicated  and  an  old  persistent 
yearning  for  the  spiritual  life  reappeared,  he  took  minor  orders  in 
the  Church.  He  turned  his  collar  around,  became  the  Abbe  Liszt, 
and  thenceforth  divided  his  time  between  Rome  and  Budapest 
and  Weimar,  between  the  Church  and  a  court  of  pupils  thronging 
from  every  quarter  of  the  globe.  He  taught  half  the  great  pianists 
of  the  nineteenth  century,  one  of  whom  is  scheduled,  as  this 
chapter  is  written,  to  give  a  New  York  recital.  He  lived  seventy- 
five  years,  and  died  in  the  shadow  of  his  son-in-law. 

Liszt  was  also  a  composer.  His  separate  works  number  between 
thirteen  and  fourteen  hundred.  Of  these,  a  staggering  percentage  is 
made  up  of  transcriptions  and  arrangements  of  other  composers' 
works.  Of  his  wholly  original  pieces,  some  are  among  the  most 
popular  music  ever  composed.  These,  almost  without  exception, 
are  not  of  high  musical  quality.  But  there  is  a  legend  about  Liszt's 
music,  too.  It  is  based  on  the  supposititious  high  musical  quality  of 

374 


LISZT  375 

various  large  works,  mostly  orchestral  or  choral,  that  are  seldom 
if  ever  performed.  Those  who  sustain  this  legend  ask  us  to  believe 
that  time  has,  in  the  case  of  Liszt,  winnowed  maliciously,  saving 
the  chaff  and  throwing  away 'the  good  grain.  Time  might  con- 
ceivably cut  such  capers  among  the  compositions  of  one  long  dead 
and  all  but  forgotten.  But  Liszt  has  been  dead  little  more  than 
sixty  years,  and  since  the  middle  of  his  life  has  been  as  famous  as 
Beethoven.  It  seems  incredible,  then,  that  if  these  neglected  works 
were  indeed  masterpieces,  they  would  be  suffered  to  remain  on  the 
shelf.  We  are  forced,  at  any  rate,  to  judge  Liszt  on  the  basis  of 
what  music  of  his  is  played  or  recorded. 

The  truth  is  that  Liszt  was  first  a  performer,  and  only  later, 
and  secondarily,  a  composer.  At  the  age  of  nine,  he  was  shown  off 
as  a  virtuoso  by  his  father,  a  disappointed  musician  serving  as  land 
steward  to  the  Esterhazys.  Some  rich  Hungarian  nobles  thereupon 
guaranteed  six  years  of  study  in  Vienna.  Adam  Liszt  and  his 
mainly  German  wife  were  glad  to  leave  the  dull  hamlet  of  Raiding, 
and  accompany  Franz.  After  studying  with  Czerny  and  the  aged 
Salieri,  he  made  a  sensational  debut  in  Vienna  shortly  after  his 
eleventh  birthday,  and  was  among  those  invited  to  contribute  to 
the  books  of  variations  on  a  theme  by  Diabelli.  This  was  his  first 
published  composition.  Solidly  endowed  by  Czerny  with  the  es- 
sentials of  what  was  to  become  a  unique  piano  style,  Liszt  was 
taken  on  his  first  extended  tour.  The  venture  turned  out  well,  and 
it  was  decided  that  the  boy  was  now  ready  for  Paris.  A  letter  from 
Metternich  was  calculated  to  unbar  for  this  prodigious  little  for- 
eigner the  jealously  guarded  doors  of  the  Conservatoire,  but 
Cherubim  stuck  by  the  letter  of  the  rule  against  admitting  for- 
eigners. The  boy  had  to  content  himself  with  private  masters. 

For  four  years  Liszt  continued  his  musical  studies,  keeping  him- 
self and  his  family  in  funds  with  Paris  concerts  and  modest  forays 
abroad.  During  three  brief  visits  to  England,  he  was  made  much  of 
and,  of  course,  was  received  several  times  by  George  IV.  A  few 
days  before  his  fourteenth  birthday,  his  operetta,  Don  Sanche,  was 
presented  in  Paris.  But  he  was  no  Rossini:  after  two  repetitions, 
the  paltry  business  was  withdrawn,  and  his  career  as  an  opera  com- 
poser was  over.  The  fiasco  did  not  mar  his  fame  as  a  virtuoso, 
which  by  1827  had  become  so  considerable  that  he  could  face  the 
future  without  economic  fears.  The  same  year,  his  father  died 


376  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

with  the  prophetic  words  on  his  lips  that  women  would  mess  up 
Franz3  life. 

The  necessity  of  paying  his  father's  debts  and  of  supporting  his 
mother  forced  Liszt,  at  sixteen,  to  add  to  his  income  by  giving 
lessons.  He  promptly  fell  in  love  with  almost  his  first  pupil,  the 
young  daughter  of  one  of  Charles  X's  ministers.  She  returned  his 
love,  but  her  father  did  not,  and  soon  he  was  shown  the  door.  He 
reacted  like  a  good  little  romantic,  fell  into  a  decline,  and  was  even 
reported  dead.  He  moped  in  his  rooms,  reading  Byron  and  books 
on  religion,  and  toying  with  the  Socialistic  ideas  of  Saint-Simon. 
For  the  first  time  in  his  dizzying  career,  he  began  to  think,  not  al- 
ways too  successfully:  there  were  so  many  conflicting  currents  of 
thought  that  reconciling  them  was  a  most  difficult  matter.  Con- 
fusion was  in  the  air,  and  ended  in  the  absurd  revolution  of  1830, 
whereby  the  young  Parisian  bolshevists  replaced  a  dictator-king, 
who  at  least  had  a  certain  antique  arrogance,  with  a  silly,  mule- 
headed  bourgeois.  But  Liszt  needed  something  more  exciting 
than  the  July  revolution  to  wake  him  from  his  musings.  He  met, 
in  rapid  succession,  three  men  who  changed  the  whole  tenor  of  his 
life  and  gave  new  impetus  to  his  musical  urge.  The  first  was  the 
student  Berlioz,  already  a  musical  anarch  experimenting  with 
new,  bold  orchestral  effects  that  Liszt  quietly  annexed  when  he 
needed  them,  and  whose  ideas  on  program  music  also  influenced 
him  profoundly.  In  Chopin  he  glimpsed  the  power  of  a  lyricism 
surcharged  with  intense  and  fluctuating  emotions.  Berlioz  and 
Chopin  gave  wings  to  his  yearning:  they  opened  vistas  into  a 
musical  never-never  land.  But  it  was  the  diabolical  fiddler,  Nicolo 
Paganini,  who  showed  Liszt,  already  aspiring  to  be  the  virtuoso  of 
virtuosos,  that  technique  itself  could  be  sorcery.  In  this  unsavory 
Italian,  he  found  exactly  the  elements  he  was  to  use  in  becoming 
the  most  phenomenal  pianist  of  the  century — absolute  command 
of  his  instrument,  a  battery  of  outlandish  technical  tricks,  a  dash 
of  diablerie,  and  an  elaborately  built-up  professional  personality. 

Liszt  the  composer  was  slow  in  emerging:  many  years  were  to 
pass  before  he  addressed  his  audience  with  his  first  large  original 
compositions.  After  meeting  and  hearing  Paganini,  for  two  years 
he  lived  the  life  of  an  ascetic:  with  his  decision  made  to  become  the 
unrivaled  pianist,  he  practiced  as  no  one  had  practiced  before,  and 
as  few  have  practiced  since.  The  fruits  of  this  painful  self-denial 


LISZT  377 

were  not  slow  in  appearing:  he  had  always,  it  seemed,  been  an 
accomplished  performer,  but  now,  emerging  from  his  retirement 
in  1832,  became  almost  at  once  what  he  had  intended  to  become — 
the  Paganini  of  the  keyboard.  Paris  lay  at  his  feet,  and  among 
those  who  succumbed  to  his  newly  found  greatness  was  "Monsieui 
Lits"  himself.  Just  as  Chopin  wafted  himself  and  his  adoring 
countesses  into  a  dreamworld  of  his  making  as  his  fingers  whis- 
pered over  the  ivory  keys  in  darkened  salons,  so  Liszt,  as  he  walked 
onto  the  stage  and  saw  the  whole  great  world  of  Paris  as  a  blur 
of  expectant  faces,  was  intoxicated  by  his  power. 

Mme  Liszt,  who  shared  her  son's  modest  rooms,  could  not  have 
been  an  effective  duenna,  for  it  was  during  this  time  that  he  em- 
barked seriously  on  his  amours.  He  made  a  few  trial  flights,  and 
scandalized  the  old  gossips  of  the  Faubourg  Saint-Germain  by 
going  off  to  Switzerland  with  a  countess  and  her  husband.  They 
were  in  for  worse  fioutings  of  their  conventions.  In  1833,  Liszt's 
extraordinary  beauty  and  Byronic  manner  attracted  the  attention 
of  a  great  lady,  Countess  Marie  d'AgouIt.  Although  she  was  six 
years  his  senior,  married,  and  the  mother  of  three  children,  Liszt 
responded  so  ardently  that  they  were  both  carried  off  their  feet 
and,  before  they  were  fully  aware  of  the  possible  consequences  of 
their  actions,  were  immersed  in  a  passionate  love  affair.  Liszt  had 
no  qualms,  and  Mme  d'Agoult  had  few:  her  husband  was  twenty 
years  older  than  she — a  cold,  boring  court  official  from  whom  she 
was  estranged.  As  early  as  March,  1835,  ^7  were  so  inextricably 
involved  with  each  other  that  they  could  not  have  turned  back, 
even  if  they  had  wished.  They  decided  to  elope,  and  by  August, 
after  a  distracted  search  for  the  most  congenial  retreat,  were 
settled  at  Geneva.  There  their  first  child,  Blandine,  was  born  in 
December,  and  their  rejoicings  over  her  birth  seemed  a  guarantee 
of  eternal  happiness. 

And  at  first  the  lovers  were  happy,  idyllically  so.  Liszt  was 
trying  to  compose — the  first  sketches  for  the  Anmes  de  pelerinage 
were  published  in  1835 — and  was  teaching  at  a  music  school  in 
Geneva.  As  for  the  Countess,  she  was  content  to  be  cut  off  from 
the  world  with  Franz  and  her  children.  She  did  not  reckon  with 
Liszt's  love  of  adulation  or  with  the  fact  that  the  scandal  they  had 
caused  had  made  them  objects  of  interest  to  prurient  sightseers. 
Soon  their  solitude  was  invaded,  first  by  a  madcap  boy  of  fifteeji, 


MEN     OF    MUSIC 

Liszt's  favorite  pupil.  Then  George  Sand,  disguised  as  an  army 
officer,  burst  in  on  them,  and  it  may  well  be  that  this  sudden  intru- 
sion gave  the  Countess  the  impulse  that  later  transformed  her  into 
the  writer  Daniel  Stern.  The  idyl  was  over.  From  this  time  on  they 
were  wanderers,  slowly  drifting  apart,  though  for  some  years  ap- 
parently wholly  devoted  to  each  other.  They  had  two  more  chil- 
dren: Cosima,  born  on  Christmas.,  1837,  and  Daniel,  born  two 
years  later. 

The  Countess  mistrusted  the  world,  but  the  need  for  money 
made  going  back  to  it  a  necessity.  Liszt  had  settled  most  of  his  earn- 
ings on  his  mother,  the  Countess  had  but  a  small  income,  and  a 
fortune  lay  at  the  tips  of  Liszt's  fingers.  They  decided  to  face  the 
censorious  eyes  of the  faubourgs ,  and  so  returned  with  Mme  Sand. 
Liszt  re-entered  Paris  in  what  must  have  seemed  to  him  an  evil 
hour:  the  city  was  ringing  with  praise  of  the  pianist  Thalberg,  the 
beautifully  mannered  illegitimate  son  of  an  Austrian  prince,  and 
momentarily  he  found  himself  in  second  place.  He  accepted  the 
situation  as  a  challenge.  When  Thalberg  came  back  early  in  1837, 
they  entered  on  a  protracted  keyboard  duel  that  culminated  in  an 
epochal  bout  at  the  home  of  Princess  Cristina  Belgiojoso,  a  noted 
musical  philanthropist.  Both  of  them  played  works  that  would 
hardly  be  tolerated  on  conceit  programs  today,  Thalberg  his  own 
fantasia  on  Rossini's  Motse,  Liszt  his  fantasia  on  the  Niobe  of 
Giovanni  Pacini,  a  Rossini  imitator.  Briefly,  Thalberg  played 
more  suavely,  Liszt  more  excitedly — and  Liszt  was  judged  the 
winner.  It  was  a  famous  victory.  Thalberg  retired  discomfited, 
but  not  so  discomfited  as  the  Lisztians  would  have  us  believe,  and 
both  victor  and  vanquished  went  on  to  make  a  great  deal  of 
money  playing  the  piano  for  many  years  thereafter. 

His  defeat  of  Thalberg  made  Liszt  the  most  sought-after  pianist 
alive.  Up  to  1847,  his  life  is  the  story  of  his  concert  tours.  For  sev- 
eral years,  while  his  love  for  the  Countess  d' Agoult  still  exercised  a 
strong  restraining  influence,  he  remained  a  musician  who  gave  a 
few  concerts,  though  it  is  probable  that  at  this  very  time  he  was 
already  conceiving  of  the  virtuoso's  career  in  revolutionary  terms. 
But  in  1840,  when  it  was  obvious  that,  despite  the  common  respon- 
sibilities entailed  by  three  children,  the  bonds  were  loosening, 
Liszt  abandoned  himself  completely  to  its  allures.  Had  not  his 
virtuosity  already  raised  him  to  a  pinnacle  of  glory  attained  by 


LISZT  379 

few  of  even  the  greatest  composers?  In  November,  1839,  leaving 
the  Countess  with  five  children  on  her  hands  (two  D'Agoult,  three 
nameless) ,  he  went  off  to  Vienna  to  give  a  series  of  six  piano  re- 
citals, having  agreed  to  raise  singlehanded  all  the  money  for  the 
Beethoven  memorial  at  Bonn.  This  was  the  first  series  of  real  piano 
recitals  ever  given,  though  earlier  that  year  he  had  experimented 
with  a  Roman  audience  in  giving  an  entire  program  of  piano  solos. 
Moreover,  he  had  revolutionized  the  art  of  piano  showmanship: 
in  order  to  advertise  his  striking  profile  (which  became  more  and 
more  Dantesque  with  the  years),  he  turned  the  side  of  the  piano 
to  the  audience.  (Previously  even  the  handsomest  of  keyboard 
Adonises  had  either  presented  their  backs  to  the  public  or  faced  it 
over  the  instrument.)  The  Vienna  recitals  fully  justified  his  in- 
novations: three  thousand  people  were  in  the  hall  for  the  first 
recital,  and  the  series  ended  in  a  fanfare  of  triumph.  A  Hungarian 
delegation  came  to  invite  him  home,  and  after  stopping  at  Press- 
burg,  where  his  arrival  forced  the  Prince  Palatine  of  Hungary  to 
postpone  his  levee  rather  than  be  ignored,  Liszt  made  a  royal 
progress  into  Budapest.  There,  in  a  hysteria  of  national  fervor,  at- 
tired in  a  magnificent  thousand-franc  Magyar  costume  bought  for 
the  occasion,  Liszt  was  presented  with  a  jeweled  saber.  There  was 
talk  at  the  time  of  his  being  ennobled,  but  it  came  to  nothing  ex- 
cept as  material  for  persiflage  among  the  Parisian  wits.  His  vanity 
had  become  so  monstrous  that  the  Countess  wrote  him  not  to 
make  an  ass  of  himself. 

But  the  Countess5  words  carried  little  weight  with  him  now.  He 
was  wedded  to  his  gilded  wayfaring.  He  lived  for  the  applause,  the 
adulation  of  the  Lisztians  whom  he  created  as  he  played,  the  flat- 
tery of  kings  and  their  jeweled  orders — and  the  complaisant  noble- 
women, with  a  peasant  girl  or  two  thrown  in  to  add  tang,  who 
waited  along  his  route.  Within  seven  years  his  tours  took  him  to 
Berlin,  Copenhagen,  Constantinople,  Leipzig,  Lisbon,  London,  Ma- 
drid, Moscow,  St.  Petersburg,  and  Warsaw,  as  well  as  scores  of 
smaller  towns,  some  of  them  jerkwaters  in  remote  Moldavia  and 
Russia.  England  alone  greeted  him  coldly:  though  Queen  Victoria 
received  him  at  Buckingham  Palace  (this  indiscretion  may  be  laid 
to  her  youth),  her  subjects  judged  him  a  libertine  and  poseur,  and 
stayed  away  from  his  recitals.  Everywhere  else  he  went,  the  honor 
of  entertaining  Liszt  was  fought  for  by  the  local  nobility,  much  to 


380  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

his  delight.  He  dearly  loved  a  title,  and  while  he  was  still  corre- 
sponding with  Mme  d'Agoult,  though  neglecting  to  speak  of  his 
amorous  conquests,  rarely  missed  a  chance  to  boast  of  the  princes 
and  counts  he  bagged.  And  yet,  Liszt  stopped  short  of  being  a 
toady,  and  even  ruling  monarchs  were  not  exempt  from  his  wrath 
when  his,  or  music's,  dignity  was  impugned.  He  once  reprimanded 
the  Iron  Tsar  himself  for  talking  while  he  was  playing.  He  refused 
to  play  for  Isabella  II  of  Spain  because  court  etiquette  would  not 
allow  him  to  be  presented  to  her  personally.  And  he  was  snobbish 
even  about  kings.  He  snubbed  poor  old  Louis-Philippe  repeatedly 
for  not  belonging  to  the  elder  branch  of  the  Bourbon  family. 

Today,  when  the  vast  majority  of  piano  recitals  are  given  for 
the  purpose  of  re-creating  the  best  music  in  that  repertoire,  it  is 
a  harsh  comment  on  the  taste  of  Liszt's  age  that  he  climbed  to  the 
zenith  of  musical  fame  largely  by  playing  his  own  compositions  at 
public  recitals.  In  private,  he  played  everything,  inventing,  in 
fact,  the  repertoire  that  has  been  standard  ever  since.  Nothing 
available  for  the  piano  escaped  his  omnivorous  attention,  and  he 
was  equally  at  home  with  Bach  and  Scarlatti,  Mozart  and  Beetho- 
ven, Chopin  and  Schumann.  Had  his  public  programs  represented 
this  catholicity  of  interest,  the  subsequent  history  of  the  piano  re- 
cital might  have  been  different.  He  had  an  opportunity  given  to 
few:  that  of  creating  simultaneously  an  audience  and  its  taste.  He 
chose  the  showman's  way,*  and  whipped  up  a  passion  for  virtuoso 
exhibitionism  for  its  own  sake  from  which  pianists  suffered  for 
more  than  half  a  century.  He  played  mainly  his  own  transcrip- 
tions of  everything  from  a  Donizetti  march  to  a  Beethoven  sym- 
phony, from  the  national  anthem  of  whatever  country  he  happened 
to  be  visiting  to  a  Schubert  lied;  he  played  the  showiest  and  noisi- 
est of  his  Etudes  transcendantes,  and  almost  inevitably  closed  with  his 
Grand  Galop  chromatique,  an  absurd  collection  of  scales  and  difficul- 
ties that  even  the  idolatrous  Sacheverell  Sitwell  cannot  stomach, 

*  In  more  ways  than  one.  His  appearance  was  deliberately  theatrical:  his  style  of 
dress  was  exaggeratedly  rich,  his  coiffure  absurd.  At  his  Russian  debut  he  was  cov- 
ered with  clanking  orders,  and  we  read  that  he  "mounted  the  platform,  and,  pulHng 
his  dogskin  gloves  from  his  shapely  white  hands,  tossed  them  carelessly  on  the  floor." 
Part  of  his  act  was  to  lead  a  deeply  emotional  life  at  the  piano,  and  he  cleverly  used 
his  disheveled  locks  as  excitants.  "Constantly  tossing  back  his  long  hair,  with  lips 
quivering,  his  nostrils  palpitating,  he  swept  the  auditorium  with  the  glance  of  a 
smiling  master" :  such  was  the  impression  of  the  dramatist  Legouve,  who  was  writing 
in  an  entirely  friendly  spirit. 


LISZT  3^1 

It  took  a  PaderewsH  and  a  De  Pachmann  and  a  few  others  to  free 
the  punch-drunk  audiences  from  that  unnatural  conception  of  the 
recital  as  an  athletic  bout  of  piano-pounding  and  sensationalism^ 
of  which  Liszt  himself  may  not  have  approved,  but  for  which  he 
was  unquestionably  to  blame.  For  the  saddest  part  of  Liszt* s  pub- 
He  perversion  of  his  unparalleled  pianistic  gifts  is  that  he  was  aware 
of  it.  He  had  a  certain  contempt  for  much  of  what  he  was  playing — 
and,  by  implication,  for  his  audiences.  Once,  when  he  was  re- 
proached for  his  trashy  operatic  fantasias,  he  said,  "Ah,  if  I  had 
written  only  Faust  and  Dante  Symphonies,  I  shouldn't  be  able  to 
give  my  friends  trout  with  iced  champagne." 

Mme  d'Agoult  shared  Liszt's  triumphs,  but  only  from  a  distance^ 
and  with  increasing  displeasure.  She  disliked  the  charlatan  in  him, 
and  was  affronted  by  his  affairs,  particularly  when  the  names 
coupled  with  his  began  to  include  such  women  about  town  as  the 
Princess  Belgiojoso  and  George  Sand,  and  such  out-and-out  cour- 
tesans as  Lola  Montez  and  the  lovely  Marie  Duplessis,  whom  the 
younger  Dumas  immortalized  in  La  Dame  OMX  camelias.  By  1844, 
they  had  come  to  the  final  parting  of  their  ways,  though  they  cor- 
responded well  into  the  fifties-  After  that,  except  for  a  chance  en- 
counter or  so  and  one  coldly  formal  letter  from  Liszt,  dated  1864, 
there  was  silence  between  them.  Liszt  did  not  even  send  her  a  for- 
mal condolence  when  two  of  their  children — Daniel  and  Blandine 
— died,  and  when  the  Countess  herself  died  in  1876,  he  spoke  of 
her  in  the  most  perfunctory  and  stilted  phrases. 

In  1843,  Liszt  was  invited  to  spend  a  few  months  each  year  as 
musical  director  of  the  grand  ducal  court  at  Weimar.  Although  he 
did  not  realize  it  at  the  time,  his  acceptance  brought  about  a  com- 
plete change  in  the  direction  of  his  life.  He  had  begun  to  grow 
weary  of  constantly  gallivanting  around  Europe  and,  as  he  already 
had  all  the  money  he  needed,  he  wanted  to  settle  down  and  devote 
most  of  his  time  to  composing.  Slowly  he  came  to  the  decision  to 
retire  from  the  concert  stage,  and  in  1847  made  his  last  tour.  This 
took  him  finally  to  Russia,  where  at  Kiev  he  was  captured  by  the 
second  woman  who  played  a  salient  role  in  his  life.  This  was  Her 
Serene  Highness  the  Princess  Carolyne  Sayn-Wittgenstein,  a  highly 
connected  Polish  matron  of  twenty-eight.  To  her  vast  estate  at 
Woronince,  where  she  lived  in  feudal  state,  surrounded  by  the 
thirty  thousand  serfs  she  had  inherited  from  her  father,  he  was 


382  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

carried  off  in  triumph.  The  Princess  was,  of  course,  a  misunder- 
stood wife,  and  soon  they  were  lovers.  There,  on  the  edge  of  the 
Russian  steppes,  while  she  lay  on  a  bearskin  rug  smoking  a  cigar, 
Liszt  played  to  her,  and  exposed  his  plan  of  abandoning  the  tinsel 
and  glitter  of  the  world.  The  Princess,  who  was  of  a  religious  and 
mystical  nature,  clung  to  the  master,  and  agreed  to  retire  with 
him  to  Weimar.  With  their  plan  of  renunciation  complete,  Liszt 
went  off  to  play  his  last  paid  recital — at  Elisavetgrad,  of  all  places! 
The  Princess,  on  her  part,  got  in  touch  with  a  good  house  agent  in 
Weimar,  and  leased  a  commodious  residence  there.  Within  a  year 
they  were  comfortably  settled  in  the  Altenburg,  which  was  to  be 
their  joint  home  for  ten  years.* 

Having  renounced  the  world,  Liszt  now  entered  upon  three 
major  careers.  Henceforth  he  was  to  become  the  most  sought-after 
of  piano  teachers.  For  more  than  a  dozen  years  he  was  to  be  the 
most  hospitable  of  conductors,  with  especial  warmth  toward  young 
composers.  And  finally,  until  within  four  years  of  his  death,  he  was 
to  unloose  the  floodgates  of  one  of  the  most  original,  daring,  and 
tasteless  talents  in  the  history  of  musical  composition.  The  Alten- 
burg, far  from  being  a  retreat,  became  an  active  center  of  Euro- 
pean culture,  a  development  that  horrified  the  right-thinking 
burghers  of  Weimar.  The  little  town,  whose  picture  of  an  artist 
was  still  based  on  the  portly,  respectable  figure  of  the  aged  Goethe, 
took  a  long  time  to  get  used  to  Liszt's  long  hair  and  his  cigar- 
smoking  Polish  mistress. 

But  it  was  at  stufiy  little  Weimar  that  Liszt  first  won  the  regard 
of  all  his  serious  confreres.  He  received  about  a  thousand  dollars 
a  year  as  general  director,  and  his  budgets  were  similarly  pinched. 
Yet,  with  them  he  wrought  miracles.  Having  raised  his  band  to 
something  approximating  concert  pitch,  he  began  a  series  of  con- 
certs remarkable  alike  for  their  range  and  discrimination.  In  ad- 
dition to  the  best  works  of  dead  composers — Handel,  Haydn, 
Mozart,  Beethoven,  and  Mendelssohn  were  liberally  represented— 
he  gave  many  novelties  by  his  contemporaries.  In  choosing  these 
compositions,  Liszt  was  above  any  petty  spites.  He  was  notably 
generous  in  Ms  attitude  toward  Schumann,  who  treated  him  with 

*  The  court  maintained  the  polite  fiction  that  Liszt  was  not  living  at  the  Alten- 
burg, and  for  twelve  years  addressed  official  communications  to  him  at  a  hotel  where 
he  had  stopped  briefly  on  his  first  arrival  in  Weimar,  and  where  he  apparently  kept  a 


LISZT  383 

rude  animosity.  He  gave  enthusiastic  performances  of  Schumann's 
symphonies.  He  was  even  more  lavish  toward  the  difficult  and 
generally  misunderstood  Berlioz,  performing  within  a  week  not 
only  the  Symphonie  fantastique,  but  also  several  of  his  overtures  and 
the  long-neglected  Harold  en  Italic. 

At  the  opera  house,  Liszt  undertook  a  small  revolution  of  his 
own,  revolutions  being  in  style  about  the  year  1848.  It  was  not 
that  he  neglected  Gluck  and  Mozart  or  Rossini  and  Meyerbeer, 
the  gods  cf  the  epoch,  but  that  he  challenged  their  operas  with  the 
most  frightful  inventions  of  newcomers.  Most  brazenly,  in  February, 
1849,  he  staged  an  opera  by  Richard  Wagner — a  doubly  bold  act, 
for  the  composer  was  a  banished  political  agitator.  Tannhduser 
was  as  outrageous  for  its  musical  radicalism  as  for  Wagner's  poli- 
tics* And  perhaps  the  fare  was  too  rich  for  the  people  of  Weimar. 
Within  a  few  years,  they  were  asked  to  accept  three  operas  by  this 
bold,  bad  radical,  not  to  speak  ofFidelio,  Berlioz'  Emmnuto  Cellini 
and  rather  cheerless  La  Damnation  de  Faust.,  two  stage  pieces  by  a 
young  Italian  named  Verdi,  and  Schumann's  Gmoveva,  which  was 
generally  esteemed  sad  stuff,  but  of  which  Liszt  said,  CCI  prefer 
certain  faults  to  certain  virtues — the  mistakes  of  clever  people  to 
the  effects  of  mediocrity.  In  this  sense  there  are  failures  which  are 
better  than  many  a  success.55  All  these  the  Weimarers  took,  though 
grumblingly.  When  they  finally  balked,  it  was  unexpectedly  at  the 
jovial  Barbier  von  Bagdad  by  Peter  Cornelius,  with  its  timid  traces 
of  Wagnerism. 

Opinions  of  Liszt  as  a  conductor  differ,  though  they  are  at  one 
today  as  to  his  intelligence  as  a  musical  host.  Ferdinand  Hiller 
accused  him  bluntly  of  beating  time  inaccurately  and  of  confusing 
his  men.  But  Liszt's  friends  pointed  out  that  Hiller  had  heard  him 
at  the  Karlsruhe  Festival  conducting  an  orchestra  to  which  he  was 
a  stranger.  Chorley,  who  heard  him  conduct  a  Berlioz  opera  in 
Weimar,  said  that  "the  real  beauties  ...  of  this  perplexed  and 
provoking  work  were  brought  as  near  to  the  comprehension  and 
sympathy  of  those  who  heard  it  as  they  will  probably  be  ever 
brought."  It  seems  reasonable  that  Liszt,  who  assumed  the  baton 
unexpectedly  and  rather  later  than  usual,  was  never  a  really  good 
conductor.  In  all  probability,  he  carried  over  into  conducting  the 
theatricality  and  unpredictable  personal  effects  of  his  pianism — 
not  the  best  equipment  for  inspiring  an  orchestral  ensemble  with 


384  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

the  necessary  confidence:  the  unpremeditated  flashes  of  inspiration 
that  had  done  much  to  make  him  an  exciting  virtuoso  would 
merely  throw  orchestral  players  off  the  track.  Liszt,  in  short,  was 
an  occasionally  brilliant  but  not  reliable  conductor.  Wagner,  who 
had  much  to  thank  Liszt  for,  in  writing  of  the  first  Weimar  pei  - 
formance  of  Tannkauser,  evades,  in  a  moment  of  forbearance,  the 
touchy  question  of  Liszt's  actual  conducting  by  saying  that  he  had 
a  perfect  musical  grasp  of  the  opera. 

Liszt's  enthusiasm  for  Wagner  was  the  indirect  cause  of  his  leav- 
ing Weimar.  For  some  years,  he  had  been  trying  to  force  a  per- 
formance of  the  entire  Ring  on  Grand  Duke  Karl  Alexander,  who 
had  neither  the  funds  nor  the  taste  for  such  a  production.  An  anti- 
Liszt  party  gradually  gained  the  upper  hand  at  court,  moralistic 
tongues  wagged  faster  than  ever,  and  Liszt  chose  this  inopportune 
time  to  state  that  if  he  could  not  give  the  Ring,  he  would  at  least 
give  Tristan  und  Isolde.  The  sovereign  responded  to  this  challenge 
by  cutting  his  budgets  to  the  bone.  Liszt  was  infuriated  and,  de- 
spite warning  that  he  would  have  to  soft-pedal  anything  new- 
fangled, went  ahead  with  plans  for  producing  his  pupil  Cornelius' 
mildly  advanced  opera.  At  its  premiere.,  on  December  15,  1858,  Der 
Barbier  wn  Bagdad  was  hissed  off  the  boards.  Liszt  promptly  re- 
signed his  post. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  Liszt's  position  in  Weimar  had  been  getting 
daily  less  and  less  tenable.  At  first,  the  Princess  had  been  received 
at  court,  and  the  gossips  had  had  to  restrain  their  tongues.  But 
when  she  ignored  the  Tsar's  command  to  return  to  Russia,  and 
was  forthwith  banished  from  his  realms,  she  was  no  longer  re- 
ceived. Liszt  viewed  with  anguish  the  growing  isolation  of  the 
woman  who  had  already  sacrificed  position  and  a  large  part  of 
her  possessions  to  be  with  him.  Her  efforts  to  have  her  marriage 
annulled  so  that  she  could  marry  him  dragged  fruitlessly  on,  for 
even  after  the  Russian  ecclesiastical  authorities  no  longer  stood  in 
the  way,  there  remained  Rome.  The  Princess,  a  devout  Roman 
Catholic,  hoped  to  convince  the  Curia  that  she  had  been  forced 
to  marry  a  heretic — that  is,  a  Greek  Orthodox  Catholic.  But  on 
this  plea  the  local  bishop  turned  a  fishy  eye,  and  in  May,  1860, 
she  left  for  Rome,  realizing  that  her  only  hope  lay  in  appealing  to 
Pius  IX  himself.  Left  behind,  Liszt  looked  forward  gloomily  to  his 
fiftieth  birthday.  Unhappy  memories  and  dire  misgivings  crowded 


LISZT  385 

his  mind.  He  felt  lonely.  Both  of  his  daughters,  whom  he  had  come 
to  know  well  during  their  frequent  visits  to  Weimar,  had  been 
married  in  1857:  Blandine  to  Emile  Offivier,  the  fond  and  foolish 
minister  of  Napoleon  III;  Cosima  to  Hans  von  Billow,  one  of 
Liszt's  pupils  and  an  eminent  pianist-conductor.  His  only  son, 
Daniel,  a  brilliant  law  student,  had  died  two  years  later,  and  that 
same  year  the  Princess'  only  daughter,  Marie,  married  Prince 
Konstantin  von  Hohenlohe-Schillingfurst,  and  went  off  to  live  in 
Vienna.  And  finally,  Wagner,  whom  he  greatly  admired  and  liked, 
was  acting  up :  he  plainly  showed  his  resentment  at  Liszt's  inability 
to  have  more  of  his  operas  produced,  and  beleaguered  him  with 
requests  for  loans  of  a  size  beyond  Liszt's  means. 

Liszt  grew  more  and  more  restless  at  Weimar.  In  September, 
1860,  he  poured  his  discontent  into  a  last  will  and  testament — a 
melodramatic  and  high-flown  document  that  leaves  the  Princess 
("whom  I  have  so  ardently  desired  to  call  by  the  dear  name  of 
wife")  the  bulk  of  his  fortune.  Wagner  ("my  friendship  with  him 
has  had  all  the  character  of  a  noble  passion")  is  remembered.  But 
the  name  of  the  Countess  d'Agoult  is  conspicuously  absent.  Never- 
theless, early  the  next  year,  when  Liszt  visited  Paris  for  a  bit  of 
distraction,  he  could  not  avoid  seeing  his  old  mistress,  now  fully 
transformed  into  Daniel  Stern,  the  prolific  but  ineffectual  rival  of 
George  Sand.  Their  meetings  were  frigidly  formal,  and  left  both 
of  them  unmoved.  He  was  received  by  Napoleon  III,  and  dined 
with  the  first  Napoleon's  son,  Count  Walewski.  "Plon-Plon,"  the 
brilliant  son  of  Jerdme  Bonaparte,  entertained  him  in  princely 
style.  He  talked  with  Berlioz,  Gounod,  Meyerbeer,  and  a  chastened 
Wagner,  who  had  just  seen  his  hopes  for  easily  conquering  Europe 
dashed  by  the  Parisian  failure  of  Tamhauser*  More  relaxing  was  a 
dinner  with  Rossini,  who  ran  his  fingers  through  Liszf  s  hair,  and 
asked  him  whether  it  was  really  his  own.  Liszt  returned  to  Weimar 
in  somewhat  better  spirits,  which  improved  even  more  when  he 
received  definite  word  that  the  Holy  Father  had  reviewed  the 
Princess'  case  favorably.  After  hearing  Von  Biilow  conduct  the 
first  performance  of  the  "Faust"  Symphony  as  the  culmination  of 
the  Weimar  Festival,  Liszt  set  out  for  Rome  by  a  strangely  tortu- 
ous route.  He  knew  in  advance  that  the  date  for  his  wedding  to 
the  Princess  had  been  set  for  that  very  fiftieth  birthday  he  had  so 


386  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

dreaded — October  22,  1861 — and  yet  he  did  not  arrive  in  Rome 
until  two  days  before  that  momentous  anniversary. 

On  the  night  of  October  21,  a  messenger  from  the  Vatican  de- 
livered a  letter  to  Her  Serene  Highness.  Her  husband's  powerful 
relatives  had  demanded  another  review  of  her  case,  and  the  mar- 
riage had  perforce  to  be  postponed.  Other  reasons  for  this  sudden 
change  of  face  on  the  part  of  the  Curia  have  been  adduced,  among 
them  that  Liszt  himself  no  longer  really  wanted  to  marry,  and 
had,  through  his  own  influential  friends,  induced  the  Roman  au- 
thorities to  reconsider  their  reconsideration.  As  for  the  Princess, 
she  was  stupefied,  and  interpreted  this  new  obstacle  as  proof  that 
Heaven  itself  frowned  on  their  banns.  Both  she  and  Liszt  began  to 
take  an  exaggerated  interest  in  religion,  though  for  some  years 
they  continued  to  lead  in  Rome  much  the  same  sort  of  life  they 
had  led  in  Weimar.  In  1864,  Prince  Sayn-Wittgenstein  died,  and 
at  last  the  Princess  was  free  to  marry  the  man  she  idolized.  By  that 
time,  however,  she  was  well  on  the  way  to  becoming  an  eccentric 
recluse,  and  was  already  wedded  to  those  ambitious  literary  schemes 
that  ended  by  giving  birth  to  The  Interior  Causes  of  the  Exterior 
Weakness  of  the  Church^  a  twenty-four-volume  book  designed  to  save 
the  world. 

In  1862,  his  daughter  Blandine  died,  and  Liszt,  stricken  by  the 
news,  began  to  spend  more  and  more  time  withdrawn  from  the 
world  and  discussing  religious  matters  with  clerical  friends,  includ- 
ing Monsignor  von  Hohenlohe,  Marie  Sayn-Wittgenstein's  brother- 
in-law.  He  wanted  to  become  a  priest,  but  had  to  be  content  with 
minor  orders.  His  reckless  past  and  lack  of  training  militated 
against  his  complete  ordination.  The  reasons  for  his  taking  this 
overt  step  at  all  are  complicated  and  by  no  means  clear.  Possibly, 
it  was  nothing  more  than  a  desire  for  internal  peace.  Possibly  the 
Hohenlohes  feared  that  he  might  still  be  induced  to  marry  the 
Princess,  and  took  this  means  of  making  it  difficult  for  him  to  do  so. 
Finally,  it  was  whispered  that  both  the  Princess  and  the  Hohen- 
lohes were  afraid  that  Liszt,  in  whom  the  fires  of  youth  had  not 
died  out,  might  contract  a  misalliance  with  an  adventuress.  What 
is  certain  is  that  on  April  25,  1865,  Liszt  entered  the  Third  Order 
of  St.  Francis  of  AssisL  By  receiving  the  tonsure,  he  was  allowed 
to  perform  the  functions  of  doorkeeper,  reader,  exorcist,  and  aco- 
lyte. Thenceforth  he  was  known  as  the  Abbe  Liszt.  When  in  Italy, 


LISZT  387 

he  divided  his  time  between  Rome — at  first  he  lived  in  the  Vatican 
itself^-and  the  Villa  d'Este  at  Tivoli.  There  was  never  a  time  in 
his  career  when  Liszt  was  not  well  accommodated.  He  hoped  for 
many  years  to  become  music  director  to  the  Pope,  but  in  vain, 
and  the  honorary  canonry  of  Albano,  which  he  received  in  1879, 
may  be  construed  as  a  slight  sop  to  his  wounded  feelings. 

Until  1869,  Liszt's  official  residence  was  Rome,  but  he  made 
various  trips  to  Germany  and  Hungary  to  superintend  the  pro- 
ductions of  his  larger  orchestral  and  choral  works.  In  1867,  for 
instance,  he  went  to  Budapest  to  hear  his  "Coronation"  Mass  per- 
formed when  Franz  Josef  was  crowned  Apostolic  King  of  Hun- 
gary. Two  years  later  the  comparative  peace  he  had  achieved  in 
Rome  was  shattered  by  a  bold  indiscretion  on  the  part  of  his 
daughter  Gosima.  She  had  for  some  years  been  under  the  spell  of 
Richard  Wagner,  and  in  1869  she  openly  left  Von  Btilow  to  live 
with  him.  As  Wagner  was  already  one  of  the  most  talked-of  men 
alive,  the  news  caused  reverberations  in  every  European  capital, 
and  not  least  in  Rome.  To  the  Abbe  Liszt  the  news  had  the  sound 
of  a  tocsin:  his  old  adventurous  spirit  flared  up — that  old  worldly 
bent  which  Carolyne  Sayn-Wittgenstein  knew  so  well  and  com- 
bated so  violently.  Now  began  what  Liszt  called  his  we  trifurquee, 
when  Rome  had  to  share  him  with  Weimar  and  Budapest,  and  for 
four  years  seemed  to  be  less  attractive  to  the  Abbe  than  they. 

Away  from  the  Princess'  critical  eye,  Liszt  doffed  his  cassock  and 
was  soon  indulging  his  taste  for  charmers.  In  packed  drama,  one 
of  these  affairs  outshone  his  liaison  with  the  Princess  herself.  For 
once,  even  with  his  love  of  theatricality,  Liszt  might  well  have 
hesitated  before  dallying  with  the  Countess  Olga  Janina.  He  had 
accepted  this  semibarbaric  Polish  girl  as  a  pupil  in  Rome,  and 
soon  she  was  traveling  with  him  as  his  mistress.  In  1870,  she  lost 
her  large  fortune  and  Liszt's  interest  simultaneously.  He  repudi- 
ated her,  and  she  reacted  like  a  madwoman,  running  off  to  Amer- 
ica in  a  fruitless  attempt  to  become  a  concert  pianist.  When  she 
spurned  P.  T.  Barnum  as  a  lover,  her  chances  were  gone.  She  began 
to  send  hysterical  and  threatening  cables  to  Liszt.  Returning  to 
Europe,  she  caught  up  with  him  in  Budapest.  There  ensued  a  lurid 
scene  during  which  she  tried  to  end  both  her  own  life  and  his. 
When  this  failed,  she  retired  sputtering  to  Paris,  and  there  published 
a  scandalous  and  mocking  book  about  him.  Liszt  never  forgave 


388  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

her.  He  rushed  for  consolation  into  the  arms  of  another  noble- 
woman, but  when  this  new  affair  tapered  off  into  dignified  friend- 
ship, his  amorous  tendencies  began  to  die  their  natural  death., 
though  as  late  as  1883,  when  he  was  seventy-two,  his  name  was 
linked  scandalously  with  that  of  one  of  his  young  pupils. 

When  Liszt  returned  to  Weimar  in  1869,  he  was  once  more  on 
good  terms  with  the  Grand  Duke,  who  placed  at  his  disposal  the 
royal  gardener's  house — the  Hafgdrtnerei  of  his  pupils'  memoirs.  It 
was  there,  during  the  rest  of  his  life,  that  the  apotheosis  of  Liszt 
the  teacher  was  accomplished.  This  process  had  been  taking  place 
ever  since  he  first  settled  at  Weimar  in  1848,  and  some  of  his  early 
pupils,  including  Von  Bulow  and  the  ill-fated  Carl  Tausig  (he  died 
at  the  age  of  twenty-nine),  were  already  world-famous.  His 
method,  stated  simply,  was  that  of  criticism  and  example:  he  lis- 
tened to  a  pupil  play  a  piece^  made  suggestion  and  might  even 
show  how  a  particular  passage  was  to  be  executed.  In  his  early 
teaching  days,  Liszt  restricted  his  classes,  accepting  only  those 
students  who  obviously  had  real  talent.  After  1869,  however,  and 
notoriously  as  the  years  passed,  he  relaxed  his  standards  until  he 
virtually  kept  open  house.  He  was  surrounded  by  a  crowd  of  ador- 
ing disciples  of  all  ages  and  stations,  some  of  them  out-and-out 
impostors,  some  mere  parasites,,  a  small  fraction  really  gifted.  For 
Liszt  not  only  taught  without  pay,  but  also  lent  money  to  needy 
pupils.  Von  Billow  tried  vainly,  time  and  again,  to  weed  out  this 
rank  garden,  but  was  always  blocked  by  the  master,  with  whom 
uncritical  generosity  had  become  an  affectation.  Nevertheless, 
those  capable  of  getting  something  from  his  instruction  and  con- 
versation did  so.  Some  of  them  became  noted  pianists^  ethers  con- 
ductors, violinists,  and  even  composers.  For  not  only  piano  students 
flocked  in  droves  to  the  Hofgartnerei.  A  roster  of  those  who  were,, 
in  one  sense  or  another,  Liszt's  pupils  takes  up  pages  of  fine  type. 
The  amazing  thing  is  that,  despite  the  ever  more  relaxed  condi- 
tions of  his  classes,  it  includes  the  names  of  many  distinguished 
musicians,  such  as  Eugene  d5 Albert,  Isaac  Albeniz,  Georges  Bizet, 
Arthur  Friedheim,  Joseph  Joachim,  Rafael  Joseffy,  Sophie  Men- 
ter,  Moritz  Moszkowski,  Arthur  Nikisch,  Moriz  Rosenthal,  Ca- 
mille  Saint-Saens,  Giovanni  Sgambati,  Alexander  Siloti>  Bedfich 
Smetana,  and  Felix  Weingartner. 

After  leaving  his  religious  ambitions  behind  him,  and  after  his 


LISZT  389 

last  passional  flare-up,  Liszt  entered  a  period  of  intense,  wide- 
spread, and  rather  monotonous  activity.  He  taught  in  both  Wei- 
mar and  Budapest,  where  the  Hungarian  government  appointed 
him  president  of  a  nascent  music  academy  that  eventually  became 
a  flourishing  institution.  Honors  were  showered  upon  him  from  all 
sides.  In  1873  ^0  particularly  affecting  events  brightened  the  old 
man's  life:  he  went  to  Budapest  to  take  part  in  fetes  celebrating 
(a  year  late,  it  would  seem)  his  golden  jubilee  as  a  pianist;  he  was 
reconciled  to  his  daughter  Cosima  and  her  new  husband,  Wagner. 
Thenceforth  the  bonds  between  him  and  Bayreuth,  the  capital  of 
his  son-in-law's  empire,  were  strengthened  yearly.  Wherever  and 
whenever  he  could,  he  spread  the  gospel  of  Wagner.  Now,  too,  he 
began  to  return  to  Rome  each  year,  staying  at  Tivoli,  but  visiting 
the  Princess  in  her  all  but  hermetically  sealed  room.  As  he  gravi- 
tated toward  the  Wagners,  his  Carolyne  complained  more  and 
more:  there  was  no  room  for  Wagner  in  her  world.  In  1874,  Liszt 
turned  down  an  American  concert  tour  for  which  he  would  have 
been  guaranteed  600,000  francs.  He  rarely  played  in  public,  and 
then  only  for  some  specific  charity.  Besides,  the  machinery  was 
running  down:  at  sixty-three  he  was  a  prematurely  aged  man. 
Two  years  later,  when  both  Daniel  Stern  and  George  Sand  died, 
it  was  a  reminder  to  him  that  the  sucle  de  Liszt  was  itself  expiring. 
These  deaths  in  themselves  affected  him  litde,  but  in  1883  he  re- 
ceived a  blow  from  which  he  could  not  recover — Wagner's  sudden 
death  at  Venice.  Of  the  major  figures  of  Liszt's  life,  only  the  Prin- 
cess was  to  outlive  him,  and  she  but  a  year.  Early  in  1886,  he  bade 
her  a  solemn  farewell,  but,  as  Sacheverell  Sitwell  observes,  they 
had  in  reality  parted  long  before. 

Yet,  in  1886,  the  very  year  of  his  death,  feeble,  with  failing  eye- 
sight, this  relict  of  a  past  age,  deprived  of  most  of  his  friends  and 
great  associates,  had  the  energy  to  undertake,  after  forty-five  years, 
a  trip  to  the  one  country  that  had  not  received  him  well — England. 
His  English  pupils  smoothed  the  way,  and  the  paunchy  old  man, 
with  his  long  snow-white  hair,  his  warts,  his  veritable  ugliness,  was 
greeted  as  he  had  never  been  when  he  was  young,  almost  godlike 
in  appearance,  and  had  real  magic  at  his  fingertips.  Most  of  the 
public  celebrations  centered  around  performances  of  his  St.  Elisa- 
beth, and  his  playing  was  confined  to  semiprivate  functions.  One 
day  he  went  out  to  Windsor,  and  there  played  to  an  imperious 


39°  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

lady  whom  he  had  met  as  a  bride  almost  half  a  century  before.  He 
left  England  on  April  22,  a  good  week  later  than  he  had  planned, 
so  gratified  was  he  by  the  unparalleled  homage  he  had  received. 
He  proceeded  by  slow  stages  to  Bayreuth,  stopping  to  rest  at  vari- 
ous places  en  route.  The  English  trip  had  cost  him  too  much 
strength.  He  reached  his  daughter's  home  in  a  pitiably  weakened 
condition.  Even  then  he  roused  himself  to  attend  performances  of 
Parsifal  and  Tristan  und  Isolde  at  the  Festspielhaus,  the  second 
superlatively  fine,  for  the  singers  had  been  inspired  by  the  presence 
of  the  greatest  of  Wagnerians.  But  before  the  performance  had 
ended,  Liszt  was  carried  home  and  put  to  bed.  He  never  rallied. 
A  week  later,  on  July  31,  1886,  he  died  painlessly,  less  than  two 
months  before  his  seventy-fifth  birthday.  His  last  word  was 
"Tristan." 

Thus  died,  histrionic  to  the  last,  the  most  tremendous  musical 
failure  of  the  nineteenth  century.  The  more  one  hears  of  his  music 
and  the  more  one  reads  about  him,  the  more  ambiguous  his  posi- 
tion as  a  composer  becomes.  The  most  notable  fact  about  Liszt  is 
that  today  only  a  fraction  of  his  vast  output  is  to  be  heard  either 
in  actual  performance  or  in  recordings.  Whole  classes  of  his  com- 
positions are  completely  ignored.  This  is  an  insuperable  bar  to 
knowing  him  in  Mo,  not  only  to  the  layman  but  also  to  the  trained 
expert  to  whom  a  complicated  musical  score  is  no  mystery.  For 
Liszt,  perhaps  more  than  any  other  composer,  depends  upon  a 
virtuoso  performance  to  be  brought  to  life  at  all.  In  years  of  concert- 
going,  it  is  possible  to  hear  a  fairly  large  percentage  of  his  piano 
pieces  brilliantly  played,  but  the  same  is  far  from  true  of  his 
orchestral  and  choral  compositions,  most  of  which  are  beyond  the 
interest  and  competence  of  the  average  orchestra  or  choral  society. 
It  seems  unlikely  that  this  situation  will  change:  interest  in  Liszt 
is  constantly  lessening,  and  his  apologists  grow  fewer  and  more 
frantic.  It  is  obvious,  then,  that  only  by  evaluating  what  Liszt  is 
still  played  can  we  decide  whether  we  should  sorrow  or  rejoice 
that  we  do  not  hear  more. 

The  truth  is  that  Liszt's  historical  importance  as  an  innovator 
and  adapter  has  given  him  a  position  that  his  compositions,  judged 
as  music,  do  not  justify.  He  diverted  the  attention  of  composers 
toward  program  music  by  preachment  and  example.  In  1854,  re- 


LISZT 


ferring  to  his  own  Tasso,  he  invented  the  term  "symphonic  poem/' 
by  which  he  meant  an  extended  orchestral  piece,  sometimes  with 
chorus,  transcribing  in  musical  terms  the  general  significance  or, 
sometimes,  the  actual  contents  of  a  specific  poem,  painting,  or 
story.  In  this  new  free  genre,  he  exploited  the  leitmotiv—a  theme 
representing  a  person  or  idea,  and  repeated  whenever  the  com- 
poser wants  to  recall  that  person  or  idea  to  his  listeners.  Liszt  did 
not  invent  this  device,  which  was  already  old  when  Berlioz  startled 
the  musical  world  with  the  idee  fixe  that  recurs  throughout  his 
Symphonie  fantastique,  but  it  was  Liszt  who  made  it  one  of  the  stand- 
ard resources  of  orchestral  music.  His  chief  heir,  aside  from  Wag- 
ner, who  borrowed  lavishly  from  him,  was  Richard  Strauss.  Liszt 
consciously  evolved  so-called  "cyclical  form/'  in  which  unity  is 
achieved  by  the  repetition  and  transformation  of  germinal  themes 
throughout  an  entire  composition.  He  was  untiring  in  experiments 
with  new  harmonic  combinations,  and  made  discoveries  of  which 
others  besides  Wagner  have  taken  advantage.  Finally,  though  he 
learned  orchestration  after  he  was  forty,  and  even  allowed  others 
to  score  so  pretentious  a  creation  as  Tasso,  Liszt  eventually  added 
new  and  scintillant  color  to  the  orchestra's  resources.  While  this 
by  no  means  makes  it  reasonable  to  call  him,  as  Cecil  Gray  does, 
"the  most  potent  germinative  force  in  modern  music,"  it  explains 
why  he  would  stiE  have  a  place  in  the  history  of  music  even  if  not  a 
single  note  of  his  were  ever  played. 

Liszt's  compositions  fall  easily  into  categories  distinct  from  those 
in  which  their  instrumentation  and  form  place  them.  The  most 
familiar  group  is  that  composed  by  the  virtuoso,  and  consists  of 
the  Hungarian  Rhapsodies,  the  B  minor  Piano  Sonata,  etudes, 
concertos,  and  certain  of  the  Annees  de  pelerimge.  They  also  include 
such  of  his  arrangements,  transcriptions,  and  paraphrases  of  other 
composers'  works  as,  to  name  but  a  representative  pianoful,  the 
Soirees  de  Vimne  (after  Schubert),  the  Rigoletto  Paraphrase,  the 
waltz  from  Gounod's  Faust,  the  Don  Juan  Fantaisie  (after  Mozart), 
and  that  muzzy  and  magniloquent  organ  fantaisie  and  fugue  on  a 
theme  from  Meyerbeer's  Le  Prophlte,  "Ad  nos  ad  salutarem  undam" 
The  most  widely  played  of  these  virtuoso  pieces  are  certain  of  the 
Hungarian  Rhapsodies  (they  are  really  gypsy  rather  than  Hun- 
garian), particularly  the  second,  which  strikes  a  typical  average  — 
showy,  clever,  effective,  even  stirring  music,  built  up  of  sharp  dra- 


MEN    OF    MUSIC 

matic  contrasts  of  mood,  color,  and  rhythm.  Doubtless  the  best  of 
Liszt's  virtuoso  music,  even  if  not  the  best  known,  is  the  B  minor 
Sonata — a  one-movement  giant  pieced  together  with  diabolical 
finesse  out  of  meretricious  scraps.  It  is  one  of  the  most  successful 
scissors-and-paste  jobs  in  music,  and  at  the  hands  of  a  master 
pianist  sounds  much  better  than  it  really  is.  The  two  piano  con- 
certos are  still  played.  One  can  only  wonder  why:  they  are  windy, 
sentimental,  invertebrate,  and  as  dated  as  plush.  The  transcrip- 
tions, paraphrases,  and  arrangements  constitute  a  ragbag  of  good 
and  bad  odds  and  ends,  chosen  for  the  ease  with  which  they  could 
be  used  for  Liszt's  nefarious  purposes.  Admitting  the  ends  at  which 
he  aimed,  his  choice  was  not  far  from  infallible.  When  the  original 
had  quality,  the  result  is  sometimes  pleasing  enough;  if  the  original 
was  trash,  Liszt  compounded  its  vacuities.  In  general,  this  entire 
class  of  Liszt's  music,  composed  mainly  for  his  own  use  in  recitals 
and  concerts.,  is  worse  than  third-rate,  and  art  would  suffer  no 
appreciable  loss  if  it  were  all  to  be  destroyed  overnight  in  a  great 
cleansing  conflagration. 

Another  ponderable  group  of  compositions  efiused  from  the  lov- 
er's pen.  One  of  these  is  possibly  more  popular  than  even  the 
Second  Hungarian  Rhapsody — the  A  flat  major  Liebestraum,  writ- 
ten originally  as  a  song,  but  now  familiar  as  everything  from  a 
piano  solo  to  an  orchestral  prelude.*  Love's  dream  to  Liszt  (at 
least  in  A  flat  major)  comes  as  close  to  the  odor  of  tuberoses  as 
anything  in  music.  The  lover  must  have  been  in  a  cruel  mood 
when  he  wrote  it,  for  every  time  this  melodic  sugar  comes  to  a  boil, 
the  morbid  repetition  of  a  single  note  is  like  the  probing  cf  a 
wound.  But  not  all  of  Liszt's  love  music  is  so  sickening.  Au  Lac  de 
Wallenstadt,  for  instance,  has  a  kind  of  pellucid  charm;  so,  too,  has 
Au  Bord  d'une  source ',  which,  however,  is  nothing  more  than  earnest 
watering  down  of  Chopin.  In  the  second  of  the  Tre  Sonetti  di 
Petrana,  Liszt  surpassed  himself:  having  found  a  musical  idea  of 
distinction,  he  treated  it  in  the  main  poetically  and  perceptively. 

When  we  come  to  the  compositions  of  the  tonsured  Abbe,  it  is 
time  to  turn  back.  For  here  is  terra  incognita  indeed,  and  heaven 
knows  what  monsters  may  lurk  there.  For  the  average  music  lover, 
nay!  for  all  except  the  most  widely  traveled  critic  and  collector  of 
curiosa,  St.  Elisabeth^  Christus,  Psalm  XIII,  and  the  Masses  are 

*  The  rare  recording  by  the  J.  H.  Squire  Celeste  Octet  is  recommended. 


LISZT  393 

closet  music.  In  view  of  the  theatricality  of  Liszt* s  religions  atti- 
tude, it  is  hardly  conceivable  that  religion  would  have  fertilized 
him,  in  these  vast  choral  works,  with  the  large  musical  ideas  that 
are  so  conspicuously  lacking  from  the  rest  of  his  work.  An  exami- 
nation of  these  scores  bears  out  this  suspicion,  and  shows  merely 
that  his  usual  faults  and  lapses  were  here  proliferated,  and  in  a 
more  pompous  voice.  Nor  was  the  Abbe  more  convincing  in  his 
attempts  to  express  or  inspire  religious  emotion  via  the  keyboard. 
In  the  fulsome  Benediction  de  Dim  dans  la  solitude,  the  sock  and  buskin 
stick  out  brazenly  from  under  the  cassock.  The  Deux  Ugendes— 
Saint-Franqois  d'Assise  predicant  aux  ozseaux  and  Saint-Franqois  de  Paide 
merchant  sur  Us  flats — are,  on  the  other  hand,  charming  impression- 
istic aquarelles  from  which  Debussy  may  have  taken  a  hint.  Of 
genuine  religious  emotion  they  are  scrupulously  free. 

There  remains  one  more  category— the  multifarious  efforts  of 
the  thinker.  These  are  Liszt's  translations  into  music  of  literary 
and  artistic  conceptions.  The  most  familiar  of  them  is  the  sym- 
phonic poem  Les  Preludes,  inspired  by  Lamartine's  Meditations  po- 
etiques,  which  asks  the  rhetorical  question:  "What  is  our  life  but  a 
series  of  preludes  to  that  unknown  song  of  which  death  strikes  the 
first  solemn  note?33  In  it  a  series  of  themselves  unpretentious  musi- 
cal ideas  is  by  means  of  resplendent  orchestration  given  a  full  Max 
Reinhardt  production.  The  music  is  vigorous,  and  has  great  sur- 
face attractiveness.  In  addition  to  the  almost  diurnal  Preludes,  con- 
ductors occasionally  exhibit  that  musical  rodeo  known  as  Mazeppa, 
and  the  sugary  Orpheus.  Or,  taking  their  courage  and  their  budgets 
in  their  hands,  they  stage  a  revival  of  Tasso,  the  "Dante"  Sym- 
phony, or  the  "Faust"  Symphony.  Getting  the  "Faust"  up  to  pro- 
duction pitch  must  be  like  assembling  the  giant  mastodon  for 
museum  display.  The  end  result  is  much  the  same:  a  thing  that  in- 
spires awe — and  bewilderment— but,  alas!  no  love.  The  "Faust" 
Symphony  is  a  wondrous  hash  that  contains  every  aspect  of  Liszt's 
personality:  thinker,  lover,  virtuoso — all  are  here,  uncomfortably 
associated  in  a  final  ad  lib  choral  ending,  written  at  the  request  of 
the  Princess,  in  which  the  figure  of  the  Abb6  climbs  laboriously  to 
the  clouds. 

Of  these  various  categories,  which,  of  course,  overlap,  one  is 
tempted  to  ask  which  expresses  the  real  Liszt.  The  answer  is  none 
all.  The  real  Liszt  is  the  expert  handler  of  musical  tools,  the 


— or 


394  MEN     OF    MUSIC 

bold,  if  often  tasteless  and  clumsy,  experimenter  with  new  forms 
and  combinations  of  sound.  But  in  the  sense  that  Chopin  is  Chopin, 
whether  composing  a  polonaise,  a  prelude,  or  a  bad  concerto,  or 
Mozart  is  Mozart,  whether  writing  Die  £auberflote,  a  German  dance, 
or  a  clarinet  quintet,  Liszt  is  never  Liszt.  He  is  a  series  of  poses, 
some  of  them  quite  sincere.  He  grew  up  the  sport  of  every  passing 
impulse,  and  swept  along  on  every  current  of  thought:  these  he 
never  integrated,  never  resolved.  Instead,  he  followed  them  all. 
Thus,  instead  of  being  one  person,  he  became  a  collection  of  self- 
delusions,  trances,  half-conscious  impersonations,  struck  attitudes. 
He  is  a  circus  rider,  a  Don  Juan,  an  oracle,  a  priest,  a  peasant 
praying  at  a  wayside  shrine,  an  emperor  too  large  for  the  world, 
a  stage  Mephisto.  He  is  never  all  these  things  at  once  (a  Beethoven 
might  have  been),  but  only  seriatim.  Here,  possibly,  is  a  clue  to  the 
deplorable  paltriness,  the  occasional  downright  cheapness,  of  most 
of  his  music.  In  each  of  these  aspects,  Liszt  had  an  abiding  desire 
to  be  a  great  composer.  He  was,  in  fact,  obsessed  by  the  conception 
of  greatness  in  all  departments  of  his  life.  But,  as  Bernard  Shaw 
has  said,  "He  was  rich  in  every  quality  of  a  great  composer  except 
musical  fertility,53  and  it  is  a  lamentable  fact  that  a  careful  scrutiny 
of  all  his  compositions  would  hardly  disclose  a  single  first-class 
musical  idea. 


Chapter  XVI 

Richard  Wagner 

(Leipzig,  May  22,  i8i3-February  13,  1883,  Venice) 


WITH  Richard  Wagner,  the  musical  artist's  process  of  social 
emancipation  is  finally  completed.  With  him,  in  fact,  the 
musical  artist  is  not  only  emancipated,  he  is  apotheosized*  Wagner 
is  at  the  opposite  pole  from  the  all  but  anonymous  Church  mu- 
sician of  the  Middle  Ages,  whose  sole  aim,  seemingly,  was  to  serve 
God  and  earn  his  bread,  and  who  expressed  his  own  personality 
only  fortuitously.  That  many  of  those  dim  figures  burned  to 
"whelm"  their  very  selves  into  the  music  they  made  is  not  im- 
possible, but  neither  the  social  demand  for  their  output  nor  the 
technical  means  at  hand  allowed  them  this  comparatively  modem 
luxury.  These  men  had  emotions  just  like  us  moderns,  but  they 
were  forced  to  express  them  tangentially,  as  when  Josquin  Des 
Pres  projected  his  vexed  spirit,  rebuking  Louis  XII  by  means  of 
an  artfully  chosen  text.  We  cannot  conceive  of  so  complex  a  man 
as  Orlando  di  Lasso  not  wanting  to  express  his  ego,  if  only  to  abate 
emotional  storms.  Yet,  he  was  perforce  obliged  to  find  the  larger 
part  of  such  expression  outside  his  art.  Gradually,  as  music's  tech- 
nical resources  grew  richer,  the  opportunities  for  self-expression 
increased.  By  the  time  of  Beethoven  they  were  so  considerable  that 
a  shrewd  analyst  can  guess  his  emotional  biography  from  the  shift- 
ing character  of  his  music.  Fortunately  for  Wagner's  impatient  and 
explosive  psyche,  by  the  time  he  reached  creative  maturity  he 
found  at  hand  opportunities  as  far  in  advance  of  Beethoven's  as 
Beethoven's  were  in  advance  of  Di  Lasso's.  A  Wagner  of  the  Mid- 
dle Ages  is  unthinkable:  he  would  simply  have  burst.  He  was  the 
most  self-absorbed  egotist  of  all  times,  and  every  note  of  music 
he  put  down  was  part  of  a  lifelong  drive  to  externalize  his 
ego. 

Of  course,  a  Wagner  is  possible  only  after  certain  social  barriers 
have  been  passed.  Not  only  did  he  insist  upon  social  equality  with 
everyone,  including  king  and  emperor,  but  he  went  even  further, 
and  showed  that  he  actually  considered  himself  their  superior.  In 

395 


MEN    OF    MUSIC 

short,  he  insisted  upon  the  prerogatives  of  genius.  To  a  Bach,  the 
very  expression  "prerogatives  of  genius"  would  have  been  mean- 
ingless, and  even  a  Handel,  living  in  the  more  socially  sophisticated 
England  of  the  eighteenth  century,  could  have  had  only  an  inkling 
of  its  meaning.  Haydn  unquestionably  accepted  his  position  as  a 
household  servant,  and  did  not  even  realize  that  he  was  pinioned. 
Only  when  a  fortunate  chance  freed  him  did  he  really  find  wings. 
Mozart  literally  died  of  debilitation  because  his  peculiarly  modern 
personality  could  not  come  to  terms  with  the  patron  system.  Leo- 
pold Mozart  had  been  content  to  be  a  prince's  servant:  his  son 
quivered  with  rage  at  the  idea,  but  did  not  have  strength  to  break 
the  system.  Beethoven  did  break  it,  though  it  must  not  be  supposed 
that  he  did  so  singlehanded:  the  times  were  ripe,  and  there  were 
plenty  who  were  breaking  through  the  frame  in  every  field.  Once 
the  frame  was  broken  through,  the  task  was  not  only  to  assure  the 
musician's  autonomy,  but  also  to  guarantee  his  livelihood  and, 
finally,  to  invest  him  with  a  halo.  Wagner  assumed  that  he  was  a 
great  man,  with  a  message  for  mankind,  and  that  the  world  owed 
him  a  living — a  luxurious  living.  It  was  fatal  to  his  disposition  that 
it  took  him  so  long  to  convince  the  world  of  these  facts.  The  fas- 
cinating thing  about  Wagner  is  that,  starting  out  with  these  mon- 
strous assumptions,  he  sold  himself  to  the  world  at  precisely  his 
own  value,  and  lived  to  see  his  own  apotheosis. 

There  is  something  odd  about  the  biographies  of  people  who 
become  demigods  in  their  own  lifetimes:  fact  becomes  indistin- 
guishable from  legend,  as  we  have  seen  in  recent  years  in  the  case 
of  T.  E.  Lawrence.  What  we  have  to  deal  with  is  an  alloy.  Large 
elements  of  mystification  always  creep  in  from  various  sources. 
Partisans  exaggerate,  enemies  distort;  both  are  powerless  to  resist 
the  storytelling  impulse  invariably  awakened  by  a  glamorous  fig- 
ure of  this  sort.  In  the  case  of  Wagner,  by  nature  a  maker  of 
legends,  the  mystification  is  further  complicated  by  the  fact  that 
his  own  glamour  awakened  this  impulse  in  himself.  He  constantly 
talked  and  wrote  about  himself,  and  when  the  picture  did  not 
square  with  his  own  ideal  conception,  he  wove  a  mesh  of  truth, 
half-truth,  and  sheer  falsehood  that  cannot  be  wholly  disentangled 
even  now.  The  result  is  that  Ernest  Newman's  masterly  life  of 
Wagner,  which  was  over  fifteen  years  in  the  writing,  and  which 


WAGNER  397 

occupies  four  bulky  volumes,  is  one  of  the  most  absorbing  detec- 
tive stories  of  all  times.* 

The  mystery  begins  with  Wagner's  parents:  no  one  will  ever  be 
quite  certain  who  either  his  mother  or  his  father  was,  Frau  Wagner 
was  generally  credited  with  having  been  Johanna  Patz,  the  daugh- 
ter of  a  Weissenfels  baker.  But  the  lady  herself  was  secretive  about 
her  antecedents.  In  her  youth,  she  had  been  befriended  by  the 
ducal  family  of  Weimar,  and  gradually  the  idea  gained  ground 
that  she  was  the  natural  daughter  of  Prince  Friedrich  Ferdinand 
Constantin,  the  younger  brother  of  Goethe's  patron.  Grand  Duke 
Karl  August.  Color  is  lent  to  this  theory  by  the  fact  that  on  the 
death  of  Prince  Constantin  (whose  turbulent  life  and  refined  mu- 
sical taste  made  him  a  likely  grandsire  for  Wagner),  Johanna  was 
summarily  removed  from  the  academy  for  highborn  girls  she — 
ostensibly  a  baker's  daughter — had  been  attending.  She  married 
Carl  Friedrich  Wagner,  a  Leipzig  police  official,  and  by  him  had 
several  children  whose  paternity  has  never  been  doubted.  But 
whether  this  good  functionary  was  the  composer's  father  is  a  hotly 
disputed  question.  Many  people,  including  Wagner  himself,  have 
thought  it  more  than  possible  that  he  was  the  son  of  the  actor 
Ludwig  Geyer,  a  close  friend  of  Carl  Friedrich's,  who  is  supposed 
to  have  taken  too  seriously  the  time-honored  role  of  consoling  the 
wife  while  the  husband  is  occupied  elsewhere.  Geyer's  intimacy 
with  Johanna  Wagner  is  evidenced  by  the  following  sequence  of 
events.  Carl  Friedrich  died  on  November  2,  1813,  Geyer,  who  was 
on  tour  at  the  time,  returned  to  Leipzig,  and  took  charge  of  the 
widow's  affairs.  They  were  married  on  August  28,  1814,  and  their 
daughter  Cacilie  was  born  less  than  six  months  later.  The  facts 
speak  for  themselves,  and  also  suggest  that  Geyer,  who  for  years 
had  had  the  freedom  of  the  Wagner  home,  may  very  well  have 
been  the  father  of  the  boy  born  in  May,  1813,  and  christened  Wil- 
helm  Richard  Wagner.  When  Wagner  was  in  his  late  fifties, 
Cacilie  sent  him  a  packet  of  her  parents'  letters.  These  he  de- 
stroyed, but  not  before  he  found  in  them  what  he  must  have  con- 

*  No  one  realizes  this  better  than  Mr.  Newman  himself.  As  a  lesson  to  those  brash 
enough,  to  take  Wagnerian  source  materials  at  face  value,  he  has  examined  a  few 
small  facets  of  the  Wagner  legend  in  what  can  be  called  a  true  detective  story.  His 
Fact  and  Fiction  about  Wagner,  a  key  to  the  methods  of  source-sifting  he  used  in  the 
biography  itself,  deserves  space  on  the  same  shelf  with  Sherlock  Holmes,  Trends 
Last  Case,  and  The  Road  to  Xanadu. 


398  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

sidered  decisive  evidence  that  he  was  Geyer's  son.  The  entire  ques- 
tion is  further  complicated  by  the  fact  that  resemblances  can  be 
found  between  Wagner  and  both  his  paternal  uncle,  Adolf  Wag- 
ner, and  Geyer — and  that  no  portrait  of  Carl  Friedrich  has  sur- 
vived.* 

Probably  the  controversy  over  Wagner's  paternity  would  not 
have  raged  so  long  and  so  violently  had  it  not  been  suggested  that 
Geyer  was  partly  Jewish.  There  are  unquestionably  German  Jews 
of  that  name,  but  the  most  painstaking  research  of  the  birth  en- 
tries of  both  sides  of  the  actor's  family  has  failed  to  disclose  a  single 
Jewish  ancestor.  The  remote  possibility  that  Geyer  came  of  Chris- 
tianized Jewish  stock  has  led  many  who  would  enjoy  believing  that 
Wagner  was  partly  Jewish  into  stating  that  he  was.  As  Wagner 
was  a  ferocious  anti-Semite,  and  as  he  posthumously  became  the 
official  composer  of  the  Nazi  regime,  finding  proof  of  a  Semitic 
strain  in  him  would  be  a  real  pleasure.  But  the  sober  fact  is  that 
he  may  well  have  been  the  legitimate  son  of  the  good  "Aryans," 
Carl  Friedrich  Wagner  and  Johanna  Patz,  the  baker's  daughter, 
and  the  stepson  of  the  equally  good  "Aryan,"  Ludwig  Geyer. 

Richard  was  little  more  than  a  year  old  when  his  mother  mar- 
ried Geyer  and  removed  the  family  to  Dresden.  As  Geyer  contin- 
ued his  acting,  and  as  Wagner's  eldest  brother  and  sister  were  al- 
ready on  the  stage,  his  mother  was  afraid  that  the  rest  of  her 
children  might  also  take  to  this  not  too  highly  esteemed  profession. 
At  first,  it  looked  to  her  as  if  her  youngest  son  was  to  be  free  of  any 
hankering  for  the  stage.  He  was  a  lively,  impish  boy,  whom  Geyer 
nicknamed  "the  Cossack."  He  was  in  no  sense  a  child  prodigy, 

*  These  are  the  bare  essentials  of  the  Wagner  paternity  case,  whose  complexities 
proliferate  with  the  years.  For  instance,  there  is  the  story  that  Nietzsche  said  he  saw 
the  words  "I  am  the  son  of  Ludwig  Geyer"  at  the  beginning  of  the  manuscript  from 
which  the  Basel  printers  were  to  set  up  the  privately  printed  original  edition  of 
Wagner's  autobiography,  Mem  Leben.  While  Wagner  almost  certainly  told  Nietzsche 
that  he  was  Geyer's  son,  these  words  do  not  appear  in  the  manuscript.  In  1 869,  the 
philosopher  gave  Wagner  as  a  Christmas  present  a  portrait  of  Schopenhauer,  the 
frame  of  which  bore  as  a  crest  a  carved  vulture,  the  original  design  for  which  he  had 
obtained  from  Wagner.  As  the  German  for  vulture  is  Geiery  the  implication  is  obvi- 
ous. More  significant  is  the  presence  of  the  vulture  crest  on  the  title  page  of  the  pri- 
vately printed  edition  of  Man  Leben.  Finally,  the  title  page  bears  no  other  indication 
of  the  author's  identity,  unless  the  reader  looks  very  closely  indeed.  Then  he  can  see 
the  seven  stars  of  the  Big'  Dipper  on  a  shield  covering  the  bird's  belly.  Ernest  New- 
man has  guessed  that  this  is  a  reference  to  the  name  Wagner,  which  means  wagoner. 
Wagen  (wagon)  is  the  German  for  an  English  nickname  (Charles'  Wain)  for  the 
seven  stars  of  this  constellation. 


WAGNER 

and  showed  no  special  aptitude  for  any  kind  of  artistic  expression. 
Geyer,  whose  dilettante  tastes  including  painting  and  playwriting, 
tried  to  teach  Richard  how  to  paint,  but  when  the  boy  found  that 
it  took  more  than  a  day  to  equal  his  master,  he  quit  in  disgust.  In 
1821,  the  beloved  stepfather  died,  and  for  a  while  Richard  had  to 
live  with  relatives  in  a  small  Saxon  village.  There  he  began  Ms 
schooling,  which  he  continued  when  he  returned,  the  following 
year,  to  live  with  his  mother  in  Dresden.  He  was  an  indifferent  if 
naturally  apt  student.  When  his  imagination  took  fire,  as  it  did 
from  the  Homeric  world  of  gods,  demigods,  and  heroes,  he  re- 
sponded brilliantly.  To  amplify  his  knowledge,  he  read  Greek 
dramas,  and  pored  over  the  epics. 

Of  all  the  great  composers,  Tchaikovsky  excepted,  Wagner  came 
latest  to  the  study  of  music.  True,  as  a  small  boy  he  had  learned  to 
read  notes,  and  drum  on  the  piano— he  never  mastered  any  instru- 
ment. His  musical  awakening  came  when  he  heard  Der  Freischutz, 
the  overwhelming  hit  by  his  mother's  friend  Weber.  Shortly,  the 
piano  score  of  this  opera  became  his  Bible,  for  which  everything 
was  put  aside.  Evidently  Wagner's  mother  thought  her  duties  as 
chaperon  to  her  daughters  more  pressing  than  those  to  the  unruly 
boy,  for  in  1826  she  packed  up  and  went  to  Prague,  where  her 
eldest  daughter  had  found  a  good  job  in  the  theater.  Left  behind 
in  the  charge  of  family  friends,  Wagner  dawdled  away  at  the  piano, 
neglected  his  studies,  and  became  aware  of  the  girls  in  the  house- 
hold. Also,  he  read  everything  in  sight— with  distressing  results, 
for  he  embarked  on  the  writing  of  a  vast  tragedy  of  revenge,  love, 
insanity,  and  death,  which  is  something  like  a  cross  between  Hamlet 
and  a  Kentucky  mountain  feud.  Leubald  is  nothing  but  the  dregs  of 
Wagner's  deep  draughts  of  the  Greeks,  Shakespeare,  Goethe,  and 
E.  T.  A.  Hoffmann.  Absurd  though  Leubald  is,  it  contains  dramatic 
elements  that  reappeared  as  late  as  Tristan  und  Isolde. 

At  Christmas,  1827,  Wagner  heard  that  his  mother  had  moved 
back  to  his  birthplace.  Fired  with  a  vision  of  himself  as  a  swash- 
buckling Leipzig  student,  he  informed  his  schoolteachers  in  Dres- 
den that  his  family  had  sent  for  him  (which  was  not  true),  and 
was  given  hk  release.  When  he  turned  up  in  Leipzig,  his  mother 
sent  him  to  the  Nikolaischule.  But  school  was  dull:  Wagner  had 
discovered  the  Gewandhaus,  and  at  the  Gewandhaus  had  dis- 
covered Beethoven.  The  symphonies*  misunderstood  and  wretch- 


4-OO  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

edly  performed,  yet  gave  him  a  glimpse  of  how  great  music  could 
be;  the  incidental  music  to  Egmont  filled  him  with  an  overpowering 
desire  to  compose  something  appropriate  for  Leubald.  There  was 
only  one  hitch:  he  knew  nothing  about  composition.  He  borrowed 
a  treatise  on  the  subject  from  Friedrich  Wieck's  lending  library, 
and  within  a  few  months  had  composed,  not  music  for  Leubald, 
indeed,  but  a  piano  sonata,  a  quartet,  and  an  aria,  as  well  as  a 
tiny  pastoral  more  indicative  of  the  future  librettist-composer,  for 
he  wrote  both  play  and  music.  It  was  his  first  shot  at  orchestration, 
the  technique  of  which  he  had  cribbed  from  a  score  of  Don  Giovanni. 
It  would  appear,  on  the  strength  of  Wagner's  own  testimony,  that 
hearing  the  passionate  Wilhelmine  Schroder-Devrient  sing  Leo- 
nora in  Fidelio  was  an  illuminating  experience  comparable  only  to 
his  first  realization  of  Beethoven.  For,  though  he  had  heard  the 
operas  of  Weber,  Marschner,  and  other  composers,  he  here  first 
glimpsed  the  possibilities  of  music  drama.  In  one  blinding  apoca- 
lyptic flash,  the  main  course  of  his  destiny  was  revealed  to  him.  It 
was  years  before  the  full  implications  of  this  vision  became  clear, 
but  from  this  time  on,  Wagner's  constant  struggle  was  to  write 
operas,  not  like  Fidelio^  which  he  soon  regarded  rightly  as  a  failure, 
but  like  those  unwritten  music  dramas  toward  which,  according 
to  him,  Beethoven  was  striving  during  his  last  years.  From  this 
time  on,  Wagner  was  consumed  by  a  single  passion.  One  of  its 
effects,  specifically  in  the  year  1829,  was  that  he  simply  forgot  to 
go  to  school.  His  family  had  no  choice:  they  had  to  let  him  become 
a  musician. 

Frau  Geyer's  reluctant  permission  carried  a  stern  proviso:  Rich- 
ard was  first  to  enter  the  Thomasschule,  and  then  move  on  to  the 
University.  But  he  flunked  out  at  the  Thomasschule,  and  so  had 
to  matriculate  at  the  University  as  a  second-class  student.  As  if  to 
make  up  for  his  languid  interest  in  his  studies,  he  entered  enthusi- 
astically into  the  rowdiest  extracurricular  activities.  He  was  still 
at  the  Thomasschule  when  he  made  his  debut  as  a  revolutionary 
in  the  riots  with  which  his  schoolfellows  greeted  news  of  the  Paris 
uprisings  of  1830.  At  the  University,  he  concentrated  on  the  corps 
life  of  the  students — chiefly  drinking  and  gambling.  He  would  have 
dueled,  too,  but  fate  intervened  in  his  behalf  by  disabling  his  op- 
ponents before  they  reached  the  dueling  field. 

But  nothing  kept  Wagner  away  from  music.  Early  in  the  fall  of 


WAGNER  401 

1830,  he  made  a  piano  arrangement  of  the  "Choral"  Symphony, 
and  sent  it  to  a  music  publisher.  They  did  not  issue  it3  but  tc 
Wagner's  delight  sent  him  a  score  of  the  Missa  solennis.  The  imme- 
diate results  of  his  fervid  study  of  these  vast  Beethoven  works  were 
two  overtures,  one  of  which  was  in  several  respects  an  astounding 
composition.  The  young  composer  thought  of  this  B  flat  major 
Overture  as  compounded  of  different  "elements/3  each  of  which 
was  to  be  printed  in  ink  of  an  appropriate  color.  Already  the 
mystical  side  of  his  nature  was  having  its  say:  these  mysterious 
"elements"  were  nothing  more  esoteric  than  the  separate  instru- 
ment families  of  the  orchestra.  But  the  most  amazing  part  of  the 
work  was  its  allegro,  in  every  fourth  measure  of  which  the  kettle- 
drummer  was  to  give  a  tremendous  thud  on  what  normally  would 
have  been  a  weak  beat.  Heinrich  Dom,  then  Kapellmeister  of  the 
Leipzig  theater,  surprisingly  accepted  the  overture,  and  thus  had 
the  honor  (which  he  lived  to  regret)  of  being  the  first  to  play  pub- 
licly a  work  by  the  most  controversial  of  all  composers.  Fortu- 
nately for  Wagner,  that  Christmas  Eve  of  1830,  it  was  listed  on  the 
program  without  his  name:  the  insistent  drumbeats  roused  the 
audience  to  rage,  and  then  to  laughter,  Wagner  said  that  the  re- 
proachful look  in  the  eyes  of  the  doorman  haunted  him  for  years. 
In  183 1,  Wagner  took  his  first  formal  lessons  in  theory  and  com- 
position from  Weinlig,  one  of  Bach's  most  obscure  successors  as 
Thomascantor.  In  exactly  six  months  he  learned  all  this  man  had 
to  teach  him.  Compositions  now  began  to  pour  out  of  him:  within 
a  year  he  had  completed  three  more  overtures,  seven  scenes  from 
Fausty  a  symphony,  and  various  piano  pieces.  Family  influence  in 
theatrical  and  musical  circles  enabled  him  to  have  several  of  these 
performed.  The  G  major  Symphony — the  only  one  Wagner  ever 
completed — achieved  some  success  in  its  three  performances,  one 
in  Prague  and  two  in  Leipzig,  the  second  on  January  10,  1833, 
when  the  fourteen-year-old  Clara  Wieck  appeared  on  the  same 
program.  Wagner  also  began  an  opera,  himself  writing  the  text — 
a  custom  he  never  abandoned.  But  Die  Hochzeit  was  summarily  laid 
aside  when  his  sister  Rosalie  pronounced  the  libretto  too  blood- 
curdling. Wagner  then  started  on  Die  Feen,  a  new  opera  of  less 
horrifying  nature,  and  might  have  finished  it  in  record  time  had 
not  an  opening  for  a  chorusmaster  turned  up  at  Wurzburg,  whore 
ins  brother  Albert  was  stage  manager  and  leading  tenor.  Not  the 


4O2  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

least  of  his  motives  for  going  to  this  small  Bavarian  town  was  to 
get  out  of  the  Kingdom  of  Saxony,  where  he  was  liable  for  military 
service.  The  job  lasted  less  than  a  year. 

Just  before  returning  to  Leipzig  early  in  January,  1834,  Wagner 
finished  the  scoring  of  Die  Fern.  He  never  heard  his  first  completed 
opera:  not  until  five  years  after  his  death,  or  fifty-four  years  after 
its  composition,  was  this  not  unmelodious  m61ange  of  Beethoven, 
Marschner,  and  Weber  presented  for  the  first  time,  under  the  baton 
of  the  master's  friend  Hermann  Levi,  at  Munich,  on  June  29,  1888. 
Within  seven  years,  it  achieved  more  than  fifty  performances  in 
Munich  alone,  and  Ernest  Newman,  whose  detailed  acquaintance 
with  even  Wagner's  now  unplayed  scores  is  unexcelled,  says  that 
Die  Feen  would  today  be  at  least  as  grateful  in  performance  as 
Rienzi.  The  sometimes  played  overture  might  pass  as  a  minor  effort 
of  Weber:  it  has  romantic  charm,  even  occasionally  a  certain  vigor. 
An  unexpected  recurrent  quotation  from  Haydn's  "Drum  Roll" 
Symphony  is  explained  by  the  fact  that  in  1831  Wagner  had  ar- 
ranged one  Haydn  symphony  for  piano,  and  had  looked  over  oth- 
ers with  an  eye  to  arranging  them  too.  The  one  thing  that  cannot 
be  heard  in  the  overture  to  Die  Fern  is  a  hint  of  the  essential  Wagner. 

To  please  Wagner's  sister  Rosalie,  the  director  of  the  Leipzig 
opera  promised  halfheartedly  to  stage  Die  Feen,  but  fulfillment  of 
the  promise  was  postponed  so  often  that  Wagner  saw  that  he  was 
being  politely  staved  off.  He  was  plunged  into  profound  gloom, 
and  saw  his  situation  as  desperate.  He  was  on  the  outs  with  his 
family:  his  seemingly  incurable  passion  for  gambling  and  his  cava- 
lier refusal  of  a  conductor's  job  at  a  Zurich  theater  had  overtaxed 
his  mother's  patience.  A  series  of  love  affairs  had  ended  in  dis- 
illusionment and  disgust — a  critical  state  for  so  highly  sexed  a  man. 
Already  the  creditors  were  at  his  door,  and  he  had  embarked  on 
a  lifetime  of  borrowing  that  is  unmatched  in  history  or  fiction  ex- 
cept in  the  careers  of  professional  swindlers.  These  cumulating 
troubles  brought  on  the  first  of  those  crises  that  occur  with  grim 
persistence  until  overwhelming  success  served  to  make  him  shock- 
proof.  He  now  began  to  doubt  those  artistic  ideals  which  a  ro- 
mantic young  man,  particularly  in  the  Germany  of  the  thirties, 
would  give  up  only  when  pressed  to  the  wall.  Circumstances  juxta- 
posed themselves  absurdly  to  give  Mm  a  new  orientation:  he  heard 
an  execrable  performance  of  Beethoven's  Ninth,  and  straightway 


WAGNER  403 

began  to  doubt  his  idol;  he  heard  a  memorable  performance  of  a 
Bellini  opera,  and  was  just  as  easily  convinced  that  the  Italians 
had  the  real  secret  of  operatic  technique.  Illogically  assuming  that 
Die  Feen  was  getting  nowhere  because  it  emulated  Weber  and 
Marschner  rather  than  the  Italians  with  their  set  forms  and  light 
and  facile  melody,  he  sat  down  and  wrote  an  article  repudiating 
all  his  high-flown  views  about  the  sacred  mission  of  German  opera. 
This  effusion,  dated  June  10,  1834,  marked  Wagner's  debut  as  one 
of  the  most  tireless  polemicists  of  the  nineteenth  century. 

In  late  July,  Wagner  made  a  trip  to  Lauchstadt,  summer  head- 
quarters of  a  Magdeburg  theatrical  troupe  of  which  he  had  been 
offered  the  musical  direction.  He  took  one  look  at  the  mangy  out- 
fit and  its  eccentric  old  director,  and  refused  the  job.  Wearily  he 
sought  lodging,  but  there  his  plan  for  a  good  night's  rest  and  im- 
mediate return  to  Leipzig  was  shattered.  He  met  another  member 
of  the  troupe — a  young  woman  named  Minna  Planer — fell  in  love 
with  her  at  first  sight,  and  promptly  changed  his  mind  about  the 
Magdeburg  job.  Return  to  Leipzig  the  next  day  he  did,  but  only 
to  get  his  few  belongings  and  hurry  back  to  Lauchstadt.  The  next 
Sunday  he  broke  himself  in  as  conductor  with  Dan  Giovanni — an 
ambitious  trial  flight  for  a  novice  with  a  fifth-rate  company.  He 
plunged  feverishly  into  the  rather  heavy  duties  of  his  office,  but 
devoted  even  more  energy  to  wooing  Minna  Planer.  He  had  dis- 
covered almost  at  once  that  she  was  no  easy  mark:  it  would  have 
to  be  marriage  or  nothing.  The  most  perplexing  thing  about  Minna 
was  that  though  she  evidently  liked  him,  the  idea  of  marriage  did 
not  seem  to  interest  her.  Reluctantly,  Wagner  concluded  that 
siege  tactics  were  essential,  and  it  was  during  the  course  of  these 
that  he  learned  the  chief  reasons  for  Minna's  apparent  indifference 
to  his  urgings. 

It  was  an  old,  old  story:  Minna  had  listened  to  a  deceiver,  and 
when  little  more  than  a  girl  herself,  had  borne  a  fatherless  child, 
whom  she  now  passed  off  as  her  sister.*  Once  bitten,  she  was  twice 
shy.  After  years  of  bitter  struggle,  this  basically  respectable  woman 
had,  at  the  age  of  twenty-four,  reached  a  position  of  promise  in  the 
theater.  She  had  no  desire  to  marry  a  penniless  nobody  whose 

*  In  pleasing  contrast  to  Wagner's  general  maltreatment  of  Minna  in  later  years 
was  his  scrupulous  concealment  of  her  secret.  Only  when  he  began  to  dictate  Mein 
Leben,  years  after  Minna's  death,  did  he  reveal  it,  and  then  only  to  his  second  wife. 


404  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

professional  standing  was  precarious,  and  whose  wild  ways  made 
him  suspect  to  one  whose  main  objective  in  life  was  stability.  Had 
Minna  known  as  much  about  Richard  Wagner  as  we  do,  she  would 
have  married  him  at  once,  realizing  that  he  could  not  be  thwarted 
when  he  really  had  his  heart  set  on  something.  As  it  was,  it  took 
him  two  years  to  wear  down  her  resistance.  Paradoxically,  it  was 
those  very  wild  ways  she  so  condemned  (and  which  he  slyly  exag- 
gerated as  soon  as  he  realized  how  they  could  be  used  to  play  upon 
her)  that  finally  brought  them  together  at  the  altar  of  the  church 
of  Tragheim,  a  village  near  Konigsberg,  on  November  24,  1836. 
If  Wagner's  own  testimony  is  to  be  believed,  it  was  not  until  the 
marriage  was  being  performed  that  he  realized  that  he  was  taking 
a  rash  step.  Then  it  flashed  through  his  mind  that,  with  all  her 
physical  attractiveness  and  admirable  human  qualities,  Minna  was 
not  likely  to  prove  the  ideal  sharer  of  his  mental  and  artistic  life. 
The  period  of  Wagner's  courtship  saw  the  composition,  produc- 
tion, and  failure  of  his  second  opera,  Das  Liebesverbot,  the  text  of 
which  he  based  on  Measure  for  Measure.  In  twisting  the  plot  to  make 
it  express  his  new  theories  and  fevered  state  of  mind,  he  changed  it 
with  a  highhandedness  that  would  otherwise  have  been  strange  in 
one  who  regarded  Shakespeare  as  a  god.  He  conceived  of  Das 
Liebesverbot  as  a  hymn  to  sensuality,  in  contrast  to  the  pseudo- 
philosophical  mystical  claptrap  and  high  moral  tone  of  German 
opera.  This,  as  well  as  his  new  Italian  bias,  led  him  to  move  the 
locale  from  Vienna  to  Sicily,  and  to  change  the  nationality  of  the 
hypocritical  Angelo  to  German.  The  composition  of  the  opera  pro- 
ceeded slowly:  Wagner  was  doing  an  uphill  job  to  raise  the  stand- 
ards of  the  Magdeburg  company;  Minna's  unwillingness  to  say 
yes  was  driving  him  to  distraction;  his  creditors  were  becoming 
importunate,  and  he  was  already  plagued  by  the  erysipelas  that 
troubled  him  all  his  life.  But  on  March  28,  1836,  Das  Liebesverbot 
was  finally  produced,  and  Wagner  selected  its  second  night  as  his 
own  benefit.  The  first  night  was  a  fiasco  of  epic  proportions:  the 
orchestra  was  not  ready  and  the  singers  forgot  their  parts — one  of 
them  filled  in  with  fragments  from  French  operas.  Without  a  li- 
bretto synopsis,  the  infuriated  audience  could  not  make  head  or 
tail  out  of  the  action.  On  Wagner's  benefit  night,  the  theater  was 
empty.  As  Ernest  Newman  says,  "The  Magdeburg  fiasco  .  .  .  may 
or  may  not  have  been  a  catastrophe  for  German  art,  but  it  cer- 


WAGNER  405 

tainly  sounded  the  knell  of  the  hopes  of  Wagner's  creditors."  Das 
Liebesverbot  was  shelved  for  almost  a  century,  and  rightly  so,  for 
if  it  can  be  judged  by  hearing  its  bustling,  empty  overture  and  by 
glancing  at  the  rest  of  the  score,  its  only  interest  is  historical.  Wag- 
ner used  leitmotivs  here  for  the  first  time,  but  in  the  crudest  way — 
as  unchanging  tags  mechanically  repeated. 

Das  Liebesverbot  proved  a  deathblow  not  only  to  Wagner's  im- 
mediate plans,  but  also  to  the  Magdeburg  company.  He  was  out 
of  a  job,  penniless,  and  in  imminent  danger  of  arrest  for  debt. 
Minna  went  to  Konigsberg  to  look  for  work,  and  within  a  couple 
of  months  Wagner,  warily  eluding  the  police,  joined  her  there.  He 
found  Minna  well  established — too  well  established,  it  seemed  to 
Wagner,  whose  jealousy  misinterpreted  the  favors  to  other  men 
she  felt  necessary  for  the  furtherance  of  her  career — and  Ms.  For 
her  needy  suitor  she  wangled  a  conducting  job  in  the  Konigsberg 
company,  but  he  was  in  abject  misery.  As  we  have  seen,  Minna 
capitulated  in  November,  1836,  and  for  a  time  Wagner's  spirits 
soared.  But  domestic  quarrels  began  almost  immediately:  Wagner 
could  not  stand  Minna's  familiarity  with  other  men,  and  she 
loathed  his  financial  irresponsibility  and  resented  the  threats  that 
hung  over  them.  But  he  had  hopes:  a  new  opera  was  gestating  in 
his  mind,  and  he  was  emboldened  to  send  the  text  to  Scribe,  doyen 
of  librettists,  with  the  modest  suggestion  that  he  would  be  willing 
to  set  a  French  version  for  the  Opera.  Scribe  did  not  answer.  Then 
Wagner  attacked  him  with  a  score  of  Das  Liebesverbot^  this  time  sug- 
gesting that,  after  having  it  favorably  passed  upon  by  Meyerbeer 
and  Auber,  he  translate  the  text  and  produce  it  at  the  Opera- 
Comique.  Meanwhile,  things  were  moving  in  Konigsberg.  The 
conductor  resigned,  and  Wagner  got  his  post.  The  change  was 
fatal  to  the  Konigsberg  company,  which  immediately  collapsed, 
thereby  precipitating  the  first  of  the  many  major  crises  in  Wagner's 
married  life. 

Hedged  in  by  Richard's  creditors,  Minna  determined  to  dissoci- 
ate herself  forever  from  his  Bohemian  existence.  She  chose  to  eman- 
cipate herself  from  unconventionality  by  fleeing  with  another  man. 
Wagner  was  beside  himself  with  grief  and  rage.  Finding  that 
Minna's  destination  was  her  parents'  in  Dresden,  he  set  out  in 
pursuit  of  her.  They  now  played  a  cat-and-mouse  game  for  some 
months,  with  no  decision  reached.  He  then  landed  a  job  as  opera 


406  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

conductor  at  out-of-the-way  Riga.  Minna  refused  to  accompany 
him,  so  he  set  out  on  the  long  journey  alone.  One  of  Wagner's 
tactics,  which  evidently  had  no  effect  on  her,  was  a  threat  of 
divorce.  Less  than  two  months  later,  Minna  showed  up  in  Riga 
with  her  sister  Amalie,  to  whom  he  promised  work  at  the  theater. 
He  threw  himself  wholeheartedly  into  his  job,  and  though  he  thor- 
oughly despised  most  of  what  he  had  to  stage,  in  two  years  he  put 
on  thirty-nine  operas.  Conditions  in  Riga  were  a  shade  better 
than  in  Magdeburg  or  Konigsberg,  but  the  politics  were  more 
devious.  Soon  Wagner  was  at  swords*  points  with  the  impresario, 
who  resented  his  conductor's  lofty  attitude  toward  the  trash  in  the 
repertoire.  Early  in  1839,  the  break  came:  Wagner  literally  awoke 
one  morning  to  find  that  he  had  been  replaced  by  Heinrich  Dorn. 
Thereafter,  he  never  tired  of  vilifying  both  Dorn  (who  seems  to 
have  been  guiltless  of  complicity  in  the  intrigue)  and  the  impre- 
sario, though  the  latter  was  somewhat  justified  in  not  wishing  to 
keep  an  aide  who  might  be  clapped  into  debtors'  prison  at  any 
moment. 

As  the  time  for  his  departure  from  Riga  drew  near,  Wagner 
desperately  turned  over  various  plans  of  action.  Getting  out  of 
Russia  was  hard  enough  for  the  jobless,  debt-harassed  fellow,  but 
the  choice  of  a  new  place  to  try  his  luck  was  even  more  difficult. 
At  last  he  hit  upon  Paris,  chiefly  in  the  thin  hope  that  Scribe  and 
Meyerbeer  would  be  interested  enough  to  help  him.  Minna,  who 
had  given  up  her  stage  career,  resigned  herself  to  a  move  of  which 
she  had  the  gloomiest  forebodings.  On  July  10,  eluding  frontier 
guards,  they  crossed  into  Prussia.  They  had  decided  to  make  the 
westward  journey  by  water,  partly  because  it  was  cheaper,  and 
even  more  because  their  Newfoundland  dog.  Robber,  was  too  large 
and  obstreperous  for  coach  travel.  Accordingly,  they  sailed  for 
London  from  Pillau,  near  Konigsberg,  on  July  18.  The  voyage 
should  normally  have  taken  about  a  week,  but  they  encountered 
storms  so  violent  that  it  was  almost  a  month  later  that  the  little 
one-hundred-ton  sailing  vessel  weighed  anchor  in  the  Thames. 
Minna  was  terrified  as  the  ship  approached  England:  screaming 
about  danger  whenever  a  buoy  or  signal  light  was  sighted  in  the 
fog,  she  added  to  the  sailors'  misery.  But  to  Wagner,  the  perils  of 
these  troubled  waters  were  exhilarating.  It  was  during  this  hideous 


WAGNER  407 

crossing  that  he  first  conceived  the  idea  of  writing  an  opera  about 
the  Flying  Dutchman— the  Wandering  Jew  of  the  sea. 

After  an  uneventful  week  in  London,  the  Wagners  crossed  to 
Boulogne,  where  they  chanced  to  meet  Meyerbeer,  then  by  all  odds 
the  most  influential  musician  in  France.  Bearing  friendly  letters  of 
introduction  from  the  man  he  was  sure  he  would  soon  supplant  in 
public  favor,  Wagner  arrived  in  Paris  in  a  bumptious  mood.  Dis- 
illusionment came  fast.  For  more  than  two  and  a  half  years,  he 
struggled  against  mounting  woes,  lured  by  deceptive  hopes  and 
empty  promises.  At  times  only  a  mystical  faith  in  his  star  kept  him 
going  at  all.  Never  did  troubles  bear  richer  fruit,  for  it  was  by  this 
tragic  via  cruets  that  Wagner  returned  to  those  ideals  of  German 
opera  that  he  had  incontinently  abandoned  for  the  fashion  of  the 
hour.  Beethoven's  Ninth  again  played  a  salient  role  in  orienting 
him:  shortly  after  his  arrival  in  Paris,  he  heard  it  magnificently 
played  under  Frangois  Habeneck,  and  at  once  his  acceptance  of 
music  as  mere  entertainment  fled  before  the  renewed  revelation  of 
its  boundless  emotional  possibilities  as  a  means  of  expression.  His 
immediate  reaction  was  to  begin  a  symphony  based  on  Faust.  This 
never  progressed  beyond  one  movement,  but  was  revised  in  1855 
as  Eine  Faust  Ouverture.  Wagner  could  not  afford  such  serious  essays: 
he  needed  money,  and  he  made  it — in  pitiable  handouts — by  com- 
posing mediocre  French  songs,  translating,  writing  articles,  and 
making  transcriptions. 

As  soon  as  Wagner  knew  anything  at  all  about  Paris,  he  realized 
that  he  could  hope  for  nothing  from  Scribe,  who  was  primarily  a 
high-powered  businessman.  Nor  did  much  come  from  his  letters 
of  introduction  until  the  Theatre  de  la  Renaissance,  urged  on  by 
Meyerbeer,  accepted  Das  LiebesverboL  It  was  to  be  produced  in 
French  as  La  Novice  de  Palerme.  With  this  supposed  sure  thing  a 
matter  of  days,  Richard  and  Minna  moved  to  fine  quarters  in  the 
fashionable  Opera  section,  and  prepared  to  enjoy  themselves  at 
last.  Then  the  Theatre  de  la  Renaissance  failed,  Minna  had  to 
take  in  boarders,  and  Wagner  seems  actually  to  have  spent  some 
time  in  debtors'  prison.  In  these  darkest  hours,  Minna  stood 
stanchly  by  him:  was  he  not  trying  to  live  according  to  her  lights? 
He  returned  to  the  dull  grind  of  translations,  articles,  and  tran- 
scriptions. In  some  of  the  articles  the  cry  of  his  struggling  spirit 


408  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

breaks  through,  and  a  few  of  them  are  more  truly  Wagnerian  than 
much  of  the  music  he  was  to  compose  in  the  next  five  years.  JL  on. 

In  the  summer  of  1840,  the  idea  of  the  Flying  Dutchman  hauMed 
Wagner  so  ferociously  that  he  had  to  find  time  to  write  a  one-act 
French  libretto  about  it.  Again  Meyerbeer  helped  him  by  inducing 
the  Opera  to  consider  Le  Vaisseau  fantome*  The  director  liked  it, 
but  enraged  Wagner  by  offering  to  buy  it  for  the  use  of  another 
composer.  Nothing  is  more  eloquent  of  Wagner's  grim  poverty 
than  that,  after  several  scenes  with  himself,  he  agreed  to  sell.  He 
received  five  hundred  francs.  This  meant  a  little  leisure,  which  he 
used  to  expand  the  libretto  into  a  three-act  German  text.  Mean- 
while, he  had  completed  Rienzi,  an  opera  begun  in  Dresden  more 
than  two  years  earlier,  and  had  sent  the  score  to  the  King  of 
Saxony  in  the  hope  that  he  would  recommend  it  to  the  Dresden 
opera.  Alleviation  seemed  to  come  all  at  once,  Le  Vaisseau  fantome 
was  sold  in  May,  1841,  and  a  few  weeks  later  word  came  that 
Dresden  had  taken  Rienzi  for  production  the  following  year.  Wag- 
ner turned  with  new  gusto  to  the  Flying  Dutchman  libretto,  and 
by  December  had  composed  Der  fliegende  Hollander,  which  he 
promptly  submitted  to  Berlin.  This,  too,  was  accepted  in  March, 
1842,  and  the  next  month  the  Wagners  set  out  from  the  now-hated 
French  city  toward  what  seemed  a  glowing  future  in  Germany. 

Rienzi  was  produced  at  the  Dresden  Hoftheater  on  October  20, 
1842.  The  cast  was  chosen  to  assure  success:  Schroder-Devrient 
created  the  role  of  Adriano,  the  great  Joseph  Aloys  Tichatschek 
that  of  Rienzi.  With  them,  despite  Schroder-Devrient's  being  too 
burgeoningly  female  to  make  a  convincing  man,  Wagner  was  un- 
feignedly  delighted.  But  the  skimping  on  the  sets  and  costumes 
vexed  him.  He  need  not  have  worried:  an  enraptured  audience  sat 
through  more  than  five  hours  of  Rienzi,  and  Wagner  left  the  theater 
a  famous  man.  Before  Christmas,  Dresden  demanded  six  repeats 
of  this  excessively  long  and  noisy  opera,  which  for  years  was  to 
remain  his  only  success.  Some  of  its  original  popularity  can  be 
credited  to  the  grandiose  libretto  Wagner  had  evolved  from  Bul- 
wer-Lytton's  novel,  with  its  chances  for  heroics  and  sumptuous 
mass  effects.  "From  the  wretchedness  of  modern  and  domestic 
existence/*  Wagner  wrote^  "...  I  was  carried  away  by  this  pic- 
ture of  a  great  political  and  historical  event.  .  .  .  Rienzi,  with 
great  ideas  in  his  brain  and  strong  feelings  in  his  heart,  dwelling  in 


WAGNER  409 

gross  and  vulgar  surroundings3  set  all  my  nerves  thrilling  with 
sympathy  and  affection."  Can  there  be  any  doubt  that  Wagner, 
disgusted  with  sordid  poverty  and  lack  of  recognition,  and  already 
resentful  of  Minna's  suburban  personality,  identified  himself  with 
the  hero? 

Rien&,  composed  in  cold-blooded  imitation  of  Spontini  and 
Meyerbeer,  is  a  true  grand  opera  in  the  French  style — the  only  one 
Wagner  ever  composed.  The  whole  work,  and  particularly  the 
first  two  acts,  is  full  of  sensationalism — heroic  displays  for  the 
tenor,  brassy  outbursts  for  the  orchestra,  and  tremendous,  ear- 
splitting  choruses.  The  predominance  of  march  rhythms  produces 
a  triumphant,  martial,  but  finally  monotonous  effect.  Rien&  is  a 
first  cousin  to  Les  Huguenots,  but  without  Meyerbeer's  beautifully 
calculated  variety  and  infinite  command  of  musicodramatic  de- 
vice. One  of  the  few  signs  in  Rienzj,  of  the  Wagner  of  the  future  is  a 
more  subtle  use  of  leitmotivs.  He  has  now  begun  to  understand 
that  they  can  be  altered  to  express  shifting  moods,  and  combined 
contrapuntally.  The  opera  may  be  fairly  judged  by  the  overture, 
which,  contrary  to  all  of  Wagner's  later  theories,  is  little  more  than 
a  potpourri  of  high  spots.  It  is  by  turns  brilliant  and  exciting,  noble 
and  smug — the  music  of  a  Von  Suppe  who  happened  to  be  a 
genius.  As  much  a  favorite  with  brass  bands  as  the  William  Tell 
overture,  it  is  the  only  part  of  the  opera  we  hear  today.  Rienzi  has 
not  been  mounted  in  New  York  since  1923.  *\ 

The  success  of  Rienzi  improved  Wagner's  fortunes  in  some  ways, 
but  increased  his  financial  difficulties.  Friedrich  August  of  Saxony 
was  much  impressed  by  the  opera,  and  wanted  Wagner  in  his 
service.  The  Kapellmeister y  Weber's  bete  noire  Morlacchi,  conveni- 
ently died  just  at  this  time,  and  Wagner  succeeded  him  early  in 
1843.  A  life  income  of  fifteen  hundred  thalers — five  times  as  much 
as  he  had  been  paid  for  Rienzi — seemed  momentarily  very  hand- 
some after  years  of  privation.  Unfortunately,  news  of  his  affluence 
came  to  the  ears  of  Wagner's  creditors,  and  in  an  amazingly  short 
time  peremptory  demands  for  payment  began  to  pour  in  from 
Leipzig,  Magdeburg,  Konigsberg,  Riga,  and  Paris.  He  was  so  fran- 
tic that  he  had  to  pour  out  his  woes  to  Schroder-Devrient.  As  rash 
as  himself,  she  lent  him  more  than  a  thousand  thalers — actually  a 
negligible  stopgap,  for  by  this  time  the  Kapellmeister  owed  many 
times  that  amount  Nor  did  the  production  of  DtrjKegemde 


4-10  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

lander,  on  January  2,  1843,  help  much.  Rather  the  contrary.  In 
fact,  for  its  failure  made  Wagner's  creditors  tighten  the  screws, 
fearing  that  Rienzi  might  prove  only  a  flash  in  the  pan. 

Berlin  had  originally  accepted  Derfliegende  Hollander,  but  its  pre- 
miere took  place  in  Dresden  because  Wagner,  vexed  by  many  post- 
ponements, angrily  demanded  it  back  for  the  city  that  had  re- 
ceived Rimzi  so  enthusiastically.  It  had  no  part  for  Tichatschek, 
but  Schroder-Devrient,  who  was  luxuriating  in  the  storms  of  a  new 
love  affair,  made  up  for  his  absence  by  a  romantically  vibrant 
portrayal  of  the  overwrought  Senta  that  might  have  carried  the 
opera  to  success  if  the  other  singers  had  had  even  a  slight  under- 
standing of  their  roles.  Ordinarily  the  audience  would  not  have 
had  much  trouble  with  the  music  itself,  but  the  patent  bewilder- 
ment of  the  actors  and  their  inability  to  project  the  drama  wrapped 
the  entire  occasion  in  a  pall  of  gloom.  The  listeners  missed  the 
pageantry  and  glittering  meretriciousness  ofRienzi.  Wagner's  new 
opera  was  a  failure,  and  after  four  nights  was  taken  off,  not  to  be 
heard  in  Saxony's  capital  for  twenty-two  years.  Nor  was  Berlin 
much  kinder  a  year  later.  Der  fliegende  Hollander  was  shown  to  in- 
creasingly enthusiastic  audiences  there,  but  the  critics  treated  it 
with  such  calculated  savagery  that  after  four  performances  it  was 
withdrawn,  and  did  not  reappear  for  a  quarter  of  a  century.  And 
though  the  self-centered  Spohr  broke  all  precedents  by  not  only 
giving  it  at  Cassel,  but  also  sending  the  composer  a  warm  letter  of 
praise  and  encouragement,  Wagner  was  forced  to  realize  that  Der 
fliegende  Hollander  would  not  help  his  fortunes. 

When,  on  November  5,  1841,  Wagner  had  completed  the  over- 
ture to  Derfliegende  Hollander,  he  had  written  on  the  title  page,  "In 
night  and  wretchedness.  Per  aspera  adastra.  God  grant  it!"  Through 
deprivation,  pain,  and  hardship  he  had  achieved  his  star — the 
creation  of  the  first  music  drama.  It  was  drawn  out  of  his  own  deep 
need  for  a  woman's  understanding  and  unquestioning  love.  It  is 
significant,  as  a  sidelight  on  Wagner's  restless  search  for  this  kind 
of  complete  love,  that  in  the  first  draft  of  the  opera,  the  woman 
whose  faith  in  the  Dutchman  redeems  him  was  called  Minna,  and 
was  changed  to  Senta  only  when  he  realized  definitely  that  Minna 
could  never  redeem  him.  From  the  moment  he  had  first  read  in 
Heine  the  legend  of  the  accursed  Vanderdecken,  it  seized  his  im- 
agination. His  passage  of  the  North  Sea  served  to  bring  it  forcibly 


WAGNER 

to  Ms  mind  again,  and  there  is  no  doubt  that  by  this  time  he  had 
identified  himself  with  the  wanderer.  This  is  reason  enough  for 
the  music  of  Der  fliegende  Hollander  registering  so  striking  an  ad- 
vance over  Rienzi:  it  is  deeply  felt.  Also,  Wagner  had  returned  to 
his  ideals,  and  was  writing  a  German  opera,  though  one  still  within 
the  limits  of  the  Weber  tradition.  The  score  is  reminiscent  of  Der 
Freischutz,  but  is  more  consistently  dramatic,  less  shackled  by  that 
creaking  set-number  scheme  which,  inherited  from  the  classicists, 
had  proved  the  curse  of  romantic  opera,  making  it  seem  jumbled 
and  spasmodic.  A  few  set  numbers  remain,  but  Wagner  has  gone 
an  amazingly  long  way  toward  continuous  action  and  melody, 
The  somber  overture,  surcharged  with  catastrophe  and  the  sea,  is 
no  mere  potpourri,  but  rather  a  cunningly  woven  prophecy  of 
conflict  and  salvation.  It,  Vanderdecken's  "Die  Frist  ist  urn"  the 
Spinning  Chorus,  and  Senta*s  Ballad  have  by  constant  repetition 
come  to  seem  autonomous,  but  in  the  opera  they  are  merely  high 
points  on  a  fairly  continuous  line.  Much  of  the  music  darkles  and 
lowers:  it  throbs  with  the  vast  impersonal  energy  of  the  sea  and  die 
sky.  No  more  here  than  in  The  Ancient  Manner  do  we  expect  to 
meet  ordinary  people.  Nor  do  we:  Vanderdecken  and  Senta  are 
the  timeless  symbols  of  Wagner's  spiritual  strife. 

With  Der  fliegende  Hollander  Wagner  performed  the  inevitable 
homage  to  Weber  that  had  been  implicit  in  his  whole  musical 
development.  He  had  to  write  it  in  order  to  discover  what  could, 
and  could  not,  be  done  with  Weber's  tools.  In  1844,  with  a  com- 
pletely new-type  opera  in  all  but  final  shape,  he  paused  to  arrange 
special  music  to  be  given  at  the  reburialof  Weber's  body  in  Dres- 
den. During  the  ceremony  he  was  so  overcome  with  emotion  that 
while  delivering  his  carefully  prepared  eulogy  he  fell  into  a  kind 
of  cataleptic  trance,  but  managed  to  speak  his  piece  to  the  end. 
In  it  he  dedicated  himself  once  more  to  the  creation  of  a  national 
opera  for  Germany.  Be  it  said  that  in  forty  years  of  unparalleled 
ups  and  downs  he  never  deviated  even  slightly  from  this  ideal. 

Wagner  was  eventually  to  decide  that  purely  mythical  subjects 
best  fitted  his  conception  of  music  drama,  but  until  reaching  that 
decision  he  combined  history  and  myth.  Tamhauser  is  a  triumph  of 
this  mixed  marriage:  the  story  combines  details  from  an  actual 
ringing  contest  held  at  the  Wartburg  in  the  thirteenth  century  with 
the  legend  of  a  minnesinger  who  fell  under  the  spell  of  Venus,  and 


412  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

lived  with  her  in  a  mountain  not  far  from  the  Wartburg.  Wagner 
transformed  this  material  into  a  dramatic  conflict  between  sensual 
and  spiritual  love.  Even  in  the  libretto,  however,  Venus  is  a  more 
vivid  figure  than  the  goody-goody  Elisabeth  because  Wagner,  here 
again  identifying  himself  with  the  hero,  had  a  passionate  parti  pris 
in  favor  of  Venus,  He  had  finished  writing  the  poem  in  April,  1843, 
worked  at  the  music  off  and  on  for  two  years,  and  finally  com- 
pleted it  in  April,  1845.  On  October  19  of  that  year,  it  was  pro- 
duced at  the  Dresden  Hoftheater,  with  the  composer's  niece, 
Johanna  Wagner,  as  Elisabeth,  Schrdder-Devrient  as  Venus,  and 
Tichatschek  as  Tannhauser.  Makeshift  scenery  had  to  be  used,  as 
that  ordered  from  Paris  did  not  arrive  on  time.  Only  the  Venus 
had  any  conception  of  her  role,  but  even  she  protested  to  Wagner: 
"You  are  a  man  of  genius,  but  you  write  such  eccentric  stuff,  it  is 
impossible  to  sing  it."  The  others  merely  walked  through  their 
parts,  and  Tichatschek  had  so  rudimentary  an  understanding  of 
the  plot  that  in  the  singing  contest  he  horrified  Wagner  by  ad- 
dressing the  impassioned  Hymn  to  Venus  directly  to  the  virginal 
Elisabeth.  It  is  no  wonder,  then,  that  an  opera  which,  even  in  a 
flawless  production,  might  have  seemed  a  daring  novelty,  failed  at 
its  premiere.  Stories  began  to  circulate:  that  Wagner  was  a  Catholic 
propagandist,  that  he  wrote  music  that  could  not  be  sung — singers 
rash  enough  to  attempt  it  would  certainly  ruin  their  voices — and 
that  Tannhauser  was,  moreover,  a  morbid,  pornographic  concoc- 
tion. Eight  days  later  it  was  given  again,  this  time  with  the  Paris 
scenery.  There  was  only  a  scattering  of  people  in  the  house,  but 
these  few  carried  such  glowing  tales  to  their  friends  that  the  opera 
began  to  catch  on,  and  soon  was  a  popular  success.  A  popular 
success,  yes,  but  not  a  critical  one.  Tannhauser  emphasized  that 
division  between  Wagner's  audiences  and  his  critics  that  endured, 
with  minor  exceptions,  the  rest  of  his  life. 

Tannhauser  as  we  know  it  today  is  not  the  opera  Dresden  heard 
in  1845.  Not  only  did  Wagner  revise  the  libretto  and  score  in  1860, 
but  he  expanded  the  Venusberg  scene  into  one  conceived  in  the 
advanced  style  of  Tristan  und  Isolde.  Even  so,  this  new  version  has 
no  hearer  difficulties  today.  On  the  contrary,  it  has  begun  to  sound 
old-fashioned,  almost  pre-Wagnerian.  A  whole  library  of  exegesis, 
partly  by  Wagner,  partly  by  his  commentators,  has  prepared  us — 
and  the  singers — for  a  full  understanding  of  Tannhauser's  meaning, 


WAGNER  413 

Now,  at  any  rate,  it  is  no  misunderstanding  on  our  part3  but  the 
failure  of  Wagner's  musical  achievement  that  makes  the  opera  as 
an  entity  seem  flat.  At  thirty-two,  he  was  not  yet  in  sufficient  com- 
mand of  his  new  resources — leitmotivs  woven  into  a  continuous 
thread  of  narrative  melody,  the  orchestra  used  as  a  means  of 
dramatic  expression— to  make  Tannhauser  the  music  drama  of  his 
most  ambitious  dreams.  There  are  prosy,  explanatory  sections  in 
the  libretto  that  are  faithfully  set  to  threadbare,  dull-useful  music. 
The  result  is  a  work  very  little  different  from  a  classical  opera: 
it  seems  to  have  the  same  set  numbers,  the  same  high  spots,  the 
same  relapses.  Tannhauser  lives  today  by  the  orgiastic  Bacchanale, 
the  catchy  Festmarsch,  Elisabeth's  Prayer,  and  the  intolerably 
sentimental  "Evening  Star."  The  Pilgrims'  Chorus.,  even  amid  this 
collection  of  musical  Bartlett's  Quotations,  is  in  a  class  by  itself. 
In  popularity  among  Wagner  "gems"  it  runs  a  close  second  to  the 
so-called  "Wedding  March"  from  Lohengrin:  it  is  the  musical 
apotheosis  of  unleavened  smugness.  Several  of  these  high  spots  are 
quoted  and  adapted  to  make  up  the  shoddy  splendors  of  the  long, 
rhetorical  overture.  Much  of  the  Tannhauser  music  is  excellent 
theater  in  itself,  wonderfully  calculated  to  help  out  the  action — 
but  anything  but  first-class  Wagner. 

The  tepid  first  reactions  to  Tannhauser  dejected  Wagner,  but  his 
recoil  was  a  resolve  to  continue  uncompromisingly  along  the  path 
he  had  chosen,  and  to  educate  a  public  to  follow  it  with  him. 
Within  a  few  months,  he  saw  that  he  already  had  a  nucleus  for  this 
public,  but  realized  simultaneously  that  his  task  was  no  easy  one. 
The  libretto  of  Lohengrin,  which  (as  he  visioned  it)  would  demand 
even  more  understanding  from  the  audience,  was  already  finished. 
He  had  sketched  out  the  stories  for  two  more  operas — one  about 
Parsifal  and  the  Holy  Grail,  the  other  about  Nuremberg  in  the 
time  of  Hans  Sachs,  the  cobbler  poet — which  would  inevitably 
cany  him  farther  from  the  traditions  that  the  bulk  of  his  Dresden 
audience  found  palatable.  At  this  juncture,  the  reinstallation  of 
Rienzi  in  the  Hoftheater  repertoire,  instead  of  cheering  Wagner, 
made  him  all  the  more  depressed:  he  had  already  gone  so  far  be- 
yond what  Meyerbeer  and  Spontini  had  to  offer  that  he  considered 
Rienzi  a  youthful  mistake.  Bitterly  he  reflected  that  it  had  been  his 
sole  success,  and  that  a  series  ofRienzis  might  easily  make  him  rich 
and  famous.  From  an  official  critical  point  of  view,  the  composer  of 


MEN    OF    MUSIC 

Riengi  was  indeed  famous.  The  composer  of  Derfliegende  Hollander 
and  Tannkauser  was  merely  notorious. 

It  was  the  composer  of  Rienzi,  too,  who  occupied  the  post  of 
royal  Kapellmeister.  Those  above  Wagner  were  not  interested  in  his 
efforts  to  reform  opera.  Donizetti  was  favored  by  the  court,  and 
Martha  was  looked  upon  as  a  sum  of  delights.  Slowly  it  was  borne  in 
upon  Wagner  that  few — certainly  not  Minna,  the  King,  the  critics, 
or  most  of  his  colleagues — realized  what  he  was  trying  to  do.  On 
the  other  hand,  a  few  gifted  musicians  began  to  rally  to  him. 
Schumann,  who  had  come  to  live  in  Dresden  in  1844,  at  first  wrote 
enthusiastically,  though  with  reservations,  about  Tannh'duser. 
Liszt,  whom  Wagner  had  met  in  Paris  in  1840,  lent  him  consistent 
and — after  taking  up  his  residence  at  Weimar — powerful  support. 
In  iB^Sy  Von  Billow,  then  an  impressionable  youth  of  sixteen,  sum- 
moned up  courage  to  present  himself  to  Wagner,  whose  music  was 
already  a  religion  to  him.  And  Wagner  felt  positive  that  if  he 
could  get  his  music  before  "the  common  man,"  an  abstraction  to 
which  he  became  more  and  more  devoted  with  the  years,  success 
would  be  assured.  Red  tape  and  conservatism  were  in  his  way 
when  he  wanted  to  produce  Beethoven's  Ninth  in  1847;  the  next 
year,  they  were  in  his  way  when,  after  recasting  Iphigenie  en  Aulide 
to  conform  with  his  own  conceptions  of  Gluck's  publicly  pro- 
claimed ideals,  he  staged  a  German  version.  Disaster  was  predicted 
for  both:  both  were  tremendous  popular  successes.  Wagner  drew 
from  these  events  a  parable  of  his  own  predicament. 

In  the  late  forties,  Wagner  had  to  manufacture  optimism:  cold- 
bloodedly surveying  his  present,  he  had  to  admit  that  everything 
was  dark.  His  marriage  was  failing.  Minna's  intellectual  defi- 
ciencies grated  on  him  more  and  more,  and  the  only  bond  that 
held  him  to  her  was  sexual.  The  most  tactless  of  men  deplored  his 
wife's  gaucherie.  As  an  aid  to  his  ambitions,  he  found  her  hopeless. 
In.  Minna's  place,  a  Clara  Schumann  might  have  smoothed  out 
Wagner's  increasing  difficulties  with  the  higher-ups.  But  Minna 
was  not  even  a  good  hostess — a  grave  failing  in  the  wife  of  a  man 
who  held  a  not  unexalted  official  position.  If  Wagner  was  in  a 
deadening  rut  at  home,  at  the  Hoftheater  his  situation  was  rapidly 
becoming  untenable.  He  saw,  down  to  the  finest  practical  detail, 
what  was  wrong  with  music  in  Dresden,  and  twice  submitted 
elaborate,  lengthy  memorials  to  the  King,  suggesting  complete 


WAGNER  415 

overhauling  of  facilities,  personnel,  repertoire,  and  aims.  Had 
these  memorials  been  acted  upon,  Dresden  might  within  a  short 
time  have  become  the  real  musical  capital  of  Germany.  In  the 
process,  of  course,  Wagner  would  have  emerged  as  the  dictator  of 
Saxon  artistic  life,  and  several  of  his  superiors  would  have  been 
dethroned.  Not  unnaturally,  a  tension  sprang  up  between  him  and 
those  he  was  in  effect  trying  to  supplant.  If  for  no  other  reason 
than  self-preservation,  they  struck  back  by  restricting  his  activi- 
ties, and  consistently  ignoring  his  plans  for  his  future  as  a  com- 
poser. Wagner  added  to  the  nasty  business  by  showing  his  lack  of 
interest  in  his  job  as  he  was  forced  to  do  it.  He  construed  his  life 
appointment  not  as  a  privilege,  but  as  a  term  of  perpetual  im- 
prisonment. * 
His  debts  were,  as  usual,  driving  Wagner  mad.  He  had  no  ap- 
preciable income  aside  from  his  salary,  for  throughout  Germany, 
except  in  Berlin,  there  prevailed  the  nefarious  system  of  buying  an 
opera  outright  for  a  pittance^  and  thereafter  paying  no  perform- 
ance royalties.  And  all  Wagner's  elaborate  scheming  failed  to 
establish  one  of  his  works  in  the  Berlin  repertoire.  His  financial 
troubles  assumed  colossal  proportions  after  Breitkopf  and  Hartel 
had  made  him  what  he  considered  an  insulting  offer,  and  he  rashly 
began  to  publish  his  operas  at  his  own  expense.  Not  only  did  he 
have  to  borrow  still  more  money  to  float  this  scheme,  but  the  scores 
he  issued — Rien^  Derjliegende  Hollander,  and  Tcmnhauser — were  re- 
turned, sometimes  unopened,  by  the  opera  houses  to  which  they 
were  offered.  The  project  was  an  unmitigated  disaster  for  Wagner 
and  for  the  poor,  unsuspecting  music  printer  he  had  involved  in  it. 
At  the  crucial  moment,  Schrdcler-Devrient,  aggrieved  because  she 
thought  Wagner  had  ungratefully  imported  his  niece  in  order  to 
supplant  her  at  the  opera,  gave  Wagner's  notes  for  a  total  of 
three  thousand  thalers  to  her  lawyer,  who  immediately  began  to 
threaten  suit.  To  save  his  Kapellmeister  from  ignominy,  the  long- 
suffering  intendant  of  the  Hoftheater,  Baron  von  Luttichau,  had 
five  thousand  thalers  advanced  to  him  from  the  theater  pension 
fund,  and  later  used  his  good  offices  in  getting  him  a  further  small 
loan  and  a  slight  increase  in  salary.  It  is  no  wonder  that  Wagner, 
distracted  by  creditors,  and  suffering  from  recurrent  attacks  of 
erysipelas,  had  his  nerves  shattered,  and  had  to  spend  still  more 
money  taking  expensive  cures. 


4*  MEN     OF    MUSIC 

Wagner's  last  hope  was  that  his  new  opera,  Lohengrin*  would  save 
him.  But,  as  he  truly  saw  in  his  heart  of  hearts,  this  was  a  slim  hope. 
Lohengrin  contained  more  shockers  for  the  critics  than  his  previous 
operas.  The  shockers  began  with  the  libretto:  those  to  whom 
Wagner  read  it  were  horrified  by  its  unhappy  ending,  and  many 
said  that  it  could  not  be  made  into  an  opera.  Momentarily  Wag- 
ner seriously  considered  changing  the  ending,  but  the  intendanfs 
wife  dissuaded  him.  To  assure  himself  that  the  original  ending 
could  indeed  be  set,  he  composed  the  last  act  first.  Early  in  1848, 
Lohengrin  was  finished,  but  unbought.  Several  years  earlier,  he  had 
tried  to  interest  the  King  of  Prussia  in  the  libretto,  but  Tieck,  in  the 
most  friendly  spirit,  warned  him  not  to  waste  his  time — for  this 
was  the  monarch  who  had  nearly  driven  Mendelssohn  to  distrac- 
tion with  his  grandiose  shilly-shallying.  So,  with  the  only  re- 
munerative house  in  Germany  closed  to  him,  Wagner  offered 
Lohengrin  to  Dresden.  In  December,  1848,  it  was  turned  down. 
This  refusal  to  stage  Lohengrin^  coming  as  a  final  touch  to  years  of 
tragedy,  precipitated  Wagner  into  overt  revolutionary  activity 
that  was  not  germane  to  his  real  character. 

Wagner  had  no  interest  in  politics  as  politics,  but  like  many 
people  with  long-standing  personal  grievances,  felt  that  only  a 
thoroughgoing  social  change,  beginning  with  a  political  house 
cleaning,  could  help  his  situation.  There  was  rancor  aplenty  in 
Wagner,  but  he  did  not  consciously  become  a  revolutionary  for 
petty  7  spiteful  reasons:  he  merely,  as  was  his  lifelong  formula, 
identified  his  own  need  with  the  world's.  Once  his  mind  was  made 
up,  he  acted  fearlessly,  indeed  rashly.  The  news  that  trickled  in 
from  Paris  of  the  February  Revolution  thrilled  him,  and  when  the 
German  liberals  began  to  organize,  Wagner  joined  a  revolutionary 
group.  By  the  spring  of  1849,  he  was  contributing  articles  to  a 
radical  paper,  and  tried  to  proselytize  among  the  members  of  his 
orchestra.  He  became  an  object  of  interest  to  the  chief  of  police. 
In  May,  rioting  began  in  Dresden,  and  Wagner  was  in  the  thick  of 
it.  High  in  the  confidence  of  the  radical  leaders,  among  whom  was 
Mikhail  Bakunin,  he  passed  out  inflammatory  literature.  He 
spent  parts  of  the  sixth  and  seventh  of  May  in  an  observer's  eyrie 
signaling  to  the  rebels. 

The  revolution  was  put  down  by  Prussian  troops.  After  seeing 
Minna  to  a  place  of  safety,  Wagner  fled,  escaping  capture  by  the 


WAGNER  417 

skin  of  his  teeth.  Deciding  to  take  advantage  of  Liszt's  many  pro- 
testations of  friendship,  he  reached  Weimar  several  days  later. 
Liszt,  who  was  at  that  moment  preparing  to  stage  Tannhamer* 
received  him  warmly,  and  shortly  Wagner  was  writing  to  his 
brother-in-law  that  he  would  establish  himself  permanently  in 
Weimar  "should  I  lose  my  post  in  Dresden."  He  was  rudely 
awakened  by  word  from  Minna  that  a  warrant  had  been  issued 
for  his  arrest.  As  extradition  treaties  existed  between  the  various 
sovereign  states  of  Germany,  this  meant  that  Wagner  would  have 
to  flee  to  a  foreign  country.  He  stayed  just  long  enough  to  hear  a 
rehearsal  of  Tannkauser  and  to  arrange  a  farewell  meeting  with 
Minna.  On  May  28,  traveling  on  a  borrowed  passport  and  on 
funds  lent  him  by  Liszt,  Wagner  crossed  into  Switzerland.  He  was 
not  to  see  Germany  again  for  twelve  years. 

Wagner  the  expatriate,  exactly  thirty-six  years  old,  was  by  no 
means  a  prepossessing  man,  to  judge  by  his  picture  in  the  Dresden 
police  archives.  On  his  Swiss  passport,  he  is  described  as  five  feet, 
five  and  a  half  inches  tall,  with  brown  hair,  blue  eyes,  round  chin, 
and  medium  nose — this  last  a  polite  understatement.  At  the  insti- 
gation of  some  friends  in  Zurich,  his  first  place  of  exile,  he  went  to 
see  how  things  were  shaping  up  in  Paris.  Everything  he  saw  there 
disgusted  him:  Meyerbeer  reigned  supreme  at  the  Opera,  the 
Revolution  was  dead,  and  no  one  was  interested  in  the  plans  of  a 
Saxon  refugee.  He  then  returned  to  Zurich,  where  Minna  soon 
joined  him.  For  the  time  being,  he  shelved  his  musical  plans,  and 
began  a  voluminous  literary  activity,  much  of  it  based  on  social 
revolution  as  inextricably  connected  with  a  decent  future  for  art. 
Some  livelihood  was  to  be  gained  from  the  sale  of  his  books  and 
articles,  and  it  is  certainly  true  that  Minna  did  not  disapprove  of 
his  writing.  Only  after  discovering  that  his  time  was  being  spent 
largely  on  the  libretto  of  an  opera  she  was  sure  would  bring  him  no 
reclame  did  she  insist  on  his  again  seeking  his  fortune  in  Paris.  All 
his  friends  backed  Minna  up  on  this  stand.  Even  Liszt,  who  for  all 
his  friendliness,  did  not,  at  least  at  this  time,  understand  what 
Wagner  was  trying  to  do,  added  his  voice  to  theirs,  and  lent 
Wagner  the  money  for  the  trip.  In  January,  1850,  Wagner  dragged 
himself  back  in  a  third  attempt  to  woo  Paris. 

Wagner  had  promised  Minna  to  try  to  compose  an  opera  for 
Paris,  but  a  few  days  there  convinced  him  that  he  could  not  bring 


MEN    OF    MUSIC 

himself  to  do  it.  He  was  too  wedded  to  far-reaching,  artistically 
ambitious  plans  to  be  diverted  into  the  fashionable  stream  of 
French  opera.  Both  of  the  projects  he  had  under  way — librettos 
built  around  Wayland  the  Smith  and  the  death  of  Siegfried — were 
uncompromisingly  serious,  intensely  Teutonic.  He  felt  that  re- 
maining in  Paris  would  only  emphasize  his  mood  of  despair. 
Happily,  he  met  a  rich  Bordeaux  couple — Eugene  and  Jessie 
Laussot,  friends  of  his  devoted  Dresden  admirer,  Julie  Ritter.  The 
young  wife,  an  attractive  and  intelligent  English  girl  with  marked 
musical  talent,  went  to  Wagner's  head.  Had  everything  panned 
out  as  he  was  soon  envisioning  it,  Tristan  und  Isolde,  his  great  lyric 
of  guilty  love,  might  have  been  started  in  1850  instead  of  seven 
years  later.  He  soon  made  his  financial  plight  clear  to  his  new 
friends,  and  after  a  three-cornered  correspondence  between  Frau 
Ritter,  the  Laussots,  and  himself,  Dresden  and  Bordeaux  offered 
to  contribute  three  thousand  francs  annually  to  his  and  Minna's 
support.  The  idea  of  becoming  a  pensioner  was  distasteful  enough 
to  Minna,  but  when  rumors  reached  her  that  Wagner,  who  had 
gone  to  Bordeaux,  was  enamored  of  Jessie,  she  set  out  angrily  for 
Paris.  Meanwhile,  Wagner  was  planning  to  escape  to  Greece  with 
his  inamorata,  and  to  live  there  on  money  from  Jessie's  husband 
and  Julie  Ritter.  His  plan  included  supporting  Minna,  but  he  had 
clearly  made  up  his  mind  to  leave  her,  had,  indeed,  convinced 
himself  that  she  would  be  better  off  without  him.  Jessie  spoiled  it 
all  by  telling  her  mother,  who  told  Laussot,  who  threatened  to  kill 
Wagner,  but  contented  himself  with  separating  the  lovers.  Frau 
Ritter,  undisturbed  by  her  protege's  bad  faith,  showed  a  deep 
understanding  of  his  soul-torturing  problems  by  coming  to  France 
to  console  him.  He  avoided  meeting  Minna,  who  was  frantically 
searching  Paris  for  him.  She  finally  had  to  return  to  Zurich  with- 
out him.  By  July,  however,  the  Laussot  episode  had  petered  out 
completely,  and  Wagner  was  back  with  her. 

After  the  Laussot  affair  was  over,  and  Julie  Ritter  had  told  him 
that  she  could  not  afford  singlehanded  to  pay  the  pension,  Wagner 
wrote  to  Liszt,  telling  him  in  what  desperate  straits  he  was,  and 
beseeching  him  to  stage  Lohengrin  immediately.  Liszt  had  begun 
by  saying  that  the  "superideal  tone"  of  the  opera  would  make  it 
unpopular,  but  now  he  generously  put  his  doubts  aside,  and  agreed 
to  produce  it  at  the  Hoftheater  in  Weimar.  His  promise  was  made 


WAGNER  419 

in  June,  1850,  and  on  August  28  it  was  carried  out  Wagner,  of 
course,  could  not  go  into  Germany,  and  waited  anxiously  for  news 
of  the  opera's  reception.  It  was  not  wholly  encouraging:  its  exces- 
sive length  (Wagner  had  permitted  only  one  brief  cut),  the  terror 
the  music  inspired  in  certain  of  the  singers,  and  the  handicaps  of 
time  and  limited  resources  liszt  had  to  contend  with  conspired  to 
create  a  far  from  perfect  production.  Lohmgnn  was  tepidly  re- 
ceived, and  at  first,  certainly,  Wagner  could  not  guess  that  this 
opera  would  gradually  win  him  a  vast  public. 

Lohengrin  is  one  of  the  two  or  three  most  artistically  successful 
operas  Wagner  ever  wrote.  It  is  impossible  not  to  agree  with 
Ernest  Newman  when  he  says  that  if  Wagner  had  "died  after 
Lohengrin  he  would  still  have  been  the  greatest  operatic  composer 
of  his  time."  Except  for  Die  Meistersinger,  he  never  wrote  an  opera 
that  equals  Lohengrin  in  sheer  entertainment  value  from  beginning 
to  end.  Listening  to  this  shimmering  lyrical  score,  it  is  likewise  im- 
possible not  to  share  Mr.  Newman's  passing  "regret  that  the 
daemon  within  him  drove  him  on  so  relentlessly  to  another  style." 
The  libretto  is  a  good  story,  dramatically  told,  and  its  only  weak- 
ness today  is  that  we  cannot  take  seriously  the  ethical  and  phil- 
osophical implications  Wagner  intended.  Again  he  projected  him- 
self as  the  hero  betrayed  by  a  woman's  lack  of  unquestioning  faith, 
but  our  common-sense  generation  is  apt  to  laugh  at  a  man  who 
leaves  the  woman  he  loves  merely  because  she  asks  him  who  he  is. 

To  enjoy  Lohengrin  fuUy,  we  must  accept  the  conventions  of  the 
story.  The  music  itself  presents  no  barriers.  Wagner's  orchestra- 
tion is  already  mature,  showing  that  he  is  ripe  for  the  revolutionary 
idiom  of  Tristan  und  Isolde  and  the  Ring.  In  Lohengrin.,  it  has  a  light- 
shot,  ethereal  texture  that  is  unique  even  in  Wagner.  It  attains  a 
supreme  height  in  the  Prelude,  which  Bernard  Shaw  called  "the 
first  work  of  Wagner's  that  really  conquered  the  world  and 
changed  the  face  of  music  for  us.  .  .  ."  But  Lohengrin  is  still  pri- 
marily a  singers'  opera — the  most  consistently  lyrical  of  Wagner's 
stage  works — and  the  orchestra,  though  it  plays  an  unflagging 
role,  is  usually  only  a  background  for  the  voices.  Because  of  the  in- 
creased continuity  of  the  musical  web,  separate  excerpts  do  not 
stand  out  so  sharply  as  they  do  in  Tannhauser.  The  Bridal  Chorus  is 
an  exception  only  because  of  its  international  use  as  a  wedding 
march. 


42O  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

With  the  instrument  of  his  art  as  well  forged  as  it  was  in  Lohen- 
grin, Wagner  nevertheless  waited  until  1853  to  do  any  further 
composing.  There  were  many  reasons  for  his  apparent  inactivity, 
the  chief  one  being  the  constantly  expanding  proportions  of  the 
vast  mythological  music  drama  he  had  at  first  seen  as  a  single 
opera,  Siegfrieds  Tod,  the  libretto  of  which  had  been  completed  be- 
fore he  left  Dresden,  in  1848.  He  kept  working  at  this  material  for 
three  years.  In  May,  1851,  partly  as  a  result  of  a  growing  interest 
in  Tannhauser  and  Lohengrin,  Liszt  persuaded  the  Weimar  Hof- 
theater  to  commission  Siegfrieds  Tod.  Instead  of  setting  to  work  on 
the  music,  Wagner  re-examined  the  libretto  with  a  coldly  critical 
eye,  and  realized  that  what  he  had  was  really  the  culmination  of  a 
series  of  events,  with  a  great  mass  of  prefatory  material  jumbled 
together.  His  first  step  was  to  write  an  introductory  book  called 
Der  Junge  Siegfried.  Still  he  was  not  satisfied,  and  for  the  first  time 
the  cyclic  plan  of  his  undertaking  dawned  upon  him.  During  the 
first  half  of  1852,  he  finished  Books  I  and  II — Das  Rheingold  and 
Die  Walkure — of  what  he  now  saw  as  the  four-part  saga  of  the 
Nibelungs.  By  the  end  of  that  year,  he  had  reworked  Der  Junge 
Siegfried,  and  called  it  simply  Siegfried.  Similarly,  Siegfrieds  Tod 
had  become  Die  Gotterdarnmerung.  He  now  had  the  books  of  four 
full-length  music  dramas,  none  of  which,  he  admitted  to  himself, 
could  be  staged  before  the  others  were  completed.  The  Ring,  to 
produce  its  effect,  would  ideally  have  to  be  performed  on  four 
consecutive  days.  As  an  artist  of  unwavering  integrity,  Wagner 
had  checkmated  himself  by  a  project  that  could  not  bear  fruit 
for  years.  The  decision  to  proceed  with  the  Ring  was  indeed  a 
courageous  one  for  a  man  whose  wife  and  friends  had  their  eyes  on 
the  immediate  thing,  and  not  at  all  on  the  long  chance.  Further, 
even  were  the  Ring  to  be  finished,  there  was  small  hope  that  it 
would  ever  be  produced.  For  in  1853,  when  he  began  to  compose 
the  first  part  of  this  utterly  revolutionary  operatic  cycle,  Wagner 
was  still  relatively  obscure,  an  exile,  an  eccentric  hopelessly  out- 
side the  main  current  of  operatic  fashion.  But  he  was  really  the 
man  who  did  not  know  the  meaning  of  "impossible."  He  sur- 
vived to  see  the  first  complete  performance  of  the  Ring,  twenty- 
three  years  later,  in  a  theater  he  had  himself  designed  for  it. 

Simultaneously  with  the  formulation  of  the  Ring  books,  Wagner 
led  two  other  lives,  either  of  which  would  have  sufficed  for  an 


WAGNER  421 

ordinary  man.  He  took  a  commanding  position  in  the  musical 
world  of  Zurich,  conducting  both  operas  and  concerts.  At  the 
theater.  Von  Biilow  was  at  first  associated  with  Mm,  but  the 
audiences  so  obviously  preferred  Wagner  that  his  young  disciple 
was  forced  out.  Wagner  then  severed  his  own  connection  in  pro- 
test, and  devoted  himself  to  the  symphonic  concerts.  Meanwhile, 
he  was  writing  prolifically.  Books,  pamphlets,  and  articles  streamed 
effortlessly  from  a  pen  guided  by  many  diverse  motives.  Least 
important  to  this  vehement-willed  pensioner  was  the  need  for 
money.  Somewhat  more  urgent  was  the  need  to  work  off  a  few 
old  grudges.  Paramount  was  the  drive  to  explain  himself  and  Ms 
aims — a  job  that  involved  destroying  the  bases  of  the  old  opera 
and  creating  a  public  that  would  necessarily  demand  the  music 
dramas  of  Richard  Wagner.  Considering  the  obstacles,  it  was  an 
unprecedentedly  bold  scheme  of  propaganda.  Also,  in  view  of 
Wagner's  trifling  talents  as  a  literary  artist,  it  is  truly  amazing 
that  his  writings  were  so  effective  in  doing  approximately  what  he 
intended  them  to  do.  They  seem  like  anything  but  the  writings  of  a 
genius:  they  betray  a  muddled  mind  that  has  ill-digested  large 
chunks  of  philosophy,  religion,  and  esthetics.  They  are  a  melange 
of  Schopenhauer,  Buddhism,  Aryanism  (fully  recognizable,, 
though  traveling  incognito),  unvarnished  Wagner,  and  sheer 
nonsense  of  varied  provenance.  Diffuse,  incoherent,  and  chaotic 
they  often  are,  but  there  is  a  unifying  thread:  Wagner  is  always 
busy  projecting  his  own  personal  prejudices  into  a  world  scheme. 
The  most  curious  of  these  writings  of  the  fifties  is  Das  Judenthum 
in  die  Musiky  apparently  a  violent  anti-Semitic  tract,  but  in  reality 
not  much  more  than  an  immature  explosion  of  resentment  against 
specific  Jewish  musicians.  It  sprang  from  a  dislike  of  Mendelssohn, 
who  not  only  had  been  lukewarm  toward  Wagner's  music,  but  also 
had  carelessly  mislaid  the  manuscript  of  a  symphony  Wagner  had 
sent  him.  It  sprang  more  savagely  from  a  hatred  of  Meyerbeer, 
whose  operas  Wagner  sincerely  detested.  He  mistrusted  the  reality 
of  Meyerbeer's  early  kindness,  and  suspected  this  music  millionaire 
of  jealously  blocking  his  career.  It  is  probable  that  the  facts  in 
these  matters  will  never  see  the  light,*  but  there  can  be  no  doubt 
that  Wagner  viewed  the  scandalously  successful  Jakob  LiebmanB 

*  It  has  been  suggested  that  the  forthcoming  pnbKcation  of  Meyerbeer's  diaries,  ii 
unexpurgated,  may  serve  to  solve  the  mystery  of  their  relationship. 


422  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

Beer  with  a  jaundiced  eye  and  a  forgetful  memory.  Out  of  these 
and  other  personal  dislikes,  Wagner  fabricated  a  case  against  the 
Jew  in  art,  insisting  that  he  not  only  contributed  nothing,  but  also 
was  poisoning  public  taste.  It  must  be  said  that  Wagner's  anti- 
Semitism  was  an  erratic  and  inconsistent  phenomenon,  quite  as 
intermittent  as  a  common  cold,  and  allowing  him,  finally,  to 
marry  the  granddaughter  of  a  Jewess.  And  though  he  republished 
Das  Judentkum  in  1869,  he  chose  a  Jew,  thirteen  years  later,  to  con- 
duct the  first  performances  of  his  sacrosanct  masterpiece,  Parsifal. 
The  saddest  aspect  of  Wagner's  anti-Semitism  is  that  it  furnished 
extra  ammunition  for  the  Aryan  polemics  of  his  future  son-in-law, 
Houston  Stewart  Chamberlain,  one  of  the  founding  fathers  of 
Nazism. 

Das  Judmthum  is  scarcely  more  difficult  to  accept  than  Wagner's 
most  ambitious  esthetic  treatise,  Oper  und  Drama.  After  proving 
that  Gluck  and  Beethoven  had  been  trying  to  create  Wagnerian 
music  drama,  and  had  been  defeated  because  of  insufficient  intel- 
lectual grasp  of  their  materials,  he  goes  on  to  show  that  music 
for  music's  sake  is  a  colo^al  mistake.  Beethoven,  for  example,  had 
been  striving  toward  the  light  in  the  choral  movement  of  the 
Ninth  Symphony,  but  had  erred  by  making  the  poet  serve  the 
musician.  What  is  needed  if  we  are  to  have  the  one  great  human 
art,  instead  of  separated,  and  therefore  unsatisfying,  arts,  is  that 
painter,  sculptor,  and  musician  shall  serve  the  poet.  Music  is 
nothing  in  itself,  but  only  achieves  its  destiny  when  it  contributes 
its  part  to  the  common  enterprise — the  music  drama.  Thus  Wag- 
ner, who  had  almost  no  appreciation  or  understanding  of  paint- 
ing and  sculpture,  and  who  alone  of  all  the  great  composers  had 
been  attracted  to  music  not  for  its  own  sake,  but  as  a  means  of 
making  drama  more  dramatic. 

The  books  of  the  Ring  lay  untouched  for  several  months,  and 
then,  in  August,  1853,  during  a  trip  to  Italy  for  his  health,  Wagner 
conceived  the  orchestral  prelude  to  Das  Rheingold.  He  returned  to 
his  "melancholy  home" — probably  a  subtle  dig  at  its  mistress — 
and  composed  the  entire  opera  in  nine  months.  After  a  four-week 
rest,  he  began  on  Die  Walkure*  Working  at  fever  heat,  he  might  well 
have  gone  right  on  and  finished  the  cycle  if  Minna  had  not  chosen 
this  time,  when  her  husband  was  in  constant  need  of  female  solace 
after  hours  with  his  score,  to  traipse  off  to  Germany  in  a  valiant 


WAGNER  423 

attempt  to  get  him  an  amnesty.  Almost  automatically,  Wagner 
turned  to  the  attractive  young  wife  of  Ms  principal  Zurich  bene- 
factor, the  wealthy  silk  merchant,  Otto  Wescndonck.  He  had 
known  the  Wesendoncks  since  1852,  and  their  admiration  for  him 
was  so  lively  that  in  May,  1853,  Otto  had  subsidized  a  series  of  all- 
Wagner  concerts  in  Zurich.  All  the  proceeds  were  generously 
given  to  Wagner,  who  accepted  this  as  an  entering  wedge  into  a 
bottomless  purse  that  was  to  supply  him  money  for  necessities — 
and  extravagances — for  many  a  year.  To  make  a  long  cause  cetelre 
short,  Wagner  repaid  his  Mndhearted  banker  by  playing  fast  and 
loose  with  Frau  Mathilde's  affections.  As  composing  made  him 
more  than  ever  susceptible  to  erotic  influence,  he  was  soon  in  the 
throes  of  a  violent  passion.  By  the  end  of  1854,  he  was  seeing  him- 
self as  the  hero  of  a  heavy  drama  of  renunciation,  and  simultane- 
ously— perhaps  as  compensation  for  thwarted  desire — began  to 
consider  the  tragic  medieval  love  story  of  Tristan  and  Isolde  as 
fitting  artistic  material  for  a  new  music  drama. 

In  January,  1855,  an  emissary  of  the  London  Philharmonic 
Society,  a  gentleman  known  to  history  only  as  Mr.  Anderson,  ap- 
peared at  Zurich  in  a  borrowed  far  coat,  and  bearing  Wagner  an 
invitation  to  conduct  a  season  of  that  renowned  organization. 
Their  regular  conductor  had  just  resigned,  and  Berlioz  was  con- 
ducting the  rival  New  Philharmonic  concerts.  They  had  applied 
vainly  to  Spohr.  Then  one  of  the  orchestra  suggested  Wagner,  then 
only  a  vague  name  in  England,  on  the  ground  that  "a  man  who  has 
been  so  much  abused  must  have  something  in  him."  Mr.  Anderson 
was  dispatched  to  fetch  him.  Wagner  did  not  want  to  look  up  from 
the  Ring,  but  £200  was  too  large  a  sum  for  him  to  refuse.  He  went 
over  to  London,  and  between  March  12  and  June  25  conducted 
eight  concerts,  approximately  one  every  fortnight.  His  beautifully 
balanced  programs  included  all  the  Beethoven  symphonies  except 
the  first  two,  five  Weber  overtures,  and  (despite  Das  Judmthum] 
five  compositions  by  Mendelssohn.  The  English  people  rather 
liked  Wagner  than  not,  but  the  critics  lashed  out  furiously  at  him. 
They  were  prejudiced  by  his  writings,  and  were  not  inclined  to 
excuse  dogmatic  self-advertisement,  even  in  so  skilled  a  conductor. 
Victoria  and  Albert,  taking  time  off  from  the  headaches  of  the 
Crimean  War,  appeared  in  the  royal  box  for  the  seventh  concert, 
at  wMch  the  Tannhduser  overture  was  played  by  command.  The 


424  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

Queen  was  graciously  pleased  to  tell  Herr  Wagner  that  she  would 
be  happy  to  hear  his  operas  sung  in  London — in  Italian.*  Alto- 
gether, except  for  a  few  pleasant  meetings  with  Berlioz,  the  guest 
conductor  of  the  Philharmonic  did  not  enjoy  England,  and  was 
delighted  to  return  to  Mathilde  and  the  score  of  Die  Walkilre. 

During  1856  and  1857,  Wagner  worked  intermittently  at  the 
Ring,  finishing  Die  Walkure,  and  completing  a  little  more  than  two 
acts  of  Siegfried.  Early  in  1857,  Wesendonck  gave  Wagner  and 
Minna,  who  was  now  suffering  from  heart  disease,  the  summer- 
house  on  his  new  estate,  rent-free.  The  Asyl,  as  Wagner  romantic- 
ally christened  it,  was  next  door  to  the  main  house,  into  which  the 
Wesendoncks  moved  in  August.  Contiguity  to  Mathilde,  coupled 
with  the  strong  temptation  to  compare  her  with  his  rapidly  aging 
wife,  precipitated  the  inevitable.  As  soon  as  Mathilde  moved  next 
door,  Wagner  dropped  Siegfried  in  the  midst  of  Act  III,  and  wrote 
the  book  of  Tristan  und  Isolde  in  four  weeks.  Amid  all  this  porten- 
tous activity,  the  Wagners  had  guests — Hans  von  Biilow  and  his 
bride,  Cosima  Liszt.  As  if  to  bid  defiance  to  the  already  electric 
atmosphere  of  the  Asyl,  Wagner  read  separate  acts  of  Tristan  to  an 
audience  consisting  of  his  wife,  his  mistress,  his  mistress'  husband, 
and  his  future  wife  and  her  husband.  On  everyone  except  Ma- 
thilde, however,  the  significance  of  this  literature  seems  to  have 
been  lost.  The  Von  Billows  left,  and  Wagner  plunged  into  the 
music  of  Tristan.  The  tension  grew.  The  patient  Wesendonck 
played  his  role  with  dignity  and  submissiveness  to  fate.  The 
others  were  not  so  philosophical:  Wagner  could  not  conceal  his 
passion;  Mathilde  was  unsure  and  wavering;  Minna  was  in  a  piti- 
able state,  hopelessly  ill  and  torn  by  uncontrollable  jealousy.  The 
five  songs  Wagner  composed  at  this  time  to  Mathilde's  lyrics,  no- 
tably the  poignant  Traume,  are  so  many  proofs  of  his  invincible  cal- 
lousness to  all  feelings  except  his  own.  This  volcanic  seething  per- 
sisted until  August,  1858,  when  Wagner  suddenly  decided  that  he 
could  not  stand  the  strain  any  longer,  and  went  off  to  Venice  in 
the  company  of  Julie  Ritter's  son  Karl.  Minna  went  to  friends  in 
Germany,  and  the  Wesendoncks  were  given  a  breathing  spell  in 
which  to  readjust  their  lives. 

Cut  off  from  Mathilde,  Wagner  poured  his  passionate  yearning 

*  As  usual,  Victoria  liad  her  way.  The  first  Wagner  opera  to  be  sung  in  London 
(July,  1870)  was  the  Hollander,  traveling  on  an  Italian  visa  as  UOllandese  darmato. 


WAGNER  425 

for  her  into  the  score  of  Tristan,  the  second  act  of  which  he  com- 
pleted at  Venice  in  March,  1859,  just  before  the  Austrian  authori- 
ties, acting  on  a  request  from  Dresden,  ordered  him  to  move  on. 
He  was  again  corresponding  with  the  Wesendoncks,  though  at 
first  they  had  returned  his  letters  unopened.  It  was  partly  in  the 
hope  of  seeing  Mathilde  again  that  he  returned  to  Switzerland, 
though  not  to  Zurich.  He  went,  instead,  to  Lucerne,  and  there 
completed  Tristan,  which  during  the  next  few  years  he  tried  vainly 
to  have  produced.  With  Tristan  finished,  a  seal  had  been  set  upon 
his  Swiss  interlude,  and  Wagner  was  at  loose  ends.  He  longed  for 
cosmopolitan  life,  opportunities  to  hear  music,  a  chance  to  hear 
one  of  his  own  operas  performed.  At  this  juncture,  Liszt  suggested 
Paris,  where  Leon  Carvalho,  who  had  a  real  interest  in  having 
Tannhduser  performed,  had  a  theater  of  his  own.  Accordingly,  in 
September,  1859,  Wagner  set  out  on  his  last — and  most  disastrous 
— trip  to  Paris.  On  the  way,  he  stopped  at  the  Wesendoncks',  both 
to  see  Mathilde  and  to  help  Otto  quell  the  gossip  that  he  had  been 
forbidden  the  house.  While  there,  he  did  a  fine  stroke  of  business, 
selling  Otto  the  publishing  rights  to  Das  Rheingold  and  Die  Walkure 
for  six  thousand  francs  apiece,  and  getting  his  promise  that  Sieg- 
fried and  Die  Gotterdammerung  would  be  purchased  at  the  same  rate 
when  finished. 

The  forty-six-year-old  Wagner  had  left  far  behind  him  the  un- 
sure and  callow  little  man,  the  composer  of  Die  Feen  and  Das 
Liebesverbot,  who  had  arrived  in  Paris  twenty  years  before  with  a 
conservative  young  wife  and  the  half-completed  score  of  Rienzi 
in  his  bag.  Still  an  exile,  still  a  bad  risk  for  moneylenders,  still  un- 
known to  Paris  audiences,  he  nevertheless  was  to  be  reckoned  with 
— and:  knew  it.  Rimziy  Tannhauser,  and  Lohengrin  were  already 
managerial  favorites  in  Germany.  The  pontifical  Liszt  was  de- 
voted to  him,  as  was  a  scattered  but  solidly  loyal  coterie  of  less 
famous  musicians,  notably  some  zealous  youngsters  who  had 
selected  him  as  a  war  cry  for  their  advanced  ideas.  Liszt's  support 
was  not  an  unmixed  blessing.  His  own  cheap  and  flashy  composi- 
tions were  suspect  to  a  large  bloc  of  respectable  musicians,  who 
unfairly  damned  Wagner  for  being  associated  with  the  great- 
hearted charlatan.  Liszt  and  other  Wagnerians  began,  about  1850, 
to  be  called — usually  in  derision — ^ukunftsmusiker^  or  "musicians 
of  the  future" — a  term  Wagner  had  invented  in  one  of  Ms  Zurich 


426  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

polemics.  A  few  rulers  of  petty  German  states  were  strongly 
tempted  to  defy  the  Saxon  ban,  and  invite  him  to  court.  More  than 
half  of  his  big  music  epic  of  the  Nibelungs  (that  was  to  revolu- 
tionize the  arts)  had  been  achieved.  And  Tristan  und  Isolde,  which 
Wagner  himself  thought  the  perfect  flowering  of  his  theories,  was 
also  finished.  Now  he  was  a  master  in  full  command  of  his  art — and 
again  he  knew  it. 

Whether  or  not  Tristan  und  Isolde  really  represents  the  perfect 
working  out  of  Wagner's  theories,  it  is  music  of  such  exciting 
beauty  that  it  makes  everything  else  he  wrote  seem  anticlimactic, 
(It  has,  of  course,  a  peer  in  Die  Meistersinger,  but  its  beauty  is  of  a 
different  order,  of  a  different  world.)  Among  Wagner's  manifold 
gifts,  and  the  very  keystone  of  his  art,  was  that  of  imminent  com- 
munication of  actual  experience,  and  naturally  it  is  most  power- 
fully used  in  an  opera  that  is  autobiographically  motivated  from 
beginning  to  end,  Tristan  is  the  music  of  passion:  it  is  almost 
as  beautiful  as  passion  itself.  True,  the  necessity  of  telling  a  co- 
herent story  prevented  Wagner  from  keeping  his  inspiration  at 
white  heat:  music  and  audience  become  listless  at  precisely  those 
times  when  the  love  interest  is  sacrificed  to  the  exigencies  of  the 
narrative.  But  whenever  the  lovers  are  on  the  stage  together,  the 
music  glows,  flames,  burns  with  an  intolerable  heat.  The  great 
second-act  duet  is  unique  in  music:  nowhere  else  is  passion's  fulfill- 
ment the  very  stuff  of  music  itself.  This  Liebesnacht  is  prolonged 
orgasm,  not,  indeed,  as  viewed  by  the  vqyeufs  eye  (for  that  would 
disgust,  which  the  Liebesnacht  never  does),  but  experienced  as  the 
culmination  of  a  great  yearning.  Quite  as  overwhelming  is  the 
tremendous  scene  of  Isolde's  apostrophe  to  the  dead  Tristan.  Far 
from  being  a  tragic  outburst,  her  Liebestod  is  a  song  of  hope  tri- 
umphant, To  Wagner's  Isolde,  death  is  not  the  end  of  love,  but 
another  beginning:  her  song  has  the  inevitability  and  splendor  of  a 
natural  force.  Wagner's  mystical  drive  in  this  scene  rends  the  veil  of 
individuality:  Isolde  is  not  a  woman — she  is  woman. 

A  fine  performance  of  Tristan  is  apt  to  produce  one  of  two  effects, 
depending  upon  the  listener's  point  of  view  and  state  of  mind. 
Either  it  is  a  wholly  absorbing  experience,  a  sublime  catharsis  of 
the  emotions,  or  it  is  an  irritant,  a  prolonged  excursion  through 
the  rank  jungles  of  the  psyche.  In  either  case,  Tristan  is  an  ex- 
citant, and  we  are  naturally  curious  as  to  how  it  exerts  its  spelL 


WAGNER  427 

The  chief  musical  tool  used  to  shape  the  peculiar  magic  of  Tristan 
is  a  harmony  based  principally  upon  the  chromatic  scale.  An  effect 
of  restless  yearning,  of  exacerbated  nerves,  is  achieved  by  a 
melodic  line  that  moves  by  half-tones.  Seldom  does  this  music 
come  to  rest:  the  very  nature  of  the  half-tone  scale  made  it  easy  for 
Wagner  to  avoid  the  resolution  of  chords — that  is,  bringing  the 
musical  phrase  to  a  close.  The  Liebemacht  cHmbs  up  and  up,  begins 
on  a  higher  step,  and  climbs  farther,  and  finally,  when  we  can  no 
longer  stand  the  tension,  bursts  the  dike  in  a  series  of  chords 
recognizably  in  the  same  key.  The  timing  is  perfect — and  salutary. 
With  sheer  sadistic  genius,  Wagner  sets  the  harmonic  and  melodic 
patterns  of  Tristan  in  the  prelude:  in  short,  on  page  one  he  poses  a 
torturing  question,  and  defers  the  answer  until  the  strain  can  no 
longer  be  endured.  That  is  why  the  end  of  the  Liebesnacht  is  the 
most  inevitable  moment  in  music,  and,  in  one  specific  sense,  the 
most  satisfying.  In  working  out  the  fundamental  harmonic  and 
melodic  fabric  of  Tristan^  Wagner  creates  en  route  some  of  his 
greatest  pages,  beginning  with  the  prelude  itself,  ending  with  the 
Liebestod,  and  including  the  magical  solo-horn  incantation  after 
the  prelude  to  Act  III.  Following  the  orchestral  richness  of  the 
prelude,  this  slender  line  of  chromatic  melody  effects  a  singularly 
exquisite  contrast.  Here,  for  a  moment,  Wagner  tenderly  recalls 
that  his  flesh-and-blood  Tristan  and  Isolde  are  figures  out  of 
medieval  romance. 

With  good  grounds  for  believing  that  Karlsruhe  would  take 
Tristan^  Wagner  now  concentrated  on  getting  a  Paris  hearing  for 
Tannhauser.  At  first,  things  looked  hopeless.  Carvalho  was  in- 
terested, but  his  theater  had  been  destroyed  under  his  feet  in  the 
course  of  Baron  Haussmann's  wholesale  rebuilding  of  the  city. 
Wagner  tried  the  Opera,  but  there  Meyerbeer's  friends  reigned 
supreme,  and  he  got  nowhere.  The  court  remained:  some  of  his 
powerful  admirers,  led  by  Princess  Pauline  Metternich,  wife  of  the 
Austrian  ambassador,  drew  Napoleon  III  to  his  side,  Accordingly, 
the  Emperor  highhandedly  ordered  the  Opera  managers  to  put 
Tannhauser  into  rehearsal.  Meanwhile,  negotiations  with  Karls- 
ruhe collapsed,  but  this  disaster  was  partly  compensated  for  by  the 
sale  of  the  copyright  of  Das  Rhdngold  to  the  Mainz  publishing  firm 
of  B.  Schott  for  ten  thousand  francs.  The  fact  that  he  had  already 
sold  the  same  copyright  to  Wesendonck  did  not  worry  Wagner, 


428  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

especially  as  he  planned  to  use  the  Schott  money  to  stage  several 
of  his  operas  in  Paris.  After  renting  a  fine  house  for  three  years, 
hiring  a  companion  for  Minna  (who  had  finally  agreed  to  rejoin 
him),  and  getting  a  liveried  servant  for  himself,  Wagner  decided 
to  buy  some  advance  publicity.  He  leased  a  theater  for  three  nights 
at  four  thousand  francs  a  night,  and  gave  three  concerts  of  excerpts 
from  his  own  operas.  Although  they  were  warmly  received,  the 
theater  was  not  thronged  any  night.  Wagner  was  left  with  im- 
portant new  adherents  among  the  Parisian  intellectuals — and  a 
deficit  of  eleven  thousand  francs.  When  his  finances  were  at  their 
lowest  ebb,  Minna  went  to  make  a  last  desperate  attempt  to  have 
the  decree  of  banishment  lifted.  This  time  she  was  successful:  in 
June,  1860,  Wagner  went  to  Baden-Baden  to  thank  Princess 
Augusta  of  Prussia,  who  had  been  largely  instrumental  in  getting 
permission  for  him  to  live  anywhere  in  Germany  except  Saxony. 
In  March,  1862,  Saxony  too  declared  his  exile  at  an  end. 

Tarmhduser  began  to  encounter  difficulties  as  soon  as  the  French 
text  was  ready.  Immemorial  tradition  at  the  Opera  required  an 
elaborate  ballet  as  the  climax  of  the  second  act  of  any  opera,  and 
the  management  demanded  that  Wagner  meet  this  requirement. 
He  refused,  but  consented  to  change  the  Venusberg  scene  in  Act  I. 
This  solution,  though  not  entirely  satisfactory  to  the  managers, 
was  agreed  to,  and  Wagner  sat  down  and  wrote  what  is  by  far  the 
best  music  in  the  opera.  Although  the  Opera  was  the  stronghold  of 
Meyerbeerism,  the  Emperor's  favor  secured  Tannhauser  one  of  the 
costliest  performances  ever  given  there:  the  bill  ran  to  about  forty 
thousand  dollars,  and  there  were  164  rehearsals.  The  conductor 
was  Pierre-Louis-Philippe  Dietsch,  for  whom,  twenty  years  be- 
fore, the  Opera  had  bought  the  libretto  of  Le  Vaisseau  fantome 
The  premiere,  on  March  13,  1861,  was  turned  into  a  shambles  by 
the  rioting  of  the  aristocratic  bloods  of  the  Jockey  Club,  who 
objected  to  the  upstart  Emperor,  to  the  Austrian  Princess  Metter- 
nich,  and,  naturally,  to  their  protege,  Wagner.  When  they  looked 
in  on  the  second  act,  hoping  to  see  their  idolized  coryphees,  they 
were  told  that  they  had  missed  the  ballet.  The  singers  were 
scarcely  able  to  proceed:  the  music  was  mingled  with  derisive 
shouts  and  imprecations.  After  a  third  disastrous  performance, 
the  brokenhearted  composer  withdrew  Tannhauser. 

The  Paris  debacle  made  Wagner  a  wanderer  again.  For  three 


WAGNER  429 

years  he  was  like  an  Ishmael  dogged  by  failure.  All  attempts  tc 
have  Tristan  produced  came  to  nothing.  In  Vienna,  it  reached 
fifty-seven  rehearsals,  and  then  was  withdrawn.  Other  houses  re- 
fused to  glance  at  it.  Yet,  it  was  at  Vienna  that  Wagner  had  the 
satisfaction  of  hearing  Lohengrin  at  last — eleven  years  after  its 
Weimar  premiere.  These  Wanderjahre  also  saw  the  practical  dissolu- 
tion of  Wagner's  marriage:  after  a  harassing  series  of  domestic 
quarrels,  he  and  Minna  parted,  though  with  the  perverse  hope  in 
their  minds  that  they  would  someday  be  reunited.  Minna  was 
mortally  ill.  She  settled  in  Dresden,  and  there  Wagner  saw  her 
for  the  last  time  in  November,  1862.*  His  wanderings  continued: 
he  roamed  fruitlessly  through  Russia,  Italy,  Austria,  Hungary, 
Switzerland,  France,  and  Germany,  giving  concerts  that  were  al- 
ways failures,  and  indulging  in  cynically  empty  liaisons.  He  hap- 
pened on  the  Wesendoncks  in  Venice,  and  Mathilde  suggested,  as 
a  panacea  for  his  depressed  spirits,  that  he  take  up  again  an  old 
project  of  a  comic  opera  about  Hans  Sachs  and  the  Meistersinger  of 
Nuremberg.  He  succeeded  in  completing  the  book,  but  found  no 
spirit  for  composing  much  more  than  the  overture,  which  he  con- 
ducted at  a  Gewandhaus  concert  in  November,  1862.  He  worked 
at  the  score  painfully,  wearily,  and  by  the  spring  of  1864  things 
were  so  bad  with  him  that  he  was  on  the  verge  of  giving  up  the 
whole  struggle.  The  most  telling  symptom  of  his  advanced  spiritual 
malaise  was  that  never  once  in  these  three  years  did  he  add  a  note 
to  the  Ring.  His  once  invincible  egotism  was  at  its  nadir:  he  wanted 
only  to  rest. 

Richard  Wagner,  a  beaten  man,  was  in  Stuttgart,  and  headed 
toward  Switzerland,  when  the  private  secretary  of  the  eighteen- 
year-old  Ludwig  II,  King  of  Bavaria,  waited  upon  him.  When 
Wagner  saw  Herr  Pfistermeister's  card,  he  tremblingly  thought  of 
his  debts,  and  believed  that  this  dignitary  had  come  to  arrest  him. 
Instead,  the  man  handed  him  the  King's  signet  ring  and  portrait, 
with  an  invitation  to  become  His  Majesty's  permanent  and  hon- 
ored guest  at  the  royal  palace  at  Munich.  Wagner  was  stunned. 
He  could  not  know  that  this  seemingly  quixotic  gesture  was  but  a 

*  Death  came  to  her  in  January,  1866.  Wagner  was  stupefied.  "She  is  to  be  envied 
for  the  painless  cessation  of  her  struggles,"  he  wrote.  "Peace,  peace  to  the  tormented 
heart  of  this  most  pitiable  woman!*' 


43°  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

step  in  a  carefully  planned  campaign  on  the  part  of  a  powerful 
and  psychopathic  boy,  consumed  by  a  passion  for  Wagner's  music, 
to  have  his  idol  by  his  side.  The  first  meeting  with  the  mad  young 
Wittelsbach  should  have  warned  Wagner  that  he  was  dealing  with 
a  strange  and  dangerous  personality.  At  first,  however,  joy  banned 
thought  and  judgment.  When  he  recovered,  Wagner  began  without 
delay  to  plan  a  glorious  musical  future  for  Munich. 

For  the  first  time  since  leaving  the  Asyl,  Wagner  was  comfort- 
ably situated.  The  openhanded  Ludwig  paid  his  most  pressing 
debts,  gave  him  a  generous  pension  (that  was  soon  increased),  and 
established  him  in  a  commodious  house  near  the  palace.  Lapped  in 
the  luxury  he  craved,  and  with  resurgent  ego,  Wagner  energeti- 
cally set  about  getting  his  music  performed.  As  Ludwig's  fervor  for 
Wagnerism,  first  roused  by  Lohengrin^  had  boiled  over  after  he  read 
the  Ring  poems  the  year  before,  it  was  only  natural  that  he  should 
commission  the  whole  opera  cycle.  Wagner  received  the  formal 
contract  in  the  autumn  of  1864,  and  an  architect  was  summoned  to 
design  a  fit  temple  for  the  performance  of  the  masterpiece.  The 
first  Munich  presentation  under  Wagner's  supervision  was  Der 
fiiegende  Hollander  on  December  4,  1868.  For  Tannhauser^  Wagner 
secured  the  services  of  Ludwig  Schnorr  von  Garolsfeld,  a  young 
tenor  whose  intelligence  and  glorious  voice  had  impressed  him  in 
Lohengrin  some  years  before.  Schnorr  acquitted  himself  so  well  as 
Tannhauser  that  Wagner  invited  him  to  create  the  role  of  Tristan. 
As  Schnorr's  wife,  Malwine,  was  an  excellent  soprano,  the  ar- 
rangement was  perfect.  The  Schnorrs  were  largely  responsible  for 
the  magnificent  premiere  of  Tristan  und  Isolde  at  the  Hof-und-Na- 
tionaltheater  on  June  10,  1865,  under  the  baton  of  Von  Biilow. 
The  audience,  including  many  foreign  music  lovers  who  had 
traveled  far  just  to  hear  the  opera,  listened  attentively,  but  showed 
little  enthusiasm.  The  King  made  up  for  their  lukewarm  applause 
by  ordering  three  more  performances  by  July  i.*  Later  that 
month,  acting  on  a  memorandum  from  Wagner,  Ludwig  ordered 
the  Akademie  der  Tonkunst  closed,  and  appointed  a  royal  com- 
mission to  ponder  its  reopening  along  Wagnerian  lines,  with  Von 
Biilow  as  director.  Wagner's  hold  on  the  King  was  now  so  strong 

^  *  Three  weeks  after  this  last  performance,  Schnorr  was  dead.  Tristan,  was  not  re- 
vived for  four  years,  as  Wagner  could  not  find  a  worthy  successor  to  this  first  of  the 
"heroic  tenors." 


WAGNER 

that  he  began  to  interfere  in  affairs  of  state,  and  was  instrumental 
In  ministerial  appointments. 

Meanwhile,  Wagner  was  embroiling  himself  in  an  emotional 
tangle  that  was  to  have  far-reaching  consequences  for  all  con- 
cerned. In  June,  1864,  only  a  month  after  his  rescue  by  Ludwig, 
he  was  sending  out  wild  SOS  calls  to  Von  Bulow  and  Cosima  to 
come  and  live  with  him.  "We  simply  must  have  each  other/*  he 
-wrote.,  "and  the  moment  for  it  is  now,  now!"  He  addressed  the 
letter  to  Hans:  he  meant  it  for  Cosima.  He  had  fallen  in  love  with 
Ler*  in  Berlin  the  preceding  year,  and  despite  the  formidable 
difference  in  their  ages — he  was  fifty,  she  twenty-six — Cosima  had 
returned  his  love.  This  was  not  unnatural,  seeing  that  the  energetic, 
strong-minded  daughter  of  Franz  Liszt  and  Daniel  Stern  was  not 
only  unhappy  with  her  vacillating,  fuddy-duddy  husband,  but 
\vas  determined  to  be  the  inspiration  of  genius.  She  went  about  it 
In  the  time-honored  fashion.  Von  Billow  unwittingly  connived 
by  sending  her  and  their  two  daughters  to  stay  at  Wagner's  before 
he  himself  could  go-  So  well  did  Cosima  play  her  role  that  within 
five  years  she  bore  Wagner  two  daughters  and  a  son,  though  Von 
Blilow  was  still  her  husband.  Von  Billow,  for  whom  Wagner  had 
wangled  a  court  appointment,  evidently  did  not  see  how  things 
were  going,  even  when,  on  April  12,  1865,  Cosima  bore  a  third 
daughter,  and  named  her  Isolde.  Wagner,  of  course,  kept  up  the 
deception  by  standing  godfather  to  his  own  child. 

In  Munich  resentment  was  growing  against  Wagner.  A  musi- 
cians5 cabal  gathered  against  the  King's  increasingly  powerful 
favorite.  It  was  led  by  the  ex-general  music  director,  Franz 
Lachner,  whom  Wagner  had  replaced  with  a  Wagnerian,  and  its 
ranks  were  swelled  by  the  disgruntled  pedants  who  had  been 
thrown  out  of  work  by  the  closing  of  the  Akademie.  At  court,  a 
whispering  campaign  was  whipped  up  into  an  outcry  against  the 
alien  who  was  meddling  in  Bavarian  state  matters,  and  flouting 
Ludwig^s  rightful  counselors.  Even  at  this  early  date,  the  news- 
papers began  to  carry  attacks  on  Wagner  and  Cosima  for  their 
loose  living,  and  on  Von  Billow  for  his  complaisance — insinua- 
tions that  neither  Von  Billow  nor  the  King  believed.  It  began  to 

*  Evidently  while  his  anti-Semitism  was  in  abeyance.  Cosima's  mother,  the 
Countess  d'AgouIt,  was  the  granddaughter  of  Johann  Philipp  Bethmann,  a  Jewish 
banker  in  Frankfort. 


MEN    OF    MUSIC 

be  said  that  Wagner's  influence  over  the  King  was  hypnotic:  he 
had  but  to  wave  his  hand  for  Ludwig  to  do  his  bidding.  Others 
went  further:  they  said  that  the  Saxon  upstart  was  to  Ludwig  II 
what  Lola  Montez  had  been  to  Ludwig  I.  The  general  public  paid 
little  attention  to  all  this,  but  the  anti-Wagnerian  bloc  managed  to 
convince  the  King  that  he  faced  a  national  uprising.  Sadly,  re- 
luctantly, Ludwig  bowed  to  the  storm,  and  told  his  hero  that  he 
must  leave  Bavaria  for  a  time.  He  wrote  Wagner  a  touching 
letter,  with  the  plea,  "Believe  me,  I  had  to  do  it.  Never  doubt  the 
loyalty  of  your  best  friend."  Wagner,  for  his  part,  could  not  under- 
stand why  a  king  should  give  in  to  his  ministers,  but  he  accepted 
Ludwig's  fiat,  and  prepared  to  go  once  more  to  Switzerland. 

For  the  unhappy  man  who  was  to  outlive  him  and  die  in  a  mad- 
house, Wagner  had  nothing  but  thanks  and  love.  In  1877,  sum- 
ming up  what  Ludwig  had  done  for  him,  he  wrote,  "My  creditors 
were  quieted,  I  could  go  on  with  my  work — and  this  noble  young 
man's  trust  made  me  happy.  There  have  been  many  troubles 
since — not  of  my  making  or  of  his — but  in  spite  of  them  I  am  free 
to  this  day — and  by  his  grace."  Wagner's  consistently  grateful  re- 
spect for  Ludwig  is  almost  unique  in  his  career  of  pettifogging, 
chicanery,  and  abuse  of  benefactors  who  had,  in  some  way,  an- 
noyed him. 

At  first,  Wagner  was  alone  in  Switzerland.  Wasting  little  time 
on  sad  repinings,  he  resumed  work  on  Act  I  of  Die  Meistersinger.  In 
March,  1866,  Cosima  joined  him  for  a  while,  and  together  they 
wait  on  a  leisurely  jaunt  through  German  Switzerland,  on  the 
lookout  for  a  likely  house  where  Wagner  could  settle  down  per- 
manently. They  found  the  ideal  spot  at  Triebschen,  on  the  Lake  of 
Lucerne,  and  there,  after  going  back  to  Munich  for  the  children, 
Cosima  rejoined  Wagner.  At  the  same  time,  Von  Bulow  acciden- 
tally discovered  the  whole  truth  about  his  wife's  relations  with  his 
best  friend.  He  went  to  Triebschen,  and  more  or  less  calmly  ac- 
cepted the  fait  accompli.  Knowing  his  own  shortcomings  as  a  hus- 
band, he  agreed  to  an  eventual  divorce,  but  implored  the  lovers 
to  part  for  two  years  so  as  to  save  face  for  all  concerned.  He  pled  in 
vain:  Cosima  remained  with  Wagner,  and  Von  Bulow  had  to  re- 
turn to  Munich  to  face  ridicule  and  calumny  alone.  While  Wagner, 
lapped  in  luxury  and  Cosima's  love,  progressed  rapidly  with  the 
composition  of  Die  Meistersinger>  and  began  to  dictate  parts  of 


WAGNER  433 

Mein  Leben  to  her  (he  had  begun  ii  at  Ludwig*s  request  the  pre- 
ceding year),  Von  Billow  took  up  his  duties  as  director  of  the 
Akademie.  Newspaper  attacks  on  him  and  his  absent  wife  and 
friend  multiplied,  and  in  a  last-minute  attempt  to  quash  the 
scandal  and  prevent  her  husband's  fall,  Cosima  persuaded  the 
credulous  monarch  to  write  an  open  letter  to  Von  Billow,  certify- 
ing the  purity  of  all  parties.  But  she  left  Triebschen— where  she 
bore  Wagner  a  second  daughter,  Eva,  in  February,  1867 — only 
when  political  changes  in  Bavaria  made  Wagner's  return  to 
Munich  practicable.  Again,  to  quiet  public  rumor,  she  returned  to 
her  husband's  house,  where  Wagner  was  their  guest  whenever  he 
was  in  town  assisting  Von  Billow  and  Hans  Richter  in  staging  Die 
Meister singer,  the  score  of  which  was  finished  on  October  24,  1867. 

In  creating  this  masterpiece,  Wagner  momentarily  receded  from 
his  most  cherished  theories,  and  wrote  an  old-fashioned  opera. 
Having  chosen  for  comic  treatment  much  the  same  sort  of  song 
contest  as  plays  a  salient  role  in  Tannhauser,  he  was  perforce  driven 
back  on  a  variant  of  the  traditional  set-number  scheme,  which  in- 
volved, also,  sacrificing  the  elaborate  sign  language  of  leitmotivs  he 
was  using  in  the  Ring.  Yet,  Die  Meistersinger  rejoices  in  everything 
that  makes  for  perfection.  Its  libretto,  besides  having  an  authentic 
flavor  of  poetry,  abounds  in  good  situations,  and  writing  and  mime 
that  are  funny  to  this  day.  A  warm  and  homely  wisdom  pervades 
it,  finding  its  mouthpiece  in  one  of  the  few  truly  full-bodied  char- 
acters in  opera — Hans  Sachs.  Die  Meistersinger  is  full  of  shafts  that 
found  their  intended  lodging  places  in  the  vulnerable  spots  of 
Wagner's  hated  enemies,  the  critics.  But  this  element  of  rancor 
never  once  usurps  an  undue  importance,  and  is  finally  submerged 
in  the  general  good  fun  and  all-pervasive  kindly  glow  created  by 
the  humane  philosophy  of  Sachs,  the  loves  of  Walther  and  Eva, 
David  and  Magdalene,  and  the  bustle  and  hurly-burly  of  the  towns- 
people. The  physically  misshapen  and  mentally  twisted  Beck- 
messer  is  a  cruel  caricature  of  the  chief  of  the  anti-Wagnerian 
critics,  Eduard  Hanslick  of  the  powerful  Vienna  Jfeuefreie  Pressed 
But  the  pedantic  Beckmesser  merely  serves  to  heighten  the  broad 
humanity  of  Sachs  and  the  enterprising  boldness  of  Walther. 

With  an  unrivaled  gift  for  translating  every  element  of  a  libretto 
into  music,  Wagner  achieved  in  Die  Meistersinger  a  score  superior 

*  In  the  first  draft  of  the  Meistersinger  libretto,  Beckmesser  was  called  Hans  Lick. 


434  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

to  Tristan  in  every  respect  except  intensity.  It  has  more  dimension, 
greater  variety,  richer  invention,  and  (what  Tristan  conspicuously 
has  not)  uninterrupted  vitality.  The  action  is  so  unflaggingly  trans- 
lated into  an  inspired  melodic  stream  that  Die  Mdstersinger  can 
be  called  a  truly  popular  opera — exactly  what  Wagner  intended  it 
to  be.  In  Tristan,  the  master  magician  Wagner,  with  his  personal 
experience  of  the  power  of  love,  had  the  stuff  of  passion  to  work 
with,  and  could  not  fail.  In  Die  Meistersinger,  he  had  no  such  earth- 
shaking  stuff  to  deal  with:  the  elements  of  the  drama  are  drawn 
from  the  everyday  life  of  Nuremberg  in  the  sixteenth  century,  and 
even  the  central  love  conflict  is  on  a  human,  more  easily  compre- 
hensible scale.  Wagner's  triumph  with  this  less  intense  material  is, 
therefore,  all  the  more  remarkable — is,  indeed,  the  triumph  of 
Wagner  as  pure  musician.  The  sensation  of  burgeoning  life  and 
irrepressible  vitality  imparted  by  the  conventional  potpourri  pre- 
lude carries  right  through  to  the  exciting  choral  apostrophe  to 
Sachs  on  the  banks  of  the  Pegnitz,  where  the  Mastersingers  are 
assembled  for  their  competition.  No  other  Wagnerian  opera  abounds 
so  liberally  in  great  moments,  some  of  them  as  familiar,  without 
being  as  notorious,  as  "Evening  Star"  and  the  Bridal  Chorus.  The 
orchestra  has  for  itself,  apart  from  the  prelude,  the  lighthearted, 
cleverly  gawky  Dance  of  the  Apprentices — the  only  true  waltz 
Wagner  ever  composed.  The  music  given  to  Sachs  is  of  a  reflec- 
tive and  philosophic  cast,  yet  robust  and  of  great  movement,  in- 
cluding the  magnificent  character  piece  on  the  world's  madness, 
"WaknJ  Wahn/"  For  Walther,  of  course,  the  composer  reserved  his 
most  lyrical  inspirations,  culminating  in  that  cantilena  of  sheer 
poetry,  the  Preislied*  The  quintet  uses  the  same  lyricism,  adding  to 
it  an  unbridled  ecstasy,  a  kind  of  communal  joy  that  is  unmatched 
in  music.  Die  Mdstersinger  is  one  of  Wagner's  longest  operas :  it 
seems  his  shortest.  It  soars  on  a  rush  of  musical  wings  that  carry 
us  to  the  final  curtain  all  too  quickly. 

The  audience  for  the  first  performance  of  Die  Meister singer,  on 
June  21,  1868,  was  more  brilliant,  and  more  international  in  char- 
acter, than  that  which  had  assembled  for  the  premiere  of  Tristan. 
The  King  broke  all  laws  of  etiquette  by  inviting  Wagner  to  share 
the  royal  loge — an  action  that  furnished  more  ammunition  to  the 
composer's  enemies.  The.  response  at  the  close  was  a  wild  ovation, 
and  rightly  so.  Von  Bulow  had  drilled  the  orchestra  to  perfection. 


WAGNER 


and  Richter  had  not  been  behind  in  training  the  chorus.  Edward 
Dannreuther,  writing  in  1889,  sa*d  categorically  that  the  Munich 
Meistersinger  had  been  matched  among  Wagnerian  performances 
only  by  the  Bayreuth  Parsifal  The  critics,  incensed  by  the  implica- 
tions of  the  libretto,  and  regarding  Beckmesser  as  a  lampoon  on 
the  entire  critical  fraternity,  subjected  Wagner  to  the  most  poison- 
ous, and  certainly  the  most  unfair,  attacks  of  his  career.  By  this 
time,  he  had  successfully  sold  his  music  to  the  public.  The  critics 
still  lagged  behind.  The  popular  misconception  of  Wagner  as  a  mis- 
understood genius,  too  advanced  for  his  public,  arose  from  the  atti- 
tude of  bigoted  brothers  of  the  press  —  and  there  were  eminent 
exceptions  among  them.  After  Die  Meistersinger,  the  attacks  on  Wag- 
ner's character  and  influence  grew  in  frequency  and  violence.  Dis- 
gusted, he  left  for  Triebschen,  vowing  never  to  set  foot  in  Munich 
again.  There  was  no  longer  any  reason  to  keep  up  appearances, 
and  Cosima  joined  Wagner  permanently.  Ludwig,  finding  too  late 
that  she  had  been  playing  him  for  a  fool,  was  enraged.  He  never 
forgave  her,  and  even  when  the  festal  atmosphere  of  the  Bayreuth 
opening  in  1876  might  have  made  for  a  gentler  attitude,  refused 
to  receive  her. 

For  over  three  years,  Wagner  enjoyed  with  Cosima  a  life  of  al- 
most flawless  happiness,  devoting  most  of  his  time  to  completing 
the  Ring.  Early  in  June,  1869,  she  presented  him  with  a  son,  who 
was  called  Siegfried,  after  the  hero  of  the  music  drama  he  was 
then  at  work  on.  Three  months  later,  Siegfried  was  finished,  except 
for  scoring,  and  in  October  Wagner  began  Die  Gotterdammerung. 
The  first  two  acts  were  completed  in  1870,  the  last  in  1872.  Sieg- 
fried was  scored  in  1871,  and  the  most  ambitious  of  all  operatic 
projects  stood  complete  when  the  scoring  of  Die  Gotterdammerung 
was  finished  in  November,  1874.  Interruptions  in  this  vast  pro- 
gram of  work  were  few,  and  they  mainly  incidental  to  straightening 
out  Cosima's  status.  On  July  18,  1870,  Von  Bulow,  who  had  filed 
papers  in  Berlin,  charging  his  wife  with  infidelity,  won  his  divorce, 
On  August  25,  after  the  once  devoutly  Catholic  Cosima  had  be- 
come a  Protestant,  she  was  married  to  Wagner  at  Lucerne.  Liszt, 
who  had  been  inclined  to  side  with  Von  Bulow,  could  not  forgive 
her  for  renouncing  her  religion,  and  it  was  years  before  he  was 
reconciled  to  the  Wagners.  This  estrangement  from  a  man  of  whom 
he  was  genuinely  fond  preyed  on  Wagner's  mind,  and  he  made  all 


MEN    OF    MUSIC 

manner  of  vain  overtures  to  the  Abbe.  But  in  general,  life  at 
Triebschen  was  so  peaceful  and  full  that  the  outside  world  in- 
truded very  little.*  As  a  tribute  to  this  domestic  bliss,  Wagner 
composed  the  Siegfried  Idjl,  and  had  it  played  in  the  hallway  of 
their  home  on  the  morning  of  Cosima's  thirty-third  birthday, 
Christmas,  1870.  It  is  far  and  away  the  loveliest  of  his  occasional 
pieces  for  orchestra.  Combining  themes  from  the  last  act  of  Sieg- 
fried with  an  old  cradle  song,  it  glows  with  the  intense  tenderness 
of  young  love — it  is  eternal  springtime  set  to  music.  The  orchestra- 
tion is  shot  with  light  and  color:  the  whole  piece  exhales  a  delicate 
flowery  magic  that  is  rare  even  in  this  poet  of  the  subtle  gradations 
of  love. 

Wagner  had  never  relinquished  the  idea  of  a  special  theater 
dedicated  solely  to  performances  of  his  own  music.  Now  that  the 
Ring  was  nearing  completion,  he  began  to  think  that  it  was  high 
time  to  make  his  dream  a  reality.  Munich  was  still  anathema,  but 
his  gratitude  to  Ludwig,  as  well  as  the  hope  of  enlisting  him  as 
one  of  the  bankers  of  the  projected  Festspielhaus,  limited  Wagner's 
choice  of  a  site  to  Bavaria.  To  Bayreuth,  a  little  town  about  sixty 
miles  northeast  of  Nuremberg,  the  honor  finally  fell,  mainly,  it 
seems,  because  Cosima  was  attracted  to  it  by  a  description  in  an 
encyclopedia.  In  April,  1871,  she  and  Wagner  visited  the  town, 
and  were  enchanted  by  the  reality.  The  idea  of  him  establishing 
the  seat  of  his  cult  at  Bayreuth  appealed  strongly  to  the  local  au- 
thorities, for  Wagner  was  now  the  greatest  name  in  German  music, 
and  they  rightly  foresaw,  drawn  there  by  the  festivals,  throngs  of 
tourists  jamming  their  hotels  and  filling  their  coifers.  They  there- 
fore granted  him  land  both  for  the  theater  and  for  a  residence.  All 
that  remained  was  to  get  the  huge  sum  of  money  that  would  have 
to  be  spent  before  the  Festspielhaus  could  open  its  doors.  Except 
for  the  time  devoted  to  completing  the  Ming,  for  the  next  five  years 

*  There  were  occasional  guests,  of  course,  the  most  frequent  and  most  welcome  of 
whom  was  the  youthful  Friedrich  Nietzsche.  Stupefied  by  Wagner's  music  and  his 
Schopenhauerian  mouthings,  Nietzsche  was  only  too  glad  to  sit  at  the  feet  of  the 
master — and  the  master  was  just  as  glad  to  have  him.  He  used  the  ardent  young 
thinker  as  a  sounding  board  for  his  theories,  and  was  pleased  to  entrust  him  with 
tHe  task  of  seeing  a  privately  printed  edition  of  Mein  Leben  through  the  press.  The 
friendship  endured  until  1878,  when  Nietzsche  began  to  regard  Wagnerism  as  a 
kind  of  spiritual  opium  with  dangerous  degenerative  power.  He  attacked  his  erst- 
while teacher  in  a  violent  pamphlet,  which  Wagner  answered.  But  Nietzsche  had  the 
last  word:  five  years  after  his  enemy's  death,  he  wrote  Der  Fall  Wagner •,  a  withering 
but  overwrought  book  that  still  supplies  fuel  to  the  anti-Wagnerians. 


WAGNER  437 

Wagner  worked  at  raising  it.  On  May  22,  1872,  the  cornerstone  of 
the  theater  was  laid  at  an  impressive  birthday  ceremony — Wagner 
was  fifty-nine  that  day — marked  by  the  playing  of  Beethoven's 
Ninth  Symphony  and  his  own  Kaisermarsch. 

With  characteristic  audacity,  the  ex-barricade  fighter  of  Dresden 
carried  his  problem  to  the  Iron  Chancellor  himself.  But  Bismarck 
turned  him  down,  commenting  that  Wagner  was  the  most  con- 
ceited man  he  had  ever  met.  After  that  rebuff,  the  scramble  for 
funds  began  in  earnest,  with  Richter  acting  as  generalissimo.  Vari- 
ous plans  were  made,  only  to  be  discarded  as  impractical,  until 
finally  one  of  the  master's  friends  hit  upon  the  ingenious  scheme  of 
starting  a  Wagner  Society.  This  organization  worked  so  zealously 
for  the  project  that  similar  societies  were  formed  throughout  Ger- 
many and  even  in  foreign  countries,  often  in  the  most  unlikely 
places — Cairo,  for  instance.  For  he  whom  the  critics  still  reviled 
as  a  musical  anarch  and  maker  of  unpleasant  noises  had  a  huge 
popular  following.  Benefit  concerts  were  given  in  many  towns, 
often  with  Wagner  himself  conducting.  A  reconciliation  with  Liszt 
proved  most  opportune:  having  drawn  away  somewhat  from  the 
influence  of  the  Princess  Sayn-Wittgenstein  (who  ever  loathed  Bay- 
reuth  and  all  its  works),  he  campaigned  vigorously  for  his  son-in- 
law.  The  King  of  Bavaria  blew  alternately  hot  and  cold.  Already 
half  mad,  one  day  he  would  be  ready  to  drop  the  whole  scheme, 
and  the  next  would  send  a  hundred  thousand  thalers.  Time  and 
again,  everyone  except  Wagner  grew  numb  with  discouragement. 
In  1876,  with  the  theater  all  but  ready  to  open,  it  was  thought  for 
a  while  that  the  often  postponed  festival  would  have  to  be  aban- 
doned altogether.  Five  thousand  dollars  came  in  the  nick  of  time, 
and  helped  to  revive  a  drooping  morale.  It  was  payment  for  the 
last  hack  job  Wagner  ever  did — the  American  Centennial  March  for 
the  Philadelphia  Exposition.  Rehearsals  began  in  June,  and  every- 
body breathed  a  sigh  of  relief. 

Wagner  had  moved  from  Triebschen  to  Bayreuth  in  April,  1872. 
At  first  he  lived  in  a  rented  house,  but  two  years  later  his  own 
luxurious  Villa  Wahnfried  was  ready.  By  this  time,  the  eyes  of  the 
world  were  focused  on  the  little  Franconian  town.  By  the  summer 
of  1876,  it  was  so  crowded  with  curiosity  seekers  that  the  police 
had  difficulty  keeping  order  at  the  public  rehearsals  in  the  Fest- 
spielhaus.  The  first  complete  performance  ofDerRing  des  Mbdungen, 


438  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

from  August  13  to  17,  18765  was  an  event  without  precedent  or 
parallel  in  the  history  of  music  and  high  society.  The  theater  was 
provided  with  a  "princes'  gallery/'  and  this  was  crowded  with  the 
elite,  from  Kaiser  Wilhelm  I9  Dom  Pedro  II  of  Brazil,  Ludwig  II 
of  Bavaria,  and  so  on,  down  to  petty  princelets  and  dukes.  Liszt, 
Tchaikovsky,  and  Saint-Saens  attended.  Wagner's  friends  and  ene- 
mies mingled  excitedly^  among  them  the  Wesendoncks  and  Hans 
von  Billow's  mother.  Von  Btilow  himself,  one  of  the  chief  instru- 
ments of  Wagner's  success  and  happiness,  was  conspicuously  ab- 
sent. He  had  been  invited,  but  was  too  ill  to  attend.  Of  all  the 
cruel  blows  dealt  by  fate  to  Minna  Wagner,  the  cruelest  was  that 
she  did  not  live  to  see  her  Richard's  apotheosis  as  the  foremost 
operatic  composer  in  the  world.  Three  complete  productions  of 
the  Ring  cycle  were  given  to  clamorously  enthusiastic,  completely 
subscribed,  houses.  Perhaps  the  only  notable  dissenters  in  the  chorus 
of  praise  were  the  critics  who  had  come,  literally,  from  the  four 
corners  of  the  earth.  But  now  even  their  ranks  (never  solid)  were 
breaking.  The  foreign  critics,  a  few  German  ones  too,  were  begin- 
ning to  realize  that  they  had  a  genius  to  evaluate. 

Even  the  most  sophisticated  of  operagoers  among  those  first 
eager  Ring  audiences  could  not  have  been  prepared  for  what  they 
saw  and  heard  during  the  twelve  hours  and  forty  minutes  of  that 
weighty  musicodramatic  epic.  Nothing  in  the  works  of  other  com- 
posers, nothing  in  the  works  of  Wagner  himself,  could  have  made 
them  ready  for  digesting  the  incredibly  complex  machinery  of  this 
audaciously  long  work  of  art.  First,  they  were  asked  to  follow  a 
series  of  interrelated  poems  that  required  a  guidebook  for  their 
perfect  comprehension.  Second,  they  were  asked  to  hold  in  their 
memories  for  four  days  a  set  of  ninety  leitmotivs,  one  third  of 
which  make  their  appearance  in  Das  Rheingold,  the  first  of  the 
cycle.  Nor  was  this  second  demand  a  mere  empty  convention;  to 
forget  even  one  of  the  motives  was  to  lose  a  part  of  the  essential 
dramatic  significance  of  the  Ring,  which  depends  for  development 
of  character  and  the  carrying  forward  of  the  action  on  the  re- 
appearance, mingling,  and  transmutation  of  these  leitmotivs.  Fi- 
nally, they  were  asked  to  sit  through  four  consecutive  performances 
cf  unrelieved  seriousness;  there  is  not  a  single  comic  touch  in  the 
Ring,  as  is  perhaps  only  correct  in  a  work  that  purports  to  have  a 
high  philosophical  message. 


WAGNER  439 

Now  that  the  smoke  of  battle  has  cleared,  and  even  the  tirnidest 
critic  in  the  most  backward  land  has  accepted  Wagner's  music,  we 
see  the  Ring  as  a  glorious  failure.  Wagner  intended  it  as  a  synthesis 
of  the  arts,  defining  their  roles  with  the  naivete  of  a  man  obsessed 
by  a  fixed  idea.  Poetry — the  essential  vehicle  of  the  drama,  that  is 
— was  to  take  pre-eminence.  Music,  far  from  being  independent, 
was  merely  to  amplify  and  illuminate  the  poet's  meaning.  Painting 
and  sculpture  had  their  parts  in  decor  and  costumes;  the  dance  was 
to  be  content  with  miming.  The  final  result  was  to  be  the  unified 
art  work — the  music  drama.  It  is  precisely  this  that  Wagner  failed 
to  achieve — or  even  to  approximate.  The  only  reason  thousands 
still  stand  in  the  ticket  line  in  the  coldest  winter  weather  whenever 
the  Ring  cycle  is  announced  is  that  it  contains  some  of  the  most 
absorbing  music  ever  written.  The  libretto  is  a  bore — windy,  flatu- 
lent, repetitious,  and  frequently  absurd.  No  one  less  cocksure  than 
the  builder  of  Bayreuth  would  have  dared  these  excessive  longueurs 
or  have  mistaken  chunks  of  undilute  Schopenhauer  for  relevant 
musical  text.  These  show  a  basic  misconception  of  the  very  nature 
of  drama.  Even  worse,  because  they  are  egregious  interruptions 
that  might  easily  have  been  excised  by  a  careful  editorial  pen,  are 
those  moments  when  one  or  more  of  the  characters  says,  in  effect, 
"Hold  everything!"  and  proceeds  at  great  length  to  narrate  what 
has  already  been  better  presented  in  the  action  of  earlier  scenes. 
It  is  a  matter  for  legitimate  amazement  that  Wagner,  who  proved 
again  and  again  that  he  knew  how  to  shape  a  truly  dramatic 
libretto,  imposed  on  himself  the  Procrustean  scheme  of  the  four 
Ring  poems  essentially  unchanged.  They  had  been  written  in  re- 
verse order,  and  therefore  involved  the  inclusion  of  synopses  of  the 
scenes  still  to  be  written.  Oddly  enough,  though  Wagner  composed 
the  actual  operas  in  correct  order,  he  left  these  synopses  in.  What 
might  possibly  be  tolerable  to  read  is  intolerable  to  listen  to.  The 
most  telling  indictment  of  the  Ring  librettos  is  that  they  contain 
hours  of  talk  that  even  Wagner  could  not  translate  into  living 
music. 

Once  it  is  freely  admitted  that  the  Ring  is  a  spotty,  generally 
unsuccessful  work  of  art,  its  many  pages  of  surpassingly  beautiful 
music  can  be  appreciated  for  what  they  are.  The  appeal  of  the 
Sing  at  its  best  is  effected  by  magnificent  texture  and  a  most  elo- 
quent musical  speech.  The  first  of  these  is  achieved  by  the  most 


MEN     OF    MUSIC 

varied  and  subtle  use  of  orchestral  and  vocal  color,  and  by  the 
rich  weaving  together  of  leitmotivs,  many  of  which,  though  as 
terse  as  can  be,  are  extraordinarily  viable.  The  last  twenty  minutes 
of  Die  Gotterddmmerungy  for  example,  when  all  the  musical  elements 
that  have  been  gathering  throughout  the  four  operas  culminate 
and  are  resolved,  shape  one  of  the  most  sheerly  splendid  climaxes 
in  all  music.  Here  is  Wagner  at  his  supreme  greatest,  with  all  the 
vast  amplitude  and  scope  of  his  style  perfectly  displayed.  It  has  an 
enduring  quality  that  the  clever  and  (at  first  hearing)  exciting 
Ride  of  the  Valkyries  lacks.  Quite  as  memorable,  however,  are  the 
Magic  Fire  Spell,  Siegfried's  Rhine  Journey,  and  Siegfried's  fu- 
neral music.  And  the  tantalizingly  lingering  Waldweben  discloses 
an  unfamiliar  Wagner,  a  precursor  of  Debussy — delicate,  shim- 
mering, impressionistic.  Strangely  out  of  place  in  this  sophisticated 
texture  is  Siegmund's  limpid,  moronically  lovely  Liebeslied,  which 
might  easily  have  come  out  of  Tannhauser.  More  in  the  style  and 
tone  of  their  great  orchestral  surroundings  are  Wotan's  Farewell 
and  Briinnhilde's  immolation  aria.  But  these  only  serve  to  prove 
that  the  mature  Wagner  of  the  Ring  was  essentially  a  symphonic 
composer,  who  used  the  voice  most  adroitly,  most  effectively,  as 
but  another  instrument  in  his  superb  orchestra.  By  a  monumental 
irony,  Wagner,  who  faithfully  believed  that  Beethoven  had  intro- 
duced voices  into  his  last  symphony  because  he  had  discovered 
that  the  orchestra  alone  could  not  express  all  that  he  had  to  say, 
seems,  in  this  most  considered,  theory-filled  product  of  his  ma- 
turity, to  be  striving  to  free  himself  of  the  impositions  of  the  human 
voice. 

The  three  cycles  of  the  Ring,  thronged  though  they  were,  left 
the  Festspielhaus  with  a  deficit  of  close  to  120,000  marks,  for  which 
Wagner  himself  had  to  shoulder  the  chief  responsibility.  At  first  he 
was  too  tired  to  think  of  ways  of  paying  it  off,  and  went  to  Italy 
for  a  much-needed  rest.  On  his  return  to  Bayreuth,  he  fell  in  with 
a  scheme  suggested  by  the  violinist  Wilhelmj,  apparently  a  man 
of  childlike  faith,  that  he  raise  funds  by  conducting  concerts  of 
his  own  in  London.  These  were  organized  on  a  ridiculously  lavish 
scale  that  ate  perilously  into  future  profits  before  they  were  even 
sighted.  The  six  concerts  of  excerpts  from  his  own  works  that  Wag- 
ner conducted  in  Albert  Hall  in  May,  1877,  suffered  from  a  double 
handicap:  the  tickets  had  to  be  priced  too  high,  and  the  composer 


WAGNER  441 

was  too  ill  and  fatigued  to  do  himself  justice — an  artistic  tragedy, 
for  Wagner  at  his  best  was  a  great  conductor.  Attendance  was 
good,  but  by  no  means  capacity.  To  save  the  venture,  two  addi- 
tional concerts  were  given  at  much  reduced  prices,  and  these  were 
so  crowded  that  not  only  were  the  costs  defrayed,  but  he  was  able 
to  send  back  to  Bayreuth  almost  £7000.  This  was  a  mere  drop  in 
the  bucket,  but  Wagner  had  neither  means  nor  energy  to  do  any- 
thing more  about  Bayreuth's  muddled  finances.  His  heart  now 
began  to  trouble  him,  and  so,  after  taking  a  cure,  he  returned  to 
Wahnfried. 

In  August,  1877,  Wagner  began  to  compose  the  first-act  music 
of  Parsifal,  the  libretto  of  which  was  published  separately  a  few 
months  later.  By  April,  1879,  Parsifal  was  complete  but  for  the 
orchestration,  which  was  not  finished  until  January  13,  1882.  The 
years  of  its  composition  were  by  no  means  happy  ones  for  Wagner. 
Tragically,  just  as  he  achieved  unblemished  domestic  serenity,  he 
began  to  die  of  a  complication  of  diseases.  Erysipelas,  the  scourge 
of  his  youth,  returned  with  special  violence  toward  the  end  of  1879. 
Gastric  troubles  and  rheumatism  of  a  peculiarly  stubborn  nature 
further  weakened  his  heart.  The  specter  of  debts,  laid  during  his 
Munich  and  Triebschen  periods,  stalked  again  in  a  more  than  ever 
fearsome  aspect.  For  Wagner's  personal  lavishness  now  assumed 
truly  Babylonian  proportions.  His  cherished  plan  of  repeating  the 
Bayreuth  festival  every  year  had  to  be  abandoned,  but  in  1878  a 
way  of  financial  rehabilitation  was  suggested  by  the  still-enthusi- 
astic Ludwig  of  Bavaria.  He  owned  the  rights  to  the  Ring  (the 
long-suffering  Wesendonck  having  greatheartedly  ceded  his  in- 
terest) ,  and  had  before  its  completion  flouted  Wagner's  well-known 
wishes  that  it  never  be  given  except  as  a  cycle.  He  had  had  Das 
Rheingold  and  Die  Walkure  performed  separately  at  Munich.  Now 
he  wanted  to  stage  the  entire  cycle  there,  but  ran  up  against  Wag- 
ner's insistence  that  the  Ring  be  given  only  in  the  specially  designed 
Festspielhaus.  He  could,  of  course,  simply  have  given  the  Ring,  but 
did  not  wish  to  annoy  his  revered  friend.  Instead,  he  offered,  in 
return  for  Wagner's  blessing,  to  turn  the  proceeds  of  the  Munich 
performances  into  a  fund  for  lifting  the  Bayreuth  debt.  Further 
help  came  from  the  farsighted  and  courageous  impresario,  Angelo 
Neumann,  who  organized  a  Richard  Wagner  Touring  Company, 
and  carried  cvclic  nerformances  of  the  Rine  to  manv  a  Euronean 


442  MEN  OF  MUSIC 

town.  Wagner  salved  his  artistic  conscience  by  saying  that  he  him- 
self had  at  least  given  the  Ring  three  times  under  perfect  conditions. 

At  last,  in  1882,  a  second  Bayreuth  festival  became  possible — 
and,  indeed,  imperative,  if  Wagner  was  to  live  to  see  Parsifal.  The 
year  before,  parts  of  it  had  been  rehearsed  under  the  direction  of 
the  last  of  Wagner's  famous  disciples.  This  was  Engelbert  Humper- 
dinck,  who  was  to  achieve  an  un-Bayreuthian  immortality  with  a 
by  no  means  un-Wagnerian  opera,  Hansel  und  GreteL  Full  rehearsals 
began  early  in  July,  1882,  and  on  the  twenty-sixth  of  that  month 
a  picked  audience  of  subscribers  heard  the  premiere  of  the  longest 
single  opera  ever  composed.  Not  the  least  strange  episode  in  the 
strange  life  of  Richard  Wagner  is  that  though  an  unrepentant  anti- 
Semite,  he  chose,  to  conduct  this  "consecrational  festival  stage 
play,"  a  Jew  by  the  name  of  Hermann  Levi,  who,  moreover,  re- 
mained chief  director  at  Bayreuth  for  many  years.  Not  quite  so 
strange — in  fact,  well  in  keeping  with  the  odd  melange  of  Chris- 
tianity and  Buddhism  that  had  brought  Parsifal  into  being — were 
Wagner's  mystical  reasons  for  refusing  to  allow  Neumann  to  add 
it  to  the  repertory  of  his  operatic  stock  company.  Everything  Wag- 
ner said  about  Parsifal  makes  one  suspect  that  he  conceived  of  it 
as  a  new  kind  of  religious  ceremony. 

And  perhaps  Parsifal  is  appreciated  best  by  those  who  like  new 
kinds  of  religious  ceremonies.  Those  who  like  it  least  call  it  a  com- 
bination of  megalomania  and  senility — the  devotional  maunder- 
ings  of  an  elderly  ex-genius.  Of  all  the  Wagnerian  music  dramas, 
Parsifal  cries  out  most  for  concert-excerpt  treatment.  Given  as  an 
opera,  it  is  intolerable.  It  never  comes  to  life  except  for  a  few 
minutes  at  a  time.  Its  length  is  no  sin,  but  that  it  seems  sluggishly, 
incredibly  long,  is.  Far  from  having  learned  the  dead-weight  effect 
of  long,  uninterrupted  narrative  (as  he  should  have  by  listening  to 
a  single  cycle  of  the  Ring),  Wagner  has  peopled  Parsifal  with  talk- 
ing textbooks  of  religious  doctrine  and  ethical  theory.  And  for  all 
its  technical  virtuosity,  most  of  the  music  is  not  measurably  better 
than  the  libretto.  The  transformations  to  which  the  leitmotivs  are 
subjected  show  unimpaired  intellectual  ingenuity,  but  the  motives 
themselves  seem  to  be  of  an  inferior  species.  The  orchestration,  as 
rich  as  ever,  is  not  often  resplendent  or  glowing.  The  musical 
weather  of  Parsifal  may  be  described  as  a  persistent  rosy  fog,  with 
extremely  low  visibility.  The  garden  of  Klingsor — what  corre- 


WAGNER 


spends  in  this  long-drawn-out  drama  of  salvation  to  the  Tannhdus&r 
Venusberg  scene—  is  sensualism  of  a  very  second-rate  order.  Its 
effect  is  like  that  of  going  into  a  garishly  lighted  burlesque  theater 
between  church  services.  Amid  all  this  folderol,  this  mixture  of 
jeweled  pother  and  muggy  sanctimoniousness,  there  are  but  few 
passages  that  show  the  hand  of  the  old  magician.  The  prelude,  for 
example  (which  Wagner  had  played  for  Cosima  as  a  birthday  sur- 
prise on  Christinas  Day,  1878),  exhales  a  radiance  and  fragrance 
that  are  worthy  of  the  Holy  Grail  they  symbolize.  As  for  the  piously 
static  Good  Friday  Spell,  one  can  only  surmise  that  its  persistent 
popularity  is  due  to  the  spurious  atmosphere  of  unctiousness  that 
is  whipped  up  with  clocklike  regularity  every  Eastertide. 

Wagner's  enfeebled  constitution  barely  stood  the  strain  of  six- 
teen performances  of  his  last  opera.  On  the  closing  night,  how- 
ever, he  was  strong  enough  to  take  the  baton  when  Levi  suddenly 
fell  ill  during  the  third  act.  But  with  the  festival  finally  over,  he 
decided  that  he  could  not  endure  the  rigors  of  a  German  winter. 
In  September,  he  and  Cosima  headed  south:  their  destination  was 
Venice,  where  Wagner  had  leased  a  luxurious  palace  on  the  Grand 
Canal.  Liszt  soon  arrived,  and  stayed  with  them  for  two  happy 
months.  Meanwhile,  Wagner's  health,  instead  of  responding  to  the 
mildness  of  the  south,  deteriorated  further,  and  he  had  an  alarm- 
ing series  of  heart  attacks.  In  his  agony,  he  did  not  forget  the  wife 
who  had  given  him  full  measure  of  happiness.  Making  a  super- 
human effort,  he  managed  to  rehearse  his  fifty-one-year-old  C 
major  Symphony,  and  conduct  it  at  the  Liceo  Marcello  on  the  eve 
of  her  birthday.  The  choice  was  not  fortuitous:  his  interest  in 
purely  orchestral  music  had  been  gaining  on  him.  At  this  time,  he 
even  projected  another  symphony.  It  is  a  cliche  of  Wagnerians  to 
deplore  that  this  was  never  composed.  Considering  the  decline 
from  Die  Gdtterddmmerung  to  Parsifal,  it  is  impossible  to  agree  with 
them.  What  is  sad  is  that  Wagner  did  not  compose  such  a  sym- 
phony when  his  powers  v/ere  at  their  full.  In  any  event,  by  Jan- 
uary, 1883,  it  was  too  late  to  do  more  than  dream  of  new  composi- 
tions. life  was  ebbing  painfully  away.  Early  in  February,  he 
suffered  an  unusually  sharp  attack  of  angina  pectoris,  and  on  the 
thirteenth  died  in  Cosima's  arms. 

When  the  news  of  his  son-in-law?s  death  reached  Liszt  in  Buda- 
pest, heatfirst  refused  to  believe  it.  "Why  not?"  was  his  casual  com- 


444  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

ment  as  he  turned  back  to  his  work.  But  soon  confirmation  came. 
This  time  he  received  it  as  an  omen,  remarking,  "He  today,  I 
tomorrow."  The  first  wreath  to  arrive  at  Wahnfried,  whither  the 
body  had  been  removed  for  solemn  interment  in  the  garden,  was 
from  Johannes  Brahms.  Cosima,  who  had  sacrificially  cut  off  her 
hair  and  placed  it  on  her  dead  husband's  breast,  received  Brahms' 
tribute  with  cold  disdain.  "We  shall  not  acknowledge  it,"  she  said. 
"He  did  not  love  the  master's  music."  Soon  there  converged  on 
Wahnfried  messages  and  wreaths  from  a  world  that  knew  a  great 
man  had  died. 

After  the  funeral,  the  widow  Wagner  pulled  herself  together, 
and  took  into  her  strong  hands  a  trust  to  preserve  unchanged  the 
empire  her  lord  had  carved  out.  For  forty-seven  years  she  stood 
jealous  guard  over  "the  Bayreuth  tradition,"  which  ended  up  by 
being  more  Wagnerian  than  Wagner.  Not  only  was  she  the  all- 
powerful  priestess  of  what  became  a  real  cult,  but  she  managed  to 
extend  the  influence  of  Wagnerism  into  the  most  remote  corners  of 
the  musical  world.  Huneker  called  her,  satirically,  but  not  without 
a  trace  of  respect,  Cosima  I  of  Bayreuth.  Her  rule  was  stern  and 
unflinching,  unmitigated  by  a  trace  of  humor.  It  was  only  when 
old  age  relaxed  her  grip,  and  she  saw  with  grim  certainty  that  the 
heir  apparent — the  incongruous^  named  Siegfried — was  a  weak 
man,  that  the  boundaries  of  the  empire  began  to  shrink.  Those  who 
either  owed  nothing  to  Wagner,  or  refused  to  acknowledge  their 
debt,  now  began  to  lead  music  away  from  the  cult  of  Bayreuth. 
When  Cosima  died  in  1930,  at  the  age  of  ninety-three,  it  had  been 
whispered  for  many  years  that  Wagner  was  old-fashioned. 


Chapter  XVII 

Giuseppe  Verdi 

(Le  Roncole,  October  10,  i8i3~January  27,  igoi,  Milan) 


THE  story  of  Richard  Wagner  is  one  of  the  most  complex  in  art: 
it  is  full  of  mysteries,  philosophical  and  literary  detours,  postur- 
ings  in  the  limelight.  It  is  a  crowded  canvas,  fuller  of  extramusical 
episode  than  the  life  of  any  other  composer.  Verdi's  story  is  sim- 
plicity itself — a  straightforward  career  piece,  with  a  minimum  of 
applied  ornament  and  a  maximum  of  common  sense.  First, 
second,  and  third,  he  was  a  practicing  composer  of  opera,  and  only 
fourth  and  thereafter  was  he  anything  else.  The  complexities  of 
his  character  were  expressed  in  his  music  and  in  his  private  life, 
which  he  kept  eminently  private.  He  was  an  intelligent  but  intel- 
lectually unpretentious  man  whose  concentration  on  his  metier 
was  unaccompanied  by  esthetic  flag-flying.  He  left  no  collected 
prose  works.  Aside  from  his  music,  he  was,  in  comparison  with 
Wagner,  a  mute. 

Giuseppe  Fortunino  Francesco  Verdi  was  born  about  a  half 
year  later  than  his  great  German  rival,  at  a  tiny  village  in  the 
grand  duchy  of  Parma,  then  part  of  Napoleon's  empire.  The  names 
on  the  birth  certificate  of  this  only  son  of  Carlo  Verdi,  grocer  and 
innkeeper,  and  Luigia  Uttini  are  "Joseph  Fortunin  Frangois," 
When  the  French  were  driven  out  in  1814,  and  Austrian  troops, 
suspecting  the  natives  of  being  pro-French,  pillaged  Le  Roncole, 
killing  many  of  its  inhabitants,  Luigia  Verdi  saved  her  baby's  life 
and  her  own  by  hiding  in  the  church  belfry.  The  tales  of  the 
Austrian  terror  that  Giuseppe  heard  as  he  was  growing  up  helped 
to  make  him  a  stalwart  patriot.  When  he  showed  more  than  the 
average  childish  interest  in  music,  he  was  sent  to  the  village 
organist  for  instruction.  At  the  age  of  twelve,  he  was  voted  a  salary 
of  ten  dollars  a  year  as  his  teacher's  successor,  and  Ms  father  de- 
cided that  such  phenomenal  talents  deserved  wider  fields.  Ac- 
cordingly, Giuseppe  went  to  live  at  Busseto,  the  district  metropolis, 
three  full  miles  away,  lodging  with  a  family  friend,  cultivating  the 
three  R's  at  the  town  school,  and  walking  to  his  native  village  on 
Sundays  to  perform  his  official  duties. 

445 


446  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

News  of  the  boy's  considerable  musical  talents  aroused  the  inter- 
est of  the  local  Maecenas — Antonio  Barezzi,  a  well-to-do  grocer 
whose  house  was  the  meeting  place  of  the  Societa  Filarmonica  di 
Busseto.  He  took  Giuseppe  tinder  his  wing,  into  his  home  and  into 
his  business,  and  sent  him  for  further  musical  study  to  the  cathedral 
organist.  This  venerable  fellow,  several  of  whose  comic  operas  had 
actually  been  produced,  taught  the  boy  what  he  could — in  short, 
prepared  him  for  the  big-city  hegira  that  was  bound  to  come. 
Under  his  tutelage,  Giuseppe  began  to  compose,  and  some  of  the 
fifteen-year-old's  efforts,  including  marches  and  an  overture,  were 
found  good  enough  for  performance  by  the  Busseto  band.  More 
important,  it  turned  out,  were  the  numerous  piano  duets  he  de- 
vised for  himself  and  Barezzi's  pretty  daughter,  Margherita. 

By  1832,  it  was  clear  that  young  Verdi  could  learn  nothing  more 
in  Busseto.  His  thoughts  and  his  hopes  turned  automatically  to 
Milan,  then  as  now  the  nerve  center  of  Italian  opera.  But  he  had 
no  money.  When  things  looked  blackest,  his  tireless  patron  not  only 
persuaded  a  local  charity  to  double  a  scholarship  grant  within  its 
gift,  but  also  added  an  appreciable  sum  to  it.  Thus  provided  with 
fonds  for  two  years'  study,  Verdi  set  out  for  Milan.  The  directors 
of  the  conservatory  turned  him  down.  While  admitting  his  phe- 
nomenal gifts  and  even  predicting  a  brilliant  career  for  him,  they 
mentioned  his  weakness  in  musical  theory  and  the  fact  that  he  was 
beyond  the  usual  age  for  admission.  This  was  a  severe  setback  to 
the  naturally  reserved  and  pessimistic  young  man.  Pride  and  hope 
were  alike  salvaged  when  the  influential  Vincenzo  Lavigna  ac- 
cepted him  as  a  private  pupil.  For  the  first  time  in  his  life,  Verdi 
was  exposed  to  really  thorough  methods  of  training,  and  he  forged 
ahead  at  a  great  rate.  At  Busseto  the  music  had  not  been  wholly 
bad:  the  Filarmonica  did  its  best  for  Rossini,  Haydn,  and  other 
popular  composers  of  the  day.  Under  Lavigna,  Verdi  came  to 
know  Bach,  Mozart,  Beethoven,  and,  above  all,  Palestrina,  for 
whom  he  conceived  a  Efelong  passion. 

In  1833,  Verdi's  old  master  in  Busseto  died,  and  Barezzi  and  a 
clique  of  his  fiiends  invited  their  protege  to  return  as  cathedral 
organist.  The  invitation  put  Verdi  on  the  spot.  On  the  one  hand,  a 
strong  sense  of  duty  and  gratitude  as  well  as  Margherita  Barezzi's 
charms  argued  Busseto's  claims;  on  the  other  hand,  his  strongest 
ambition  urged  him  to  remain  in  Milan.  Through  a  series  of  fortu- 


VERDI  447 

nate  accidents  which  had  brought  him  into  contact  with  Milanese 
high  society,  he  was  becoming  something  of  a  personage  in  musical 
circles,  and  indeed  had  just  been  asked  earnestly  to  write  an 
opera.  Busseto  won.  Verdi  returned  for  six  years'  vegetation.  It 
turned  out  that  Barezzi  and  the  pro-Verdi  group  in  Busseto  had 
not  been  entitled  to  speak  for  the  cathedral  authorities,  who  per- 
emptorily appointed  a  nonentity  as  organist.  The  Filarmonica 
responded  by  appointing  Verdi  as  its  conductor,  and  the  town  it- 
self voted  him  a  stipend  as  organist  of  a  rival  church.  A  tiny  civil 
war  threatened:  the  clerics  tried  to  have  the  Filarmonica  out- 
lawed, and  the  musicians  retaliated  by  "stealing"  music  they  had 
themselves  lent  to  the  cathedral, 

Verdi's  six  years  at  Busseto  did  little  to  further  his  career:  he 
marked  time,  and  was  happy.  In  1835,  ne  asked  Barezzi  for 
Margherita's  hand,  and  was  delighted  to  find  that  his  poverty  wras 
not  held  against  him.  The  marriage  took  place  in  May  of  the  next 
year.  By  the  time  Verdi  returned  to  Milan  in  1839,  he  was  the 
father  of  two  children.  Meanwhile,  he  had  completed  the  score  of 
Oberto,  conte  di  Bonifacio,  the  libretto  his  Milanese  friends  had  asked 
him  to  set  some  years  before.  But  whatever  high  hopes  he  had  for 
easy  success  were  dashed  when  he  reached  Milan:  friends  on  whom 
he  had  counted  most  were  no  longer  in  high  places.  At  last,  how- 
ever, Oberto  was  taken  by  La  Scala,  put  into  rehearsal,  and  then 
withdrawn  indefinitely  when  the  tenor  fell  sick.  When  Verdi's 
funds  were  at  the  utmost  ebb,  the  impresario  Merelli  happened  to 
hear  two  members  of  the  cast — one  of  them  the  soprano  Giusep- 
pina  Strepponi — talking  aggrievedly  of  the  abandonment  of  an 
opera  with  so  many  excellences  as  Oberto.  He  looked  at  the  score 
with  new  eyes,  sent  for  the  young  composer,  and  made  him  an 
unusually  attractive  offer,  considering  that  in  those  days  un- 
knowns were  expected  to  pay  for  staging  their  first  efforts.  In 
this  case,  Merelli  agreed  to  shoulder  all  expenses  and  share  the 
profits  with  Verdi,  whose  cup  of  happiness  must  have  overflowed 
when  the  enterprising  publisher,  Giovanni  Ricordi,  bought  the 
rights  to  Oberto.  The  opera  had  itspremure  on  November  17,  1839. 
It  was  a  measured  success,  and  as  its  defects  were  charitably  at 
tributed  to  the  inhibiting  effects  of  a  bad  libretto,  Verdi  was 
immediately  signed  up  to  write  three  operas  in  two  years. 

More  than  a  year  later,  Verdi  had  done  nothing  with  the  first 


MEN     OF     MUSIC 

libretto  Merelli  had  given  him.  Therefore,  he  was  asked  to  com- 
pose, instead,  a  comic  piece  for  the  fall  season.  He  was  scoring  II 
Finto  Stanislao  when  there  occurred  the  last  of  a  series  of  tragedies 
that  might  well  have  deprived  of  his  senses  a  man  less  master  of 
himself:  he  had  already  lost  his  two  children  in  two  years,  and 
now  Margherita  died.  Verdi,  who  had  himself  been  very  ill, 
laboriously  finished  what  had  become  a  galling  task,  and  the 
opera,  renamed  Un  Giorno  di  regno,  naturally  fell  flat  at  its  pre- 
miere. Seventeen  years  later,  securely  established  as  the  foremost 
composer  of  Italian  opera,  Verdi  had  not  forgotten  the  discour- 
tesy of  that  cruel  Milanese  audience.  "If  the  public  then  had, 
I  will  not  say  applauded,  but  just  received  the  work  in  silence," 
he  wrote,  "I  should  not  have  had  words  enough  to  express  my 
thanks,"  and  frigidly  added:  "I  accept  severity  and  hisses  only 
on  condition  that  I  am  not  asked  to  be  grateful  for  applause." 

Verdi  abandoned  composition.  He  retreated  to  Busseto,  found  it 
intolerable,  and  returned  to  Milan,  hoping  to  live  by  coaching 
singers.  One  evening  he  met  Merelli,  who  was  hot  on  his  trail,  and 
who  then  and  there  forced  on  the  obstinate  ex-composer  a  Baby- 
lonian libretto  that  had  been  turned  down  by  Otto  Nicolai,  the 
adroit  deviser  of  a  number  of  now-forgotten  scores  and  the  peren- 
nially favored  overture  to  Die  lustigen  Weiber  von  Windsor.  Verdi 
read  it,  and  returned  it  to  Merelli,  saying  in  a  listless  voice  that  it 
was  very  fine,  but  that  he  would  not  score  it.  Merelli  thereupon 
called  him  an  ass,  stuffed  the  manuscript  in  his  pocket,  and  locked 
him  out.  This  was  just  the  sort  of  medicine  Verdi  needed.  He 
began  to  compose  Nabucodnosor  right  away,  and  was  soon  fretting 
the  librettist  with  plans  for  extensive  revisions.  Merelli  was  con- 
vinced that  Verdi  was  cured,  and  staged  the  Biblical  extravaganza 
on  March  9,  1842,  at  the  height  of  the  carnival  season. 

In  Nabucodnosor,  Verdi  was  compensated  for  years  of  defeat. 
The  Milanese  received  it  with  riotous  enthusiasm,  and  the  critics 
praised  it  for  the  qualities  he  had  intended  it  to  .have.  After  the 
third  crowded  performancej  he  was  invited  to  write  the  chief 
novelty  for  the  coming  season.  He  literally  became  the  rage:  new 
food  creations  and  articles  of  dress  were  named  after  him.  But 
the  best  proof  of  his  success  was  that  he  was  to  receive  for  his  next 
opera  the  same  fee  Bellini  had  received  for  Norma — eight  thousand 


VERDI  449 

lire.*  In  Nabucco  (as  it  is  usually  called),  Verdi  found  his  way  to  the 
heart  of  the  masses,  and  the  overture  and  a  chorus  are  still  prime 
favorites  in  Italy.  The  opera  was  revived  with  great  success  for  the 
Verdi  centenary  in  1913,  and  Francis  Toye,  most  brilliant  of  recent 
Verdi  biographers,  considers  it  the  most  effective  of  his  pre- 
Rigoletto  operas.  Like  practically  all  his  early  librettos,  that  of 
Nabucco  could  be  twisted  into  a  patriotic  message  of  courage  and 
hope  to  his  audiences,  who  were  dreaming  of  a  free  and  united 
Italy.  Although  this  feature  was  played  down  at  the  premiere,  it 
contributed  to  Nabucco's  early  success.  A  surging  vitality  in  the 
music  itself  accounts  for  its  occasional  revival  nowadays. 

Verdi,  though  an  ardent  patriot  and  decided  anticlerical,  had 
hitherto  held  himself  aloof  from  overt  expression  of  his  allegiances. 
But  beginning  with  /  Lombardi  alia  prima  crodata  in  1843,  he  found 
himself  constantly  embroiled  with  the  police  and  the  censors^ 
both  civil  and  ecclesiastical,  over  the  political  implications  of 
the  librettos  he  chose.  /  Lombardi  was  ready  for  production  when 
the  police  interfered:  they  had  discovered  not  only  that  it  repre- 
sented certain  holy  sites  (fairly  inevitable  in  any  stage  work  about 
the  First  Crusade),  but  that  it  might  be  interpreted  as  a  plea 
to  the  Pope — the  violently  reactionary  Gregory  XVI — to  under- 
take the  unification  of  Italy.  Verdi  contemptuously  refused  to 
listen  to  the  suggestions  for  changing  the  story.  At  last  the  official 
demands  were  reduced  to  substituting  the  words  "Salve  Maria"  for 
"Ave  Maria"  and  he  gave  in.  I  Lombardi  fired  the  Milanese,  but  left 
the  Venetians,  quite  rightly,  cold.  Verdi  had  become  such  a  box- 
office  attraction  throughout  Italy,  however,  that  Venice  immedi- 
ately ordered  a  new  opera  from  him.  Now  he  rode  roughshod  over 
the  police,  the  manager  of  the  Teatro  Fenice,  and  his  leading  lady: 
he  foisted  a  garbled  but  still  inflammatory  version  of  Hugo's 
Ilernani  on  the  gendarmeria,  a  stage  horn  call  on  a  shocked  regisseur 
who  thought  it  lowered  the  dignity  of  the  Fenice,  and  a  last  act 
without  solo  fireworks  on  the  soprano.  Although  the  Venetians  re- 
sponded less  warmly  to  Ernani  than  the  Milanese  had  to  Nabucco,  it 
was  this  opera  that  finally  made  Verdi  an  international  figure,  in- 
troducing him  to  both  London  and  New  York.  Ernani  is  notable  for 
two  reasons:  it  contains,  in  "Ernani,  inooland"  the  earliest  Verdi 

*  He  was  advised  to  ask  exactly  this  amount  by  Giuseppina  Strepponi,  whose 
shrewd  business  sense  was  invaluable  to  Verdi  in  this  stage  of  his  career. 


45°  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

aria  still  (for  no  discernible  reason)  frequently  sung,  and  makes  use 
of  something  closely  resembling  the  leitmotiv,  thus  by  its  date  dis- 
posing of  the  often  repeated  charge  that  Verdi  took  this  device 
from  Wagner.  Oddly  enough,  this  crude  effort  was  revived  at  the 
Metropolitan  as  late  as  1921. 

Against  the  reclame  that  Verdi  almost  universally  enjoyed  after 
Ernaniy  he  paid  a  price  for  the  feverish  demand  for  more  and  more 
operas  from  his  pen.  Seven  years  elapsed  between  its  production 
and  that  ofRigoletto  in  1851,  during  which  time  he  composed  ten 
new  works  and  completely  rewrote  another.  Several  of  these  were 
very  successful,  and  one  of  them,  Macbeth,  is  interesting  as  an  ex- 
periment that  bore  rich  fruit  in  his  last  period.  None  of  them,  how- 
ever, maintains  a  high  level  of  musical  interest:  for  all  their  fertile 
melody-making,  their  raw  vigor,  their  easy  translation  of  action 
into  obvious  musical  speech,  they  are  hopelessly  flawed  by  their 
composer's  lack  of  taste,  chiefly  in  accepting  the  librettos  his  play- 
wrights offered  him.  True,  he  did  not  accept  them  without  demur: 
no  one  troubled  himself  more  than  Verdi  in  the  matter  of  text, 
but  until  fairly  late  in  life  he  was  betrayed  by  faltering  literary 
judgment.  Passion  for  the  universal  geniuses  he  had,  but  not  until 
he  came  under  the  sure  guidance  of  Arrigo  Boito  did  he  have  a 
libretto  worthy  of  his  abounding  musical  gifts.  Otherwise,  unless  he 
accidentally  got  hold  of  a  credible,  workmanlike,  and  stageworthy 
text,  he  set  absurd  makeshifts — with  gusto  but  with  little  else.  This 
situation  was  particularly  disastrous  for  Verdi,  who  responded  to 
the  character  of  his  book  with  bold  truthfulness. 

Although  his  gifts  were  generously  recognized,  Verdi  was  not 
worshiped  blindly,  and  he  had  his  percentage  of  failures.  When  he 
gave  his  audiences  indifferent  stuff,  they  generally  refused  their 
approval,  and  on  occasion  showed  their  annoyance  in  forthright 
Italian  fashion.  But  when  he  gave  them  a  Luisa  Miller,  quite  the 
best  of  this  transitional  group  of  operas,  they  did  not  spare  their 
applause.  His  first  attempts  to  write  expressly  for  the  foreign  stage 
were  none  too  happy.  /  Masnadieriy  composed  for  London  in  1847, 
was  received  tepidly,  despite  the  efforts  of  Jenny  Lind  to  make 
something  effective  of  the  heroine's  role.  "Her  Amalia,"  Ghorley 
commented  coldly,"  .  .  .  could  not  have  pleased  had  it  been  given 
by  Saint  Cecilia  and  Melpomene  in  one,  so  utterly  worthless  was 


VERDI  451 

the  music."  A  revision  of  /  Lombard^  fitted  with  a  French  text, 
fared  scarcely  better  in  Paris. 

Verdi,  to  whom  there  always  clung  something  of  the  robust  com- 
mon-sense Italian  peasant,  was  nevertheless  becoming  a  man  of  the 
world.  He  adapted  himself  easily  to  foreign  life,  and  found  much 
to  admire  in  London  and  Paris.  In  his  late  thirties,  he  seemed  cos- 
mopolitan, but  was  only  superficially  so,  and  he  remained  Italian 
to  the  core.  In  1848  he  acquired  a  farm  outside  Busseto,  which  as 
the  Villa  Sant'  Agata  was  to  play  the  same  role  in  his  life  that 
Horace's  Sabine  villa  did  in  his.  Doubtless  he  planned  from  the 
beginning  to  fix  it  up  for  himself  and  his  future  wife.  Within  a  few 
years  the  house  was  ready  to  be  lived  in,  but  he  did  not  marry  for 
the  second  time  until  1859.  This  did  not  mean  that  love  was  miss- 
ing from  his  life.  He  had  never  lost  track  of  Giuseppina  Strepponi, 
who  had  done  so  much  to  salvage  Oberto  in  his  salad  days,  and  in 
Paris,  in  the  late  forties,  it  seems  that  she  became  his  mistress.  For 
some  inexplicable  reason,  they  shrank  from  formalizing  their  union. 
Could  it  have  been  that  Verdi's  anticlericalism  had  something  to 
do  with  it?  Everything  here  is  conjecture:  nothing  is  known. 

There  is  no  mystery  attaching  to  Verdi's  close  friendship  with 
the  Contessa  Clara  Maffei,  a  sensitive  and  intellectual  woman  who 
was,  probably  more  than  any  other  parson  until  he  met  Bo'ito,  the 
confidante  of  his  ideas  about  art  and  life.  Between  the  two  women, 
each  distinguished  in  her  own  way,  there  was  no  conflict  as  there 
was  between  Minna  Wagner  and  Mathilde  Wesendonck.  Clara 
Maffei  was  Giuseppina's  friend,  too.  The  letters  the  Contessa  re- 
ceived from  the  maestro  and  his  companion  contain  most  of  what 
is  known  about  Verdi's  intimate  life.  These  documents,  always 
lively  and  often  humorous,  are  open  and  candid.  Unlike  the  Wag- 
ner correspondence,  they  do  not  have  to  be  deciphered  with  the 
aid  of  special  knowledge. 

In  1850,  Verdi's  gestational  period  came  abruptly  to  an  end. 
That  year,  having  been  commissioned  to  write  an  opera  for  Venice, 
he  was  feverishly  casting  about  for  new  material,  turning  over  and 
rejecting  such  diverse  plots  as  King  Lear,  Hamlet,  Schiller's  Don 
Carlos,  and  the  elder  Dumas'  Kean.  What  he  really  wanted  was  a 
Spanish  play  called  El  Trovador,  but  at  the  moment  his  librettist 
could  find  no  copy  of  it.  As  a  last  choice,  he  took  up  a  second 
Hugo  play,  no  doubt  musing  that  Emam  had  been  the  vehicle  to 


452  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

spread  Ms  fame  outside  the  peninsula.  This  time  he  invited  censor 
trouble:  Le  Roi  s' amuse  had  been  banned  in  Paris  after  only  one 
performance.,  partly  for  political  reasons  and  partly  because  it  read 
like  a  paean  to  vice.  Verdi,  undaunted  by  the  past  history  of  the 
play,  and  sensible  only  of  its  operatic  adaptability,  had  his  own 
tame  librettist,  Francesco  Maria  Piave,  make  an  Italian  text,  which 
was  christened  La  Maledizione,  and  submitted  to  the  Venetian  cen- 
sor. This  functionary  tossed  it  back  as  though  it  were  indeed  an 
accursed  thing,  with  "profound  regret  that  the  poet  Piave  and  the 
celebrated  Maestro  Verdi  should  have  found  no  better  field  for 
their  talents  than  the  revolting  immorality  and  obscene  triviality 
of  ...  La  Maledizione.  .  .  ."  After  a  series  of  tragicofarcical  epi- 
sodes that  would  in  themselves  make  a  good  libretto,  Verdi  won 
the  battle  merely  by  changing  the  names  of  the  characters,  and 
La  Maledizione,  renamed  Rigoletto  after  its  jester-villain-hero,  finally 
reached  La  Fenice  on  March  n,  1851. 

When  these  vicissitudes  culminated  in  Rigoletto's  overwhelming 
success,  Verdi  must  have  felt  repaid  for  his  obstinate  persistence  in 
getting  past  the  censor.  Perhaps  he  had  even  felt  doubt  about  the 
public's  reception  of  what  he  considered  a  revolutionary  work.  It 
may  come  as  a  shock  to  the  modern  operagoer,  but  Verdi  actually 
conceived  of  Rigoletto  as  being  free  of  those  arias  and  tableaux  that 
had  for  so  long  been  the  chief  stock  in  trade  of  the  musical  stage. 
In  composing  Rigoletto,  he  made  the  dramatic  appropriateness  of 
the  music  his  paramount  consideration,  arid  if  we  are  to  believe 
him,  there  is  not  a  single  haphazard  bar  in  the  entire  work.  Like 
Gluck,  like  Rossini,  like  Wagner,  who  fought  the  same  battle  with 
varying  degrees  of  success,  Verdi  was  trying  to  get  away  from  the 
old,  hard-dying  idea  that  an  opera  is  a  parade  of  set  numbers  held 
together  by  an  often  exceedingly  tenuous  thread  of  story.  This  is 
borne  out  by  his  reaction  to  the  censor's  proposal  that  he  adapt 
the  music  of  Rigoletto  to  an  altered  libretto.  "If  I  am  told  that  my 
music  will  fit  this  version  as  well  as  the  other,"  he  wrote,  "I  reply 
that  such  an  argument  is  utterly  beyond  me;  my  music — good  or 
bad  as  it  may  be — is  written  in  no  casual  manner.  I  invariably  try- 
to  give  it  a  character  of  its  own.  .  .  ."  If  some  soprano  dared  to 
sing  such  a  stock  piece  as  "Caro  nome"  as  VercU,  in  the  score,  plainly 
asks  that  it  be  sung,  it  might  then  emerge  as  a  moving  revelation 
of  character,  a  soliloquy  contributing  to  the  drama,  and  not  merely 


VERDI  453 

as  just  another  bravura  aria.  Even  the  quartet,  now  (because  of  its 
popularity  and  the  way  it  is  sung  to  the  gallery)  calculated  to  in- 
terrupt the  action,  flows  inevitably  from  the  action.  Although  the 
sins  of  generations  of  singers  have  established  a  bad  tradition  that 
makes  it  impossible  to  hope  for  a  presentation  ofRigoletto  following 
the  composer's  intentions,  the  opera  itself  is  deathless.  For  even  if 
the  caprices  of  fashion  were  to  banish  it  from  the  stage,  it  would  be 
kept  alive,  until  its  inevitable  resuscitation  on  the  boards,  by  rendi- 
tions o£"Caro  nome"  the  quartet,  and  the  wanton  Duke's  "La  donna 
€  mobile"  on  the  barrel  organs  and  tinny  pianos  of  the  world.  No 
one  can  claim  that  this  is  great  music;  equally,  no  one  can  deny 
that  it  is  universal  music. 

From  Nalucco  to  Rigoletto.,  Verdi  had  produced  anywhere  from 
one  to  three  operas  a  year,  but  now  he  refused  to  be  hurried.  A 
librettist  had  been  found  to  adapt  El  Trovador,  and  Verdi  retired 
to  the  Villa  Sant5  Agata  with  Giuseppina  to  wait  for  the  Italian 
text  to  be  delivered.  Meanwhile,  in  June,  1851,  his  mother  died — 
an  event,  it  has  been  conjectured,  that  influenced  his  conception 
of  the  gypsy  mother,  Azucena,  in  his  new  opera,  the  text  of  which 
was  in  his  hands  by  the  end  of  the  year.  Although  //  Trovatore  had 
not  been  commissioned,  he  completed  the  score  in  twenty-eight 
days.  With  many  opera  houses  clamoring  for  something  new  from 
him,  Verdi  calmly  locked  it  away,  and  went  to  Paris  on  an  ex- 
tended business  trip.  The  management  of  the  Opera  wanted  a  Verdi 
premiere^  but  had  to  be  content  with  a  contract  allowing  him  two 
full  years  for  completing  the  work.  News  that  his  father  was  seri- 
ously ill  sent  him  rushing  back  home.  Only  when  the  old  man  was 
fully  recovered — he  survived  fifteen  years  more  into  ripe  old  age — 
did  Verdi  set  about  deciding  what  opera  house  he  would  prefer  for 
//  Trovatore.  This  time  there  was  no  trouble  with  the  censors.  Per- 
haps they  had  as  much  difficulty  figuring  out  the  plot  as  we  do 
today.  At  any  rate,  the  coveted  honor  fell  to  Rome,  and  there, 
despite  the  Tiber  being  in  flood,  it  was  presented  to  a  cheering 
audience  on  January  19,  1853. 

"To  this  day  many  persons  have  not  found  out  the  right  and 
wrong  betwixt  the  false  child  roasted  by  the  gipsy  and  mistaken 
vengeance  and  the  true  one,  spared,  and  mistaken,  and  flung  into 
all  manner  of  miserable  dilemmas,  and  at  last  beheaded,  in  order 
to  give  the  avenging  Fury  an  opportunity  of  saying  to  her  noble 


454  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

persecutor,  'He  was  thy  brother!*"  This  sentence,  written  in  1855  by 
Henry  Fothergill  Chorley,  is  as  clear  an  exposition,  as  sharp  a  criti- 
cism, as  we  are  ever  likely  to  have  of  the  exasperating  libretto  of 
II  Trovatore.  To  this  frenzied  puzzle,  Verdi  fitted  some  of  the  bald- 
est, most  vigorous,  and  most  blatantly  melodramatic  tunes  ever 
written*  In  it,  he  taps  his  least  golden,  if  most  prodigal  and  glitter- 
ing, vein  without  let  or  surcease.  The  melodies  of//  Trovatore  are, 
indeed,  the  fool's  gold  of  song.  Here,  without  losing  sight  of  his 
dramatic  aims  altogether,  he  swamps  them  in  catchy  tunes.  Not 
even  the  best-intentioned  artists  (for  there  must  be  some)  could 
prevent  an  opera  containing  "Stride  la  vampa"  "II  balen"  the 
Miserere,  and  "Ai  nostri  monti"  from  becoming  a  singers'  carnival. 
The  "Anvil"  Chorus,  once  an  interesting  sound  novelty,  is  no 
longer  even  that — it  is  merely  ludicrous.  To  hear  II  Trovatore  today 
is  like  hearing  a  collection  of  overscored  folk  songs  sung  with  un- 
necessary energy.  It  follows,  then,  that  this  opera,  though  inferior 
to  Rigoletto  in  almost  every  respect,  enjoys  precisely  the  same  sort 
of  immortality. 

For  clinching  his  fame,  1853  was  Verdi's  banner  year.  In  Feb- 
ruary, 1852,  it  seems  that  he  was  present  at  the  Paris  premiere  of 
the  younger  Dumas'  scandal-provoking  drama  of  a  consumptive 
courtesan — La  Dame  aux  camelias*  He  was  deeply  impressed  by  it, 
and  little  less  than  a  year  later,  about  the  time  II  Trovatore  was 
being  produced,  selected  it  as  the  subject  of  an  opera  he  had  prom- 
ised to  the  Fenice.  He  retired  at  once  to  Sant'  Agata,  and  though 
he  described  the  work  of  composing  it  as  "real  penance,"  finished 
La  Tramata  in  less  than  a  month.  Exactly  six  weeks  after  the  tri- 
umphant presentation  of  If  Trovatore ,  he  saw  his  version  ofCamille 
jeered  off  the  boards  of  the  Fenice.  That  the  critics  attributed  its 
failure  to  Venice's  keen  sense  of  the  ridiculous  did  not  assuage 
Verdi's  wounded  feelings:  the  soprano  was  too  bouncingly  healthy 
for  a  credible  consumptive,  the  tenor  was  hoarse,  and  the  baritone 
— with  a  strange  lack  of  historical  foresight — did  not  realize  that 
he  had  been  given  the  biggest  plum  in  the  opera.  With  unruffled 
dignity,  Verdi  took  the  score  back  to  Sant'  Agata,  and  rewrote  five 
of  the  weaker  numbers.  On  May  6,  1854,  the  Venetians  had  a 
chance  to  reverse  their  judgment.  At  the  first  production  of  La 
Tramata,  the  use  of  contemporary  costumes  had  upset  the  audience, 
so  at  the  revival  the  costumes  were  set  back  to  the  time  of  Louis 


VERDI  455 

XIII,  though  the  heroine  was  incongruously  permitted  to  retain 
her  fashionable  Parisian  gowns.  An  excellent  cast  was  found  to  fit 
the  new  costumes,  and  the  refurbished  version  won  great  and  im- 
mediate approval.  Within  two  years  it  was  the  rage  of  London, 
Paris,  New  York,  and  St.  Petersburg;  in  1857,  a  version  in  English 
was  successful  in  London. 

Both  La  Dame  aux  camelias  and  La  Tramata  were  considered  por- 
nographic in  the  days  of  their  youth:  aged,  they  have  become 
delicate  period  pieces  to  which  no  moral  stigma  can  be  attached. 
It  is  clear,  however,  that  part  of  the  original  success  of  Traviata 
was  due  to  its  being  seized  upon  as  a  symbol  of  moral  rebellion. 
After  the  social  hubbub  had  died  down,  the  music  quietly  asserted 
itself  as  a  sufficient  reason  for  endurance.  In  Tramata,  Verdi  wrote 
what  has  been  called  a  "chamber  opera":  in  contrast  to  the  boom- 
ing heroics  of  Rigoletto  and  Trovatore,  it  is  gauged  to  a  credible 
human  scale.  La  Traviata  is  not  melodrama — it  is  real  tragedy, 
even  if  not  of  the  most  profound  sort.  It  needs  no  special  self- 
hypnosis,  no  suspension  of  disbelief,  to  be  enjoyed  as  a  real  drama 
in  musical  terms.  Artistically,  too,  Tramata  was  a  new  departure 
for  Verdi.  The  melody,  bubbling  up  as  profusely  as  ever,  is  more 
subtle  and  thoughtful,  less  blatantly  catchy  than  that  of  his  earlier 
successes.  Not  that  there  are  no  epidemic  numbers  in  the  score. 
But  even  the  giddy  "Sempre  libera"  and  the  folksy  "Di  Promn^a  il 
mar"  are  free  of  the  indisputable  cheapness  that  mars  some  of  his 
most  effective  early  tunes,  while  the  soprano  aria  "Ah!  fors  e  lui" 
has  a  wistful,  meditative  note  that  Verdi  rarely  achieves.  Even  the 
bustling  drinking  song  in  Act  I  is  gay,  sparkling  music  without  the 
slightest  trace  of  vulgarity.  In  Trawata,  Verdi  seemed  at  last  to 
have  learned  the  powerful  uses  of  understatement. 

With  the  revision  of  Tramata  off  his  hands,  Verdi  spent  most  of 
1853  at  his  country  place,  devoting  his  artistic  leisure  wholly  to 
plans  for  an  opera  based  on  King  Lear,  a  project  he  played  with 
until  his  death,  actually  composing  some  music  for  it.*  But  with 
the  coming  of  autumn,  he  bethought  himself  of  his  contract  with 
the  Opera.  The  promised  libretto  by  Scribe  had  not  materialized, 
so  he  went  to  Paris  to  see  what  all  the  delay  was  about.  In  the  first 
place,  he  found  that  the  date  for  the  opera  had  been  moved  ahead 

*  These  fragments  were  unfortunately  destroyed  after  Verdi's  death,  by  his  ex- 
pressed wish. 


MEN    OF    MUSIC 

so  that  It  would  be  first  performed  at  the  Exposition  Universelle  of 
1855.  Scribe  was  both  dilatory  and  insulting:  the  long  overdue 
libretto  did  not  reach  Verdi's  hands  until  December  3 i,  ai^d  there- 
after Scribe  refused  to  make  any  changes  in  it,  however  needed. 
Verdi,  who  smarted  under  such  treatment,  and  who  was  annoyed 
at  the  cold  response  of  the  Opera  management  to  his  legitimate 
requests,  eventually  pieced  together,  in  Les  Vepres  siciliennes,  some- 
thing that  satisfied  neither  himself  nor,  in  the  long  run,  his  public. 
The  libretto,  built  around  a  Sicilian  St.  Bartholomew's  that,  after 
six  hundred  years,  still  rankled  in  the  French  memory,  also  tact- 
lessly insulted  Italy  (and  Verdi,  the  Italian  nationalist)  by  making 
the  hero  a  run-of-the-mill  melodramatic  conspirator.  Yet,  despite 
hurt  feelings  all  around  and  the  caustic  comments  of  a  powerful 
bloc  of  French  musicians  who  thought  that  one  of  themselves  should 
have  had  the  honor  of  composing  "the  opera  for  the  Exposition,  Les 
VSpres  was  a  resounding  success.  Presented  on  June  13,  1855,  it 
ran  through  fifty  consecutive  performances  at  the  Op6ra.  Trans- 
lated into  Italian,  it  failed  in  Italy.  /  Vespri  siciliani,  though  it 
boasts  the  most  effective  overture  Verdi  ever  composed,  a  couple 
of  fine  arias  and  duets,  and  some  very  attractive  ballet  music,  is 
in  the  main  a  distressing  medley,  and  has  passed  almost  completely 
from  popular  favor.  There  was  something  more  than  mere  Teu- 
tonic contempt  in  Wagner's  lofty  reference  to  "/  Vespri  siciliani  and 
other  nights  of  carnage." 

After  the  premiere  of  Les  Vepres,  Verdi  waited  a  year  before  sign- 
ing a  contract  for  a  new  opera.  Then,  with  a  strange  blindness  to 
true  dramatic  credibility  and  .effectiveness,  he  chose  another  mel- 
ancholy and  completely  absurd  play  by  the  same  Spaniard  who 
had  concocted  El  Trovador.  Neither  Piave's  nor  his  own  doctoring 
was  able  to  make  a  good  libretto  out  of  the  vicissitudes  of  a  Genoese 
Oliver  Cromwell.  First  produced  at  the  Fenice  on  March  12,  1857, 
Simone  Boccanegra  was  a  flat  failure  in  spite  of  several  "strong"  num- 
bers that  Verdi,  with  his  usual  canniness,  had  placed  at  strategic 
points  in  the  opera.  As  he  himself  had  a  special  fondness  for  Simone, 
he  tried  time  and  again  to  force  it  on  the  public,  but  unsuccessfully. 
At  last,  more  than  twenty  years  after  its  first  production,  he  and 
his  friend  Boi'to  put  their  heads  together  over  the  problem,  but 
solving  it  was  beyond  them.  Indeed,  as  Boi'to  had  feared,  they 
made  "confusion  worse  confounded."  But  Verdi  revised  the  music 


457 

drastically  and,  as  he  was  then  at  the  height  of  his  matured  powers, 
produced  a  beautifully  workmanlike  score.  In  addition,  he  intro- 
duced into  Act  II  a  whole  new  scene,  which,  though  it  slows  up  the 
action  intolerably,  is  musically  the  most  powerful  in  the  opera. 
This  gloomy  hodgepodge  was  again  tried  out  on  the  public  in  1881, 
and  won  moderate  success.  Although  it  is  occasionally  revived — 
Lawrence  Tibbett  was  a  superb  Simone  in  a  modem  Metropoli- 
tan staging — it  will  never  win  a  place  among  the  Verdi  perennials. 
Five  months  after  the  original  Simone  fiasco,  Verdi  drained  the 
cup  of  humiliation  to  its  dregs  when  the  audience  of  the  little 
provincial  town  of  Rimini  turned  a  completely  cold  shoulder  to 
something  he  had  pieced  together  especially  for  the  opening  of  its 
new  opera  house.  Aroldo  is  a  tasteless  patchwork  rewriting  of  a 
tasteless  early  effort  called  Stiffelio:  both  are  now  rightly  forgotten. 
Rejected  by  these  bumpkins,  Verdi  may  well  have  felt,  at  least 
temporarily,  that  he  had  lost  the  golden  touch.  Therefore,  he  was 
doubly  cautious  in  selecting  the  libretto  for  an  opera  he  had  prom- 
ised the  San  Carlo  at  Naples,  finally  choosing  one  by  Scribe  that 
had  already  proved  its  stageworthiness,  having  been  successfully 
set  by  Auber.  As  soon  as  he  received  its  Italian  text,  he  set  to  work, 
and  by  the  end  of  1857  completed  what  must  have  been  an  un- 
usually well-integrated  dramatic  work.  Even  before  he  set  sail  for 
Naples,  however,  he  had  stepped  down  the  august  victim  of  Un 
Balk  in  maschera  from  a  king  to  a  duke  on  advice  from  the  censors. 
But  it  was  when  he  arrived  there  that  his  troubles  really  began. 
There  had  been  an  attempt  to  assassinate  Napoleon  III,  and 
though  Un  Ballo  was  to  be  given  in  a  capital  of  the  Bourbons  (who 
had  every  reason  to  loathe  a  Bonaparte),  monarchical  solidarity 
clamped  down  on  anything  that  might  be  interpreted  as  an  attack 
on  established  authority.  The  censors  demanded  a  thorough  pas- 
teurizing of  the  libretto,  and  as  this  would  have  meant  rewriting 
all  the  music,  Verdi  refused.  News  of  his  stand  percolated  through 
the  town,  and  made  him  a  hero  of  the  revolutionary  cause.  "Viva 
Verdi"  became  a  war  cry,  more  particularly  when  the  Neapolitans 
figured  out  that  the  letters  of  the  composer's  surname  were  the 
initials  of  Fittorio  Emmanuele  re  *f /talia,  and  that  when  they 
were  shouting  for  Verdi  they  were  secretly  shouting  for  a  united 
Italy  under  the  popular  Sardinian  monarch.  The  inflexible  atti- 
tude of  the  Neapolitan  censors  forced  the  composer  to  turn  to 


458  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

Rome,  where  he  was  told  the  authorities  were  more  lenient.*  He 
had  been  misinformed.  The  same  agonizing  trouble  began  all  over 
again.  This  time  he  gave  in:  the  duke  became  an  English  count, 
and  the  locale  was  transferred  to  the  wilds  of  seventeenth-century 
Massachusetts — changes  that  undid  much  of  Verdi's  careful  work 
in  selecting  a  good  story  and  making  his  music  fit  just  that.  How- 
ever, the  emasculated  version  of  Un  Ballo  in  maschera  was  duly 
produced  at  the  Teatro  Apollo  on  February  17,  1859,  and  voted 
a  tremendous  hit. 

Un  Ballo  will  never  be  a  loved  opera:  it  is  too  long  and  unwieldy, 
and  the  music  is  by  no  means  constantly  engrossing.  Some  of  its 
characters  are  strongly  delineated,  Oscar,  the  gay  and  foppish 
page,  being  a  particularly  brilliant  and  original  creation.  Indeed, 
the  entire  score  is  strewn  with  masterstrokes  of  technique,  the  har- 
monic texture  is  more  subtle  than  is  usual  with  Verdi  in  this  stage 
of  his  career,  and  there  are  individual  numbers,  especially  the 
great  baritone  aria  of  accusation,  "Eri  tu"  that  stand  beside  the 
best  he  ever  composed.  The  trouble  with  Un  Ballo,  which  is  not 
without  a  certain  grandeur  of  total  effect,  is  that  it  is  constantly 
foundering  in  the  manifest  absurdities  of  the  stage  action.  It  is,  of 
course,  not  uncommon  for  an  opera  to  triumph  over  a  muddled 
and  preposterous  libretto,  but  to  do  so  it  must  make  amends  with 
a  wealth  of  engaging  melody  that  Un  Balk  lacks. 

Little  more  than  two  months  after  the  premiere  of  Un  Ballo  y  Verdi 
finally  led  Giuseppina  Strepponi  to  the  altar.  The  reasons  for  his 
taking  this  step  at  all  are  as  much  guesswork  as  his  reasons  for  not 
having  taken  it  long  before.  They  were  getting  along  in  years — 
Verdi  was  forty-five,  Giuseppina  two  years  younger — and  it  seems 
possible  that  she,  as  a  devout  Catholic,  wished  to  square  her  ac- 
counts. Also,  there  was  malicious  gossip  in  Busseto  and  the  sur- 
rounding countryside  about  Verdi  and  his  woman,  though  it  is 
hardly  probable  that  such  pettiness  would  have  moved  a  man  of 
Verdi's  Yankee  individualism  had  not  Barezzi,  the  father  of  his 
first  wife,  been  foremost  among  the  indignant  expostulators.  Verdi 
was  not  only  in  Barezzi's  debt,  but  was  also  extremely  fond  of  him, 
and  had  him  as  a  permanent  guest  at  Sanf  Agata.  A  desire  to 

*  To  do  so,  lie  had  to  repudiate  his  contract  with  the  San  Carloy  which  promptly 
sued  him  for  not  giving  them  a  satisfactory  opera.  He  replied  in  a  countersuit,  suing 
them  for  not  staging  the  opera  he  had  provided. 


VERDI  459 

smooth  things  all  around  must  have  prompted  Verdi  and  Giusep- 
pina  to  slip  away  like  elopers,  and  regularize  their  relationship. 
The  ceremony  took  place  at  Collonge,  a  little  Swiss  village  on  the 
shore  of  the  Lake  of  Geneva,,  on  April  29,  1859 — a  historic  day  in 
more  ways  than  one,  for  while  the  marriage  was  taking  place,  the 
Austrians  were  crossing  the  Ticino,  thus  setting  the  stage  for  the 
penultimate  scenes  in  the  struggle  for  Italian  unity.  For  several 
years,  the  peninsula  was  in  a  turmoil,  and  among  those  who  found 
their  plans  interrupted  was  Verdi,  who  temporarily  suspended  his 
usual  activities,  and  enjoyed,  despite  some  alarums,  the  pleasant 
life  of  a  country  squire. 

One  of  the  few  heroes  of  the  prosperous  lord  of  Sanf  Agata  was 
Gavour,  the  architect  of  that  united  Italy  of  which  Garibaldi  (a 
figure  out  of  Verdian  melodrama)  was  the  master  mason.  When 
Gavour,  summoning  the  first  Italian  parliament  to  meet  in  Turin 
in  1 86 1,  asked  his  friend  Verdi  to  stand  for  Busseto,  the  composer 
protested,  but  the  patriot  could  not  refuse.  He  was  elected,  and 
served  faithfully  if  without  distinction — a  stanch  middle-of-the- 
roader — for  four  years.  His  sole  recorded*  act  of  statecraft  was  to 
lay  before  Gavour,  who  unhappily  died  shortly  afterward,  an  elab- 
orate plan  for  free  musical  education.  Until  April,  1861,  this  was 
the  only  outward  sign  that  Verdi  was  still  actively  interested  in 
music.  He  seemed  absorbed  in  his  squire's  duties,  his  broad  acres, 
his  blooded  livestock,  the  large  staff  of  farm  workers  for  whom  he 
entertained  a  warm  affection.  But  those  who  think  these  years  lost 
are  mistaken:  this  once  pale  and  rather  sickly  man  was  laying  by 
(as  it  turned  out)  a  store  of  health  and  vigor  for  the  forty  years  that 
remained  to  him.  It  was,  at  least  in  part,  due  to  the  peace  and 
fresh  air  of  Sant9  Agata  that  Verdi  was  able,  at  the  age  of  eighty,  to 
electrify  the  world  with  one  of  the  supreme  masterpieces  of  opera. 

In  April,  1 86 1,  the  managers  of  the  Imperial  Theater  at  St. 
Petersburg  asked  Verdi  to  write  an  opera  for  them.  He  had  a 
story — unfortunately,  another  of  his  Spanish  massacres — in  mind, 
and  accepted  eagerly.  By  January  of  the  following  year,  he  was 
able  to  leave  for  Russia  with  a  complete  sketch  for  La  Forza  del 
destino.  The  long  trip  to  St.  Petersburg  was  in  vain,  for  the  illness 

*  Data  for  the  period  1859-67  are  scanty,  for  dining  those  years  Verdi  neglected 
to  make  those  copies  of  his  correspondence  which  are  the  chief  source  of  personal  in- 
formation about  him. 


<Jro  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

of  one  of  the  principal  singers  forced  a  postponement  of  the  pre- 
miere until  autumn.  Agreeing  to  return,  Verdi  went  to  Paris  on  no 
apparent  mission  except,  perhaps,  to  see  whether,  as  he  once  said, 
the  Parisians  were  madder  than  ever.  He  went  often  to  Rossini's 
famous  Saturday  nights,  meeting  there  an  erudite  youngster  of 
twenty  by  the  name  of  Arrigo  Bo'ito,  who  was  interested  both  in 
composing  opera  and  in  the  improvement  of  librettos.  So  im- 
pressed was  he  with  Boi'to  that  when  an  invitation  came  from 
London  to  compose  something  for  the  Universal  Exhibition  of 
1862,  Verdi  asked  him  to  write  the  words  for  a  hymn  of  the  na- 
tions that  he  finally  decided  upon  as  his  offering.  He  heard  this 
successfully  sung  in  London,  and  then  hurried  to  Sanf  Agata  to 
complete  the  scoring  of  La  Forza  del  destino.  With  this  heavy  job 
done,  the  tireless  man,  with  his  equally  tireless  wife,  returned  to 
St.  Petersburg,  where  the  reception  accorded  to  La  Forza  on  No- 
vember 10,  1862,  was  as  chilly  as  the  weather.  The  Russian  na- 
tionalist composers  had  plotted  against  this  foreign  work  with 
considerable  success,  and  Verdi  had  to  be  content  with  a  decora- 
tion from  Alexander  II  rather  than  popular  applause.  Undaunted, 
he  packed  up  and  took  his  opera  to  Madrid,  where  it  had  a  much 
warmer  welcome. 

La  Forza  del  destine,  like  Don  Carlos,  which  followed  it  five  years 
later,  is  a  transitional  opera,  and  as  such  lacks  the  dramatic  force- 
fulness  of  certain  earlier  works,  though  it  has  moments  of  great 
expressiveness  and  concentration.  Unlike  Don  Carlos  it  is  lavish 
in  ready  lyric  appeal,  but  to  judge  from  these  operas,  it  would 
seem  that  Verdi's  sure-fire  theatricality  was  ebbing.  Verdi 
has  begun  to  husband  his  resources  with  the  care  of  a  man 
uncertain  of  his  wealth.  The  harmonies  are  more  carefully  con- 
sidered, less  stereotyped;  the  orchestration  is  more  varied  and  im- 
aginative. Yet,  because  Verdi  is  not  completely  at  home  in  these 
new  surroundings,  both  works  are  a  trifle  stilted.  Less  and  less  often 
revived.  La  Forza  and  Don  Carlos  are  now  known  chiefly  by  a  few 
stock  numbers  that  without  too  much  incongruity  might  fit  into 
such  operas  as  Rigoletto  and  II  Trovatore.  Such  are  "Solenne  in  quesf 
ara"  the  richly  emotional  duet  from  La  Forza  that  Caruso  and 
Antonio  Scotti,  a  generation  ago,  sang  on  every  gramophone  in 
the  land,  and  "Pace,  pace"  the  big  soprano  scena  from  the  same 
opera.  These  are  matched  in  Don  Carlos  by  such  numbers  as  the 


VERDI  461 

mezzo-soprano's  powerful  "0  donfatale"  and  the  baritone's  gloomy 
and  impressive  "0  Carlo,  ascolta." 

The  years  between  the  production  of  La  Form  del  desiino  In  1862 
and  that  of  Aida,  almost  a  decade  later,  were  not  happy  ones  for 
Verdi.  The  public,  possibly  puzzled  by  the  experimental  element 
in  his  new  stage  works,  gave  them  but  qualified  approval,  while  a 
revision  of  Macbeth  on  which  he  had  counted  heavily  was  a  failure 
after  two  weeks.  The  story  of  the  production  of  Don  Carlos  makes 
sad  reading.  It  was  ordered  by  the  Opera,  and  a  pompous,  highly 
rhetorical  libretto  supplied  by  two  French  librettists.  Verdi,  with 
the  best  will  in  the  world,  set  out  to  write  a  true  French  grand 
opera  in  the  highfalutin  style  Meyerbeer  had  made  so  popular.  It 
was  produced  in  1867,  just  when  events  in  Italy  had  made  Italians 
unpopular  in  France.  Verdi,  who  was  sensible  of  this  animus,  tried 
to  withdraw  from  his  contract,  but  the  management  would  not 
agree.  When  Don  Carlos  was  given  on  March  n,  the  Empress 
Eugenie,  said  to  have  been  annoyed  by  the  libertarian  ideas  pro- 
pounded by  one  of  the  characters  in  the  opera,  turned  her  back 
on  the  stage.  Society  took  the  hint.  The  critics,  though  accusing 
Verdi  of  imitating  Meyerbeer  and  Wagner,  were  on  the  whole  fair 
to  the  opera.  But  Verdi  was  in  no  mood  to  have  his  disappointment 
assuaged  by  their  praise.  He  was  grief-stricken  by  his  father's  death 
early  that  year,  and  in  July  was  stunned  by  Barezzi's.  His  own 
health  had  been  none  too  good,  and  finally,  as  if  to  submerge  his 
personal  woes,  the  outcome  of  the  war  of  1867  had  left  him  dis- 
illusioned and  numb.  Italy's  payment  had  been  half  a  loaf — to 
Verdi,  a  cheap  reward  after  so  much  bloodshed  and  strife. 

In  1868,  Rossini  died,  and  Verdi,  who  had  done  much  to  de- 
stroy the  conventions  of  the  Rossinian  stage,  saw  the  event  as  a 
national  tragedy.  He  observed  gloomily  that  Manzoni — who  on 
the  basis  of  the  excellent  novel  IPromessi  sposi  was  then  considered 
Italy's  greatest  man  of  letters — was  his  country's  sole  remaining 
glory.  He  at  once  bestirred  himself  to  honor  the  dead  man  fittingly. 
Oddly  enough,  he  projected  the  idea  of  a  Mass,  to  be  sung  only 
once  and  then  deposited  in  the  archives  of  the  Liceo  at  Bologna. 
It  was  to  be  a  community  affair,  the  production  of  the  pious  pens 
of  thirteen  leading  Italian  composers:  we  should  describe  them 
nowadays  as  twelve  nonentities  and  Verdi.  Naturally,  the  scheme 
fell  through,  and  Rossini  rested  in  peace. 


462  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

In  1869,  Verdi  received  the  oddest  request  of  his  life.  Ismail 
Pasha,  Khedive  of  Egypt,  had  decided  to  signalize  the  passing  of 
the  first  ship  through  the  Suez  Canal  by  staging  a  specially  written 
grand  opera  at  Cairo.  Ignoring  Wagner,  who  might  conceivably 
have  fabricated  a  vast  epic  of  the  twilight  of  Isis,  Osiris,  and  Ptah, 
he  set  his  royal  mind  on  Verdi,  who  twice  refused,  saying  that  he 
had  no  appetite  for  further  composition.  The  French  librettist  Du 
Locle,  who  represented  the  Khedive's  intermediary,  thereupon 
sent  Verdi  an  outline  of  a  possible  Egyptian  plot.  Verdi  took  one 
look  at  it,  and  agreed  to  negotiate.  His  terms  for  coming  out  of 
retirement  were  stiff:  150,000  francs  and  the  rights  for  all  countries 
except  Egypt.  Ismail,  who  was  a  spendthrift,  blithely  told  all  con- 
cerned to  go  ahead.  As  the  premiere  was  scheduled  for  January5 
1871,  there  was  no  time  to  lose.  The  opera  was  well  under  way 
when  the  Franco-Prussian  War  broke  out.  As  one  of  the  important 
collaborators  in  the  concoction  of  the  libretto  was  detained  in 
Paris  for  the  duration  of  the  war,  A'ida  was  not  staged  until  De- 
cember 24,  1871. 

Verdi  did  not  go  to  Cairo  for  A'idcfs  turbulently  successful  open- 
ing, but  six  weeks  later,  at  La  Scala,  he  witnessed  the  enthusiasm 
it  could  evoke.  Within  a  few  years  it  had  achieved  that  universal 
popularity  it  has  never  relinquished.  It  is  too  bad  that  Verdi's 
delight  in  this  acclaim  was  somewhat  spoiled  by  the  absurd  ac- 
cusation that  Aida  consciously  imitates  Wagner.  In  cold  fact,  it 
grew  directly  out  of  Verdi's  own  past,  and  might  be  note  for  note 
what  it  is  if  Wagner  had  never  lived.  Traces  of  Meyerbeer  at  his 
most  sumptuous  grand  it  undoubtedly  has,  but  by  1872  the  music 
critics  smelled  Wagner  in  the  most  unlikely  places.  Some  of  them 
have  never  got  over  the  habit. 

A'ida  is  not  only  a  synonym  for  "grand"  opera,  but  is  very  prob- 
ably the  most  popular  opera  ever  composed.  Although,  as  a  wit 
has  said,  "You  can't  judge  Egypt  by  Aida"  you  can  judge  the  es- 
sential Verdi  by  it.  It  does  not  contain  his  best  music,  but  is  by  far 
the  cleverest  evening's  entertainment  he  ever  devised.  Once  more 
the  melodies  flow  untramnieled,  and  a  simple  and  sufficiently  cred- 
ible story  is  told  in  broad  dramatic  idiom.  It  has  the  appeal  of  a 
pageant:  the  triumph  of  a  general,  the  solemn  march  of  the  priests 
of  Ptah,  the  moonlit  banks  of  the  Nile,  a  subterranean  crypt — the 
very  scenes  themselves  contribute  mightily  to  Aida's  tremendous 


VERDI  463 

drawing  power.  The  music  may  not  be  psychologically  searching, 
but  it  has  a  relevance  to  the  shifting  character  of  the  stage  action 
that  would  be  difficult  to  better.  There  is  not  a  dull  moment  in 
the  entire  opera.  It  is  by  turns  exciting,  moving,  and  simply  ab- 
sorbing as  a  spectacle.  "Big"  arias  and  concerted  numbers  are 
scattered  through  the  score  with  the  prodigality  of  youth  con- 
trolled by  the  firm  judgment  of  mature  experience.  There  is  nothing 
experimental  in  Atda;  it  has  none  of  the  questing,  groping  quality 
of  a  transitional  work.  Far  from  being  opera  in  a  new  genre,  it  is 
merely  the  quintessential  product  of  the  tradition  Verdi  was  ex- 
ploiting in  Rigoletto  and  Trovatore.  The  simple,  sure-fire  "Celeste 
Azda,"  coming  early  in  the  first  act,  is  a  superbly  effective  stock 
aria  of  obvious  ancestry  that  wins  any  audience  right  away.  Nor 
are  there  any  violent  shocks  in  store.  The  music  says  what  it  has 
to  say  with  real  mastery  of  harmony  and  orchestration,  but  the 
melodic  element  predominates  throughout.  In  Atda,  the  human 
voice  is  still  king.  A  thousand  subtle  touches  give  the  score  a  slightly 
Oriental  tang— one  shudders  to  think  what  the  composer  of  Trava- 
tore  might  have  done  with  this  coloring.  If  Verdi  had  written  noth- 
ing after  Aida,  it  would  have  been  impossible  not  to  say  that  he  had 
fully  realized  his  potentialities. 

Verdi  was  now  almost  sixty  years  old,  and  there  must  have  been 
many,  possibly  even  including  the  composer  himself,  who  felt  that 
he  had  crowned  a  long,  useful,  and  brilliant  career  with  the  crea- 
tion of  so  stupendous  a  work  as  Atda.  In  1873,  however,  while 
loitering  in  Naples,  he  surprised  his  intimates  by  tossing  off  a  de- 
lightful and  craftsmanlike  string  quartet.  A  few  months  later,  the 
death  of  Manzoni  stirred  him  as  deeply  as  had  Rossini's.  This  time 
he  had  learned  his  lesson:  instead  of  delegating  parts  of  a  Requiem 
Mass  to  various  composers,  he  sat  down  and  wrote  a  complete  one 
himself,  working  in  part  from  the  sketches  he  had  made  for  the 
abortive  Rossini  commemoration.  He  himself  conducted  the  first 
performance  of  the  "Manzoni"  Requiem  at  San  Marco's,  Milan, 

on  May  22,  1874.  It  was  as  successful  throughout  Italy  as  Alia 

and  for  much  the  same  reasons.  It  is  theatrical,  full-bodied, 
noisy,  sweepingly  melodic,  more  like  a  sincere  and  impulsive 
paean  than  anything  else.  Some  sections  are  catchy  and  even 
alluring,  but  only  professional  Protestants  could  deplore  the 
high  spirits  of  this  Requiem  Mass.  In  judging  it,  we  must  enter 


464  MEN     OF     MUSIC 

into  the  Latin  temper,  and  forget  Bach  and  all  such  solemn 
fellows.  We  can  then  admit  that  the  "Manzoni"  Requiem  is 
magnificent. 

After  the  Requiem,  for  thirteen  years  no  new  work  came  from 
Verdi's  pen.  During  this  time,  he  did  not  immure  himself  at  Sanf 
Agata.  He  traveled  widely,  at  first  to  conduct  the  Requiem,  and 
later  to  supervise  new  stagings  of  his  operas.  Once  he  went  as  far 
afield  as  England,  and  Paris  saw  him  often.  After  several  years  of 
silence,  it  was  generally  believed  that  he  would  never  again  com- 
pose for  the  stage,  nor  was  Verdi  disposed  to  contradict  this  as- 
sumption, most  probably  because  he  shared  it  himself.  But  in  1879, 
his  publisher,  his  favorite  conductor,  and  the  Contessa  Maffei  con- 
spired to  rouse  him  from  the  lethargy  of  a  prosperous  old  age.  Not 
for  a  moment  did  they  admit  that  he  had  written  himself  out:  their 
job  was  to  get  him  started  again.  Boi'to  was  their  man,  despite  the 
fact  that  he  had  once  thoughtlessly  belittled  Verdi.  With  the  best 
resources  of  his  early  radicalism  assimilated,  and  with  an  unrivaled 
sense  of  the  libretto,  Boito  seemed  to  them  the  spark  that  would 
surely  ignite  Verdi.  Three  days  after  the  two  were  brought  to- 
gether, Boito  handed  him  the  sketch  for  a  libretto  based  on  Shake- 
speare's Othello.  Verdi  hesitated,  but  by  the  end  of  the  year  it 
seems  certain  that  he  had  decided  to  compose  his  second  Shake- 
spearean opera.  Its  composition  occupied  him,  off  and  on,  for 
seven  years,  during  which  time  Boito  practically  became  a  per- 
manent house  guest  at  Sant*  Agata.  The  revised  version  of  Simone 
Baccanegra,)  produced  in  1881,  was  the  first  public  earnest  of  one 
of  the  most  fruitful  collaborations  in  the  history  of  music. 

Verdi,  always  a  conscientious  artisan,  outdid  himself  in  Otello — 
no  detail  of  costuming  and  scenery  was  too  insignificant  for  his 
attention.  The  collaboration  ran  smoothly  except  when  Bo'ito  was 
quoted  in  the  newspapers  as  saying  that  he  regretted  not  being 
able  to  set  the  libretto  oflago  (as  it  was  then  called)  himself.  Verdi 
at  once  offered  to  give  Boito  back  his  libretto,  and  they  were  not 
reconciled  until  it  was  made  clear  that  Boito  had  been  misquoted. 
Meanwhile,  public  interest  in  Verdi's  rebirth  was  nearing  fever 
pitch,  and  all  sorts  of  wild  guesses  were  being  hazarded  as  to  the 
nature  of  his  new  opera.  Some  people  were  annoyed  because  he 
had  chosen  a  subject  that,  they  claimed,  Rossini  had  already  im- 
mortalized. Others  merely  said  that  he  was  too  old  to  write  a  good 


VERDI  465 

opera.  On  November  I3  1886,  Verdi  wrote  to  Ms  collaborator: 
"Dear  Bolto —  It  is  finished.  Here's  a  health  to  us  ...  (and  also 
to  Him  .  .  .)  Good-by.  G.  Verdi."  On  February'  5,  1887,  all 
doubts  as  to  the  youthful  creative  vigor  of  the  seventy-four-year- 
old  composer  were  dispersed  when  Otello  was  given  at  La  Scala. 
Its  success  was  tremendous  and  instantaneous,  and  for  once  critics 
and  public  vied  with  each  other  in  acclaiming  the  composer. 

He  who  goes  to  Otello  and  listens  only  to  the  music  misses  half 
the  opera's  greatness.  Here  is  a  perfect  fusion  of  music  and  libretto, 
and  we  must  think  of  it  as  the  creation  of  two  miraculously  coa- 
lesced talents.  It  is  as  plainly  by  BoTto- Verdi  as  The  Mikado  is  by 
Gilbert-Sullivan.  As  Shaw  once  pointed  out,  Othello  as  Shakespeare 
wrote  it  is  already  very  like  an  Italian  opera  book,  so  Boito's  task 
was  not  so  difficult  as  it  might  have  been  if  Verdi  had  set  him  to 
adapting  King  Lear,  With  a  superb  sense  of  wThat  was  usable  on  the 
operatic  stage — he  had  himself  composed  to  his  own  libretto  the 
beautiful  but  now  rarely  performed*  Mefstofele — he  took  just  those 
relevant  parts  of  Othello  and  really  adapted,  not  merely  translated, 
them  for  Verdi's  use.  Magnificent  in  his  good  sense,  he  sacrificed 
the  first  act.  From  various  Shakespearean  plays  he  pieced  together 
a  villainous  credo  for  lago — a  departure  that  infuriated  academic 
literary  critics,  but  which  remains  one  of  the  most  effective  mo- 
ments in  opera.  Verdi  accepted  the  challenge  of  a  masterly  libretto 
by  mating  it  to  a  score  luminous  with  precisely  those  qualities  that 
many  of  his  otherwise  fine  early  scores  conspicuously  lack — un- 
faltering good  taste,  melodic  subtlety,  expressive  harmonic  texture. 
Otello  moves  on  as  a  relentless  continuum:  it  comes  close  to  the 
Wagnerian  ideal  of  an  opera  without  arias,  though  rising  to  mo- 
ments of  arresting  poignancy  in  Desdemona's  pathetic  "Sake, 
sake"  and  tremulous  "Ave  Maria."  It  has  no  barrel-organ  tunes, 
but  is  instinct  with  melody  of  true  dramatic  pertinence.  Lacking 
the  obvious  appeal  of  Aida  or  several  of  Puccini's  tear  jerkers,  it 
nevertheless  gives  proof  of  an  ageless  vitality.  In  1938,  for  the  sec- 
ond time  in  its  history,  the  Metropolitan  Opera  House  opened  its 
season  with  a  most  successful  performance  of  Otello. 

The  extraordinary  success  of  Otello  momentarily  pulled  Verdi 
from  a  slough  of  despond  in  which  he  was  foundering.  In  July, 

*  In  the  United  States.  In  Italy,  after  failing  at  first,  it  achieved,  and  has  main- 
tained, tremendous  popularity. 


466  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

1886,  the  Contessa  Maffei,  for  forty-four  years  his  most  intimate 
friend,  had  died.  It  was  not  strange  that  the  old  man's  friends  were 
dying  off,  but  it  was  more  than  a  little  odd  that  Verdi,  who  was  so 
renowned  for  his  sturdy  common  sense,  reacted  anything  but 
stoically  to  these  losses.  He  indulged  his  grief,  and  became  edgy 
and  morose.  In  1889,  he  squelched  a  plan  to  celebrate  the  fiftieth 
anniversary  of  his  first  opera,  though  the  same  year  he  lent  his 
name  to  a  Beethoven  festival  at  Bonn,  remarking  that  he  disliked 
festivals  and  such,  and  was  agreeing  only  because  Beethoven  was 
involved.  In  1892,  however,  the  centenary  of  Rossini's  birth  en- 
listed his  active  co-operation:  he  led  the  famous  prayer  from  Mose 
in  Egitto.  It  was  his  last  public  appearance  as  a  conductor. 

And  yet,  Verdi  was  not  through.  As  early  as  the  week  following 
the  premiere  of  Otello,  there  was  talk  of  his  considering  a  comic 
opera,  possibly  based  on  Don  Quixote.  Within  the  next  couple  of 
years,  Shakespeare's  conception  of  Falstaff  was  chosen  as  the  focal 
point  of  Bolto's  libretto  and,  it  was  hoped,  Verdi's  new  opera.  By 
1890,  Verdi  had  begun  to  work  at  the  music,  but  was  strangely 
coy  about  both  his  progress  and  his  ultimate  intentions.  When  he 
finally  admitted  that  he  would  finish  Falstaff \  he  indicated  that  he 
might  have  it  performed  only  privately  at  Sant5  Agata.  When  at 
last, he  was  wheedled  into  giving  the  new  work  to  La  Scala,  he 
kept  the  right  of  withdrawing  it  from  production  if  he  chose.  His 
own  illness  and  Giuseppina's  delayed  the  completion,  but  finally, 
just  before  his  seventy-ninth  birthday,  it  was  finished.  A  public 
largely  unaware  that  Verdi,  more  than  fifty  years  earlier,  had, 
under  the  most  tragic  circumstances,  produced  a  buffa  work  waited 
in  breathless  anticipation  of  the  master's  "first"  comic  opera.  It 
was  produced  at  La  Scala  on  February  9,  1893.  Verdi  and  Giusep- 
pina  wore  in  the  audience:  more  than  half  a  century  before,  she 
had  sung  in  his  first  opera. 

Richard  Strauss  called  Falstaff  "one  of  the  greatest  master- 
pieces of  all  time."  Most  musicians  agree  with  him  about  this 
comic  complement  of  Otello.  In  many  respects,  it  is  a  far  more 
remarkable  creation  than  its  tragic  predecessor,  which,  after  all, 
was  but  the  last  and  best  of  a  long  line  of  serious  operas.  It  is  one 
of  the  wonders  of  music  that  a  tired  old  man,  with  grief  in  his  heart, 
struck  the  most  mellow  of  comic  notes  in  a  work  that  stands  shoul- 
der to  shoulder  with  The  Barber  of  Seville,  the  epitome  of  youth's 


VERDI  467 

conception  of  comedy,  and  Die  Meistersinger,  the  great  character- 
istic comedy  of  middle  age.  In  Falstqf,  the  extreme  frivolity  of  the 
one  and  the  rancorous  satire  of  the  other  are  alike  missing:  in  it, 
we  meet,  instead,  the  deep,  ripe  humor  that  rises  from  a  seasoned 
understanding  of  life.  A  glowing  wit,  rare  as  an  orient  pearl  in 
music,  matches  the  exquisite  patterning  of  Boito's  libretto — for 
here  again  the  collaboration  is  perfect.  Falstaff  is9  as  is  quite  proper, 
slighter  than  Otello,  but  it  is  even  more  erudite  musically:  to  its 
fashioning  Verdi  brought  an  encyclopedic  understanding  of  tech- 
nical device,  and  used  it  with  the  sensitive  taste  bom  of  more  than 
half  a  century  of  experience.  For  example,  the  perfectly  correct 
eight-voice  fugue  sung  by  the  principals  at  the  end  of  the  last  act 
uses  this  so-called  dryest  of  musical  forms  to  distil  the  very  essence 
of  gaiety.  The  perfection  of  Falstaff  gives  point  to  Verdi's  statement 
that  he  had  been  waiting  twenty  years  for  a  comic-opera  libretto. 
The  delicious  score  ranges  from  the  broad  humorous  passages  of 
Falstaff  himself  through  the  exquisitely  felt  music  of  the  lovers, 
and  includes  such  a  delightfully  bold  departure  as  the  almost  De- 
bussyan  pages  given  to  the  masquerade  in  Windsor  Forest.  But, 
for  reasons  that  are  by  no  means  easy  to  fathom,  Falstq/faas  never 
become  a  popular  opera.  Possibly  its  skimming  over  of  mere  plot 
interest  is  against  it.  Possibly  it  is  just  too  subtle  for  the  big  spaces 
of  a  great  opera  house.  It  is  worth  noting  that  Verdi  himself  feared 
that  Falstaff  was  too  intimate  for  La  Scala.  At  any  rate,  it  is  an 
obligation  to  keep  this  masterpiece  in  the  living  repertoire. 

Although  Verdi  lived  eight  years  after  completing  Falstqff,  his 
career  was  practically  over.  For  a  few  years  he  led  an  active  if 
uncreative  life.  In  1894,  for  example,  he  attended  the  Paris  pre- 
miere of  Falstaff.  He  wintered  in  either  Milan  or  Genoa,  in  July 
going  to  Montecatini  for  the  cure.  For  the  most  part,  however,  he 
remained  at  Sant*  Agata,  busying  himself  with  the  trivia  of  man- 
aging an  estate,  playing  with  his  dogs,  working  out  plans  for  his 
pet  philanthropy — a  home  for  aged  musicians  in  Milan — and  talk- 
ing over  old  times  with  Giuseppina.  On  November  14,  1897,  the 
last  of  these  distractions  was  denied  him:  his  faithful  and  loving 
companion  died.  After  that,  though  he  still  had  the  strength  to 
arrange  for  performance  a  few  religious  compositions,*  it  was  evi- 

*  To  the  thirty-one-year-old  Arturo  Toscanini  fell  the  honor  of  conducting  their 
first  Italian  performance  in  1898. 


468  MEN     OF    MUSIC 

dent  that  he  was  failing.  Outwardly  his  health  seemed  rugged: 
loneliness  was  his  disease.  In  July,  1900,  King  Humbert  was  assas- 
sinated, and  Queen  Margherita  wrote  a  simple  little  prayer  in  his 
memory  that  for  a  moment  warmed  the  chilled  embers  of  Verdi's 
artistic  imagination.  He  sketched  a  setting  of  it — the  last  music  he 
ever  wrote.  In  January,  1901,  he  suffered  a  stroke  of  apoplexy  in 
Milan,  and  lingered  in  some  agony  until  the  twenty-seventh  day 
of  that  month.  Boi'to  is  authority  for  the  statement  that  he  fought 
death  until  the  very  moment  he  ceased  to  breathe. 


Chapter  XVIII 

Johannes  Brahms 

(Hamburg,  May  7,  iSss-April  3,  1897,  Vienna) 


Ess  than  half  a  century  after  the  death  of  Johannes  Brahms, 
the  phrase  "the  three  BY'— Bach,  Beethoven,  and  Brahms — 
has  such  wide  currency  that  it  no  longer  evokes  surprise  or  protest. 
When  Hans  von  Billow  first  sprang  the  phrase,  he  drew  a  double 
wrath  upon  himself:  there  were  those  who  thought  that  he  was 
taking  a  belated  revenge  on  Wagner  for  a  personal  injury,  and 
there  were  those  who  thought  that  he  was  violating  the  loftiest 
canons  of  his  profession  (as  well  as  ordinary  common  sense)  by 
raising  a  parvenu  to  the  supreme  fellowship  of  the  greatest  masters, 
A  third  party  dryly  concluded  that  he  was  merely  giving  a  friend 
a  hand  up.  Few — and  least  of  all,  Brahms  himself — took  the  brack- 
eting seriously.  Today  the  only  comment  it  causes  is,  among  dis- 
senters, a  pursing  of  the  lips  or  a  shrug  of  the  shoulders,  but  though 
they  may  consider  it  fantastic,  they  cannot  laugh  it  off.  For  Brahms* 
reputation  has  grown  vast,  and  his  cohorts  have  waxed  numerous 
and  vociferous.  In  point  of  fact,  Von  Billow's  words  contain,  if 
interpreted  sanely,  an  indisputable  truth:  that  is,  if  they  are  taken 
to  mean  that  Brahms'  conscious  artistic  genealogy  was  predomi- 
nantly classical,  no  one  can  refute  them.  In  his  persistent  and 
masterly  use  of  counterpoint,  Brahms  was  among  Bach's  fairest 
children;  in  his  conception  of  the  larger  musical  forms  he  stemmed 
frorn,  and  added  little  to,  Beethoven.  These  are  facts,  and  not  in 
the  realm  of  controversy.  But  only  the  most  perfervid  Brahmsian 
can  accept  without  question  the  other  implication  of  "the  three 
B's":  that  Brahms  is  one  of  the  three  greatest  composers  who  ever 
lived. 

One  of  the  best  antidotes  to  an  overestimate  of  Brahms  that 
can  end  only  by  doing  him  a  grave  disservice  is  to  read  what  he 
had  to  say  about  himself.  "I  know  very  well,"  he  remarked  in  his 
old  age,  "the  place  I  shall  one  day  have  in  musical  history:  the 
place  that  Cherubim  once  had,  and  has  today."  Brahms'  modesty 
was  excessive.  He  declared  that  he  and  his  contemporaries  made 


470  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

a  living  out  of  composing  only  because  the  public  had  forgotten 
so  much  of  the  music  of  the  past.  Once,  after  playing  Bach's  Violin 
Sonata  in  G  major  with  Joachim,  he  threw  to  the  floor  his  own 
sonata  in  the  same  key,  exclaiming,  "After  that,  how  could  anyone 
play  such  stuff  as  this?"  Possibly  few  great  composers  have  not  had 
these  moments  of  feeling  small  beside  Bach,  but  Brahms  also  had  a 
perhaps  exaggerated  reverence  for  masters  whose  genius  did  not, 
at  best,  exceed  his  own.  Witness  his  almost  servile  remark  about 
Mendelssohn:  "I'd  give  all  my  compositions  if  I  could  have  writ- 
ten such  a  piece  as  the  'Hebrides'  Overture!"  He  thought  of  him- 
self as  a  good  composer  whose  duty  it  was  to  work  as  hard  as 
possible  on  what  ideas  came  to  him,  and  to  publish  only  what  dis- 
satisfied him  least.  He  was  pre-eminently  an  artisan,  with  an  al- 
most medieval  feeling  for  his  craft,  and  quite  content  to  let  the 
products  of  his  workshop  speak  for  themselves.  Such  a  man  with 
such  stern  ideals  could  only  be  embarrassed  by  Von  Billow's  bally- 
hoo. Everything  that  was  deepest  in  his  character  revolted  against 
claiming  too  fair  a  kingdom  for  himself  or  aiming  at  too  easy  a 
success. 

Although  born  in  the  crowded  slums  of  a  vast  commercial  city, 
Brahms  was  a  peasant  of  the  peasants,  and  so  he  remained  all  his 
life.  This  does  much  to  explain  the  temperance  of  his  ambitions, 
the  obstinacy  of  his  ideals,  and  the  rather  static  quality  of  his 
genius.  Even  when  his  fame  made  him  the  intimate  of  royalty,  he 
never  by  a  single  action  showed  that  he  had  "gone  up  in  the 
world."  He  remained  true  to  his  own  past  and  his  family's.  His 
father  had  come  to  Hamburg  from  the  barren  and  sparsely  popu- 
lated marshlands  of  the  Elbe  estuary;  his  mother  was  a  proletarian 
of  the  same  great  city.  Johann  Jakob  Brahms,  a  stupid  musical 
Jack-of-all-trades  who  eventually  attained  the  eminence  of  first 
double-bass  at  the  municipal  theater,  at  the  age  of  twenty-four 
married  Johanna  Nissen,  a  woman  of  some  superiority,  but  seven- 
teen years  his  senior,  ugly,  crippled,  of  irascible  and  dominating 
temper.  This  inevitably  mismated  pair  had  three  children,  of 
whom  the  composer  was  the  second.  Separation  was  the  fore- 
ordained end  of  such  a  marriage,  but  Brahms,  who  was  deeply 
devoted  to  his  mother,  managed  to  stave  it  off  until  1864,  when 
the  jealousy  of  the  seventy-five-year-old  woman  drove  her  husband 
from  the  house. 


BRAHMS  471 

We  do  not  know  whether  it  was  Johann  Jakob's  undoubted  pas- 
sion for  music,  or  merely  a  desire  to  add  to  the  family  income,  that 
made  him  decide  upon  music  as  a  career  for  Johannes.  It  does  not 
seem  that  he  had  any  grandiose  plans  for  the  boy:  he  envisioned 
him,  almost  certainly,  as  walking  approximately  in  his  own  foot- 
steps. He  undertook  his  son's  musical  education  himself,  soon  ex- 
hausting his  own  limited  knowledge.  As  the  Brahmses  could  not 
afford  a  piano,  at  the  age  of  eight  Johannes  was  sent  to  a  modest 
little  pedagogue  to  learn  that  useful  instrument.  He  was  so  apt 
that  within  a  year  or  so  he  was  much  in  demand  in  what  his 
cautious  biographers  gloss  over  as  "humble  places  of  entertain- 
ment" or  "sailors'  taverns."  These  were  brothels,  and  according 
to  Brahms  himself,  he  was  the  darling  of  the  prostitutes,  who 
thought  it  fun  to  try  to  arouse  his  immature  emotions.  It  is  impos- 
sible to  overestimate  the  influence  of  these  odd  experiences  on 
Brahms'  sexual  make-up:  he  depended  all  his  life  on  prostitutes 
for  physical  release,  and  withdrew  from  a  relationship  with  a  de- 
cent woman  as  soon  as  an  overt  amorous  element  showed  itself. 
The  "women  in  Brahms'  life"  are  anonymous. 

Little  Johannes  was  not  exclusively  a  redlight-district  virtuoso. 
He  attended  the  local  schools,  such  as  they  were,  and  continued 
his  musical  studies.  In  1843,  his  teacher  pled  with  Eduard  Marx- 
sen,  Hamburg's  leading  music  master,  to  take  the  boy.  Marxsen 
consented  reluctantly  to  give  him  an  occasional  lesson,  and  Brahms 
made  his  public  debut  at  a  conceit  arranged  to  defray  the  costs  of 
this  more  expensive  instruction.  He  played,  besides  a  few  solos, 
the  piano  part  in  chamber  works  by  Mozart  and  Beethoven.  Marx- 
sen,  finding  him  a  willing  slave  to  music,  gradually  undertook  not 
only  to  perfect  his  piano  technique,  but  to  teach  him  composition. 
Shortly,  Brahms  was  grinding  out  an  interminable  series  of  pot- 
boilers— mostly  arrangements  of  popular  tunes  of  the  day.  His 
ambition  was  to  become  a  fine  composer,  but  before  he  succeeded 
in  writing  anything  he  cared  to  publish  under  his  own  name  he 
had  published  151  ephemera  under  the  pseudonym  of  G.  W. 
Marks,  as  well  as  a  few  he  considered  somewhat  better,  attributing 
these  latter  to  the  cacophonously  named  Karl  Wurth.  Music  les- 
sons and  composition,  combined  with  schoolwork  and  night  jobs, 
wore  him  out.  He  was  rescued  by  a  family  friend  who  treated  him 
to  two  summers  in  the  country,  but  even  then  he  worked,  making 


472  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

the  hundred-and-twenty-mile  round  trip  every  week  to  take  his 
lesson,  and  conducting  a  rural  chorus.  Rest  and  fresh  air  did 
wonders,  and  when  he  returned  to  Hamburg  in  the  fall  of  18483 
he  was  glowing  with  that  rugged  good  health  that  scarcely  varied 
for  half  a  century. 

On  September  21,  Johannes  Brahms  gave  his  first  public  re- 
cital, showing  the  classical  rectitude  of  his  taste  by  venturing  a 
Bach  fugue — an  unheard-of  feat  of  daring  in  those  days.  At  another 
recital  the  following  April,  he  gave  Hamburg  its  first  taste  of 
Brahms  the  composer,  with  a  fantasy  that  has  not  survived.  On 
the  whole,  these  first  attempts  at  a  serious  career  were  disappoint- 
ing, and  he  had  to  resume  his  hack  labors.  But  these  could  not 
hold  him  long,  for  he  had  been  fired  by  two  experiences:  he  had 
heard  the  already  famous  Joachim,  only  two  years  his  senior,  play 
Beethoven's  Violin  Concerto,  and  had  met  the  brilliant  Hungarian- 
Jewish  violinist,  Eduard  Remenyi.  Joachim  stirred  him  more  deeply 
than  he  realized  at  the  time.  Remenyi,  with  his  extravagant  col- 
lection of  travelers'  tales,  captivated  him  with  a  vision  of  that  great 
world  Brahms  in  later  years  came,  if  not  to  detest,  at  least  to  dis- 
regard. He  fretted  more  than  ever  under  a  hateful  routine,  but 
found  precisely  the  solace  his  artist's  soul  needed  in  composing  the 
two  piano  sonatas,  scherzo,  and  songs  that  now  constitute  his  first 
four  opus  numbers. 

Just  about  the  time  of  Brahms'  twentieth  birthday,  Remenyi 
again  appeared  on  the  scene  with  a  tempting  offer  to  take  him  as 
accompanist  on  a  vagabond  concert  tour.  At  Hanover,  they  fell  in 
with  Joachim,  who  enraptured  Brahms  by  expressing  an  under- 
standing admiration  for  his  compositions.  After  arranging  a  court 
concert  for  Remenyi  and  Brahms,  Joachim,  who  at  that  time  was 
still  warmly  espousing  the  cause  of  the  gukunftsmusiker,  sent  them 
off  to  Weimar  with  a  generous  letter.  Although  Liszt  was  lavish 
with  his  praise,  Brahms  was  so  disgusted  by  the  trumpery  court 
politics  of  the  AJtenburg  that  he  disdained  to  give  its  master  his 
meed  of  flattery.  This  was  fatal  to  any  real  rapprochement  between 
them,  particularly  as  Brahms  found  little  to  admire  in  the  "music 
of  the  future."  He  decided  to  move  on,  leaving  Remenyi  swooning 
under  the  spell  of  Kundry  Liszt.  He  did  not  miss  the  young  Hun- 
garian: musically,  Remenyi  gave  Brahms  little  that  he  could  use 
accept  a  smattering  knowledge  of  gypsy  folk  tunes. 


BRAHMS  473 

On  September  30,  1853,  Robert  Schumann  wrote  in  his  diary? 
"Brahms  to  see  me  (a  genius}."  For  after  the  disheartening  visit  to 
Liszt,  Joachim  had  persuaded  his  friend  to  go  to  Diisseldorf.  The 
Schumanns  received  the  handsome  young  fellow  with  open  arms. 
As  a  bosom  friend  of  Joachim's,  he  was  welcome,  and  wiien  he 
played  his  music  for  them,  they  treated  him  at  once  as  an  equal. 
Brahms,  still  vexed  by  the  artificial  ways  of  the  Altenburg,  gave 
his  heart  immediately  to  his  new  friends,  who  (he  could  not  but 
remind  himself)  were,  for  all  their  simplicity  and  forthrightness, 
two  of  Europe's  leading  musicians.  Clara  was  to  become  his  friend 
for  life.  Robert,  with  but  three  years  before  Mm,  and  those  clouded, 
at  once  translated  enthusiasm  into  action.  He  successfully  urged  a 
publisher  to  issue  some  of  Brahms'  early  compositions,  but  almost 
more  effective  in  establishing  his  protege's  name  was  the  farewell 
article  he  wrote  for  the  New  %dtschrift  fur  MusiL  Called  "New 
Paths,"  this  high-flown  panegyric  hailed  Brahms  as  "vouchsafed 
to  give  the  highest  and  most  ideal  expression  to  the  tendencies  oi 
the  times,  one  who  would  not  show  us  his  mastery  in  a  gradual 
development,  but  like  Minerva  spring  full-armed  from  the  head  of 
Zeus."  The  article  aroused  wide  interest  in  the  newcomer,  but 
there  were  plenty,  particularly  among  the  adherents  of  the  Neo- 
Germans,  who  felt  that  the  Elijah  of  romanticism  was  casting  his 
mantle  over  the  wrong  man.  Worse,  they  whispered  that  this  vio- 
lently enthusiastic  manifesto  was  proof  of  the  rumors  that  Schu- 
mann was  losing  his  mind.  The  fact  was  that  he  had  written  "New 
Paths"  in  one  of  those  dazzlingly  lucid  intervals  that  preceded  his 
collapse:  less  than  six  months  after  his  meeting  with  Brahms,  he 
was  incarcerated  in  a  madhouse.  During  the  period  of  Schumann's 
insanity,  Brahms  visited  him  as  often  as  he  could,  and  was  to  the 
unhappy  wife  and  mother  a  tower  of  strength. 

What  was  the  music  that  had  stirred  the  weary  Schumann  to  his 
swan  song?  Appropriately  enough,  it  was  as  romantic  music  as 
Brahms  ever  composed.  It  consisted  of  three  piano  sonatas,  a 
scherzo,  and  some  songs,  besides  certain  compositions  that  Brahms, 
tempering  Schumann's  enthusiasm,  refused  to  publish  because 
they  did  not  come  up  to  his  own  standards.  The  Scherzo — the  first 
piece  he  played  for  both  Liszt  and  Schumann — is  a  bright  youth- 
ful display,  rather  empty,  rather  dazzling,  and  altogether  as  near 
to  pure  virtuoso  music  as  any  he  ever  contrived.  The  C  major 


474  MEN  °F  MUSIC 

Sonata  is  not  entirely  successful:  Brahms  here  uses  the  sonata  form 
awkwardly,  academically  rather  than  spontaneously,  and  much  of 
the  result  is  so  unpianistic  as  to  seem  an  extended  sketch  for  an 
orchestral  work.  Yet,  it  is  vigorous,  confident,  always  provocative 
in  thematic  material,  manfully  reverent  in  its  obvious  Beethoven 
worship.  In  short,  possibly  the  most  satisfactory  Opus  i  ever  com- 
posed. The  F  sharp  minor  Sonata  is  a  cold  and  rather  dour  work 
that  pianists  rightly  consider  thankless.  The  F  minor  Sonata — the 
last  Brahms  ever  wrote  for  the  piano — is  important.  Though  far  too 
long,  and  in  a  medley  of  styles,  it  yet  contains  many  consecutive 
pages  of  beautiful  music.  There  are  still  Beethovian  echoes,  espe- 
cially in  the  development  of  the  first  movement,  but  here  already 
are  Brahms'  widely  spaced  harmonies,  broken  chords,  and  perilous 
modulations,  as  well  as  the  trick  of  carrying  a  melody  on  the  inner 
notes  of  chords.*  The  scherzo  reads  like  a  Brahms  rewriting  of 
parts  of  the  Carnaval,  but  the  andante  is  the  kind  of  music  fully  ma- 
tured Brahms  was  to  turn  into  sheer  magic. 

The  total  effect  of  these  early  piano  works  suggests  a  composer 
of  genius  who  has  not  yet  found  his  metier.  The  extravagance  of 
the  romantic  material  in  them  tends  to  obscure  what  on  analysis 
appears  equally  obvious — that  Brahms  was  faithfully,  if  not  always 
happily,  devoted  to  the  sonata  form  as  Beethoven  left  it.  Those  who 
can  bear  to  study  a  work  like  the  G  major  or  F  minor  Sonata  as  a 
laboratory  specimen  can  uncover  the  whole  catalogue  of  Brahms* 
artistic  virtues  and  vices.  Their  proportion  may  vary,  but  the 
dichotomy  remains.  It  is  less  noticeable  in  the  four  ballades  com- 
posed little  later  than  the  pieces  that  inspired  Schumann's  eulogy; 
Brahms  never  carried  out  his  intentions  more  successfully  than  in 
the  archaic  and  severely  pared  "Edward"  Ballade,  based  on  an 
old  Scots  poem.  All  the  ballades  hint  that  Brahms'  genius  as  a 
composer  for  the  piano  would  find  its  happiest  outlet  when  freed 
from  the  conventions  of  the  sonata. 

It  is  probable  that  the  four  ballades  were  the  last  of  Brahms* 
music  that  Schumann  ever  heard.  Certain  it  is  that  Brahms  played 
them  to  the  dying  master  during  one  of  his  sane  interludes  in  the 
madhouse.  About  the  same  time,  Brahms  delighted  Schumann 
with  a  set  of  "Short  Variations  on  a  Theme  by  Him.  Dedicated  to 

*  One  of  Brahms'  last-published  piano  pieces — the  C  major  Intermezzo  (Opus 
119) — is  a  superb  example  of  the  use  of  this  device. 


BRAHMS  475 

Her."  This  not  very  inspired  composition  is  interesting  for  two 
reasons:  it  is  a  trial  flight  in  a  form  that  Brahms  was  to  infuse  with 
new  meaning,  and  it  is  dedicated  to  Clara.  During  the  last  two 
years  of  Schumann's  life,  Brahms  had  become  warmly  devoted  to 
her,  so  warmly,  indeed,  that  there  was  gossip  about  them.  There 
were  some  who  went  so  far  as  to  whisper  that  he  was  the  father  of 
Clara's  last  child,  and  now,  almost  half  a  century  after  their  deaths, 
people  are  still  guessing  and  theorizing  about  the  status  of  their 
relationship.  In  the  absence  of  any  documents  except  their  in- 
creasingly ardent  letters,  it  is  possible  to  belong  to  one  of  two 
camps.  One  holds  that  it  was  a  high-minded,  purely  platonic 
friendship  based  on  a  common  grief  and  common  sympathies  and 
interests.  The  other,  referring  to  them  as  Johannes  and  Clara  (the 
analogue  of  Richard  and  Cosima),  takes  a  Freudian  point  of  view. 

Robert  Haven  Schauffler,  without  committing  himself  to  what 
actually  took  place  between  them,  summed  up  the  case  for  the 
prosecution.  It  is,  briefly,  that  Brahms  (clearly  the  victim  of  a 
mother  fixation)  chose  Clara,  fourteen  years  his  senior,  as  a  mother 
surrogate.  It  is  significant,  perhaps,  that  he  occasionally  addressed 
her  as  "meine  liebe  Frau  Mama"  Grief  and  mutual  admiration 
brought  them  together  under  highly  emotional  circumstances,  and 
it  may  be  that  Brahms  persuaded  the  distraught  woman  to  become 
his  mistress.  This  school  of  thought  makes  much  of  the  fact  that 
Brahms  and  Clara,  less  than  a  year  after  Schumann  was  incar- 
cerated, went  on  a  five-day  pleasure  trip  with  only  her  maid  to 
chaperon  them.  This  sounds  incriminating,  but  certain  physiolog- 
ical and  psychological  peculiarities  in  Brahms*  development  as  a 
functioning  male  suggest  that,  whatever  their  impulses  may  have 
been,  they  could  not  have  been  lovers  at  this  time.  In  the  first 
place,  Brahms*  voice  did  not  change  until  1857,  at  which  time 
also  his  beard  began  to  grow.  Secondly  (and  Mr.  Schauffler  is 
authority  for  this  astute  conjecture),  it  seems  likely  that  Brahms* 
mother  fixation  and  infantile  erotic  experiences  in  brothels  made 
him  incapable  of  consummating  a  physical  relationship  with  a 
decent  woman.  His  whole  life  bears  out  this  contention. 

No  specifically  sexual  foundation  was  required,  however,  to  make 
Brahms  and  Clara  friends  for  life.  She  came  to  regard  him  as  the 
greatest  composer  of  the  age — after  Schumann — and  his  reverence 
for  her  as  artist  and  critic  never  abated.  Even  as  an  old  man,  he 


MEN    OF    MUSIC 

continued  to  submit  his  compositions  to  her  before  publishing 
them.  For  almost  forty  years  they  carried  on,  with  few  interrup- 
tions, a  spirited  correspondence,  and  were  together  whenever  pos- 
sible. Clara's  letters  make  somewhat  more  interesting  reading  than 
Brahms':  her  interests  were  wider,  her  culture  was  deeper,  her 
many  triumphal  tours  gave  her  more  contact  with  the  great  world. 
So  powerful  was  her  influence  on  him  that  in  time  he  inherited  her 
quarrels  (some  of  them  dating  from  her  life  with  Schumann)  and 
absorbed  her  prejudices.  For  example,  his  dislike  of  Wagner,  which 
has  been  much  exaggerated,  in  part  reflected  Clara's  own  reflec- 
tion of  Schumann's  misunderstanding  of  the  scant  fraction  of  Wag- 
ner's music  he  knew,  as  well  as  her  own  Victorian  abomination  of 
the  sensual  content  of  many  of  the  later  operas.  At  heart,  Brahms 
was  too  good  a  musician  not  to  recognize  Wagner's  genius. 

At  first,  Clara's  friendship  for  Brahms  asserted  itself  in  a  helpful 
and  practical  way.  Then,  as  always,  she  had  more  pupils  than  she 
could  handle,  and  she  turned  several  of  them  over  to  Brahms. 
Some  of  them  happened  to  be  well-born  ladies  from  Detmold,  and 
they,  with  the  help  of  a  good  word  from  Clara  (who  had  fine  con- 
nections everywhere) ,  wangled  a  semiofficial  appointment  for  him 
at  this  sleepy  little  town,  where  the  Prince  of  Lippe  held  his  court. 
There,  from  1857  to  1859,  Brahms  spent  a  portion  of  each  year, 
giving  lessons  to  the  Prince's  sister,  conducting  a  chorus  of  doting 
Frauldn,  and  presiding  over  the  court  orchestra.  Here  was  an  ideal 
place  for  thinking  things  out.  The  decisions  Brahms  came  to  mu- 
sically he  expressed  only  in  music,  and  they  are  not  easy  to  express 
in  words.  Briefly,  he  went  to  Detmold  saturated  with  the  type  of 
romanticism  summed  up  in  Schumann,  and,  after  much  vigorous 
self-criticism  and  experimentation,  emerged  as  a  Brahmsian,  which 
is  the  only  accurate  description  of  a  man  who  is  variously  called  a 
neoclassicist,  an  eclectic,  or  a  classical  romanticist,  depending  on 
what  measuring  stick  is  used.  Certainly,  those  who  think  exclu- 
sively of  the  contour  and  emotional  atmosphere  of  the  overwhelm- 
ing majority  of  his  themes  are  justified  in  calling  him  a  romanticist; 
those  who  focus  their  attention  on  the  way  he  handles  his  musical 
material  are  equally  justified  in  calling  him  a  classicist.  Between 
them  they  have  a  complete  judgment  of  one  who,  starting  with 
classical  sympathies,  ran  the  gauntlet  of  romanticism,  and  came 


BRAHMS  477 

out  with  an  eclectic  style  that  eventuaEy  became  as  idiosyncratic 
as  Chopin's. 

To  the  Detmold  period  belong  Brahms'  first  three  compositions 
for  orchestra.  Two  of  these — extended  serenades  or  dimrtimenti — 
are  of  little  more  than  historical  interest.  Both  are  excessively  long 
and  excessively  dull,  though  the  second  of  them,  in  A  major,  is 
suave  enough  in  its  instrumentation.,  chiefly  because  Brahms  re- 
orchestrated  it  many  years  later.  Their  discursiveness  and  blurred 
outlines  suggest  that  he  was  wise  in  never  again  venturing  to  use 
the  classical-suite  form.  Yet,  composing  them  was  of  incalculable 
value  in  putting  him  at  ease  among  the  instruments  of  the  or- 
chestra. The  scoring  of  the  D  minor  Piano  Concerto,  effected  at 
about  the  same  time,  is  still  not  of  the  happiest,  but  clearly  shows 
not  only  the  solid  results  of  working  on  the  serenades,  but  also  the 
fruits  of  directing  his  own  band.  Its  immense  advance  over  the 
serenades  is  as  much  psychological  as  technical:  he  has  gained  con- 
fidence in  handling  the  orchestra.  The  themes  have  more  distinc- 
tion, more  clarity  of  contour.  Altogether,  the  First  Piano  Concerto 
has  surprisingly  little  tentativeness  for  a  work  that  began  as  a 
symphony  sketched  for  two  pianos,  and  was  written  as  a  concerto 
only  as  an  afterthought.  In  spite  of  many  virtuoso  passages, 
Brahms  subordinated  the  soloist's  role  to  a  degree  previously  un- 
known in  the  piano  concerto. 

The  D  minor  opens  with  a  titanlike  theme  that  promises  more 
than  is  actually  achieved,  for  here  he  falls  victim  to  his  incurable 
tendency  to  ramble.  The  edifice,  though  constructed  of  fine  ma- 
terials, is  constantly  on  the  verge  of  toppling  over,  and  in  the  end 
we  are  left  with  a  feeling  of  having  been  cheated  of  what  we  were 
promised.  If  this  tendency  to  formal  decadence  were  not  so  per- 
sistent, it  might  be  possible  to  interpret  its  presence  in  the  D  minor 
Concerto  as  merely  a  device  to  point  up  the  parable  of  Schumann's 
decline,  to  which  Brahms  is  known  to  have  referred  in  at  least  the 
first  two  movements. 

On  January  22,  1859,  Brahms  played  the  D  minor  Concerto  in 
Hanover.  It  was  a  failure.  Five  days  later  he  played  it  at  a  Ge- 
wandhaus  concert  in  Leipzig.  It  was  roundly  hissed,  and  he  him- 
self, as  a  pianist,  with  it — a  fact  that  was  instrumental  in  causing 
him  to  abandon  a  possible  virtuoso  career.  Hamburg  was  kind  to  the 
concerto,  but  only  the  first  time,  for  when  it  was  repeated  there  a 


MEN     OF    MUSIC 

year  later,  it  was  received  with  icy  silence.  While  Brahins  was  in- 
clined to  view  all  this  merely  as  a  temporary  setback,  enough 
rancor  simmered  in  his  mind  to  lead  him  to  the  only  foolhardy  act 
recorded  of  him.  The  New  £eitschrift  fur  Musik,  then  an  organ  of 
the  Neo-Germans,  published  an  article  stating  that  almost  every 
good  composer  in  Germany  belonged  to  the  Liszt  camp.  The  idea 
was  certainly  a  silly  one,  if  for  no  other  reason  than  that  it  made  a 
Hungarian  cosmopolitan  the  arbiter  of  German  music.  Brahms 
and  Joachim  fell  into  a  rage  and,  with  two  less-known  musicians, 
signed  a  manifesto  attacking  the  article.  Then  they  began  collect- 
ing other  signatures,  but  it  was  accidentally  published  without 
these.  The  reverberations  were  far-reaching,  particularly  as 
Wagner,  too,  had  been  tacitly  aspersed  in  the  manifesto.  Brahms 
was  unwittingly  jockeyed  into  being  a  paladin  of  the  anti-Wag- 
nerians,  and  worse,  the  incensed  Wagner  was  moved  to  discharge 
the  vials  of  his  wrath  on  the  imprudent  Brahms.  Without  wishing 
to,  he  had  created  overnight  a  powerful  bloc  of  vituperative  ene- 
mies who  for  years  delayed  the  full  appreciation  of  his  music. 

In  1860,  Brahms  gave  up  his  connection  with  Detmold,  and  for 
three  years  made  his  headquarters  in  or  near  Hamburg.  Here  he 
organized  a  women's  choir,  for  whom  he  drew  up  a  quaintly  medi- 
eval charter  and  wrote  much  of  his  smaller  choral  work.  Often  he 
took  his  ladies  into  the  country,  and  practiced  out  of  doors;  as  he 
was  a  stubby  little  man,  he  often  chose  the  branch  of  a  tree  as  his 
podium.  Anyone  who  glances  at  a  chronological  list  of  Brahms' 
compositions  will  notice  that  this  period  is  one  of  his  least  produc- 
tive, but  its  barrenness  is  more  apparent  than  real.  He  was  either 
actually  at  work  on  several  major  compositions  or  thinking  them 
out.  One  of  them — Ein  deutsches  Requiem,  his  most  pretentious  choral 
work — was  not  completed  until  1866;  the  First  Symphony  took 
more  than  twice  that  long.  The  spate  of  song  continued  unabated, 
and  he  also  wrote  a  considerable  amount  of  chamber  music. 

The  most  impressive  earnest  of  Brahms'  genius  in  the  early  six- 
ties was  the  set  of  piano  variations  on  a  theme  by  Handel,  the 
undertaking  of  which  involved  some  temerity  on  his  part,  for  Han- 
del himself  had  written  five  exquisite  variations  on  the  same  theme. 
The  result  justified  what  Brahms'  enemies  no  doubt  considered 
sacrilege:  his  twenty-five  variations  and  the  mighty  concluding 
fiigue  constitute  a  veritable  milestone  not  only  in  the  history  of 


BRAHMS  479 

the  form,  but  in  the  entire  realm  of  piano  music.  Cut-and-dried 
academics  still  find  them  offensive.  Certainly,  Brahms  had  a  curi- 
ously nonclassical  conception  of  the  variation  form,  regarding  it 
not  so  much  as  a  series  of  comments  or  disguised  elaborations  on 
the  original  theme  as  a  series  of  comments  on  ideas  engendered  by 
the  organism — the  original  theme  and  its  variations  up  to  that 
point — as  it  unfolded.  The  result  is  that  the  connection  between 
the  theme  and  particularly  the  later  variations  is  extremely  tenu- 
ous. It  is  paradoxical,  and  not  a  little  ironical,  that  this  work  of 
the  so-called  neoclassicist  Brahms  presents,  despite  its  great  free- 
ness  of  structure,  an  effect  of  much  more  unity  than  most  of  his 
large  works  in  strict  forms.  Brahms  made  the  variation  a  perfect 
vehicle  for  his  native  discursiveness:  in  the  "Handel"  Variations, 
Brahms  is  like  a  subtle  storyteller  who  is  constantly  reminded  of 
some  new  tale,  but  who,  at  the  end,  leaves  us  with  the  perfect 
|atisfaction  of  having  heard  a  complete  story.  The  variations  are  of 
singular  beauty,  shifting  in  mood,  shading,  and  rhythm,  and  un- 
obtrusively making  use  of  every  technical  device  to  achieve  a  daz- 
zling variety.  On  the  basis  of  the  gigantic  fugue,  it  is  possible  to 
understand  the  oft-repeated  statement  that  Brahms  is  the  greatest 
contrapuntist  since  Bach.  Even  Wagner  was  moved  to  praise  his 
official  enemy  after  hearing  him  play  this  masterpiece. 

Much  less  interesting  musically  are  the  variations  on  a  Paganini 
theme  which  Brahms  completed  in  1863.  Paganini  himself  would 
have  adored  them:  they  are  the  most  difficult  virtuoso  music  ever 
written.  "Practically  nothing  new  in  virtuoso  technique  has  been 
thought  of  since3  *  is  the  considered  opinion  of  William  Murdoch, 
English  pianist  and  devoted  Brahmsian.  Volcanic,  daemonic,  ex- 
plosively energetic,  their  vast  gigantic  ways  too  often  seem  much 
ado  about  nothing. 

In  1862,  the  directorship  of  the  Hamburg  Philharmonic  fell 
vacant,  and  Brahms  was  among  the  handful  considered  for  the 
post.  While  waiting  for  his  fate  to  be  decided,  he  visited  Vienna 
for  the  first  time,  remaining  for  several  months  and  giving  a  num- 
ber of  concerts,  perhaps  believing  that  a  success  there  would  tip 
the  scales  in  his  favor  at  Hamburg.  Success  he  had  in  lavish  meas- 
ure, but  the  careful  conservative  Hamburgers  brushed  aside  the 
claims  of  their  young  townsman — be  it  remembered  that  Brahms 
was  only  twenty-nine — and  chose  his  considerably  older  friend^ 


480  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

Julius  Stockhausen.  It  was  a  strange  choice,  for  Stockhausen  had 
previously  been  known  only  as  a  Heder  singer.  Brahms,  naturally 
disgruntled,  had  his  indignation  fed  by  Joachim  who,  though  a 
friend  of  Stockhausen's,  was  infuriated  by  the  election.  Brahms' 
return  to  Hamburg  was  almost  funereal,  for  besides  having  his 
hopes  dashed,  he  found  his  family  at  sixes  and  sevens.  He  just 
managed  to  patch  up  the  quarrel  between  his  parents  for  a  year, 
when  they  finally  separated.  Altogether,  Hamburg  had  become 
ashes  in  his  mouth,  and  he  desperately  desired  to  go  elsewhere. 
On  his  thirtieth  birthday,  when  the  decrepit  Vienna  Singakademie 
invited  him  to  become  its  director,  he  accepted  with  joy  this  op- 
portunity to  settle  permanently  in  the  city  that  had  seemed  so 
pleasant  to  him  on  his  single  visit.  Although  within  a  year  he  gave 
tip  the  Singakademie  post  as  a  bad  job,  Vienna  remained  his  head- 
quarters for  the  rest  of  his  life. 

The  first  major  work  completed  by  Brahms  after  settling  in 
Vienna  had  a  curious  history.  In  1862,  he  had  written  it  as  a  string 
quintet,  but  had  been  much  dissatisfied  when  the  Joachim  Quartet 
and  an  extra  cellist  played  it  over  for  him.  He  then  revised  it  as  a 
sonata  for  two  pianos,  and  was  even  more  dissatisfied.  Late  in 
1864,  he  again  rescored  it,  this  time  for  piano,  two  violins,  viola, 
and  cello,  and  so,  after  these  almost  unexampled  labor  pains,  the 
famous  F  minor  Piano  Quintet  came  into  the  world.  It  is  possibly 
the  best  of  a  large  group  of  baffling  pieces  that  some  have  not 
hesitated  to  call  the  crown  of  Brahms'  achievement.  In  speaking  of 
his  chamber  music,  Edwin  Evans,  the  English  musicologist,  says 
that  in  it  "Homer  never  nods,"  but  omits  the  pertinent  fact  that 
Brahms  is  never  Homer.  It  is  perfectly  true  that  the  chamber 
works,  from  the  B  major  Piano  Trio  (1853)  to  the  clarinet  sonatas 
(1894),  maintain  a  uniformly  high  level.  But  that  high  level  is 
nevertheless  fax  from  epic  grandeur.  If  you  are  a  really  devout 
Brahmsian — if  the  things  Brahms  says  inevitably  hit  an  answering 
chord  in  your  psyche — then  there  is  hardly  one  of  his  chamber 
pieces  that  will  not  be  a  favorite  of  yours.  But  if  your  criteria  of 
enjoyment  emphasize  the  way  things  are  said,  then  much  of  Brahms' 
chamber  music  may  well  rub  you  the  wrong  way.  It  is  not  that 
Brahms  did  not  know  the  native  speech  of  his  instruments.  But  he 
was  not  infallible.  The  chamber  works  are  one  and  all  spotted  with 
thick,  muddy  passages  that  suggest  not  so  much  lack  of  taste  as 


BRAHMS  481 

actual  insensitivity  to  effect.  It  seems  as  if  Brahms  could  not  al- 
ways hear  in  his  mind  how  the  lines  of  the  separate  instruments 
would  sound  when  played  together.  The  stone-deaf  Beethoven  was 
infinitely  his  superior  in  this  respect. 

A  careful  analysis  of  the  chamber  music  will  show  that  Bernard 
Shaw's  irate  blasting  of  Brahms  as  the  Leviathan  Maunderer  is 
often  justified.  No  matter  how  vigorously  he  starts  out,  he  soon 
enough  settles  back  in  his  chair  and  rambles  on,  often  like  an  old 
man  telling  some  already  twice-told  tale  to  his  cronies.  Too  many 
times  the  voice  becomes  a  drone,  and  it  is  we,  the  listeners,  who 
nod.  Of  course,  Brahms  wakes  us  up  frequently  with  a  fine  com- 
ment made  with  a  master's  finesse.  But  then,  as  like  as  not,  he 
goes  on  reminiscing,  forgetful  of  the  hourglass.  For  Brahms5  sense 
of  timing  when  writing  in  large  forms  was  as  deficient  as  Beetho- 
ven's was  perfect.  The  F  minor  Piano  Quintet  is  an  exemplar  of 
the  best  and  worst  in  Brahms'  chamber  music.  It  opens  with  a 
broad  and  eloquent  declamation  that  seems  to  promise  a  move- 
ment of  spacious  architectural  solidity.  This  really  develops.  The 
movement  is  half  over,  in  fact,  before  it  slowly  but  surely  collapses. 
A  countertheme  would  have  saved  it  (supposing  it  had  to  be  as 
long  as  it  is),  but  nothing  deserving  that  name  ever  appears.  The 
second  movement  also  has  a  beautiful  opening  theme,  rather  like 
a  lullaby,  which  Brahms  treats  with  embarrassing  sugariness.  The 
scherzo  is  the  weakest  section  of  the  quintet:  for  all  its  brevity,  it  is 
monotonous.  The  finale  is  diffuse,  allusive,  and  thoroughly  inept 
for  ending  a  work  of  large  proportions,  The  F  minor  Quintet  has 
many  noble  moments,  but  they,  in  the  final  analysis,  only  empha- 
size defects  that  far  outweigh  them. 

In  all,  Brahms  composed  two  dozen  chamber  works,  seven  of 
them  duet  sonatas  and  the  rest  for  three  or  more  instruments.  A 
sextet  in  G  major  written  about  the  same  time  as  the  Piano  Quin- 
tet is  of  peculiar  biographical  interest.  Of  it  Brahms  said  earnestly 
to  a  friend:  "In  this  I  have  freed  myself  of  my  last  love."  One  of  the 
themes  is  built  on  the  sequence  A-G-A-D-E,  and  so  refers  to  a  cer- 
tain Agathe  von  Siebold,  who  had  a  small  slice  of  Brahms'  heart 
for  rather  more  than  a  year.  He  had  come  across  her  in  Gottingen 
in  1858.  It  is  not  clear  why  he  was  attracted  to  her:  Agathe  was  a 
plain-featured  young  woman  of  slight  charm.  Perhaps  he  merely 
fell  in  love  with  the  way  she  sang  his  songs.  At  any  rate,  he  was 


MEN    OF    MUSIC 

soon  writing  more  of  them  just  for  her,  and  what  Clara  Schumann 
saw  of  their  relationship  was  enough  to  make  her  jealous.  Despite 
this,  they  exchanged  rings,  and  the  girl  seems  to  have  considered 
herself  betrothed  to  Brahms.  When  a  common  friend  chided  him 
for  keeping  Agathe  dangling,  Brahms  wrote  her  a  passionate  love 
letter  with  the  news  that  he  longed  to  hold  her  in  his  arms,  but 
could  not  consider  marriage.  This  paradox  was  too  much  for 
Agathe,  who,  moreover,  was  thoroughly  respectable.  Five  years 
later,  as  a  final  salving  of  his  conscience,  Brahms  composed  a 
tribute  to  her  in  the  G  major  Sextet.  This  tepid  romance  was  prob- 
ably the  closest  he  ever  came  to  marrying,  but  it  was  by  no  means 
the  last  of  his  heart  flutterings.  One  of  his  most  famous  songs — the 
Wiegenlied — was  dedicated  to  a  former  inamorata  on  the  birth  of 
her  second  child. 

With  all  his  friends,  Brahms  suffered  from  loneliness,  which  he 
combated  by  frequent  travel.  Besides  professional  touring  as  far 
afield  as  Budapest,  he  roamed  the  resort  towns  of  Germany,  Aus- 
tria, and  Switzerland,  and  in  later  life  often  visited  Italy,  which  he 
came  to  love.  An  innate  dislike  of  all  things  French  and  English 
made  the  Rhine  the  barrier  of  his  westward  wanderings,  and  he 
took  no  pains  to  conceal  his  ungracious  attitude  toward  those  na- 
tions. From  about  1857  on,  Brahms  was  free  of  financial  worry, 
for  his  music  was  selling  well,  and  he  could  easily  afford  to  indulge 
his  taste  for  summer  rambling,  particularly  as  his  scale  of  living 
was  simple.  After  resigning  the  direction  of  the  Singakademie  in 
1864,  he  went  to  Baden-Baden  to  spend  the  season  with  Clara 
Schumann  and  her  family.  There  he  met  Turgeniev,  with  whom  he 
discussed  plans  for  an  opera,  which  fortunately  (for  Brahms  was 
anything  but  a  dramatic  composer)  remained  at  the  discussion 
stage.  His  mother  died  the  following  year,  and  he  had  the  tough 
assignment  of  getting  his  father  to  the  funeral.  Although  pro- 
foundly affected  by  this  loss,  he  accepted  his  father's  remarriage, 
a  few  months  later,  with  cheerful  equanimity,  and  even  grew  very 
fond  of  his  stepmother  and  her  crippled  son. 

It  has  often  been  carelessly  said  that  the  death  of  his  mother  led 
Brahms  to  compose  Ein  deutsches  Requiem.  The  facts  are  actually 
these:  he  had  begun  it  years  earlier,  while  still  affected  by  Schu- 
mann's death,  and  had  worked  at  it  sporadically.  By  1867,  the  six 
sections  of  the  work  as  originally  projected  were  finished,  and  the 


BRAHMS  483 

first  three  were  given  at  Vienna  on  December  i.  The  performance 
was  rowdy  rather  than  reverent,  the  audience  hissed,  and  for  a 
time  Brahms  was  in  eclipse.  On  Good  Friday  of  1868,  all  six  sec- 
tions were  produced  so  well  at  Bremen  that  the  Requiem  was  im- 
mediately established  as  an  important  work.  It  was  not  until  this 
year  that  Brahms  wrote  a  new  section  for  soprano  solo  to  com- 
memorate his  mother;  this  is  now  the  fifth  part  of  the  Requiem. 
The  whole  work  was  finally  sung  under  the  happiest  auspices  at 
the  Gewandhaus  on  February  18,  1869,  under  the  baton  of  the 
careful  Karl  Reinecke,  a  friend  of  Schumann  and  Mendelssohn. 
It  was  soon  popular  throughout  Germany.,  and  was  the  first  large 
composition  by  Brahms  to  achieve  world-wide  fame. 

Em  deutsches  Requiem  is  scored  for  chorus.,  soloists,  and  orchestra, 
with  organ  ad  libitum.  It  is  not  a  Requiem  in  the  traditional  sense: 
that  is,  it  does  not  follow  the  specific  liturgical  text  of  a  Requiem 
Mass.  It  is  a  Protestant  work  built  on  words  chosen  by  Brahms 
himself  from  the  German  Bible,  which  he  knew  intimately  from 
cover  to  cover.  The  outstanding  musical  feature  of  this  vast  work 
is  that  it  is  a  veritable  compendium  of  technical  effects.  Every 
contrapuntal  resource  is  laid  under  contribution,  often  to  excess, 
chiefly  in  certain  fugal  passages,  which  though  marvels  on  paper 
are  confusing  in  performance.  Here,  again,  Brahms  draws  out  some 
of  his  best  effects  to  the  point  of  boredom.  The  result  is  a  general 
amorphousness  that  is  not  sufficiently  compensated  for  by  many 
passages  of  real  beauty.  The  whole  Requiem  is  instinct  with  earnest- 
ness, with  a  genuine  reverence  for  the  sacred  texts  that  makes  one 
wish  the  results  were  better.  Yet  the  total  effect  is  one  of  noble 
dreariness.  There  are  factors  quite  independent  of  Brahms*  mu- 
sical limitations  that  had  their  part  in  flawing  the  Requiem.  No 
soul-lifting  faith  in  the  transcendental  aspects  of  religion  shines 
from  it.  Brahms  had  no  such  faith.  At  best,  he  had  a  homely  re- 
spect for  the  Good  Book.  He  repeatedly  stated,  for  instance,  that 
he  had  no  belief  in  life  after  death.  Without  absolutely  echoing  the 
brash  Shaw  of  the  early  nineties,  who  said  that  listening  to  the 
Requiem  was  a  sacrifice  that  should  be  asked  of  a  man  only  once  in 
his  life,  it  may  be  said  that  the  reputation  of  this  interminable 
work  is,  among  critics,  justifiably  waning — with  no  especial  loss  to 
Brahms'  position.  Perhaps  quite  the  contrary. 

During  the  very  years  Brahms  was  toiling  over  the  completion 


484  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

of  this  solemn  monument,  he  tossed  off  several  groups  of  small 
pieces  that  have  done  more  service  to  his  reputation  among  music 
lovers  than  a  dozen  Requiems  would  have.  The  sixteen  waltzes  for 
piano  duet,  now  more  familiar  as  solos,  are  among  the  most  sure- 
fire encore  music  ever  composed.  They  are  delicious  little  master- 
pieces, deceptively  simple  and  engagingly  unpretentious,  yet  made 
with  exquisite  care  and  subtlety.  The  A  flat  major  Waltz  shares 
with  the  Wiegenlied  top  popularity  among  Brahms'  original  com- 
positions. His  arrangements  of  twenty-one  Hungarian  Dances,  the 
first  two  books  of  which  were  issued  as  piano  duets  in  1869,  were, 
however,  the  earliest  of  his  compositions  to  gain  a  large  popular 
audience.  He  was  the  first  composer  who  ever  became  comfortably 
well  off  from  the  sale  of  his  music  alone,  and  the  widespread  de- 
mand for  certain  of  the  Hungarian  Dances  was  the  foundation  of 
his  not  inconsiderable  fortune.  Three  years  later,  he  published 
piano-solo  arrangements  of  the  first  two  books,  and  these,  with 
Joachim's  versions  for  violin  and  piano,  added  still  further  to  their 
popularity.  In  1880,  Brahms  issued  the  third  and  fourth  books  for 
piano  duet.  Although  these  pieces  are  also  heard  as  solos,  they  are 
not  his  own  arrangements.  Nor  are  the  many  orchestral  transcrip- 
tions usually  Brahms*  own:  he  orchestrated  only  three  of  them — • 
the  first,  third,  and  tenth.  No  matter  how  he  issued  them,  he  was 
careful  to  say  that  the  Hungarian  Dances  were  merely  "arranged 
by  Johannes  Brahms,"  though  a  few  of  the  melodies  were  his  own. 
This  scrupulousness  did  not  avert  charges  of  plagiarism  by  Remenyi 
and  others.  Brahms'  publisher  issued  a  pamphlet  containing  the 
facts  in  the  case,  but  the  composer  himself  held  aloof  from  the 
unsavory  mess.  He  was  content  to  have  enriched  the  repertoire 
with  these  clever,  vibrant,  and  rhythmically  vigorous  dances, 
whose  popularity  to  this  day  is  undiminished. 

Despite  his  increasingly  comfortable  circumstances,  Brahms  con- 
tinued to  take  a  few  pupils.  In  1863,  a  beautiful  young  girl  had 
come  to  study  with  him,  and  soon  a  warm  sympathy  had  sprung 
up  between  him  and  the  engaging  and  talented  Elisabeth  von 
Stockhausen,  who  was  clever  and  understanding  beyond  her  years. 
Brahms  was  so  taken  with  her  that  he  eventually  had  to  dismiss  her 
as  a  pupil,  but  this  discreet  step  did  not  end  their  friendship.  Even 
when  she  married  Baron  Heinrich  von  Herzogenberg,  an  Austrian 
pianist-composer,  she  and  Brahms  continued  to  correspond,  and 


BRAHMS  485 

were  often  together.  Until  her  death  in  1892,  she  was  something 
like  an  Aspasia  to  him,  dividing  with  Clara  Schumann  the  role  of 
chief  critic  and  trusted  confidante.  Had  Brahms  been  the  marrying 
sort,  there  seems  little  doubt  that  he  would  have  chosen  Elisabeth 
von  Stockhausen,  and  that  she  would  have  accepted  him. 

Less  happy  in  its  outcome  was  Brahms'  sudden  and  intense  in- 
fatuation for  Julie  Schumann,  Clara's  daughter.  This  flared  up  in 
1869,  and  was  crushingly  squelched  by  unanticipated  news  of  her 
engagement  to  an  Italian  nobleman.  What  we  know  of  Julie  Schu- 
mann suggests  a  less  sympathetic  personality  than  Elisabeth  von 
Herzogenberg,  and  it  may  well  be  that  the  basis  of  Brahms'  pas- 
sion was  her  strong  physical  resemblance  to  her  mother.  That  he 
was  easily  resigned  to  losing  her  is  evident  from  Ms  remark  when 
he  first  heard  of  her  betrothal:  "Now  it  merely  remains  to  compose 
a  bridal  song."  That  it  was  Indeed  passion  he  felt  toward  her  is 
just  as  evident  from  the  note  to  his  publisher  that  accompanied  the 
score  of  the  "Alto"  Rhapsody:  "Here  I  have  written  a  bridal  song 
for  the  Schumann  Countess — but  I  do  this  sort  of  thing  with  con- 
cealed wrath — with  rage!" 

There  is  no  bitterness  in  the  "Alto"  Rhapsody,  though  the  lines 
from  Goethe's  Harzreise  im  Winter  would  justify  it.  There  is,  rather, 
a  serenity,  a  deep  hopefulness  tinged  with  melancholy,  that  is  ex- 
quisitely appropriate  for  a  young  woman's  epithalamium.  The 
unusual  scoring — alto  voice,  male  chorus,  and  orchestra — has  kept 
this  simple,  heartfelt,  and  altogether  engaging  music  from  being 
easily  accessible  to  a  public  that  would  almost  certainly  be  at- 
tracted to  it.  Much  the  same  factor  has  kept  the  gay  and  brightly 
colored  Liebesliederwalzer — scored  for  piano  duet  and  mixed  vocal 
quartet — from  being  heard  often  in  their  original  form.  Composed 
about  the  same  time  as  the  restrained,  almost  monochromatic 
"Alto"  Rhapsody,  the  Liebesliederwalzer  are  the  most  truly  "Vien- 
nese" of  all  Brahms3  compositions,  and  seem  to  pay  tribute  to 
Johann  Strauss,  whom  he  greatly  admired,  and  whose  excellent 
band  he  often  went  to  hear. 

Brahms,  though  domiciled  in  the  Austrian  capital,  was  never  a 
true  Viennese.  He  remained,  to  all  intents  and  purposes,  a  north 
German,  and  his  deep,  abiding,  but  rather  uncritical  patriotism 
was  German  to  the  core.  Because  of  his  youth  and  Hamburg's 
isolation  from  the  centers  of  discontent,  he  had  been  unaffected  by 


MEN    OF    MUSIC 

the  revolutionary  upheaval  of  1848-9.  But  the  Franco-Prussian 
War  stirred  him  profoundly.  He  was  resolved  to  volunteer  imme- 
diately if  the  Prussians  suffered  a  major  setback,  and  he  followed 
the  daily  course  of  the  war  with  avid  interest.  A  portrait  of  Bis- 
marck long  remained  the  only  nonmusical  decoration  of  his  rooms 
— he  worshiped  the  Iron  Chancellor  and  execrated  Napoleon  III 
as  an  archfiend.  Fortunately  for  music,  if  not  for  humanity,  the 
Prussians  won  the  war,  and  even  as  early  as  Sedan,  Brahms  was 
moved  to  compose  a  pompous  Triumphlied  for  eight-part  chorus 
and  orchestra,  with  organ  ad  libitum.  Dedicated  to  Kaiser  Wil- 
helrn  I,  it  is  a  worthless  piece  of  jingoism  that  is  best  forgotten. 

In  the  summer  of  1871,  Brahms  was  again  at  Baden-Baden, 
where  he  first  became  friendly  with  Von  Bulow,  though  he  had 
actually  known  him  for  many  years.  Von  Bulow  was  among  those 
who  had  sneered  at  the  %eitschrift  article  about  Brahms,  whom  he 
was  at  first  inclined  to  regard  as  just  another  of  Schumann's  Stern- 
dale  Bennetts.  In  1871,  despite  all  he  had  suffered  at  Wagner's 
hands,  Von  Billow  was  still  in  bondage  to  the  Wagner-Liszt  group. 
But  he  was  favorably  impressed  by  Brahms,  and  within  a  decade 
was,  as  pianist  and  conductor,  to  become  the  official  chief  of  the 
Brahmsians. 

In  February,  1872,  Johann  Jakob  Brahms  died,  leaving  his  wife 
and  stepson  in  Johannes'  care.  This  duty  he  interpreted  gener- 
ously. His  father's  death  drew  him  more  closely  to  the  widow,  and 
he  remained  on  the  most  intimate  terms  with  her  for  the  rest  of 
his  jife — far  more  intimate,  indeed,  than  with  his  own  brother  and 
sister,  neither  of  whom  he  liked.  Fortunately,  money  was  no  prob- 
lem to  him,  and  in  the  fall,  his  circumstances  improved  still  fur- 
ther, when  he  was  appointed  to  succeed  Anton  Rubinstein  as 
director  of  the  Gesellschaft  der  Musikfreunde,  far  and  away  the 
best  of  Vienna's  choral  organizations.  The  Gesellschaft  found  their 
new  chief  a  strict  and  rather  terrifying  taskmaster,  and  it  is  evi- 
dent that  his  severity  of  taste  was  not  altogether  palatable  to  the 
members  of  the  chorus.  As  Roman  Catholics,  they  were  a  little 
bewildered  by  the  Protestant  music  of  Bach  and  Handel,  but 
Brahms'  three  years'  tenure  of  office  was  in  the  main  beneficial  to 
their  morale  and  standard  of  taste. 

More  than  fifteen  years  had  passed  since  Brahms  had  completed 
a  purely  orchestral  composition.  In  1873,  while  summering  at  the 


BRAHMS  487 

beautiful  lakeside  resort  of  Tutzing  in  the  Bavarian  Alps,  he  began 
and  finished  what  some  have  pronounced  his  most  consistently  suc- 
cessful orchestral  work — the  Variations  on  a  Theme  by  Josef  Hajdn. 
Brahms  had  found  the  theme  in  some  recently  unearthed  manu- 
script material — incidentally,  it  is  by  no  means  certain  that  it  was 
Haydn's  to  begin  with.  The  fact  that  the  theme  was  labeled 
Chorale  St.  Antoni  [sic]  led  Brahms5  first  biographer  to  interpret  the 
"Haydn"  Variations  as  something  so  Lisztian  as  scenes  from  St. 
Anthony's  temptations.  Whether  or  not  Brahms  had  a  struggle 
between  good  and  evil  in  mind  when  he  wrote  them  (which,  to 
say  the  least,  seems  unlike  him),  they  stand  in  no  need  of  a  pro- 
gram. The  theme  is  an  attractive  one,  square  and  \igorous,  and 
quite  as  well  suited  for  comment  as  that  of  the  "Handel"  Varia- 
tions. In  the  eight  variations  and  finale,  Brahms  sets  the  orchestra 
ablaze  in  a  manner  quite  unusual  for  him,  with  masterly  efficiency 
using  every  color  resource  of  his  enlarged  band,  with  its  extra 
horns,  trumpets,  and  kettledrums. 

The  "Haydn"  Variations  are  almost  as  compendious  in  their 
musical  erudition  as  the  "Paganini"  set  for  piano,  but  are  utterly 
free  from  any  pedantic  or  artificial  feeling.  Again  Brahms  inter- 
prets the  variation  in  the  freest  way,  and  again  it  sets  Ms  imagina- 
tion free.  Yet,  the  total  effect  is  one  of  almost  incredible  unity,  of 
absolutely  satisfying  form.  The  music  is  joyful  and  (what  is  even 
rarer  in  Brahms)  frankly  sensuous.  The  whole  composition  is  ir- 
radiated by  a  kind  of  luminous  sanity.  This  does  not  mean  that  the 
coloring  and  mood  are  always  bright:  they  are  actually  sometimes 
dark  and  somber.  But  when  the  wind  choir  reiterates  the  theme 
triumphantly  at  the  close  of  the  finale,  it  is  with  no  mere  unimagi- 
native smugness.  If  the  "Haydn"  Variations  can  be  made  to  sym- 
bolize anything,  it  is  Brahms  the  man  accepting  all  human  experi- 
ence as  his  province.  It  is  a  rare  view,  and  may  not  be  entirely 
welcome  to  those  who  prefer  their  Brahms  dispensing  an  unleav- 
ened brand  of  thick  Teutonic  philosophy.  Yet  there  is  no  doubt 
that  the  "Haydn"  Variations  brought  him  his  first  triumph  as  an 
orchestral  composer,  and  that  even  the  critics  who  had  snubbed 
his  D  minor  Piano  Concerto  echoed  the  enthusiasm  with  which 
Vienna  greeted  the  Variations  when  they  were  first  played  on 
November  2,  1873.  Today  they  stand  in  the  shadow  of  the  more 
pretentious  symphonies,  but  they  are  played  often  enough  to  give 


488  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

us  a  chance  to  realize  how  great  Brahms  could  be  when  his  crea- 
tive powers  were  unhindered  by  a  hankering  alter  a  traditional 
formalism  he  was  destined  never  to  master. 

The  salutary  effects  on  Brahms  of  not  having  to  conform  to  the 
restrictions  of  the  sonata  form  are  illustrated  most  clearly  in  his 
more  than  two  hundred  songs,  written  over  practically  the  entire 
span  of  his  creative  life.  The  best  of  these  are  exceedingly  fine, 
and  it  may  seem  strange  that  only  one — the  flawless  V/iegenlied 
( 1 868) — has  attained  that  thoroughly  universal  popularity  which  so 
many  of  Schubert's  songs,  and  not  a  few  of  Schumann's,  enjoy. 
But  a  moment's  reflection  will  reveal  the  reason.  They  are  without 
the  feckless  spontaneity,  the  effortless  melody  of  Schubert,  and 
also  lack  that  profoundly  sympathetic  understanding  of  the  poetic 
line  that  informs  the  best  of  Schumann's  songs.  Brahms  is  often 
positively  insensitive  to  the  precise  rhythmic  demands  of  his  text, 
to  such  an  extent  that  singers  are  sometimes  forced  to  mispronounce 
words  in  order  to  do  justice  to  the  musical  beat.  In  this  he  affords 
an  instructive  contrast  to  Hugo  Wolf,  who  at  times  went  to  the 
opposite  extreme  of  sacrificing  purity  of  musical  contour  to  an 
ironclad  reverence  for  the  poetic  meter.  Although  most  of  Brahms' 
songs  are  love  songs,  they  sing  of,  or  comment  upon,  what  seems  a 
rather  passionless  love — they  are  reflective,  nostalgic,  pessimistic, 
even  aloof.  Almost  without  exception,  they  lack  drama.  One  of  the 
most  dramatic — Vergebliches  Stdndchen — is  cast  in  an  innocuously 
light  mood.  We  are  left  to  gather  that  for  the  most  part  Brahms  was 
afraid  to  touch  the  heavier  emotions.  The  intensely  passionate  Von 
ewiger  Liebe  is  not  Brahms  at  his  most  characteristic,  but  it  is  his 
greatest  song. 

Most  of  Brahms'  songs  are  of  high  musical  interest  quite  apart 
from  their  relation  to  their  texts.  Looked  at  merely  as  a  fusion  of 
melody,  harmony,  and  rhythm,  such  a  song  as  the  Sapphische  Ode 
is  a  beautiful  and  moving  piece  of  music.  It  would  be  just  as  effec- 
tive written  to  another  set  of  words.  Not  a  few  of  Brahms'  happiest 
melodic  inspirations  are  to  be  found  in  his  son^s,  and  invariably 
they  are  handled  with  tact  and  finesse.  Even  when  the  results  are 
not  very  good  as  songs,  they  are  still  good  Brahms — fine  music- 
making.  The  songs  point  up  a  salient  peculiarity  in  his  creative 
gift:  it  is  as  though  he  had  at  his  command  a  splendid  treasury  of 
the  raw  materials  of  music,  and  apportioned  it  more  or  less  indis- 


BRAHMS  489 

criminately  among  his  compositions  in  various  media.  In  short,  he 
seems  rarely  to  have  performed  the  only  inevitable  marriage  be- 
tween medium  and  material,  and  to  have  used  whatever  was  bub- 
bling up  at  the  moment  in  whatever  sort  of  composition  he  was 
working  on.  Constant  Lambert  has  well  said  of  Brahms  that  with 
him  "the  creation  of  musical  material  and  its  subsequent  treat- 
ment appear  to  be  two  separate  mental  processes.'5  This  discrep- 
ancy prevents  all  but  a  handful  of  Brahms'  songs  from  being  the 
total  successes  they  might  have  been  had  he  asked  himself  con- 
stantly what  the  nature  of  song  actually  is. 

Except  for  songs  and  choral  pieces,  Brahms  published  little  dur- 
ing his  years  as  director  of  the  Gesellschaft  der  Musikfreunde.  This 
is  the  best  evidence  that  he  took  his  job  seriously  and  performed 
his  duties  conscientiously.  It  is  impossible  to  guess  what  a  pro- 
longed tenure  of  this  exacting  position  would  have  done  to  his 
career  as  a  composer,  but  the  nature  of  most  of  his  compositions 
completed  during  these  years  does  suggest  that  he  might  have  been 
permanently  sidetracked.  The  ostensible  reason  for  his  resignation 
in  1875  was  that  he  was  annoyed  by  the  machinations  of  one  of  his 
predecessors,  who  was  plotting  to  get  the  directorship  back.  Actu- 
ally, Brahms  must  have  left  official  life  with  relief,  for  great  proj- 
ects were  pressing  for  completion,  and  he  needed  leisure  to  carry 
them  out.  For  years  he  had  been  at  work  on  a  symphony.  He  was 
now  forty-two  years  old,  and  it  was  still  incomplete.  Within  little 
more  than  a  year  after  leaving  the  Gesellschaft,  he  had  finished 
the  First  Symphony  and  sketched  the  Second.  He  was  feverishly  at 
work  when,  in  1876,  he  was  invited  by  Cambridge  University  to 
visit  England  to  receive  an  honorary  doctorate  of  music.  Brahms 
refused  to  go.  He  said  that  he  disliked  "concerts  and  other  dis- 
turbances"; his  friends  said  that  he  hated  the  English  and  feared 
the  sea.  The  most  likely  explanation  of  his  rather  churlish  refusal 
(which  he  repeated  in  1892)  was  that  he  was  too  pressed  to  take 
time  off.  At  any  rate,  that  same  summer  saw  the  completion  of  the 
First  Symphony.  Within  a  decade  he  had  put  the  finishing  touches 
to  his  Fourth  and  last. 

Brahms'  four  symphonies  are  the  most  eloquent  and  decisive 
commentary  on  the  prophecy  contained  in  Schumann's  ^eitschrift 
article,  assuming  that  in  hailing  Brahms  as  the  "Messiah  of  music 
...  he  who  was  to  come,"  Schumann  meant  the  successor  of  the 


49°  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

great  classical  masters,  specifically  Beethoven.  Color  is  lent  to  this 
interpretation  by  Schumann's  own  growing  classical  bent  in  the 
last  years  of  his  life.  There  is  no  doubt  that  Brahms  took  Schu- 
mann's incautious  words  with  grave  seriousness,  and  throughout 
his  career  endeavored  to  fill  the  role  in  which  Schumann  (rather 
than  his  own  innate  tendencies)  had  cast  him.  Although  he  never 
postured  as  a  great  master,  Brahms  felt  his  mission  confirmed  when 
Von  Biilow  pronounced  his  First  Symphony  "Beethoven's  Tenth.'9 
Von  Bulow  set  a  style:  devoted  Brahmsians  almost  inevitably  refer 
to  the  four  symphonies  as  "the  greatest  since  Beethoven."  Anti- 
Brahmsians  and  middle-of-the-road  admirers  unite  in  pointing  out 
that  it  is  precisely  in  the  symphonies  that  Brahms  failed  most 
signally  to  measure  up  to  the  demands  of  the  larger  classical  forms. 
That  Brahms  viewed  the  writing  of  a  symphony  with  more  than 
ordinary  apprehension  is  indicated  by  the  chronology  of  his  or- 
chestral work.  He  had  published  two  serenades  of  quasi-symphonic 
scope,  a  large  piano  concerto,  and  the  "Haydn"  Variations  before 
completing  a  symphony  on  which  he  had  been  at  work  for  almost 
twenty  years.  Begun  in  Brahms'  early  twenties,  the  C  minor  Sym- 
phony is  nevertheless  by  no  means  a  youthful  work.  It  represents  a 
considered  whipping  into  shape  by  a  fully  matured  man.  It  is 
unfortunate  that  we  have  no  revealing  notebooks  to  show  us  the 
early  ideas  out  of  which,  twenty  years  later,  Brahms  evolved  this 
symphony.  Certainly,  as  it  stands,  the  C  minor  has  had  any  young 
quality  taken  out  of  it.  It  is  predominantly  a  dour  work  and,  ex- 
cept for  the  introduction  to  the  first  movement  and  the  finale, 
could  be  interpreted  as  the  last  composition  of  an  embittered  old 
man.  The  introduction  is  an  effective  swirl  of  nebula — music  of 
enchanting  loveliness  in  itself.  Its  presence  needs  no  excuse,  but 
its  function  is  problematical.  If  out  of  it  rose  the  vigorous  germina- 
tive  themes  essential  to  the  construction  of  a  recognizable  sym- 
phony, it  might  seem  as  much  a  stroke  of  architectural  genius  as 
the  sublime  adagio  introduction  to  Mozart's  E  flat  Symphony. 
But  nothing  of  this  sort  takes  place.  Instead,  the  invertebrate  na- 
ture of  the  introduction  pervades  the  first  three  movements.  Sud- 
denly, in  the  finale,  Brahms  hits  upon  a  truly  energizing  first  theme, 
about  which  it  might  be  carping  to  say  that  it  is  in  part  lifted  from 
the  choral  finale  to  Beethoven's  Ninth  Symphony  were  it  not  for 
the  fact  that  zealots  of  the  Brahms  cult  make  such  a  point  of  re- 


BRAHMS  491 

peating  the  master's  famous  growl  when  someone  mentioned  this 
resemblance:  "Any  fool  can  see  that!"  The  point  is  that  this  strong 
Beethovian  theme,  whether  hit  upon  by  accident  or  purposely,  is 
just  the  right  sort  of  material  on  which  to  erect  a  soundly  con- 
structed symphonic  movement.  This  Brahms  proceeds  to  do  with 
complete  success.  But  it  must  be  said  that  a  triumphant  conclusion 
— almost  a  swift  victory  march — after  three  vast  movements  of 
transitional  music  produces  an  odd  effect. 

The  Second  Symphony,  the  most  cheerful  of  Brahms'  larger 
compositions,  is  attractively  bucolic  in  nature.  It  has  often  been 
called  his  "Pastoral"  Symphony,  but  the  implied  comparison  must 
not  be  strained.  The  D  major  contains,  in  fact,  better  music  than 
Beethoven's  Sixth,  but  is  not  so  well  constructed.  Also,  program- 
matic effects  were  foreign  to  Brahms'  Dorian  conception  of  sym- 
phonic dignity.  The  scoring  is  light  and  clear.  The  instrumentation 
is,  for  Brahms,  unusually  transparent — free  of  the  sluggish  turgidity 
that  so  often  clogs  the  machinery  in  his  other  symphonies,  and 
sometimes  makes  them  difficult  to  follow.  The  circumstances  of  the 
composition  of  the  D  major  Symphony — it  was  composed  during 
the  summer  of  1877,  on  the  shores  of  the  Worthersee,  a  beautiful 
Austrian  lake — doubtless  have  much  to  do  with  its  spontaneous 
quality.  Two  of  Brahms'  most  seductive  melodies  appear  in  the 
first  and  third  movements  respectively,  and  the  whole  is  liberally 
sprinkled  with  delights.  The  entire  allegretto  enjoys  a  popularity 
of  its  own:  it  is,  after  all,  much  like  a  theme  and  variations,  and 
naturally  Brahms  is  at  his  happiest  in  it.  As  a  suite  of  attractive 
symphonic  effects,  the  D  major  is  not  surpassed  by  Brahms'  other 
symphonies,  but  even  more  than  the  others,  it  lacks  the  perfectly 
achieved  cohesiveness  that  is  the  hallmark  of  a  true  symphony. 

In  1883,  Brahms  composed  a  third  symphony,  and  began  to 
sketch  a  fourth.  The  first  of  these,  in  F  major,  is  the  shortest  of  all 
his  symphonies,  but  often  seems  the  longest  because  of  its  heroic 
cast  and  grandiosity.  A  few  attentive  listenings  to  it  should  dispel 
forever  the  notion  that  Brahms  is  essentially  a  classical  composer. 
It  begins  with  a  burst  of  romantic  virtuosity,  and  is  steeped  through- 
out in  an  almost  Schumannesque  romanticism.  In  the  first  two 
movements,  Brahms  seems  to  be  speaking  in  propria  persona,  a  per- 
suasive romantic  poet  uninhibited  by  any  sense  of  duty  to  the 
great  classical  dead.  The  breathless  flow  of  melodic  beauty  is  noth- 


492  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

ing  short  of  intoxicating,  and  momentarily,  at  least,  we  scarcely 
care  that  we  are  listening  to  a  free  fantasia  rather  than  to  a  sym- 
phony. After  these  heroic  draughts,  the  third  and  fourth  move- 
ments are  tepid  and  unadventurous.  The  skeleton  in  Brahms' 
closet  is  indeed  neoclassicism — a  very  self-conscious  neoclassicism — 
and  its  bones  rattle  throughout  the  andante  and  the  allegro.  In  no 
other  large  work  is  the  descent  from  mountain  to  plain  made  so 
rapidly.  The  idiom  suddenly  becomes  harsh  and  monotonous,  the 
melodic  line  studied.  The  whole  symphony  sags,  and  in  trying  to 
find  distinction  for  this  industrious  classicizing  Brahms  descends  to 
real  ugliness  in  his  orchestration.  Had  Richard  Strauss  concocted 
some  of  this,  we  should  say  that  he  was  orchestrating  a  sandbank, 
and  compliment  him  for  doing  it  perfectly.  The  last  half  of  the 
F  major  Symphony  has  given  those  critics  who  make  a  specialty  of 
judging  a  composer  by  his  lapses  something  to  hold  on  to:  from  it, 
more  than  from  anything  else,  has  come  Brahms'  reputation  as  a 
harsh  melodist  and  a  muddy  orchestrator. 

Brahms  lived  to  be  almost  sixty-four  years  old,  but  he  finished 
his  last  symphony  when  he  was  only  fifty-two.  In  many  respects, 
the  E  minor  is  the  most  remarkable  of  the  four,  just  as  it  is  the  least 
conventional.  In  movement  sequence  it  violates  some  of  the  most 
time-honored  canons  of  the  symphonic  form:  it  begins  with  an 
allegro,  moves  on  to  an  andante,  then  to  another  allegro,  and  ends 
with  a  third  allegro,  energico  e  passionate,  that  is  actually  a  pas- 
lacaglia — a  theme  and  variations  in  triple  time.  It  begins  and  ends 
tragically,  violating  another  supposed  rule  that  even  a  tragic  sym- 
phony must  close  on  a  yea.  Be  it  said  that  Brahms'  innovations  are, 
in  themselves,  completely  successful,  and  that  none  of  his  other  sym- 
phonies so  consistently  holds  the  attention  as  the  Fourth.  It  is 
unquestionably  one  of  the  sovereign  works  for  orchestra,  never  for 
a  moment  devoid  of  great  melodic  inspiration,  and  orchestrated 
sensitively,  sometimes  brilliantly.  Coming  after  the  spacious  but 
mysterious  and  darkly  questioning  first  movement,  the  melan- 
choly, tender  andante,  and  the  robust  good-humored  allegro  gio- 
coso,  the  majestic  passacaglia,  with  the  mind-dazzling  variety  of 
its  thirty  variations  and  finale,  is  as  inspired  a  conception  as  the 
grand  fugue  of  the  "Handel"  Variations. 

The  First  Symphony,  which  had  its  premiere  at  Karlsruhe  on 
November  4,  1876,  under  the  listless  baton  of  Felix  Dessoff,  was 


BRAHMS  493 

received  indifferently,  even  by  some  of  Brahms'  stanchest  parti- 
sans. Nor  did  Brahms'  own  conducting  of  it  later  help  matters 
much.  Hanslick,  who  was  rapidly  assuming  leadership  of  the  pro- 
Brahms  bloc  of  critics,  found  it  "difficult."  That  Brahms  took 
Hanslick's  attitude  to  heart  may  be  gathered  from  a  letter  he  wrote 
him  the  following  year:  "In  the  course  of  the  winter  I  will  let  you 
hear  a  symphony  which  sounds  so  cheerful  and  delightful  that  you 
will  think  I  wrote  it  specially  for  you,  or  rather  for  your  young 
wife."  This  time  the  mighty  Hans  Bichter  was  entrusted  with  the 
conducting,  and  the  band  was  the  Vienna  Philharmonic.  The  re- 
sponse to  the  first  hearing,  on  December  30,  1877,  cheered  Brahms 
immensely,  particularly  as  the  D  major  was  always  one  of  his 
favorites.  Not  only  Hanslick,  but  a  wide  public,  was  won  over,  and 
Brahms'  reputation  as  a  promising  symphonist  dates  from  the  pre~ 
mure  of  the  Second  Symphony. 

With  two  symphonies  for  the  critics  and  the  public  to  ponder, 
Brahms  felt  that  he  was  entitled  to  a  real  vacation.  With  his  Zurich 
friend,  Dr.  Theodor  Billroth,  and  the  composer  Goldmark,  he  set 
out,  in  April,  1878,  for  the  first  of  his  eight  Italian  tours.  Although 
he  had  a  much-needed  rest  from  composing,  and  conceived  a  deep 
and  lasting  love  for  Italy,  the  trip  was,  in  some  respects,  unsatis- 
factory. It  lasted  but  a  few  weeks  and  was  conducted  in  rush 
tempo:  evidently  the  friends  "did"  the  sights  all  the  way  to  Sicily 
in  the  most  approved  tourist  fashion.  This  sort  of  mad  scramble 
got  on  Brahms5  nerves,  and  he  was  further  depressed  by  a  meeting 
with  his  godchild,  Felix  Schumann,  who  was  dying  a  consump- 
tive's death  in  Palermo.  Under  the  circumstances,  he  was  glad  to 
get  back  home,  though  with  the  resolve  to  resume  his  Italian 
travels  as  soon  as  possible. 

For  some  years  Brahms  had  intended  to  compose  a  violin  con' 
certo  for  Joachim,  and  during  the  summer  of  1878,  having  re- 
turned to  the  Worthersee,  did  so.  Joachim  naturally  introduced  it, 
at  the  Gewandhaus,  on  New  Year's  Day,  1879.  The  public  reac^ 
tion  was  cold,  and  it  took  years  of  proselytizing  on  Joachim's  part 
to  get  it  accepted  widely.  That  it  is  today  solidly  established  is  a 
tribute  to  the  great  violinist's  conviction  that  he  was  advertising  a 
masterpiece.  Again  Hanslick  was  a  dissenter  and  a  powerful  de- 
terrent to  immediate  acceptance.  Many  still  agree  with  him.  The 
D  major  Violin  Concerto  is  as  uneven  as  the  Third  Symphony.  It 


4-94  MEN"    OF    MUSIC 

has  an  absorbingly  beautiful,  if  rather  errant,  first  movement,  a 
hopelessly  inadequate  second,  and  a  sometimes  exciting,  but  far 
from  perfectly  achieved,  finale.  Except  for  the  cadenza,  which 
Brahms  leaves  to  the  soloist's  taste  (Joachim's  or  Fritz  Kreisler's 
is  ordinarily  used  today),  it  is  not  a  display  piece  for  the  soloist, 
whose  role,  indeed,  is  sometimes  worse  than  secondary.  Von  Billow, 
in  one  of  his  acidulous  and  bitter-truthful  moods,  once  said  that 
Max  Bruch  had  written  a  concerto  for  the  violin,  Brahms  a  con- 
certo against  the  violin.  The  roles  of  solo  instrument  and  orchestra 
are  best  balanced  in  the  first  movement — an  emotional,  nobly 
speaking  allegro.  The  andante  is  ruined  by  flagrantly  inept  or- 
chestration: the  thin  note  of  the  oboe  carrying  the  main  theme  is 
swamped  by  too  massive  accompaniment,  and  the  solo  violin's 
comments  are  insignificant  and  weak.  In  the  finale,  there  is  much 
fine  gypsy  music  of  bravura  cast,  but  here  Brahms,  halfway  to 
success,  swamps  the  solo  instrument  itself. 

Late  in  1879,  the  University  of  Breslau  informed  Brahms  that  it 
intended  to  honor  him  with  a  Ph.D.  Possibly  to  the  surprise  of 
the  University  authorities,  he  accepted  graciously,  and  bethought 
himself  of  some  music  fitting  to  the  occasion.  Let  us,  under  the 
guidance  of  Sir  Henry  Hadow,  follow  his  ruminations  at  the  lovely 
summer  resort  of  Ischl:  "A  ceremonial  of  so  solemn  and  academic 
a  character  naturally  demanded  an  unusual  display  of  learning. 
Symphonies  were  too  trivial,  oratorios  were  too  slight,  even  an 
eight-part  a  cappella  chorus  in  octuple  counterpoint  was  hardly 
adequate  to  the  dignity  of  the  occasion.  Something  must  be  done 
to  mark  the  doctorate  with  all  the  awe  and  reverence  due  to  the 
Philosophic  Chair.  So  Brahms  selected  a  handful  of  the  more  con- 
vivial student-songs  and  worked  them  into  a  concert  overture  which 
remains  one  of  the  most  amusing  pieces  of  pure  comedy  in  the 
whole  range  of  music."  This  rollicking  piece  was  the  still  im- 
mensely popular  Academic  Festival  Overture.  Oddly  enough,  when 
performed  under  Brahms'  direction  at  Breslau,  on  January  4, 
1 88 1,  it  was  received  with  less  enthusiasm  than  its  perfect  gauging 
to  the  occasion  deserved.  It  may  be  that  the  presence  on  the  pro- 
gram of  the  Tragic  Overture,  also  completed  at  Ischl  the  preceding 
year,  explains  the  audience's  low  spirits.  This  is  a  gloomy,  not  to 
say  dull,  work.  Although  Brahms  insisted  that  he  had  no  specific 


BRAHMS  495 

tragedy  in  mind,  it  has  been  guessed  that  the  overture  was  meant 
as  a  prelude  to  Medea,  Hamlet,  Macbeth,  or  Faust. 

For  many  years,  Brahms  was  accustomed  to  go  on  concert  tours, 
performing  either  as  conductor  of,  or  pianist  in,  his  own  works.  In 
neither  role  was  he  superlative:  there  is  no  evidence  that  he  was 
ever  regarded  as  a  first-rate  conductor,  and  as  he  grew  older,  his 
pianism,  which  at  times  had  approached  brilliancy,  became  slip- 
shod. Yet  there  is  no  doubt  that  he  naturally  was  influential  in 
establishing  a  tradition  for  the  performance  of  his  compositions. 
As  time  passed,  and  the  memory  of  the  unpleasant  reception  of  the 
First  Piano  Concerto  dimmed,  Brahms  concluded  that  he  needed 
another  concerto  to  vary  his  programs.  He  played  with  the  idea 
for  several  years,  and  after  spending  the  spring  of  1881  in  Italy  and 
Sicily,  completed  it  during  the  summer,  announcing  the  news  to 
Elisabeth  von  Herzogenberg  in  a  typical  letter:  "I  don't  mind  tell- 
ing you  that  I  have  written  a  tiny,  tiny  pianoforte  concerto  with  a 
tiny,  tiny  wisp  of  a  scherzo.  It  is  in  B  flat,  and  I  have  reason  to 
fear  that  I  have  worked  this  udder,  which  has  yielded  good  milk 
before,  too  often  and  too  vigorously."  This  was  Brahms*  backhand 
manner  of  telling  his  confidante  that  he  had  composed  one  of  the 
longest  piano  concertos  in  existence.  He  also  characterized  it  in 
another  letter  as  "a  few  little  piano  pieces." 

On  November  22,  1881,  the  B  flat  Concerto  was  brought  out  at 
Stuttgart,  with  Brahms  as  soloist.  The  critical  reaction  almost 
matched  the  coldness  with  which  the  D  minor  had  been  greeted 
twenty-two  years  before.  Because  it  has  four  movements  instead  of 
the  concerto's  conventional  three,  and  because  the  solo  instru- 
ment is  so  closely  woven  into  the  orchestration,  Hanslick  called  it 
a  "symphony  with  piano  obbligato."  It  has  caught  on  more  slowly 
than  most  of  Brahms'  large  works  for  orchestra.  The  fact  that  its 
extreme  complexity  requires  a  surpassing  executant  has  not  helped 
the  B  flat,  for  it  is  all  too  often  attempted  by  pianists  who  find  it 
quite  beyond  their  competence.  Even  that  greatest  of  ensemble 
players,  Artur  Schnabel,  though  none  of  it  is  beyond  him,  cannot 
give  interest  to  this  unwieldy  work  throughout  its  entire  length. 
The  opening  allegro  constitutes  a  serious  stumbling  block:  it  is  a 
tortuous  maze  that  may  well  puzzle  even  the  most  loyal  Brahmsian. 
The  main  theme,  pleasant  in  itself,  is  transitional  in  character,  and 
scarcely  suffices  to  launch  a  mammoth  concerto.  The  "extra" 


MEN    OF    MUSIC 

movement  follows:  it  is  another  allegro,  vigorous  and  passionate, 
yet  ominous  and  lowering.  It  seems  incredible  that  Brahms'  ex- 
planation of  its  presence — that  the  first  movement  was  so  "harm- 
less"— could  ever  have  been  taken  seriously.  The  charmingly  song- 
like  andante,  not  precisely  happy  in  its  surroundings,  is  followed 
by  a  finale  of  generous  proportions — unquestionably,  in  its  vitality 
and  firmness  of  structure,  the  best  thing  in  the  concerto. 

It  was  not  until  the  summer  of  1881  that  Brahms  physically  be- 
came the  familiar  bearded  figure  of  most  of  his  portraits.  He  began 
the  composition  of  the  B  flat  Concerto  smooth-shaven,  and  emerged 
with  a  heavy  beard.  The  growing  of  this  famous  ornament,  which 
became  more  and  more  luxuriant  with  the  years,  has  been  in- 
terpreted by  Freudian  critics  as  a  compensatory  gesture  for  "the 
smooth  cheeks  of  his  early  twenties."  In  view  of  the  fact  that  the 
hoarseness  of  Brahms'  voice  from  middle  age  on  was  due  to  his 
having  artificially  lowered  its  pitch,  this  explanation  has  some 
slight  plausibility,  though  it  is  almost  negated  by  the  fact  that  he 
grew  his  beard  in  the  very  heyday  of  excessive  hirsuteness.  The 
most  likely  reason  is  that  Brahms  grew  tired  of  shaving  and  of 
wearing  a  tie.  His  careless  dress  became  proverbial,  his  old  brown 
overcoat  and  battered  hat  one  of  the  sights  of  Vienna.  About  this 
stubby,  rather  paunchy  little  man  there  was  small  glamour.  The 
ashes  of  interminable  cigars  fell  unheeded  on  his  waistcoat,  and 
were  smudged  in.  He  was  a  heroic  beer  drinker,  withal  a  connois- 
seur, and  his  taste  in  food  was  heavily  German.  As  he  aged,  his 
hosts  of  friends  regarded  Brahms  with  affection,  his  appearance 
and  habits  with  delighted  amusement,  though  his  wide  acquaint- 
ance with  ladies  of  easy  virtue,  who  often  greeted  him  brightly  on 
the  street,  embarrassed  them.  Until  the  very  end  of  his  life,  people 
remarked  on  his  piercing,  extremely  blue  eyes,  fair  skin,  and  mag- 
nificently domed  forehead,  and  it  was  these  characteristics  that, 
much  to  Brahms'  amused  gratification,  led  a  geographer  to  include 
his  portrait  in  a  textbook  as  a  typical  representative  of  the  Cau- 
casian race. 

As  Brahms  neared  fifty,  his  life  settled  more  and  more  into  a 
routine  of  summer  composing  and  winter  touring.  He  kept  his 
quarters  in  Vienna,  but  as  soon  as  the  weather  warmed,  he  was  to 
be  found  at  one  of  his  favorite  mountain  resorts — Thun,  Miirz- 
zuschlag,  or  Ischl — and  there  he  did  most  of  his  creative  work.  In 


BRAHMS  497 

the  winter,  his  tours  often  served  to  introduce  his  latest  composi- 
tions to  a  growing  public.  Whenever  possible,  he  spent  a  part  of 
each  year  in  Italy.  The  Third  Symphony,  for  example,  was  begun 
at  Ischl  during  the  summer  of  1882,  and  finished  at  Wiesbaden  the 
following  year.  On  December  2,  Richter  led  the  Vienna  Philhar- 
monic in  a  successful  premiere,  following  which  Brahms  introduced 
the  symphony  at  various  places,  notably  at  Berlin  early  in  1884. 

For  some  years,  Von  Biilow  had  been  established  at  Meiningen 
as  leader  of  the  orchestra,  and  through  his  unswerving  devotion, 
backed  by  the  friendly  sympathy  of  Grand  Duke  Georg  of  Saxe- 
Meiningen  and  his  wife,  soon  made  it  one  of  the  principal  centers 
of  the  Brahms  cult.  Therefore,  it  was  no  surprise  when  Meiningen 
was  chosen  for  the  first  performance  of  the  Fourth  Symphony — 
the  chief  product  of  two  delightful  holidays  in  Styria — on  October 
25,  1885,  with  Brahms  himself  conducting.  The  youthful  Richard 
Strauss,  who  had  just  become  Von  Billow's  assistant,  recalled 
Brahms  as  a  less  polished  and  subtle,  but  more  warmly  human, 
conductor  than  his  chief.  After  the  premure^  the  Meiningen  band 
took  the  work  on  tour  through  parts  of  Germany  and  Holland.  It 
was  arranged  that  Brahms  was  to  conduct  all  performances  of  the 
new  symphony.  At  Frankfort,  Von  Billow,  who  truly  fdt  that  the 
composer  slighted  the  full  beauty  of  the  work,  dared  to  announce 
that  he  himself  would  conduct  it  during  a  return  engagement, 
Brahms  was  annoyed,  and  insisted  that  the  letter  of  the  original 
arrangement  be  strictly  observed.  When  Von  Biilow,  delicately 
balanced  man  that  he  was,  and  suffering  from  ill  health,  quite 
reasonably  took  this  in  bad  part,  and  resigned,  they  quarreled. 
Two  years  were  to  elapse  before  Brahms  tacitly  acknowledged  his 
fault  by  seeking  Von  Biilow  out  for  a  reconciliation. 

Brahms  had  treated  his  selfless  champion  with  that  brusque  in- 
sensitivity  even  Clara  Schumann  had  often  complained  of,  and 
which  once  led  to  a  temporary  cooling  in  their  relationship.  But 
this  gruffness,  this  apparent  callousness,  was  only  a  fagade  that 
Brahms'  wisest  friends  learned  in  time  to  discount.  Actually,  he 
was  so  tenderhearted  and  kind  that  it  may  merely  have  been  self- 
protection.  In  1888,  for  instance,  when  Clara,  almost  seventy  years 
old,  found  that  she  could  no  longer  support  herself  and  her  family 
on  the  proceeds  from  concerts  alone,  Brahms  stepped  in,  and  in 
the  most  roundabout  and  thoughtful  manner  contributed  a  large 


MEN    OF    MUSIC 

piece  of  what  he  called  "my  superfluous  pelf3  to  easing  the  finan- 
cial burden  of  her  last  years.  Furthermore,  he  could  be  tactful  in 
a  quite  unusual  degree  when  the  delicacy  of  a  situation  forced  itself 
upon  him.  Once,  in  the  late  eighties,  he  made  a  special  trip  to 
Hamburg  to  hear  Tchaikovsky  conduct  his  Fifth  Symphony.  He 
honestly  disliked  it,  but  invited  his  Russian  colleague  to  dinner, 
and  confessed  with  such  diffidence  and  warmth  that  the  hyper- 
sensitive Tchaikovsky  plucked  up  courage  to  make  a  similar  ad- 
mission about  Brahms'  music. 

The  lovable  side  of  Brahms'  nature  is  nowhere  better  illustrated 
than  in  the  circumstances  surrounding  the  composition  of  the  Con- 
certo for  Violin  and  Violoncello,  which  he  finished  in  1887.  For 
six  years  he  had  been  on  the  outs  with  Joachim  because  he  had 
sided  with  the  violinist's  wife  in  the  series  of  quarrels  preceding 
their  divorce.  This  was  even  worse  than  being  estranged  from  Von 
Billow,  for  Joachim  was  Brahms'  oldest  friend,  as  well  as  the  first 
enthusiast  for  his  music.  Too  shy  or  too  awkward  to  approach 
Joachim  directly,  Brahms  slaved  at  the  "Double"  Concerto  during 
the  summer  of  1887,  and  sent  it  to  his  sulking  friend  with  the  dis- 
arming inscription:  "To  him  for  whom  it  was  written."  Joachim 
was  deeply  touched,  and  though  he  had  his  doubts  about  the 
musical  worth  of  the  concerto,  the  reconciliation  took  place.  He 
and  Robert  Hausmann,  a  member  of  Joachim's  world-renowned 
quartet,  appeared  as  the  soloists  at  the  premiere  in  Cologne,  but 
Brahms  was  not  slow  in  noting  that  the  work  was  anything  but  a 
favorite  with  his  friend.  He  had  started  a  second  concerto  for  violin 
and  cello,  but  shelved  it  with  the  wry  observation  that  no  one  cared 
to  listen  to  the  first  one.  This  was  an  exaggeration,  of  course,  for 
there  is  a  certain  public  for  any  Brahms  work,  even  one  as  unleav- 
ened as  the  "Double"  Concerto.  This  last  of  Brahms'  larger  com- 
positions is  the  least  spontaneous  of  them  all.  A  revival  of  the  old 
concerto  grosso,  it  clearly  bears  out  the  evidence  that  it  is  partly  com- 
posed of  discarded  symphonic  material.  It  is  of  appalling  difficulty 
both  for  soloists  and  audience:  playing  it  may  give  the  pleasure  of 
obstacles  overcome,  but  there  is  no  such  reward  for  most  listeners. 

Almost  ten  years  more  of  life  remained  to  Brahms — years  of 
meager  outward  eventfulness,  but  sweetened,  on  one  hand,  by 
lavish  official  and  public  recognition,  and  on  the  other,  saddened 
by  the  loss  of  beloved  friends  of  long  standing.  In  1889,  Franz 


BRAHMS  499 

Josef,  Emperor  of  Brahms'  adopted  country,  bestowed  the  coveted 
Order  of  Leopold  on  him,  and  the  same  year,  his  birthplace  pleased 
him  even  more  by  giving  him  the  freedom  of  the  city.  Brahms 
ordinarily  refused  to  wear  his  numerous  decorations,  but  relaxed 
during  solemn  state  dinners  at  the  Meiningen  ducal  Schloss,  and 
amused  himself  by  wearing  the  whole  lot.  Generally  speaking, 
pleasures  outweighed  sorrows.  In  1892,  however,  the  still  young 
Elisabeth  von  Herzogenberg  died,  and  for  months  Brahms  was  in- 
consolable. He  was  growing  old,  and  could  not  lose  himself  so 
completely  in  composition  as  had  been  his  wont  earlier  in  life. 
Fortunately,  at  Christmastime,  he  was  reconciled  to  Clara,  whose 
growing  touchiness  had  caused  a  break  between  them  in  1891. 
He  managed  to  see  her  at  least  once  a  year  for  the  next  three  years, 
perhaps  feeling  that  each  time  might  be  the  last.  And  in  May, 
1896,  when  Clara  was  almost  seventy-seven,  the  dreaded  news 
came  in  a  telegram  from  her  daughter  Marie:  "Our  mother  fell 
gently  asleep  today."  Brahms  was  at  Ischl,  and  the  telegraph  peo- 
ple had  had  difficulty  in  finding  him.  He  set  off  at  once  for  Frank- 
fort, read  in  a  newspaper  that  the  funeral  was  to  be  at  Bonn,  and 
reached  there  just  in  time.  A  few  months  less  than  forty  years 
before,  he  and  Clara  had  walked  beside  the  bier  of  Robert 
Schumann. 

At  Clara's  funeral,  weakened  by  fatigue  and  grief,  Brahms  caught 
a  chill  from  which,  in  a  sense,  he  never  recovered.  By  September, 
it  was  obvious  to  his  doctor  at  Carlsbad  that  he  was  dying  of  a 
liver  complaint.  When  he  returned  to  Vienna  the  next  month, 
his  altered  appearance  shocked  all  his  friends.  It  seemed  that  he 
had  grown  old  and  feeble  overnight.  He  grew  steadily  worse,  and 
when  1897  came  around,  knew  that  he  would  not  get  better.  On 
March  7,  he  attended  a  Philharmonic  concert^  and  heard  the  great 
Richter  do  a  superb  job  of  his  Fourth  Symphony.  It  turned  out  to 
be  an  intensely  emotional  occasion  for  all  concerned:  after  each 
movement,  the  music  was  wildly  cheered,  and  at  the  end  of  the 
finale,  when  Richter  indicated  Brahms5  presence,  the  audience 
rose  as  a  man,  and  saluted  him.  Almost  sobbing  out  his  emotion, 
the  old  man  bowed,  and  then  stepped  back  into  the  shadow  of  the 
box.  Less  than  a  month  later,  on  April  3,  1897,  he  died  of  cancer 
of  the  liver.  He  died  with  tears  in  his  eyes — he  had  loved  Iife3  and 
hated  to  give  it  up. 


5OO  MEN    OP    MUSIC 

A  chronology  of  Brahms*  life  that  listed  only  works  in  large  forms 
would  show  his  last  decade  as  singularly  barren  of  achievement. 
After  1887,  he  wrote  nothing  more  pretentious  than  a  few  chamber 
works,  songs,  some  minor  choral  music,  and  short  piano  pieces. 
But  it  is  precisely  these  last — the  four  collections  of  piano  pieces 
that  make  up  Opuses  1 16,  117,  1 18,  and  1 19 — that,  in  the  opinion 
of  many,  constitute  his  most  certain  claim  to  immortality.  After 
the  magnificent  "Handel"  Variations  of  186 1,  for  ten  years  Brahms 
wrote  little  for  piano  alone  until  he  began  that  series  of  intermezzos 
and  capriccios  that  he  eventually  collected  as  Opus  76.  These,  to- 
gether with  the  two  rhapsodies  of  Opus  79,  represent  a  return  to 
his  earliest  love,  but  would  not,  in  themselves,  place  Brahms  among 
the  foremost  piano  composers.  The  earlier  set,  which  contains  the 
light  and  humorous  B  minor  Capriccio,  one  of  Brahms3  most  popu- 
lar pieces,  shows  the  strong  influence  of  Chopin*  and  Schumann — 
not  the  late,  classicizing  Schumann  of  the  ^eitschrift  salute  to 
Brahms,  but  he  who  had  composed  the  Fantasiestucke  and  the 
Krdsleriana.  They  are  not  quite  certain  of  themselves,  and  over- 
sentimentalize  in  spots.  Of  Opus  79,  poor  Dr.  Billroth,  with  whom 
Brahms  imperiously  broke  for  being  civil  to  Massenet  in  face  of 
Brahms'  known  contempt  for  the  Frenchman's  music,  said:  ccln 
these  two  rhapsodies  there  remains  more  of  the  young,  heaven- 
storming  Johannes  than  in  the  last  works  of  the  mature  man." 

But  even  the  charms  of  these  middle-period  pieces  do  not  wholly 
prepare  us  for  the  unique  quality  of  the  twenty  pieces  of  the  last 
four  sets — the  finest  solo  piano  music  between  that  of  Chopin  and 
Schumann  and  that  of  Debussy.  Here,  untrammeled  by  his  neme- 
sis, the  duty  of  classicizing,  Brahms  is  an  out-and-out  romanticist, 
but  a  romanticist  who  has  found  perfect  forms  for  his  material. 
The  brevity  of  these  pieces  has  deceived  more  than  one  otherwise 
shrewd  critic  into  dismissing  them  as  "slight,"  but  to  do  this  in  the 
case  of  a  piece  like  the  E  flat  minor  Intermezzo  is  to  misunderstand 
completely  the  nature  of  lyric  poetry  in  music  and,  indeed,  lay 
oneself  open  to  the  charge  of  not  recognizing  it  when  it  appears. 
Here,  if  anywhere,  is  most  apparent  Brahms'  gift  of  expressive 
melody,  his  harmonic  originality,  his  ability  to  evoke  a  mood  in  a 
few  bars.  Not  all  the  pieces  are  uniformly  good.  Here  and  there  a 
tendency  to  the  lachrymose  creeps  in,  notably  in  the  E  flat  Rhap- 

*  The  Intermezzo  in  A  minor  opens  like  a  parody  of  Chopin's  F  minor  Nocturne. 


BRAHMS  5OI 

sody,  where  a  tasteless  middle  section  all  but  ruins  an  exciting  be- 
ginning and  end.  Nor  does  the  composer  consistently  overcome 
one  of  his  most  flagrant  defects — a  certain  rhythmic  listlessness  and 
lack  of  variety.  But  the  best  of  these  pieces — for  instance,  the  G 
minor  Capriccio,  the  G  minor  Ballade,  and  the  Scarlatdlike  G 
major  Intermezzo — are  music  of  a  very  high  order.  They  would 
not,  it  is  true,  put  Brahms  in  the  company  of  Bach  and  Beethoven. 
It  will  be  a  macabre  joke  on  the  thirty-third  degree  Brahmsians, 
but  hardly  on  Brahms,  if.  as  seems  likely,  his  last  piano  pieces  place 
him  among  the  great  romantic  masters  of  the  small,  intensely  per- 
sonal forms. 


Chapter  XIX 

Piotr  Ilyich  Tchaikovsky 

(Votkinsk,  May  7,  i84O-November  6, 1893,  St.  Petersburg) 


THE  greatest  symphonist  of  the  nineteenth  century — after  Bee- 
thoven, of  course — was  born  of  totally  unmusical  parents  at 
Votkinsk,  a  small  town  almost  equidistant  from  Kazan  and  Perm. 
Of  his  mother  we  know  only  that  she  was  the  granddaughter  of 
an  epileptic  Frenchman  who  may  have  been  a  straggler  from  the 
Grande  Armee.  Ilya  Tchaikovsky,  a  pleasant  man  of  modest  men- 
tality and  means,  was  an  inspector  of  mines,  and  later  director  of  a 
technological  school  in  St.  Petersburg.  The  few  facts  known  of  Piotr 
Ilyich's  childhood  are  more  fruitful  for  the  Freudian  analyst  than 
for  the  hopeful  musicologist  looking  for  precocity.  His  first  gov- 
erness described  him,  after  his  death,  as  having  been  "a  porcelain 
child."  In  less  literary  language,  he  was  high-strung,  oversensitive, 
morbid,  but  extraordinarily  charming. 

For  those  who  profess  to  find  a  French  accent  in  much  of 
Tchaikovsky's  music,  one  early  anecdote  is  illuminating.  The  same 
governess — a  Frenchwoman — found  him  poring  over  a  map  of  Eu- 
rope, kissing  Russia  and  spitting  at  the  rest  of  the  continent.  When 
Mile  Fanny  reminded  him  that  he  was  metaphorically  insulting 
her,  he  answered,  "Didn't  you  see  that  I  covered  France  with  my 
hand?"  It  was  impossible  to  be  angry  at  so  docile  and  quick-witted 
a  child,  which  was  a  good  thing,  for  the  least  talking-to  or  threat  of 
punishment  would  make  him  hysterical.  He  was  more  attached  to 
his  mother  than  is  usual  with  even  so  sensitive  a  child.  Once,  when 
he  was  ten,  Mme  Tchaikovskaya  took  him  to  St.  Petersburg  to 
leave  him  in  boarding  school.  As  her  carriage  drove  off,  he  ran 
after  it,  trying  to  cling  to  the  wheels.  He  brooded  over  this  first 
separation  until  his  dying  day.  When  his  mother  died  of  cholera  in 
1854,  he  was  for  a  long  time  inconsolable,  but  gradually  found  an 
outlet  for  his  welling  love  by  mothering  his  younger  twin  brothers. 

Tchaikovsky's  first  recorded  reactions  to  music  were  quite  as 
neurotic  as  Chopin's.  He  adored  the  pathetic  melodies  of  Donizetti 
and  Bellini,  but  would  often  scream  for  his  governess  after  being 
tucked  into  bed,  insisting  that  they  were  still  in  his  head,  and 

502 


TCHAIKOVSKY  503 

would  not  let  him  sleep.  He  had  the  musical  attainments  of  an 
ordinary  child  of  good  family.  He  began  to  take  piano  lessons  at 
the  age  of  five,  learned  to  sight-read  fairly  well  before  he  was 
eight,  and  could  improvise  a  pretty  valse  at  fourteen.  He  was,  on 
the  whole,  indifferently  taught  by  teachers  unable  to  rouse  his 
latent  abilities.  The  truth  is  that  there  is  nothing  in  Tchaikovsky's 
life  of  either  human  or  musical  interest  to  detain  us  until  1859, 
when,  after  leaving  the  School  of  Jurisprudence,  he  became  a  clerk 
in  the  Ministry  of  Justice  in  St.  Petersburg.  At  this  time,  he  seems 
like  a  stock  figure  out  of  Turgeniev:  elegant,  superficial,  foppish, 
and  diffuse.  He  was  a  very  bad  civil  servant  even  in  that  paradise 
of  bad  civil  servants.  He  hung  around  the  Ministry  for  three  years, 
so  listless  in  attending  to  his  duties  that  when  he  left  he  promptly 
forgot  what  they  had  been.  He  did  not  forget  music:  he  obliged  at 
the  piano  at  dances,  improvised  nicely,  and  haunted  the  opera  and 
ballet.  He  finally  consummated  this  frivolous  period  of  his  career 
by  composing  and  publishing,  apparently  at  his  own  expense,  an 
operatic  song  with  Italian  words,  Mezza  notte.  This  sugary  bunkum 
was  the  sole  artistic  fruit  of  a  passing  friendship  with  one  Piccioli, 
an  antique  Italian  singing  teacher  with  painted  cheeks  and  arti- 
ficially raven  locks. 

In  the  summer  of  1861,  Tchaikovsky  traveled  through  Germany,, 
Belgium,  and  England  with  a  family  friend.  One  of  his  letters  to 
his  beloved  sister  Alexandra  shows  him  precisely  on  the  verge  of  a 
new  life,  and  poignantly  foreshadows  the  triumphs  and  tragedy  of 
his  later  years.  After  berating  himself  for  his  extravagance,  he  asks, 
"What  can  I  expect  from  the  future?  It's  terrible  to  think  of  it. 
I  know  that  sooner  or  later  I  shall  no  longer  be  able  to  battle  with 
life's  difficulties.  Till  then,  however,  I  intend  to  enjoy  it  and  to 
sacrifice  everything  to  that  enjoyment.  I  have  been  pursued  by 
misfortune  during  the  last  fortnight;  official  work — very  bad.  ..." 
And  then,  a  significant  postscript:  "I've  been  studying  thorough- 
bass and  am  making  good  progress.  Who  knows?  Perhaps  in  three 
years3  time  you'll  be  hearing  my  operas  and  singing  my  arias." 
Earlier  that  year,  Tchaikovsky's  father  (could  he  have  been  im- 
pressed by  the  sight  of  the  printed  Mezza  notte?)  remarked  casually 
that  if  Piotr  Ilyich  wished  to  become  an  artist,  there  was  still  time. 
Tchaikovsky  did  not  need  a  second  hint:  he  was  already  sick  to 
death  of  petty  officialdom.  He  did  not  immediately  relinquish  his 


504  MEN   OF  MUSIC 

job,  but  went  at  once  to  sign  up  with  Nikolai  Ivanovich  Zaremba, 
a  thorough  pedant  who  had  the  reputation  of  working  his  pupils 
to  the  bone.  Not  unnaturally.,  the  still-dilettante  Tchaikovsky  was 
at  first  a  lax  student,  but  nevertheless,  when  Zaremba  joined  the 
staff  of  the  newly  created  Conservatory  of  Music  in  1862,  Piotr 
Ilyich  followed  him  faithfully. 

Fate  favored  Tchaikovsky's  determination  to  change  his  life  by 
giving  him  a  not  undeserved  blow  in  the  face.  At  the  Ministry,  he 
was  passed  over  in  the  promotions,  and  the  slight  rankled.  In  April, 
1863,  despite  the  fact  that  his  father  had  lately  lost  most  of  his 
small  fortune,  and  could  offer  his  son  only  shelter  and  food,  Tchai- 
kovsky resigned  his  post.  Music  had  by  now  become  his  absorbing 
passion,  and  he  could  not  bear  to  give  time  elsewhere.  He  entered 
Zaremba5  s  advanced  classes,  and  worked  hard  at  the  dry  husks 
of  his  new  profession.  Now,  just  when  he  needed  it,  came  inspira- 
tion in  the  person  of  the  Conservatory's  director — Anton  Rubin- 
stein, only  ten  years  Tchaikovsky's  senior  but  already  one  of  the 
key  figures  in  Russian  music.  In  the  great  pianist's  class  in  orches- 
tration, Tchaikovsky  suddenly  found  wings.  Rubinstein's  method 
was  to  set  his  pupils  problems  involving  the  most  expanded  mod- 
ern orchestra — a  medium  for  which  Tchaikovsky  had  a  phenom- 
enal natural  flair.  It  is  no  wonder  that  the  impressionable  youth, 
who  changed  within  a  brief  year  from  a  silly  fop  into  a  hard- 
working, fever-eyed,  and  threadbare  student,  conceived  a  patheti- 
cally sincere  schoolboy  crush  on  the  brittle,  subtle,  and  empty 
cosmopolitan.  Even  later,  as  one  of  the  most  famous  composers 
alive,  he  hungered  for  a  word  of  praise  from  Rubinstein.  But  his 
old  teacher  was  Tchaikovsky-deaf  to  the  end  of  his  days. 

Tchaikovsky  was  graduated  from  the  Conservatory  in  January, 
1866.  He  was  too  nervous  to  appear  at  the  required  viva  voce  ex- 
amination, and  for  a  time  Rubinstein  threatened  to  withhold  his 
diploma.  He  relented,  however,  and  even  suggested  to  his  brother 
Nikolai  that  Tchaikovsky  be  attached  to  the  staff  of  the  new  Mos- 
cow Conservatory  of  Music.  Nikolai,  its  director,  not  only  accepted 
the  young  graduate — at  a  salary  the  equivalent  of  about  twenty- 
five  dollars  a  month — but  also  gave  him  a  room  in  his  own  house. 
As  the  house  served  temporarily  as  Conservatory  headquarters, 
there  was  method  in  Nikolai  Rubinstein's  altruism.  Until  his  school 
became  a  going  concern,  he  could  overwork  his  guest  and  still  keep 


TCHAIKOVSKY  505 

his  conscience  clear.  A  capable,  bustling,  domineering  man,  for 
many  years  Nikolai  shared  his  brother's  low  opinion  of  Tchaikov- 
sky's music.  Tchaikovsky  arrived  in  Moscow  eager  to  have  some  of 
his  compositions  performed*  He  was  even  a  little  puffed  up,  for 
had  not  the  most  famous  bandmaster  in  Europe,  Johann  Strauss, 
thought  a  dance  of  his  worthy  of  being  included  in  a  program  at 
the  Imperial  palace  at  Pavlovsk?  Nikolai,  however,  deflated  his 
tiny  conceit  by  scornfully  turning  down  the  first  thing  Tchaikov- 
sky submitted  to  him.  He  gingerly,  condescendingly,  agreed  to 
conduct  a  second  overture,  which  was  moderately  successful  in 
introducing  Tchaikovsky's  name  in  Moscow.  Thereafter,  he  faith- 
fully, but  without  conviction,  brought  out  his  protege's  work. 

In  March,  1866,  the  young  professor  began  to  struggle  with  his 
first  symphony.  In  the  creative  throes  he  worked  himself  into  a 
nervous  breakdown.  On  his  enforced  vacation,  he  took  the  unfin- 
ished score  to  Anton  Rubinstein,  who  pronounced  it  poor  stuff. 
This  increased  Tchaikovsky's  despair,  but  though  firmly  convinced 
that  he  would  die  before  doing  so,  he  managed  to  complete  this 
lengthy  romantic  effusion  that  he  called  "Winter  Daydreams." 
Oddly  enough,  Anton  now  accepted  two  movements  of  the  sym- 
phony, but  they  were  coldly  received  in  St.  Petersburg.  In  Febru- 
ary, 1868,  Moscow  heard  "Winter  Daydreams53  entire  with  more 
enthusiasm  than  it  deserved,  and  Tchaikovsky  took  his  first  curtain 
call.  Success  did  not  quiet  his  nerves.  Nor  did  Moscow  night  life, 
tasted  gluttonously  with  the  convivial  Nikolai,  put  him  in  a  better 
frame  of  mind.  His  debut  as  a  conductor  in  a  dance  from  his 
forthcoming  opera,  The  Voyevoda,  threatened  to  be  disastrous,  but 
the  well-drilled  performers  saved  the  day.  On  the  podium  he  had 
the  hallucination  that  his  head  was  coming  off,  and  actually  held 
on  to  it  with  one  hand  during  the  entire  performance.  This  experi- 
ence so  terrified  him  that  ten  years  elapsed  before  he  had  courage 
to  repeat  the  experiment.  The  Voyeooda  itself  enjoyed  a  brief  spurt 
of  success,  but  soon  this  first  opera  fell  into  desuetude,  and  he 
destroyed  the  score. 

Late  in  1868,  Tchaikovsky  came  as  close  to  conventional  ro- 
mance as  was  possible  for  him.  The  enchantress,  Desir£e  Artot> 
was  a  French  opera  singer,  five  years  his  senior.  The  train  of  events 
makes  it  clear  that  she  thought  of  him  only  as  a  possible  affaire,  but 


506  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

he  evidently  believed  that  her  intentions  were  serious.  Early  in 

1869,  he  wrote  to  his  father,  saying  in  effect:  this  woman  is  pursu- 
ing me — what  shall  I  do?  Old  Ilya  answered  yes  and  no,  and  Mile 
Artot  solved  the  problem  by  going  off  to  Warsaw  and  marrying  a 
Spanish  baritone.  It  is  certain  that  Tchaikovsky  greatly  admired 
her,  and  so  was  naturally  cast  down.  He  recovered  quickly.  Twenty 
years  later,  when  she  had  doubled  in  size,  and  he  was  interna- 
tionally famous,  they  chanced  to  meet,  and  she  seems  to  have 
exercised  her  old  spell  over  him.  Obviously  a  real  Platonic  love 
affair. 

Of  far  more  importance  than  his  harmless  intrigue  with  Desir6e 
Art6t  was  Tchaikovsky's  introduction  into  the  charmed  circle  of 
The  Five,  nationalist  musicians  who  revolved  around  the  saturnine, 
Tartar-faced  Mili  Balakirev.  As  the  pupil,  protege,  and  friend  of 
the  Rubinsteins,  who  were  conventional  Occidentals  in  music, 
Tchaikovsky  was  at  first  looked  upon  with  suspicion  by  the  na- 
tionalists. But  when  they  discovered  that  he  was  ready  to  take 
them  at  their  own  valuation,  was  eager  for  their  praise,  and  ad- 
mitted the  greatness  of  their  spiritual  ancestor,  Mikhail  Ivanovich 
Glinka,  they  welcomed  him  with  open  arms.  He  never  knew  Boro- 
din or  Mussorgsky  well,  and  he  resented  the  Pecksniffian  acidity 
of  C6sar  Cui,  the  least  important  of  The  Five.  But  Rimsky- 
Korsakov  became  his  friend,  looked  up  to  him,  and  was  even 
influenced  toward  traditionalism  by  reading  a  little  harmony  text- 
book Tchaikovsky  wrote.  As  for  Balakirev,  he  was  soon  subjecting 
the  strayed  Rubinsteinian  to  that  overweening  supervision  which 
made  his  companions  of  The  Five  think  of  him  as  a  martinet.  He 
began  his  lessons  by  suggesting  that  Tchaikovsky  compose  a  sym- 
phonic poem  about  Romeo  and  Juliet,  accompanying  this  sugges- 
tion with  a  detailed  prescription  for  the  writing.  But  when  he  went 
so  far  as  to  sketch  some  of  the  music,  Tchaikovsky  called  a  halt, 
scrapped  Balakirev's  themes,  and  went  ahead  on  his  own  |;o  com- 
pose one  of  his  most  successful  orchestral  works.  It  must  have 
been  with  mixed  feelings  that  Nikolai  Rubinstein  conducted  the 
premiere  of  this  result  of  his  friend's  fraternizing  with  the  enemy. 
As  it  failed,  Tchaikovsky  doctored  it  up  during  the  summer  of 

1 870,  six  months  after  the  first  performance,  and  presented  it  again. 
The  overture-fantasia  Romeo  and  Juliet  is  the  first  composition 


TCHAIKOVSKY  507 

Tchaikovsky  wrote  that  is  still  played  today.*  Except  for  Berlioz's 
Romeo  et  Juliette,  this  is  the  best  music  ever  to  illustrate  some  of 
Shakespeare's  most  luscious  lines,  far  superior  to  Gounod's  triv- 
ial, long-winded  lucubrations,  and  more  relevant  than,  and  at 
least  as  lovely  as,  Bellini's  now  forgotten  opera.  Already  Tchai- 
kovsky is  writing  music  that  bears  his  unmistakable  sign  manual. 
The  vigorous  and  varied  rhythms,  the  lush,  ripe  harmonies,  the 
pull  toward  the  minor,  the  melodic  spontaneity,  the  feeling  for 
large  climaxes — already  all  are  here.  Although  sections,  notably 
the  haunting  love  melody,  are  Tchaikovsky  at  his  best,  Romeo  and 
Juliet  as  a  whole  seems  thin  and  shallow.  As  a  true  and  original 
master  of  orchestration,  Tchaikovsky  has  certainly  arrived,  but  he 
is  still  using  material  that  in  later  years  he  might  have  cast  aside. 

Considering  how  late  Tchaikovsky  came  to  the  serious  study  of 
music,  the  quickness  of  his  technical  development  is  amazing.  In 
half  a  dozen  years  he  acquired  all  the  subtleties  and  nuances  of 
the  musical  language,  all  the  tricks  of  its  rhetoric.  Romeo  and  Juliet 
shows  that  at  thirty  he  had  a  vast  vocabulary,  a  large  and  engaging 
fluency  of  speech,  but  very  little  to  say.  Had  everything  gone  as 
smoothly  as  he  wished,  this  facility  might  have  been  fatal,  at  least 
as  far  as  shaping  a  great  composer  is  concerned.  But  life  treated 
Tchaikovsky  savagely,  his  sensitive  little-boy  soul  did  not  get  the 
meed  of  praise  it  craved,  and  so  he  went  on  composing,  composing, 
composing,  both  to  express  and  to  stanch  his  grief  and  to  create 
something  that  would  satisfy  him  so  fully  that  it  must  satisfy  others. 

In  view  of  the  generally  high  level  and  surface  attractiveness  of 
much  Tchaikovsky  did  before  completing  his  Fourth  Symphony  in 
1878,  it  is  more  than  a  little  strange  that  he  was  not  flattered  to 
his  heart's  content,  especially  considering  his  elaborate  and  some- 
times insensitive  connivings  to  give  his  music  the  spotlight.  One 
instance  suffices  to  show  that  his  desperate  need  for  recognition 
could  anesthetize  him  to  the  most  obvious  points  of  honor.  In 
1874,  he  began  to  compose  an  opera  for  a  competition  under  the 
auspices  of  the  Russian  Musical  Society.  First,  though  anonymity 
was  naturally  the  essence  of  such  a  contest,  he  went  around  ascer- 
taining that  no  formidable  rival  was  entering.  Then,  having  com- 

*  Except,  unfortunately,  the  third  part  of  the  Souvenir  de  Hapsal — the  endemic 
Chant  sans  paroles,  which,  composed  originally  for  solo  piano,  has  since  appeared  in 
various  noisome  arrangements.  This  dates  from  1867. 


508  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

pleted  Vakula  the  Smith  ahead  of  time,  he  discussed  it  all  over  Mos- 
cow, and  contrived  to  have  Nikolai  Rubinstein,  one  of  the  judges, 
play  the  overture  publicly.  Finally,  he  sent  in  the  manuscript  in 
an  envelope  bearing  a  motto  in  his  unmistakable  handwriting. 
Having  violated  all  the  rules,  he  then  won  the  competition-  It  was 
an  unsavory  business  all  around,  and  Rimsky-Korsakov,  also  one 
of  the  judges,  put  his  conscience  to  rest  by  reflecting  that  Tchaikov- 
sky's was  far  and  away  the  most  deserving  entry,  anyhow.  The 
public  did  not  agree  with  the  judges:  Vakula  had  been  announced 
as  a  comic  opera,  but  Moscow  did  not  laugh.  In  fact,  even  when 
Tchaikovsky  had  achieved  great  popularity,  he  was  never  the  rage 
among  operagoers.  None  of  his  ten  operas  has  secured — except  in 
Russia — a  permanent  place  in  the  repertoire.  This  was  a  source  of 
keen  disappointment  to  him.  Not  only  was  his  artist's  vanity  piqued, 
but  his  hopes  of  easy  financial  success  were  blasted.  Musicians 
have  ever  yearned  to  write  a  successful  opera,  just  as  writers  yearn 
to  write  a  successful  play. 

It  was  need  of  money  that  led  Tchaikovsky  to  compose  his  first 
string  quartet.  At  Nikolai  Rubinstein's  suggestion,  he  announced 
an  all-Tchaikovsky  program.  He  needed  a  large  work  for  the  oc- 
casion, and  as  he  could  not  afford  an  orchestra,  compromised  on 
music  that  required  only  four  players.  Who  today  knows  the  D 
major  Quartet?  Not  one  to  the  thousands  who  know  its  second 
movement  as  "the  Andante  cantabile"  Wrenched  (with  ease,  one 
must  admit)  from  its  context,  this  suave  setting  of  a  folk  melody 
Tchaikovsky  had  heard  on  his  sister's  estate  has  played  an  exag- 
gerated part  in  ensuring  his  popular  fame  and  in  damaging  his 
reputation  with  serious  musicians.  Neither  very  good  nor  very  bad 
music,  it  is  one  of  those  unassuming  little  pieces  that  have,  through 
constant  playing,  acquired  connotations  that  smother  whatever 
musical  value  they  may  originally  have  had.  Decidedly,  the  pres- 
ent repute  of  much  of  Tchaikovsky's  music  is  absurdly  fortuitous. 
There  is  little  reason,  for  example,  why  the  last  movement  of  his 
Second  Symphony  (1872) — an  extraordinarily  catchy  allegro — 
has  not  been  picked  up  and  adapted  for  dinnertime  ensembles. 
Finallya  is  it  not  odd  that  this  perfectly  respectable  C  minor  Sym- 
phony, so  well  tricked  out  with  charmingly  adapted  folk  melodies, 
is  never  played  at  all?  Most  emphatically,  it  is  odd.  Tchaikovsky 
composed  three  of  the  world's  most  popular  symphonies,  and  it  is 


TCHAIKOVSKY  509 

high  time  that  some  conductor,  instead  of  dragging  out  Franck's 
D  minor  or  Dvorak's  "From  the  New  World"  for  the  nth  time, 
try  his  hand  at  popularizing  the  Tchaikovsky  Second.  "Winter 
Daydreams"  is  probably  embalmed  forever,  but  now  that  the  Third 
has  reacted  so  encouragingly  to  Stravinsky's  attentions,  there  is 
every  chance  that  the  C  minor  might  prove  just  as  much  of  a  find. 

In  November,  1874,  Tchaikovsky  began  the  composition  of  what 
is  indubitably  his  first  masterpiece — the  B  fiat  minor  Piano  Con- 
certo. He  intended  it  for  Nikolai  Rubinstein,  and  when  it  was 
complete  except  for  the  orchestration,  rushed  to  play  it  to  his  chief 
For  a  moment  Rubinstein,  who  was  vexed  because  Tchaikovsky 
had  not  asked  his  advice  on  technical  matters,  was  silent,  and  then 
subjected  the  music  to  a  blasting  fire  of  criticism.  A  bit  later,  he 
returned  to  the  attack,  suggesting  changes  tantamount  to  com- 
plete rewriting.  At  this,  Tchaikovsky  became  as  furious  as  Rubin- 
stein. Muttering,  "I'll  not  change  a  note  of  it,"  he  erased  his 
master's  name  from  the  score,  and  rededicated  it  to  Hans  von 
Billow,  who  had  once  made  some  pleasant  comments  about  his 
music.  Rubinstein  lived  to  change  his  mind  about  the  concerto  so 
thoroughly  that  it  became  one  of  the  prime  staples  of  his  repertoire. 
Tchaikovsky,  older  and  wiser,  also  changed  his  mind,  and  in  1889, 
after  pondering  Rubinstein's  excoriating  criticism  for  fourteen 
years,  completely  revised  the  piano  part.  At  the  time  of  its  com- 
position, however,  he  felt  nothing  but  resentment  toward  his  over- 
critical  friend,  and  there  is  no  doubt  that  this  difficult  scene  had 
much  to  do  with  his  moving  from  Rubinstein's  house  and  taking 
a  three-room  apartment  of  his  own,  with  a  manservant  to  see  to 
his  needs. 

While  it  is  too  strong  to  say  that  the  B  fiat  minor  Concerto  is  in 
eclipse,  it  is  certainly  far  less  played  than  it  was  ten  or  fifteen  years 
ago,  when  a  veritable  epidemic  of  it  threatened  to  obscure  its  more 
solid  musical  qualities,  especially  as  many  pianists  of  less  than 
virtuoso  stature  dared  to  attempt  it.  The  B  flat  minor  is  definitely 
for  the  virtuoso:  the  piano  part  is  both  showy  and  extremely  diffi- 
cult. Today,  in  reaction,  the  concerto  is  glibly  dismissed  as  mor- 
bid, trivial,  and  sentimental.  Possibly  there  is  something  in  our 
hard-boiled  mores  to  account  for  this  unthinking  contempt — cer- 
tainly that  something  is  not  in  the  concerto  itself.  Possibly,  too, 
this  hoity-toity  attitude  is  simply  more  of  the  sort  of  criticism  that 


5IO  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

abuses  B  for  not  being  A.  Thus,  Handel  is  not  great  because  he  is 
not  Bach,*  Verdi  because  he  is  not  Wagner,  and  Tchaikovsky  be- 
cause he  is  not  Beethoven  and  Brahms. 

The  B  flat  minor  Concerto  of  Tchaikovsky  (who,  incidentally, 
wrote  some  excellent  criticisms  of  Brahms)  is  a  far  more  successful 
and  a  better-integrated  piano  concerto  than  Brahms  ever  wrote. 
No  attempts  at  dark  philosophical  meanings  and  no  tortuous  mu- 
sical pedantries  interpose  themselves  between  the  listener  and  this 
mightily  attractive,  unabashedly  romantic  music.  On  the  score  of 
torrential  spontaneity  disciplined  by  an  entirely  adequate  tech- 
nique, the  B  flat  minor  is  assured  of  immortality.  It  is  at  times 
flighty,  at  times  tasteless,  but  if  even  the  very  greatest  compositions 
were  to  be  judged  by  their  lapses,  only  a  handful  would  survive. 
The  perfectionists  would  soon  tire  of  them  if  they  had  nothing 
else  to  listen  to.  There  is  some  sugar  in  the  andante  of  the  B  flat 
minor,  but  far  from  being  morbid,  the  work  as  a  whole  is  informed 
by  gusto,  manliness,  and  high  spirits.  Those  who  listen  to  it  thought- 
fully and  without  a  priori  notions  will  agree  with  Von  Billow,  who 
found  it  "lofty,  strong,  and  original,"  its  form  "perfect,  mature, 
and  full  of  style — in  the  sense  that  effort  and  craftsmanship  are 
everywhere  concealed." 

Although  Von  Billow  had  gratefully  accepted  the  dedication  of 
the  B  flat  minor  Concerto,  and  had  enthusiastically  decided  to 
make  it  one  of  the  mainstays  of  his  forthcoming  American  tour, 
Tchaikovsky  was  depressed  because  it  was  not  immediately  played 
in  Moscow.  He  was  momentarily  cheered  by  a  cable  from  Von 
Billow  announcing  a  magnificent  ovation  at  the  world  premiere  in 
Boston,  but  was  again  plunged  into  gloom  because  his  finances 
were  so  low  that  to  send  an  answering  cable  meant  spending  his 
last  ruble.  This  condition  was  the  result,  not  of  personal  extrava- 
gance, but  of  an  almost  foolish  willingness  to  place  his  meager 
resources  at  the  disposal  of  every  Tom,  Dick,  and  Harry.  In  view 
of  his  steadily  growing  fame,  the  salary  he  received  from  Nikolai 
Rubinstein  was,  despite  grudging  increases,  ridiculously  inade- 
quate. He  made  something  from  journalism  after  having  broken 
into  print  with  a  spirited  defense  of  a  piece  by  Rimsky-Korsakov, 

*  The  latest  lunacy  of  this  school  of  criticism  is  to  take  Bach  severely  to  task  for  not 
being  Buxtehude. 


TCHAIKOVSKY 


but  as  he  wrote  with  painful  slowness,  eventually  gave  it  up  with 
a  sigh  of  relief. 

Actually,  however,  in  the  middle  of  1875,  when  Tchaikovsky 
was  so  agitated  by  his  lack  of  larger  success  and  of  financial  ease, 
he  was  at  least  on  the  verge  of  the  former.  With  a  commission  in 
his  pocket  for  a  ballet,  he  retired  to  the  country  for  the  summer, 
and  wrote  his  Third  Symphony.  That  November,  it  was  given  at 
Moscow  with  considerable  success,  and  rapidly  made  its  way  in 
St.  Petersburg,  Paris,  and  New  York.  At  St.  Petersburg,  even'  the 
vinegarish  Cui  admitted  that  the  Third  Symphony  "must  be  taken 
seriously"—  high  praise  from  him.  Only  Vienna  turned  it  down, 
on  the  ground  that  it  was  "too  Russian."  This  was  a  singularly 
obtuse  comment  on  a  symphony  that  is  often  called  the  "Polish/'* 
and  is  in  reality  among  the  least  Slavic  of  Tchaikovsky's  major 
works.  Except  for  the  introduction  —  a  businesslike,  neatly-con- 
structed, and  sturdy  moderate  that,  possibly  with  humorous  in- 
tent, is  marked  Tempo  di  marcia  funebre  —  the  Third  Symphony  is 
light  music.  Most  of  it  is  merely  gracious  and  superficial.  The 
breezy  scherzo  is  more  exhilarating:  a  kind  of  moto  perpetuo  with 
jolly,  jolting  halts,  it  is  a  fine  jeu  d*  esprit.  In  the  finale,  Tchaikov- 
sky's love  for  vast  volumes  of  sound  gets  the  better  of  him,  and 
produces  an  effect  as  funny  as  a  Rossini  crescendo  that  has  out- 
stayed its  welcome.  The  second  half  of  this  movement  is  nothing 
but  the  composer  playing  around  with  various  earsplitting  endings. 
The  worst  that  can  be  said  of  the  D  major  Symphony  is  that  it  is 
scatterbrained.  With  all  its  good  things,  it  shows  no  improvement 
over  the  Second,  and  nothing  to  indicate  that  its  successor  is  to 
be  one  of  the  most  impressive  symphonies  ever  composed. 

A  rousing  reception  for  the  B  flat  minor  Piano  Concerto  at  its 
first  Moscow  performance  followed  close  on  the  successful  pre- 
miere of  the  Third  Symphony,  These  events,  coupled  with  his  lucky 
finaglings  in  the  opera  competition,  put  Tchaikovsky  in  high  good 
humor.  Taking  his  brother  Modest,  he  went  off  to  Paris,  and  fell  in 
love  with  a  new  opera  called  Carmen  and  with  the  fashionable  ballet 
music  of  Leo  Delibes  —  a  taste  that  has,  for  some  reason,  been  ad- 
duced as  a  final  proof  of  shallowness.  The  first  half  of  1876  was 

*  It  was  called  this  because  the  fifth  movement  is  marked  Tempo  di  Polacca.  As  the 
second  one  is  marked  Alia  Tedesca,  there  is  no  good  reason  why  the  Symphony  should 
not  as  well  have  been  called  the  "German.*5 


512  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

comparatively  uneventful.  By  summer,  Tchaikovsky  was  in  holiday 
mood  again:  he  looked  in  at  Vichy,  and  then,  in  company  with 
the  rest  of  fashionable  Europe,  migrated  to  Bayreuth,  where  he 
observed  the  first  Ring  cycle  as  a  reporter  for  The  Russian  Gazette. 
Some  of  his  critiques  were  decidedly  frivolous;  some  had  more  than 
a  grain  of  truth;  all  tried  to  be  scrupulously  fair  to  Wagner — then 
a  rather  unusual  procedure  for  a  music  critic.  But  when  it  was  all 
over,  Tchaikovsky  had  Festspielhaus  claustrophobia:  "After  the 
last  chords  ofGotterdammerung,  I  felt  as  if  I'd  been  let  out  of  prison." 
In  short,  he  admired  Wagner  without  liking  the  Ring  as  a  whole. 
The  only  Wagner  opera  he  thoroughly  enjoyed  was  Lohengrin. 

Now,  for  the  first  time  since  the  episode  of  Desiree  Artot,  thoughts 
of  women  began  to  play  some  part  in  Tchaikovsky's  life.  After 
Bayreuth,  he  had  returned  to  Russia  unaccountably  depressed,  and 
settled  down  for  the  rest  of  the  summer  at  Verbovka,  an  estate 
belonging  to  his  brother-in-law,  Lev  Davidov,  Alexandra  Tchai- 
kovskaya's  husband.  From  there  he  sent  Modest  the  news  that 
"I've  decided  to  marry.  This  is  irrevocable."  This  must  have  flab- 
bergasted Modest,  who  was  himself  homosexual,  and  knew  that 
Piotr  Ilyich  was,  too.  Actually,  the  key  to  this  rash  decision  was 
simple:  Tchaikovsky  lived  in  mortal  terror  of  having  his  private  life 
exposed,*  and  longed  for  someone  to  take  care  of  him — a  second 
mother,  in  fact.  But  even  though  he  wrote,  "This  is  irrevocable," 
he  had  no  specific  woman  in  mind.  One  of  his  confidants  later  said 
that  Tchaikovsky  was  looking  for  a  middle-aged  woman  who 
would  make  no  sexual  demands  on  him.  That  very  autumn,  when 
Nikolai  Rubinstein  established  a  contact  between  him  and  the 
music-loving  Mme  von  Meek,  he  may  momentarily  have  felt  that 
he  had  found  the  woman. 

Nadejda  Filaretovna  was  a  respectable  widow  with  grown  chil- 
dren, like  himself  shy  and  retiring,  and  ten  years  his  senior.  And, 
though  Tchaikovsky  was  no  fortune  hunter  in  any  vulgar  sense,  he 
could  not  have  been  averse  to  the  fact  that  Mme  von  Meek  was  one 
of  the  richest  women  in  Russia.  Rubinstein,  who  knew  his  friend's 
dire  financial  situation,  had  suggested  that  she  commission  some 

*  Even  in  his  letters  to  Modest,  he  veiled  all  references  to  their  common  homo- 
sexuality by  using  the  code  word,  This.  Nevertheless,  Modest' s  twin,  Anatol,  knew 
their  secret,  and  so,  probably*  did  Alexandra  Davidova.  And  all  Tchaikovsky's 
elaborate  precautions  did  not  keep  fashionable  Moscow  from  whispering. 


TCHAIKOVSKY  513 

music  from  him,  and  she  had  fallen  in  love  with  the  rather  inferior 
samples  of  Tchaikovsky's  art  Rubinstein  had  shown  her.  Not  only 
did  she  accede  to  Rubinstein's  suggestion,  but  she  also  began  to 
correspond  with  the  man  whose  music  so  poignantly  touched  her 
recluse's  heart.  It  soon  developed  that  though  she  was  eager  for 
Tchaikovsky's  friendship,  she  had  no  wish  to  meet  him.  He  wrote 
her  that  he  quite  understood  this  point  of  view,  nay,  felt  closer  to 
her  because  of  it.  Did  he  not  suffer  from  this  selfsame  misan- 
thropy— this  fear  of  disillusionment?  So  began,  in  perfect  under- 
standing, one  of  the  most  extraordinary  friendships  in  history. 

Fate  had  dealt  kindly  with  Tchaikovsky  in  giving  him  Nadejda 
von  Meek  at  the  time  when  he  most  needed  a  sympathetic  woman 
friend.  But  he  still  wanted  a  wife-housekeeper-nursemaid.  Early  in 
1877,  fate,  this  time  in  a  vindictive  mood,  supplied  him  with  one. 
She  was  Antonina  Ivanovna  Miliukova,  a  slightly  unbalanced 
woman  of  twenty-eight  who  had  become  violently  enamored  of 
Tchaikovsky  while  a  pupil  at  the  Conservatory.  She  wrote  her  pro- 
fessor a  mash  note,  and  he  foolishly  answered  it.  He  tried  to  fend 
off  her  attentions,  telling  her  everything  that  might  serve  to  cool 
her  ardor — except  the  dark  secret.  It  was  no  use.  On  May  18,  1877, 
she  sent  him  a  letter  containing  a  suicide  threat,  whereupon  he 
went  to  see  her,  told  her  all  the  truth — and  ended  by  asking  her  if 
she  still  wanted  to  marry  him.  Of  course,  her  answer  was  yes,  for 
she  firmly  believed  that  she  could  change  his  nature.  One  of  the 
reasons  for  Tchaikovsky's  quixotic  and  naive  conduct  was  that  he 
was  at  work  on  a  setting  of  Pushkin's  Eugen  Omegin,  in  which  the 
callous,  Bryonic  hero  receives  a  love  letter  from  the  unsophisticated 
Tatiana.  Tchaikovsky,  who  had  been  enraged  by  Oniegin's  heart- 
less treatment  of  the  girl,  identified  Mile  Miliukova  with  Tatiana. 
and  determined  not  to  repeat  Oniegin's  cruelty.  And  so,  from  the 
most  kindhearted  of  motives,  he  brought  stark  tragedy  into  his  own 
and  this  foolish  girl's  life.  On  July  18,  1877,  they  were  married. 

At  first,  Tchaikovsky  strove  manfully,  despite  his  horror,  to  be 
a  husband  to  this  strange  woman.  But  after  a  fortnight,  he  was 
like  a  man  trying  to  escape  from  a  nightmare.  Pretending  that  he 
was  going  away  for  a  cure,  he  fled  to  one  of  the  Davidov  estates. 
There,  by  convincing  himself  that  his  marriage  was  only  a  bad 
dream,  he  so  recovered  himself  that  he  was  able  to  resume  work  on 
Eugen  Oniegin  and  to  begin  the  orchestration  of  the  Fourth  Sym- 


5X4  MEN     OF    MUSIC 

phony,  which  he  had  started  to  sketch  in  April.  But  his  return  to 
Moscow,  where  Antonina  was  lovingly  making  a  home  for  them, 
could  not  be  postponed  indefinitely.  He  went  back,  and  for  the 
two  most  hellish  weeks  of  his  life  again  tried  to  live  with  his  wife. 
It  was  a  gathering  crescendo  of  terror  and  despair,  during  which 
he  was  unable  to  write  a  note.  One  night  he  stood  waist-deep  in  the 
icy  Moskva:  he  hoped  to  catch  pneumonia  and  die,  but  his  fine 
constitution  defeated  him.  On  October  6,  he  could  stand  An- 
tonina's  nearness  no  longer,  and  boarded  the  St.  Petersburg  train. 
His  brother  Anatol  met  him  at  the  Nikolai  Station,  took  one  look  at 
this  hideously  altered  hysteric,  and  rushed  him  to  the  nearest  hotel. 
There,  after  a  cataclysmic  nervous  attack,  the  details  of  which 
Anatol  forever  kept  secret,  he  lapsed  into  a  two-day  coma.  As  soon 
as  he  was  somewhat  recovered,  he  and  Anatol  left  for  Switzerland. 
To  Nikolai  Rubinstein  and  Modest  was  left  the  awful  task  of 
breaking  to  Antonina  the  news  of  her  husband's  seizure  and  the 
impossibility  of  his  ever  rejoining  her.  She  heard  Rubinstein's 
brutally  unvarnished  words  calmly.  Probably  she  did  not  take 
them  as  really  final.* 

Early  in  that  ambiguous  period  that  had  given  him  both 
Nadejda  and  Antonina,  Tchaikovsky  had  heard  three  large  com- 
positions of  his  given  in  Moscow,  all  of  them  of  minor  importance 
musically,  and  memorable  only  for  their  popularity.  The  first  of 
these,  written  at  Nikolai  Rubinstein's  request,  to  be  played  at  a 
benefit  concert  for  the  Serbian  victims  of  Turkish  aggression,  was 
the  jingoistic,  Pan-Slavic,  and  infectiously  noisy  Marche  Slave.  As 
the  Russians  were  working  themselves  into  that  fine  fever  of  in- 
dignation which  was  to  fit  in  so  well  with  their  Tsar's  desire  for  a 
war  against  Turkey,  the  piece  was  a  huge  success.  It  still  is.  Even 
Tchaikovsky  was  so  carried  away  that  he  forgot  his  podium  terrors, 
and  consented  to  take  the  baton  at  a  repetition  of  the  Marche, 
the  following  February.  So  well  did  this  go  off  that  he  thereupon 
decided  to  do  more  conducting — a  decision  that  ended  by  making 
him  something  of  a  globe-trotter.  Shortly  after  Tchaikovsky's  un- 

*  Already  partly  psychopathic  when  she  fell  in  love  with  Tchaikovsky,  Antonina 
became  odder  and  odder  with  the  years.  She  wrote  her  husband  long,  rambling,  and 
nonsensical  letters,  which  never  contained  a  single  word  of  reproach.  After  a  long 
career  of  free  love  (including  the  bearing  of  numerous  illegitimate  children),  in  1 896 
she  was  confined  in  an  insane  asylum,  where  she  died  in  1917.  For  his  own  part, 
Tchaikovsky  always  spoke  gently  of  the  wretched  creature,  and  blamed  himself  foi 
the  marriage. 


TCHAIKOVSKY  515 

expected  resurrection  as  a  conductor  came  Le  Lac  des  cygnes^  based 
on  a  poem  by  Pushkin,  and  produced  at  the  Grand  Theater  on 
March  4,  1877.  This  gracious,  pellucid,  and  rather  empty  com- 
position, which  clearly  shows  the  influence  of  Delibes  and  the 
fashionable  French  entertainment  music  of  the  time,  has  a  place  in 
history  as  the  forerunner  not  only  of  Tchaikovsky's  own  later  and 
finer  ballets,  but  also  of  a  distinguished  line  of  ballets  by  other 
Russian  composers. 

Five  days  after  the  opening  ofLe  Lac  des  cygnes,  Nikolai  Rubin- 
stein conducted  the  first  performance  of  Tchaikovsky's  Francesco, 
da  Rimini^  based  on  the  touching  lines  from  the  fifth  canto  of  the 
Inferno.  Although  some  have  considered  this  temperately  Lisztian 
tone  poem  superior  to  Romeo  and  Juliet,  Tchaikovsky  himself  knew 
better.  In  1882,  in  a  letter  to  Balakirev,  he  said,  "Both  these  things 
[an  earlier  tone  poem,  The  Tempest^  is  also  referred  to]  are  written 
with  merely  affected  warmth,  with  false  pathos,  with  whipping-up 
of  purely  external  effects,  and  are  really  extremely  cold,  false,  and 
weak.  All  this  arises  from  the  fact  that  these  productions  did  not 
arise  out  of  the  given  subject,  but  were  only  written  apropos  of  it, 
i.e.,  the  birth  of  the  music  was  not  inward  but  fortuitous,  external. 
The  meaningless  uproar  in  the  first  part  of  Francesco,  does  not  cor- 
respond in  the  least  to  the  stupendous  grandeur  of  the  picture  of 
the  infernal  whirlwind,  and  the  sham  exquisiteness  of  the  harmony 
in  the  middle  part  has  nothing  in  common  with  the  inspired  sim- 
plicity and  strength  of  Dante's  text."  It  is  only  fair  to  observe  that 
Tchaikovsky  was  equally  harsh  with  Romeo  and  Juliet:  "I  was  all  too 
painfully  conscious  of  the  complete  lack  of  connection  between 
Shakespeare's  portrayal  of  the  youthful  passion  of  the  Italian 
Romeo  and  my  own  bitter-sweet  meanings."  These  quotations 
should  go  far  in  refuting  the  charge  that  Tchaikovsky  lacked  self- 
criticism. 

When  he  arrived  in  Switzerland  in  October,  1877,  Tchaikovsky 
had  with  him  the  scores  of  two  partially  completed  works,  Eugen 
Oniegin  and  the  F  minor  Symphony.  It  is  amazing  that  except  dur- 
ing the  weeks  he  had  actually  spent  with  Antonina,  he  had  been 
working  on  them — in  the  case  of  the  Fourth  Symphony,  passion- 
ately, for  he  intended  it  as  a  gift  for  Mme  von  Meek.  That  he  had 
been  able  to  compose  at  all  was  largely  owing  to  her  generosity,  for 


516  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

she  saved  him  from  distraction  by  paying  his  most  pressing  debts 
and  lending  him  money  besides.  Now,  when  his  funds  were  so  low 
that  it  seemed  he  might  have  to  return  to  teaching  before  he  was 
physically  fit,  Tchaikovsky  received  from  her  enough  money  to  live 
on  for  several  months.  The  generous  woman  was  not  content  with 
this:  some  weeks  later,  he  received  a  letter  from  her,  stating  that 
she  was  settling  an  annuity  of  six  thousand  rubles  on  him,  and  en- 
closing the  first  installment.  The  effect  of  this  overwhelming  good 
fortune,  this  unquestioning  and  undemanding  kindness  offered 
him  as  a  musician  by  a  woman  who  had  unquestionably  resented 
his  marriage,  was  a  splendid  burst  of  creative  energy  unparalleled 
elsewhere  in  his  career.  In  six  months  he  completed  the  instrumen- 
tation of  Eugen  Oniegin  and  the  Fourth  Symphony,  and  composed 
the  Violin  Concerto  and  an  extremely  long  Piano  Sonata.  Far 
from  being  a  recluse  while  accomplishing  all  this,  he  gadded  hap- 
pily from  one  place  to  another,  lighting  at  Clarens,  Venice,  Vienna, 
Milan,  San  Remo,  Florence,  and  finally,  in  April,  1878,  at  Mme 
Davidova's  estate  at  Kamenka.  Here  he  finished  the  Violin  Con- 
certo before  going  on  to  the  vast  Von  Meek  house  at  Brailov,  which 
had  been  placed  at  his  disposal  during  Nadejda's  absence.  There 
he  passed  the  summer  like  a  great  Russian  landed  proprietor. 

In  September,  Piotr  Ilyich  returned  to  Moscow:  it  was  exactly  a 
year  after  the  darkest  hours  of  his  marital  tragedy.  He  wanted  at 
once  to  give  up  his  Conservatory  job,  but  his  hands  were  momen- 
tarily tied,  as  Rubinstein  was  at  the  Paris  Exposition  conducting 
the  Russian  music — an  honor  Tchaikovsky  had  refused.  On 
Rubinstein's  return,  he  resigned  at  once,  and  resumed  that  roving 
life  that  lasted,  with  few  settled  intervals,  until  his  death,  fifteen 
years  later.  He  was  fretful,  fearful  lest  Antonina  track  him  down 
(which  she  managed  to  do  on  at  least  one  occasion),  and  annoyed 
that  the  performance  of  the  F  minor  Symphony,  which  had  been 
composed  with  such  loving  care,  had  not  noticeably  increased  his 
Moscow  reputation.  It  is  difficult  to  understand  why  this  extraor- 
dinarily attractive  composition  was  not  taken  to  the  heart  at 
once.  Very  gradually  it  made  its  way  through  the  world.  As  late  as 
1897,  over  twenty  years  after  it  was  composed,  James  Huneker,  a 
passionate  Tchaikovskyan,  wrote,  "Western  ears  are  sometimes 
sadly  tried  by  the  uncouth  harmonic  progressions  and  by  the 


TCHAIKOVSKY  517 

savagery  of  the  moods  of  this  symphony."  Today  it  ranks  high  in 
popularity.* 

The  composition  of  the  F  minor  Symphony  was  so  closely  identi- 
fied with  Tchaikovsky's  regard  for  Mme  von  Meek  that  he  and  she 
always  referred  to  it  as  "our  symphony":  as  it  reflected  their  com- 
mon pessimism,  it  is  a  good  description.  The  Fourth  is  unique 
among  his  symphonies  in  having  a  detailed  program,  which  he 
Wrote  out  in  response  to  Nadejda's  request.  Like  Beethoven's 
Fifth,  it  opens  with  a  fate  motive,  f  and  this  Tchaikovsky  called  the 
germ  of  the  entire  composition.  The  first  movement  pictures  futile 
•efforts  to  escape  from  tragic  reality  into  a  dreamworld,  which  is 
rudely  shattered  by  the  irruption  of  the  fate  motive  in  a  savagely 
acrid  key.  The  second  movement  is  a  flight  into  the  past — an 
obbligato  to  evening  reminiscences:  "It  is  bitter,  yet  so  sweet,  to 
lose  oneself  in  the  past,"  The  scherzo  consists  of  "capricious  ara- 
besques, intangible  forms,  which  crowd  the  mind  when  one  has 
drunk  a  little  wine,  and  feels  rather  giddy."  The  finale  explores  a 
very  Russian  idea:  " If  you  can  find  no  reasons  for  happiness  in 
yourself,  look  at  others.  Go  to  the  people."  But  Tchaikovsky  con- 
fesses finally  that  "my  description  is  not  very  clear  or  satisfactory. 
Here  lies  the  peculiarity  of  instrumental  music:  we  cannot  analyze 
the  meanings.  'Where  words  leave  off,  music  beings,'  as  Heine  has 
said."  Thus,  it  is  with  a  Parthian  shot  at  the  rising  school  of  pro- 
gram musicians  that  Tchaikovsky  ends  his  description  of  what  was 
in  his  mind  while  composing  the  F  minor  Symphony. 

Whether  or  not  it  was  because  the  two  masters  conceived  of  fate 
in  different  aspects,  it  must  be  admitted  that  Tchaikovsky's  fate 
motive  is  more  eloquent,  more  ominous,  more  truly  fatalistic  than 
Beethoven's.  But  instead  of  evolving  an  entire  movement  from  it, 
he  merely  states  the  motive  with  unmistakable  vigor,  and  begins  a 
series  of  attempts  to  forget  its  implications.  The  first  movement, 
which  is  a  kind  of  half-valse  built  up  into  rhapsodic  episodes  of 
shrewdly  varying  vitalities,  is  of  boundless  rhythmic  interest.  De- 

*  In  the  WQXR  poll  (footnote,  page  1 94),  the  Fourth  stood  last  in  the  popularity 
rating  of  Tchaikovsky's  last  three  symphonies.  Tchaikovsky  was  a  heavy  favorite  in 
this  poll,  taking  third,  fifth,  and  seventh  places  with  the  Fifth,  Sixth,  and  Fourth 
Symphonies  respectively.  In  the  entire  poll,  he  ran  second  to  Beethoven,  and  well 
ahead  of  Wagner  and  Brahms,  who  ran  practically  nose  and  nose  for  third  place. 

f  He  frankly  confessed  that  "my  work  is  a  reflection  of  Beethoven's  Fifth  Sym- 
phony. ...  If  you  have  failed  to  understand  it,  that  simply  proves  that  I  am  no 
Beethoven — on  which  point  I  have  no  doubt  whatever.3* 


5*8 


MEN    OF    MUSIC 


spite  its  fragmentariness  to  the  eye  (it  is,  in  reality,  a  series  of  varia- 
tions), the  yearning,  predominantly  chromatic  character  of  the 
melodies  gives  it  a  very  real  unity.  The  second  movement  is  one  of 
Tchaikovsky's  finest  inspirations,  its  rambling  narrative  main 
theme  one  of  poignant,  nostalgic  beauty.  The  scherzo  is  a  struc- 
tural masterstroke:  its  nervous,  insistent  plucking,  with  marvel- 
ously  calculated  points  of  rest,  is  a  perfect  foil  to  the  languors  and 
reminiscence  of  the  second  movement  and  to  the  lusty,  forthright 
strength  of  the  finale.  The  total  effect  of  the  Fourth  Symphony  is 
one  of  almost  perfect  integration,  and  shows  Tchaikovsky  in  full 
command  of  his  powers.  He  never  bettered  this  performance,  for 
the  Fifth  and  Sixth  Symphonies  are  not  better  in  quality,  only 
different  in  kind.  And  in  one  respect — the  achievement  of  large 
architectural  balance — the  Fourth  is  his' most  nearly,  perfect  work. 

Russia  gave  Tchaikovsky,  at  this  period,  little  more  than  polite 
response  to  his  efforts,  and  it  is  not  strange  that  he  spent  much  of 
his  time  in  foreign  parts,  usually  returning  home  to  spend  the 
summer  in  the  Russian  countryside  he  came  increasingly  to  love. 
The  chill  success  of  the  F  minor  Symphony  was  only  a  sample  of 
the  real  neglect  and  painful  slights  the  composer  had  to  endure, 
even  in  the  case  of  his  best  work.  For  instance,  the  splendid  Violin 
Concerto,  which  he  had  dedicated  to  Leopold  Auer,  was  carelessly 
put  aside  by  that  fiddler:  he  found  it  too  difficult  to  struggle  with, 
and  was  not  sufficiently  interested  to  work  it  up.  Uglier  still  was 
the  reception  that  Eugen  Oniegin  got  when  it  was  presented  by  the 
Conservatory  students  at  Moscow  on  March  29,  1879,  for  though 
Nikolai  Rubinstein  and  some  other  distinguished  musicians  were 
devoted  to  the  music,  Anton,  who  had  ,come  specially  from  St. 
Petersburg  for  the  premiere,  withheld  his  praise.  The  audience  gave 
Tchaikovsky  a  personal  ovation,  but  was  merely  polite  to  Eugen. 
Tchaikovsky's  disappointment  over  this  rebuff  was  assuaged,  five 
years  later,  when  the  Tsar  ordered  it  performed  at  the  Imperial 
Opera  in  St.  Petersburg.  A  slight  flurry"  of  popularity  followed, 
and  on  several  occasions  Tchaikovsky  made  long  journeys  as  far 
afield  as  Prague  and  Hamburg  to  conduct  it. 

Almost  thirty  years  ago,  the  Metropolitan  staged  Eugen  Oniegin 
seven  times  in  two  successive  seasons,  but  has  not  revived  it  since. 
This  is  doubtless  wise,  for  with  all  its  moments  of  romantic  charm 
and  gentle  melancholy,  it  is  only  intermittently  dramatic.  What  we 


TCHAIKOVSKY  519 

hear  of  it  over  the  air  and  on  records  is  a  shrewd  sampling  of  the 
best  moments  of  what  Tchaikovsky  thought  his  best  opera.  It  is 
pleasant  enough  music  (Bernard  Shaw  implied  that  it  is  The 
Bohemian  Girl  of  Russia,  and  suggested  that  the  hero's  name  might 
best  be  spelled  O'Neoghegan),  but  completely  lacks  the  power  and 
urgency  of  Tchaikovsky's  finest  orchestral  music.  He  was  not  com- 
pletely at  ease  when  writing  for  the  voice.  He  composed  dozens  of 
songs,  some  of  them  popular,  and  one  of  them — a  setting  of 
Goethe's  commonplace  Nur  wer  die  Seknsucht  kennt — something  that 
cannot  be  escaped.  Had  he  written  nothing  else,  he  would  rank  a 
step  or  two  below  Massenet.  His  songs,  more  than  any  other  class  of 
his  compositions  except  his  trivial  salon  pieces  for  piano,  point  up 
the  sad  fact  that  this  rigid  self-disciplinarian  began  to  eye  himself 
askance  only  after  the  deed  was  done.  Tchaikovsky's  output  of 
trash  is  equaled  among  first-rank  composers  only  by  Sibelius'. 

Traveling  from  one  gay  capital  or  resort  town  to  another  (pre- 
cisely what  Tchaikovsky  continued  to  do)  was  in  certain  respects 
detrimental  to  the  character  of  his  music.  Always  fatally  facile, 
prone,  too,  to  fall  under  the  spell  of  others  as  fatally  facile  as  him- 
self, he  picked  up  a  characterless  way  of  writing — a  real  interna- 
tional idiom — that  allowed  him  to  grind  out  rigmarole  that  did 
nobody  any  harm  and  himself  no  good.  Anyone  who  had  been  to 
Paris,  and  had  sat  drinking  lemonade  in  the  Pincian  Gardens, 
could  have  written  the  Capricdo  Italien*  Similarly,  anyone  with  a 
flair  for  shattering  mass  orchestration,  enough  counterpoint  to 
combine  the  Marseillaise  with  the  Tsarist  anthem,  and  a  feeling  for 
a  good,  swingy  march,  could  have  turned  out  the  "1812"  Over- 
ture, with  its  Russianism  spread  on  too  thick  to  be  true. 

The  year  1881  laid  heavy  toll  on  Tchaikovsky's  emotions.  In 
February,  his  setting  of  Schiller's  Die  Jungfrau  von  Orleans,  though 
received  rapturously  by  a  brilliant  first-night  audience  at  the 
Maryinsky  Theater  in  St.  Petersburg,  was  unmercifully  but  justly 
drubbed  by  the  critics,  led  by  Cesar  Gui.  In  April,  Nikolai  Rubin- 
stein, his  difficult,  overbearing,  but  loyal  friend,  died  at  the  early 
age  of  forty-six.  Tchaikovsky's  easy  tears  were  roused,  and  there  is 
no  doubt  that  he  was  deeply  touched.  By  the  end  of  the  year  he  was 
working  on  a  trio  for  piano,  violin,  and  cello — a  combination  he 
loathed — because  he  wished  to  honor  Rubinstein's  memory  with  a 
small,  personal  type  of  composition.  An  amusing  instance  of 


5^0  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

Tchaikovsky's  harmless  deceptiveness  is  his  writing  Mme  von 
Meek  that  he  was  composing  the  trio  because  she  liked  that  sort  of 
music  so  much.* 

Although  the  A  minor  Trio  is  extremely  long,  this  finest  of 
Tchaikovsky's  chamber  works  consists  of  but  two  movements.,  the 
first  an  elegy,  the  second  a  series  of  variations  on  a  folk  melody  he 
and  Rubinstein  had  heard  during  a  happy  picnic  in  the  country 
nine  years  before.  Each  of  the  variations  represents  a  facet  in 
Rubinstein's  character  or  an  incident  in  his  life.  The  concluding 
section,  so  extended  as  to  seem  like  a  third  movement,  is  a  whirl- 
wind of  angry  grief,  and  ends  with  an  andante  lugubre  in  which 
the  selfsame  rhythm  as  that  of  Chopin's  Marche  funebre  suggests 
that  it  may  represent  the  funeral  of  "the  great  artist55  to  whose 
memory  the  trio  is  dedicated.  The  A  minor  Trio  is  a  fine,  eventful 
composition  in  Tchaikovsky's  sincerest  and  most  personal  vein.  It 
has  few  dull  moments.  In  short,  it  is  more  thankful  in  performance 
than  certain  chamber  works  by  recognized  masters  of  the  medium, 
played  only  because  of  the  revered  names  attached  to  them. 

Tchaikovsky  was  in  Rome  in  November,  1881,  when  he  heard 
that  Adolf  Brodsky  had  had  the  courage  to  make  his  Vienna  debut 
as  soloist  in  the  long-neglected  Violin  Concerto.  Not  only  was  the 
Concerto  in  D  extremely  difficult,  but  it  was  a  novelty,  and  to  dare 
the  austere  Vienna  press  with  a  novelty  not  by  Brahms  was  indeed 
rash.  In  shocked  and  vengeful  mood,  Eduard  Hanslick,  the  self- 
appointed  guardian  of  music*  s  most  sacred  shrine,  proceeded  to  rip 
the  concerto  to  pieces  in  an  article  full  ofAlt-Wien  billingsgate — a 
piece  of  gratuitous  vituperation  that  Tchaikovsky  brooded  over 
until  the  day  of  his  death.  Brodsky,  however,  was  not  discouraged: 
he  said  that  he  was  tempted  to  go  on  playing  the  concerto  forever, 
and  so  not  only  won  away  the  dedication  from  Auer,  but  also 
earned  the  composer's  enduring  gratitude.  Time  has  proved  that 
Hanslick  and  his  colleagues  were  as  flagrantly  wrong  about 
Tchaikovsky  as  about  Wagner. 

The  D  major  is  not  only  one  of  the  most  popular  violin  concertos 
ever  composed,  but  it  is  one  of  the  best.  Its  difficulties  are  for  the 

*  At  this  time,  Mme  von  Meek  retained  a  private  trio,  the  pianist  of  which  was  a 
nineteen-year-old  Frenchman,  Claude-AchiUe  Debussy.  Tchaikovsky  never  met 
uour  little  Bussy,"  as  she  called  Mm,  but  influenced  him  indirectly,  for  Debussy's 
first  published  composition  was  a  piano  arrangement  of  selections  from  Le  Lac  des 
cygnes. 


TCHAIKOVSKY  521 

performer,  not  for  the  hearer,  and  it  thus  has  an  immediacy  of 
appeal  the  more  learned  fabrications  of  Beethoven  and  Brahms 
cannot  pretend  to.  It  does  not  attempt  as  much — perhaps — but 
succeeds  without  qualification.  It  would  be  a  misnomer  to  speak  of 
the  significance  of  the  Concerto  in  D :  it  is  primarily  a  sensuous 
work,  to  be  enjoyed  for  the  opulence  of  its  melodies,  its  tireless 
rhythmic  variety  and  vigor,  and  its  bold  but  sensitive  coloring.  The 
violin  has  a  lot  of  work  to  do,  but  work  always  peculiarly  suited  to 
its  genius.  The  only  disappointment  the  D  major  offers  is  the 
orchestral  introduction,  which  is  pompous  but  niggardly.  But  once 
the  solo  instrument  has  entered  on  the  sweep  of  a  broad  cantilena, 
this  unhappy  first  impression  is  permanently  banished.  The  theme 
of  the  first  movement  has  the  character  of  a  romantic  song,  and 
that  its  permutations  should  transfer  it  from  the  latitude  of  love  to 
that  of  sheer  exuberance  might  seem  tasteless.  The  answer  is  that  it 
does  not:  what  happens  seems  inevitable  and  utterly  germane.  The 
brief  canzonetta,  a  charming  interlude  of  melancholy  cast,  is  a 
needed  moment  of  rest  before  the  violent  dynamics  of  the  finale,  as 
mighty  in  its  high  spirits  and  earthy  jollity  as  a  Beethoven  kermis. 
In  analyzing  it,  Rosa  Newmarch  said  exactly  the  right  thing: 
"Tchaikovsky  has  built  a  movement  the  brightness  and  infectious 
gaiety  of  which  would  probably  have  delighted  Beethoven  as  much 
as  it  shocked  Hanslick.55  It  is  clear  that  those  who  speak  of  Tchai- 
kovsky as  exclusively  morbid  and  self-pitying  have  slept  through 
his  Violin  Concerto. 

After  Rubinstein's  death  in  1881,  the  directorship  of  the  Moscow 
Conservatory  had  been  offered  to  Tchaikovsky,  though  it  must 
have  been  an  open  secret  that  toward  the  end  of  his  professoriate 
there  Rubinstein  had  valued  him  rather  as  a  composer  than  as  a 
teacher.  At  any  rate,  Tchaikovsky  refused:  he  was  too  attached  to 
his  roaming  life  to  give  it  up.  For  the  next  six  years,  his  biography 
is  simply  a  record  of  his  wanderings.  He  composed,  of  course,  but 
nothing  that  added  notably  to  his  stature  as  an  artist.  One  of  the 
largest  and  most  neglected  works  of  this  period  is  the  Second 
Piano  Concerto.  Possibly  the  chief  reason  why  it  is  never  heard  is 
that  both  the  violin  and  cello  have  important  solo  passages — not 
important  enough  to  make  it  a  triple  concerto,  but  too  much  so 
for  the  average  pianist's  comfort.  The  score  is  interesting,  even  if 
excessively  long,  and  might  well  claim  the  attention  of  some  enter- 


MEN     OF    MUSIC 

prising  virtuoso.  Manfred  is  a  vast  symphonic  pastiche — a  musico- 
literary  work  patterned  after  Berlioz'  Symphonie  fantastique,  even 
down  to  the  idee  fixe.  Its  neglect  is  not  much  to  be  deplored.  To 
these  listless  years  also  belong  several  weak  operas  that  are  quite 
unlikely  to  be  resurrected.  One  of  them — Vakula  the  Smith  rewritten 
and  rechristened  Oxana's  Caprices — was  performed  in  the  United 
States  in  1922  to  a  politely  amused  audience.  Really  popular  is  the 
delightful  suite  for  orchestra  called  Mozartiana>  a  pretty  tribute  to 
Tchaikovsky's  favorite  composer,  done  in  antique  style. 

With  nothing  in  his  past  few  years  to  shore  up  his  title  of  com- 
poser except  a  gusty  symphonic  poem,  some  flabby  operas,  and  a 
few  delicately  scented  nosegays,  it  is  not  surprising  that  in  April, 
1888,  Tchaikovsky  was  asking,  "Have  I  written  myself  out?  No 
ideas,  no  inclination?"  But  the  very  next  sentence  in  this  letter: 
"Still,  I  am  hoping  to  collect  materials  for  a  symphony"  indicates 
that  he  has  entered  upon  a  new  stage  of  his  career.  Briefly,  in 
January,  1888,  as  the  result  of  a  very  successful  appearance  as  a 
concert  conductor  in  St.  Petersburg  the  year  before,  he  began  the 
first  of  that  series  of  ambitious  conducting  tours  that  carried  him  to 
such  cultural  outposts  as  New  York,  Philadelphia,  and  Baltimore, 
and  ended  by  making  him  one  of  the  most  famous  people  alive. 
The  first  taste  of  this  glory  was  tonic  to  him.  Everywhere  he  was 
feted,  and  bigwigs  thronged  his  concerts.  At  Leipzig,  where  he 
conducted  a  Gewandhaus  concert,  he  met  Brahms  and  Grieg  and  a 
shoal  of  lesser  notabilities  from  the  pages  of  Grove.  At  Prague, 
Dvorak  sought  him  out,  while  at  Paris  Gounod,  Massenet,  and 
Paderewski  were  among  his  visitors.  London  ignored  his  social 
existence,  but  received  his  music  enthusiastically.  Reflecting  on  his 
growing  fame,  and  sensible  of  the  new  artistic  duties  it  involved, 
Tchaikovsky  returned  to  Russia,  and  retired  to  a  comfortable 
country  estate  a  pension  from  Alexander  III  had  helped  him  to 
purchase.  Within  four  months  he  had  completed  the  Fifth  Sym- 
phony. With  a  charming  irony,  he  dedicated  it  to  the  venerable 
Theodor  Ave-Lallemant,  manager  of  the  Hamburg  Philharmonic 
Society,  who  had  severely  lectured  him  for  his  lack  of  German 
musical  training.  On  November  17,  Tchaikovsky  conducted  the 
premiere  of  the  E  minor  Symphony  in  St.  Petersburg.  So  lukewarm 
was  the  public  reaction  that  a  short  time  later  the  volatile  com- 


TCHAIKOVSKY  523 

poser  was  writing  dejectedly,,  "Am  I  done  for  already?"  and  him- 
self railing  against  his  new  symphony. 

Today  the  Fifth  is  not  only  the  most  popular  of  Tchaikovsky's 
symphonies,  but  is  probably  exceeded  in  public  affection  only  by 
two  or  three  other  symphonies.  With  some  important  modifica- 
tions, it  follows  the  pattern  of  the  F  minor  Symphony,  particularly 
in  that  a  fate  motive  binds  the  movements  together,  though  here 
(and  this  may  explain  people's  preference  for  the  Fifth  over  the 
Fourth)  Tchaikovsky  uses  the  device  with  increased  dramatic 
power.  The  first  movement  has  an  ambiguous  stamp,  blending 
gloom  with  a  certain  nervous  gaiety,  and  using  a  somber,  darkling 
palette  with  burnished  highlights  and  smoky  depths.  The  second 
movement,  marked  to  be  played  "with  all  freedom,"  begins  with  a 
plaintive,  yearning  melody  for  solo  horn  that  has  made  it  a  salon 
favorite  in  transcriptions.  It  works  up  gradually  into  an  attack  of 
public  sobbing  that  would  be  embarrassing  if  it  were  not  so  effec- 
tive musically.  The  third  movement  is  not  the  usual  tricky  scherzo 
at  which  Tchaikovsky  so  excelled:  a  waltz,  it  begins  questioningly, 
tentatively,  almost  listlessly,  but  develops  fleetness  and  excitement 
until  the  first  mood  returns,  only  to  be  cut  off  sharp  by  a  hint  of  the 
fate  motive.  The  fourth  movement  is  a  stumbling  block  to  those 
who  assert  that  Tchaikovsky  always  took  refuge  in  despair,  for  this 
tremendous,  varirhythmed  essay  in  mighty  orchestration  is  one  of 
the  great  yes-sayings  in  all  music.  Its  effect,  after  three  movements 
of  predominant  melancholy,  is  powerful  beyond  description.  Had 
Tchaikovsky  died  right  after  completing  the  E  minor  Symphony, 
his  biographer  would  be  forced  to  conclude  that  he  had  found 
some  ennobling  way  out  of  his  soul  sickness. 

When  Tchaikovsky  went  on  his  second  European  tour  in  1889, 
he  somewhat  reluctantly  included  the  Fifth  Symphony  in  his  con- 
certs, only  to  find  that  it  grew  on  acquaintance.  When  he  played  it 
in  Hamburg,  Brahms  came  to  town  especially  to  hear  it.  The  finale 
was  too  much  for  him;  the  other  movements  he  liked  mildly.  The 
rest  of  the  year  passed  more  or  less  uneventfully  for  Tchaikovsky,  a 
lazy  summer  at  his  country  place  producing  nothing  beyond  the 
orchestration  of  The  Sleeping  Beauty,  a  ballet  commissioned  by  the 
Imperial  Opera  earlier  in  the  year.  It  was  given  in  the  Tsar's 
presence  the  following  January,  and  Tchaikovsky,  who  was  him- 
self enthusiastic  about  the  music,  was  cast  down  by  the  perfimc- 


524  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

tory  "very  nice"  that  issued  from  the  imperial  lips,  and  by  the 
tepid  applause  from  the  public.  The  light  and  charming  music, 
some  of  which  had  been  composed  for  a  playlet  given  by  Tchai- 
kovsky's small  nieces  and  nephews  at  Kamenka^  rapidly  gained 
ground,  and  is  still  popular,  though  the  ballet  itself  has  disap- 
peared except  in  a  briefer  form  known  as  Aurora's  Wedding.  What 
vexation  he  suffered  over  the  first  reactions  to  The  Sleeping  Beauty 
was  more  than  made  up  for  by  the  enormous  ovation  given  to  his 
last  full-length  opera,  Pique-Dame,  completed  just  before  his  fiftieth 
birthday.  This  was  an  all-Tchaikovsky  product,  for  the  libretto 
was  by  Modest,  who  adapted  it  from  a  Pushkin  story.  The  vogue 
of  Pique-Dame)  like  that  ofEugen  Oniegin,  ceased  about  a  quarter  of 
a  century  ago. 

Unhappily  for  Tchaikovsky's  peace  of  mind,  Pique-Dame  had  not 
yet  been  performed,  and  thus  he  could  not  know  what  tidy 
royalties  he  would  earn  from  it,  when,  early  in  October,  1890,  the 
most  important  relationship  in  his  life  suddenly  collapsed.  He  was 
in  Tiflis  visiting  his  brother  Anatol  when  the  blow  fell:  Mme  von 
Meek  wrote  him  that  her  finances  were  perilously  involved,  and 
that  she  was  discontinuing  his  annuity.  This  was  bad  enough,  but 
worse,  the  letter  sounded  like  farewell.  As  she  was  always  com- 
plaining about  money  matters,  Tchaikovsky  was  prepared  to  be- 
lieve that  she  really  was  in  serious  straits,  even  though  she  had 
sent  him  an  unusually  generous  check  some  months  before.  How- 
ever, stopping  in  Moscow  en  route  to  superintend  the  rehearsals  of 
Pique-Dame  in  St.  Petersburg,  he  received  the  startling  information 
that  Nadejda's  description  of  her  money  losses  was  so  exaggerated 
as  to  be  a  He.  He  then  knew  that  she  was  merely  finding  a  way  to 
break  with  him.  Although  they  had  never  spoken  to  each  other, 
even  on  the  several  occasions  when  they  had  accidentally  met  in 
public  places,  they  had  in  thirteen  years  of  constant  correspond- 
ence built  up  an  intimacy  that  had  all  but  one  of  the  elements  of  a 
love  affair.  It  is  not  remarkable  that  Tchaikovsky,  with  his  ca- 
pacity for  disillusionment,  found  in  Nadejda's  defection  a  parable 
of  the  basic  falseness  of  even  the  best  of  humanity.  He  never  re- 
covered: within  a  few  months  he  became  an  old  man. 

We  naturally  wonder  what  led  Mme  von  Meek  to  take  this 
callous  measure.  No  really  satisfactory  answer  is  forthcoming. 
Possibly  she  had  heard  of  her  protege's  homosexuality.  More  prob- 


TCHAIKOVSKY  525 

ably  the  death  of  her  favorite  son  caused  this  neurotic  woman  to 
feel  that  Tchaikovsky  was  an  indulgence  for  which  she  had  sinfully 
neglected  her  family.  A  final  factor  in  this  baffling  situation  is  that 
in  1890  Mme  von  Meek  was  a  hopeless  consumptive  with  but  three 
years  more  to  live. 

The  excellent  financial  results  of  Pique-Dame  did  not  free 
Tchaikovsky  from  a  frantic  feeling  that  his  income  was  seriously 
impaired,  and  that  he  could  turn  down  no  offer.  He  even  spoke 
bitterly  of  having  to  apply  for  "some  well-paid  post."  He  accepted 
a  commission  from  St.  Petersburg  for  a  one-act  opera  and  a  ballet; 
he  agreed  to  conduct  one  of  the  modish  Concerts  Golonne  at  Paris; 
finally,  he  overcame  his  fear  of  long  journeys,  and  at  young  Walter 
Damrosch's  invitation  signed  up  for  an  American  tour.  Almost  be- 
fore he  had  crossed  the  Russian  frontier,  he  was  engulfed  by  a  wave 
of  homesickness.  Nor  could  his  first  French  triumph  cheer  him. 
At  Paris,  the  day  before  he  sailed  for  the  United  States,  he  read  in  a 
newspaper  of  his  beloved  sister's  death.  For  a  moment,  he  was  on 
the  verge  of  turning  back.  He  conquered  this  impulse,  and  on 
April  27,  1891,  arrived  in  New  York.  He  spent  his  first  evening  in 
America  alone  in  his  hotel  room,  crying.  But  his  appearance  at  the 
opening  concert  of  Music  (now  Carnegie)  Hall,  on  May  5,  cheered 
him  immensely.  With  a  pardonably  exaggerated  reaction  to  the 
unquestioning  cordiality  of  the  Americans,  he  wrote,  "I'm  ten 
times  more  famous  here  than  in  Europe/5  He  took  the  United 
States  to  his  heart,  and  except  for  persistent  homesickness  thor- 
oughly enjoyed  himself.  After  conducting  four  concerts  in  New 
York  and  one  each  in  Philadelphia  and  Baltimore,  he  made  the 
grand  tour  of  Washington  and  Niagara  Falls,  was  regally  enter- 
tained by  Andrew  Carnegie,  and  was  back  in  Russia  by  the  end 
of  May. 

Tchaikovsky  wanted  to  settle  down  in  the  country,  and  for  a  few 
months  was  able  to  do  so,  working  on  the  compositions  he  had 
promised  St.  Petersburg.  Then,  almost  against  his  will,  but  driven 
by  his  money  mania  and  his  profound  unhappiness,  he  began 
another  concert  tour.  At  Paris,  in  February,  1892,  he  was  so  over- 
come by  nostalgia  and  apathy  that  he  canceled  the  rest  of  the  tour, 
and  fled  back  home.  He  had  promised  the  Russian  Musical  Society 
a  new  work  for  a  St.  Petersburg  concert  on  March  19,  but  having 
none  at  hand,  quickly  orchestrated  a  few  numbers  from  the  ballet 


5^6  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

he  was  composing.  Thus  the  famous  Nutcracker  Suite  came  into 
being.  At  the  concert,  every  number  had  to  be  repeated,  and  so 
the  suite  was  started  on  its  career  as  Tchaikovsky's  most  consist- 
ently popular  nonsymphonic  orchestral  work.  For  this  group  of 
clear-cut  miniatures,  each  of  which  is  like  a  child's  conception  of  a 
fairyland  scene,  he  provided  witty  and  delicately  tinted  orchestra- 
tion. Some  of  it  sounds  Hke  music  Victor  Herbert  might  have 
written  if  he  had  been  a  more  gifted  artist.  The  Nutcracker  was  the 
first  work  by  a  major  composer  in  which  the  celesta,  with  its  dainty 
tinkling  tone,  was  used.  The  novelty  of  its  effect  in  the  Dance  of 
the  Sugarplum  Fairy  y  on  which  Tchaikovsky  banked  so  heavily,  is 
now,  of  course,  lost.  The  charm  of  the  entire  suite,  however,  has 
proved  extraordinarily  durable.  It  is  curious  that  from  the  very 
beginning  the  Nutcracker  failed  as  a  workable  ballet.  At  its  pre- 
miere, on  December  17,  1892,  it  was  given  along  with  the  one-act 
Ivlanthe,  Tchaikovsky's  last  opera.  Both  just  escaped  being  hissed. 

But  with  the  exception  of  the  Nutcracker-Iolanthe  debacle,  the 
winter  of  1892-3  was  a  series  of  personal  accolades,  the  chief  being 
Tchaikovsky's  appointment  as  a  corresponding  member  of  the 
French  Academy.  He  witnessed  the  huge  success  of  Pique-Dame  at 
Prague,  as  generous  with  its  applause  as  in  the  days  of  Gluck  and 
Mozart,  and  gave  a  highly  acclaimed  concert  at  Brussels.  But  his 
letters  to  Russia,  written  mostly  to  his  nephew  Vladimir  ("Bob") 
Davidov,  are  almost  casual  about  his  triumphs,  and  vibrate  with 
nameless  fears  and  physically  painful  longings  for  the  little  house 
he  had  lately  purchased  in  the  quiet  town  of  Klin,  near  Moscow. 
In  January,  he  was  once  more  on  Russian  soil,  but  before  he  could 
retire  to  Klin  to  complete  a  symphony  he  had  started  the  year  be- 
fore, he  had  to  attend  a  music  festival  in  his  honor  at  Odessa.  Here 
he  submitted  to  the  ordeal  of  having  his  portrait  done  by  one 
Kuznetsov.  It  is  an  old  man  who  looks  out  at  us — a  bent  old  man 
with  a  tragic  face  and  sparse  white  hair,  his  bitter,  full-lipped 
mouth  emphasized  rather  than  concealed  by  the  white  mustache 
and  beard.  The  piercing  blue  eyes  look  us  through  and  through. 
Modest  testified  that  the  portrait  was  a  speaking  likeness. 

Now,  at  last,  he  could  go  to  Klin.  There  would  be  peace  until 
May,  when  he  had  agreed  to  go  to  England  to  accept  an  honorary 
degree  from  Cambridge.  He  looked  over  the  sketches  for  his  new 
symphony,  and  found  them  mechanical  and  cold.  So  he  put  them 


TCHAIKOVSKY  527 

aside,  and  took  up  some  ideas  that  had  come  to  him  while  in  a 
French  railway  carriage.  With  lightning  speed,  he  composed  the 
sixth  of  his  symphonies.  To  Bob  Davidov,  he  wrote  in  an  exultant 
mood:  "You  cannot  imagine  the  joy  it  gives  me  to  know  my  day  is 
not  yet  done.  ..."  In  May,  he  went  to  England,  and  on  June  i 
conducted  the  London  Philharmonic  in  his  Fourth  Symphony. 
Saint-Saens  presented  a  symphony  of  his  own  on  the  same  pro- 
gram, but  was  quite  overshadowed  by  the  enthusiasm  for  Tchai- 
kovsky. Eleven  days  later,  along  with  Saint-Saens,  Max  Bruch, 
and  Boito — Grieg  was  to  have  been  of  the  company,  too,  but  was 
absent — he  received  a  music  doctorate  from  Cambridge. 

Back  at  Klin,  Tchaikovsky  finished  orchestrating  the  Sixth 
Symphony  late  in  August,  and  wrote  his  publisher  one  of  his  few 
self-satisfied  reports;  "On  my  word  of  honor,  never  in  my  life  have 
I  been  so  satisfied  with  myself,  so  proud,  so  happy  to  know  that  I 
have  made,  in  truest  fact,  a  good  thing.35  There  was  some  discus- 
sion as  to  what  the  new  symphony  should  be  called.  Modest  sug- 
gested "Tragique"  as  the  proper  descriptive  adjective.  Tchaikovsky 
demurred,  and  Modest's  next  idea  was  "Pathetique"  which  de- 
lighted the  composer.  On  October  28,  he  conducted  it  at  St. 
Petersburg,  and  it  is  ironical  that  the  only  one  of  his  symphonies 
the  composer  spoke  of  with  unreserved  pleasure  should  have  been 
received  with  a  chill  lack  of  understanding.  After  the  performance, 
Rimsky-Korsakov  asked  his  friend  whether  the  B  minor  Symphony 
had  a  program.  Tchaikovsky  said  yes,  but  that  it  was  secret.  As  it  is 
dedicated  to  Bob  Davidov,  with  whom  he  shared  his  own  and 
Modest's  secret,  one  possible  program  may  easily  be  conjectured. 
Havelock  Ellis  has  flatly  called  the  Sixth  Symphony  the  "homo- 
sexual tragedy." 

Early  in  November,  Tchaikovsky,  who  for  some  years  had  com- 
plained of  what  he  called  "heart  cramps"  and  "nervous  dysen- 
tery," awoke  one  morning  after  a  gay  evening,  feeling  ill.  He 
brushed  aside  Modest's  offer  to  summon  a  doctor,  saying  that  a 
bottle  of  Hunyadi  Water  would  fix  him  up.  Instead,  he  drank  a 
glass  of  unboiled  tap  water — a  rash  act  in  cholera-infested  St. 
Petersburg.  That  night  he  was  seriously  ill,  and  the  hurriedly 
summoned  specialists  pronounced  him  dying  of  cholera.  Except  for 
one  slight  rally,  he  sank  rapidly,  enduring  the  suffocation  and 
thirst  characteristic  of  the  disease.  The  end  came  on  November  63 


528  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

1893.  He  died  reproachfully  muttering  the  name  of  Nadejda 
Filaretovna. 

Wild  rumors  began  to  circulate.  About  a  fortnight  after  Tchai- 
kovsky's death,  a  memorial  performance  of  the  "Pathetique"  was 
given  that  was  marked  by  wild  acclamation  of  what  was  already 
beginning  to  be  called  the  c 'Suicide"  Symphony.  Of  course,  these 
sensationalists  and  hysterics  were  wrong  in  their  suspicion  that 
the  composer  had  taken  his  life.  But  they  were  right  in  a  larger 
sense:  the  Sixth  Symphony  is  an  epitome  of  Tchaikovsky's 
biography,  wherein  his  vices  and  virtues  are  ranged  side  by  side. 
Here  are  all  his  faults,  too  glaring  to  be  denied — gross  sentimen- 
tality, inability  to  avoid  the  commonplace,  unhealthy  self-pity, 
overfervid  emotionalism.  Against  these  are  his  fertile  melodious- 
ness, his  wide  gamut  of  orchestral  color,  ranging  from  the  rawest 
primes  to  the  most  delicate  tints,  his  genius  for  knowing  what  in- 
struments can  do,  the  sweep  of  his  rhythms,  and  the  satisfying 
eloquence  of  his  mighty  climaxes.  It  is  possible  honestly  to  dislike 
something  in  each  of  the  movements  of  the  Sixth  Symphony — the 
first  for  its  tearful  repetitiveness,  the  second  for  its  petty  wayward- 
ness, the  third  for  its  bombastic  and  vulgar  spunk,  and  the  finale 
for  its  neurotic  self-revelation — but  it  will  necessarily  be  an  ambiv- 
alent dislike.  For  the  symphony  gathers  compelling  power  as  it 
moves  along,  and  its  dynamic  sweep  is  not  to  be  denied.  The  cold 
mathematician  tells  us  that  the  whole  is  equal  to  the  sum  of  its 
parts,  but  Tchaikovsky  has  proved  that  musically  this  can  be  false. 
In  its  totality  the  Sixth  Symphony  has  a  strength  and  a  beauty  that 
multiply  rather  than  add  together  the  strength  and  beauty  of  the 
separate  movements.  It  is  pointless  to  prate  of  vulgar  tears,  willful- 
ness, bombast,  and  morbidity  when  the  ocean  is  coming  straight 
at  you. 


Chapter  XX 

Claude-Achille  Debussy 

(St.  Germain-en-Laye,  August  22,  1862- 
March  25,  1918,  Paris) 


DEBUSSY,  musicienfran$ais"  was  the  way  the  greatest  of 
French  musicians  was  wont,  in  his  last  years,  to  sign  his  name. 
Gabriele  d'Annunzio  called  him  "Claude  de  France."  Debussv 
was  so  French,  and  what  he  did  was  so  French,  that  it  is  unprofit- 
able to  compare  him  with  his  musical  contemporaries  in  other 
countries.  Of  course,  no  modern  composer,  with  his  unparalleled 
opportunities  for  hearing  the  music  of  all  times  and  all  countries, 
can  fail  to  be  influenced  somewhat  by  the  work  of  foreign  mu- 
sicians. But  in  Debussy's  case  that  influence  was  singularly  small. 
He  took  something  from  Russia,  something  from  the  Far  East,  and 
even  a  little  from  Spain,  but  these  borrowings  have  been  exag- 
gerated in  attempts  to  find  a  simple  explanation  for  the  exoticism 
that  still  clings  to  his  music.  Actually,  the  key  to  that  exoticism 
lies  nearer  home,  and  is  much  simpler.  Debussy  broke  with  the 
German  and  Italian  traditions  that,  between  them,  had  run  music 
for  two  hundred  years,  and  wrote  French  French  music.  If  he  still 
sounds  strange  to  us,  that  is  partly  because  our  ears  are  pro-German 
or  pro-Italian. 

Debussy  was  not  only  French,  he  was  Parisian.  When  he  was 
only  twenty,  Nadejda  von  Meek  described  him  to  Tchaikovsky  as 
"Parisian  from  tip  to  toe,  a  typical  gamin  de  Paris"  and  in  some 
ways  Debussy  was  the  boulevardier  of  fiction.  The  Paris  into  which 
he  was  born  was  in  most  respects  as  barren  artistically  as  the  Ger- 
many Schumann  laughed  to  scorn  in  the  famous  retrospective 
preface  to  his  collected  ^eitschrift  articles.  The  Germany  of  1833 
was  in  the  short-lived  doldrums  between  the  waning  of  classicism 
and  the  emergence  of  romanticism.  The  Paris  of  1862  was  in  a 
deeper  trough:  except  in  literature,  it  was  impossible  to  get  even 
a  Pisgah  sight  of  the  great  efflorescence  that  was  to  begin  in  the 
eighties.  Many  of  the  lions  of  romanticism  were  either  dead  or 
dying.  Lamartine,  who  had  sponsored  the  movement  in  France, 
was  an  unburied  corpse.  However,  Hugo  was  still  to  write  master- 

529 


530  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

pieces,  and  Baudelaire,  the  Goncourts,  and  Flaubert  were  to  be 
reckoned  with.  Painting  and  music  were  the  derelicts.  Delacroix, 
the  friend  of  Chopin,  was  on  his  deathbed,  and  so  was  the  hope  of 
romanticism  in  painting.  The  recognition  of  Daumier  was  yet  to 
come,  and  the  impressionists  were  still  to  perform.  The  academi- 
cians were  in  the  saddle.  In  music,  though  Berlioz  was  still  alive, 
the  same  situation  obtained.  The  composers  of  Faust  and  Mignon 
were  great  in  the  land,  and  Auber  and  Offenbach  were  not  far 
behind.  Conforming  to  the  rules  as  interpreted  by  the  pundits  was 
notoriously  the  only  way  to  success,  and  (as  Berlioz  had  found  out) 
true  originality  meant  being  an  outcast.  Or,  with  the  proper 
strength,  it  meant  breaking  the  tradition — as  Debussy  did — and 
dying  the  most  respected  composer  in  France. 

The  art  of  Debussy  is  an  aristocratic  art,  but  his  origins  were 
definitely  middle-class.  In  the  days  of  his  slightly  affected  and 
supercilious  youth,  he  laid  tacit  claim  to  noble  blood  by  pretend- 
ing that  his  patronymic  was  De  Bussy.  Actually,  the  name  had 
been  Debussy  for  generations,  and  his  parents  kept  a  china  shop 
at  St.  Germain-en-Laye.  Here  in  sight  of  Paris,  AchiUe-Claude* 
was  born  on  August  22,  1862.  Even  as  a  baby,  he  had  a  mighty 
forehead,  but  with  such  projecting  temples  that  in  later  life  he 
wore  his  hair  so  as  to  hide  them.  Fortunately  for  his  chances  of 
getting  a  start  in  life,  his  father's  sister,  Mme  Roustan,  was  the 
mistress  of  Arosa,  a  rich  banker,  and  it  was  this  lighthearted  and 
artistic  couple  who  acted  as  godparents  at  his  belated  christening 
in  1864.  When  the  little  china  shop  failed  the  next  year,  and  the 
Debussys  had  to  move  to  a  scrubby  artisans'  suburb,  his  godpar- 
ents temporarily  adopted  the  child.  While  with  them,  he  acquired 
that  taste  for  the  luxuries  of  life  which  never  left  him,  and  which 
even  conditioned  his  art.  Before  he  was  seven,  the  fates  were  en- 
gaged in  a  tug  of  war  over  his  future:  his  father  wanted  him  to 
become  a  sailor;  the  boy  himself,  fascinated  by  Arosa's  collection 
of  modern  paintings,  yearned  to  be  an  artist;  his  aunt  settled  the 
matter  by  taking  him  to  an  old  Italian  piano  teacher. 

In  1870,  the  moody  little  boy  must  have  been  vaguely  aware  of 
the  preparations  for  Napoleon  Ill's  disastrous  war  against  Prussia 
and  her  allies.  But  he  was  already  too  enthralled  by  the  sounds  he 

*  Early  in  life^  he  called  himself  Achille,  But  he  came  to  think  of  it  as  a  silly  name, 
and  reversed  his  Christian  names.  He  ended  up  as  plain  Claude  Debussy. 


BEBUSSY  531 

could  make  on  the  piano  to  pay  even  a  precocious  child's  heed  to 
the  outside  world.  Furthermore,  a  remarkable  woman  now  took 
an  interest  in  him.  Mme  Haute  de  Fleurville  exhaled  the  glamour 
of  great  memories:  she  had  been  the  friend  of  Balzac  and  De 
Musset,  and  a  pupil  of  Chopin.  She  knew  Wagner.  She  was  Paul 
Verlaine's  mother-in-law.  Debussy's  talent  was  obvious  to  her,  and 
she  eagerly  offered  to  prepare  him  for  the  Conservatoire.  This  took 
three  years— long  enough  for  him  to  have  absorbed  from  Mme 
Maute  de  Fleurville  the  essence  of  everything  she  could  hand  on 
to  him  from  Chopin.  And  like  Chopin,  but  more  precociously  (for 
he  was  barely  out  of  his  musical  swaddling  clothes),  Debussy  be- 
came an  explorer  of  unorthodox  harmonies.  If  his  teacher  thought 
about  it  at  all,  she  must  have  known  that  life  in  the  Conservatoire 
presided  over  by  the  pedantic  and  moribund  Ambroise  Thomas 
would  not  be  easy  for  this  born  rebel.  When  he  appeared  there, 
in  October,  1873,  it  seemed  at  first  as  if  his  fellow  students  would 
complicate  the  situation  by  ragging  him  about  his  strange  appear- 
ance. For  with  Arosa  respectably  married,  and  no  longer  inter- 
ested in  Mme  Roustan's  charms,  Debussy  was  back  on  his  parents 
for  support,  and  had  to  wear  shabby  clothes. 

Debussy's  eleven  years  at  the  Conservatoire  were  one  round  of 
difficulties,  due  chiefly  to  his  independent  and  mocking  spirit  and 
his  already  marked  originality— difficulties  he  met,  quite  logically, 
in  a  very  cavalier  manner.  He  was  lucky  in  his  solfege  teacher, 
Albert  Lavignac,  a  progressive  young  man  who  was  soon  to  be- 
come a  leader  of  the  French  Wagnerians.  Not  only  was  Lavignac 
moved  to  answer  the  boy's  unconventional  questions  reasonably, 
but  he  found  his  own  faith  in  the  sanctity  of  rules  seriously  shaken 
by  them.  Within  a  few  years,  Debussy  was  at  the  head  of  the 
school  in  solfege.  In  sharp  contrast  was  his  experience  in  other 
classes,  which  were  presided  over  by  men  twice  Lavignac's  age. 
Antoine  Marmontel  took  him  in  piano.  Here,  unhappily  for  his 
parents*  dream  of  a  virtuoso  son  who  would  be  a  good  money- 
maker, Debussy  did  not  shine.  For  some  years  a  state  of  war  existed 
between  him  and  Marmontel,  who  was  angered  by  his  pupil's  way- 
wardness and  improvising  idiosyncrasies.  In  1877,  the  fifteen-year- 
old  boy  managed  a  second  prize  in  piano-playing,  but  thereafter 
failed  to  place.  He  fought  his  bloodiest  battles  in  the  harmony 
class  of  Emile  Durand,  a  ninth-rate  academician  who  was  bored 


532  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

by  music  and  detested  the  very  idea  of  teaching.  As  a  prize  in 
harmony  was  prerequisite  to  going  on  to  a  composition  class, 
Durand  temporarily  checkmated  Debussy's  most  cherished  wish 
by  giving  him  no  recognition  whatsoever.  It  was  only  by  getting 
honors  in  score-reading  that  he  gained  his  wish. 

The  year  1880  was  a  lucky  one  for  Debussy.  Not  only  could  he 
look  forward  to  becoming  a  composition  student,  and  thereby  a 
candidate  for  the  Prix  de  Rome,  but  he  had  by  this  time  won 
Marmontel's  solid  regard.  He  was  therefore  his  piano  master's 
choice  when  Nadejda  von  Meek,  who  was  luxuriating  with  her 
large  family  and  entourage  at  one  of  the  Loire  chateaux,  asked 
the  Conservatoire  to  send  her  a  pianist  for  her  private  trio,  a 
teacher  for  her  children,  and  a  four-hands  partner  for  herself. 
That  summer  Debussy  saw  Italy  and  Switzerland  in  style,  and 
was  thoroughly  introduced  to  the  music  of  Tchaikovsky.  Mme  von 
Meek  thought  "my  little  Bussy"  a  nice  lad,  but  was  not  overly 
enthusiastic  about  his  musical  gifts.  She  liked  him  well  enough  to 
ask  him  to  Russia  in  the  summers  of  1881  and  1882.  That  much  is 
certain.  The  existence  of  two  unpublished  compositions  signed 
"Debussy,  Moscow,  1884"  indicates  that  he  was  also  there  that 
year,  and  possibly  other  times.  As  he  himself  never  mentioned 
these  Russian  experiences,  and  the  references  to  him  in  the  Von 
Meek  letters  are  scanty,  this  matter  is  apt  to  remain  obscure.  One 
cannot  help  wondering  what  would  have  become  of  Debussy  if 
the  Von  Meek  girl  to  whom  he  proposed  had  accepted  him,  and 
he  had  settled  down  in  Moscow. 

Meanwhile,  in  the  autumn  of  1880,  Debussy  had  entered  Ernest 
Guiraud's  composition  class  at  the  Conservatoire.  During  the  next 
four  years  his  principal  efforts  were  directed  toward  gaining  the 
Prix  de  Rome,  the  highest  award  in  the  gift  of  the  Academic  des 
Beaux-Arts,  carrying  with  it  a  considerable  subsidy  for  four  years' 
study  at  the  Academic  de  France  in  Rome.  He  made  three  tries, 
getting  the  second-prize  gold  medal  at  the  last,  but  the  now  un- 
known compositions  he  submitted  were  judged  too  immature  for 
the  big  honor.  In  1884,  he  handed  the  judges  the  manuscript  of 
L*  Enfant  pro&gue,  a  cantata  or,  as  he  called  it,  "lyric  scene."  This 
time,  twenty-two  of  the  twenty-eight  judges  voted  for  him.  Fore- 
most in  his  praises  was  Gounod,  who  loudly  declared  the  cantata 
a  work  of  genius.  But  the  genius  was  Massenet,  to  whom  Debussy 


DEBUSSY  533 

was  at  this  time  little  more  than  a  sedulous  ape.  U Enfant  prodigue 
shows  some  dramatic  flair,  but  has  the  peculiar  cloying  effect  of 
much  second-rate  nineteenth-century  French  music.  There  is  a 
minimum  of  Debussy  himself  in  it,  and  it  may  be  that  the  kindly 
Guiraud,  mindful  of  the  academic  minds  with  which  the  Prix  de 
Rome  juries  were  packed,  had  advised  him  not  to  be  naughty.* 

The  composer  of  L' 'Enfant prodigue  had  already  written  songs  that 
are  still  sung.  Among  the  dozen  or  so  composed  in  the  eight  years 
between  1876  and  1884,  some  of  which  he  revised  later,  we  find 
the  favorite  Beau  Soir,  Mandoline,  and  Fantoches.  The  first  of  these  is 
almost  pure  Massenet,  though  slightly  more  etherealized,  but  in 
the  two  settings  of  Verlaine,  Debussy  was  at  least  borrowing  more 
judiciously:  this  time  he  went  to  Berlioz,  and  the  result  is  some- 
thing magic  in  a  small  way.  Many  of  these  songs  carry  dedications 
to  a  Mme  Vasnier,  a  delightful  misunderstood  wife  in  whose  home 
Debussy  made  himself  easy  in  the  early  eighties.  It  seems  that  M. 
Vasnier  carried  his  misunderstanding  of  his  handsome  wife  to  the 
point  of  not  realizing  that  she  was  having  an  affair  with  her  ac- 
companist. In  fact,  he  was  on  excellent  terms  with  Debussy,  who 
found  the  comfortable  Vasnier  home  much  more  attractive  than 
his  parents'  dingy  quarters  in  Clichy.  Even  after  going  to  Rome, 
he  corresponded  with  the  Vasniers  for  some  time,  but  soon  other 
interests  claimed  him,  and  the  friendship  came  to  an  end. 

Debussy  was  idling  on  one  of  the  Seine  bridges  when  a  friend 
tapped  him  on  the  shoulder,  and  breathed,  "You've  won  the 
prize."  He  was  crushed  by  the  good  news:  "Believe  me  or  not,  I 
can  assure  you  that  all  my  pleasure  vanished!  I  saw  in  a  flash  the 
boredom,  the  vexations  inevitably  incident  to  the  slightest  official 
recognition.  Besides,  I  felt  I  was  no  longer  free."  In  this  antagonis- 
tic mood,  he  went  to  Rome  in  January,  1885.  He  disliked  the  city, 
hated  the  weather,  and  despised  the  restrictions  of  the  Villa  Medici, 
where  the  prizewinners  lived  and  worked.  The  wide,  open  spaces 
of  his  living  quarters,  which  he  referred  to  as  an  "Etruscan  tomb," 
aggravated  the  newcomer's  loneliness.  The  food  was  bad — no  tri- 
fling matter  to  this  precocious  gourmet.  He  poured  out  his  dejec- 
tion in  long  letters  to  the  Vasniers.  He  made  a  few  friends,  met 

*  It  has  often  been  said  that  Debussy  developed  his  essential  style  late.  There  is 
some  truth  in  this,  and  it  may  have  been  that  the  seeming  tardiness  was  due  to  his 
following  the  advice  of  Guiraud  and  other  mistaken  friends. 


534  MEN   OF  MUSIC 

droves  of  notables.  One  day,  at  the  home  of  Giovanni  Sgambati, 
Cardinal  von  Hohenlohe,  as  a  tactful  gesture  toward  the  young 
French  laureate,  induced  the  famous  Italian  pianist  to  sit  down 
with  Liszt,  and  play  Saint-Saens'  two-piano  Variations  on  a  Theme 
of  Beethoven.  Another  day,  Debussy  made  the  long  pilgrimage  to 
Sant*  Agata,  and  chatted  with  Verdi  while  the  old  man  puttered 
in  his  garden.  Through  Leoncavallo  he  met  Boito,  who  seemed  to 
him  more  like  a  man  of  letters  than  a  composer.  Most  Roman 
music  either  bored  or  annoyed  him:  the  operas  of  Donizetti  and 
the  early  efforts  of  Verdi  reigned  supreme.  The  Masses  of  Pales- 
trina  and,  even  more,  those  of  Di  Lasso,  exalted  him,  but  his  most 
intense  pleasure  was  playing  over  Wagner  scores,  particularly 
Tristan.  In  1885,  an<^  f°r  some  years  after,  Debussy  was  a  pas- 
sionate Wagnerian. 

Early  in  1886,  the  atmosphere  of  the  Villa  Medici  became  too 
much  for  Debussy,  and  he  fled  to  Paris.  Doubtless,  he  hoped  to 
turn  his  back  on  that  hated  Renaissance  structure  forever,  but 
someone  (probably  Vasnier)  persuaded  him  that  he  was  foolishly 
throwing  away  his  big  chance.  In  April,  he  was  back  in  Rome. 
The  rest  of  the  year  was  given  over  to  grinding  out  an  envoi  de 
Rome — the  stipulated  yearly  proof  that  the  laureate  was  not  wast- 
ing his  time,  Debussy  had  already  made  two  attempts  to  compose 
one  in  1885,  but  had  abandoned  them  in  desperation  at  having  to 
write  music  to  order.  Now  he  took  up  one  of  them — ^uleima^  an 
adaptation  for  orchestra  and  chorus  of  lines  by  Heine — and  fin- 
ished a  truncated  version  by  October.  The  very  next  month,  he 
began  Printemps,  also  for  orchestra  and  chorus,  the  inspiration  for 
which  had  come  from  Botticelli's  Primauera.  The  first  of  these  was 
unmitigatedly  damned  by  the  Paris  committee,  and  Debussy,  who 
cared  little  for  it  himself,  destroyed  the  score.  Printemps  fared  some- 
what better  with  the  academes,  though  they  took  exception  to  the 
key  in  which  it  was  written  and  to  the  humming  chorus.  In  the 
official  report  on  Printemps  there  occurred,  probably  for  the  first 
time  in  connection  with  Debussy,  the  word  "impressionism."  It 
was  used  to  deride  him,  just  as  it  had  been  used,  ten  years  before, 
to  deride  a  now  world-famous  group  of  painters. 

Before  the  spring  of  1887,  Debussy  made  his  final  resolve  not  to 
finish  out  three  years  in  Rome.  Somehow  or  other,  the  committee 
was  prevailed  upon  to  accept  his  return  to  Paris,  though  this  did 


DEBUSSY  535 

not  exempt  him  from  submitting  a  third  envoi.  He  threw  himself 
thirstily  into  the  artistic  life  of  Paris,  acquired  a  green-eyed  mis- 
tress, cherished  the  Pre-Raphaelites,  and  became  an  intimate  of 
the  more  outrageous  literary  circles.  Mallarme  and  the  symbolistes 
welcomed  him  at  their  famous  Tuesday  evenings.  From  these  as- 
sociations and  predilections  came  the  inspiration  for  his  last  envoi, 
a  setting  of  a  French  condensation  of  Dante  Gabriel  Rossetti's  The 
Blessed  Damozel.  Before  completing  it,  Debussy  made  a  trip  to  Bay- 
reuth  in  true  pilgrim  spirit,  and  swam  rapturously  in  the  murky 
sea  of  Parsifal,  large  doses  of  which  he  injected  into  La  Damoiselle 
elue.  Between  the  patches  of  thinned-out  Wagner  and  the  echoes 
of  Franck,  there  was  enough  Debussy  in  it  to  at  least  put  the 
committee  in  a  questioning  frame  of  mind.  They  referred  to  its 
"systematic  vagueness"  and  lack  of  form,  but  admitted  a  certain 
poetic  quality  and  charm.  It  is  a  work  of  exquisite  taste,  with  much 
lovely  pastel  color,  though  too  faithful  to  Rossetti  for  modern  ears. 
Debussy's  melodies  swoon  and  languish  with  the  poetry.  La  Damoi- 
selle elue  is  an  immature  work.  But,  as  Oscar  Thompson  has  pointed 
out,  it  is  "full  of  harmonic  prophecies  that  no  subsequent  genera- 
tion can  fail  to  recognize-" 

The  year  1889  was  of  salient  importance  in  Debussy's  artistic  de- 
velopment, less  for  what  came  from  his  pen  than  for  the  influences 
to  which  he  was  subjected.  A  second  pilgrimage  to  Bayreuth  re- 
sulted in  his  beginning  to  look  at  Wagner  with  a  coldly  judicious 
eye:  he  was  thrilled  by  the  music  of  Tristan,  but  began  to  question 
his  idol's  theories  of  music  drama.  Once  he  had  begun  to  doubt 
recantation  of  his  early  enthusiasm  followed  fast  until,  by  the  time 
he  himself  began  to  compose  Pelleas  et  Melisande,  he  was  in  arms 
against  Wagner's  conception  of  the  stage.  As  Wagner  receded. 
Mussorgsky  loomed  as  an  ever  more  important  influence.  After  re- 
turning from  Bayreuth,  Debussy  got  hold  of  a  score  of  Borit 
Godunov  (strangely  enough,  it  belonged  to  Saint-Saens,  who  was  tc 
lead  the  opposition  to  Debussy),  and  began  studying  it  and  playing 
it  over  to  his  friends.  Boris  implemented  his  flight  from  Wagner,  fou 
he  saw  that  a  frankly  episodic  opera  could  produce  quite  as  in- 
tegral an  effect  as  Wagner's  continuous  and  repetitive  web.  Frorr 
Mussorgsky,  too,  he  received  certain  harmonic  hints,  thougl 
none  so  germinative  as  those  he  got  simultaneously  at  the  Exposi 
tion  Universelle  of  1889-90.  The  music  of  the  Javanese  and  An 


MEN    OF    MUSIC 

namite  orchestras — more  particularly,  the  percussion  group  that 
accompanied  the  Javanese  dancers — held  him  enthralled.  The 
subtle,  complicated  rhythms,  the  harmonies  that  had  never  heard 
of  Occidental  textbooks,  and  the  feline,  insinuating  coloration 
made  something  in  his  own  nature  respond,  and  opened  more 
widely  the  vista  of  a  music  he  dreamed  of  creating. 

Debussy's  immediate  attempt  at  an  opera  may  be  classified  as  his 
protest  against  Wagnerism.  Taking  a  libretto  by  Catulle  Mendes, 
entitled  Rodrigue  et  Chirriene,  he  wrote  three  scenes  of  a  melodra- 
matic opera,  and  then  gave  it  up.  It  was  too  Wagnerian.  Debussy, 
though  his  opinions  had  changed,  could  not  get  Brangane's  potion 
out  of  his  blood.  Although  elements  that  are  now  called  Debussyan 
are  recognizable  in  many  small  works  that  belong  to  the  late 
eighties  and  early  nineties,  the  composer  was  not  yet  in  full  com- 
mand of  his  new  resources,  had  not  yet  developed  his  peculiar 
idiom  sufficiently  to  use  it  in  a  large  work.  These  were  essentially 
years  of  study  and  experimentation,  of  highly  selective  response. 

Debussy  did  not  crowd  himself:  he  was  too  much  a  Parisian  of 
the  epoch  to  do  that.  To  an  outsider,  to  all  but  a  handful  of  his 
friends,  he  seemed  little  more  than  a  carefree  boulevardier  saved 
from  stereotype  only  by  his  aristocratic  and  delicate  tastes.  He  did 
his  share  of  gossiping  in  the  artists'  cafes,  usually  in  the  company  of 
Gabrielle  Dupont,  who  remained  his  mistress  through  thick  and 
thin  until  just  before  his  marriage  in  1899.  Poor  Gaby  of  the 
Green  Eyes  could  not  expect  to  hold  her  Claude  forever,  for  apart 
from  his  congenital  inclination  to  stray,  she  had  little  more  than 
her  physical  charms  with  which  to  hold  him.  Once  he  became  en- 
gaged to  a  young  singer,  another  time  he  had  an  affair  with  a 
society  woman.  But  he  always  returned  to  Gaby  until  the  time  he 
began  to  find  her  eyes  "steely"  and  her  companionship  totally  un- 
stimulating.  In  1891,  Erik  Satie,  the  talented  and  sardonic  Mephis- 
topheles  of  modern  French  music,  became  another  of  Debussy's 
cafe  familiars.  Satie,  with  his  taste  for  the  miniature  and  his  loath- 
ing of  the  oversized  and  pompous,  was  instrumental  in  dissipating 
whatever  traces  of  Wagnerism  his  friend  retained.  In  later  years, 
Satie's  searing  humor  was  to  be  turned  against  Debussy's  pro- 
grammatic titles.  At  first,  however,  he  played  the  role  of  an  in- 
telligent interlocutor,  and  subtly  directed  Debussy's  attention  to 
the  traditions  of  French  music.  The  idea,  once  widely  current,  that 


DEBUSSY  537 

Satie  strongly  influenced  Debussy's  harmonic  style  is  quite  with- 
out foundation. 

The  period  of  meditation  and  search  began  to  bear  fruit  as  early 
as  1892,  when  Debussy  embarked  on  the  composition  of  two  of  his 
most  characteristic  works.  One  of  them.  Prelude  a  VApres-midi  fun 
fame,  was  finished  within  two  years.  The  other,  which  grew  out 
of  his  happening  upon  a  Maeterlinck  play  in  a  bookstall,  and  took 
ten  years  of  false  starts  and  revisions,  was  his  only  completed  opera, 
Pelleas  et  Melisande.  Before  finishing  U Apres-midiy  Debussy  got  his 
first  taste  of  public  reaction  to  some  of  his  extended  compositions. 
La  Damoiselle  elue,  which  should  have  been  performed  at  the  Con- 
servatoire in  a  concert  of  his  three  envois,  had  its  premiere  elsewhere 
because  Debussy  had  quarreled  with  the  committee.  Fortunately, 
the  Societe  Nationale  decided  to  present  it  at  its  concert  of  April  8, 
1893.  The  critical  reaction  was  mixed,  Colette's  caustic  husband, 
Henri  Gauthier-Villars  ("Willy")  being  in  the  van  of  the  scoffers. 
He  referred  to  the  composer  as  "Fra  Angelico  Debussy"  and  to  the 
cantata  as  a  "symphonic  stained-glass  window.55  In  December  of 
the  same  year,  the  Ysaye  Quartet,  at  another  Societe  Nationale 
concert,  gave  the  first  performance  of  a  string  quartet,  to  compose 
which  Debussy  had  temporarily  laid  aside  both  UApres-midi  and 
Pelleas.  This  G  minor  Quartet,  which  is  always  called  the  First 
Quartet,  though  Debussy  never  completed  another,  was  frowned 
upon  by  purists,  but  was  acclaimed  by  many  influential  musicians, 
some  of  whom  might  have  been  expected  to  resent  its  break  with 
cut-and-dried  quartet  tradition.  In  general,  Debussy  took  the  criti- 
cism calmly,  but  was  wounded  when  his  friend  Ernest  Chausson 
stood  aloof.  "I  shall  write  another  quartet  for  you,"  he  wrote 
Chausson,  "entirely  for  you,  and  I  shall  try  to  give  dignity  to  my 
forms."  There  is,  perhaps,  a  trace  of  irony  in  the  last  phrase. 

The  G  minor  String  Quartet  is  the  most  distinguished  piece  of 
chamber  writing  in  the  French  repertoire.  Comparatively  speak- 
ing, it  is,  for  Debussy,  an  essay  in  abstract  music.  There  is  no  doubt 
that  working  (however  freely)  with  the  string  quartet — that  most 
rule-bound  of  musicar  media — somewhat  curtailed  the  expressive- 
ness of  the  idiom  he  was  engaged  in  perfecting.  What  weaknesses 
the  quartet  has  are  traceable  to  the  respect  Debussy  sporadically 
showed  to  the  old  sonata  formula  of  quartet  construction,  and  it 
is  precisely  in  the  last  movement,  when  the  pull  of  convention  be- 


MEN    OF    MUSIC 

came  overpowering,  and  the  revolte  felt  called  upon  to  write  true 
counterpoint,  that  the  String  Quartet  approaches  the  stilted.  One 
cannot  help  hazarding  the  guess  that  the  mature  Debussy  would 
]aave  carried  to  their  logical  conclusion  the  full  implications  of  the 
cyclic  form,  and  written  the  quartet  in  one  movement.  Although 
Debussy's  only  contact  with  Cesar  Franck  had  been  as  a  short- 
term  student  in  an  organ  class,  here  he  was  strongly  influenced  by 
the  Belgian,  who  had  devoted  much  of  his  creative  energy  to  ex- 
ploring the  possibilities  of  cyclic  form.  At  the  beginning  of  the 
third  movement,  Franck's  voice  may  even  be  heard,  though  for- 
tunately not  for  long.  In  harmonic  texture,  in  understanding  of 
instrumental  timbres,  in  a  sensuousness  unusual  for  the  medium, 
the  String  Quartet  is  unmistakably  Debussyan.  The  fragments  of 
exquisite  and  caressing  melody,  the  mixed,  unsettled  harmonies, 
the  elegant  attention  to  the  personalities  and  versatilities  of  the 
instruments — all  these  testify  to  Debussy's  tacit  repudiation  of  the 
old-fashioned  idea  that  the  string  quartet  is  par  excellence  the 
vehicle  for  the  expression  of  lofty  philosophical  ideas.  The  G  minor 
Quartet  was  Debussy's  first  important  manifesto  that,  as  far  as  he 
was  concerned,  music  is  to  be  enjoyed  for  itself  and  for  the  pic- 
tures and  sensations  it  evokes. 

And,  after  making  every  allowance  for  the  difference  of  the 
media,  what  an  advance  Debussy  registers  toward  his  ideal  of 
sensuous  music  in  a  work  performed  the  very  next  year!  The  Pre- 
lude a  I'Aprh-midi  d'unfaune,  "orchestral  eclogue  after  the  poem  by 
Stephane  Mallarme,"  is,  in  the  exact  sense  of  those  frequently  mis- 
used words,  a  tone  poem.  Just  as  Mallarme's  lines  are  an  idealess 
evocation  of  summer  warmth  and  a  faun  daydreaming  of  the  only 
delights  he  can  know,  Debussy's  shimmering  score  is  a  musical 
gloss  on  this  Theocritan  afternoon.  There  is  no  real  programmatic 
connection  between  the  two  works:  this  is  mood  music,  and  pre- 
tends to  nothing  more.  Nijinsky's  well-known  choreography  of  the 
faun  and  the  nymphs  came  from  the  poem  and  his  own  imagina- 
tion, not  from  details  in  the  music.  Debussy  disliked  the  ballet,  and 
wrote  of  it  with  scarifying  scorn:  cTt  is  ugly:  Dalcrozian,  in  fact." 
Few  will  quarrel  with  the  proposition  that  Nijinsky's  descent  to 
realistic  detail  fatally  marred  the  quality  Mallarme  tried  to  con- 
vey. Debussy  has  actually  improved  upon  Mallarme.  Not  only  is 
the  creation  of  the  mood  of  UApfes-mdi  easier  for  music  than  for 


DEBUSSY  539 

poetry,  but  Debussy  had  become  the  subtlest  master  of  sensuous 
effect  in  music.  The  chromatic  pleasings  of  the  flutes,  the  rustlings 
and  light  pluckings  of  the  harps,  the  warming  sunlight  of  the  strings 
and  horns — all  these  conjure  up  the  very  feeling  of  a  young  and 
ancient  world.  What  a  relief  it  must  have  been  in  1894  to  have  this 
vision  of  a  sun-intoxicated  Latin  pagandom  after  the  gross,  glow- 
ering, and  heavily  philosophical  magnificences  of  Der  Ring  des 
Nibelungenl 

When  Ly Apres-midi  was  first  performed  on  December  22,  1894* 
at  least  the  audience  of  the  Societe  Nationale  liked  it,  for  it  had 
to  be  repeated.  As  usual,  however,  the  critics  divided,  largely  along 
lines  of  age.  Debussy's  admirers  found  in  it  a  proof  that  he  had 
finally  arrived;  his  enemies  quite  as  much  a  proof  that  he  was  a 
hopeless  case.  The  important  thing  was  that  in  the  struggle  against 
a  smothering  tradition  he  now  became  a  battle  cry,  often  on  the 
lips  of  people  who  had  not  the  vaguest  notion  of  what  he  was  try- 
ing to  do.  Within  a  decade,  L'Apres-midi  found  its  way  around  the 
world,  but  until  just  after  the  World  War  it  was  considered  ex- 
tremely daring.  It  then  became,  and  has  remained,  the  best  known 
of  Debussy's  compositions.*  But  L? Apres-midi  was,  at  least  in  scale, 
a  small  work,  and  the  Debussyans  immediately  began  to  clamor 
for  something  that  could  be  used  as  an  antidote  to  the  Wagnerism 
poisoning  the  wellsprings  of  French  music.  Naturally,  what  they 
most  wanted  was  the  opera  Debussy  was  known  to  be  writing.  But 
hurry  was  fatal  to  his  best  intentions,  and  when  pressure  became 
unendurable  in  1895,  ^e  tore  UP  'm  disgust  a  first,  probably  com- 
pleted, version  of  Pelleas — an  action  that  showed  not  only  artistic 
integrity  but  also  a  clear  realization  of  the  high  quality  of  what 
was  asked  of  him.  It  showed  courage,  too,  for  he  was  so  poor  that 
grinding  out  a  couple  of  potboilers  would  have  been  not  only  par- 
donable but  reasonable. 

Of  course,  the  eight  years  intervening  between  UApres-midi  and 
the  first  production  of  Pelleas  were  not  devoted  exclusively  to  pol- 
ishing that  opera.  In  1893,  Debussy's  acquaintance  with  the  exotic 
Pierre  Louys  ripened  into  intimacy.  The  more  one  knows  of  De- 
bussy, the  more  one  realizes  that  he  chose  his  friends  with  some  of 

*  At  least,  that  is,  until  1938,  when  Debussy  joined  the  Immortals  who  have 
made  the  grade  in  Tin  Pan  Alley.  In  that  year,  his  piano  salon  piece  Reverie — always 
negligible — lost  what  little  distinction  it  had  in  becoming  My  Reverie.,  the  hit  song  of 
the  year. 


54°  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

the  calculation  Horace  Walpole  had  used,  in  a  more  inhuman, 
pavonine  way,  in  choosing  his  correspondents.  Ever  the  self-con- 
scious, aristocratic  eclectic,  he  went  through  life  adding  to  the 
scanty  culture  his  deficient  education  had  given  him.  Louys  was  a 
scholar  with  a  dilettante's  air,  a  pundit  who  posed  as  a  mere  ele- 
gant taster  of  culture.  Rome  and  Greece  and  the  Orient  were  at  his 
fingertips:  he  used  this  quite  profound  knowledge  to  decorate  his 
pornographic  writings.  Debussy  definitely  came  under  Louys5  spell 
for  a  number  of  years,  and  absorbed  many  of  his  esthetic  ideas.  In 
1897,  he  set  three  of  his  friend's  notorious  Chansons  de  Bilitis  >  a 
sequence  of  Lesbian  love  poems.  Already,  he  had  composed  many 
fine  songs,  even  a  few  great  ones.  Yet,  with  rare  exceptions,  these 
early  songs  are  more  reflective  of  other  men's  music  than  is  the 
instrumental  work  contemporary  with  them.  After  Massenet  had 
served  his  turn,  Debussy  wrote,  in  the  Cinq  Poemes  de  Baudelaire 
(1887—9),  French  cousins  to  Wagner's  Trdume  and  Schmerzen — 
splendid,  heavy-colored  songs  not  unworthy  of  their  lyrics.  But 
with  the  Ariettes  oubliees  (1888),  he  returned  to  Berlioz,  his  early 
master  in  the  song.  These  are  less  opaque,  extraordinarily  simple 
and  calmly  wrought.  Debussy  never  achieved  a  more  pellucid  wash 
than  II  pleure  dans  mon  coeur,  a  more  guileless  statement  than  Green. 
These  are  the  works  of  a  perfectly  deceptive  sophistication  so  sure 
of  itself  that  it  can  risk  a  sly  touch  of  sentimentality.  As  Verlaine 
moods,  nothing  better  can  be  imagined.  In  1892,  Debussy  tried 
his  hand  at  setting  some  prose  lyrics  of  his  own  manufacture:  the 
results  are  machine-made  and  clumsy — epitaphs,  if  anything,  of  a 
transient  lack  of  taste. 

For  Louys'  Chansons  de  Bilitis  Debussy  surpassed  himself.  La 
Fl&te  de  Pan,  La  Chevelure,  Le  Tombeau  des  naiades  are,  as  poetry, 
negligible  fake  paganism;  as  songs,  they  have  the  remote,  static 
beauty  of  a  frieze  about  to  be  given  life.  Some  such  music  whispers 
on  the  surface  of  Keats'  Grecian  urn.  The  Chansons  de  Bilitis  are 
somewhat  cold,  incalculably  distant,  but  extremely  beautiful.  The 
songs  that  came  after  them  are  something  of  an  anticlimax.  Then 
suddenly,  in  1910,  in  three  truly  magnificent  settings  of  Villon, 
Debussy  found  a  new  side  of  his  lyrical  nature.  The  Trois  Ballades 
de  Francois  Villon  show  no  marked  technical  difference  from  their 
predecessors,  but  are  informed  by  a  passion,  a  vigor,  a  sheer  mas- 
culinity, if  you  will,  that  are  unparalleled  in  his  work.  The  mu- 


DEBUSSY  541 

sician  in  Debussy  did  not  have  to  change  to  produce  these:  he  had, 
as  a  man,  to  develop  to  the  point  of  wanting  to  set  Villon,  and  his 
musical  sensitivity  did  the  rest.  The  Trots  Ballades  register  a  human 
advance:  despite  the  rollicking  humor  of  the  Ballade  desfemmes  de 
Paris,  these  are,  in  total  effect,  a  tragic  triptych — the  creation  of  a 
man  not  far  from  the  end  of  his  tether. 

Debussy's  care  in  his  choice  of  friends  was  not  matched  in  his 
love  life.  At  least,  apparently  not.  One  may  be  permitted  to  won- 
der what  had  kept  him  generally  faithful  to  Gaby  for  more  than 
ten  years,  and  equally,  what  induced  him  to  leave  her  for  a  re- 
spectable little  dressmaker  whose  sole  qualities  seem  to  have  been 
an  amiable  disposition  and  a  sort  of  wistful  prettiness  that  re- 
minded him  of  Melisande.  It  is  true  that  by  the  time  he  married 
this  appealing  Rosalie  Texier,  he  no  longer  cared  even  physically 
for  Gaby.  It  is  also  true  that  the  girl  he  married  on  October  19, 
1899,  was  virginal  and  unspoiled — attributes  that  appealed  strongly 
to  the  sensualist  Debussy.  He  was  soon  to  discover  that  she  repre- 
sented the  zero  point  as  an  intellectual  companion,  and  nothing 
is  more  telling  of  this  aspect  of  their  six  years  together  than  that 
Debussy  dedicated  not  a  single  published  composition  to  her.  From 
a  financial  point  of  view,  the  marriage  was  a  risk:  Debussy's  tiny 
income  rested  precariously  on  a  few  piano  lessons,  an  occasional 
order  for  a  transcription,  and  a  few  coppers  from  royalties.  On  his 
wedding  day  he  had  to  give  a  lesson  in  order  to  get  enough  money 
to  pay  for  the  traditional  wedding  breakfast  and  tickets  to  a  circus. 
With  a  true  Bohemian  touch,  the  Debussys  boasted  that  they  had 
literally  spent  their  last  sou  so  that  it  could  be  said  they  had  begun 
their  married  life  with  no  money  at  all. 

It  has  been  loosely  asserted  that  "Lily-Lilo,"  as  Debussy  called 
Rosalie,  was  the  direct  inspiration  of  the  two  large  works  he  com- 
pleted within  three  years  of  his  marriage.  Simple  chronology  refutes 
this  idea.  The  second — and  final — version  of  Pelleas  et  Melisande 
was  well  advanced  when  he  met  Lily.  As  for  the  Nocturnes ,  though 
her  name  appears  on  the  first  page  of  the  complete  manuscript, 
they  were  begun  years  earlier  as  violin  and  orchestra  pieces  for  his 
friend  Eugene  Ysaye,  and  in  the  published  version  for  orchestra 
alone  are  dedicated  to  Georges  Hartmann,  Debussy's  publisher. 
The  unhappy  tradition  of  playing  only  the  first  two  of  the  three 
Nocturnes  was  instituted  on  December  9,  1900,  when  Nuages  and 


542  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

FStes  were  played  at  the  Concerts  Lamoureux.  An  opportunity  to 
judge  the  Nocturnes  as  a  whole  was  not  afforded  until  October  27 
of  the  following  year,  when  Sirenes  was  also  played.  A  key  to  the 
unity  they  undeniably  have  comes  from  Debussy  himself:  "The 
title  Nocturnes  is  to  be  interpreted  here  in  a  general  and,  more  par- 
ticularly, in  a  decorative  sense.  Therefore,  it  is  not  meant  to  desig- 
nate the  usual  form  of  the  nocturne,  but  rather  all  the  various 
impressions  and  the  special  effects  of  light  that  the  word  suggests." 
In  short,  they  are  neither  the  classical  notturni  of  Haydn  and 
Mozart  nor  the  languorous  night  pieces  of  Chopin.  The  most  ob- 
vious thing  about  the  Nocturnes  is  their  relation  to  impressionist 
painting:  Debussy  may  even  have  borrowed  their  name  from 
Whistler.  Specifically,  Nuages  has  been  likened  to  Monet,  Fetes  to 
Renoir,  and  Sirenes  to  Turner.  It  is  easy  to  quarrel  with  these 
analogies,  particularly  the  last,  for  Sirenes  is  reminiscent  rather  of 
the  vasty  emptinesses  of  Ryder.  As  contrasting  moods,  as  contrasting 
evocations  of  light  effects,  these  Nocturnes  are  unique  in  music. 
Among  them,  F$tes  is  perhaps  the  most  moving;  the  slow  and 
mysterious  entrance  of  a  procession  halfway  through  it  is  an  utterly 
magical  moment,  as  breathtaking  each  time  one  hears  it,  as  sud- 
denly surprising,  as  the  modulation  after  the  first  fortissimo  in 
Beethoven's  Fourth  Concerto. 

By  the  time  of  the  Nocturnes,  the  critics  were  so  inured  to  De- 
bussy's strange  antics  that  they  no  longer  commented  overmuch 
on  his  technical  innovations.  They  did  not  even  blast  his  use  of 
female  voices  as  wordless  instruments  in  Sirenes — an  experiment 
that  never  quite  comes  off,  and  is  mainly  of  historical  interest.  In 
fact,  they  were,  on  the  whole,  enthusiastic.  One  of  them  caught  the 
very  essence  of  Debussy*s  esthetic:  "M.  Debussy  does  not  demand 
of  music  all  that  she  can  give,  but  rather,  that  which  she  alone  is 
capable  of  suggesting."  When,  at  the  Paris  Exposition  of  1900, 
France  herself  had  extended  recognition  to  the  composer  by  or- 
dering some  of  his  music  performed  at  the  official  concerts,  it  was 
not  likely  that  the  sycophantic  press  would  long  hold  aloof.  A  use- 
ful proof  of  Debussy's  increasing  weight  in  French  music  came  in 
1901,  when  he  was  invited  to  contribute  articles  to  La  Revue  blanche. 
He  accepted,  for  he  had  something  to  say,  and  the  articles  would 
be  paid  for.  Appropriately,  his  first  column  appeared  on  April 
Fool's  Day,  for  he  was  to  become  the  G.  B.  S.  of  Parisian  musical 


DEBUSSY  543 

reporting.  For  thirteen  years,  in  various  journals,  sometimes  under 
the  pseudonym  of  "Monsieur  Croche,  Antidilettante,"  sometimes 
under  his  own  name,  he  was  to  harry  the  graybeards  of  all  ages. 
When  M.  Crochets  mocking,  acid  voice  was  first  heard,  the  storm 
over  Debussy's  music  had  quietened,  in  his  own  bailiwick,  to  a 
deceptive  lull,  but  as  it  was  to  break  loose  with  unexampled  vio- 
lence in  a  year,  it  was  all  to  the  good  that  he  had  some  share  in 
directing  public  taste  in  the  interim. 

By  the  beginning  of  1902,  Pelleas  et  Melisande  was  complete.  It 
had  been  Debussy's  intention  merely  to  present  it  privately  at  the 
house  of  Comte  Robert  de  Montesquiou,  the  wealthy  eccentric 
whom  both  Huysmans  and  Proust  took  as  a  model  for  their  most 
noisome  characters.  To  his  delight,  in  1897  Andre  Messager,  a 
conductor  at  the  Opera-Comique,  showed  the  incomplete  score 
to  the  management,  and  it  was  accepted  at  once.  Maeterlinck  had 
already  expressed  his  willingness  to  have  Debussy  set  his  play. 
Everything  seemed  ready  when  Albert  Carre,  director  of  the  Co- 
mique,  caused  a  scandal  by  giving  the  role  of  Melisande  to  a  young 
American  singer  by  the  name  of  Mary  Garden.  Debussy  had  pre- 
viously promised  the  role  to  Maeterlinck's  common-law  wife, 
Georgette  Leblanc,  who  had  created  M61isande  in  the  stage  play. 
The  Belgian  dramatist  was  incensed  at  what  he  considered  De- 
bussy's trickery.  Actually  he  had  merely  promised  something  he 
now  lacked  authority  to  give.  It  almost  came  to  a  duel,  but  Mae- 
terlinck finally  contented  himself  with  rushing  into  print  with  a 
diatribe  against  Debussy  and  the  management  of  the  Comique. 
Carre  was  not  to  be  bluffed.  Rehearsals  went  on  as  scheduled, 
though  certain  members  of  the  orchestra  assumed  part  of  Maeter- 
linck's grudge.  The  repetition  generate  was  disturbed  by  heckling  and 
unfriendly  laughter.  As  a  rumpus,  the  first  performance,  on  April 
30,  1902,  equaled  the  Paris  premiere  of  Tannhauser.  Almost  all  the 
critics,  and  more  than  half  the  audience,  were  vocally  hostile.  Miss 
Garden's  American  accent  was  jeered  at,  and  her  fine  interpreta- 
tion ignored.  Nor  did  the  other  members  of  the  cast — one  hundred 
per  cent  French  though  they  were — get  more  polite  treatment. 
That  audience  wanted  Debussy's  scalp. 

By  the  terms  of  his  reaction  against  Wagner,  Debussy  had  cre- 
ated a  thoroughly  non-Wagnerian  opera  in  spirit.  He  could  not 
afford,  however,  to  ignore  the  techniques  Wagner  had  added  to 


544  MEN  OF  MUSIC 

opera,  and  selected  from  them  just  enough  to  allow  one  to  say  that 
Pelleas  could  have  been  composed  only  after  Wagner  had  lived. 
Most  obvious  of  these  borrowings  was  the  leitmotiv,  from  which 
Debussy  evolved,  as  Vincent  d'Indy  said,  cca  series  of  pivot  themes 
.  .  *  the  function  of  which  is  to  send  out  harmonic  rays  in  all 
directions,  rays  that  serve  to  present  the  musical  speech  in  the 
ambience  suited  to  it."  In  other  words,  Wagner's  leitmotiv  serves 
constantly  to  advance  the  action,  Debussy's  pivot  theme  to  con- 
centrate the  atmosphere.  For  Pelleas  is  an  opera  of  atmosphere,  of 
extended  poetic  evocation.  A  story  unfolds,  scrupulously  Debussy 
follows  the  Maeterlinck  text.  Possibly  too  scrupulously.  Maeter- 
linck's shadowland  and  twilight  people  call  for  a  music  of  under- 
statement. The  score  of  Pelleas  whispers:  the  orchestration  is  thin 
and  restrained,  the  vocal  line  hardly  different  from  ordinary 
speech.  The  result  is  that  a  work  whose  component  parts  are  as 
disjointed  as  sections  of  a  dream  has  also  the  incongruous  unity  of 
a  dream.  Pelleas  has  a  oneness  of  atmosphere  that  is  at  once  its 
strength  and  its  weakness.  It  ensorcels,  but  it  also  emanates  tedium 
vitae.  It  is  a  decadent  opera,  an  opera  of  the  nineties. 

To  Debussy's  surprise,  Pelleas  bucked  the  harrowings  of  the  press, 
and  became  first  a  cult,  and  then  a  staple  of  the  repertoire.  Enough 
of  the  old  Jin  de  such  spirit  was  left  in  the  world  to  make  the  opera 
the  darling  of  an  influential  group  ofprecieux.  And  when  its  purely 
cult  appeal  faded  out,  the  fragile,  poetic  Melisande  of  Mary  Gar- 
den kept  it  a  favorite  wherever  she  sang.  With  her  disappearance 
from  the  stage,  Peltias  is  heard  less  often,  except  in  France.  The 
rare  concert  performances  of  instrumental  excerpts  prove  how  in- 
dissolubly  Debussy  wedded  music  to  words  and  action.  This  music, 
which  in  a  stage  version  glimmers  so  exquisitely,  definitely  needs 
the  words  and  action  from  which  it  grew:  heard  alone,  it  is  all  but 
meaningless  and  thoroughly  monotonous.  Paradoxically,  though  a 
more  integrated  opera  does  not  exist,  it  needs  a  great  singing  ac- 
tress like  Garden  to  hold  it  together.  Unless  another  such  arises, 
Debussy's  opera  may  disappear  entirely  at  a  not  too  distant  date. 

The  success  of  Pelleas  projected  its  composer  into  public  life  far 
more  than  he  liked.  He  became  a  famous  man,  and  France  took 
cognizance  of  his  eminence  by  giving  him  the  Legion  of  Honor. 
His  more  feverish  admirers  were  dubbed  the  Pelleastres,  and  were 
derided  in  print  and  caricature  for  their  extravagant  absorption, 


DEBUSSY  545 

much  as  the  Wagnerians  had  been  pilloried  by  Beardsley.  For  a 
time  this  most  personal,  most  intimate  of  composers,  this  aloof 
man  who  valued  his  privacy  above  everything  else,  was  threatened 
with  the  destiny  of  a  chefd'icole.  He  had  a  bad  attack  of  nerves,  and 
retired  to  the  country.  As  Lily  was  with  him,  this  did  not  help 
much,  for  already  that  period  was  beginning  which  was  to  end 
with  him  confessing  that  the  mere  sound  of  her  voice  made  him 
want  to  scream.  He  sketched  the  libretto  of  a  new  opera  from  Poe's 
The  Devil  in  the  Belfry ,  thought  vaguely  about  another  based  on 
As  You  Like  It,  and  did  nothing  about  either.  He  did  not  hanker 
too  much  after  further  success  at  the  Comique.  He  was  ill,  how- 
ever, of  something  more  destructive  of  peace  than  even  success 
could  be,  and  when  an  extended  orchestral  work — La  Mer — did 
not  progress  as  he  had  hoped,*  he  decided  to  leave  Lily,  whose 
personality  was  by  this  time  revealed  to  him  in  all  its  flatness.  It 
was  one  thing  to  write  an  opera  about  Melisande,  another  to  live 
with  her.  He  fled  to  the  arms  of  Emma  Bardac,  an  attractive 
woman  of  the  world  and  fine  singer.  Of  somewhat  ambiguous  per- 
sonality, she  was  already  the  wife  of  a  rich  banker  and  the  mistress 
of  Gabriel  Faure,  an  excellent  composer  who  has  never  had  his 
just  deserts. 

Lily  took  Debussy's  desertion  hard:  she  tried  to  kill  herself  with 
a  revolver.  He  went  to  see  her  at  the  hospital,  but  never  went  back 
after  being  assured  that  she  would  not  die.  He  had  come  to  hate 
her,  and  never  saw  her  again,  though  she  outlived  him  fourteen 
years.  He  was  living  openly  with  Emma  Bardac:  Faure  protested, 
but  not  her  husband — he  was  enjoying  himself  with  an  actress,  and 
was  inclined  to  tolerance.  In  this  scandal,  the  public  and  most  of 
Debussy's  friends  sided  with  Lily,  and  it  was  whispered  that  he 
was  fortune  hunting.  There  seems  to  be  a  core  of  truth  to  this  idea, 
but  when  Emma's  money  evaporated,  Debussy  remained  faithful, 
and  went  on  dedicating  compositions  to  her  until  the  end.  In 
October,  1905,  she  bore  him  a  daughter  after  Lily  had  divorced 
him,  but  unfortunately  before  she  had  obtained  her  own  divorce. 

*  His  now  unhappily  forgotten  Rapsodie  pour  saxophone  et  piano  fared  even  worse. 
Begun  in  1903  at  the  insistence  of  Mrs.  Elisa  Hall,  a  Boston  lady  who  believed  that 
playing  what  Debussy  called  "this  aquatic  instrument"  was  good  for  her  health,  it 
languished  for  years,  and  was  finally  delivered  in  incomplete  form  in  191 1.  Roger- 
Ducasse  orchestrated  it  in  1919,  and  it  was  heard  for  the  first  time  more  than  a  year 
after  Debussy's  death. 


546  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

Thus  Claude-Emma,  the  beloved  "Chouchou"  of  the  doting  father 
Debussy  rather  surprisingly  became,  was  illegitimate.  It  was  not 
until  months  later  that  Emma  was  free,  and  the  marriage  could 
take  place.  Bardac  had  tricked  Emma  into  believing  that  she  would 
receive  an  annual  alimony  of  fifty  thousand  francs.  When  he  failed 
to  live  up  to  his  promise,  there  ensued  a  series  of  lawsuits  that 
threw  a  lurid  light  on  the  motives  of  the  three  interested  parties. 
These  were  fruitlessly  protracted,  outlasting  Debussy,  and  ending 
only  in  1934  with  Emma's  death. 

The  period  of  Debussy's  marital  vicissitudes  was  not  musically 
unproductive.  Aside  from  a  Verlaine  song  suite  he  dedicated  to 
Emma  in  1904,  the  delightfully  archaic  Danse  sacree  et  danse  profane 
for  harp  and  strings,  and  the  most  ambitious  of  his  orchestral 
works,  La  Mer,  from  these  years  date  the  earliest  of  the  pieces  that 
have  entitled  Debussy  to  be  called  the  greatest  composer  for  the 
piano  since  Chopin.  When  the  semiofficial  pianist  of  modern  French 
music,  Ricardo  Vines,  played  the  suite  Pour  le  piano  in  January, 
1902,  no  new  piano  pieces  had  come  from  Debussy  for  ten  years. 
Although  some  of  those  early  pieces  attained,  and  have  kept,  a 
great  popularity — who  does  not  know  Reverie  and  Glair  de  lune? — 
the  enthusiasm  that  greeted  Vines  at  the  Societe  Nationale  showed 
that  the  public  was  ready  for  something  more  advanced  than  the 
Massenet  salon  pieces  Debussy  had  been  composing.  As  a  writer 
for  the  piano,  he  evolved  slowly.  When  he  had  all  but  attained  full 
stature  in  songs  and  orchestral  work,  he  had  not  yet  begun  to 
think  in  his  peculiar  piano  idiom. 

Pour  le  piano  had  a  hint  here  and  there,  but  it  was  not  until 
January  9,  1904,  when  Vines  played  Estampes,  that  Paris  heard  a 
Debussy  who  had  caught  up  with  himself.  He  had  also  caught  up 
with  Maurice  Ravel,  whose  Jeux  d*eau,  containing  many  of  the 
technical  devices  Debussy  quietly  annexed  for  his  own  very  differ- 
ent purposes,  had  been  performed  two  years  before.  Each  of  the 
three  Estampes  shows  a  separate  influence:  Pagodes  reflects  the  Ori- 
ental impressions  Debussy  gained  at  the  Exposition  Universelle 
four  years  before;  the  Soiree  dans  Grenade,  besides  having  to  own  an 
almost  fatal  relationship  to  a  Ravel  habanera  now  incorporated  in 
the  popular  Rapsodie  espagnole,  actually  echoes  Debussy's  early 
fondness  for  Carmen  and  Lalo;  Jar  dins  sous  lapluie,  finally,  draws  on 
two  old  French  folk  songs.  But  Debussy  does  not  borrow — he  trans- 


DEBUSSY  547 

mutes.  Estampes  Is  the  creation  of  a  refined  and  delicate  stylist,  with 
the  temperament  of  a  Chopin  subjected  to  modern  influences. 
Chopin  makes  poetry  with  the  piano,  Debussy  paints  with  it.  The 
very  title  of  his  next  two  suites— Images* — tells  much  of  his  point 
of  view.  Two  of  them — significantly,  the  most  popular,  possibly  the 
most  successful — are  visual  evocations,  one  of  reflections  in  the 
water,  the  other  of  lacquered  goldfish  on  a  Japanese  plate. 

Debussy's  esthetic  predilection  for  water  scenes,  which  one  can 
discover  merely  by  running  through  the  titles  of  his  separate  pieces, 
now  manifested  itself  in  a  vast  tripartite  orchestral  work,  La  Mer. 
His  actual  experience  of  the  sea  was  from  the  shore  and  from  the 
deck  of  a  Channel  boat,  but  the  great  empty  spaces  of  ocean  as 
they  change  under  light  and  wind  compelled  his  imagination.  After 
initial  difficulties,  enhanced  by  the  brewing  emotional  storms  of 
his  domestic  life,  he  took  up  La  Mer  again,  and  finished  it  during 
two  of  the  most  harried  years  of  his  life.  But  completing  it  was  only 
half  the  battle  with  La  Mer.  The  score  frankly  baffled  its  first  con- 
ductor, and  there  was  a  violent  demonstration  against  it  at  the 
premiere  on  October  15,  1905.  So  wretched  was  this  performance 
that  La  Mer  was  not  repeated  for  two  years:  it  is  this  second  hear- 
ing, conducted  by  the  master  himself,  that  dyed-in-the-wool  De- 
bussyans  persist  in  referring  to  as  the  premiere. 

The  three  divisions  of  La  Mer  are  De  Vanbe  a  midi  sur  la  mer,  Jeux 
de  vagues,  and  Dialogue  du  vent  et  de  la  mer.  Nevertheless,  despite 
these  subtitles,  this  is  not  descriptive  music.  There  is  no  reason  why 
it  should  be:  titles  do  not  constitute  a  program.  When  Erik  Satie 
wisecracked  about  the  first  movement,  that  he  liked  "the  part  at 
quarter  past  eleven,3*  he  was  attacking  Debussy's  sometimes  too 
specific  titles  rather  than  implying  that  the  music  was  realistic. 
For  La  Mer  is  an  imaginative  response  to  thoughts  about  the  sea 
and  its  moods,  not  a  wave-by-wave  description.  Because  Debussy 
conceived  poetically  of  the  sea,  La  Mer  is  necessarily  a  large  and 
masculine  work.  Without  sacrificing  the  sensuous  delicacy  of  his 
perceptions  or  the  subtly  tapering  color  of  L'Apres-midi  or  Noc- 
turnes, he  had  widened  his  scope  to  include  big  orchestral  effects 
he  had  never  before  needed.  The  shattering  climaxes  of  La  Mer  are 

*  Series  I  (1905)  contains  Reflets  dans  Peau,  Hommage  a  Rarneau,  and  Mouvement; 
Series  II  (1907)  Cloches  &  trovers  lesfeuillesy  Et  la  lune  descend  swr  le  temple  quifut,  and 
Poissons  (For. 


54-8  MEN     OF    MUSIC 

unique  to  that  composition  only  because  Debussy  never  again  felt 
called  upon  to  use  them. 

There  is  a  hint  of  more  formal  disposition  of  materials  in  La 
Mer:  Debussy  returns  to  a  partial  use  of  cyclic  structure,  and  even 
occasionally  develops  a  theme  in  a  recognizably  classical  way. 
Also,  La  Mer  progresses  as  much  by  longer  melodic  statements  than 
are  usual  with  Debussy  as  by  the  fusing  and  flowing  of  harmonies 
and  the  vicissitudes  of  rhythmic  swirl.  Debussy  called  it  "three 
symphonic  sketches":  the  effect  is  that  of  a  symphony,  and  it  is 
indeed  much  more  clearly  a  whole  than  many  a  classical  sym- 
phony. The  more  one  hears  this  great  poem  of  the  sea,  the  more 
one  realizes  that  La  Mer  is  Debussy's  masterpiece  precisely  because 
it  adds  to  his  decorative  and  mood-evocative  qualities  a  powerful 
and  satisfying  emotional  impact. 

After  La  Mer,  five  years  elapsed  before  a  new  orchestral  com- 
position by  Debussy  was  played.  The  dropping  off  of  his  wife's 
income  created  a  financial  crisis  in  the  small  house  near  the  Bois 
de  Boulogne,  for  his  own  income  was  still  meager — a  bit  from 
royalties,  a  bit  from  journalism.  He  had,  much  against  his  will,  to 
trade  on  his  fame  as  a  composer  to  get,  as  conductor  and  pianist, 
engagements  for  which  he  was  not  fully  equipped.  Like  Chopin,  he 
played  beautifully  and  with  a  distinctive  style  peculiarly  suited  to 
his  own  music,  but  so  softly  that  he  could  barely  be  heard  beyond 
the  first  few  rows  of  a  large  concert  hall.  As  a  conductor,  he  was 
nervous  and  stiff,  and  if  he  got  through  an  entire  concert  bril- 
liantly, it  was  a  happy  accident.  Yet  he  was  well  liked  in  both 
capacities.  His  appearances  in  Austria,  Hungary,  Italy,  Belgium, 
Holland,  and  Russia  were  marked  by  excellent  press  notices  and 
cheering  audiences.  But  it  was  London  that  welcomed  him  most 
warmly,  just  as  it  had  taken  widely  to  his  music  before  Paris  gave 
it  other  than  a  cultish  response.  His  second  English  tour  had  a 
tragic  ending.  Too  ill  to  finish  it  out,  he  had  to  return  home  to 
consult  specialists,  and  they  told  him  he  was  suffering  from  cancer. 
Although  he  lived  nine  years  more,  Debussy  became  less  active, 
and  was  never  for  long  free  of  pain.  Yet  he  continued  his  concertiz- 
ing  until  the  war,  by  which  time  his  royalties  were  sufficiently  large 
to  support  him  in  modest  style. 

Fortunately,  these  hectic  years  of  making  ends  meet  were  free 
of  domestic  troubles.  He  may  not  have  been  passionately  in  love 


DEBUSSY  549 

with  Emma,  but  he  was  on  excellent  terms  with  her.  The  focus  of 
the  menage  was  Chouchou,  who  seems  to  have  delighted  her  father 
from  the  very  day  of  her  birth.  The  child  had  some  slight  musical 
talent,  which  both  amused  and  pleased  Debussy.  It  was  to  her  that 
in  1908  he  gave  Children? s  Corner.,  with  the  dedication,  "To  my  dear 
little  Chouchou,  with  her  father's  affectionate  apologies  for  what 
follows."  Both  the  name  of  the  suite  and  the  titles  of  the  six  sepa- 
rate pieces  are  in  English — for  no  explicable  reason.  The  first  of 
them,  Doctor  Gradus  ad  Parnassum,  is  a  wonderful  parody  of  the 
Clementi  Gradus  with  which  generations  of  children  have  strug- 
gled, and  of  a  child  playing  it.  JimWs  Lullaby  (Debussy's  charming 
misspelling  of  Jumbo,  Barnum's  big  elephant)  has  a  clumsy,  child- 
ish humor.  Serenade  for  the  Doll  and  The  Little  Shepherd  are  pretty, 
but  not  so  effective  as  Snow  Is  Dancing,  a  miniature  of  exquisite 
sharpness.  The  sixth  of  the  Children^  Corner  is  the  ever-popular 
Golliwog's  Cake-Walk,  which  combines  a  malicious  quotation  from 
Tristan  with  an  elegantly  rollicking  adaptation  of  American  rag- 
time. Almost  without  exception,  these  little  pieces  exhale  a  per- 
sonal warmth,  a  gentle  humor  that  is  rare  in  Debussy.  Like  Schu- 
mann's Kinderscenen,  they  are  about  the  child's  world,  but  scarcely 
for  the  child  himself. 

In  1908,  too,  after  Oscar  Hammerstein  had  successfully  pre- 
sented Pelleas  et  Melisande  to  New  York  for  the  first  time,  the  Metro- 
politan Opera,  not  to  be  outdone  by  the  dashing  impresario  of  the 
Manhattan  Opera  House,  decided  to  approach  Debussy  with  a 
commission  for  another  opera.  One  New  York  newspaper  had 
pronounced  Pelleas  "exquisite  but  creepy,"  another  "a  study  in 
glooms/'  The  public  reception  had  been  ambiguous,  even  uncom- 
prehending, but  it  had  been  just  enthusiastic  enough  to  warrant 
Giulio  Gatti-Casazza  trying  to  get  an  option  on  the  operas  Debussy 
was  rumored  to  be  composing.  Debussy  refused  to  promise  a  set- 
ting of  Bedier's  Le  Roman  de  Tristan,  but  reluctantly  took  Gatti- 
Casazza' s  eagerly  proffered  two  thousand  francs  for  an  option  on 
The  Fall  of  the  House  of  Usher  and  The  Devil  in  the  Belfry.  He  had, 
after  several  years,  resumed  work  on  the  last,  and  told  Gatti- 
Casazza  that  its  quite  un-Faustian  Devil  would  be  a  whistling,  not 
a  singing  role.  These,  in  addition  to  a  projected  opera  on  Orpheus, 
were  allowed,  after  sporadic  and  halfhearted  work,  to  lapse.  De- 
bussy's languid  efforts  to  compose  a  second  opera  may  indicate  a 


55°  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

deep-seated  dissatisfaction  with  Pelleas  as  well  as  a  fear  that  his 
genius  was  not  wholly  suited  to  the  demands  of  the  stage.  Some 
years  later,  after  Nijinsky  had  given  his  notorious  interpretation  of 
the  Faun  in  UAptis-midi,  Debussy,  rather  against  his  better  judg- 
ment, was  persuaded  to  collaborate  with  the  famous  Polish  dancer 
in  Jeux>  the  best  of  three  ballets  he  tried  his  hand  at  in  something 
more  than  a  year.*  The  music  is  deft  but  vapid. 

One  more  stage  work  remains  to  be  mentioned — the  controver- 
sial Le  Martyre  de  Saint-Sebastien.  In  191 1,  Gabriele  d'Annunzio  gave 
Debussy  a  rush  order  for  incidental  music  to  a  mystery  he  had 
written  for  the  eccentric  diseuse,  mirne,  and  dancer,  Ida  Rubin- 
stein. Despite  serious  ill  health,  Debussy  worked  at  top  speed  on 
the  sketches,  turning  them  over  to  Caplet  for  orchestration.  The 
music,  which  is  still  performed  in  concert  version,  consists  of  a 
prelude  to  each  of  the  five  acts,  occasional  orchestral  comment 
within  the  acts,  and  choral  and  solo-voice  passages.  As  soon  as 
notices  of  the  performance  were  posted,  the  Archbishop  of  Paris 
issued  a  pastoral  letter  commanding  his  sheep  to  stay  away  from 
the  premiere  on  May  22,  1911,  and  denouncing  Le  Martyre  as  offen- 
sive to  Christian  consciences.  At  once,  Debussy  and  D'Annunzio — 
a  Catholic  in  good  standing — rushed  into  print  in  its  defense. 

These  blasts  and  counterblasts  could  not  have  much  affected  the 
fate  of  a  smart  Ida  Rubinstein  first  night.  It  was  the  death  of  a 
cabinet  minister  on  the  morning  of  the  repetition  generate  that  pro- 
vided the  scandaL  On  the  grounds  of  public  mourning,  the  govern- 
ment tried  to  exclude  everyone  except  the  press,  upon  which  the 
rest  of  the  invitees  attempted  to  storm  the  hall.  The  garish  publicity 
attending  these  tasteless  events  raised  the  first-night  audience's 
hopes  to  a  level  that  the  sprawling,  chaotic  performance  failed  to 
satisfy.  After  the  first  astonishment  at  the  sort  of  splendid  sham- 
bles the  combined  talents  of  D'Annunzio,  Debussy,  Ida  Rubin- 
stein, Bakst,  and  Fokine  could  concoct,  the  audience  settled  back 
in  boredom.  Even  Mile  Rubinstein  dancing  the  Saint  could  not 
wake  them.  Le  Martyre  was  a  fiasco.  All  that  survives  of  this  expen- 
sive indulgence  of  a  spoiled  society  entertainer  is  the  set  of  religio- 
sensual  pieces  made  from  it — music  that  is  resplendent  at  times  in 
an  almost  Straussian  way,  music  that  harks  back  to  the  Church 

*  Jeux  was  the  only  one  of  these  he  completed.  Khamma  was  completed  by  Charles 
Koechlin,  La  Boite  ajoujottx  by  Andr6  Caplet. 


DEBUSSY  551 

modes,  but  is  not  the  less  a  commentary  on  the  panoply  of  religion 
rather  than  a  revelation  of  its  spiritual  essence.  The  best  explana- 
tion of  Debussy's  part  in  this  tawdry  venture  that  did  not  even 
satisfy  prewar  cafe  society  is  that  he  needed  the  money. 

Possibly  the  explanation  of  Debussy's  indifferent  setting  of  D*  An- 
nunzio's  overwrought  text  lies  in  the  fact  that  he  was  writing  to 
order  and  in  a  hurry.  The  history  of  his  three  ballets  bears  this  out. 
His  dawdling  with  Gatti-Casazza's  commission  emphasizes  it.  Yet, 
the  same  years,  as  anyone  knows  who  has  heard  the  piano  Preludes 
and  the  orchestral  Images,  produced  work  of  most  exquisite  finish, 
matured  point  of  view,  and  abounding  musical  fruitfulness.  By  a 
curious  vagary  of  selection,  only  one  of  the  three  Images  is  ever 
played.  Rondes  de  printemps  and  Gigues  are  not  far  below  UApres- 
mdi  in  loveliness,  though  technically  they  are  more  varied  in  color 
and  harmony,  and  are  more  precisely  outlined.  They  are  stark 
Debussy,  but  it  is  a  calculated  starkness,  implicit  in  the  materials 
on  which  they  are  based — French  folk  music  in  Rondes  and  Scots 
folk  dances  in  Gigues.  They  will  never  be  as  well  known  as  Iberia, 
the  third  of  the  Images,  which  has  a  greatness  that  smites  one.*  But 
that  two  large  compositions  of  Debussy's  maturity  should  be  com- 
pletely neglected  is  a  telling  comment  on  the  incuriosity  of  or- 
chestral conductors.  And  yet,  except  that  it  uses  scraps  of  charac- 
teristic Spanish  melody  and  rhythm,  the  constantly  played  Iberia 
has  no  more  surface  attractiveness  than  Rondes  or  Gigues.  The  ex- 
planation of  its  popularity  lies  elsewhere.  With  all  its  color,  its 
searching  use  of  the  resources  of  the  modern  orchestra,  it  remains 
somewhat  difficult  of  access,  and  needs  several  hearings  to  reveal 
its  full  beauty.  In  this  respect,  it  stands  in  salutary  contrast  to 
many  of  Strauss*  symphonic  poems,  which  give  their  all  at  a  first 
devastating  hearing,  and  pale  thereafter.  The  inner  vibrations  of 
Iberia  are  radiating  centers  of  pure  emotion:  Iberia  is  a  tragic  and 
deeply  felt  evocation  of  the  passing  show  of  life.  Its  three  move- 
ments, f  as  clearly  as  the  three  sections  of  La  Mer,  are  interrelated 

*  After  Iberia  and  Rondes  de  printemps  were  first  performed,  on  February  20  and 
March  2,  1910,  respectively,  one  Gaston  Carraud  attacked  Ddbussy  In  a  vitriolic 
article,  asserting  that  the  source  of  his  genius  was  drying  up.  To  the  discomfiture 
of  those  who  for  years  had  been  trying  to  set  up  Ravel  as  head  of  a  group  officially 
in  opposition  to  Debussy,  the  younger  man,  angered  by  this  unwarranted  jet  of 
venom,  for  once  sought  the  limelight  he  loathed  with  a  warm  defense  of  Debussy. 

f  The  tripartite  division  of  Iberia  into  Par  les  rues  etpar  les  ckemins,  Par/urns  de  la  mat., 
and  Au  matin  (Fun  jour  dejete  explains  Edward  Lockspeiser's  (at  first)  astonishing-  state- 


MEN    OF    MUSIC 

and  cumulative  in  effect.  If,  as  has  been  suggested,  Debussy  was 
influenced  by  the  piano  suite  Iberia  of  the  Spanish  composer,  Isaac 
Albeniz,  he  has  subtilized  and  enriched  his  borrowings  quite  be- 
yond recognition. 

Without  Debussy's  large  orchestral  works,  the  modern  repertoire 
would  be  deprived  of  some  of  its  most  precious  color.  Without  his 
twenty-four  piano  Preludes  (1910-13),  the  lack  would  be  far  more 
serious,  for  some  of  them  have  achieved  places  for  themselves 
among  those  most  popular  of  popular  pieces — encore  music.  Most 
of  the  Preludes  are  delicious  morceaux  raised  above  triviality  by  their 
confectioner's  unfaltering  taste,  perfect  sense  of  the  proportions  of 
small  things,  and  sharp  inventiveness.  Here,  more  than  any  place 
else  in  Debussy,  is  the  work  of  a  pupil  of  a  Chopin  pupil.  Even  the 
most  trifling  of  them  is  grateful  to  play  and  to  listen  to,  so  purely 
pianistic  is  their  texture.  Only  an  insensitive  could  overlook  this 
patent  fact,  and  dare  to  transcribe  them  for  another  medium. 
There  is  no  use  pretending,  however,  that  most  of  the  Preludes — La 
Fille  aux  cheveux  de  lin,  La  Danse  de  Puck,  Brouillards,  and  Bruyeres,  for 
instance — are  anything  but  impressionistic  miniatures.  Nor  are 
Minstrels,  General  Lavine — Eccentric,  and  Hommage  a  S.  Pickwick,  Esq., 
P.P.M.P.C.,  anything  more  pretentious  than  cousins  of  Golliwog 
and  music  for  Chouchou.  And  in  the  second  book,  there  are  a  few 
that  have  no  other  function  than  filling  out  the  traditional  twenty- 
four. 

But  in  both  books  of  Preludes  there  are  several  of  large  dimen- 
sions and  weightier  import.  Ce  quta  vu  le  vent  d*ouest  works  up  into 
a  hurtling  fory  that  seeks  out  the  piano's  full  volume.  La  Cathedrale 
engloutie  shows  how  brilliantly  Debussy  could  have  succeeded  had 
he  wanted  to  be  a  really  programmatic  composer:  bells  toll  and 
echo,  a  Gregorgian  chant  is  heard,  first  in  the  open  air,  then  as  it 
might  sound  coming  from  the  bottom  of  the  sea.  There  is  a  pretty 
story  that  Debussy  was  inspired  to  compose  La  Puerta  del  Vino  by 
a  picture  postcard  Manuel  De  Falla,  always  his  admirer,  often  his 
debtor,  had  sent  him.  As  Oscar  Thompson  has  pointed  out,  the 
clashing  keys  of  this  fine,  dancelike  piece  foreshadow  the  poly- 
tonality  of  postwar  music.  Ondine  conjures  up  the  mermaid's  watery 

ment  that  there  are  five  orchestral  Images.  This  division  into  three  of  one  part  of  a 
three-part  suite  suggests  that  Debussy  was  inordinately  fascinated  by  triptychs.  He 
published  seven  groups  of  three  songs,  five  piano  suites  in  three ,  parts,  and  three 
orchestral  works  similarly  divided. 


DEBUSSY  553 

domain.  No  better  way  of  hearing  the  basic  difference  In  style 
between  Debussy  and  Ravel  can  be  found  than  by  listening  to 
their  separate  responses  to  the  idea  of  Ondine,  that  favorite  water 
sprite  of  French  legend.  Debussy's  is  sensuous,  flowing,  liquid; 
Ravel's  is  cold,  clear,  pointilliste,  the  glitter  of  spray.  The  last  prel- 
ude in  Book  II  is  Feux  d*  artifice.  By  far  the  longest  of  the  twenty- 
four,  almost  maliciously  difficult,  it  is  one  of  the  most  truly  pic- 
turesque works  in  the  virtuoso's  repertoire.  If  anything  so  artificial 
as  fireworks  can  be  said  to  have  an  inner  nature  of  their  own, 
Debussy  has  found  it,  and  put  it  on  paper. 

Book  II  of  the  Preludes  _was  the  last  important  composition  De- 
bussy finished  before  August,  1914.  The  outbreak  of  the  World 
War  shattered  what  long  suffering  had  left  of  his  once  resilient 
spirit.  For  a  time  he  could  do  nothing.  The  successive  disasters 
of  the  Allied  armies  made  him  rage  impotently  that  he  could  not 
join  in  the  struggle  to  save  the  France  he  worshiped.  In  October, 
he  was  writing,  "If  I  had  the  courage,  or  rather,  if  I  did  not  dread 
the  inevitable  blatancy  natural  to  that  type  of  composition,  I 
should  like  to  write  a  Marche  herozque."  His  old  mocking  spirit  re- 
asserted itself  momentarily  in  an  afterthought;  "But  I  must  say  I 
consider  it  ridiculous  to  indulge  in  heroism,  in  all  tranquillity, 
well  out  of  reach  of  the  bullets."  The  next  month  he  straddled  the 
dilemma  by  composing  an  oddly  dove-tinted  work  in  honor  of  the 
then  revered  Albert  of  the  Belgians — Berceuse  h&rolque. 

To  add  to  Debussy's  distress  of  body  and  mind,  his  finances  were 
in  sad  shape.  His  royalties  were  good,  but  too  much  of  them  v/as 
earmarked  for  Lily's  alimony.  His  publisher,  Jacques  Durand, 
generously  advanced  considerable  sums  against  future  royalties, 
and  it  was  to  pay  off  these  loans  that  Debussy  took  on  the  editing 
of  part  of  the  complete  Chopin  Durand  was  bringing  out  to  re- 
place German  editions.  Toward  the  end  of  1914,  there  were  some 
indications  that  he  was  on  the  verge  of  a  new  burst  of  creativeness. 
He  said  that  he  wanted  to  work  to  prove  that  no  matter  what  hap- 
pened, French  thought  would  not  be  destroyed.  The  first  signs  of 
this  activity  were  the  Six  Epigraphes  antiques  for  piano  duet.  Being 
adaptations  of  old  sketches  for  a  second  series  of  Chansons  de  Bilitis, 
they  did  not  require  the  concentrated  effort  of  completely  new 
work.  They  are,  however,  charming  if  slight  works  of  a  cold  and 
archaic  loveliness.  They  are  notable  for  their  starkness  of  line,  and 


554  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

for  an  absence  of  those  washes  of  color  to  which,  in  Debussy,  we 
are  accustomed.  It  is  this  difference  from  his  preceding  work  that 
has  encouraged  certain  critics  to  point  to  the  Epigraphes  as  proof 
that  his  creative  energies  were  in  decline. 

But  by  June>  1915,  when  he  began  the  first  book  of  Etudes, 
Debussy  had  somehow  uncovered  a  new  lode  of  fertility  that  was 
to  produce  in  rapid  succession,  besides  the  twelve  Etudes,  the  two- 
piano  suite  En  Blanc  et  noiry  and  two  chamber  sonatas.  It  seems 
probable  that  the  Etudes  grew  out  of  his  restudying  of  Chopin.  Cer- 
tain it  is  that  he  approached  them  with  the  same  imaginative 
freedom  as  Chopin,  and  that  his  use  of  precise  indications  of  what 
each  study  is — Pour  les  tierces,  Pour  les  huit  doigts,  Pour  les  notes  repetees 
— indicates  no  sacrifice  of  poetic  intensity.  Writing  of  them  in  wry, 
deprecatory  vein,  he  said  in  part,  "You  will  agree  with  me  that 
there  is  no  need  of  making  technique  any  sadder  than  it  is,  that  it 
may  seem  more  serious;  and  that  a  little  charm  has  never  spoiled 
anything.  Chopin  proved  that,  and  makes  this  desire  of  mine  very- 
rash,  I  realize.  And  I  am  not  dead  enough  yet  not  to  know  the 
comparisons  that  my  contemporaries,  confreres,  and  others  will 
not  fail  to  make,  to  my  disadvantage."  In  short,  Debussy  himself 
conceived  of  the  Etudes  as  a  finger  technique  without  tears. 

The  Etudes  are  not  in  the  class,  nor  are  they  intended  to  be,  of 
Chopin's  masterpieces,  though  they  are  frequently  as  difficult. 
"You  break  your  left  hand  in  them,"  Debussy  confessed,  "in  gym- 
nastics almost  Swedish."  Walter  Gieseking,  a  few  years  ago,  proved 
that  a  pianist  whose  hands  know  no  terrors  could  use  several  as 
attractive,  sure-fire  novelties.  The  sad  thing,  of  course,  is  that  they 
remain  novelties.  For  the  Etudes  are  the  very  spirit  of  Debussy, 
crystallized,  refined,  classicized  even.  They  have  exquisite  defini- 
tion, a  sharpness  without  angularity.  One  element  is  lacking,  and 
it  is  this,  no  doubt,  that  has  argued  against  their  popularity.  That 
element  is  sensuousness.  It  is  as  if  the  war  had  burned  out  De- 
bussy's interest  in  the  senses,  and  driven  his  genius  to  express  itself 
in  the  most  closely  reasoned  musical  intellection.  And  yet,  by  a 
miracle,  the  charm  he  hoped  to  achieve  is  there.  Of  much  the  same 
character  as  the  Etudes,  and  quite  as  worthy  of  performance,  are 
the  three  pieces  called  En  Blanc  et  noir.  One  need  not  refer  to  their 
elaborate  and  rather  obscure  programs  in  order  to  enjoy  them. 

Late  in  1915,  the  rapid  spread  of  Debussy's  cancer  necessitated 


DEBUSSY  555 

a  painful  and  weakening  operation.  From  this  he  never  recovered. 
For  more  than  a  year  he  did  not  even  attempt  to  compose.  Only 
his  humor,  a  tragic  ghost,  remained.  He  wrote  to  Durand  in  June, 
19165  "Claude  Debussy,  writing  no  more  music,  has  no  longer  any 
reason  to  exist.  I  have  no  hobbies.  They  never  taught  me  anything 
but  music.  That  wouldn't  matter  if  I  wrote  a  great  deal,  but  to  tap 
on  an  empty  head  is  disrespectful.55  When  he  finally  summoned 
the  will  to  rouse  himself,  it  was  to  produce  an  unexciting  sonata 
for  violin  and  piano.  He  appeared  as  the  pianist  when  it  was  first 
performed  on  May  5,  1917.  Andre  Suares  has  left  us  an  unforget- 
table picture  of  the  master's  farewell  to  Paris:  "His  complexion 
was  the  color  of  melted  wax  or  ashes.  In  his  eyes  there  was  no 
flame  of  fever,  only  the  dull  reflections  of  silent  pools.  There  was 
not  even  bitterness  in  his  gloomy  smile."  He  was  beyond  the  reach 
of  morphine  and  radium;  a  second  operation  did  him  no  good. 
There  was  nothing  left  but  to  die.  From  late  in  1917  on,  he  never 
left  his  house.  The  last  act  of  a  man  whom  the  war  had  led  to  affix 
musidenfranqais  to  his  signature  was  to  apply  for  a  vacant  chair  at 
the  Academic  des  Beaux- Arts,  the  organization  with  which  he  had 
so  often  crossed  swords.  He  could  scarcely  sign  his  name.  Eight 
days  later,  on  March  25,  1918,  he  died.  In  the  confusion  of  a  Paris 
in  range  of  German  guns,  he  was  given  a  funeral  almost  as  hurried 
as  Mozart's.  What  few  had  time  to  realize,  or  wit  to  foresee,  was 
that  these  poor  remains  had  been  animated  by  the  most  fructifying 
spirit  in  twentieth-century  music. 


Chapter  XXI 

Richard  Strauss 

(Munich,  June  iiai864-September  8,  1949,  Garmisch) 


IN  1911,  a  bland-faced,  blue-eyed,  middle-aged  Bavarian,  who 
was  then  the  most  famous  composer  in  the  world,  put  the  finish- 
ing touches  on  one  of  the  most  effective  operas  ever  written.  Behind 
him  stretched,  like  the  peaks  of — well,  not  the  Himalayas,  but  the 
Alps — a  series  of  notable  works  with  which  he  had  asserted  his 
right  to  the  mantle  of  Liszt  and  the  crown  of  Wagner.  After  pen- 
ning the  most  challenging  orchestral  pieces  of  the  dying  century, 
he  had  veered  sharply  to  create  three  of  the  most  talked-of  operas 
of  the  new.  He  had  produced  a  handful  of  master  songs.  He  was 
forty-seven  years  old:  he  had  conquered  the  world,  and  he  still  had 
the  world  to  conquer.  Since  191 1,  besides  more  than  forty  songs, 
he  has  composed  two  ballets,  a  long  symphony,  and  ten  operas. 
Among  these  later  works,  there  is  not  one  that  has  added  the 
fraction  of  an  inch  to  his  stature.  Rather,  by  their  patent  inferi- 
ority, by  their  manufactured  quality,  they  have  cast  suspicion  on 
his  early  worfcs.  This  is  manifestly  unfair.  The  fair  thing  is  to  treat 
Richard  Strauss  as  a  man  who  died  in  1911.  One  of  the  most 
fascinating,  if  finally  insoluble,  problems  in  music  criticism  is  to 
try  to  discover  the  causes  of  his  premature  demise. 

Strauss  is  doubly  puzzling  because  both  his  beginning  and  his 
end  are  extraordinarily  mediocre.  There  is  little  to  detain  us  in  the 
youthful  career  of  this  well-educated  son  of  Franz  Strauss,  first 
horn  player  of  the  Munich  Hofoper,  and  Josephine  Pschorr,  scion 
of  a  wealthy  brewing  family.  He  was  an  alarming  child  prodigy 
from  the  age  of  five.  Within  ten  or  eleven  years  he  had  composed  a 
large  number  of  pieces,  including  a  serenade  for  wind  instruments 
that  Von  Bulow  liked  well  enough  to  play  with  the  Meiningen 
orchestra.  At  the  age  of  sixteen,  he  dashed  off  a  symphony  that 
was  duly  performed  by  the  sainted  Wagnerian  conductor,  Her- 
mann Levi.  If  one  looks  long  enough  at  any  music,  he  can  find 
whatever  he  is  looking  for.  So  some  have  looked  at  these  Strauss 
juvenilia,  and  found  wondrous  hints  of  the  epics  to  come  Actually, 
by  Strauss'  own  confession,  they  were  pretty,  neoclassic  imitations. 

556 


STRAUSS  557 

In  one  way  only  did  they  hint  at  the  composer  of  Till  Eulenspiegel 
and  Elektra:  they  are  enormously  clever.  Obviously,  it  was  quite 
absurd  for  a  young  fellow  with  so  much  musical  savoir-faire  to 
waste  his  time  in  a  university.  Accordingly,  he  quit  school  in  1883. 

Luck  was  with  Strauss.  He  met  exactly  the  right  people  to  estab- 
lish him  and  help  him  break  with  his  respectable  past.  The  first 
of  these  beneficent  deities  was  Von  Billow,  who  was  bowled  over 
by  the  lad's  sheer  adroitness.  Without  training,  Strauss  was  already 
an  astute  conductor:  had  not  Von  Billow  seen  him  face  the  veterans 
of  the  Meiningen  band,  and  conduct  his  own  wind  suite  without  a 
hitch,  though  he  had  never  before  wielded  a  baton?  Needing  an 
assistant.  Von  Billow  impulsively  took  Strauss  on.  Shortly  after, 
he  resigned,  and  his  aide  found  himself,  at  twenty-one,  leader  of  a 
famous  orchestra.  Had  Von  Billow  stayed  on,  this  plastic  youth 
might  have  docilely  followed  his  chief,  and  run  up  his  flag  on 
Brahms'  masthead.  For  that  matter,  there  is  a  tinge  of  Brahms  in 
some  Strauss  works  of  this  period.  But  even  before  Von  Billow  had 
left,  Strauss  had  come  under  the  influence  of  Alexander  Bitter,  a 
man  thirty  years  his  senior,  whose  comparatively  humble  position 
as  a  violinist  in  the  orchestra  was  offset  by  the  loftiness  of  his 
musical  connections.  Having  married  Wagner's  niece,  Ritter  was 
hand  in  glove  with  the  Music-of-the-Future  crowd  at  Bayreuth. 
It  was  Ritter  who,  after  whispering  into  Strauss*  ear  the  facts  of 
life  about  £ukunftsmusik,  convinced  him  that  the  successors  of  Liszt 
and  Wagner — he  conceded  Berlioz,  too — would  conquer  the  world. 
Strauss  was  tempted,  and  he  fell.  Doffing  the  somber  weeds  of  the 
Brahms  sect,  he  assumed  a  coat  of  many  colors.  The  ease  with 
which  he  made  this  change  is  one  clue  to  the  mystery  of  Richard 
Strauss. 

Although  while  still  in  his  teens  he  had  composed  several  quite 
remarkable  songs  that  showed  him  not  unaware  of  Wagner,  the 
first  large  composition  in  which  Strauss  toyed  with  revolution  was 
Burleske,  a  fantasy  for  piano  and  orchestra  he  lived  to  regret,  but 
which,  significantly,  is  the  earliest  of  his  compositions  still  played. 
It  is  shilly-shally,  genuflective  to  Brahms,  but  casting  sheep's-eyes 
at  Bayreuth  and  Weimar.  But  it  is  dynamic,  it  is  energetic,  it  has 
a  hint  of  the  briefly  great  Strauss.  Later,  he  himself  called  it  "sheer 
nonsense":  it  is  not  quite  that  bad — or  quite  that  good. 

Strauss'  next  large  work,  the  program  symphony  Aus  Italien, 


558  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

written  after  he  had  given  up  the  leadership  at  Meiningen  for  an 
assistant's  job  at  Munich,  revealed  that  he  had  reached  Berlioz  in 
his  flight  from  neoclassidsm.  Still  timidly  clinging  to  the  tradi- 
tional phases  of  the  classical  symphony,  he  imposed  upon  them  a 
specific  literary  program  they  were  not  fitted  to  enact.  The  result 
is  a  spotty  hybrid,  in  parts  fine  to  listen  to,  but  not  coming  off  as  a 
whole.  He  had  not  yet  discovered  that  the  tone  chronicler  and 
psychologue  must  completely  throw  over  the  whole  machinery  of 
first  and  second  themes,  counterstatement,  development,  recapitu- 
lation, and  coda,  and  make— or  adapt— a  free  form  of  his  own. 
In  more  ways  than  one,  Aus  Italien  is  inept.  There  is,  for  instance, 
that  unfortunate  quotation  of  the  melody  of  Luigi  Denza's  Funicull, 
funicula,  in  the  belief  that  it  was  a  genuine  Italian  folk  song.  This 
is  the  sort  of  mistake  the  Strauss  of  a  few  years  later,  whose  music 
prides  itself  on  its  cosmopolitanism  and  sophistication,  would  never 
have  made.  Even  in  Aus  Italien  he  should  have  known  better:  it  was 
composed  after  a  trip  to  Italy. 

Strauss  was  still  fumbling  for  the  heaven-made  form  in  his  next 
work,  Macbeth,  Here  for  the  first  time  he  used  the  expression  "tone 
poem."  But  Macbeth  is  not  a  true  tone  poem:  it  is  an  adaptation  of 
the  classical  sonata  form,  with  its  structure  relaxed  just  enough  for 
the  purpose  of  musical  portraiture.  Sometimes  Strauss  achieves  an 
uncanny  insight  into  Macbeth's  tortured  mind,  sometimes  he  writes 
a  beautiful  passage.  Rarely  does  he  fuse  the  two.  However,  he 
learned  quickly.  The  very  next  year,  1888,  he  summarily  threw  off 
whatever  shackles  remained,  and  came  out  with  one  of  his  most 
characteristic  and  successful  orchestral  pieces.  Don  Juan  is  a  mir- 
acle. As  far  as  cogency  of  form  is  concerned,  Strauss  never  bettered 
it.  Nor  did  he  often  orchestrate  more  magnificently  or  with  surer 
taste.  Don  Juan  is  a  whirlwind  under  control,  and  never  did  Strauss 
compose  more  heroic  music.  The  themes  and  rich  contrapuntal 
harmony  are  not  only  beautiful  in  themselves,  but  admirably  per- 
form their  function  of  carrying  forward  the  story  and  of  examining 
the  state  of  Don  Juan's  soul.  The  frantic  quality  of  the  hero's 
search  is  given  ironic  emphasis  by  the  sense  of  impending  catas- 
trophe that  hovers  over  the  music  from  the  very  beginning.  In  a 
few  strides,  Strauss  has  succeeded  in  creating  an  opera  without 
words,  cleverly  adapting  for  solo  orchestra  Wagner's  concept  of  a 
continuously  unfolding  music  drama.  Don  Juan  has  immediate  im- 


STRAUSS  559 

pact  as  drama,  whether  or  not  the  listener  knows  the  Lenau  poem 
on  which  it  is  based. 

In  musical  idiom,  particularly  in  the  use  of  discords,  Don  Juan 
went  Wagner  one  better.  The  first-night  audience  at  Weimar,  who 
knew  their  Liszt  and  had  at  least  a  fashionable  smattering  of  Wag- 
ner, easily  followed  Strauss.  The  critics  did  not.  They  accused  Don 
Juan,  by  implication,  of  being  a  work  of  original  genius:  they  found 
it  formless,  needlessly  cacophonous,  foil  of  deliberate  shockers. 
They  did  not  mention  that  it  was  the  logical  successor  of  Liszt's 
symphonic  poems  and  Wagner's  musical  speech.  When  Hanslick 
deigned  to  mention  Don  Juan,  he  did  indeed  call  Strauss  a  Wag- 
nerian:  it  was  the  worst  word  he  could  think  of.  He  might  better 
have  spared  his  virulence  for  the  longer  Tod  und  Verkldrung.  It  con- 
sists of  the  thoughts  and  memories  of  a  dying  man,  his  death,  and 
his  transfiguration.  Some  of  this  supplies  good  material  for  musical 
treatment,  some  does  not.  The  result  is  patchwork,  which,  how- 
ever, is  not  at  first  apparent.  It  takes  several  hearings  of  Tod  und 
Verkldrung  to  get  past  the  powerful  enchantments  of  the  bravura 
technique,  the  breath-taking  mastery  of  the  orchestration.  Then 
the  arid  spots  are  revealed.  It  seems  that  they  occur  precisely  at 
those  points  where  the  program  is  too  abstract,  too  religio-philo- 
sophical,  for  Strauss'  alchemy.  But  a  worse  charge  can  be  leveled 
against  Tod  und  Verkldrung:  with  all  its  grandiloquence,  its  celestial 
harpstrings,  its  exalted  sermonizings,  we  come  away  with  the  un- 
easy feeling  that  we  have  looked  in  on  the  last  moments  of  a 
stuffed  shirt.  For  the  first  time  a  suspicion  flits  across  the  mind  that 
Strauss  is  a  musical  genius  with  a  small  soul.  And  here,  perhaps, 
is  another  clue  to  the  mystery  of  Richard  Strauss. 

Tod  und  Verkldrung  is  dated  1889;  Strauss'  next  large  composition 
was  not  completed  until  1893.  This  lull  in  the  creative  activity  of 
an  extraordinarily  fertile  man  can  be  attributed  partly  to  a  change 
in  his  worldly  position,  partly  to  ill  health.  In  Munich  he  had  little 
to  do — he  was  only  second  assistant  conductor — but  when,  in  Octo- 
ber, 1889,  he  was  called  to  Weimar  as  director  of  the  court  opera, 
he  became  a  very  busy  man.  He  was  not  content  with  the  mechan- 
ical resurrection  of  war  horses,  but  eagerly  sought  for  new  stage 
works,  the  most  notable  of  which  was  Humperdinck's  Hansel  und 
GreteL  Of  course,  Wagner  was  a  heavy  staple.  Against  this  he  set 
a  rollicking  presentation  of  Die  Fledermaus.  He  was  in  constant  de- 


560  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

mand  for  concerts  and  festivals,  for  he  was  already  a  rather  famous 
man.  In  1890,  a  signal  honor  awaited  him  at  Eisenach:  he  was 
invited  to  conduct  the  Allgemeine  Deutsche  Musik-Verein  in  world 
premieres  of  Tod  und  Verklarung  and  Burleske,  in  which  the  fantastic 
Eugen  d' Albert  played  the  solo  part.  The  very  next  year,  Strauss' 
own  transfiguration  was  accomplished:  Cosima  Wagner  invited 
him  to  assist  at  Bayreuth,  and  three  years  later  he  conducted  sev- 
eral performances  of  Tannhauser  there.  It  was  then  that  Wagner's 
maddening  lady  exclaimed:  "Well,  well,  so  modern,  yet  how  well 
you  conduct  Tannhauserl"  Strauss'  reverence  for  Wagner  went  be- 
yond the  limits  of  good  sense:  though  he  customarily  conducted 
sitting  down,  he  always  stood  when  the  music  was  Wagner's.* 

In  1892,  Strauss'  health  was  so  bad  that  his  doctor  ordered  a 
long  vacation  without  work  of  any  kind.  He  set  out,  and  for  a  time 
rambled  happily.  From  Greece,  he  went  on  to  Egypt,  and  there  his 
conscience  began  to  bother  him.  As  a  professional  composer,  he 
had,  except  for  a  small  sheaf  of  songs,  been  marking  time  for  sev- 
eral years.  Cairo  was  the  scene  of  a  historic  decision:  on  Decem- 
ber 29  he  began  to  compose  his  first  opera,  and  two  months  later, 
under  the  shadow  of  the  massive  colonnades  of  Luxor,  he  com- 
pleted the  first  act  of  a  medieval  German  opera  called  Guntram. 
Evidently,  Strauss'  muse  was  not  allergic  to  scenery,  for  the  second 
act  is  dated  from  an  equally  un-Teutonic  Sicilian  villa.  Back  home, 
and  once  more  in  good  health,  he  finished  the  opera  at  his  charm- 
ing chalet  in  the  Bavarian  Alps.  Presented  at  Weimar  in  1894,  *&& 
Wagnerian  pastiche  was  received  with  scant  approval.  The  com- 
poser did  not  attempt  another  opera  for  six  years. 

The  heroine  of  Guntram  had  been  sung  by  Pauline  de  Ahna,  a 
well-born  Bavarian  girl  who  later  in  the  year  was  the  Elisabeth  in 
the  Tannhdusers  Strauss  conducted  at  Bayreuth.  They  were  married 
the  same  year.  Frau  Strauss  had  not  been  very  distinguished  in 
opera,  but  under  her  husband's  tutelage  she  became  an  excellent 
lieder  singer,  and  did  much  to  help  popularize  his  songs.  By  the 
middle  nineties,  many  of  his  best  ones  had  been  written,  and 
though  he  has  since  tripled  his  output,  he  has  never  excelled  the 
finest  of  his  early  songs.  Strauss  is  not  to  be  ranked  with  Brahms 

*What  Henry  T.  Finck  happily  called  Strauss*  Wagnerolatry  had  a  mystical 
tinge.  In  1891,  when  he  was  all  but  dead  of  a  lung  complaint,  he  one  day  expressed 
a  wish  to  die.  But  he  reconsidered.  "No,  before  I  do,**  he  said,  "I  should  love  to  con- 
duct Tristan" 


STRAUSS  561 

and  Hugo  Wolf,  much  less  with  Schubert  and  Schumann.  Most  of 
his  songs  are  flawed  in  various  ways:  they  are  pretentious,  or  bom- 
bastic, or  expressively  inept;  the  heaviness  of  the  accompaniment 
often  overshadows  the  voice;  sometimes  they  are  mere  technical 
exercises.  They  are  perhaps  worst  when  Strauss  tries  to  set  a  hu- 
morous or  folksy  lyric.  But  when  something  in  the  lyric — whether 
in  itself  good  or  bad  poetry — set  his  imagination  aflame,  he  could 
deliver  a  masterpiece.  Such  is  Standchen^  whose  passionate  lyrical 
grace  is  poignantly  intensified  by  a  somber-colored  middle  section. 
Such,  too,  is  Morgen,  an  idyl  of  contemplative  beauty,  which  is 
matched  in  loveliness  by  a  song  similar  in  mood,  the  earlier  Aller- 
seelen.  The  ecstatic  Cacilie,  the  glimmering  Traum  durch  die  Ddm- 
merung,  and  the  serenely  peaceful  Ruhey  meine  Seele  could  not  well 
be  spared  from  the  pitifully  limited  literature  of  great  songs.  And 
Die  heiligm  drei  Konige  aus  Morgenland,  of  solemn  joy  and  apocalyptic 
rapture,  is  one  of  the  most  magnificent  songs  ever  written. 

Shortly  after  his  marriage,  Strauss  went  back  to  Munich,  first  as 
Kapellmeister,  and  finally,  after  Levi's  retirement  in  1896,  as  general 
music  director.  Von  Billow's  death  had  left  the  Berlin  Philhar- 
monic without  a  leader,  and  Strauss,  who  had  become  one  of  the 
most  sought-after  conductors,  tried  for  a  while  the  experiment  of 
commuting  between  Munich  and  Berlin.  His  health  suffered,  and 
he  had  to  hand  his  Philharmonic  baton  to  Artur  Nikisch,  the 
Hungarian  genius  who  was  to  make  the  Berlin  organization  one 
of  the  crack  European  orchestras,  Nikisch,  who  was  not  a  com- 
poser, could  juggle  Berlin  with  Leipzig,  and  do  full  justice  to  both 
the  Philharmonic  and  the  Gewandhaus. 

But  in  1895,  Strauss  was  engaged  simultaneously  on  two  more 
tone  poems.  Till  Eulenspiegels  lustige  Streiche  was  the  first  completed. 
Till  is  the  sort  of  fellow  who  is  much  loved  by  modern  composers: 
he  has  his  analogue  in  Zoltan  Kod^ly's  Hary  Janos  and  Serge 
Prokofiev's  Lieutenant  Kije,  Strauss  sets  him  and  his  fourteenth- 
century  environment  before  us  in  a  brawling,  lusty,  and  bawdily 
witty  score  that  is  as  far  as  possible  removed  from  the  heavenly 
visions  and  lugubriousness  of  Todund  Verkldrung.  Till  is,  after  more 
than  fifty  years,  one  of  the  most  complicated  scores  in  existence 
(Strauss'  orchestra  was  getting  larger  and  larger),  but  so  powerful 
was  the  impetus  of  its  issuance  from  Strauss'  imagination  that, 
with  all  its  episodes,  it  gives  the  effect  of  a  perfectly  described 


562  MEN    OF    MUSIC 

parabola.  HansEck,  still  savage  against  Wagnerismus,  attacked  Till 
with  cold  fury:  "It  is  a  mistake  to  look  on  this  immoderate  and 
masterless  chase  of  pictures  as  an  overflowing  of  youthful  creative 
power.  ...  I  can  see  in  it  only  the  exact  opposite:  a  product  of 
subtly  calculated  decadence."  The  huge  orchestral  battery  he 
thought  might  better  be  used  to  call  up  "the  English  war  in  the 
Transvaal  than  as  an  illustration  of  episodes  in  the  life  of  a  poor 
vagabond."  But  as  it  was  precisely  "an  overflowing  of  youthful 
creative  power/'  Till  is  as  fresh  today  as  the  day  of  its  first  per- 
formance in  1895. 

Almost  exactly  a  year  after  the  premiere  of  Till,,  Strauss  conducted 
at  Frankfort  another  vast  tone  poem.  Also  sprach  ^arathustra  is  a 
tribute  to  Nietzsche.  Strauss,  just  after  the  first  performance,  went 
to  some  pains  to  clarify  his  intentions.  "I  did  not/'  he  asserted, 
"intend  to  write  philosophical  music  or  portray  Nietzsche's  great 
work  musically.  I  meant  to  convey  musically  an  idea  of  the  devel- 
opment of  the  human  race  from  its  origin,  through  the  various 
phases  of  evolution,  religious  as  well  as  scientific,  up  to  Nietzsche's 
idea  of  the  superman."  As  one  can  see,  there  is  nothing  modest 
about  Strauss'  aims.  Rather  the  contrary.  Here  are  definite  signs 
of  megalomania,  which  unmistakably  constitute  another  clue  to 
the  mystery  of  Richard  Strauss.  Just  as  the  conversation  of  a  meg- 
alomaniac is  apt  to  teem  with  banalities  that  have  been  accepted 
without  question  by  their  creator  simply  because  they  are  his  own, 
so  the  music  of  a  megalomaniac  is  apt  to  be  full  of  boring  rodo- 
montade. Not  only  does  ^arathustra  fail  to  cohere,  but  some  of  the 
separate  sections  into  which  it  is  far  too  easily  divisible  are  shock- 
ingly flat.  Such,  for  instance,  is  the  silly  Viennese  waltz,  intended 
as  the  climax  of  the  piece.  As  a  superman's  dance,  it  is  incredible. 
Zaratkustra  is  a  jumble,  all  the  more  tragic  because  magnificent 
music  jostles  the  sensational  and  commonplace.  Such  a  fabric  does 
not  long  endure,  and  %arathustra  is  already  all  but  disappearing 
from  the  concert  repertoire. 

^arathustray  evidently  composed  on  a  downswing,  was  followed 
in  1897  by  a  masterpiece  as  different  in  conception  and  form  from 
its  predecessor  as  that  was  from  Till.  As  Cecil  Gray  has  pointed 
out,  the  particular  form  of  each  of  Strauss'  large  orchestral  works 
is  shrewdly  calculated  to  the  nature  of  the  program.  Thus  Macbeth, 
Don  Juan,  and  ^arathustra  are  adaptations  of  the  Lisztian  sym- 
phonic poem,  since  the  psychological  development  that  supplies 


STRAUSS  563 

the  subject  matter  of  these  works  is  best  expressed  through  the 
mechanics  of  theme  transformation,  Till  Eulenspiegel,  primarily  a 
drama  of  action  told  in  episodes,  uses  the  rondeau,  with  the  return 
of  the  main  theme  after  each  secondary  theme  has  been  introduced. 
Finally,  in  Don  Quixote,  Strauss,  with  exquisite  appreciation  of  the 
essential  conflict  in  Cervantes5  great  book,  i.e.,  the  disparity  be- 
tween the  real  and  the  ideal,  chose  the  classical  variation,  sub- 
jecting an  originally  noble  theme  to  the  most  distorting  adven- 
tures. In  another  sense,  Don  Quixote  is  a  disguised  cello  concerto, 
for  that  instrument  is  given  the  task  of  speaking  for  the  hero.  The 
viola,  too,  gets  considerable  work,  for  it  is  made  to  utter  the  forth- 
right comments  of  Sancho  Panza.  Don  Quixote  has  as  much  dy- 
namic energy  as  Till,  but  does  not  achieve  the  consistent  musical 
beauty  of  that  rogue's-epic.  It  is  marred  by  touches  that  are  merely 
realistic,  and  which  add  nothing  musically.  The  once  notorious 
wind  machine,  intended  to  give  verisimilitude  to  the  ride  through 
the  air,  is  a  case  in  point.  These  are  small  details,  however,  in  a 
work  that  is  really  new.  In  its  admixture  of  humor  and  pathos,  and 
as  a  whole,  Don  Quixote  is  extraordinarily  moving.  It  is  obvious  that 
even  the  composer  has  been  affected  by  his  material.  The  death- 
bed scene  is  perhaps  the  most  sheerly  beautiful  music  Strauss  ever 
composed. 

The  critics  were  annoyed  because  Strauss  had  based  one  of  his 
tone  poems  on  the  anarchistic  Nietzsche,  and  they  were  even  more 
infuriated  by  the  cacophonous  superrealism  of  certain  parts  of  Don 
Quixote.  His  next  gesture  was  to  offend  a  much  wider  group:  he 
based  an  epic  of  a  hero's  struggles  on  his  own  life.  Lest  anyone 
should  mistake  who  the  hero  was,  he  quoted  ostentatiously  from 
his  own  works,  which  of  course  were  supposed  to  represent  the 
hero's  achievements.  People  resented  the  bad  taste  of  Ein  Helden- 
leben:  they  could  not  know  that  the  way  Strauss'  career  has  turned 
out  would  make  the  bad  taste  seem  even  more  flagrant.  At  the 
time  of  the  first  performance  of  Ein  Heldenleben  in  March,  1899, 
however,  it  rallied  a  valiant  army  of  champions,  and  such  men  as 
Romain  Rolland  and  James  Huneker  were  temporarily  robbed  of 
their  critical  senses  by  its  vast  plan,*  excessive  noise,  and  technical 

*  Its  sections  are,  in  condensed  form,  The  Hero,  The  Hero's  Adversaries,  The 
Hero's  Helpmate,  The  Hero's  Battlefield,  The  Hero's  Works  of  Peace,  and  The 
Hero's  Flight  from  the  World  and  Self-Development. 


MEN    OF    MUSIC 

wizardry.  Holland's  dithyrambs  are  worth  quoting — as  awful  ex- 
amples, if  nothing  else:  "I  had  a  strange  feeling  of  giddiness,  as  if 
an  ocean  had  been  upheaved,  and  I  thought  that  for  the  first  time 
in  thirty  years  Germany  had  found  a  poet  of  Victory. "  Of  the 
Hero's  Battlefield,  Huneker  wrote  with  a  touch  prophetic  of  Hol- 
lywood: "Such  an  exposition  has  never  been  heard  since  Saurians 
roared  in  the  steaming  marshes  of  the  young  planet,  or  when  pre- 
historic man  met  in  multitudinous  and  shrieking  combat." 

Em  Heldenleben  has  worn  badly:  it  seems  incredible  now  that  even 
those  who  heard  it  fifty  years  ago  could  not  see  that  it  was  con- 
stantly collapsing  and  falling  over  on  its  side  like  a  backboneless 
leviathan.  In  the  passing  years,  the  little  dead  areas  have  spread 
until  they  now  blotch  the  work  like  a  devitalizing  fungus.  Strauss5 
ingenuity  has  outwitted  itself:  the  combination  of  twenty-four 
themes  in  one  contrapuntal  web  now  sounds  like  commonplace 
music  with  wrong  notes;  the  battle  scene  is  tedious  rather  than 
exciting,  and  the  love  music  sounds  suspiciously  like  the  smug 
sentimentality  of  the  fireside  instead  of  a  noble  and  elevated 
passion. 

Just  before  completing  Ein  Heldenleben^  Strauss  had  relinquished 
his  position  in  Munich  for  the  chief  conductorship  of  the  Berlin 
Hofoper.  At  first,  he  had  a  hard  time  of  it.  Wilhelm  II  did  not  care 
for  modern  music,  and  showed  no  interest  in  his  conductor's  plans. 
Running  the  opera  according  to  the  Kaiser's  whims  was  not  suffi- 
cient for  a  man  with  the  abundant  artistic  vitality  that  Strauss, 
despite  the  sad  evidence  of  decline  in  Ein  Heldenleben^  still  had.  He 
wanted  to  put  on  a  series  of  orchestral  concerts  of  modern  music, 
and  as  the  only  symphonic  organizations  in  town  were  in  the 
hands  of  Nikisch  and  Felix  Weingartner  respectively,  he  had  to 
create  a  new  orchestra  for  his  purpose.  Thus  the  Tonkiinstler- 
orchester  came  into  being.  Its  programs  were,  from  the  first,  am- 
bitious, and  notable  for  exhibiting  their  conductor's  catholicity  of 
taste.  One  of  his  first  ventures  was  to  present  all  the  symphonic 
poems  of  Liszt  in  chronological  order.  He  played  his  own  works, 
somewhat  to  the  Kaiser's  annoyance,  and  gave  the  Berlin  premieres 
of  compositions  by  Tchaikovsky,  Bruckner,  Elgar,  Hugo  Wolf, 
Gustave  Charpentier,  Vincent  d'Indy,  and  Charles  Martin  Loef- 
fler,  then  an  obscure  violinist  of  the  Boston  Symphony  Orchestra. 

At  the  same  time,  by  accepting  the  presidency  of  the  Allgemeine 


STRAUSS  565 

Deutsche  Musik-Verein,  the  society  Liszt  had  founded  to  foster 
the  advancement  of  modern  music  by  means  of  annual  festivals, 
Strauss  tended  to  put  off  the  day  he  could  sit  down  and  start  an- 
other large  composition.  His  programs  put  him  in  no  danger  of 
being  forced  to  resign  by  his  energetic  constituents,  who  had  kicked 
out  his  predecessor  for  daring  to  include  Brahms  in  concerts  that 
were  supposed  to  be  modern.  Paradoxically,  he  aroused  opposition 
among  the  very  modernists  he  was  trying  to  help  when,  with  a  few 
others,  he  founded  the  Genossenschaft  Deutscher  Tonsetzer  to  fight 
for  composers3  rights  to  get  reasonable  royalties  on  performances. 
Some  of  the  little  men  were  afraid  that  if  royalties  were  made  an 
issue,  they  would  not  be  performed  at  all.  But  the  Genossenschaft 
won  the  battle  despite  them. 

When  Strauss  simply  made  the  time  for  himself,  and  broke  si- 
lence in  1901,  it  was  with  a  long  one-act  fantastic  opera,  Feuersnot. 
In  a  way,  this  was  his  method  of  working  off  a  grudge  and  getting 
a  forum  for  his  rebuke  to  the  Munich  critics  who  had  reviled  Wag- 
ner in  the  sixties  and  himself  a  quarter  of  a  century  later.  Point- 
edly, the  scene  is  laid  in  thirteenth-century  Munich  (the  analogy 
to  Die  Meistersinger  escaped  no  one),  though  the  story  is  actually 
borrowed  from  an  obscene  Dutch  legend.  The  Valhalla  motive  of 
the  Ring  is  quoted;  there  are  puns  on  the  names  of  Wagner  and 
Strauss.  Even  Wagner  himself  had  not  carried  the  warfare  into  the 
camp  of  the  critics  more  vigorously  than  Strauss  was  doing.  Mu- 
sically, Feuersnot  is  a  blend  of  two  tendencies  that  were  becoming 
increasingly  easy  to  isolate  in  Strauss3  idiom:  the  use  of  the  mate- 
rials of  folk  music  and  a  most  complex  orchestral  polyphony.  In 
Feuersnot,  it  is  perhaps  the  former  that  gains  the  upper  hand,  and 
leaves  the  more  enduring  impression.  It  is  very  far  from  the  earnest 
Wagnerism  of  Guntram,  and  clearly  foreshadows  the  exquisite  lyr- 
icism of  Der  Rosmkavalier  of  a  decade  later.  Unfortunately,  perhaps 
because  it  is  almost  devoid  of  action,  Feuersnot  has  not  held  the 
stage  outside  Germany.  Its  single  American  production  took  place 
in  Philadelphia  in  1927,  when  Nelson  Eddy  played  the  relatively 
unimportant  role  of  Hammerlein.  Alexander  Smallens,  a  notable 
resurrector  of  neglected  works  of  merit,  was  responsible  for  the 
production,  and  conducted. 

Strauss  had  worked  off  his  grudge  in  Ein  Heldenleben  and  Feu- 
ersnot,  but  he  had  not  yet  exhausted  his  autobiographical  vein. 


MEN    OF    MUSIC 

This  time,  however,  he  was  In  a  comfy  mood.  For  to  1903  belongs 
the  Sinfonia  domestica,  one  of  the  most  embarrassing  works  in  the 
history  of  music.  Those  who  found  Strauss  absurd  as  a  hero  now 
found  him  fatuous  as  a  father.  The  Sinfonia  is  nothing  more  than  a 
day  spent  in  the  Strauss  household,  which  turns  out  to  be  quite  as 
tedious  as  any  other  German  household.  The  clock  strikes  seven? 
the  baby  squeals  in  its  tub  (for  by  this  time  Strauss  had  an  heir), 
a  crowd  of  doting  relatives  coo  their  appreciation,  the  Strausses 
register  conjugal  felicity.  To  such  no  doubt  worthy  emotions  and 
(to  Strauss)  interesting  incidents  we  are  treated  for  an  hour.  All 
the  technical  ingenuity  in  the  world  does  not  compensate  for  the 
almost  unalleviated  poverty  of  musical  invention  in  the  Sinfonia. 
Except  for  a  certain  structural  conciseness,  it  is  an  utterly  negligi- 
ble work.  When  it  was  first  performed,  some  kind  people  explained 
it  by  saying  that  perhaps  Strauss  was  trying  to  pull  his  audience's 

leg- 

But  those  who  thought  that  the  Sinfonia  domestica  indicated  that 
Strauss  had  burned  himself  out  were  in  for  a  shock.  In  fact,  his 
next  large  work  was  altogether  shocking.  It  was  Salome,  whose 
prolonged  succes  de  scandale  did  more  to  put  Strauss  on  the  map  for 
the  general  public  than  all  his  previous  works  put  together.  It  was 
based  on  Wilde's  Salome,  which  in  its  original  play  form  had  had  a 
tremendous  vogue  among  the  Germans,  who  tended  to  regard  it 
as  a  creation  of  sweeping  genius  that  transcended  any  objections 
based  on  breach  of  the  moral  code.  When  Strauss'  opera  was  first 
given  at  the  Hofoper  in  Dresden  on  December  9,  1905,  the  fash- 
ionable audience  received  it  with  hysterical  acclamation.  But  the 
next  morning  the  newspapers  were  ominous:  the  moralists  were  in 
arms— at  their  van,  within  a  few  days,  His  Imperial  Majesty  Wil- 
helm  II,  the  patron  of  Leoncavallo.  Necrophily  had  seemed  all 
right  in  the  play,  but  given  explicit  sensual  attractiveness  by 
Strauss'  music,  it  proved  too  strong  a  dish  for  imperial  and  other 
stomachs. 

Yet,  audiences  loved  Salome,  and  soon,  despite  the  enormous 
difficulties  of  the  score,  it  was  given  all  over  Germany.  It  was  suc- 
cessfully kept  out  of  England  by  the  censor,  but  rapidly  spread  to 
most  of  the  other  civilized  countries  of  the  world.  In  New  York, 
after  a  semipublic  dress  rehearsal  and  one  performance,  the  opera 
was  withdrawn  because  the  directors  of  the  Metropolitan  Opera 


STRAUSS  567 

and  Real  Estate  Company  protested  to  Heinrich  Conried,  the  Im- 
presario. Most  of  the  newspapers  acted  like  outraged  Aunt  Mabels, 
but  the  Brooklyn  Eagle  was  scathing:  "As  to  the  mind  and  morals, 
they  were  diseased.  Not  to  emphasize  disgust,  their  state  was  one  of 
decomposition  far  advanced.  As  to  the  music,  it  fits.  It  makes  worse 
that  to  which  nothing  but  music  could  have  added  degradation.3* 
Two  years  later,  Oscar  Hammerstein  staged  Salome  without  dire 
results,  even  though  Mary  Garden  played  the  part  of  Herod  An- 
tipas5  naughty  daughter  for  all  it  was  worth.  At  last,  in  1934,  the 
Metropolitan  plucked  up  courage,  and  tried  it  again.  No  one  of 
any  importance  protested.  During  the  1938-39  season  the  most 
discussed  opera  of  modern  times — Dance  of  the  Seven  Veils  and 
all — was  given  three  times  to  packed  houses. 

Much  of  the  ornate  seductiveness  and  aphrodisiac  leer  of  Salome 
having  vanished  with  the  years,  it  is  possible  to  view  Strauss'  score 
with  some  measure  of  critical  calm.  First,  it  is  superb  theater — 
energetic,  swift-paced,  dramatic.  In  this  respect,  Strauss  never  did 
a  better  job,  though  Elektra  may  have  more  vertiginous  climaxes. 
Technically,  the  old  magician  is  back,  refreshed  and  renewed. 
While  the  strongly  contrasted  characters  are  cunningly  projected 
by  the  music,  the  vocal  parts  are  in  themselves  generally  undis- 
tinguished and  feeble:  underneath  them  is  the  fabric  of  a  continu- 
ous and  expressive  orchestral  web.  This  is,  indeed,  nothing  but  a 
logical  next  step  after  Parsifal — a  tone  poem  with  words.  It  is  in- 
variably the  wonderful,  shifting  temper  of  the  orchestra  that  lends 
significance  to  the  vocal  line,  and  fire  to  the  static,  jeweled  words. 
The  effect  of  Salome  is  fine,  nay,  it  is  overpowering.  It  is  only  when 
it  is  examined  too  closely  (as  the  Dance  of  the  Seven  Veils  is 
through  constant  isolated  performance)  that  its  jewels  are  seen  to 
come  from  Woolworth's,  its  veils  to  be  cheesecloth,  and  even  the 
Baptist's  gory  head  on  the  platter  becomes  nothing  but  a  papier- 
mache  prop.  Just  as  the  refined  perversities  of  the  Herods  begin  to 
sound  like  the  Saturday-night  excesses  of  a  bourgeois  family,  so  the 
magnificent,  glittering  score  inevitably  begins  to  seem  like  old  mu- 
sical commonplaces  traveling  under  fanciful  assumed  names.  It  is 
fair,  perhaps,  to  assume  that  Strauss  realized  all  this  in  1905,  and 
banked  his  all  on  the  grand  effect. 

It  seemed  that  in  Salome  Strauss  had  done  the  ultimate  in  musical 
shockers.  But  on  January  25,  1909,  the  New  York  Sun's  Dresden 


^68 


MEN     OF    MUSIC 


correspondent  wired  his  paper:  "The  seemingly  impossible  has 
been  accomplished:  Salome  has  been  outdone."  For  a  modernized 
version  of  Sophocles'  Elektra  by  the  aristocratic  Viennese  litterateur 
Hugo  von  Hofinannsthal,  Strauss  had  brewed  a  hellbroth  of  cacoph- 
ony, psychopathic  passion,  and  tragedy.  Compared  with  it, 
Salome  was  a  pleasantry  by  a  spoiled  child.  For  one  hour  and  fifty 
minutes,  the  singers  shouted  and  screamed  to  make  themselves 
heard  through  an  all  but  impenetrable  mesh  of  sound  made  by  a 
tremendous  modern  orchestra.  Poor  Elektra  was  on  the  stage  al- 
most all  the  time.  It  was  no  wonder  that  Mariette  Mazarin,  the 
first  New  York  Elektra,  fainted  after  the  performance.  That  ener- 
getic woman,  Ernestine  Schumann-Heink,  who  created  the  role  of 
Klytemnestra  at  the  world  premiere  in  Dresden,  resigned  after  one 
night  of  it*  She  told  Henry  T.  Finck  that  during  rehearsals  Strauss 
had  shouted  at  the  conductor:  "But,  my  dear  Schuch,  louder, 
louder  the  orchestra;  I  can  still  hear  the  voice  of  Frau  Heink!"  As 
Elektra  represented  Strauss'  most  advanced  conception  of  the  Wag- 
nerian  music  drama,  and  harmonically  was  very  daring  (looking 
toward  certain  ultramodern  experiments  that  Strauss  himself  did 
not  choose  to  pursue,  but  which  were  later  made  by  Schdnberg, 
Alban  Berg,  and  Anton  von  Webern),  the  critics  fell  on  it  with 
whips  and  scorpions.  Many  of  them,  including  men  of  genuine 
perspicacity,  called  it  ugly,  and  washed  their  hands  of  it.  Its  com- 
poser was,  by  implication,  called  a  madman  and  a  criminal. 

In  1937,  Rose  Paidy  came  to  New  York,  and  with  the  Philhar- 
monic-Symphony Orchestra  and  some  confreres  gave  a  concert 
performance  of  Elektra  that  was  by  all  odds  the  outstanding  artistic 
event  of  the  season.  Like  Salome,  Elektra  was  no  longer  a  musical 
shocker,  but  unlike  the  earlier  opera,  it  vibrated  with  life.  And,  far 
from  being  ugly,  it  proved  to  be  a  work  of  constantly  welling-up 
musical  beauty.  Paradoxically  this  score— really  far  more  complex 
than  Salome — is  also  more  singable,  and  the  vocal  line  frequently 
has  an  intrinsic  beauty  that  has  its  own  telling  effect  in  the  rush 
toward  catastrophe.  By  its  symptoms  of  lasting  vitality,  Elektra  is 
without  question  the  finest  tragic  opera  composed  since  the  death 
of  Wagner. 

Strauss  could  well  afford  to  laugh  at  the  old-line  critics  who 
heard  in  Salome  and  Elektra  nothing  but  discord.  He  could  merely 
show  them  his  bankbook,  and  watch  the  expression  on  their  faces. 


STRAUSS  569 

His  publisher  had  paid  him  $15,000  for  Salome ,  $27,000  for  Ehktra. 
When  Oscar  Hammerstein  imported  the  latter,  his  take  on  Salome 
had  been  so  impressive  that  he  thought  it  no  risk  to  buy  the  Amer- 
ican rights  for  $10,000,  and  to  pay  Strauss  $18,000  in  advance  roy- 
alties. From  the  beginning  of  the  twentieth  century  on,  Strauss' 
compositions  were  exceedingly  popular,  and  he  was  becoming  a 
rich  man.  His  income  was  swelled  by  the  vast  number  of  calls  made 
upon  him  as  a  conductor.  Having  appeared  in  almost  every  im- 
portant European  city,  in  1904  he  went  to  the  United  States  at  the 
invitation  of  Hermann  Hans  Wetzler,  who  had  got  a  symphony 
orchestra  together  almost  solely  for  the  purpose  of  giving  a  Strauss 
festival,  to  culminate  in  the  world  premiere  of  the  Sinfonia  iomestica. 
At  the  four  concerts,  almost  all  the  tone  poems  were  played,  and 
David  Bispham  and  Frau  Strauss  presented  fourteen  of  the  songs. 
The  orchestra  men  found  Strauss  a  severe  taskmaster:  he  required 
fifteen  rehearsals  of  the  Sinfonia  before  he  was  satisfied.  New  York 
held  somewhat  aloof — the  critics  were  definitely  nasty.  But  Strauss' 
inland  tour  was  a  brilliant  success,  particularly  in  Chicago,  where 
Theodore  Thomas'  advocacy  of  his  music  had  prepared  an  audi- 
ence with  unusually  sophisticated  ears.  Winding  up  in  New  York, 
however,  Strauss  became  involved  in  an  odd  controversy  when  he 
gave  two  concerts  at  Wanamaker's.  He  was  straightway  accused 
of  degrading  art  by  appearing  in  a  department  store.  His  response 
was  curt  and  to  the  point:  "True  art  ennobles  any  hall,  and  earn- 
ing money  in  a  decent  way  for  wife  and  child  is  no  disgrace — even 
for  an  artist.'5  He  had  received  $  i  ,000  for  his  two  appearances. 

Strauss'  official  status  kept  pace  with  his  finances.  In  1908  he 
was  created  director  general  of  the  Berlin  Hofoper.  Honors  rained 
upon  him:  governments  decorated  him,  and  in  1910  Germany 
made  him  a  member  of  the  Akademie.  By  191 1  he  had  become  by 
all  odds  the  world's  most  famous  musician,  and  the  announcement 
of  a  new  opera  from  his  pen  was  awaited  with  curiosity  by  the 
sensation-seeking  public,  and  with  eagerness  by  music  lovers.  This 
time,  the  former  was  disappointed,  for  Der  Rosenkavalier,  though  its 
morals  are  far  from  spotless,  is  neither  morbid  nor  sensational, 
"This  time  I  shall  compose  a  Mozart  opera,"  Strauss  had  an- 
nounced, and  he  kept  his  promise.  Von  Hofmannsthal  had  pro- 
vided him  with  a  libretto  brimming  over  with  intrigue,  and  suc- 
cessfully flavored  with  the  eighteenth  century,  quite  as  much  in 


57°  MEN     OF     MUSIC 

its  vulgarities  as  in  its  delicacy  and  charm.  Strauss*  score  is  the 
tasteful  comment  of  a  true  man  of  the  world.  Without  sacrificing 
the  externals  of  his  idiom,  he  has  miraculously  imported  to  it  an 
old-time  character.  Der  Rosenkavalier  is  a  string  of  gloriously  allur- 
ing waltzes  connected  by  a  glittering  musical  thread.  The  finest 
comic  opera  since  Falstaff,  it  has  often  a  warmth,  a  persuasive 
sincerity  that,  except  for  certain  pages  of  Till  Eulenspiegel  and  Don 
Quixote  and  a  few  songs,  is  foreign  to  Strauss.  Salome  and  Elektra 
are  presented  with  an  intense  objective  verity  that  makes  them 
seem  to  live.  Yet,  they  are  only  seen  from  without:  in  Der  Rosen- 
kavalier,  at  least  in  the  music  devoted  to  the  Marschallin  and 
Baron  Ochs,  Strauss  abandons  exteriorization,  and  builds  his 
characters  from  the  vantage  ground  of  their  inner  realities.  It  has 
been  said  that  three  hours  and  a  half  of  a  comic  opera  is  too  much, 
and  that  in  this  one  Strauss'  ojd  betrayer — the  commonplace — 
shows  itself.  There  is  a  measure  of  truth  in  these  strictures:  all  but 
a  tiny  handful  of  operas  would  be  the  better  for  cutting,  and  cer- 
tainly there  are  banal  sections  in  Der  Rosenkavalier.  But  the  score 
abounds  in  beauty.  An  opera  that  is  in  its  totality  instinct  with 
life,  and  that  contains  such  strokes  of  genius  as — to  name  but  two 
of  many — the  scene  of  the  presentation  of  the  silver  rose  in  Act  II 
and  the  third  act  trio,  is  indeed  a  worthy  swan  song. 

Der  Rosenkavalier  was  produced  at  Dresden  on  January  26,  1 91 1 . 
Everything  in  this  score  pointed  to  Strauss'  being  at  the  height  of 
his  powers.  The  next  year  came  incidental  music  to  Moliere's  Le 
Bourgeois  gentilhomme,  with  the  miniature  opera  Ariadne  auf  Naxos 
tucked  away  in  its  folds,  and  containing  a  scena — Grossmachtigste 
Prin^essin — that  is  the  most  taxing  music  composed  in  recent 
times  for  coloratura  soprano.  Ariadne,  which  Strauss  later 
separated  from  its  Moliere  association,  sounds  like  a  clever 
modern  parody  of  Mozart,  but  shows  an  undeniable  falling  off., 
People  said  pleasantly  that  it  was  but  a  temporary  decline.  After 
1912,  however,  there  were  many  Strauss  premieres,  and  his  well- 
wishers  were  kept  waiting.  Strauss  was  now  borrowing  without 
restraint  from  the  styles  of  others.  In  Ariadne  auf  Naxos,  as  Cecil 
Gray  said,  "Mozart  dances  a  minuet  with  Mascagni,  and  Handel 
with  Offenbach. .  .  /*  InDieFrau  ohneSchatten  (1919),  again  (like 
Ariadne)  with  a  Hofmannsthal  libretto.  Gray  found  "Wagner  . , . 


STRAUSS  571 

reconciled  to  Brahms,  and  Mendelssohn  to  Meyerbeer/'  Die 
Frau  was  received  with  ominous  coldness. 

With  Intermezzo  (1924)  Strauss  again  tried  the  Wagnerian  trick 
of  writing  his  own  libretto,  doubtless  because  this  "bourgeois 
comedy  with  symphonic  interludes"  is  based  on  a  little  incident 
in  his  own  life.  It  is  a  series  of  set  numbers  designed  for  bel  canto 
singing  and  connected  by  a  sort  of  amiable  Sprechstimme.  This, 
too,  failed  to  please,  and  four  years  were  to  pass  before  he  tried 
again.  This  time  he  returned  to  Hofmannsthal  for  the  ponderous 
pseudoclassical  text  of  Die  aegyptische  Helena  (1928),  the  latest 
Strauss  opera  imported  by  the  Metropolitan.  This  static  and 
unoriginal  music  was  a  disaster,  and  Strauss  never  again  at- 
tempted anything  so  elaborate.  Significantly,  when  he  returned 
to  the  boards  five  years  later  it  was  with  Arabella  (1933),  an 
opera  so  light  that  it  could  properly  be  labeled  a  musical  comedy. 
It  contains  many  delicious  pages,  the  best  of  them  evoking  the 
champagne  atmosphere  of  Der  Rosenkavalier.  The  composer  of 
this  sparkling  frivol  was  nearly  seventy  years  old. 

In  1935  Strauss  made  a  tactical  mistake.  Despite  Hitler's  rise 
to  power,  he  set  a  libretto — Die  schweigsame  Frau — by  Stefan 
Zweig,  a  Jew,  who  had  derived  its  story  from  Ben  Jonson*s 
Epicoene,  or  The  Silent  Woman.  Three  weeks  after  the  premiere  of 
this  excessively  noisy  opera  on  June  24,  1935,*  he  resigned  from 
the  presidency  of  the  Reichsmusikkammer,  an  office  he  had 
accepted  in  1933  from  the  hands  of  Paul  Josef  Goebbels.  He 
adduced  advanced  age  as  the  reason  for  his  action,  but  no  one 
believed  him.  He  was  temporarily  out  of  favor,  and  Die  Schweig- 
same Frau  was  withdrawn.  Strauss  certainly  did  not  improve  his 
position  with  the  regime  when  he  refused  to  furnish  new  inci- 
dental music  for  A  Midsummer  Night's  Dream,  confessing  that  he 
could  not  better  Mendelssohn's.  But  he  was  soon  rehabilitated. 
With  Friedenstag,  given  at  Munich  in  July,  1 938,  he  pleased  the 
Nazis,  though  this  political  morality  play  glorifies  peace.  In 
October,  Strauss  himself  was  glorified  when  Daphne  (like  Frieden- 
stag,  in  one  act)  was  given  before  an  audience  packed  with  Nazi 
officials.  The  following  year,  on  Strauss'  seventy-fifth  birthday, 
he  was  personally  congratulated  by  Hitler,  who  journeyed  to 
newly  conquered  Vienna  to  hear  a  revival  of  Friedenstag.  After 

*  Zweigfs  name  is  said  to  have  been  omitted  from  the  program. 


572  MEN   OF   MUSIC 

that  Strauss  composed  at  least  two  more  operas  (Der  Liebe  der 
Danae,  1940,  and  Capriccio>  1942);  a  Second  Concerto  for  Horn, 
and  Orchestra  (1943 — the  First  dated  from  1884);  and  Meta- 
morphoses, a  half-hour's  nonentertainment  for  string  orchestra 
completed  in  1945.  This  last  was  composed  in  memory  of  Bee- 
thoven, a  reminiscence  of  whose  "Eroica"  Funeral  March  is  by 
far  the  best  thing  in  it.  Finally  came  the  charming,  surprisingly 
youthful  Concerto  for  Oboe  and  Orchestra  (1946).* 

Meanwhile,  the  ex-magician  continued  to  live.  He  was  still 
news,  if  only  for  the  reason  that  he  was  the  most  eminent  musical 
has-been  alive.  But  he  was  definitely  not  news  in  the  way  he  had 
been.  Strauss,  it  could  safely  be  predicted,  would  never  spring 
another  of  his  shattering  surprises,  and  now  his  composing  only 
made  trouble  for  bibliographers.  A  mild-mannered,  stoop- 
shouldered,  rather  sleepy  old  gentleman,  he  supported  his 
existence  at  Garmisch  in  the  Bavarian  Alps,  and  later  in  a  dingy 
Swiss  boardinghouse,  exercising  his  tireless  pen  and  living — and 
composing — on  his  memories.  They  were  not  precisely  inglorious. 
In  addition  to  being  the  composer  of  three  or  four  superb  tone 
poems,  three  magnificent  operas,  and  a  dozen  master  songs,  was 
he  not  director  emeritus  of  both  the  Berlin  and  Vienna  operas, 
as  well  as  the  retired  head  of  the  Berlin  Hochschule? 

But  poverty  routed  him  out  of  his  retirement.  With  his  fortune 
in  Germany  destroyed  and  his  foreign  royalties  impounded, 
Strauss  accepted  an  invitation  to  visit  Paris  and  one  from  Sir 
Thomas  Beecham  to  visit  England.  On  October  5,  1947,  he  sat 
in  the  royal  box  at  Drury  Lane  Theatre  wearing  a  tattered  coat 
while  Sir  Thomas  conducted  Dan  Quixote.  After  the  performance 
he  responded  to  the  loud  plaudits  of  the  crowd  by  going  to  the 
stage  and  saying  feebly:  "Merci,  Merci!"  Shortly  thereafter  he 
returned  to  the  Continent  He  had  disappeared  from  the  great 
world  forever.  On  September  8,  1949,  he  died  at  GarmisdbL 

It  seems  certain  that  Strauss'  place  in  the  history  of  music  is 

*  The  Second  Horn  Concerto  was  first  heard  in  America  on  October  18,  1948, 
when  the  Little  Orchestra  Society,  Thomas  K,  Scherman  conducting,  played  it  in 
New  York  with  Anthony  Miranda  as  soloist;  Metamorphoses  received  its  Ajnerican 
premure  on  the  Columbia  Broadcasting  System's  notable  program  Invitation  to 
Music  on  March  19,  1947,  when  it  was  conducted  by  Leopold  Stokowski;  the  Oboe 
Concerto  was  also  first  heard  in  America  on  CBS  when  it  was  performed  by  Mitchell 
MIHer  as  soloist  with  the  Columbia  Concert  Orchestra,  Daniel  Saidenberg  conduct- 
ing, on  February  I,  1948. 


STRAUSS  573 

secure.  But  as  time  goes  on,  it  becomes  clearly  manifest  that 
though  he  looked  forward  to  certain  modernisms  that  have  since 
borne  fruit,  he  himself  did  not  noticeably  change  the  face  of  his 
art.  For  he  was  the  end  of  a  tradition — the  afterglow  of  Liszt  and 
Wagner — rather  than  the  beginning  of  a  new.  There  is,  perhaps., 
some  obscure  connection  between  this  fact  and  the  mystery  of  his 
final  decline  after  1911.  There  is  about  all  but  the  best  of  his 
achievement  a  feeling  of  applied  modernism,  a  suggestion  of 
shocking  the  bourgeois — a  tendency  that  by  the  second  decade  of 
this  century  had  become  very  old-fashioned.  Charlatanism, 
vitiates  most  of  his  work,  and  it  is  patent  that  a  flair  for  the  sensa- 
tional is  not  a  quenchless  source  of  inspiration.  Also,  Strauss  was 
a  career  man.  More  than  any  other  great  figure  in  music,  Rossini 
excepted,  he  was  as  much  businessman  as  musician.  It  is  prob- 
able that  the  final  key  to  his  failure  lies  in  his  richly  successful 
career.  If  he  had  only  had  Rossini's  perfect  sense  of  timing,  and 
had  known  that  his  masterpieces  were  written,  he  would  have 
served  himself  better.  People  today  would  be  saying,  "Ah,  if 
Strauss  had  only  composed  another  opera  .  .  ." 


Chapter  XXII 

Jean  Sibelius 

(Tavastehus,  December  8,  1865 — 
September  2 o,  1957,  Jarvenpaa) 

ER  many  years  the  careers  of  Richard  Strauss  and  Jean  Sibelius 
lowed  what  seemed  to  be  salient  contrasts.  Strauss  at  thirty- 
five  was  already  the  most  famous  of  living  composers,  but  after 
Der  Rosenkavalier  (finished  1911)  he  wrote  no  further  masterpieces, 
though  several  of  his  later  operas  have  been  seriously  underesti- 
mated. Sibelius  at  thirty-five  was  esteemed  in  his  own  Finland,,  and 
had  been  played  in  Germany,  but  was  otherwise  unknown.  With 
creativity  apparently  undiminished  he  marched  through  his 
sixtieth  year  (his  Seventh  Symphony  was  finished  in  1924).  While 
Strauss  kept  on  disappointing  his  admirers,  Sibelius  went  on 
from  triumph  to  triumph.  Yet,  after  1925  he  published  little  of 
importance.  What  made  him  international  news  until  his  death 
was  the  persistent  legend  that  he  had  finished  an  eighth  symphony 
and  was  even  working  on  a  ninth.  The  legend  did  not  turn  into 
fact.  Nevertheless,  a  study  of  Sibelius3  attitude  toward  his  art 
may  help  to  explain  the  phenomenon  of  his  long  and  satisfactory 
fruitfulness,  and  may  also  give  some  clue  to  the  mystery  of  the 
seeming  disorientation  of  Strauss's  later  years.  Here  the  effective 
words — "satisfactory"  and  "unrewarding33 — are  both  used  to 
suggest  the  responses  of  sophisticated  listeners  with  a  tendency 
to  plot  ideal  graphs. 

The  fact  that  Sibelius  came  out  of  Finland  has  given  many  a 
very  distorted  picture  of  the  man  and  his  music.  This  is  based  on 
the  misconception  that  Finland  is  full  of  igloos  and  Eskimos — a 
country  of  savages  who  somehow  manage  to  pay  their  bills.  With 
this  are  associated  the  ideas  that  there  are  no  proper  conserva- 
tories of  music  there,  and  that  Sibelius  began  composing  without 
previous  instruction.  Thus,  he  has  been  pictured  as  an  intuitive,  a 
primitive — a  sort  of  musical  douanier  Rousseau.  Actually,  Tavaste- 
hus,  where  he  was  born  in  1865,  was,  though  necessarily  insular 
and  limited  in  its  outlook,  a  center  of  some  culture.  Its  mixed 
Finnish,  Swedish,  and  Russian  population  of  about  four  thousand 
supported  an  ambitious  concert  season,  during  which  such  artists 

574 


SIBELIUS  575 

as  the  violinist  Wilhelmj  and  the  pianist  Sophie  Menter  felt  them- 
selves well  repaid  for  visiting  there.  Sibelius  grew  up  in  a  home 
where  music  was  a  commonplace.  Far  from  being  untaught,  he  had 
a  very  tolerable  grounding  in  piano  and  violin,  later  attended  the 
Helsingfors  Academy  of  Music,  and,  after  convincing  himself  and 
others  that  he  had  talent,  went  abroad  to  finish  his  studies. 

Sibelius  came  of  good  middle-class  stock,  on  both  sides  of  mixed 
Finnish  and  Swedish  blood.  This  eldest  son  of  Battalion  Surgeon 
Christian  Sibelius  and  Maria  Charlotta  Borg  was  elaborately  chris- 
tened Johan  Julius  Christian,  but  of  this  string  of  names  the  com- 
poser retained  only  the  first,  Frenchifying  it  into  Jean  in  imitation 
of  a  much-admired  uncle.  Dr.  Sibelius  died  when  Jean  was  less 
than  three  years  old,  and  consequently  the  child  was  brought  up 
by  his  mother,  assisted  by  a  flock  of  female  relatives.  As  there  was 
a  piano  at  hand,  he  picked  out  little  tunes  at  an  early  age,  and 
began  to  receive  formal  instruction  on  that  instrument  at  the  age 
of  nine.  He  got  the  general  idea  of  violin-playing  by  himself,  and 
his  first  composition — Drops  of  Water  (written  at  the  age  of  ten) — 
was  a  pizzicato  duet  for  violin  and  cello.  He  much  preferred  the 
violin  to  the  piano,  but  did  not  begin  to  study  it  seriously  until  he 
was  fifteen.  Meanwhile,  he  led  the  healthy,  active  life  of  a  growing 
boy,  but  delighted  more  in  the  poetic  aspects  of  nature  than  most 
children.  With  his  brother  and  sister  as  cellist  and  pianist  respec- 
tively, he  soon  founded  a  family  trio  that  played  Haydn,  Mozart, 
and  Beethoven.  He  and  his  sister  also  tried  over  a  Mendelssohn 
violin  and  piano  sonata,  but:  "I  was  so  thoroughly  impregnated 
with  the  classical  spirit  that  I  could  not  bear  the  piece.55 

In  1885,  the  young  Sibelius,  with  an  average  diploma  from  the 
Tavastehus  preparatory  school,  wen,t  to  Helsingfors  in  no  very 
enthusiastic  mood.  His  family  could  think  of  no  other  than  an 
official's  career  for  him,  and  so  had  sent  him  to  the  capital  to 
study  law.  By  this  time,  however,  the  young  man  whose  life  was 
being  disposed  of  so  cavalierly  was  determined  to  become  a  great 
violinist.  For  that  reason,  rather  than  to  study  composition,  he 
began  taking  lessons  at  the  Academy  of  Music  even  during  his  first 
term  at  the  University  of  Helsingfors.  As  Sibelius  fluctuated  be- 
tween duty  to  his  family  and  an  interest  in  music  that  was  growing 
by  leaps  and  bounds,  one  of  his  uncles,  finding  in  the  youth's  room 
a  law  text  whose  dust-covered  jacket  told  the  tale  of  months  of 


576  MEN     OF     MUSIC 

neglect,  cut  the  Gordian  knot  by  saying,  "After  all,  Jamie,  it  would 
be  best  for  you  to  devote  yourself  entirely  to  music,  seeing  that  study 
does  not  interest  you  any  more  than  this.55  So,  after  a  summer  va- 
cation reading  and  playing,  he  returned  to  Helsingfors  in  the  fall 
of  1886  to  study  composition  at  the  Academy  of  Music  under  its 
well-known  director,  Martin  Wegelius. 

Sibelius3  relations  with  the  domineering  Wegelius  showed  his 
early-developed  independence  of  spirit  and  intellectual  honesty. 
The  director  was  a  fierce  %ukunftsmusiker  and  rabid  Wagnerian, 
endowed  with  an  intemperately  crusading  spirit.  Sibelius  was  vastly 
uninterested  in  Wagner,  and  nothing  Wegelius  could  say  had  any 
effect  on  him.  Yet,  the  two  got  on  together,  and  the  instruction 
bore  fruit.  For  some  time  Sibelius  led  what  he  himself  described 
as  "a  double  life,"  which  meant  nothing  more  criminal  than 
manufacturing  rather  textbookish  pieces  for  the  severe  scrutiny  of 
his  master  and,  on  the  sly,  working  out  his  own  ideas  in  less  con- 
ventional compositions.  In  this  latter  activity,  he  was  much  stimu- 
lated by  powerfully  felt  reactions  to  nature  and  omnivorous  read- 
ing, particularly  of  Homer  and  Horace,  Bjornson  and  Strindberg. 
After  three  years  of  hard  work,  he  received  a  hint  from  Wegelius 
to  go  ahead  and  write  as  he  pleased.  The  results  were  a  workman- 
like string  suite  and  a  string  quartet  that  were  played  when  he 
was  graduated  from  the  Academy.  The  critical  press,  led  by  the 
influential  Karl  Flodin,  was  enthusiastic.  It  was  at  once  perceived 
that  a  new  note  had  been  sounded  in  Finnish  music,  which  had 
previously  been  cultivated  with  more  industry  than  inspiration. 
It  was  further  seen  that  this  young  man  might  well  put  Finland 
on  the  bigger  map  of  European  music.  Accordingly,  a  scholar- 
ship was  provided,  and  he  was  packed  off  for  graduate  studies  in 
Berlin  and  Vienna. 

Sibelius  did  not  like  Berlin,  and  German — at  least,  Prussian — 
culture  did  not  seem  to  him  either  so  broad  or  so  deep  as  Finnish. 
Albert  Becker,  the  highly  respected  expert  in  theory  and  composi- 
tion, was  a  stiff,  punctilious  pedant  whose  angularities  of  character 
presented  more  obstacles  to  Sibelius  than  did,  perhaps,  the  motets 
and  fugues  he  was  set  to  analyzing.  However,  Wegelius  had  recom- 
mended Becker,  and  Sibelius  took  his  medicine.  "But  I  could  not 
resist  the  feeling,"  he  confesses,  "that  all  the  time  I  was  dealing 
with  things  that  belonged  to  the  past,  and  at  times  my  patience 


SIBELIUS  577 

almost  failed/*  Far  more  important  in  his  development  was  his 
introduction  to  fine  symphonic  music.  True,  Helsingfors  had  a 
symphony  orchestra,  but  a  feud  between  its  conductor,  Robert 
Kajanus,  and  Wegelius  was  so  inflamed  that  the  latter's  students 
were  forbidden  to  go  to  its  concerts.  It  is  odd  that  the  otherwise 
independent  Sibelius  respected  this  absurd  ban.  In  Berlin,  he  made 
up  for  this  unnatural  abstinence  by  attending  Von  Billow's  con- 
certs, at  one  of  which  he  saw  Strauss  take  a  bow  after  the  playing 
of  Don  Juan.  Years  later,  he  remarked  to  Strauss  that  this  once 
revolutionary  work  seemed  positively  classical  in  the  light  of  his 
later  compositions,  and  was  astonished  when  Strauss  murmured 
thoughtfully,  "At  that  time  I  had  not  yet  divided  the  violins.  .  .  /* 

When  Sibelius  had  first  taken  ship  for  Germany  in  September, 
1889,  a  fellow  passenger  had  been  a  young  Finnish  painter,  Eero 
Jarnefelt,  son  of  a  distinguished  general.  Together  they  had  grown 
enthusiastic  over  the  prospects  of  Finnish  art,  explored  the  hopes 
of  Finnish  nationalism,  and  discussed  the  Kaleuala,  the  great  collec- 
tion of  bardic  verse  that  had  been  pieced  together  earlier  in  the 
century  to  form  a  national  epic.  Returning  to  Finland  in  the  sum- 
mer of  1890,  Sibelius  spent  a  great  deal  of  time  at  the  Jamefelts, 
and  before  leaving  for  Vienna  in  the  autumn  had  plighted  his 
troth  to  his  friend's  sister  Aino.  Robert  Fuchs,  to  whom  soon  after 
his  arrival  in  Vienna  he  was  directed  by  Hans  Richter,  gave  him 
regular  instruction  in  orchestration.  Goldmark,  though  at  the  sum- 
mit of  his  ephemeral  fame,  consented  to  give  him  a  few  pointers 
in  composition. 

When  Sibelius  returned  home  for  good  in  1891,  he  found  Finland 
in  a  ferment  of  extremely  self-conscious  nationalism.  The  Tsar's 
government  had  begun  curtailing  the  rights  of  the  grand  duchy, 
suppressing  newspapers,  interfering  with  freedom  of  speech,  and 
making  itself  generally  obnoxious.  From  the  purely  political  as- 
pects of  Finnish  opposition  Sibelius  held  aloof,  but  he  participated 
enthusiastically  in  the  artistic  movement  that  worked  tacitly  with 
the  patriots  by  nurturing  a  really  native  art.  He  began  this  col- 
laboration by  composing  a  huge  five-movement  symphonic  poem 
with  voices  called  Kullewo,  after  one  of  the  more  lugubrious  heroes 
of  the  Kalevala.  When  it  was  performed  on  April  28,  1892,  it  had  an 
instant  success.  Even  the  critics  liked  it.  As  Kvllervo  exists  only  in 
manuscript,  and  has  apparently  never  been  given  outside  Finland, 


MEN     OF     MUSIC 

we  must  perforce  be  content  with  the  word  of  responsible  music 
critics  who  have  examined  the  score  and  pronounced  it  a  master- 
piece.  Sibelius  himself,  though  fond  of  the  work,  was  not  entirely 
satisfied  with  it,  and  therefore  it  was  not  performed  again  during 
the  composer's  lifetime. 

Fortunately,  we  have  a  frequently  played  work  of  approximately 
the  same  period — En  Saga,  a  tone  poem  written  at  Kajanus'  re- 
quest after  the  success  of  Kulleroo.  It  affords  (though  Cecil  Gray 
correctly  points  out  that  Sibelius  is  not  always  so  "dark  and  win- 
try") an  excellent — and  easy — introduction  to  his  music.  It  con- 
tains elements  of  style  that  he  was  to  modify  but  not  essentially  to 
change.  Those  who  know  him  well  recognize  instantly  his  unique 
orchestral  color,  obtained  in  part  by  reliance  on  woodwind  en- 
semble, sudden  irruptions  of  brass,  and  long  pedal  points  used  for 
much  the  same  purpose  as  the  sustaining  pedal  in  piano  composi- 
tions. Here  are  the  long-persisting,  stubborn  rhythms  in  which  he 
delights;  here,  too,  the  acrid,  sometimes  parched  harmonies,  often 
widely  and  daringly  spaced,  and  depending  for  their  effect  more 
than  is  usual  on  instrumental  timbres.  These  are  combined,  in  En 
Saga,  to  produce  a  somber  legend  of  the  folk,  with  occasional  glints 
of  campfire  and  armor,  highspotted  by  a  climax  like  a  battle, 
dying  away  in  a  few  pages  of  elegiac  beauty. 

In  June,  1892,  Sibelius  married  Aino  Jarnefelt,  and  went  on 
his  honeymoon  to  the  sparsely  populated  district  of  Karelia. 
Life  there  was  really  as  primitive  as  outsiders  fancy  Helsingfors  to 
be:  it  is  a  peasant  land,  where  Sibelius  heard,  for  the  first  time,  the 
extremely  ancient  folk  songs  on  which  many  had  supposed  Kullervo 
to  be  based.  He  was  often  suspected  of  being  a  self-conscious  folk 
composer,  in  much  the  same  sense  as  Smetana  and  Dvorak  were. 
This  notion  is  absurd.  Those  who  know  Finnish  folk  music  deny 
its  resemblance  to  anything  in  Sibelius^  and  the  composer  him- 
self was  frankly  puzzled  by  the  charge  that  he  either  quoted  or 
imitated  it.  His  undeniable  national  quality  is  something  far 
more  subtle  and  difficult  to  understand — call  it  atavism  or  gene 
inheritance,  if  you  will.  Reduced  to  its  most  sensible  terms,  this 
nationalism  is  merely  the  translation  into  music  of  a  very  sensitive 
nature  lover's  response  to  the  lakes  and  forests  of  his  native  land 
and  to  the  magical  and  heroic  aspects  of  its  traditional  literature. 

From  the  fall  of  1892  on,  Sibelius  began  a  long-persisting  routine 


SIBELIUS  579 

of  life,  spending  three  seasons  of  the  year  in  Helsingfors  teaching, 
and  enjoying  the  brief,  hot  Finnish  summer  in  a  wooded  country 
district.  Until  1897,  when  his  financial  position  was  somewhat  im- 
proved, life  was  far  from  easy  for  this  fortunately  rugged  man: 
sometimes  he  taught  as  many  as  thirty  hours  a  week — a  heavy 
program  for  anyone  with  a  primary  passion  for  creative  work. 
Kajanus,  now  his  stanch  friend,  had  made  a  job  in  the  orchestral 
school  of  the  Philharmonic  Society  expressly  to  help  Sibelius  out. 
Both  there  and  at  the  Academy  of  Music,  Wegelius*  stronghold,  he 
taught  theory.  Meanwhile,  he  composed  songs,  piano  pieces,  inci- 
dental music  for  plays,  and  miscellaneous  orchestral  works.  Even 
though  it  produced  the  four  Legends  for  orchestra,  including  first 
versions  of  The  Swan  of  Tuonela  and  Lemminkainen's  Home-Coming, 
this  period  did  not  register  any  important  advance  over  En  Saga. 
In  fact,  these  five  years  are  more  remarkable  for  quantity  than 
quality,  for  Sibelius  never  held  with  the  idea  that  a  composer 
can  compose  too  much.  Although  his  vigorous  iteration  of  this 
point  of  view  must  be  taken  with  a  saving  grain  of  salt,  it  explains 
the  presence  of  the  merest  ephemera  in  the  catalogue  of  his  works. 
No  composer  has  ever  been  less  sentimental  and  more  realistic 
about  his  art.  To  Sibelius,  there  was  something  absurd  about  not 
constantly  pursuing  your  profession  just  because  you  could  not 
turn  out  a  masterpiece  every  time  you  touched  pen  to  paper.  And 
if  you  made  money  by  these  second-  and  third-rate  flights,  well — 
so  much  the  better.  Sibelius  would  have  been  the  last  to  claim 
that  ICarelia  and  the  incidental  music  to  King  Christian  II  were 
high  art:  the  first  is  good  fun  (rather  in  the  Enesco  manner),  and 
the  second  has  a  certain  pictorial  felicity. 

It  might  be  supposed  that  foreign  travel  would  be  reflected  in 
the  music  of  a  man  so  sensitive  to  nature's  moods  as  Sibelius.  But 
he  took  the  Italian  tour  in  1894  without  absorbing  any  Latin  color 
whatsoever:  his  Aus  ItaLien  was  never  written.  On  his  way  back 
from  the  South,  he  stopped  briefly  in  Bayreuth  at  the  insistence  of 
his  bellicosely  Wagnerian  brother-in-law,  Armas  Jarnefelt.  He  suf- 
fered through  Lohengrin  and  Tannhduser,  but  refused  to  suffer  through 
Parsifal.  Sibelius  often  declared,  "Wagner  has  never  meant  much 
to  me."  As  the  composer  of  only  one  opera  (and  that  tossed  off, 
and  produced  privately),  Sibelius  could  hardly  be  considered  an 
authority  on  the  subject.  Still,  as  a  great  composer,  he  must  be 


580  MEN     OF     MUSIC 

listened  to  with  attention.  "I  still  place  Verdi  higher  than  Wag- 
ner" is  another  of  his  heresies,  with  its  dry  coda:  "Opera  is,  after 
all,  a  conventional  form  of  art,  and  should  be  cultivated  as  such.53 
This  dictum  explains  both  why  Sibelius  was  not  a  Wagnerian,  and 
why  he  did  not  cultivate  opera.  He  did  not  smuggle  a  single  bar 
of  Bayreuth  into  Finland.  The  swan  that  glides  with  such  ominous 
and  inhuman  serenity  on  the  dark  waters  of  Tuonela  is  not  re- 
motely related  to  Lohengrin's  faithful  bird.  The  cold  mist  that 
pervades  this  evocation  of  the  Finnish  Hades,  blurring  and  mask- 
ing all  the  contours,  is  the  creation  of  an  orchestral  color  as  in- 
hibited and  fastidious  as  that  Debussy  used  in  Nuages.  Almost 
rhythmless,  The  Swan  of  Tuonela  has  only  fragments  of  melody, 
achieves  its  effect  by  suggestion.  Its  companion  piece  (for  Sibelius 
recast  only  these  two  of  the  Legends),  Lemminkainetfs  Home-Coming, 
is  less  impressive.  It  has  high  spirits,  a  rough  brio,  but  no  magic. 
In  1897,  the  newspapers  began  a  campaign  to  have  the  Finnish 
Senate  give  Sibelius  a  money  grant  to  ease  the  strain  on  his  ener- 
gies. Accordingly,  with  surprising  promptness,  he  was  voted  an 
annual  stipend  of  about  four  hundred  dollars.  Let  the  reader  pon- 
der this  sum  of  money,  lest  he  has  been  imposed  upon  by  the 
favorite  story  that  a  government  grant  allowed  Sibelius  to  take  it 
easy  for  the  rest  of  his  life.  A  man  with  a  wife  and  daughters,  and 
whose  reputation,  though  already  heroic,  was  confined  to  a  small, 
relatively  poor,  and  subjugated  country,  could  not  live  on  his  roy- 
alties plus  four  hundred  dollars.  He  did,  however,  relinquish  his 
most  onerous  duties,  and  devote  longer  sustained  periods  to  com- 
position. At  the  age  of  thirty-four,  he  began  his  first  symphony: 
he  had  waited  for  maturity,  and  the  work  went  easily.  Within  a 
few  months  it  was  down  on  paper — the  E  minor  that  was  the  first 
of  a  line  of  symphonic  masterpieces  that  have  been  called,  by 
Sibelius'  most  enthusiastic  admirers,  the  greatest  since  Brahms,  or 
even  since  Beethoven.  Given  its  premiere  at  Helsingfors  on  April  26, 
1899,  it  was  literally  and  figuratively  the  last  nineteenth-century 
symphony.  With  far  more  reason  than  had  led  people  to  call 
Brahms'  First  Beethoven's  Tenth,  this  might  have  been  called 
Tchaikovsky's  Seventh.  It  abounds  in  Tchaikovskyan  echoes,  and 
is,  indeed,  the  most  derivative  of  Sibelius'  large  works.  But  these 
are  the  echoes  of  a  natural-born  symphonist,  about  to  speak  in 
propria  persona.  He  did  not  have  to  struggle  with  the  form  as  Brahms 


SIBELIUS  581 

did.  There  is  no  padding,  a  minimum  of  awkwardness.  And  the 
symphony  has  the  native  bigness,  the  breadth  of  shoulder  needed 
to  sustain  its  un-Sibeliuslike  melodrama.  Still  a  bit  timid  in  its 
traditional  patterns,  yet  it  is  a  remarkable  first  try. 

It  so  happened  that  the  First  Symphony  came  almost  stillborn 
into  the  world,  for  on  the  same  program  was  a  choral  work,  also 
by  Sibelius,  that  for  nonmusical  reasons  aroused  the  audience  to 
unbridled  excitement.  Ostensibly  nothing  more  than  a  setting,  for 
men's  and  boys*  voices,  of  a  Swedish  pseudoclassical  poem,  Song  of 
the  Athenians  was  a  political  harangue  devised  to  inflame  the  Finns, 
and  yet  get  past  the  ever  more  oppressive  Russian  censors.  Even 
without  the  aid  of  words,  Sibelius  could  forge  a  potent  weapon 
against  tyranny,  for  that  is  reaEy  how  Fwlandia  was  conceived.  In 
November,  1899,  a  series  of  celebrations,  outwardly  fostered  for 
newspaper  pension  funds,  but  actually  for  the  writers  whose  pens 
had  been  tireless  in  the  cause  of  Finnish  independence,  was  given 
throughout  the  country.  For  the  gala  fete  at  Helsingfors,  Sibelius 
composed  several  numbers  to  accompany  historical  tableaux,  only 
one  of  which — Finlandia — has  survived.  Known  first  simply  as  Fi- 
nale, it  was  played  in  that,  and  several  other,  disguises.  As  late  as 
1904,  for  instance,  it  was  masquerading  in  Russia  as  Impromptu* 
With  the  exception  of  the  Valse  triste,  the  most  widely  popular  of 
Sibelius5  compositions,  it  is  stirring,  noisy,  and  empty — good  made- 
to-order  patriotic  music  of  the  "1812"  Overture  variety.  There  is 
more  apparent  reason  for  its  popularity  than  for  that  of  the  Valse 
tristey  which  is  simply  a  respectable  waltz  that  could  have  been 
written  by  any  one  of  a  hundred  composers.  It  no  doubt  served  its 
purpose  adequately  in  a  death  scene  in  Knolemay  a  play  by  Arvid 
Jarnefelt,  another  of  Sibelius'  gifted  brothers-in-law. 

In  the  summer  of  1900,  the  Helsingfors  Philharmonic  went  on 
an  extensive  tour,  with  Kajanus  as  conductor  and  Sibelius  as  his 
assistant.  Within  a  month  the  orchestra  gave  concerts  at  Stock- 
holm, Christiania,  Goteborg,  Malmd,  Copenhagen,  Lubeck,  Ham- 
burg, Berlin,  Amsterdam,  Rotterdam,  Brussels,  and  Paris.  Sibelius 
was  well  represented  in  the  repertoire,  and  the  beginning  of  his 
European  fame  may  be  said  to  date  from  this  series  of  concerts. 
That  autumn  he  was  notified  that  the  AHgemeine  Deutsche  Musik- 
Verein  was  placing  two  of  his  orchestral  Legends  on  the  programs  of 
its  next  festival. 


582  MEN     OF     MUSIC 

Gratified  by  this  recognition,  Sibelius  went  to  Italy  with  his 
family.  At  Rapallo,  where  he  settled  for  the  spring,  he  composed 
the  Second  Symphony,  which  today  is  not  only  the  favorite  among 
his  extended  orchestral  works,  but  is  one  of  the  most  frequently 
played  of  all  symphonies.  Aside  from  the  rich  romantic  fruitiness 
of  the  finale,  it  is  a  very  characteristic  work.  The  opening  move- 
ment is  built  up  of  simple,  attractive  motives,  which,  as  first  pre- 
sented, have  no  special  distinction.  As  the  movement  progresses, 
we  gain  insight  into  one  of  the  salient  features  of  Sibelius'  method 
of  symphonic  architecture:  the  relating  and  transforming  of  ap- 
parently uncongenial  fragments  of  sound  into  a  beautifully  inte- 
grated fabric.  Quite  as  much  as  his  peculiarly  personal  orchestra- 
tion, quite  as  much  as  the  sobriety  of  his  coloring,  this  device  is  a 
hallmark  of  a  Sibelius  symphony.  "Nothing,  from  a  purely  tech- 
nical point  of  view,"  Cecil  Gray  says,  "is  more  remarkable  in  the 
entire  range  of  symphonic  literature  than  the  way  in  which  the 
composer,  having  presented  in  the  exposition  a  handful  of  seem- 
ingly disconnected  and  meaningless  scraps  of  melody,  proceeds  in 
the  development  section  to  breathe  life  into  them  and  bring  them 
into  relation  with  one  another."  In  the  last  movement  of  the  Sec- 
ond Symphony  this  device  is  used  to  create  one  of  the  most  tri- 
umphant paeans  in  modern  music. 

In  comparison  with  the  big  work  that  followed  it,  the  Second 
Symphony  has  many  holdovers  from  the  nineteenth  century.  The 
Violin  Concerto,  composed  in  1903  and  revised  in  1905,  is  in 
every  sense  an  unconventional  work.  Although  thankful  to  the 
virtuoso,  it  is  never  a  mere  display  piece,  and  throughout  has  es- 
sentially musical  interest.  Only  in  the  second  movement  (inci- 
dentally, the  least  satisfactory  of  the  three)  does  it  more  than  casu- 
ally bow  to  traditional  concerto  forms.  Having  evolved  a  whole 
new  battery  of  technical  means  in  the  Second  Symphony,  Sibelius 
did  not,  as  a  less  discriminate  and  sensitive  artist  might,  force  all 
of  them  on  the  concerto,  but  selected  just  those  which  seemed  ger- 
mane to  the  balance  offerees.  Of  the  three  movements,  the  first  is 
at  once  the  most  startling  and  most  attractive:  cadenza  and  all,  it 
is  clearly  a  whole  of  exactly  the  duration  required  to  expound  its 
material.  For  Sibelius  at  his  best  shared  with  Beethoven,  his  idol, 
an  infallible  sense  of  timing.  It  is  no  small  triumph  to  know  exactly 
when  to  break  off  a  rhapsody  (precisely  what  this  first  movement 


SIBELIUS  583 

is),  especially  when  in  an  access  of  sustained  beauty.  Unhappily, 
Sibelius  did  not  know  when  to  stop  in  the  second  movement, 
which  at  times  conies  close  to  maundering.  He  got  into  stride 
again  in  a  final  allegro  that  is  one  of  his  rare  flights  of  humor.  The 
vigorous  and  appealing  quality  of  this  section  of  the  concerto  is 
more  interesting  to  the  listener  than  the  enormously  skillful  jug- 
gling of  rhythms  by  which  it  is  achieved.  Owing  to  the  unadven- 
tuf  ousness  of  great  violinists,  the  concerto  was  one  of  the  most  recent 
of  Sibelius'  works  to  find  wide  favor.  To  Jascha  Heifetz  go  thanks 
for  his  magnificent  and  successful  championing  of  this  long- 
neglected  masterpiece,  which  in  its  revised  version  had  been  aus- 
piciously ushered  into  the  world  in  1906  under  the  baton  of 
Richard  Strauss,  with  Karl  Halif,  a  member  of  the  Joachim 
Quartet,  as  soloist. 

In  1904,  Sibelius  began  to  have  grave  misgivings  about  remain- 
ing in  Helsingfors.  There  were  far  too  many  demands  on  his  time, 
and  he  ingenuously  confessed:  "I  was  too  sociable  to  be  able  to 
refuse  invitations  that  interfered  with  my  work.  I  found  it  very 
difficult  to  say  no.  I  had  to  get  away."  He  vacillated  between  the 
idea  of  moving  to  a  large  European  capital,  where  he  could  be 
isolated  in  the  crowd,  and  that  of  living  in  the  country.  As  was 
probably  inevitable,  he  chose  the  latter,  for  practical  as  well  as 
spiritual  reasons.  He  built  a  house  two  miles  from  a  railroad  sta- 
tion called  Jarvenpaa;  practically  in  the  forest,  and  near  the  shore 
of  a  lake,  this  rural  solitude  was  yet  only  a  short  trip  from  Hel- 
singfors. He  lived  there  the  rest  of  his  life.  For  him  it  was  an 
entirely  satisfactory  choice.  Nor  could  his  devotees  argue  with  it, 
for  from  Jarvenpaa,  with  its  wild  and  beautiful  environs,  came  a 
string  of  works  that  showed  Sibelius  had  absorbed  strength  from 
his  native  soil.  Here,  far  from  cosmopolitan  influences,  he  was 
not  tempted,  as  was  Stravinsky,  the  greatest  of  his  younger  con- 
temporaries, to  thin  out  his  creative  energies  in  fashionable 
frittering.  There  were  no  fads,  artistic  or  otherwise,  in  Jarvenpaa. 

As  soon  as  he  moved  into  his  country  home,  Sibelius  began  a 
third  symphony.  This  proved  to  be  a  three-year  job,  which  was  in- 
terrupted by  several  trips  and  the  composition  of  various  shorter 
works.  Most  of  these  are  of  passing  interest  only.  Take  Pelleas  et 
Melisande,  for  example.  This  incidental  music  for  the  Maeterlinck 
play  is  dreamy  and  delicate,  but  Sibelius  was  not  at  his  best  on  a 


584  MEN     OF     MUSIC 

miniature  canvas.  Nor  does  the  conscious  Orientalism  ofBelshaz- 
zafs  Feast,  another  suite  of  incidental  pieces,  seem  a  natural  ges- 
ture. This  is  watered-down  Sibelius.  But  in  1906  he  returned  to  the 
Kalevala  for  inspiration,  and  the  result  was  the  intensely  character- 
istic Pohjola's  Daughter,  a  symphonic  fantasy  that  is,  perhaps,  the 
most  rigidly  programmatic  music  he  ever  composed.  The  spinning 
maiden,  the  rainbow  on  which  she  sits,  her  taunting  of  the  hero, 
and  his  baffled  rage  and  furious  leave-taking — these  and  a  few 
other  elements  of  the  program  must  be  grasped  before  the  music 
can  be  appreciated  to  the  full.  At  times  the  sumptuousness  of  the 
music  is  reminiscent  of  Strauss,  though  the  color  and  accent  are 
totally  different.  Pohjola's  Daughter  has  the  impact  of  an  epic  frag- 
ment: it  is  a  heroic  tale  set  in  a  splendid  landscape.  Although  rela- 
tions between  Finland  and  Russia  were  more  strained  than  ever, 
Sibelius  journeyed  to  St.  Petersburg  to  conduct  the  premiere  of  this 
extremely  Finnish  piece  at  one  of  the  concerts  established  by  Alex- 
ander Siloti. 

On  September  25,  1907,  Sibelius,  for  the  first  time  in  several 
years,  conducted  a  concert  of  his  own  works  in  Helsingfors.  Poh- 
jola's Daughter  and  Belshazzar *s  Feast  were  enthusiastically  received, 
but  the  high  spot  of  the  program  was  the  Third  Symphony,  which 
he  had  completed  the  same  summer.  In  light  of  the  desperately 
compressed  emotion  of  the  symphony  that  was  to  follow  it,  the  C 
major  is  a  lull  before  the  storm — a  moderate,  tempered,  and. pre- 
dominantly happy  composition.  With  its  diminished  orchestra  and 
contracted  size,  Sibelius  had  begun  to  move  away  from  the  easy 
largess  of  his  first  two  symphonies.  There  is  a  compensatory  gain  in 
the  direction  of  depth  and  concentration.  It  is  significant  that  he 
now  unleashes  the  brasses  only  for  climaxes.  As  has  been  suggested 
above,  the  C  major  stands  in  the  shadow  of  the  Fourth,  but  further- 
more, it  is  a  truly  lightweight  work.  For  all  its  easy  allure,  it  is  a 
collection,  skillfully  assembled,  of  tendencies  that  were  to  be  real- 
ized in  later  symphonies.  Not  unnaturally,  there  is  a  tentative 
quality  to  the  Third  Symphony,  suggesting  that  Sibelius  is  still 
feeling  his  way  toward  what  can  be  called  his  ars  nova,  and  is  not 
quite  sure  what  his  final  direction  will  be.  It  is  this  lack  of  assured- 
ness that  makes  it  a  not  altogether  satisfying  composition  to  listen  to. 

Early  in  1908,  an  ear-and-throat  infection  that  had  been  worry- 
ing Sibelius  for  some  years  became  acute.  At  first,  he  had  been 


SIBELIUS  585 

afraid  that  he  might  lose  his  hearing.  When  that  fear  was  dissi- 
pated, one  quite  as  frightful  took  its  place:  there  was  ground  for 
believing  that  his  throat  trouble  was  cancerous  in  origin.  He  went 
under  the  knife  in  Helsingfors,  but  to  no  avail.  In  those  days, 
the  greatest  professors  of  the  surgical  art  were  Germans,  and  ac- 
cordingly Sibelius  went  to  Berlin  and  submitted  to  a  series  of  no 
fewer  than  thirteen  operations  at  the  hands  of  a  gray  and  revered 
specialist.  After  this  dreadful  experience3  he  was  not  improved. 
"Finally,"  Sibelius  says,  "the  old  man  gave  it  up,  and  handed  the 
operation  over  to  his  assistant,  a  young  man  with  sharp  features 
and  a  steely  look,  the  personification  of  ability  and  energy.  He  low- 
ered his  instrument  into  my  throat,  and  found  the  bad  place.  A 
strong  jerk,  a  shout  of  triumph:  "Now  I've  got  it!' — and  he  pulled 
out  the  instrument.  I  was  released  from  torture." 

Although  his  physical  suffering  was  thus  ended,  Sibelius  con- 
tinued to  worry.  Might  not  the  tumor  that  had  been  excised  give 
place  to  a  true  cancerous  condition?  Who  could  tell?  It  seems  that 
troubles  of  all  sorts  conspired  to  put  Sibelius  in  a  gloomy  and  self- 
questioning  frame  of  mind.  As  he  wandered  over  the  map  of 
Europe,  conducting  concerts  of  his  works,  his  ills  pursued  him.  It 
was  inevitable  that  this  mood  should  be  mirrored  in  his  music. 
This  spiritual  malaise  was  so  intense  that  he  felt  forced  to  express 
himself  in  a  more  intimate  medium.  The  result  was  the  string 
quartet  Voces  intimae^  in  five  brief,  almost  gnomic  movements.  Com- 
pleted in  London  in  March,  1 909,  this  shows  a  mature  handling  of 
string-quartet  forces,  but  there  is  little  doubt  that  its  interest  is 
more  biographical  than  musical.  It  can  be  dismissed  (though  not 
scornfully)  as  another  way  station  on  the  road  to  the  Fourth  Sym- 
phony. Its  first  three  movements  grope  and  come  to  no  decisions: 
there  is  frank  confession  here,  confession  of  near-desiccation.  But 
the  fourth  movement  plucks  up  courage,  almost  as  if  sluggish  blood 
had  begun  to  course  freely,  and  this  interesting  composition  ends 
on  a  small  but  assured  yea.  Sibelius  needed  to  express  himself  just 
this  way,  but  he  showed  wisdom  by  not  pursuing  the  string  quar- 
tet any  farther.  His  genius  needed  plenty  of  elbow  room,  even 
in  its  moments  of  greatest  concentration. 

In  the  fall  of  1909,  much  of  Sibelius'  anxiety  was  a  thing  of  the 
past.  Clearly,  a  vacation  was  indicated.  So,  with  his  painter 
brother-in-law,  Eero  Jarnefelt,  he  once  more  braved  the  wilds  of 


586  MEN     OF     MUSIC 

Karelia.  This  time  winter  was  coming  on,  and  they  experienced  a 
variableness  of  weather  they  never  forgot.  While  Jarnefelt  painted, 
Sibelius  reveled  in  the  wild  scenery  of  white  cliffs,  wind-swept  lake, 
and  dark  forest.  Speeding  patches  of  cold  sunlight  raced  before  the 
sharp  wind  that  sometimes  brought  bursts  of  hail.  This  was  tonic 
to  Sibelius,  who  exposed  himself  to  every  peril  his  doctors  had 
warned  him  to  avoid.  After  returning  home  and  playing  with  a 
few  small  compositions,  he  plunged  into  his  Fourth  Symphony. 
Less  than  a  year  later,  this  most  controversial  of  all  his  works  was 
finished.  On  April  3,  191 1,  he  conducted  its  premiere  in  Helsingfors. 

The  first  audience  that  heard  the  Fourth  Symphony  was  friendly 
but  baffled.  The  critics,  also  in  the  same  dilemma,  wrote  inconse- 
quentially of  it.  One  of  them  said  that  he  could  not  explain  the 
work  at  all  except  as  a  series  of  Karelian  landscapes,  and  proceeded 
to  furnish  a  convenient  Baedeker  for  the  perplexed  concertgoer. 
This  obtuseness  angered  the  composer,  who  for  once  felt  called 
upon  to  explain  himself.  He  did  not  deny  that  the  A  minor  had 
assimilated  some  of  his  reactions  to  the  wild  north  country,  but  he 
did  deny  that  it  was  a  picture  album.  It  dealt,  he  said,  with  the 
eternal  problems  of  suffering  mankind  as  he  himself  had  experi- 
enced them.  This  explanation  cleared  up  a  misunderstanding,  but 
did  not  make  the  Fourth  easier  to  understand.  Those  who  had 
warmed  to  the  symphonic  poems  and  the  first  three  symphonies 
might  well  feel  themselves  betrayed  by  this  superficially  unattrac- 
tive work,  though  some  must  have  known  what  was  coming  if  they 
had  listened  closely  to  Pohjolds  Daughter ,  the  Third  Symphony,  and 
Voces  intimae.  The  A  minor  dispenses  entirely  with  purely  sensuous 
attractions,  makes  its  points  rapidly  and  concisely,  and  uses  har- 
monies that  do  not  float  in  one  ear  and  out  the  other.  To  those  who 
pillow  themselves  on  dulcet  melodies  and  savor  the  delights  of 
sweet  repetitiveness,  the  elliptical  and  Spartan  Fourth  makes  no 
concessions.  In  one  sense,  it  exacts  more  from  the  listener  than 
even  the  most  complex  of  classical  symphonies:  it  is  possible,  for 
instance,  to  let  the  mind  wander  momentarily,  and  yet  enjoy  to 
the  full  the  surpassing  beauty  of  the  "Jupiter"  Symphony.  The 
Fourth  allows  no  such  leeway. 

There  are  those  who  do  not  admit  Sibelius  to  a  place  among 
great  composers.  But  even  some  of  those  who  do,  say  that  the 


SIBELIUS  587 

Fourth  Symphony  is  a  mistake,  a  sport,  a  momentary  lapse  quite 
off  the  line  of  his  development.  They  interpret  its  sparseness  as 
poverty  of  inspiration,  its  abruptness  and  angularity  as  deliberate 
experimentation  that  does  not  come  off.  They  say  that  it  relies 
solely  on  technical  interest,  and  therefore  does  not  excite  the  emo- 
tional catharsis  that  is  the  end  result  of  a  great  work  of  art.  Scorn- 
fully quoting  Sibelius*  own  remark  that  whereas  other  composers 
gave  the  world  champagne,  he  offers  cold,  clear  water,  they  retort 
that  Sibelius  himself  is  at  his  best  dispensing  champagne.  Neverthe- 
less, its  admirers  claim  a  very  lofty  place  for  it,  and  have  not  hesi- 
tated to  compare  its  fundamental  quality  to  the  daemonic  con- 
centration of  Beethoven's  last  quartets.  Certainly,  it  is,  like  them, 
distilled  down  to  an  essence.  Partisans  of  the  Fourth  Symphony  say 
that,  far  from  not  touching  the  emotions,  it  descends  deep  into 
their  remote,  rarely  touched  sources.  They  say  that  its  peculiar 
language,  its  savage  speech,  is  well  worth  the  learning,  for  it  re- 
veals important  things  that  could  not  otherwise  be  said.  Finally, 
they  claim  that  it  is  a  tragic  masterpiece — one  of  the  few  spiritual 
talismans  of  the  twentieth  century. 

The  habit  of  dividing  the  products  of  artists'  Eves  into  neat  little 
periods  is  almost  always  silly,  but  it  must  be  admitted  that  the  A 
minor  Symphony  closed  one  phase  of  Sibelius'  life.  Henceforth  he 
was  not  to  pursue  the  gnomic  saying  or  the  spiritual  epigram.  It 
was  as  if  Voces  intimae  and  the  Fourth  Symphony  had  solved  certain 
personal  problems  in  his  own  life,  and  left  him  free  to  develop  more 
objective  tendencies  that  were  also  implicit  in  his  earlier  work. 
Again,  in  such  compositions  as  the  tone  poems  The  Bard  and  Luon- 
notar,  he  sent  up  trial  balloons  that  reached  modest  heights,  but 
four  years  were  to  elapse  before  another  symphony  (the  form  we 
must  necessarily  regard  as  the  decisive  focusing  of  his  interests) 
told  his  precise  direction.  Meanwhile,  his  pastoral  life  at  Jarvenpaa 
was  interrupted  by  increasingly  frequent  tours  and  visits  abroad. 
In  191 2,  he  was  offered  a  chair  at  the  Vienna  Conservatorium,  but 
what  might  have  been  a  temptation  eight  years  before,  when  he 
was  sick  of  the  social  demands  his  Hekingfors  friends  made  upon 
him,  was  now  refused  without  a  second  thought.  A  request,  the  next 
year,  that  he  compose  a  special  orchestral  work  for  the  Litchfield, 
Connecticut,  June  festival  was  accepted  enthusiastically,  partial- 


588  MEN     OF     MUSIC 

laxly  as  It  was  accompanied  by  a  generous  invitation  to  come  to 
America  and  conduct  it  in  person. 

On  May  16,  1914,  Sibelius  sailed  for  Bremen,  whence  he  em- 
barked for  the  United  States.  In  his  luggage  was  the  score  of  The 
Oceanides,  the  new  tone  poem  he  had  reserved  for  an  American 
premiere*  He  went  at  once  to  the  estate  of  Carl  Stoeckel,  who  spon- 
sored the  Litchfidd  festivals,  and  who  had  been  responsible  for  the 
invitation.  At  the  first  rehearsal,  the  orchestra,  composed  of  fine 
players  from  New  York  and  Boston,  struck  him  as  the  best  he  had 
ever  led.  The  countryside  delighted  him — "the  sort  of  district  in 
which  Leatherstocking  formerly  dwelt  and  had  his  being." 

On  June  3,  the  festival  opened  before  an  audience  of  invited 
guests  (Stoeckel  was  afraid  that  commercializing  Litchfield  might 
turn  it  into  a  second  Bayreuth) .  On  that  day  the  offering  was  Mes- 
siah. The  next  day,  Sibelius  conducted  an  entire  program  of  his 
own  works:  Firdandia,  Pohjola's  Daughter,  King  Christian  II,  and  The 
Oceanides,  the  last  a  grim  picture  of  a  churning  northern  ocean. 
Typical  of  the  enthusiasm  Sibelius  aroused  was  Henry  E.  KrehbieFs 
bracketing  of  him  with  Strauss  and  Toscanini  as  the  three  indubi- 
table musical  immortals  he  had  seen  in  the  course  of  fifteen  years. 
The  climax  of  Sibelius'  American  visit  came,  after  several  trips  in 
his  host's  private  Pullman,  when  Yale  bestowed  on  him  an  honorary- 
doctorate  of  music.  Professor  Wilbur  L.  Cross,  later  Governor  of 
Connecticut,  read  the  citation,  which  concluded  in  the  following 
lofty  strain:  "What  Wagner  did  with  Teutonic  legend,  Dr.  Sibelius 
has  done  in  his  own  impressive  way  with  the  legends  of  Finland  as 
embodied  in  her  national  epic.  He  has  translated  the  Kalevala  into 
the  universal  language  of  music,  remarkable  for  its  breadth,  large 
simplicity,  and  the  infusion  of  a  deeply  poetic  personality." 

In  late  June,  the  Finnish  master  left  the  shores  of  the  United 
States,  gratified  by  his  reception,  and  promising  to  return  for  a 
transcontinental  tour  the  following  year.  But  he  had  scarcely 
reached  home  before  the  World  War  broke  out,  and  his  second 
American  visit  never  took  place.  Before  the  end  of  1914  he  had 
begun  work  on  another  symphony,  which  proved  more  stubborn 
of  perfection  than  anything  he  had  ever  composed.  At  first,  Sibelius 
was  comparatively  unaffected  by  the  war,  though  it  was  annoying 
to  have  performance  fees  and  royalties  stopped  by  his  German  pub- 


SIBELIUS  589 

lishers.*  like  most  people,  he  believed  that  the  war  would  be  brief. 
To  enlarge  his  straitened  income,  he  made  extensive  tours  of  Nor- 
way and  Sweden,  and  composed  a  number  of  trivia  for  quick  sale. 
Despite  these  distractions,  the  Fifth  Symphony  was  completed,  in 
a  first  version,  late  in  1915.  It  was  performed  on  Sibelius3  fiftieth 
birthday,  which  had  been  declared  a  national  holiday.  The  com- 
poser himself  conducted  the  concert,  which  climaxed  a  gala  day. 
But  he  was  not  satisfied  with  his  new  symphony.  In  October,  1916, 
he  revised  it,  and  this  second  version  was  played.  Even  then,  it  was 
not  precisely  what  he  had  in  mind.  More  wrestling  with  the  recal- 
citrant material  followed,  and  it  was  not  until  1919  that  the  third, 
and  final,  version  was  achieved. 

The  Fifth  Symphony  is  not  a  controversial  work.  It  is  easily  ap- 
proachable, teems  with  quite  recognizable  melodies,  and  is  only 
mildly  discordant.  Big,  assertive,  extroverted,  the  E  flat  major  is 
the  Second's  glorious  heir.  While  the  Fourth  can  almost  invariably 
make  its  most  telling  points  mezza  voce>  the  Fifth  raises  its  voice  with 
the  naturalness  of  uninhibited  emotive  speech.  There  is  still  some 
argument  as  to  whether  the  long  section  leading  to  the  first  obvious 
break  is  one  movement  or  two.  One  principal  theme  dominates 
this  entire  section,  but  entirely  new  material  surrounds  this  theme 
in  the  second  part.  Clearly,  it  is  unimportant  whether  this  section 
is  to  be  called  one  or  two  movements:  what  is  important  is  that  it 
foreshadows  that  technique  of  agglutination  that  was,  a  decade 
later,  to  result  in  the  vast  one-movement  world  of  the  Seventh 
Symphony.  The  unity  of  the  beautiful  andante  (the  second  or  third 
movement,  depending  on  your  point  of  view)  is  achieved  by  a  set 
rhythmic  pattern:  various  melodies  play  upon  this  rhythm,  with 
an  eeriness  of  effect  suggesting  the  unvaried  variability  of  a  narra- 
tive epic.  Here,  if  anywhere,  Sibelius  dons  warlock's  robe,  and 
reads  the  runes.  Discreetly  lost  in  the  accompaniment,  and  droned 
in  octaves  by  the  double  basses,  is  a  positively  banal  theme  that  has 
an  unfortunate  resemblance  to  0,  Dry  Those  Tears,  the  masterpiece 
of  Teresa  del  Riego.  By  some  obscure  alchemy,  this  galumphing 
motif,  helped  along  by  one  other  equally  mediocre  melody,  be- 

*  Finland  (as  a  part  of  the  Russian  Empire)  was  not  at  this  time  a  party  to  the 
Bern  Convention  that  protects  international  copyright.  Sibelius,  however,  by  selling 
his  works  first  to  German  and  English  publishers,  managed  to  obtain  an  ever-grow- 
ing royalty  income. 


59°  MEN     OF     MUSIC 

comes  the  motor  of  one  of  Sibelius'  most  stupendous  and  exciting 
climaxes. 

Until  the  March,  1917,  revolution,  which  established  the  pro- 
visional government  of  Miliukov  and  Kerensky,  Finland  had  been 
relatively  untouched  by  the  war.  At  first  it  seemed  that  she  would 
benefit  by  the  collapse  of  the  tsarist  system.  For  one  thing,  her  rep- 
resentative form  of  government  was  restored  to  her.  But  the  Ke- 
rensky  regime  was  short-lived,  and  the  Finns  had  little  sympathy 
with  the  Leninists.  On  December  6,  1917,  they  accordingly  de- 
clared their  independence,  which  was  at  once  recognized  by  several 
foreign  countries,  and  confirmed,  in  March,  1918,  by  the  treaty  of 
Brest-Litovsk.  But  the  Communists  were  not  disposed  to  see  Fin- 
land slip  away  from  Russia's  orbit,  ^nd  soon  the  little  country  was 
swarming  with  Red  Guards.  Resistance  stiffened  under  White 
Russian  and  German  leadership,  but  the  Reds  were  not  finally 
ousted  until  the  end  of  April,  in  a  battle  that  took  place  at  Sibelius' 
birthplace,  Tavastehus.  Then  followed  a  White  terror,  during 
which  reprisals  were  carried  out  in  a  grimly  sanguinary  manner.  It 
was  not  until  July,  1919,  that  the  White  hooligans  were  dispersed, 
and  an  orderly  government  was  established  under  predominantly 
Social  Democratic  control. 

Sibelius'  part  in  these  gory  events  was  as  passive  as  a  Finnish 
Gandhi's,  but  there  was  no  doubt  that  as  a  nationalist  he  could 
only  view  the  Reds  with  abhorrence.  In  February,  1918,  his  house 
was  repeatedly  searched,  and  he  was  virtually  a  prisoner.  Finally, 
after  fearing  for  his  life,  he  was  allowed  to  take  his  family  to  Hel- 
singfors.  There  they  nearly  starved  to  death.  Sibelius  himself  lost 
almost  forty  pounds  during  the  weeks  the  besieged  Reds  doled  out 
a  bread-and-water  diet  to  Whites  and  White  sympathizers.  An 
entry  in  his  diary  shows  that  he  regarded  these  events  with  horror, 
but  as  an  artist:  "The  crescendo,  as  the  thunder  of  the  guns  came 
nearer,  a  crescendo  that  lasted  for  close  on  thirty  hours  and  ended 
in  a  fortissimo  I  could  never  have  dreamed  of,  was  really  a  great 
sensation/' 

And  it  was  during  these  grisly  happenings  that  he  was  struggling 
with  the  final  shape  of  the  Fifth  Symphony,  working  on  a  sixth,  and 
planning  a  seventh.  Already,  in  a  letter  written  two  days  after  the 
battle  at  Tavastehus,  he  was  describing  the  revised  Fifth  as  ^tri- 
umphal," the  Sixth  as  "wild  and  impassioned"  (which  it  is  not), 


SIBELIUS  591 

and  the  Seventh  as  epitomizing  "joy  of  life  and  vitality/'  At  fifty- 
three,  Sibelius  had  a  resilience  that  could  go  unscathed  through 
revolution  and  bloodshed.  After  the  troubles  were  all  over,  he 
quietly  returned  to  Jarvenpaa,  and  finished  the  Sixth  Symphony. 
The  horrors  he  had  seen  had  not  embittered  him  or  made  him 
love  his  country  the  less.  In  1920,  when  he  was  offered  the  richly 
paid  directorship  of  the  Eastman  School  of  Music  in  Rochester, 
New  York,  he  refused  it  with  as  little  compunction  as  he  had  felt  in 
turning  down  the  Vienna  chair  so  many  years  before. 

The  Sixth  Symphony  was  not  finally  completed  until  1923,  and, 
though  a  creature  of  the  turbulence  of  1917-193  shows  few  traces 
of  its  chronological  lineage.  A  feckless,  almost  insouciant  creation, 
it  has  attracted  much  highfalutin  respect  from  competent  authori- 
ties. "The  chief  interest  of  the  work  is  formal,"  Cecil  Gray  has  said. 
Perhaps  that  is  what  is  wrong  with  it.  It  is,  for  the  most  part,  down- 
right duU — Sibelius'  "Pastoral"  Symphony,  in  fact,  in  number 
and  attractiveness.  Without  austerity,  it  is  nevertheless  as  hard  to 
get  hold  of  as  the  Fourth,  and  quite  lacks  the  Fourth's  intensity. 
Possibly  the  fact  that  it  is  a  late  work  has  blinded  some  to  the 
equally  obvious  fact  that,  of  all  Sibelius'  symphonies,  the  Sixth  has 
the  least  to  say.  In  view  of  its  neutral  color  and  tame  personality, 
Sibelius'  description  of  it  as  "wild  and  impassioned"  (written  be- 
fore much  of  the  symphony  was  complete)  sounds  flatly  misleading. 
One  can  only  suppose  that  he  saved  these  fervors  for  the  Seventh. 

On  March  2,  1924,  the  Seventh  Symphony  was  completed.  This 
the  composer  had  at  first  called  Fantasia  sinfonicay  doubtless  be- 
cause it  is  in  one  movement  only.  By  the  letter  of  a  textbook  defi- 
nition, it  is  probably  not  a  symphony  at  all,  though  with  some 
freedom  it  can  be  analyzed  as  one.  The  important  thing  is  that  it 
follows  the  spirit.  It  is  as  compact,  and  quite  as  unadorned,  as  the 
Fourth,  but  it  is  more  varied  in  mood,  uses  a  wider  color  and  vol- 
ume gamut,  and  is  more  approachable  after  a  few  hearings.  Lumi- 
nosity has  been  claimed  for  the  Sixth;  it  is  really  this  second  C 
major  Symphony  that  has  it.  Sibelius  had  now  discarded  the  last 
shreds  of  romanticism  in  his  music  and,  allowing  for  the  inevitably 
modern  constituents  of  his  idiom,  had  achieved  a  purely  classical 
symphony.  The  classicism  at  which  he  had  arrived  represents,  not 
a  mimicry  of  the  past,  but  a  natural  growth.  In  short,  Sibelius  is  a 
classicist,  not  a  neoclassicist.  There  is  no  lack  of  emotional  conno- 


592  MEN     OF     MUSIC 

tation  in  the  Seventh  (any  more  than  in  a  Mozart  symphony) — but 
it  is  connotation  only.  Everything  is  sublimated.  The  drama  that  is 
presented,  struggled  through,  and  solved  is  the  drama  of  the  themes 
themselves.  Sibelius  has  said,  "I  am  the  slave  of  my  themes,  and 
submit  to  their  demands.93  Here  they  have  freed  him  entirely  from 
the  fuzziness  and  grandiloquence  of  much  nineteenth-century 
rnusic.  Yet,  simplified,  restrained,  essenced  out  though  the  Seventh 
is,  it  Is  very  far  from  art  for  art's  sake,  and  is  an  intensely  moving 
composition. 

The  Seventh  was  the  last  symphony  from  Sibelius'  pen,  which 
until  the  middle  twenties  of  this  century  was  very  active.  As  1931 
approached,  Serge  Koussevitzky,  a  masterly  interpreter  of  Sibelius, 
announced  hopefully  that  the  Eighth  Symphony  would  be  played 
during  the  fiftieth-anniversary  celebration  of  the  Boston  Sym- 
phony Orchestra.  But  the  work  did  not  show  up.  It  was  said  that 
it  had  been  completed,  but  there  was  also  a  rumor  that  it  was 
not  to  be  heard  during  the  master's  lifetime.  All  this  was 
conjecture:  Sibelius,  who  did  not  hold  back  in  talking  of  other 
composers  and  their  work,  invariably  refused  to  discuss  what 
he  himself  was  doing.  Of  the  several  smaller  orchestral  works  he 
published  after  the  Seventh  Symphony,  only  one — Tapiola — has 
gained  a  wide  audience.  Tapio  is  the  forest  god  of  the  Finnish 
pantheon,  and  Tapiola  breathes  the  spirit  of  his  forest  home  with- 
out actually  being  program  music.  It  shares  the  classic  temperate- 
ness,  the  reasonableness  of  the  Seventh  Symphony,  and  represents 
the  final  stage  of  tone-poem  evolution  as  Sibelius  conceives  it. 
Like  La  Mer,  it  suggests  the  infinitudes  of  nature  without  reveal- 
ing the  particular.* 

Sibelius,  who  lived  out  his  long  life  at  Jarvenpaa  in  what  is 
little  more  than  a  large  log  house  on  the  edge  of  the  Finnish  forests, 
was  regarded  in  his  country  as  a  living  demigod.  On  December  8, 
1925,  his  sixtieth  birthday  was  again  a  national  holiday,  marked 
by  nationwide  celebrations  and  concerts  of  his  music.  On  that  day, 
he  received  the  highest  decoration  in  the  gift  of  the  Finnish  govern- 
ment, and  was  granted  the  largest  state  annuity  ever  given  to  a 
private  citizen  of  Finland.  Ten  years  later,  his  seventieth  birthday 
was  made  the  subject  of  similar  rejoicings,  which,  however,  had  a 

*  Commissioned  by  the  Symphony  Society  of  New  York,  Tapiola  received  its 
world  premiere  under  Walter  Damrosch  on  December  26,  1926. 


SIBELIUS  593 

slightly  different  tone.  Within  that  decade  he  had  become  one  of 
the  most  frequently  played  of  composers,  and  it  was  obvious  that 
his  country  had  an  immortal.  On  his  eightieth  birthday,  in  1945, 
congratulations  from  all  parts  of  the  non-Communist  world 
flooded  Jarvenpaa.  Much  the  same  celebration  ensued  on  his 
ninetieth  birthday,  and  no  doubt  the  more  sanguine  looked  for- 
ward to  the  composer's  being  present  on  his  own  centenary. 
Without  having  given  to  the  world  another  major  work  for  more 
than  thirty  years,  Sibelius  died  at  Jarvenpaa  on  September  20, 
1957.  It  is  said  that  the  only  unknown  manuscript  discovered 
among  his  papers  was  a  trifle  tossed  off  half  a  century  before. 
The  final  word  seems  to  be  that  Sibelius,  untouched  by  the  fads 
and  fancies  of  contemporary  fashion  in  music,  worked  unflaggingly 
to  develop  to  the  full  the  gifts  that  he  had  and  at  a  certain  point 
had  nothing  more  to  say. 


Chapter  XXIII 

Igor  Stravinsky 

(Oranienbaum,  June  17,  1882-         ) 


A  FTER  twenty  years  of  shadowboxing,  Igor  Stravinsky  still  retains 
jf\  the  crown  of  modern  music.  He  retains  it  because  there  are 
none  to  dispute  his  supremacy.  Sibelius,  though  using  as  many 
modern  means  as  he  needed,  was  at  heart  a  traditionalist  who  had 
found  the  essence  of  classicism.  There  have  been  challengers,  more 
or  less  serious,  whom  Stravinsky  has  not  even  had  to  vanquish, 
for  they  have  eliminated  themselves  simply  by  not  getting  into 
the  heavyweight  class.  First  it  was  Ravel,  then  Falla;  even  the 
mathematician  Schonberg  was  once  spoken  of  as  a  dangerous 
rival.  The  weary  king  retains  his  crown,  but  unless  he  shows  his 
royal  will  shortly,  it  will  be  time  to  declare  the  throne  vacated, 
and  a  democracy  established. 

There  is  between  Stravinsky's  career  and  that  of  Richard  Strauss 
a  parallel  so  tragically  close  that  one  wonders  whether  a  twentieth- 
century  composer  can  live  fully  in  the  world,  and  yet  come  to  the 
fullest  fruition.  They  both  started  out  tepidly  with  Brahmsian 
echoes:  Strauss,  as  the  better-taught  man,  produced  his  academic 
symphony  at  an  earlier  age  than  Stravinsky,  who  merely  dabbled 
in  music  until  his  early  twenties.  Both  quickly  spouted  revolution- 
ary works,  threw  off  fireworks  for  a  couple  of  decades,  and  then 
fizzled  out,  though  in  different  ways.  Strauss'  creative  energy  dried 
up.  Stravinsky,  always  an  experimentalist,  continued  to  experi- 
ment. But  for  a  number  of  reasons,  his  later  experiments  have 
been  too  often  experiments.  By  a  strange  coincidence,  their  careers 
as  composers  that  matter  stopped  just  short  of  their  fiftieth  year. 
Neither  of  them  possessed  the  staying  power  of  a  Haydn,  a 
Wagner,  a  Sibelius — a  Verdi.  Still,  there  is  the  ghost  of  a  chance  that 
Stravinsky  may  come  through  witii  another  masterpiece.  It  is 
still  too  early  to  write  his  epitaph. 

In  many  respects,  Stravinsky's  early  life  was  conventional  for  a 
major  Russian  composer.  The  second-  and  third-rate  Russian  mu- 
sicians were  prodigies,  and  went  early  to  academies  of  music;  the 
geniuses  came  late  to  music,  and  ended  up  by  teaching  themselves. 

594 


STRAVINSKY  595 

The  Five  were  young-gentleman  dilettantes  who  entered  music  by 
the  back  door.  Tchaikovsky,  though  he  eventually  acquired  a  solid 
academic  grounding,  did  not  start  formal  training  until  after  his 
twentieth  year.  Stravinsky,  not  having  Tchaikovsky's  overmaster- 
ing urge  to  devote  himself  to  music,  in  1905  docilely  finished  a  law 
course  at  the  University  of  St.  Petersburg  because  his  mother 
wished  him  to.  The  next  year,  his  mind  still  not  made  up  about  be- 
coming a  professional  musician,  he  married  his  second  cousin. 

There  is  something  incredibly  lackadaisical,  something  whimsi- 
cal, about  Stravinsky's  inability  to  grow  up.  At  this  time,  he  was  a 
typical  gifted  futilitarian  from  a  Chekhov  play.  Yet,  his  background 
was  musical.  His  father  was  an  opera  singer  of  some  renown,  and 
his  mother  knew  music  at  least  well  enough  to  enjoy  reading  opera 
scores.  Not  the  least  surprising  thing  about  Stravinsky  is  that  he 
was  no  prodigy.  His  parents  viewed  his  childish  musical  efforts  with 
indulgent  amusement:  they  did  let  him  study  the  piano,  but  he  had 
to  pick  up  the  rudiments  of  harmony  and  counterpoint  by  himself. 
Soon  he  tried  compositions  of  his  own — little  more  than  written- 
down  improvisations.  But  it  is  uncertain  how  long  his  musical  ma- 
turity would  have  been  delayed  if  he  had  not  met  Rimsky-Korsa- 
kov's  son  at  the  university.  In  1902,  while  traveling  in  Germany, 
Stravinsky,  by  his  chum's  wangling,  got  to  show  the  pedantic 
master  some  of  his  juvenilia.  Rimsky  was  not  enthusiastic:  he  ad- 
vised the  boy  to  go  on  with  law  and,  if  he  wished,  to  take  private 
lessons  in  harmony  and  counterpoint.  He  unbent  enough  to  offer 
to  look  at  any  future  pieces  by  his  son's  friend.  Five  years  were  to 
elapse  before  Stravinsky,  having  done  everything  the  great  pundit 
asked  of  him,  and  having  frequently  consulted  him  about  his  con- 
fessedly desultory  work,  showed  Rimsky  a  large  composition  that 
his  adviser  thought  fit  to  be  performed. 

Stravinsky's  Opus  i  and  Opus  2 — respectively  a  symphony  and 
a  song  cycle  with  orchestral  accompaniment — are  rarely  given. 
By  1908,  however,  he  was  at  work  on  three  compositions  that  have, 
in  some  form  or  other,  kept  a  precarious  hold  on  public  attention. 
The  first  was  an  opera,  Le  Rossignol,  with  which  he  struggled,  off 
and  on,  for  six  years.  The  second  was  the  orchestral  Scherzo  fantas- 
tique.  The  last  was  a  little  tone  poem  called  Feu  £  artifice,  which  he 
sent  to  Rimsky  on  his  daughter's  wedding,  as  the  master  had  ex- 
pressed an  interest  in  its  composition.  "A  few  days  later,"  Stra- 


596  MEN     OF     MUSIC 

vinsky  says  in  his  autobiography,  "a  telegram  informed  me  of  his 
death,  and  shortly  afterwards  my  registered  packet  was  returned 
to  me:  cNot  delivered  on  account  of  death  of  addressee/  "  In  honor 
of  his  teacher,  he  then  composed  a  Chant  furiebre,  the  score  of  which 
vanished  during  the  Russian  Revolution. 

The  Scherzo  fantastique  and  Feu  d*  artifice  were  the  means  of  bring- 
ing fame  and  fortune  to  their  composer,  for  in  the  audience  at  the 
Siloti  concert  where  they  were  first  performed  on  February  6,  1909, 
sat  the  greatest  talent  scout  of  the  century — Serge  Diaghilev.  Some- 
thing in  these  fast,  crackling  pieces,  with  their  knowing  echoes  of 
Paul  Dukas'  popular  DApprenti  sorcier,  enthralled  him.  With  his 
usual  impetuosity,  Diaghilev  instantly  commissioned  Stravinsky  to 
orchestrate  a  Chopin  nocturne  and  valse,  to  be  used  in  the  forth- 
coming performance  of  the  Ballet  Russe's  version  of  Les  Sylphides. 
Stravinsky  was  made.  His  adaptations  turned  out  to  be  most  satis- 
factory, and  later  that  year  the  impresario  telegraphed  him  to 
compose  a  completely  new  work  for  the  Ballet  Russe's  1910  season 
at  the  Opera. 

The  result  of  Diaghilev' s  confidence  in  his  find  was  DOiseau  de 
feu,  the  first  real  modern  ballet.  Not  only  did  it  inaugurate  Diaghi- 
lev's  custom  of  commissioning  entire  ballets,  but  it  set  the  precedent 
of  the  composer  consulting  both  the  choreographer  and  the  decor 
artist  during  the  course  of  composition.  The  brilliant  Op6ra  audi- 
ence that  made  the  opening  of  DOiseau  defeu,  on  June  25,  1910, 
the  notable  event  of  the  Paris  season  saw,  in  effect,  the  perfectly 
functioning  collaboration  of  Stravinsky,  the  choreographer  Fokine, 
and  the  scene  painter  Golovin.  Thamar  Karsavina  was  the  Fire- 
bird, Adolf  Bolm  the  Prince.  We  who  have  too  often  seen  a  tired 
version  of  DOiseau  defeu,  with  faded  sets  and  bedraggled  costumes 
and  bored  dancers,  can  scarcely  imagine  the  incredible  glamour  of 
the  original  production,  Stravinsky,  who  was  making  his  first  visit 
to  Paris,  found  himself  famous  overnight — the  most  feted  hero  of 
smart  Paris  society.  For  years  DOiseau  defeu  remained  a  favorite  of 
balletomanes,  and  spread  Stravinsky's  name  across  the  world. 
Shortly  after  the  premiere,  he  made  a  selection  of  excerpts  from  the 
ballet,  and  this  rather  hasty  business  served  for  some  years  as  an 
orchestral  suite.  In  1919,  however,  he  reorchestrated  and  re-edited 
the  suite,  and  his  carefully  constructed  potpourri  is,  even  thirty 
years  later,  his  most  popular  concert  piece.  Abounding  in  vivid 


STRAVINSKY  597 

color.,  romantic  melodies,  and  easy,  fruity  emotion,  UOiseau  defeu 
is  as  ingratiating  as  Scheherazade.  Only  the  Dance  of  Katschei,  the 
fourth  of  the  five  sections  of  the  suite,  might  hit  the  conservative  in 
the  midriff:  its  irregular  pounding  rhythm  and  jagged  harmonies., 
the  sheer  physical  excitement  of  this  diabolic  music— all  foreshadow 
the  cometlike  anarch  of  Le  Sacre  du  printemps.  The  rest  of  the  suite 
might  be  not  quite  first-rate  Rimsky.  It  is  fading  rapidly.  But  for- 
tunately, it  was  the  Dance  ofKatschei  that  the  composer  was  to  use 
as  a  springboard. 

While  composing  UOiseau  defeu,  Stravinsky  toyed  with  the  idea 
of  doing  a  ballet  based  on  the  ancient  pagan  rites  of  his  native  land. 
He  discussed  the  matter  with  the  painter  Roerich,  but  the  diffi- 
culties of  the  task  deterred  him  momentarily.  Keeping  it  cubby- 
holed  in  his  mind,  he  turned  to  another  idea  he  found  equally 
fascinating — the  composition  of  a  large  orchestral  work  with  an  im- 
portant piano  part.  Speaking  of  how  this  unnamed  piece  happened 
to  develop  into  Petrcuchka,  Stravinsky  has  written,  "In  composing 
the  music,  I  had  in  my  mind  a  distinct  picture  of  a  puppet,  sud- 
denly endowed  with  life,  exasperating  the  patience  of  the  orchestra 
with  diabolical  cascades  of  arpeggios."  As  soon  as  he  played  over 
the  manuscript  to  Diaghilev,  the  impresario,  though  he  had  been 
expecting  to  hear  the  pagan  ballet  music  of  which  rumors  had 
reached  him,  was  excited,  and  persuaded  his  friend  to  enlarge  it  to 
ballet  size.  Wandering  across  Europe,  from  Switzerland  to  France, 
and  from  France  to  Russia  and  Italy  (for  Stravinsky,  like  all  Rus- 
sians, is  a  tireless  traveler) ,  the  composer,  adding  touches  to  Petwuchka 
along  the  way,  finally  settled  down  in  Rome,  and  completed  the 
score  on  May  26,  191 1,  three  weeks  before  his  twenty-ninth  birth- 
day. 

Only  eighteen  days  later,  Diaghilev  sumptuously  mounted  Pe- 
trouchka  at  the  Chatelet  in  Paris.  Again  a  galaxy  of  talents  gave 
added  eclat  to  a  new  ballet  by  a  man  who  was  already  hailed  as 
one  of  the  first  of  living  composers.  This  time  Nijinsky  danced  the 
Clown,  Bolm  was  the  Moor,  and  Karsavina  the  apex  of  the  tragi- 
comic triangle.  It  was  admitted  at  once  that  a  perfect  ballet  had 
been  written,  the  principal  reason  being  that  nowhere  before  or 
since  has  such  wholly  danceable  action  been  allied  to  such  vividly 
illustrative  music.  While  previous  composers  had  generously  bor- 
rowed Russian  material,  Stravinsky,  with  the  help  of  the  learned 


MEN     OF     MUSIC 

and  sensitive  Alexandre  Benois  (despite  his  name,  also  a  Russian), 
had,  in  this  tale  of  a  St.  Petersburg  carnival,  caught  the  very  es- 
sence of  theater  Slavdom. 

In  the  Dance  ofKatschez>  a  new  voice  had  been  heard,  but  it  was 
still  uncertain  what  that  voice  would  say.  Petrouchka  ended  all 
doubt.  It  was  undeniably  an  anarch's  voice,  but  hostility  was  not 
yet  aroused.  This  anarch  was  an  amusing  one.  Yet,  the  leap  from 
VOiseau  defeu  to  Petrouchka  is  immensely  wider  than  that  from  Pe- 
trouchka to  the  next  ballet  Stravinsky  wrote — that  ballet  which 
literally  caused  a  riot,  and  organized  powerful  forces  against  his 
music.  In  Petrouchka  gone  are  the  romantic  melodies  and  charming 
Rimskyan  harmonies.  In  a  work  just  as  brimful  of  color,  Stravinsky 
has  primitivized  his  palette.  The  raw,  sharp  color  ^Petrouchka  has 
its  analogue  in  the  choppy,  mechanized  rhythms,  which  tend  to 
dominate  among  the  various  musical  elements.  Stravinsky  broke 
even  more  violently  with  the  past  in  the  harmonies.  For  the  first 
time,  a  composer  wrote  simultaneously  ia  two  clashing  keys.  The 
effect,  far  from  being  ear-shattering,  is  strange,  acrid,  deliciously 
different.  Bitonal  counterpoint  is  being  born  under  our  very  noses, 
but  we  scarcely  notice  it,  much  less  damn  it,  for,  as  Gerald  Abraham 
has  shrewdly  noted,  "Both  contrapuntal  strands  are  absurdly  easy 
to  follow." 

In  1921,  Stravinsky  "began  a  task  which  enthralled  me — a  tran- 
scription for  the  piano  which  I  called  Trois  Mouvements  de  Petrouchka. 
I  wanted  this  to  provide  piano  virtuosos  with  a  piece  having  suffi- 
cient scope  to  enable  them  to  add  to  their  modern  repertoire  and 
display  their  technique."  Those  who  have  heard  Arthur  Rubin- 
stein, to  whom  the  Trois  Mouvements  is  dedicated,  play  it,  will 
realize  how  perfectly  the  composer  has  succeeded.  The  transcrip- 
tion is  one  of  the  few  notable  large  pieces  of  post-Debussyan  piano 
music.  In  addition  to  being  a  work  of  distinction  and  beauty,  it 
illustrates  the  changed  point  of  view  from  which  postwar  com- 
posers considered  the  piano.  No  longer  the  vehicle  of  fluctuant, 
cloudy  impressionism,  of  curtains  of  sound,  it  began  to  be  treated 
as  a  percussion  instrument — something  that  could  be  properly 
thumped,  banged,  struck,  and  otherwise  attacked.  Now  a  pro- 
jector of  significant  noise,  it  might  be  considered  a  congeries  of 
small  drums  tuned  to  various  pitches.  This  conception  has  led  to 
the  anarchic  extravagances  of  Henry  Cowell,  and  has  its  golden 


STRAVINSKY  599 

mean  in  Prokofiev,  in  Stravinsky's  Concerto  for  piano  and  wind 
orchestra  (1923),  Capriccio  (1929),  Concerto  for  two  unaccom- 
panied pianos  (1935),  and  Sonata  for  two  pianos  (1944). 

After  Petrouchka  was  produced,  Stravinsky  returned  to  Russia 
and  his  idea  of  a  pagan  ballet.  He  stayed  there  until  winter  in 
order  to  complete  the  scenario  with  Roerich,  after  which  he  moved 
to  Switzerland,  to  Clarens,  almost  sacred  to  him  because  it  had 
often  sheltered  his  hero  Tchaikovsky.  There,  after  other  visits  to 
Paris,  Bayreuth  (which  moved  him  to  irreverent  laughter),  and 
Russia,  he  finished  Le  Sacre  duprintemps  in  March,  1913.  He  looked 
forward  to  the  staging  of  this  very  complicated  ballet  with  trepida- 
tion, for  the  choreography  had,  at  Diaghilev's  insistence,  been  en- 
trusted to  the  maladroit  care  of  Nijinsky.  His  worst  fears  were 
realized,  Nijinsky  was  both  incompetent  and  unreasonable,  and 
though  the  corps  de  ballet  was  working  against  a  deadline,  his  in- 
ability to  follow  the  bar-by-bar  significance  of  the  score  took  the 
form  of  demanding  an  absurd  number  of  rehearsals.  "Although  he 
had  grasped  the  dramatic  significance  of  the  dance,"  Stravinsky 
writes,  "Nijinsky  was  incapable  of  giving  intelligible  form  to  its 
essence,  and  complicated  it  either  by  clumsiness  or  lack  of  under- 
standing. For  it  is  undeniably  clumsy  to  slow  down  the  tempo  of 
die  music  in  order  to  compose  complicated  steps  which  cannot  be 
danced  in  the  tempo  prescribed.  Many  choreographers  have  that 
fault,  but  I  have  never  known  any  who  erred  in  that  respect  to  the 
same  degree  as  Nijinsky."  Despite  all  the  resulting  contretemps, 
the  invitation  dress  rehearsal  went  off  well. 

Not  so  the  premiere.  The  first  performance  of  Le  Sacre  duprintemps, 
at  the  Theitre  des  Champs-EIysees,  on  May  29,1913,  was  a  scandal 
unmatched  in  the  annals  of  music.  Jean  Cocteau,  the  star  reporter 
of  smart  Paris,  so  describes  it:  "Let  us  now  return  to  the  theater  in 
the  Avenue  Montaigne,  while  we  wait  for  the  conductor  to  rap  his 
desk  and  the  curtain  to  go  up  on  one  of  the  noblest  events  in  the 
annals  of  art.  The  audience  behaved  as  it  ought  to;  it  revolted 
straight  away.  People  laughed,  booed,  hissed,  imitated  animal 
noises,  and  possibly  would  have  tired  themselves  out  before  long, 
had  not  the  crowd  of  esthetes  and  a  handful  of  musicians,  carried 
away  by  their  excessive  zeal,  insulted  and  even  roughly  handled 
the  public  in  the  loges.  The  uproar  degenerated  into  a  free  fight. 

"Standing  up  in  her  loge,  her  tiara  awry,  the  old  Comtesse  de 


GOO  MEN     OF     MUSIC 

Pourtales  flourished  her  fan  and  shouted,  scarlet  in  the  face,  Tt's 
the  first  time  in  sixty  years  that  anyone's  dared  to  make  a  fool  of 
me.'  The  good  lady  was  sincere:  she  thought  there  was  some 
mystification.  '  ' 

The  cause  of  all  this  disturbance  was  the  most  beautiful,  the 
most  profoundly  conceived,  and  most  exhilarating  piece  of  music 
thus  far  composed  in  the  twentieth  century.  By  some  odd  freak  of 
genius,  Stravinsky,  a  straitlaced  devotee  of  Greek  Catholicism,  had 
become  an  earth-worshiper,  and  written  a  hymn  of  pantheistic  ex- 
altation, For  Le  Sacre  is  in  truth  exactly  what  Stravinsky  called  it: 
an  act  of  faith.  A  skirling  bassoon  melody  ushers  us  into  the  prime- 
val world  of  Scythia,  long  before  Christianity  came  to  give  it  his- 
tory. Now,  technical  analyses  of  music  are  too  often  nothing  but 
the  most  unpalatable  dry  bones,  but  it  happens  that  Nicolas  Slo- 
nimsky,  analyzing  Le  Sacre  in  his  invaluable  chronicle,  Music  Since 
y  manages  to  communicate  the  very  essence  of  this  masterpiece. 


Part  i:  Kiss  of  the  Earth,  opening  with  a  high-register  bassoon  solo,  the 
tune  being  derived  from  a  Lithuanian  song;  Spring  Fortune-telling,  in 
stamping  duple  time;  Dance  of  the  Womenfolk,  on  a  melody  within  the 
range  of  a  fifth,  characteristic  of  Stravinsky's  stylized  Russian  the- 
matics;  The  Game  of  Kidnaping,  brusque  and  crude,  with  unperiodic  ex- 
plosive chords;  Spring  Rounds,  a  syncopated  march-tune,  opening  and 
closing  with  six  bars  of  serene  folk  song  in  unison;  Game  of  Two  Cities, 
poly  tonal  and  polyrhythmic;  Procession  of  the  Oldest  and  Wisest  Men,  with 
a  stultifying  persistent  figure  in  the  brass;  Dance  of  the  Earth,  in  triple 
time  with  unperiodic  blasts  against  a  quartal  motto  on  a  firm  pedalpoint 
C.  Part  2:  The  Great  Sacrifice  >  opening  with  a  tortuous  introduction  in 
subdued  orchestral  colors;  Mysterious  Games  of  Toung  Maidens,  in  a  poly- 
harmonic  major-minor  mode,  in  soft  coloring,  ending  in  an  eleven-times- 
repeated  chord  in  heavy  beats;  The  Glorification  of  the  Chosen,  in  uneven 
meters,  with  the  eighth-note  as  a  constant,  dynamically  and  rhythmic- 
ally vitalized  into  a  frenzied  dance;  Evocation  of  the  Ancestors,  slow  and 
elementally  crude;  Rites  of  Old  Men,  Human  Forebears,  on  D  as  a  keynote, 
with  a  sinuous  chromatic  English-horn  solo  against  a  rhythmic  duple- 
time  motion;  Great  Sacred  Dance,  in  ternary  form  with  a  sixteenth-note  as 
a  constant  in  the  first  and  third  part  and  eighth-note  rhythm  in  the 
middle  section;  Sostenuto  e  Maestoso,  with  a  quarter  note  as  a  unit,  in 
triplets  or  duplets,  interrupted  by  a  quotation  from  the  Sacred  Dance, 
which  finally  returns  in  constantly  changing  meters  of  i,  52,  3,  4,  5  six- 
teenth-notes in  a  bar,  until,,  .after  a  scratch  of  a  Cuban  guiro,  used  here 


STRAVINSKY  6oi 

for  the  first  time  in  European  orchestral  music,  and  a  fertilizing  run  of 
the  piccolo,  the  orchestra  comes  to  rest  on  the  kev-note  D.  with  the 
tritone-note  G  sharp  on  top.* 

The  Great  Sacred  Dance,  in  which  the  scapegoat  maiden  dances 
herself  to  death,  is  the  high-water  mark  beyond  which  the  brutal 
modern  technique  has  not  gone,  possibly  cannot  go.  Its  constantly 
changing  rhythms  thudded  out  in  screaming,  searing  discords  en- 
gender a  physical  agitation  in  the  listener  that  is  closely  akin  to 
sexual  excitation,  acting  chiefly  on  atavistic,  deeply  veneered  strata 
of  being.  Music,  beginning  with  the  rewritten  Venusberg  scene 
from  Tannhauser,  and  proceeding  through  Tristan  und  Isolde  to  much 
of  Strauss  and  the  now  unheard  tone  poems  of  Alexander  Scriabin, 
was  tending  inevitably  to  this  glorification  of  the  physical,  and  for 
decades  was  busily  stripping  away  veil  after  veil  of  respectability. 
Once  Stravinsky  had  completed  the  process,  imitators  were  quick 
to  take  a  hint.  For  instance,  Prokofiev's  clever  but  derivative  Scy- 
thian Suite  came  a  year  later  than  Le  Sacre.  But  gradually,  music 
(largely  under  Stravinsky's  own  tutelage)  has  been  turning  away 
from  these  scandals  to  desiccated  forms  of  experimentation  which, 
momentarily  at  least,  seem  to  remain  localized  in  the  laboratory  of 
the  past.  It  is  not  a  little  odd  that  Stravinsky,  whose  pantheistic 
vision  reduces  Wordsworth's  or  Thoreau's  to  spongecake,  should 
have  become  the  leading  medium  in  those  ectoplasmic  spinnings- 
out  which  have  thus  far  characterized  the  career  of  musical  neo- 
classicism.  Because  Le  Sacre  is  Stravinsky's  overtowering  master- 
piece, everything  he  has  done  since  is  necessarily  something  of  an 
anticlimax.  But  the  anticlimax  is  most  depressing  when  he  is  in  full 
flight  from  the  genii  he  uncorked  in  Le  Sacre,  and  retreating  head- 
long into  the  arms  of  Tchaikovsky,  Pergolesi,  Handel,  and  Bach. 
As  his  artistic  remorse  becomes  unbearable,  it  may  be  that  he  will 
go  farther,  and  retreat  into  Palestrina,  Des  Pres,  and  Jubal. 

Before  Stravinsky  went  off  into  those  experiments  in  pure 
rhythm  which  were  clearly  prognosticated  by  Le  Sacre  he  com- 
pleted the  opera  he  had  begun  in  1908.  He  had  written  but  one 
act  ofLe  Rossignol  then,  and  it  was  only  in  1914  that  he  found  time 
to  compose  the  last  two  acts.  Meanwhile,  a  lot  of  water  had  gone 
under  the  bridge,  and  there  was  a  huge  disparity  between  the 

*  Quoted  by  kind  permission  of  Mr.  Slonlmsky's  publishers,  W.  W.  Norton  and 
Company. 


602  MEN     OF     MUSIC 

styles  of  Act  I  and  Acts  II  and  III — far  more  disparity  than  was 
required  by  the  change  in  scene  and  mood  in  the  Hans  Christian 
Andersen  fairy  story.  Although  Diaghilev  gave  Le  Rossignol  a  sump- 
tuous mounting,  the  opera  was  not  a  success.  Then  Diaghilev  sug- 
gested staging  it  as  a  ballet.  But  Stravinsky  said  no:  he  would,  in- 
stead, take  material  from  the  last  two  acts,  and  adapt  it  as  a 
symphonic  poem  that  could  be  used  for  a  ballet.  This  was  Le  Chant 
du  rossignol,  a  glittering  simulacrum  of  real  Chinese  music,  the 
composer's  last  fling  with  the  musical  paintpot.  Hereafter  his  color 
was  to  be  applied  gingerly  and,  in  many  places,  to  be  reduced  to 
black  and  white.  Le  Chant  du  rossignol  is  attractive  picture-book 
music,  and  is  unduly  neglected. 

Beginning  with  Trois  Puces  pour  quatuor  a  cordes,  composed  in 
1914,  for  nine  years  Stravinsky  sent  forth  from  his  studio  a  series 
of  small  compositions  that  have  the  air  of  being  experiments  with 
one  or  more  aspects  of  musical  technique.  As  these  bloodless  frag- 
ments appeared,  they  were  greeted  by  Cocteau,  Boris  de  Schloezer 
(who  had  constituted  himself  Stravinskyographer  extraordinary), 
and  other  less  talented  but  equally  thuriferous  critics  with  clouds 
of  incense  that  simultaneously  gave  the  occasions  a  religious  tinge, 
and  served  to  obscure  the  paltriness  of  the  music.  According  to 
these  official  communiques  from  the  Etoile  sector,  it  seemed  that 
Stravinsky  had  always  just  completed  a  masterpiece  that  would 
alter  the  whole  face  of  music.  In  1918  it  was  UHistoire  du  soldat  that 
was  crowned  by  the  Academic  Cocteau;  in  1920  it  was  Pukimlla,  in 
1922  Le  Renard.  Le  Soldat  and  Renard  were  experiments  in  timbres 
and  rhythm;  Puldnella  was  an  experiment  in  melodies  (since  Stra- 
vinsky had  so  few  of  his  own  he  used  Pergolesi's) .  Poor,  half-starved 
things  that  they  were,  they  have  scarcely  had  the  energy  to  last 
thirty  years.  The  best  parts  of  them,  the  parts  when  they  are  sud- 
denly galvanized  into  life,  are  evidence  that  at  moments  Stra- 
vinsky realized  he  was  a  Russian.  The  one-act  Mama  (1922),  for 
instance,  delightfully  echoes  Glinka  and  Tchaikovsky* 

In  a  somewhat  different  category  is  Les  Noces  villageoises,  a  secular 
ballet-oratorio,  first  performed  in  Paris  in  June,  1923.  This  tale  of 
a  Russian  village  wedding,  though  it  began  as  more  experimenta- 
tion in  timbre  and  rhythm — Stravinsky  discarded  several  instru- 
mentatio^is  (including  one  with  mechanical  pianos,  which  were 
found  impracticable)  before  hitting  on  the  final  one — ended  up  as 


STRAVINSKY  603 

something  far  more  formidable.  It  is  scored  for  four  pianos,  seven- 
teen percussion  instruments,  solo  voices,  and  chorus.  Some  have 
called  Les  Noces  Stravinsky's  masterpiece.  It  is,  for  perhaps  half  its 
length,  as  exciting  as  a  tribal  chant.  After  that,  its  lack  of  color 
palls,  its  insistent  rhythms  numb  rather  than  excite,  and  the  voices 
distort  the  delicate  balance  of  timbres.  They  become  overpromi- 
nent,  inescapable,  exacerbating.  It  may  be  said  that  it  was  exactly 
this  maddening  iteration  at  which  Stravinsky  was  aiming:  if  so,  he 
has  succeeded.  But  whereas  Le  Sacre  maddens  and  exhilarates,  Les 
Noces  maddens  and  leaves  you  exhausted.  This  is  sensationalism 
pure  and  simple,  and  it  is  all  very  cleverly  done.  In  Les  Noces  Stra- 
vinsky has  interpreted  the  idea  of  catharsis  not  as  a  purging  of  the 
blacker  humors,  but  as  a  draining  of  vitality.  It  is  precisely  a 
deathly  work. 

Stravinsky's  feverish  search  for  the  new,  constant  change  of 
technique,  and  bald  refusal  to  repeat  himself  make  the  comparison 
with  Picasso  inevitable.  Both  are  expatriates  from  countries  with 
strong  folk  traditions:  both  men  became  Parisians  and,  by  exten- 
sion, internationalists.  Here  the  comparison  ends.  Picasso  is  a  tire- 
less experimenter  in  new  techniques  and  new  styles,  and  has  as 
wholly  discarded  his  Spanishness  as  Stravinsky  his  Russianness. 
But  the  painter,  though  he  may  not  produce  an  immortal  work  of 
art  each  time  he  changes  his  manner,  shrewdly  knows  that  the  new 
canvases  can  be  accepted  or  rejected  at  a  glance  by  the  sophisti- 
cated eye,  which,  after  all,  is  the  only  eye  he  paints  for.  The  mu- 
sician contrarily  has  failed  to  realize  that  the  sophisticated  ear  has 
a  limit  of  toleration.  It  can  take  in  an  almost  unlimited  amount  of 
discord,  polyrhythm,  atonality,  and  novel  timbre,  but  it  cannot, 
will  not,  endure  for  long  the  musical  analogues  of  a  Picasso  puzzle. 
Stravinsky's  refusal  to  admit  this  handicap  of  a  temporal  art  is  odd 
if  not  stupid.  His  later  compositions  have  a  limited  meaning  to  the 
unaided  ear,  however  sophisticated:  to  be  fully  understood,  they 
would  need  perfectly  trained  groups  of  listeners,  each  equipped 
with  a  full  score.  Obviously,  this  is  not  one  of  the  desiderata  of  a 
sensual  art. 

With  Les  Noces>  Stravinsky's  interest  in  the  nerve-twisting  possi- 
bilities of  rhythmic  pulse  culminated.  Worse  was  to  follow.  Having 
devitalized  his  audiences  in  Les  Noces.>  he  now  proceeded  to  de- 
vitalize himself.  His  principal  aim  in  most  of  the  compositions  he 


604  MEN     OF     MUSIC 

has  written  since  1 923  seems  to  have  been  to  make  them  sound  as 
little  as  possible  like  those  on  which  his  reputation  had  been 
founded.  It  has  been  a  difficult  task,  but  in  some  of  them  he  aas 
done  it  flawlessly.  The  composer's  retreat  into  the  past — away  from 
both  his  achievements  and  his  experiments — began  with  the  Octuor 
(1923),  and  by  the  time  of  the  Piano  Sonata,  the  following  year, 
he  no  longer  looked  over  Ms  shoulder.  A  landmark,  or  a  tomb- 
stone, along  this  tragic  road  of  misguided  genius  is  Oedipus  Rex,  a 
pompous,  turgid,  and  altogether  prolix  opera-oratorio,  after  Soph- 
ocles— and  Handel.  Cocteau  made  a  fine  translation  of  the  Greek 
play  into  French,  and  then  his  version  was  translated  into  Latin  by 
the  Rumanian  poet,  Jean  Danielou. 

Let  us  hear  Stravinsky's  own  explanation  of  this  piece  of  what 
the  old  Comtesse  de  Pourtales  would  have  been  justified  in  calling 
"mystification":  "What  a  joy  it  is  to  compose  music  to  a  language 
of  convention,  almost  of  ritual,  the  very  nature  of  which  imposes  a 
lofty  dignity!  One  no  longer  feels  dominated  by  the  phrase,  the 
literal  meaning  of  the  words.  .  .  .  The  text  then  becorres  purely 
phonetic  material  for  the  composer.  He  can  dissect  it  at  will  and 
concentrate  all  his  attention  on  its  primary  constituent  elements — 
that  is  to  say,  on  the  syllable.  Was  not  this  method  of  treating  the 
text  that  of  the  old  masters  of  austere  style?"  The  answer  to  Stra- 
vinsky's rhetorical  question  is  no.  Stravinsky  was  using  Latin  be- 
cause it  was  denatured  of  meaning;  Palestrina  (who  may  fairly  be 
taken  as  one  of  the  "old  masters")  was  using  Latin  because  it  was 
fraught  with  the  most  profound  meanings  and  emotions  he  knew. 

It  seemed,  in  the  two  ballets  that  followed  Oedipus  Rex,  that 
Stravinsky  was  faced  with  complete  loss  of  creative  potency.  Apol- 
lon  Musagete  is  an  inane  group  of  musical  statuary,  Le  Baiser  de  la  fee 
a  nosegay  of  weakest  scent  "inspired  by  the  Muse  of  Tchaikovsky," 
and  quoting  some  of  Piotr  Ilyich's  most  sentimental  trivia.  But  in 
1929  came  the  Gapriccio  for  piano  and  orchestra  that  could,  at  the 
moment,  have  been  interpreted  either  as  a  sign  of  real  life  or  as  the 
last  galvanic  spasm  of  a  dead  man.  There  is  a  quality  in  it  that 
might  be  called  a  memory  of  emotion:  otherwise,  the  Capriccio  is 
facile,  clever,  and  pallid.  The  hope  that  the  Capriccio  was  indeed 
a  symptom  of  life  was  quickened  the  next  year — 1930 — when  the 
Brussels  Philharmonic  Orchestra  gave  the  world  premiere  of  the 
Symphonie  de  psaumes.  Stravinsky,  with  a  complete  lack  of  humor, 


STRAVINSKY  605 

had  put  on  the  title  page  "composed  for  the  glory  of  God  and  dedi- 
cated to  the  Boston  Symphony  on  the  occasion  of  the  fiftieth  anni- 
versary of  its  existence."*  It  is  a  setting  for  chorus  and  orchestra 
of  Latin  versions  of  the  thirty-eighth,  thirty-ninth,  and  fortieth 
Psalms,  the  first  two  fragmentarily,  the  last  in  Mo.  As  Stravinsky  is 
an  intensely  religious  man,  it  seemed  reasonable  to  suppose  that  he 
would  have  written  deeply  felt  religious  music,  which — despite  his 
many  pronouncements  against  emotional  content  in  music — might 
move  the  listener  as  well  as  the  composing  artist.  Actually,  except 
in  those  portions  when  his  sheer  musical  talent  momentarily  re- 
leased him  from  the  grip  of  his  own  esthetic,  the  Symphonic  de 
psaumes  must  be  chalked  up  as  just  another  experiment.  For  two 
movements,  the  good  things  are  spaced  closely  enough  to  make  it 
impressive,  and  occasionally  moving,  as  nothing  of  Stravinsky's 
had  been  since  Les  Noces.  The  third  movement  has  been  dismissed 
by  some  critics  as  sentimental  trifling:  this  would  in  itself  be  egre- 
gious in  a  setting  of  the  fortieth  Psalm.  But  the  sad  truth  is  that 
even  the  sentimentality  is  not  genuine.  It  rings  about  as  true  as 
the  halo  Del  Sarto  put  about  the  head  of  his  peasant  mistress 
when  he  was  manufacturing  a  religious  picture. 

Despite  its  lapses,  its  blotches  of  bad  taste,  the  Symphonic  de 
psaumes  kept  hope  alive  for  the  patient.  After  all,  he  was  only 
forty-eight  years  old.  In  October,  1931,  Stravinsky  went  to 
Berlin  to  conduct  the  premiere  of  his  Violin  Concerto,  his  first 
big  instrumental  composition  for  several  years.  The  soloist  was 
the  American  violinist  Samuel  Dushkin,  who  for  a  long  time  was 
to  be  closely  associated  with  him,  rather  in  the  role  of  violinist 
extraordinary.  This  quietly  forbidding  composition,  interesting 
for  its  variety  of  technical  resourcefulness,  again  minimized  ex- 
pressiveness. In  1941,  combined  with  George  Balanchine's  most 
self-consciously  mannered  choreography,  the  Violin  Concerto,, 
metamorphosed  into  a  ballet  called  Balustrade^  came  close  to 
creating  a  riot  at  the  last  of  its  few  New  York  performances. 
Balustrade  soon  vanished  from  the  repertoire  (despite  the  worship- 
ful regard  of  a  few),  and  the  Concerto  itself  is  almost  never 
revived. 

In  1932,  again  for  Dushkin,  Stravinsky  produced  his  Duo 

*  Naturally,  Dr.  Koussevitsky  was  to  have  had  the  privilege  of  first  presenting  the 
Symphonie  to  the  world.  But  he  fell  ill,  and  the  Brussels  group  got  ahead  of  him. 


606  MEN     OF     MUSIC 

Concertant,  one  of  the  most  impressive  offerings  of  his  neoclassic 
muse.  This  extremely  difficult  five-movement  piece  for  violin  and 
piano,  which  more  recently  has  been  brilliantly  interpreted  by 
Joseph  Szigeti,  shows  the  composer  momentarily  losing  his  war 
against  expressiveness.  Was  it  not  inevitable,  finally,  that  he — 
who  had  omitted  strings  from  his  Piano  Concerto  eight  years 
before  as  being  "too  expressive" — should  surrender  inadvertently 
to  their  romantic  seductions?  It  was  but  a  half-surrender: 
especially  in  the  first  four  movements  of  the  Duo  Goncertant  the 
idiom  and  esthetic  are  still  astringent.  And  in  the  final  movement 
— a  Dithyrambe — the  exalted,  hieratic  mood  that  is  achieved 
reserves  a  classicist's  dignity. 

Still  exploring  the  violin,  Stravinsky,  with  Dushkin  as  his 
colleague,  arranged  for  violin  and  piano  parts  of  the  Diverti- 
mento he  had  fashioned  earlier  from  the  score  of  Le  Baiser  de  la 
fee.  In  the  process,  he  refined  the  original  inspiration  and 
strengthened  its  expression,  though  it  is  still  a  trifle  embarrassing 
to  hear  Tchaikovsky's  Humoresque  anatomized  by  modern  har- 
monies. A  parallel  operation  was  performed  on  the  corpus  vivendi 
of  Pulcinella,  giving  to  that  witty  commentary  on  Pergolesi  a  new 
and  different  life  in  a  piece  for  violin  and  piano  called  Suite 
italienne.  Whatever  the  separate  virtues  of  these  various  enter- 
prises, only  the  Duo  Concertant  manifested  continuing  creative- 
ness. 

In  1933,  at  the  request  of  Ida  Rubinstein,  Stravinsky  set  Andre 
Gide's  version  of  the  Homeric  Hymn  to  Demeter  as  Persephone,  a 
melodrama  in  three  parts  for  orchestra,  chorus,  tenor,  and  a 
female  speaking  voice.  Stravinsky  himself  conducted  its  premiere 
at  the  Paris  Opera.  When  people  began  to  discuss  and  criticize, 
he  said:  ccThere  is  nothing  to  discuss  or  criticize."  Then,  explain- 
ing that  Persephone  was  "a  sequel  to  Oedipus  Rex,  to  the  Symphonie 
de  psaumes,  to  the  Capriccio,  the  Violin  Concerto,  and  the  Duo 
Concertant — in  short,  to  a  progression  from  which  the  spectacu- 
lar is  absent,"  he  proceeded  to  instruct  the  critics.  "One  does  not 
criticize  anybody  or  anything  that  is  functioning,"  he  said.  "A 
nose  is  not  manufactured;  a  nose  just  is.  Thus,  too,  my  art." 
But  a  critic's  business  is  precisely  to  notice  whether  anybody  or 
anything  is  functioning  ill  or  well,  and  a  critic  may  properly 


STRAVINSKY  607 

observe  that  Persephone  is  a  vast  bore  despite  its  distinguished 
ancestry. 

Stravinsky's  return  to  the  ballet,  signalized  by  the  premiere  of 
The  Card  Party  at  the  Metropolitan  Opera  House,  New  York,  on 
April  27,  1937,  was  almost  as  disappointing  as  Le  Baiser  de  la  fee 
nine  years  earlier.  This  entertainment  "in  three  deals,"  repre- 
senting the  actual  course  of  three  poker  hands,  is  as  trivial, 
and  not  nearly  so  charming,  as  Delibes*  most  obscure  and 
forgotten  ballet.  On  the  other  hand,  Stravinsky's  acceptance  of  a 
commission  to  compose  a  band  accompaniment  for  the  frolics  of 
Ringling  Brothers-Barnum  &  Bailey's  elephants  led,  in  1942,  to 
some  amusing  results.  Billed  as  "Fifty  Elephants  and  Fifty 
Beautiful  Girls  in  an  Original  Choreographic  Tour  de  Force," 
this  diversion  was  directed  by  George  Balanchine,  staged  by 
John  Murray  Anderson,  and  costumed — down  to  the  pachy- 
derms' vast  pink  tutus — by  Norman  Bel  Geddes.  Newspaper 
reports  had  it  that  the  elephants,  unable  to  follow  the  intricacies 
of  the  score,  expressed  their  dislike  of  it  in  some  subtle  elephantine 
way.  In  truth,  the  music  was  all  but  lost  in  the  pervasive  clamor 
of  the  circus.  But  Stravinsky,  always  economical  with  every 
composed  measure,  revised  it  for  symphony  orchestra  as  Circus 
Polka. 

The  elephant  ballet  was  a  far  cry  from  the  savagery  of  Le  Sacre 
du  printemps.  Stravinsky's  next  alliance  with  commercial  enter- 
tainment had  a  happier  outcome.  To  Billy  Rose's  order  he 
fashioned,  for  a  lamentable  revue  entitled  The  Seven  Lively  Arts, 
a  score  for  displaying  the  talents  of  Alicia  Markova  and  Anton 
Dolin.  What  audiences  at  the  refurbished  Ziegfeld  Theatre  in 
New  York  heard  in  1 944  was  snippets  of  the  entire  suite.  Divorced 
from  the  longueurs  incident  on  Dolin's  boring  choreography, 
Scenes  de  ballet  easily  established  its  autonomy.  It  is  average  latter- 
day  Stravinsky  with  a  few  moments  of  graciousness  (scarcely  a 
Stravinskyan  quality)  in  the  midst  of  its  clever  aridities.* 

Between  Circus  Polka  and  Scenes  de  ballet  Stravinsky  had,  how- 
ever, composed  one  of  his  most  satisfactory  and  sensitive  ballets — 
Danses  concertantes.  Written  in  1942,  heard  the  next  year  in 

*Not  very  clever  is  the  Ebony  Concerto  written  in  1945  for  the  jazz  orchestra  of 
Woody  Herman.  The  music  suffers  from  a  case  of  borborygmus  so  bad  that  early 
death  is  almost  certain. 


608  MEN     OF     MUSIC 

concert  form  (it  was  originally  conceived  as  a  sort  of  concerto 
grosso  for  twenty-four  virtuoso  string  players),  and  not  finally 
danced  until  1944,  this  music  gave  Balanchine  the  perfect 
medium  for  a  profound  and  consistently  adult  exploitation  of 
abstract  ideas.  Danses  concertantes  is  not  only  a  Balanchine  master- 
piece; it  is  also  Stravinsky's  most  successful  solution  in  neoclassic 
style  of  the  problem  of  communication.  It  shows  him  still 
primarily  intellectual,  but  passionately  so.  The  human  is  not 
easily  abstractable  from  this  music,  but  it  glows  with  a  white 
radiance. 

Less  human,  and  at  times  forbidding,  is  Dumbarton  Oaks,  a 
concerto  grosso  in  E  flat  for  chamber  orchestra  that  Stravinsky 
composed  in  1 938  to  celebrate  the  thirtieth  wedding  anniversary 
of  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Robert  Woods  Bliss,  after  whose  Washington, 
D.  C.,  manor  house  it  was  named.  Chiefly  a  series  of  experiments 
in  rhythms  and  timbres,  this  scholarly  puce  (T  occasion  not  inappro- 
priately had  its  first  hearing  in  a  house  that  has  since  become  the 
chief  seat  of  Byzantine  studies  in  America.  Like  Byzantine  art, 
Dumbarton  Oaks  can  fascinate  those  whose  sophistication  is 
tempted  only  by  the  most  recondite  flavors. 

In  1940,  Stravinsky  returned  to  the  symphony,  a  form  he  had 
not  worked  with  for  almost  thirty-five  years.*  The  fiftieth 
anniversary  of  the  Chicago  Symphony  Orchestra  was  to  occur  in 
1941,  and  the  Symphony  in  C  was  composed  to  celebrate  that 
event.  Far  from  being  festive,  it  is  reserved  and  elegant,  a  formal 
and  deliberate  reminiscence  of  the  classical  symphony.  But,  as 
Virgil  Thomson  wrote,  "...  in  spite  of  his  almost  academic 
intentions,  the  Russian  ballet-master  in  him  does  take  over  from 
time  to  time.  Indeed,  what  breath  the  piece  has  is  due  to  the 
incompleteness  of  its  voluntary  stylization."  All  in  all,  the 
Symphony  in  C  is  true  caviar  to  the  general,  and  the  rumor  that 
Stokowski's  playing  it  on  the  air  caused  his  break  with  the  NBC 
Symphony  Orchestra  is  all  too  plausible. 

Dedicated  ccto  the  Philharmonic-Symphony  Society  of  New 
York  as  an  homage  and  appreciation  of  my  twenty  years' 
association  with  that  eminent  institution,"  the  Symphony  in 

*  The  Symphonic  depsaumes  need  not  be  excepted:  it  is  sui  generis.  The  Symphonies 
for  wind  instruments  in  memory  of  Claude  Debussy  (1920)  do  not,  in  the  ordinary 
sense,  constitute  a  symphony  at  all. 


STRAVINSKY  609 

Three  Movements  followed  the  Symphony  in  C  five  years  later 
(1945).  Ingolf  Dahl,  Stravinsky's  friend  and  associate,  had  pro- 
fessed to  find  in  the  Symphony  in  C  irony,  wit,  and  playfulness. 
In  strains  reminiscent  of  the  panegyrics  of  Boris  de  Schloezer  and 
Jean  Cocteau,  he  wrote  of  the  Symphony  in  Three  Movements: 
"But  now  it  is  not  the  kothurnus  of  Greek  tragedy  on  which  the 
composer  stands,  as  in  Oedipus  Rex  or  Duo  Concertant,  but  the 
soil  of  the  world  of  1 945.  One  day  it  will  be  universally  recognized 
that  the  white  house  in  the  Hollywood  hills  [where  he  now  lives 
with  his  second  wife,  the  first  Mme  Stravinsky  having  died  some 
time  before]  in  which  this  Symphony  was  written  and  which  was 
regarded  by  some  as  an  ivory  tower  was  just  as  close  to  the  core 
of  a  world  at  war  as  the  place  where  Picasso  painted  Guernica" 
Anyone  who  has  seen  Guernica  and  heard  the  Symphony  in 
Three  Movements  may  decide  for  himself  on  the  merits  of  this 
comparison,  which  nevertheless  says  nothing  about  the  music 
itself.  Its  fury,  unlike  Picasso's,  lacks  validity,  and  the  self-con- 
sciousness of  its  technical  efficiency  too  often  impinges  upon  the 
sympathetic  listener. 

For  a  man  who  was  certainly  the  most  gifted  composer  of  his 
generation,  the  rest  of  Stravinsky's  recent  output  is  mostly  a  tally 
of  trivial  and  disappointing  essays  and  rearrangements.  The 
Sonata  for  Two  Pianos  is  among  the  best  of  his  later  inventions, 
of  immense  interest  to  the  musical  exegete.  But  in  works  like  Four 
Norwegian  Moods  (1942),  originally  intended  for  a  Broadway 
review,  and  the  Ode  composed  in  1 943  in  honor  of  the  late  Mme 
Nathalie  Koussevitzky,  Stravinsky  falls  below  those  standards 
which,  however  chill  and  arid,  are  by  their  very  loftiness  some- 
how admirable.  The  Four  Norwegian  Moods  are  full  of  half-dis- 
solved saccharin:  it  is  truly  astonishing  that  they  could  have  come 
from  Stravinsky's  pen. 

The  Concerto  in  D  for  strings  (i  946),  composed  for  a  chamber 
group  in  Basle,  and  therefore  often  referred  to  as  the  "Basle" 
Concerto,  again  showed  that  the  patient  was  by  no  means  dead. 
It  has  one  quality  conspicuously  lacking  in  the  works  that  im- 
mediately preceded  it:  vitality.  Yet  it  was  not  of  the  quality  to 
prepare  the  hopeful  watchers  for  the  truly  remarkable  flare-up 
that  took  place  in  1947.  Using  the  much-used  story  of  Orpheus 
and  Eurydice  (its  very  time-eaten  substance  gave  edge  to  the 


6lO  MEN     OF     MUSIC 

challenge),  Stravinsky  concocted  the  beautiful  and  touching 
score  of  the  ballet  Orpheus.  By  his  infallible  sensitivity  to  the 
nature  of  the  dance,  he  again  triumphantly  proved  himself  a 
great  man  of  the  theater,  his  perfect  adjutant  beipg  one  equally 
sensitive  to  the  nature  of  music — the  great  choreographer  George 
Balanchine.  Here,  better  late  than  never,  is  a  mellow  Stravinsky, 
in  effect  willing  to  admit  that  his  battle  against  expressiveness 
has  been  lost,  a  battle  against  his  own  nature,  as  Orpheus  proves. 
The  Stravinsky  of  five  years  before  would  never  have  composed 
these  tender,  pleading  musical  strophes,  so  suave  and  yet  so 
persuasive.  The  elegance  to  which  he  had  seemingly  bade  fare- 
well is  one  of  the  positively  cohesive  elements  of  the  score.  As 
presented  by  Ballet  Society  in  New  York  on  April  28,  1948,  it 
was  one  of  the  great  occasions  of  the  modern  theater. 

The  simile  Stravinsky-as-patient  should  not  be  pressed  too  far, 
for  it  would  necessitate  calling  theLatinMassfor  mixed  chorus  and 
ten  wind  instruments  (i  948)  a  relapse.  Truly  it  is  a  crabbed  piece, 
musically  more  Byzantine  than  Latin  in  its  stiff  lack  of  recogniz- 
able contour  and  plastic  mobility.  At  its  American  premiere  on 
February  26,  1 949,  it  was  sung  twice,  but  did  not  seem  any  more 
accessible  at  the  repetition.  Perhaps  Orpheus  has  supplied  the 
final  necessary  proof  that  Stravinsky  only  comes  fully  to  life  in 
the  ambiance  of  the  theater.  If  so,  his  collaboration  with  the 
Anglo- American  poet  Wystan  Hugh  Auden  on  an  opera  may  have 
great  results.  The  theme  is  derived  from  Hogarth's  great  series  of 
pictorial  satires,  The  Rake's  Progress.  The  vividness  and  variety  of 
the  material  seem  in  advance  peculiarly  suited  to  Stravinsky's 
adaptability  as  a  theatrical  artist,  and  his  first  setting  of  English 
words  should  prove  an  interesting  experiment.  It  is  said  that  the 
opera  may  come  to  production  in  1951. 

It  is  fascinating  to  ponder  the  strange  arc  of  Stravinsky's  career. 
Many  explanations  have  been  advanced,  all  with  grains  of  truth 
in  them.  Stravinsky  is  a  complex  personality,  and  it  is  not  easy  to 
chart  the  future  course  of  his  career  or  explain  the  vagaries  of  his 
past.  Some  have  said  that  Diaghilev  acted  as  his  Svengali,  and 
that  Stravinsky's  vitality  waned  with  Diaghilev's.  There  are  those 
who  say  that  quite  the  opposite  was  the  case,  and  that,  by  focus- 
ing Stravinsky's  attention  on  rhythm  (the  prime  requisite  of  ballet 
music),  Diaghilev  precipitated  the  drying  up  of  his  creative 


STRAVINSKY  6x1 

powers.  They  insist  that  Stravinsky  had  little  melodic  gift  to  start 
with,  and  that  rhythmic  preoccupation  sapped  that  little.  There 
can  be  no  doubt,  too,  that  expatriation  hurt  Stravinsky.  Russians 
must  go  back.  Even  the  Paris-loving  Turgeniev  went  back,  and 
we  have  seen  the  onetime  internationalist  Prokofiev  returning  to 
the  Soviet  Union  with  happy  results.  But  the  Russian  Revolution 
completed  Stravinsky's  estrangement  from  his  native  land.  He 
became  a  French  citizen  in  1934,  an  American  citizen  in  1945.* 
The  natural  tendency  in  discussing  the  composer  of  music 
so  frequently  dehumanized,  is  to  forget  the  personal  element 
completely.  Yet  Stravinsky  is  by  no  means  a  Martian.  There  are 
plenty  of  Americans  who  remember  his  first  visit  to  our  shores  in 
1 925,  when  he  seemed  like  a  herald  angel,  like  the  harbinger  of  a 
new  dispensation  in  art.  Despite  his  unpoetical  resemblance  on 
the  podium  to  a  trained  seal,  one  was  tempted  to  say  of  the 
composer  of  Petrouchka  and  Le  Sacre,  <£I  too  have  once  seen  Shelley 
plain."  Since  the  fall  of  1 939  he  has  been  domiciled  in  America — a 
little,  hurried  man,  awkward  in  his  gestures  and  looking  myopi- 
cally  from  behind  horn-rimmed  spectacles  Alas,  alas !  we  should 
have  seen  it  on  his  first  visit:  Stravinsky  looks  like  a  business- 
man, and  nothing  else.  It  is  difficult  to  think  of  him  as  the  com- 
poser of  indubitable  masterpieces,  even  more  difficult  to  think  of 
him  as  holding  the  future  of  music  in  his  (much  photographed) 
hands.  But  when  he  takes  up  the  baton,  and  begins  to  conduct 
Orpheus.,  he  declares  that  some  of  the  future  of  music  still  belongs 
to  him. 

*  Stravinsky  may  have  been  looking  forward  to  his  American  citizenship  when, 
in  1942,  he  made  an  arrangement  for  orchestra  of  The  Star -Spangled  Banner.  A 
puzzled  Boston  Symphony  audience  tried  vainly  to  co-operate  in  its  premiere  at 
Symphony  Hall,  Boston,  on  January  14, 1944,  but  the  plot  line  soon  got  beyond  their 
powers.  Apparently  Stravinsky  had  approached  the  anthem  reverently.  "I  gave  it 
the  character  of  a  real  church  hymn,"  he  explained,  "not  that  of  a  soldier's  march- 
ing song  or  a  club  song,  as  it  was  originally.  I  tried  to  express  the  religious  feelings  of 
the  people  of  America."  Nevertheless,  he  had  offended  the  mores  of  Massachusetts: 
Boston  Police  Commissioner  Thomas  F.  Sullivan  warned  him  that  he  had  made 
himself  liable  to  a  $100  fine  under  an  old  state  law  forbidding  rearrangements,  in 
whole  or  in  part,  of  the  national  anthem.  No  action  was  taken,  but  Stravinsky  did 
not  again  invite  the  law — his  Star-Spangled  Banner  has  not  been  heard  since. 


Index 


A  travers  Chants  (Berlioz),  360 
Abraham,  Gerald  (1904-    ),  598 
Academic  Festival  Overture  (Brahms), 

494 

Acis  and  Galatea  (Gay),  65 
Adam,  Adolphe-Charles  (1803-56),  368 
Adams,  Henry  (1838-1918),  243 
Adams,  John  Quincy  (1767-1848),  243 
Addison,  Joseph  (1673—1719),  60 
Aeneid  (Virgil),  367 
Aeschylus  (525-456),  85 
Agoult,  Charles,  Comte  d*  (1816-?),  341 
Agoult,      Marie-Catherine-Sophie      de 

Flavigny,  Corntesse  d'  (Daniel  Stern) 

1805-76),  244,  329,  377,  378,  379,  380, 

381,  385,  389,  431 
Aguado,  Alexandre-Marie  (1784-1842), 

240,  243 
Ahna,  Pauline  de,  see  Strauss,  Pauline 

(De  Ahna) 

A'ida  (Verdi),  461,  462-463,  465 
Aix-la-Chapele,   Peace  of,  81 
Albani,    Alessandro,    Cardinal    (1692— 

1779)'  90 
Albeniz,  Isaac  (1860-1909),  20,  388,  552 

Iberia,  552 
Albert  I,  King  of  the  Belgians  (1875- 

1934)'  553 
Albert,   Prince   of   Saxe-Goburg-Gotha, 

the  Prince  Consort  (1819-1861),  284, 

289,  423 
Albert  V,  Duke  of  Bavaria  (1528-1579), 

15,  16,  18 

Albert,  Eugene  d'  (1864-1932),  388,  560 
Alboni,  Marietta  (1823-1894),  246 
Albrechtsberger,  Johann  Georg  (1736- 

1809),  168 

Alceste  (Gluck),  93-94,  98,  105,  138 
Alexander  the  Great,  King  of  Macedon 

(35<5-323)>    159  . 

Alexander    I,    Tsar    of    Russia    (1777- 

1825),  236 
Alexander   II,  Tsar   of  Russia    (1818- 

1881),  460,  514,  518 
Alexander  III,  Tsar  of  Russia  (1845- 

1894),  522,  523-524 
Alexander  VI   (Rodrigo  Borgia),  Pope 

(1431-1503),  6 

Alexander's  Feast  (Dryden),  72-73 
Allegri,  Gregorio  (1582-1652),  130 

Miserere,  130 

Allgemeine  musikalische  Zeitung  (Leip- 
zig), 256,  560,  564-565,  581 
Also      sprach      Zarathustra      (Richard 

Strauss),  562 


Almanack  de  Gotha,  11,  29,  321 
"Alto'*  Rhapsody  (Brahms),  535 
Alva,  Fernando  Alvarez  de  Toledo, 

Duke  of  (1508-1582),  192 
Ambrose,   Bishop   of    Milan,   St.   (340- 

397),  3>  20 

Arnelie  (last  name  unknoira),  371 
Ancient  Mariner.,  The  ("Coleridge),  411 
Andersen,    Hans    Christian    (1805-75), 

602 

Anderson,  Mr.,  423 
Anderson,  Emily,  129 
Anderson,  John  Murray,  607 
Anhalt-Cothen,     Prince     Leopold     of 

(1694-1729),  33,  34,  35,  37,  38 
Anne,  Queen  of  England  (1665—1714), 

59,  61-62 
Anne,  Empress  of  Russia  (1693-1740), 

43 
Annunzio,  Gabriele  d'  (1864—1938),  529, 

55.o>  551 

Antigone  (Sophocles),  283,  285 
Apres-midi  d'un  faune,  U  (Mallarme), 

538 

Arcadian  Academy,  57 
Aristotle  (384—322),  329 
Arnaud,  Abbe  Francois  (1721—1784),  97 
Arnim,   Bettina   Brentano   von    (1785— 

1859),  178,  191,  192,  272,  366 
Arnold,  Matthew  (1822-1888),  329 
Arnould,       Madeleine-Sophie       (1744- 

1802),  96 

Arosa,  Achille-Antoine,  530,  531 
Artot  (de  Padilla),  Desiree  (1835-1907), 

505—506,  512 

As  You  Like  It  (Shakespeare),  545 
Asleep  in  the  Deep  (Petrie),  7 
Athalie  (Racine),  284 
Auber,    Daniel-Francpis-Esprit     (1782— 

1871),  222,  320,  355,  405,  457,  530 
Auden,  Wystan  Hugh  (1907-    ),  610 
Auer,  Leopold  (1845-1930),  518,  520 
Auf  Flugeln  des  Gesanges  (Heine),  278 
Augsburg  Confession,  270 
Augusta,  Empress  of  Germany  (1811- 

1890),  428 

Augustus  II,  King  of  Poland,  see  Sax- 
ony, Friedrich  Augustus  I,  Elector  of 
Augustus  III,  King  of  Poland,  see  Sax- 
ony, Friedrich  Augustus  II,  Elector 
of 

Aurora's  Wedding  (Tchaikovsky),  524 
Auvergne,  Antoine  d'  (1713-1797),  96 
Ave  Maria  (Schubert),  250,  251,  262 
Ave-Lallemant,    Theodor    (1805-1890), 

522 
Avenarius,  Cacilie  (Geyer)  (1813-?),  397 


613 


614 


INDEX 


B 


B  minor  Mass  (Bach),  38,  40,  42,  45-47, 

49,  78,  288 
Bach,  family,  23,  24 
Bach  Gesellschaft,  22-23 
Bach,     Anna      Magdalena      (Wilcken) 

(1701-1760),  35,  38,  44,  52 
Bach,  Johann  Ambrosiiis   (1645-1695), 

24 
Bach,    Johann    Christian    (1735-1782), 

35,  52,  127,  136 
Bach,     Johann     Gottfried     Bernhard 

(WS-iftQ)'  49 

Bach,  Johann  Sebastian  (1685-1750), 
14,  18,  21,  22-52,  53,  55,  63-64,  65, 
69,  70,  76,  82,  84,  104,  124,  153—154, 

l6o,  l6ls  165,  201,  207,  272,  273, 
275,  28l,  282,  283,  289,  291,  294, 
315,  324,  372,  380,  396,  446,  464, 

469,  470,  472,  479,  486,  501,  510, 

601 
B  minor  Mass,  38,  40,  42,  45-47,  49, 

78,  288 
"Brandenburg**  Concertos,  36-37,  63, 

76 
Capriccio  on  the  Departure  of  His 

Beloved  Brother,  27 
Chaconne,    see    Partita    for    violin 

alone  (2nd) 

Christ  lag  in  Totesbanden,  47 
"Coffee"  Cantata,  47 
Concerto,  four  claviers  and  orchestra, 

38 

Concerto,  three  claviers  and  orches- 
tra, 282 

Ein  feste  Burg  ist  unser  Gott,  47 

English  Suites,  36,  37 

French  Suites,  26,  36,  37,  38 

"Goldberg"  Variations,  49 

Gott  ist  mein  Konig,  28 

Gottes  Zeit  ist  allerbeste  Zeit,  31 

Italian  Concerto,  26,  38 

Kunst  der  Fuge,  Die,  51,  200 

Magnificat,  39-40 

Musikalisches  Opfer,  50 

Partita  for  violin  alone  (2nd),  37 

partitas,  clavier,  36,  37 

Passacaglia,  C  minor,  30 

St.  John  Passion,  40-42,  46,  47,  63-64 
Es  ist  vollbracht,  41 

St.  Matthew  Passion,  18,  37,  38,  40, 

41,  42-43*  46»  47^  %  7$>  272-273* 

288 

Singe t  dem  Herrn,  154 
Sonata,  violin  and  piano,  C  major, 

460 
Streit   zwischen  Phoebus   und  Pan, 

Der,  47-48 

Toccata  and  Fugue,  D  minor,  29 
"Vivaldi"  Concertos,  28 
Wachet  aufy  47 


Bach,  Johann  Sebastian — (Continued) 

Was  mir  behagt,  32 

Well-Tempered      Clavichord,      The, 
35~36>  37>  49>  5*>  65>  l65>  294,  315, 
324»  330 
Bach,    Karl    Philipp    Emanuel    (1714- 

1788),  23,  29,  41,  49-50,  52,  104,  105, 

117,  123,  124,  125,  127,  131,  132,  142 
Bach    Maria    Barbara    (Bach)    (1684- 

1720),  28,  30,  35,  44 
Bach,     Wilhelm     Friedemann     (1710- 

1784),  29,  35,  41,  44,  45,  49,  50,  70,  82 
Backer-Grondahl,  Agathe   (1847-1907), 

141 

Baini,  Abbe"  Giuseppe  (1775-1844),  275 
Bakst,   Leon   Nikolaevich    (1868-1924), 

55<> 
Bakunin,  Mikhail  Aleksandrovich 

(1814-1876),  416 
Balakirev,  Mili  Alexeivich  (1837-1910), 

506,  515 
Balanchine,  George  (1904-    ),  605,  607, 

608,  610 

Ballet  Russe  (Diaghilev),  596,  599,  602 
Ballet  Society  (New  York),  610 
Ballo  in  maschera,  Un  (Verdi),  457-458 
Balustrade  (Stravinsky-Balanchine),  605 
Balzac,    Honore"    de    (1799-1850),    239- 

240,  320,  329,  362,  531 
Banck,  Carl  (1809-1889),  299 
Barbaia,    Domenico    (1778-1841),    220, 

229-230,  234,  235 
Barber  of  Seville,  The  (Rossini),  226, 

230-232,  233,  240,  242,  243,  246,  247, 

37°>  466 
Barbier,     Henri- Auguste     (1805-1882), 

355 
Barbier  de  Seville,  Le  (Beaumarchais), 

230 
Barbier  von  Bagdad,  Der  (Cornelius), 

383>  384 

Bardac,  M.,  545,  546 
Bardac,    Emma,    see    Debussy,    Emma 

(Bardac) 
Bardi,    Giovanni,    Conte    del    (1534?- 

1612?),  85 
Barezzi,  Antonio  (1787-1867),  446,  447, 

458,  461 
Barezzi,   Margherita,   see   Verdi,    Mar- 

gherita  (Barezzi) 
Barnum,   Phineas   Taylor   (1810—1891), 

68,  387,  549 

Basticn  und  Bastienne  (Mozart),  128 
Baudelaire,  Pierre-Charles  (1821-1867), 

53°>  540 
Bauernfeld,    Eduard  von    (1802-1890), 

255 
Bavaria,  Karl  Theodor,  Elector  of 

(P-1799),  138 
Bavaria,  Maximilian  III  Josef,  Elector 

.of  (?-i777),  125,  132 
Beard,  John  (i7i6?-i79i),  72 


Beardsley,  Aubrey  (1872-1898),  545 
Beatrice  et  Benedict  (Berlioz),  349,  368, 

369,  370-371 

overture,  370 
Beaumarchais,   Pierre-Augustin   Caron 

de  (1732-1799),  147,  230,  231 
Beauvais  Cathedral,  261 
Becker,  Albert  (1834-1899),  576 
Bedier,  Joseph  (1864-1938),  549 
Beecham,  Sir  Thomas  (1879-    ),  572 
Beer,  Jakob  Liebmann,  see  Meyerbeer, 

Giacomo 
Beethoven,   Johann   van   (i74o?~i792)» 

163,  164,  165,  166 
Beethoven,      Johann     Nikolaus     van 

(1776-1848),  171,  173,  193,  205 
Beethoven,    Karl    Kaspar    van    (1774- 

1815),  171,  173,  174,  192,  197 
Beethoven,  Karl  van  (1806-1858),  197- 

198,  205 
Beethoven,    Ludwig   van    (1712-1773), 

163 

Beethoven,  Ludwig  van  (1770-1827), 
22,  46,  49,  65,  107,  115,  118,  122, 
141,  142,  143,  149,  151,  152,  159, 

l6o,  l6l,  162-207,    215,  2l6,    221, 

236,  241,  242,    249,    251,  252,    255, 

258,  262,  264,    266,    278,  279,    291, 

296,  300,  302,    303,    304,  307,    317, 

328,  357,  341,  344,  346,  347>  352, 
356,  360,  362,  365,  366,  372,  374, 

375>  379*  38<>>  38*,  394*  395*  399> 

402-403,  422,  423,  440,   446,  466, 

469,  471,  474,  481,  489,  501,  510, 

517,  521,  542,  572,  575,  580,  582, 

587 

"Adieux,  Les"  Sonata    (Opus   8ia), 
190,  191 

"Ah!  perfido,"  188 

"Appassionato,"    Sonata    (Opbs    57), 
182,  206 

Battle  of  Vittoria,  The,  see  Welling- 
ton's Victory 

"Battle"  Symphony,  see  Wellington's 
Victory 

Choral  Fantasy,  188 

"Choral"  Symphony,   191,   192,  193, 
194-195,  196,  202,  277,  302 

concertos  for  piano  and  orchestra 
ist,  C  major,  169-170,  188 
2nd,  B  flat  major,  169 
3rd,  C  minor,  142,  178-179 
4th,  G  major,  185-186,  542 
5th  ("Emperor"),  E  flat  major,  185, 
186,  207 

Concerto   for  violin   and   orchestra, 
D  major,  186-187,  287,  472,  521 

C&riolanus  Overture,  192 

"Diabelli"  Variations,  49,  200 

Egmont,  incidental  music,  195,  278, 
400 

Egmont  Overture,  192 


Beethoven,  Ludwig  van — (Continued) 
"Emperor"  Concerto  for  piano  and 

orchestra,  185,  186,  207 
"Eroica"    Symphony,    179-181,    188, 

194,  206,  236,  572 
"Eroica"  Variations,  49 
Fidelia,  182-185,   196,  221,  241,  383, 

400 
" Abscheulicher,  vo  eilst  du  kin" 

i85 

Fidelia  Overture,  184 
Geschopfe  des  Prometheus,  Die,  171, 
180 

overture,  171 

Grosse  Fuge  (Opus  132),  207 
" Hammer klavier"  Sonata  (Opus  106), 

198-200 

"Harp"  Quartet  (Opus  74),  207 
"Kreutzer"    Sonata    for    violin    and 

piano,  206 
Leonora,  see  Fidelio 
"Leonora"  Overture,  ist,  183-184 
"Leonora"  Overture,  2nd,   184 
"Leonora"  Overture,   3rd,   183,   184, 

185 

Mass,  C  major,  188 
Missa  solennis,  200—202,  203,  401 

"Et  vitam  venturi"  202 
"Moonlight"  Sonata  (Opus  27,  No. 

2),  175,  181,  191 
overtures 

Coriolanus,  192 

Egmont,  192 

"Fidelio"  184 

"Leonora,"  ist,  183-184 

"Leonora,"  2nd,  184 

"Leonora,"  3rd,  183,  184,  185 

"Prometheus,"   see   Geschopfe   des 

Prometheus,  Die 
"Pastoral"  Symphony,  188,  190,  194, 

*77>  49i 

"Pathetique"  Sonata  (Opus  13),  170 
quartets  for  strings,  587 

Opus  18,  206 
No.  4,  206 

Opus    59    ("Rasoumovsky"),    185, 

186,  206,  207 
No.  i,  206-207 

Opus  74  ("Harp'*),  207 

Opus  95,  207 

Opus  127,  205-206,  207 

Opus  130,  205-206,  207 

Opus  131,  205-206,  207 

Opus  132,  205-206,  207 

Opus  135,  205-206,  207 
"Rasoumovsky"  Quartets  (Opus  59), 

185,  186,  206,  207 
Rondo,  G  major,  for  piano   (Opus 

5*)»  *75 

Septet,  E  flat  major  (Opus  20),  171 
sonatas  for  piano 

Opus  2,  170 


6i6 


INDEX 


Beethoven,  Ludwig  van — (Continued) 
sonatas   for  piano — (Continued) 
Opus  10,  170 

Opus  13  ("Pathetique"),   170 
Opus  26,  181 
Opus  27,  No.  i,  181 
Opus  27,  No.  2  ("Moonlight"),  175, 

181,  191 

Opus  31,  No.  2,  181,  182 
Opus  31,  No.  3,  181,  182 
Opus  53  ("Waldstein"),  182 
Opus  57  (" 'Appassionato,"),  182,  206 
Opus  78,  191 

Opus  Sia  ("Les  Adieux"),  190,  191 
Opus   90,    199 
Opus  101,  198—199 
Opus  106  ("Hammerklavier"),  198- 

200 

Opus  109,  198—199,  200 
Opus  no,  198-199,  200 
Opus  111,  198-199,  200 
Sonata  for  violin  and  piano  (Opus 

47)  ("Kreutzer"),  206 
symphonies,  170-171,  399-400,  423 
ist,  C  major,  171,  178,  188 
2nd,  D  major,  179,  188 
3rd  ("Eroica"),  E  flat  major,  179 

181,  188,  194,  206,  236,  572 
4th,   B   flat   major,    187,    188-189, 

196,  279 
5th,  C  minor,   185,    188,   189-190, 

*94>  5*7 
6th  ("Pastoral"),  F  major,  188,  190, 

194,  277,  346,  491 

7th,  A  major,  191,  192,  193,  194- 

195,  196,  202,  277,  302 

8th,  F  major,    192,    193,    195-196, 

199,  202 

gth  ("Choral"),  D  minor,  194,  199, 
202-204,  352,  365,  401,  402,  467, 
414,  422,  437,  440,  490-491 ^ 
"Battle/*  see  Wellington's  Victory 
"Waldstein"  Sonata  (Opus  53),  182 
Wellington's   Victory,  or  the  Battle 
of    Vittoria   ("Battle"   Symphony), 
193-194,  215 
writings 

"Heiligenstadt    Testament,"    170- 

174,  176 
letter  to  the  "Immortal  Beloved," 

176-178 
Beethoven,    Maria    Josef  a    (Poll)    van 

(1714-1775),  163 

Beethoven,    Maria    Magdalena    (Keve- 
rich)  van  (1747-1787),  163-164,  165— 
166 
Beethoven,   Therese   (Obermeyer)  van 

(?-i828),  205 

Beethoven,  Theresia   (Reiss)   van,   197 
Beggar's    Opera,    The    (Gay    and    Pe- 
pusch),  64,  69,  74,  78 


Beiden  Grenadier 'e,  Die  (Schumann),  303 
Beidler,  Isolde  (Wagner)  ( 1 865-1 9 1 9) ,  43 1 
Bekker,  Paul  (1882-1937),  202,  203-204 
Belgiojoso,  Princess  Cristina  (Trivul 

zio),  378,  381 

Bellini,  Vincenzo  (1801-1835),  241,  294. 
320,  337,  403,  448,  502,  507 

Capuletti  ed  i  Montecchi,  I,  507 

Norma,  294,  320,  448 

Sonnambula,  La,  294 
Benchley,  Robert  (1889-1945),  220 
Benedict,  Sir  Julius   (1804-1885),   218, 

221-222 

Benedict  XIV  (Prospero  Lorenzo  Lam- 
bertini),  Pope  (1675-1758),  90 

Bennett,  Sir  William  Sterndale  (1816- 
1875),  298»  311*  486 

Benois,  Alexandre  Nikolaevich 

(1870-    )>  598 

Benvenuto   Cellini   (Berlioz),  350,   352, 
353»  355~356»  365»  383;  see  also  Car- 
naval  romain  overture 
•overture,  355 
B<§ranger,  Pierre-Jean   de  (1780-1857), 

352 

Berg,  Alban  (1885-1935),  568 
Berlin,  Irving  (1888-    ),  234 
Berliner  Musik-Zeitung,  165 
Berlioz,  Harriet  Constance  (Smithson) 

(1800-1854),  325,  341,  342,  343,  345, 

346,  347>  348-349>  352,  359-  3&>>  36*> 
366,  371,  376,  383,  385,  391.  423,  424, 
507,  522,  530,  533,  540,  557,  558 
Berlioz,  Louis  (1834-1867),  349,  352,  353, 

359>  366>  37i 

Berlioz,  Louis-Hector  (1803-1869),  189, 
225,  241,  279,  282,  297,  320,  325, 
326,  338-373»  376,  383>  39i»  423* 
424>  5°7>  522,  53°»  533>  54<>>  557> 
558 
Beatrice  et  Benedict,  349,  368,  369, 

370-371 
overture,  370 

Benvenuto  Cellinif  350,  352,  353,  355— 
356,  365,  383;  see  also  Carnaval 
romain  overture 
overture,  355 
Captive,  La,  352-353 
Carnaval  romain  overture,  355,  356, 
360;    see    also   Benvenuto    Cellini 
Cinq  mai,  Le,  352,  359 
Corsaire  overture,  360 
Damnation    de   Faust,   Laf   360—361, 
362,  365,  371,  383,*  see  also  Huit 
Scenes  de  Faust 
"Immense  nature"  361 
Dance  of  the  Sylphs,  361 
Minuet   of  the  Will-o'-the-Wisps, 

361 

Rakoczy  March,  360 
Roi  de  Thule,  Le,  361 
"Void  des  roses"  361 


Berlioz,   Louis-Hector  —  (Continued) 
Dernier  Jour  du  monde,  Ler  354 
Dcrniers  Instans  de  Marie  Stuart,.  Les, 

35° 

Dix  decembre,  Le,  368 
Enhance  du  Christ,  I/,  364-365,  366- 

367»  369,  373 

Fuite  en  Egypte,  La,  364-365,  367 
overture,  367 
Adieu  des  bergers,  L',  367 
Repos  de  la  Sainte-Famille,  Le3 

367 


Songe  d'Herode,  Le,  367 
Arrives  a  Sals,  L',  367 


fantasy  for  orchestra,  chonist  two 
pianos,  on  Shakespeare's  Tempest, 
346-347,  350,  351;  see  also  Lelio 

Francs-juges,  Les,  342,  343,  349,  359 
overture,  343,  349 

Grande  Messe  des  marts,  see  Requiem 

Harold  en  Italic,  346,  350,  351—352, 

356,.  383 
Herminie,  343 
Huit  Scenes  de  Faust,  343,  360;  see 

also  Damnation   de  Faust,  La 
Imperialef  I/,  368 
Lelio,   343,    347,   348,   350-351,   369, 

372 
fantasy  on  Shakespeare's  Tempest, 


Mass  (early),  341,  342 

Resurrexit,  342,  354 
Menace  des  francs,  La,  364 
Mort  de  Gleopdtre,  La,  343,  350 
Mort  de  Sardanapale,  La,  346 
Mort  d'Orphee,  La,  342 
Nuits  d'ete,  352-353 

Absence,  352-353 

Au  time  tier  e,  353 

lie  inconnue,  U9  353 

Spectre  de  la  rose,  Le,  352-353 

Villanelle,  352-353 

Prise  de  Troie,  La  see  Troyens,  Les 
potpourri  on  Italian  airs,  340 
quintet  for  flute  and  strings,  340 
Requiem  (Grande  Messe  des  marts), 

353-355 

Offertory,  355 

Tuba  mirum,  354,  355 
Revolution    grecque,  La,   see   Scene 

heroique 

Rob  Roy  overture,  348 
Roi  Lenr  overture,  348 
Romeo  et  Juliette,  343,  356-357,  361, 

3<55>  370,  373»  5^7 
Grand  Fete  at  the  Capulets',  357 
Love  Scene,  357 
Queen  Mab  Scherzo,  357 
Scene  heroique:  La  Revolution  grec- 
que,  342 


INDEX  617 

Berlioz,  Louis-Hector — (Continued) 
Symphonic  jantastiqiie,  341,  342,  343- 
346»  347»  348,  359>  $69,  371,  383» 
39  *>  522 

"Marche  au  supplice,"  346,  347 
Symphonic   junebre    et    triomphale* 

358 

Te  Deum,  363-364 
Judex  crederis,  363-364 
Tibi  omnes,  364 

Tour  de  Nice,,  Le,  see  Corsair e  over- 
ture 

Troyens,  Les,  343,  367,  368-370,  373 
Chasse  royale  et  orage,  370 
"Inutiles  regrets,,"  370 
Marche  troyenne,  370 
Prise  de  Troie,  La,  369 
Troyens  a  Carthage,  Lest  369 
"Vallons  sonore,"  370 
Troyens  a  Carthage,  Les,  see  Troyens, 

Les 

Waverley  overture,  342,  343 
writings 

A  tr avers  chants,  360 
Grotesques  de  la  muszquey  Les,  360 
Memoires,  348,  360,  363,  366 
Soirees  de  l'orchestrey  Lesf  360 
Traite     de     I 'instrumentation     et 
d' orchestration    (Opus    10),    360 
Voyage   musical  en  Allemagne  et 

en  Italie,  306 
Berlioz,  Louis-Joseph  (1776-1848),  339, 

340,  341,  353,  363 
Berlioz,  Marie  -  Antoinette  -  Josephine 

(Mannion)   (1781-1838),  339 
Berlioz,    Marie  -  Genevieve     (Martin, 
called  Recio)   (1814-1862),  359,  360, 
362,  366 
Benin,   Louise- Angelique    (1805-1877), 

353 

Esmeralda,  353 
Bertin  family,  353,  354,  356 
Bethlehem  (Pennsylvania)  Bach  Festi- 
val, 46 

Bethmann,  Johann  Philipp,  431 
Billington,   Elizabeth    (1768-1818),    116 
Billroth,  Theodor  (1829-1894),  493,  500 
Bishop,  Sir  Henry  Rowley  (1786-1855), 

362 
Bismarck-Schonhausen,    Otto    Eduard 

Leopold,    Prince    von    (1815-1898), 

437,  486 

Bispham,  David  Scull  (1857-1921),  569 
Bizet,    Georges    (Alexandre-Cesar-Leo- 
pold)   (1838-1875),  218,  388 

Carmen,  511,  546 

Bjomson,  Bjornsterne  (1832-1910),  576 
Blanchard,     Sophie    (Armant)     (1778- 

1819),  213 

Blessed  Damozel*    The   (Rossetti),   535 
Bliss,  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Robert  Woods,  608 


6i8 


INDEX 


Blom,  Eric  (1888-        ),  137,  153 
Blossom  Time  (Romberg),  248,  261 
Bohemian  Girl,  The  (Balfe),  519 
Bohm,  Georg  (1661-1733),  25 
Boi'to,  Arrigo  (1842-1918),  233,  361,  450, 
451,  456,  460,  464,  465,  466,  467, 
468,  527,  534 

Mefistofele,  465 

Bolm,  Adolf  (1884-        ),  596,  597 
Bonaparte,  Jerome,  King  of  Westphalia 

(1784-1860),  190 
Bonaparte,  Joseph,  King  of  Naples  and 

Spain  (1768-1844),  193 
Bonaparte,    Princess    Mathilde-Letitia 

(1820-1904),  245 
Bonaparte,      Napoleon-Joseph-Charles 

("Plon-Plon"),    (1822-1891),    385 
Bordoni,  Faustina,  see  Hasse,  Faustina 

(Bordoni) 

Boris  Godunov  (Mussorgsky),  535 
Borodin,      Alexander      Porphyrievich 

(1833-1887),  506 

Borromeo,  St.  Carlo  (1538-1584),  7,  10 
Boston  Symphony  Orchestra,  no,  567, 

592,  605,  611 

Boswell,  James  (1740-1795),  37?, 
Botticelli,  Sandro  (i447?-i5io),  331,  534 
Boughton,  Rutland  (1878-        ),  31 

Immortal  Hour?  The,  31 
Bourgeois-gentilhomme,  Le   (Moliere), 

57° 
Braganca,  Joao  de,  Duke  of  Lafoens 

(1719-1806),  95 

Braham,  John  (1774-1856),  223 
Brahms,  Caroline  (Schnack)  (1824-1892), 

482,  486 
Brahms,    Johann    Jakob     (1806-1872), 

470,  471,  482,  486 
Brahms,  Johanna  (Nissen)  (1789-1865), 

470,  482,  483 

Brahms,  Johannes  (1833-1897),  22,  49, 
152,  181,  187,  206,  251,  263,  292, 
297,  301,  304,  309-310,  311,  328, 
338,  366,  444,  469-501>  51O>  51?- 
520,  521,  522,  523,  557,  560,  565, 

57i>  5&> 
chamber  music,  480-481 

Quintet,    piano     and    strings,     F 

minor  (Opus  34),  480,  481 
Sextet,  strings,  G  major  (opus  36), 

481-482 
sonatas,  clarinet  and  piano  (Opus 

120,  480 
Trio.,  piano,  violin,  and  cello,  B 

major  (Opus  8),  480 
choral 
Deutsches     Requiem,     Ein,     solo 

voices,    chorus,    and    orchestra, 

organ    and   libitum    (Opus   45), 

478,  482-484 


Brahms,  Johannes — (Continued) 
choral — (Continued) 
Rhapsody  ("Alto"),  alto  solo,  male 
chorus^  and  orchestra  (Opus  53), 

485 

Triumphlied,  chorus  and  orchestra, 
organ  ad  libitum  (Opus  55),  486 
concertos 
piano  and  orchestra 

ist,   D   minor    (Opus    15),   477- 

478,  487,  490,  495 
2nd,  B  flat  major  (Opus  83),  495- 

496 
violin    and    orchestra,    D    major 

(Opus  77),  187,  493-494»  521 
violin,       cello,       and       orchestra 

("Double")  (Opus  102),  498 
orchestra  alone 

Hungarian    Dances    (arrangements 

of  three  piano  duets),  484 
overtures 

Academic  Festival  (Opus  80),  494 

Tragic  (Opus  81),  494~495 
serenades,  477,  490 

A  major  (Opus  16),  477 
symphonies,  489-492 

ist,  C  minor  (Opus  68),  478,  489, 
490-491,  492-493 

2nd,   D    major   (Opus   73),   489, 

49  *>  493 
3rd,  F  major  (Opus  90),  491-492, 

493>  497 
4th,   E   minor    (Opus   98),   489, 

492>  497>  499> 

Variations  on  a  Theme  by  Josef 
Haydn  (Opus  560),  49,  487-488, 

490 

piano  solo,  500 
ballades,  474 
D  minor  ("Edward"),  (Opus  10), 

474 

G  minor  (Opus  118),  501 
capriccios 

B  minor  (Opus  76),  500 

G  minor  (Opus  116),  501 

of  Opus  76,  500 
Hungarian   Dances    (arrangements 

of  piano  Duets),  484 
intermezzos 

A  minor  (Opus  76),  500 

C  major  (Opus  119),  501 

E  fiat  minor  (Opus  118),  500 

of  Opus  76,  500 
rhapsodies 

E  flat  major   (Opus   119),  500- 
501 

of  Opus  79,  500 

Scherzo,  E  flat  minor  (Opus  4),  473 
sonatas,  473 

C  major  (Opus  i),  473~474 


Brahms,  Johannes — (Continued) 
piano  solo — (Continued) 
sonatas — (Continued) 
F  minor  (Opus  5),  474 
F  sharp  minor  (Opus  2),  474 
variations 

and  fugue  on  a  theme  by  Handel 
(Opus   24),   49,   47&-479>   487* 
492,  500 
on  a  theme  by  Schumann  (Opus 

9)'  474-475 
on  a  theme  by  Paganini  (Opus 

35)»  479 
piano  duets 
Hungarian  Dances,  484 
Liebesliederwalzer     (with     mixed 

vocal  quartet)  (Opus  52),  485 
sixteen  waltzes  (Opus  39),  484 

A  flat  major,  484 
songs,  473,  488-489 

Sapphische  Ode  (Opus  94),  488 
Ver^ebliches  Stdndchen  (Opus  84), 

488 

Von  ewiger  Liebe,  488 
Wiegenlied    (Opus    49),   482,    484, 

488 

variations,  181,  479,  487 
Brandenburg,  Christian  Ludwig,  Mar- 
grave of  (1677-?),  36 
"Brandenburg"  Concertos   (Bach),  36- 

37>  %  76 
Brandenburg,  Sophia  Charlotte,  Elec- 

tress  of  (1668-1705),  54 
Brandt,  Caroline,  see  Weber,  Caroline 

(Brandt)  von 
Brantome,  Pierre  Bourdeilles  de,  Abbe 

de  (i540?-i6i4),  15 
Braun,  Peter,  Baron  von,  183 
Breitkopf  and  Hartel,  415 
Brendel,  Franz  (1811-1868),  310 
Brenet,  Michel  (Marie  Bobillier)  (1858- 

1918),  109 
Brentano,  Bettina,  see  Arnim,  Bettina 

(Brentano)  von 

Breughel,  Pieter  (i525?-is69),  195 
Breuning  family,  166,  168 
Breuning,    Helene    (von    Kerich)    von 

(1750-1838),  166 
Breuning,    Stephan    von    (1774-1827), 

183,  197 

Britannia,  Rule  the  Waves,  194 
Broadwood,  John,  and  Sons  (London), 

198 
Brockes,  Barthold  Heinrich  (1680-1747), 

41,63 

Brodsky,  Adolf  (1851-1929),  520 
Brosses,  Charles,  President  de  (1709- 

1777),  87 
Browning*   Elizabeth    (Barrett)    (1806- 

1861),  329 
Browning,  Robert  (1812-1889),  210 


IMDEX  619 

Bruch,  Max  (1838-1920),  494,  527 
Bruckner,  Anton  (1824-1896),  266,  564 
Briihl,    Count    Karl    Friedrich    (1772- 

1837),  217 
Brunswick,   Therese   von    (1775-1861), 

177 
Buckingham,  George  Vflliers,  Duke  of 

(1628-1687),  209 

Bull,  Ole  Borneman   (1810-1880),  275 
Blilow,  Cosima  (Liszt)  von,  see  Wagner, 

Cosima  (Lizst  von  Billow) 
Bulow,  Franziska  von,  438 
Billow,  Hans  Guido  von    (1830-1894), 

366,  385,  387,  388,  414,  421,  424,  430, 

431,  432,  433,  434,  435,  469,  470,  486, 

489,  494,  497,  498,  510,  556,  557,  561, 

577 
Bulwer-Lytton,  Edward  George  Earle 

Lytton/  Baron    Lytton    (1803-1873), 

408 

Bunyan,  John  (1628-1688),  33 
Buononcini,  Giovanni   Battista   (1672— 
1750?),  67-68,  69 

Astarto,  67 
Burlington,    Richard    Boyle,    Earl    of 

(1695-1753),  61,  67 
Bumey,   Charles    (1726-1814),    15,   32, 

83,  114,  126,  129 
Buxtehude,    Dietrich    (1637-1707),    24, 

25,  27,  29,  30,  55,  510 
Byrd,  William  (1540-1623),  59 
Byrom,  John  (1692-1763),  68 
Byron,    George   Noel    Gordon,    Baron 

(1788-1824),  292,  307,  350,  376 


Calzabigi,  Raniero  da  (1714-1795),  9*» 

93*  94,  95>  101.  W 

Camille,  see  Dame   aux   cameUas,  La 
Canons  (near  London),  64,  66 
Caplet,  Andre  (1878-1925),  540 
Capricdo  I  fallen  (Tchaikovsky),  519 
Carissimi,  Giacomo  (1605-1674),  25 
Carlyle,  Thomas  (1795-1881),  335 
Carmen  (Bizet),  511,  546 
Carnarvon,  James  Brydges,  Earl  of,  see 

Chandos,   James   Brydges,   Duke   of 
Carnaval   (Schumann),   279,   296,   297, 

298,  301,  303,  474 
Carnaval    remain    overture    (Berlioz), 

355»   356»   360'"    se&   also   Benvenuto 

Cellini  (Berlioz) 

Carnegie,  Andrew  (1837-1919),  525 
Carnegie  Hall  (New  York),  364,  525 
Caroline  of  Anspach.,  Queen  of  England 

(1683-1737),  73 

Carraud,  Gaston  (1864-1920),  551 
Carre,  Albert  (1852-1938),  543 
Cams,  Ernst  August,  293 
Caruso,  Enrico  (1873-1921),  460 


620 


INDEX 


Carvalho,  L£on  (1825-1897),  369,  425, 

427 
Casanova  de  Seingalt,  Giovanni  Jacopo 

(1725-1798),  149,  175 
Catherine  II,  Empress  of  Russia  (1729- 

1796),   101 
Cavour,  Camillo  Benso,  Conte  di  (1810- 

1861),  459 

Cellini,   Benvenuto   (1500-1571),  350 
Cenerentola,  La  (Rossini),  233 
Cervantes  de  Saavedra,  Miguel  (1547— 

1616),  33,  218,  338,  563 
Chaliapin,    Feoclor    Ivanovich    (1873- 

1938),  232 
Chamberlain,   Eva   (Wagner)    (1867-?), 

43 i,  433 
Chamberlain,  Houston  Stewart  (1855- 

1927),  422 
Chamisso,    Adelbert   von    (1781-1838), 

302 
Chandos,    James    Brydges,    Duke    of 

(1673-1744),  64,  66 
Chansons  de  Bilitis  (Louys),  540 
Charles  VIII,   King  of  France   (1470- 

1408),  6 
Charles    IX,    King   of    France    (1550- 

1574),  15^  l6 
Charles  X,  King  of  France  (1757-1836), 

238,  239,  240,  241,  242,  245,  339,  376 
Charles,  Ernest  (1895-        ),  75 
Charlie  Is  My  Darling,  284 
Charlotte      of      Mecklenburg  -  Strelitz, 

Queen  of  England  (1744-1818),  127 
Charpentier,  Gustave  (1860-  ),  564 
Chateaubriand,  Francois  Rene,  Vicomte 

de  (1768-1848),  320 
Chaucer,  Geoffrey  (1340?-! 400),  4 
Chausson,  Ernest  (1855-1899),  537 
Chekhov,  Anton  (1860-1904),  595 
Cherubini,  Maria  Luigi  Carlo  Zenobio 
Salvatore  (1760-1842),  214,  222,  223, 
239,  270,  278,  319,  338,  340,  342, 

359'  37  L  375'  469 
Deux  Journees,  Les,  278 
Chezy,    Helmine    (von    Klencke)    von 

(1783-1856),  220,  258 
Chicago  Symphony  Orchestra,  608 
Children's  Corner  (Debussy),  549 
Chopin,  Frederic-Francois  (1810-1849), 
35,    150,   217,   225,   263,   275,   279, 
292,   297,   301,   311,   314-33?'  349* 
35 !»  376.  377*  3&>>  39*>  394»  477> 
500,  502,  520,  530,  531,  542,  547, 

548'  552,  553»  554>  596 

ballades,  332 

ist,  G  minor  (Opus  23),  332 
2nd,  F  major  (Opus  38),  332 
3rd,  A  flat  major  (Opus  47),  332 
4th,  F  minor  (Opus  52),  332 

Barcarole  in  F  sharp  major   (Opus 
60),  334 


Chopin,  Frederic-Francois— (Con  tinned) 
Berceuse  in  D  flat  major  (Opus  57), 

334 
concertos    for  piano   and  orchestra, 

3i9 

ist,  E  minor  (Opus  n),  319 
2nd,  F  minor  (Opus  21),  319 
Variations  on  "La  ci  darem"  150 
Etudes,  324-325,  554 

i2th,    C   minor    ("Revolutionary") 

(Opus   10,  No.   12),  324-325 
i8th,   G   sharp   minor   (Opus    25, 

No.  6),  324 
22nd,  B  minor  (Opus  25,  No.  10), 

324 

three  supplementary,  325 
Fantaisie    in    F    minor    (Opus    49), 

332-333 

*Tantaisie-Impromptu,"      see       im- 
promptus, 4th 
impromptus,  332 

ist,  A  flat  major  (Opus  29),  332 
2nd,  F  sharp  major  (Opus  36),  332 
3rd,  G  flat  major  (Opus  51),  332 
4th,   C   sharp    minor   ("Fantaisie- 
Impromptu")     (Opus    66),    325, 

332 

Marche  funebre,  see  sonatas,  2nd 
mazurkas,  323-324 
nocturnes,  327-328 

7th,  C  sharp  minor  (Opus  27,  No. 

i),  328 
i3th,  C  minor  (Opus  48,  No.  i), 

328 

15th,  F  minor  (Opus  55,  No.  i),  500 
polonaises,  322-323 
3rd,  A  major  ("Militaire")  (Opus 

40,  No.   i),  322 

5th,  F  sharp  minor  (Opus  44),  323 
6th,  A  flat  major  ("Heroic")  (Opus 

53)>  323 
7th,  A  flat  major  (Polonaise-Fan- 

taisie),  323 

preludes,  Opus  28,  350-331 
2nd,  A  minor,  331 
4th,  E  minor,  331 
5th,  D  major,  331 
6th,  B  minor,  331 
7th,  A  major,  331 
15th,,  D   flat  major  ("Raindrop"), 

33 i 

i6th,  B  flat  minor,  331 
igth,  E  flat  major,  331 
20th,  C  minor,  331 
23rd,  F  major,  331 
scherzos,  328-329 

ist,  B  minor  (Opus  20),  328 
2nd,  B  flat  minor  (Opus  35),  328 


INDEX 


621 


Chopin,  Frederic-Francois— ( Con  tinned) 
Sonata   for   cello   and   piano   in   G 

minor  (Opus  65),  335 
sonatas  for  piano 

ist,  C  minor  (Opus  4),  331 

2nd,  B  flat  minor  (Opus  35),  331- 

332,  334 

3rd,  B  minor  (Opus  58),  334 
valses,  321-322 

D    flat    major    ("Minute")    (Opus 

64,  No.  i),  322 
C  sharp  minor  (Opus  64,  No.  2), 

322 

Variations    on    "La    ci    darem**   for 
piano  and  orchestra  (Opus  2),  317, 

319 
Chopin,  Justina  (Krzyanowska)  (1782- 

1861),  315 
Chopin,     Ludwika     (1807-1855),     315, 

336 

Chopin,  Nicolas  (1771-1844),  315,  334 
"Choral'*  Symphony    (Beethoven),  191, 

192,  193,  194-195,  196,  202,  277,  302, 

352 
Chorley,  Henry  Fothergill  (1808-1872), 

246,  279,  383,  450-451*  454 
Chrysander,  Friedrich   (1826-1901),  84 
Gibber,  Susanna  Maria  (1714-1766),  78 
Cimarosa,  Domenico   (1749-1801),   229 
Cinti-Damoreau,     Laure     (1801-1863), 

334 
Clement  VIII  (Ippolito  Aldobrandini), 

Pope  (1535-1605).  17 
Clement    XIV    (Lorenzo    GanganelH), 

Pope  (1705-1774).  130 
Clement,  Franz  (1780-1842),  187 
Clementi,  Muzio  (1752-1832),  139,  549 

Gradus  ad  Parnassum,  549 
Clesinger,   Solange    (Dudevant)    (1828- 

1899)'  334>  335 

"Clock"   Symphony   (Haydn),   122 
Cocteau,    Jean    (1891-       ),    599-600, 

602,  609 
Colbran,  Isabella  Angela,  see  Rossini, 

Isabella  (Colbran) 
Colette,  Sidonie-Gabrielle   (1873-       ), 

537 

Colles,  Henry  Cope  (1879-1943),  35 
€ollin,  Hemrich  Josef  von  (1771-1811), 

192 
Colloredo,   Hieronymus  Joseph  Franz 

von  Paula,  Graf  von,  Archbishop  of 

Salzburg  (1732-1806),  131,  135,  137, 

138-139 
Cologne,    Maximilian    Franz,    Elector 

(1756-1801),  165,  166,  167 
Cologne,   Maximilian   Friedrich,  Elec- 
tor of  (5-1784),  163 
Colonna  family,  8 


Columbia  Broadcasting  System,  572 
Columbia     Concert     Orchestra     (New 

York),  572 

Comedie  humaine,  La  (Balzac),  240 
Conried,  Heinrich  (1855-1909),  567 
Constantine    Pavlovich,    Grand    Duke 

(1779-1831),  316 
Consuelo   (George   Sand),    105 
Cooper,  James   Fenimore   (1/89-1851), 

266 
Corelli,  Arcangelo   (1653-1713),  57,  75 

Weinachtskonzert,  75 
Conolanus  (Von  Collin),  192 
Cornelius,  Peter  (1824-1874),  355,  366, 

383 

Barbier  von  Bagdad,  Der,  383,  384 
"Coronation"    Concerto    (Mozart),    155 
Corsaire  overture  (Berlioz),  360 
Cosi  fan  tutte  (Mozart),   154-155 
Costa,  Sir  Michael   (1808-1884),  84 
Council  of  Trent,  7,  9-10,  12,  19 
Couperin,    Francois    le    grand    (1668- 

1733).  25,  65 

Co  well,  Henry  Dixon  (1897-        )T  598 
Creation,  The  (Haydn),   119-120,   121, 

122,   153,  244 
Croche,    M.,    pseudonym    of    Claude- 

Achille  Debussy,  542 
Cross,  Wilbur  Lucius  (1862-1948),  588 
Crystal  Palace  (London),  237 
Cui,     Cesar    Antonovich     (1835-1918), 

506,  511 
Cumberland,     William     Cumberland, 

Duke  of  (1721-1765),  80 
Cuzzoni,  Francesca  (1700-1770),  67,  68, 

69,  72 
Czerny,  Karl  (1791-1857),  159,  293,  317, 

375 

D 

Dahl,  Ingolf,  609 

Dalcroze,  see  Jaques-Dalcroze,  Emile 

Dame  aux  camelias,  La  (Dumas  fils), 

381,  454,  455 
Damnation    de    Faust,    La    (Berlioz), 

360-361,  362,  365,  371,  383;  see  also 

Huit  Scenes  de  Faust 
Damoiselle  elue,  La  (Debussy),  535, 537 
Damrosch,  Walter  Johannes 

(1862-       ),  364,  525,  592 
Danielou,  Jean,  604 
Dannreuther,  Edward  George    (1844- 

1905)-  ?25»  435 

Dante  Alighieri  (1265-1321),  515 
"Dante"  Symphony  (Liszt),  381,  393 
Daumier,  Honore   (1808-1879),  530 
David,    Ferdinand     (1810-1873),     283, 

285,  287,  290 


622 


INDEX 


Bavidov,   Lev    Vasilevich    (1837-1896), 

512 
Davidov,    Vladimir    Lvovich    ("Bob") 

(1871-1906),  526,  527 
Davidova,    Alexandra    (Tchaikovskaya) 
(1842-1891),  505,  508,  512,  516,  525 
Datndsbund,  219,   297 
Debussy,    Claude-Achille    (1862-1918), 
190,  218,  308,  370,  393,  440,  467, 
500,  520,  529-555,  580 
ballets 
Boite    a   joujoux,   La    (completed 

by  Caplet),  550 
Jeux,  550 
Khamma  (completed  by  Koechlin) 

55° 

cantatas  and  choral  works 
Damoiselle   elue,   Laf  solo   voices, 

chorus,  and  orchestra,  535,  537 
Enfant     prodigue,     U}     soprano, 

tenor,   and   baritone,   532-533 
PrintempSj  female  voices,  534 
Zuleima,   534 
chamber  music 

Quartet      ("First"),      strings,      G 

minor,   537-538 
Rapsodie  pour  saxophone  et  piano 

(orchestrated  by  Roger-Ducasse), 

545 
sonatas 

cello  and  piano,  554 

flute,  viola,  and  harp,  554 

violin  and  piano,  555 
incidental  music 

to  Le  Martyre  de  Saint-Sebastien, 

550-55 l 
operas 
Pelleas  et  Melisande,  150,  535,  537, 

539>  54^  542-543>  549>  55° 
Rodrigue     et     Chimene     (unfin- 
ished), 536 
orchestra 

Berceuse  hero'ique,  553 

Danse    sacree    et    danse    profane* 

harp  and  strings,  546 
Images,  551 

Gigues,  551 

Iberia,  551-552 

Rondes  de  printemps,  551 
Mer,  La,  545,  546,  547~548>  551* 

592 
Nocturnes,  541-542,  547 

Fetes,  542 

Nuages,  541,  542,  580 

Sirenesy  542 
Prelude  a  FApres-midi  d'un  faune, 

537*  538-539'  547>  55<> 
piano  solo,  546 

Children's  Corner,  549 


Debussy,   Claude-Achille — (Continued) 
piano  solo — (Continued) 

Children's  Corner — ( Continued) 
Doctor    Gradus    ad    Parnassum, 

549 

Golliwog's  Cake-Walk,  549,  552 
Jimbo's  Lullaby,  549 
Little  Shepherd,  The,  549 
Serenade  for  the  Doll,  549 
Snow  is  Dancing,  549 
Clair  de  lune,  546 
Estampes,  54<3-547 
Jar  dins  sous  la  pluie,  546 
Pagodes,  546 

Soiree   dans   Grenade,  546 
Etudes,  554 

Pour  les  huit  doigts,  554 
Pour  les  'notes  repetees,  554 
Pour  les  tierces,  554 
Images,  547 
Book  I,  547 

Hommage  a  Rameau,  547 
Mouvementf  547 
Reflets   dans   I'eau,  547 
Book  II,  547 

Cloches  a  travers  les  feuilles, 

547 
Et    la    lune    descend    sur    le 

temple  qui  fut,  547 
Poissons  d'or,  547 
Pour  le  pianof  546 
Preludes,  551,   552-553 
Book  I 

Cathedrale  engloutief  La,  552 
Ce  qu'a  vue  le  vent  d 'Quest, 

552 

Danse  de  Puck,  Le,  552 
Fille  aux  cheveux  de  lin,  La, 

552 

Minstrels,  552 
Book  II,  553 
Brouillards,  552 
Bruyeres,  552 
JFeux   d'artifice,  553 
General        Lavine — Eccentric, 

552 
Hommage  a  S.  Pickwick,  Esq., 

P.P.MJP.C.,  552 
Ondine,  552—553 
Puerta  del  vino,  La,  552 
Reverie,  539,  546 
piano  duet 

Six  Epigraphes  antiques,  553-554 
two  pianos 

En  blanc  et  noir,  554 
songs,  533 

Ariettes  oubliees,  540 
Green,  540 
11  pleure  dans  mon  coeur,  540 


Debussy,  Claude- Achille — (Continued) 
songs — (Continued) 

Beau  Soir,  533 

Chansons  de  Bilitis,  540,  553 
Cheuelure,  La,  540 
Flute  de  Pan,  La,  540 
Tornbeau   des  Naiades,  Ley  540 

Cinq  Poemes  de  Baudelaire,  540 

Fantoches,  533 

Mandoline,  533 

Trois  Ballades  de  Francois  Villon, 

540-541 

Ballade  des  femmes  de  Paris,  541 
Debussy,   Claude-Emina   ("Chouchou") 

(i9°5-?)»  545-S46*  549»  552 
Debussy,  Emma  (Bardac)  (?— 1934),  545, 

546,  548,  549 
Debussy,  Manuel- Achille  (1836-?),  530, 

531 
Debussy,    Rosalie    ("Lily-Lilo")    (Tex- 

ier),  541,  544,  545 
Debussy,  Victorine  (Manoury) 

(1836-?),  530,  531 
Defoe,  Daniel   (i66i?-i73i),  64 
Delacroix,       Ferdinand-Victor-Eugene 

(1798-1863),  320,  336,  337,  342,  530 
Delany,  Patrick  (i685?-i768),  78 
Delibes,  Leo  (1836-1891),  511,  515,  607 

Lakme,  157 

"Bell  Song/*  157 
Del  Riego,  Teresa,  589 

O,  Dry   Those  Tears,.  589 
Dent,  Edward  Joseph  (1876-        ),  190, 

221 
Denza,  Luigi  (1846-1922)  558 

Funiculi,   Funicula,   558 
Des    Pr&,   Josquin,    see   Josquirt   Bes 

Pres 

Dessoff,  Felix  Otto  (1835-1891),  492 
Dettingen,  battle  of,  79 
Deutsches    Requiem^    Em     (Brahms), 

478,  482-484 

Deutschland  uber  Alles,  119 
Devil  in   the  Belfry,   The  (Poe),  545, 

549 

Devrient,  Eduard  (1801-1877),  273 
Diabelli,  Anton  (1781-1858),  200,  259, 

375 
Diaghilev,     Serge     Pavlovich     (1872- 

1929)'  596>  597.  599>  602,  610-611 
Dichterliebe  (Schumann),  303 
Dickens,  Charles  (1812-1870),  336 
Dido  and  Aeneas  (Purcell),  59,  86 
Dies  irae*  345 
Diet  of  Worms,  23 
Dietsch,    Pierre-Louis-Philippe    (1808- 

1865),  428 
Ditters   von   Dlttersdorf,   Karl   (1739- 

1799),  111,  145 


INDEX  623 

Doles,   Johann    Friedrich    (1715-1797)* 

*54 
Dolin>    Anton    (Patrick    Healey    Kay) 

(1905?-    ),  607 
Don  Carlos  (Schiller),  451 
Don   Carlos  (Verdi),  460-461 
Don  Giovanni  (Mozart),   101,   149-151, 

152,  165,  263,  278,  317,  345,  400,  401 
Don  Juan  (Richard  Strauss),  558-559, 

562,  577 

Don  Quixote  (Cervantes),  466,  563 
Don    Quixote    (Richard   Strauss),   563, 

57<>»  572 

Donizetti,    Gaetano    (1797-1848),    226, 
359,  380,  414,  502,  534 

Favorita,  La,  359 

Lucia  di  Lammermoor,  226,  362 
Dorn,  Heinrich  (1804-1892),   201,  295, 

297,  301,  303,  401,  406 
Dowson,    Ernest    Christopher    (1867- 

1900),  342 

"Drum  Roll"  Symphony  (Haydn),  402 
Dryden,  John  (1631-1700),  72,  73,  77, 

206 
Du   Barry,  Marie-Jeanne  Becu,  Com- 

tesse   (1746-1793),  99 
Duboeuf,  Estelle,  see  Former,  Estelle 

(Duboeuf) 
Ducre,   Pierre,   composer  invented  by 

Berlioz,  364 
Dukas,  Paul  (1865-1935)*  506 

Apprenti  sorrier,  U,  596 
Du  Locle,  Camille  (1823-1903),  462 
Dumas,    pere,   Alexandre    (1802-1870), 

320,  342,  349 
Dumas,    fik,    Alexandre    (1824-1895), 

38l>  454 

Dunciadf  The  (Pope),  61,  280 
Dunstable,  John  (i37o?-i453),  4-5,  59 
Dunstan,   Archbishop   of   Canterbury, 

St.  (925?-988),  4 

Duplessis,  Marie   (1824-1846),  381 
Dupont,  Gabrielle  ("Gaby"),  535,  536, 

54i 
Duprez,  Gilbert-Louis  (1806-1 896),  355 

Durand,  Emile  (1830-1903),  531-532 
Durand,  Jacques  (1865-1928),  553,  555 
Dfirbach,  Fanny,  502 
Dushkin,  Samuel  (1898-        ),  605,  606 
Dvofik,  Antonin  (1841-1904),  509,  578 
Symphony  No,  5,  E  minor  ("From 
the  New  World"),  509 


Eagle  (Brooklyn),  567 

Eastman  School  of  Music  (Rochester). 

591 
Eddy,  Mary  Baker  (1821-1910),  128 

Eddy,  Nelson  (1901-       ),  565 
"Edward"  Ballade   (Brahms),  474 


624  INDEX 

Egmont,    Lamoral,    Count    of    (1522- 

1568),  192 

Egmont  (Goethe),   192 
fsi8i2,"     overture     solennelle     (Tchai- 

kovsky),  194,  519,  581 
Ein  feste  Burg  ist  unser  Gott  (Luther), 

23,  274 
Einstein,    Alfred    (1880-        ),    90,   92, 

1  18,  134 
Elektra  (Richard  Strauss),  99,  228,  557, 

567.  568,  569,  570 
Elgar,  Sir  Edward  (1857-1934),  564 
Elijah    (Mendelssohn),  228-289,  290 
Eliot,     George     (Mary    Anne    Evans) 

(1819-1880),  329 

Ellis,  Henry  Havelock  (1859-1  939),  527 
Eisner,  Joseph  (1769-1854),  316,  318 
"Emperor"  Concerto  (Beethoven),  185, 

186,  207 

Enesco,    Georges    (1881-        ),   579 
Enhance  du  Christ,  U  (Berlioz),  364- 

365,  366-367,  369>  373 
Enfant   prodigue,   L'    (Debussy),   532- 

533 

En  Saga   (Sibelius),  578,  579 
Entfiihrung  aus  dem  Serail,  Die  (Mo- 

zart), 101,  129,  137,  139,  140,  154 
Epiccene,  or  The  Silent  Woman  (Jon- 

son),  571 

Erdmann,  Georg  (1681-?),  43 
Erlkonig,  Der  (Schubert),  250,  251,  254, 

259 

Ernani    (Verdi),   449-450,   451-452 
Ernes  ti,    Johann    August    (1707-1781), 

48 
"Eroica"  Symphony  (Beethoven),  179— 

181,    188,   194,  206,  236,  572 
Essavs    in    Musical    Analysis    (Tovey), 


Esterhizy,    Prince    Antal    (Pal    Antal) 

(P-1794),   in 
Esterhazy,    Count    Jdnos    (1775-1834), 

141,  256,  261 
Esterhazy,     Countess     Karolin     (1805- 

1851),  261 
Esterhazy,  Prince  Miklos  Jozsef  (1714- 

1790),  107-108,  109,  110-111,113,141 
Esterhazy,    Prince    Miklos    II     (1765- 
-    1833),   102,   118,   122 
Esterhazy   Prince   Pal   Antal    (?~i762), 

106,  107 

Esterhazy  family,  168,  375 
Euclid  (ft  300  B.C.),  153 
Eugenie,     Empress     of     the     French 

(1826-1920),  461 
Eugen  Oniegin  (Pushkin),  513 
Eugen     Oniegin     (Tchaikovsky),     513, 

515,  516,  518-519,  524 
Euryanthe  (Weber),  220-221,  222,  224, 

225,  236,  558 

Evans,  Edwin,  Jr.  (1874—1945),  480 
Exposition  of  1851  (London),  237,  365 


Exposition  Universelle  of  1855  (Paris), 

363,  368,  456 
Exposition  Universelle  of  1878  (Paris), 

516 
Exposition     Universelle     of     1889-90 

(Paris),  535 
Exposition  Universelle  of  1900  (Paris), 

542 


Fact  and  Fiction  about  Wagner  (New- 
man),  397 
Fall  of  the  House  of  Usher,  The  (Poe), 

549 

Fall  Wagner,  Der  (Nietzsche),  436 
Falla,  Manuel  de  (1876-1946),  20,  552, 


593 

FaM  ' 


Falstaff^    (Verdi),   370,   466-467,   570 
Fantasiestucke    (Schumann),    301,    302, 

303.  5°° 
"Farewell"    Symphony    (Haydn),    109- 

no,  117 
Farinelli    (Carlo    Broschi)    (1705-1782), 

72,  87,  88 

Faure,  Gabriel-Urbain  (1845-1924),  545 
Faust  (Goethe),  343,  495 
Faust  (Gounod),  36,  391,  507,  530 
"Faust"    Symphony    (Liszt),    381,    385, 

393 

Faustina,  see  Hasse,  Faustina  (Bordoni) 
Fausts  Hollenfahrt,  212 
Feen,  Die  (Wagner),  401,  402,  403,  425 
Ferdinand     I,     Emperor     of     Austria 

(1793-1875),  300,  360 
Ferdinand  I  (IV  of  Naples),  King  of 

the  Two  Sicilies  (1751-1825),  235 
Ferrand,  Humbert  (?-i868),  349 
Ferrara,   Alfonso   II    d'Este,   Duke   of 


Festin  de  pierre,  Le  (Moliere),  91 
Fetis,  Francois-Joseph  (1784-1871),  320, 

324,  347 
Fidelio  (Beethoven),  182-185,  196,  221, 

241,  383,  400 

Field,  John   (1782-1837),   322,  327-328 
Fieschi,    Giuseppe    Maria    (1790-1836), 

353'  354 
Finck,  Henry  Theophilus  (1854-1926), 

560,  568 
Fingal's  Cave  (Mendelssohn),  274,  275, 

276,  284,  291,  470 
Finlandia   (Sibelius),   581,  588 
Firmian,   Carl,   Count,  Governor-Gen- 

eral of  Lombardy  (1716-1774),   129, 

130,  131 

"Fischer,  Der"  (Goethe),  350 
Five,  the,  506,  594 
Flaubert,    Gustave    (1821-1880),    314, 

329>  530 

Fledermaus,  Die  (Johann  Strauss),  559 
Flegeljahre  (Jean  Paul  Richter),  295 


Fliegende    Hollander,    Der    (Wagner), 

408,  409-411'  4H 
Flodin,  Karl  (1858-1925),  576 
Fokine,  Mikhail  (1880-1942),  550,  596 
"Forellen"  Quintet  (Schubert),  257 
former,     Estelle     (Duboeui)     (1797-""). 

342»  371 
Forza  del  destino,  La  (Verdi),  459-460, 

461 

Foundling  Hospital  (London),  81-82 
Francesco,    da    Rimini    (Tchaikovsky), 

5*5 
Francis  II,  Emperor  of  Austria  (1768- 

1835),  119,  121 
Fraiick,      Cesar- Auguste      (1822-1890), 

345»  5°9>  535»  53^ 
Symphony,  D  minor,  509 
Fraiick,  Salome  (1659-1725),  31 
Francs-Juges,   Les    (Berlioz),    342,    343, 

349*  359 

overture,  343,  349 
Franz,  Robert  (1815-1892),  251,  297 
Franz  Josef,  Emperor  of  Austria  (1830- 

1916),  387,  498-499 
Frederick,  King  of  Sweden  (1676-1751), 

31-32 
Frederick    II    ("the   Great"),    King  of 

Prussia  (1712-1786),  50,  97,  126,  154 
Frege,  Livia  (Gerhard)  (1818-1891),  290 
Freischutz,  Der  (Weber),  212,  216-217, 

218-220,  221,  223,  258,  269,  399,  411 
French  Revolution,   154,   180,  268 
Frescobaldi,  Girolamo  (1583-1643),  30 
Freud,  Sigmund  (1856-1939),  475,  496, 

502 

Fricken,  Baron  von,  296,  298 
Fricken,   Ernestine   von   (1816-?),   296, 

297,  298 

Friedheim,  Arthur   (1869-1932),  388 
Friedrich    I,    King    of    Wurttemberg 

1754-1816),  211-212 
Friedrich  Augustus  I,  King  of  Saxony 

(1750-1827),    215,    216,   217 
Friedrich  Augustus  II,  King  of  Saxony 

(1797-1854),  285,  408,  409,  414 
Friedrich  Wilhelm  II,  King  of  Prussia 

(1744-1797),  146,  154 
Friedrich  Wilhelm  III,  King  of  Prus- 
sia (1770-1840),  203,  214 
Friedrich  Wilhelm  IV,  King  of  Prussia 

(1795-1861),  283,  285,  286,  302,  416 
Fuchs,   Robert   (1847-1927),  577 
Funicull,  Funicula   (Denza),  558 
Fiirnberg,  Karl  Josef,  Baron  von,  105, 

106 
Fumvangler,  Wilhelm  (i8S&~       ),  39 


Gade,  Niels  Wilhelm  (1817-1890),  289, 


INDEX  625 

Galitzin,    Prince    Nikolai    Borissovich 

(1794-1866),    201 

Galuppi,  Baldassare  (1706-1785),   75 

Toccata,  75 
Gand-Leblanc,       Marie-Francpis-Louis, 

Bailli  du  Rollet  (1716-1786),  95-96 
Giinsbacher,  Johann   (1788—1844),  210, 

212 

Garcia,    Manuel    del    Popolo    Vicente 

(1775-1832),  231 

Garden,  Mar)-  (1877-    ),  543,  544,  567 
Garibaldi,  Giuseppe  (1807-1882),  459 
Gates,  Bernard  (1685-1773),  70 
Gatti-Casazza,  Giulio  ( 1869-1940),  549, 

55i 
Gauthier-Villars,  Henri  ("Willy")  (1859- 

1931),  537 
Gamier,    Theophile    (1811-1872),   320, 

353 

Gay,  John  (1688-1732),  61,  65,  69 
Gazette  musicals  (Paris),  363,  364 
Gazza  ladm,  La  (Rossini),  234 
Geddes,  Norman  Bel  (1893-        )»  *>°7 
Genevieve,  St.  (422?-^  12),  306-307 
Genossenschaft    Deutscher    Tonsetzer, 

5% 

Genoveva  (Schumann),  306-307,  383 
Georg,  Elector  of  Hanover,  see  George 

I,  King  of  England 
George    I,    King    of    England    (1660- 

1727),  57,  6 1^-62,  63,  67,  69 
George   II,    King   of   England    (1683- 

1760),  69,  70,  72,  73,  78,  79,  80 
George  III,   King  of  England   (1738- 

1820),  83,  102,  116,  127 
George  IV,    King  of  England   (1762- 

1830),  114,  116,  193,  238,  375 
Gerusalemme  liberata  (Tasso),  60,  98, 

343 

Geschichte  der  Kunst  de$  4lterthums 
(Winckelmann),  90 

Gesellschaft  der  Musikfreunde  (Vi- 
enna), 260,  264 

Gesner,  Johann  Matthias  (1691-1761), 

44>  48 
Gewandhaus    (Leipzig),    39,    279,    282, 

284,  285,  286,  287,  288,  289,  290,  298, 

303.  3t»7>  366,  399,  429,  477,  483 
Geyer,  Cacilie,  see  Avenarius,  Ciicilie 

(Geyer) 
Geyer,  Johanna,  see  Wagner,  Johanna 

(Patz) 
Geyer,  Ludwig   (1779-1821),   397,   398, 

399 

Gibbon,  Edward  (1737-1794),  51 
Gibbons,  Orlando  (1583-1625),  59 
Gibson,  Edmund,  Bishop  of  London 

(1669-1748),  71 

Gide,  Andre  (1869-        ),  606 
Gieseking,  Walter  (1895-        ),  181,  554 
Gilbert,  William  Schwenk  (1836-1911), 

31.  465 


626 


INDEX 


Girl  of  the  Golden   West,  The  (Puc- 
cini), 227 
Glinka,  Mikhail  Ivanovich  (1803-1857), 

506,  602 

Gluck,  Christoph  Willibald,  Ritter 
von  (1714-1787),  68,  76,  85-101, 
124,  129,  136,  137,  138,  141,  167, 
34°>  365>  369»  383>  4!4>  422,  450, 
526 

Alceste,  93~94>  98>  1O5»  *38 
"Divinites  du  Styx,"  94 
Overture,  94 
Antigone,  90 
Armide,  98-99 
Artaserse,  88 
Don  Juan,  90—91 
Echo  et  Narcisse,  100 
Ipermestra,  88 
Iphigenie  en  Aulide,  96-98,  414 

overture,  97 
Iphigenie  en   Tauride,  99-100,   101, 

185,  340 

Orfeo  ed  Euridice ,  91-93,  94,  97-98 
"Che  faro  senza  Euridice  "  92 
chorus  of  Furies,  92 
"Dance  of  the  Blessed  Spirits/*  92 
Orphee  et  Eurydice,  98 
Paride  ed  Elena,  94-95 

"O  del  mio  dolce  ardor"  95 
Roland,  99 
Gluck,   Marianne   (Pergin),  89-90,  96, 

100,  101 

Gluck,  Marianne  (1759-1776),  96,  101 
God  Save  the  King,  119,  194 
Goebbels,  Paul  Josef  (1897-1944),  571 
Goethe,   Johann   Wolfang  von   (1749- 
1832),  28,  93,  127,  151,  178,  191-193, 
213,  249,  250,  251,  252,  270,  274,  275, 
343»  35<>>  3^1,  362>  366>  382,  399*  485> 
519 
Goldberg,  Johann  Gottlieb  Theophilus 

(1720-1760),  49 

Goldman  Band  (New  York),  358 
Goldmark,  Karl   (i  830-19 15),  493,  577 
Golovin,  M.,  596 
Goncourt,    Edmond-Louis    de    (1822- 

1896),  530 
Goncourt,  Jules-Alfred  de  (1833-1870), 

530 
Gonzaga,  Ferdinand,  Viceroy  of  Sicily 

(1507-1557),  14 
Gossec,     Francois-Joseph     (1734-1829), 

98 
Gotha-Altenburg,   Augustus,   Duke   of 

(1772-1822),  215 
Gott  erhalte  Franz  den  Kaiser  (Haydn), 

119,  122 
Gotterdammerung,  Die  (Wagner),  420, 

425>  435»  44o»  443»  S12;  see  also  Ring 

des  Nibelungen,  Der 
Gottschalk,  Louis  Moreau  (1829-1869), 

324 


Gounod,  Charles  (1818-1893),  36,  361, 

385»  39*>  507*  522,  53<>»  532 

Ave  Maria,  36 

Faust,  36,  391,  507,  530 
Gradus  ad  Parnassum  (dementi),  549 
Gramophone    Shop    Encyclopedia    of 

Recorded  Music,  The  (Darrell),  250 
Granvelle,  Antoine  Perrenot,  Cardinal 

de  (1517-1586),   15 

Graupner,  Christoph  (1683-1760),  38 
Gray,   Cecil    (1895-    ),   370,   391,   562, 

57<>-57 !*  578,  582,  591 
Greco,    El    (Domenico    Theotocopuli) 

(i548?-i625),  18 

Gregory  I,  Pope,  St.  (540?-6o4),  4 
Gregory    XIII    (Ugo    Buoncompagni), 

Pope  (1502-1585),   13 
Gregory    XVI    (Bartolommeo    Alberto 

Cappellari),    Pope    (1765-1846),    449 
Gretry,    Andre-Ernest-Modeste    (1741- 
^1813),  243 

Richard  Goeur-de~lion,  243 

"O  Richard!  O  mon  roy!"  243 
Grieg,    Edvard    Hagerup    (1843-1907), 

142,  522,  527 

Grillparzer,  Franz  (1791-1872),  266 
Grimani,  Cardinal  Vincenzo,  58 
Grimm,    Friedrich     Melchior,     Baron 

von  (1723-1807),   127 
Grisi,  Giulia  (1811-1869),  244 
Grob,  Therese  (1798-1875),  261-262 
Grotesques  de  la  musique,  Les  (Ber- 
lioz), 360 
Grove,    Sir    George    (1820-1900),    203, 

259,  262,  522 
Guernica   (Picasso),  609 
Guicciardi,  Contessa  Giulietta,  175,  177 
Guillard,  Nicolas-Francois  (1752-1814), 

99 

Guiraud,  Ernest  (1837-1892),  532,  533 
Gutenberg,  Johannes   (i397?-i468),  5 


H 


Hass,  Alma  (1847-?),  141 

Habeneck,      Frangois-Antoine      (1781- 

i849)'  347*  407 
Hadow,    Sir    William    Henry    (1859- 

1927),  204,  244*  333'  494 
Haffner,  Marie  Elizabeth,   135 
Haffner,     Sigmund,     Burgomaster     of 

Salzburg  (1699-1772),   135,   144 
"Haffner"    Symphony    (Mozart),     144, 

149 
Halevy  (Levy),  Jacques-Fromental-Elie 

(1799-1862),  355 
Halif,  Karl  (1859-1909),  583 
Hall,  Elisa,  545 
Hamilton,   Emma,   Lady    (i765?-i8i5), 

130 
Hamilton,  Sir  William  (1730-1803),  130 


Hamlet    (Shakespeare),   273,   342,   399, 

45  *>  495 
" Hammer  klavier"  Sonata  (Beethoven), 

198-200 
Hammerstein,  Oscar  (1847-1919),  549, 

5<>7>  569 
Handel,  Dorothea  (Taust)  (1652^-1730), 

53.  63,  70 

Handel,  Georg  (1622-1697),  53-54 
Handel,  George  Frideric  (1685-1759), 
21,  22,  24,  37,  41,  51,  53-84,  86-87, 
88-89,  98,  102,  105,  114,  116,  119, 
124,  127,  142,  153,  157,  205,  264, 
277,  279,  281,  283,  289,  291,  316, 
382,  396,  478,  486,  510,  570,  6ou 
604 

Ads  and  Galatea,  65 
"O  ruddier  than  the  cherry/*  65 

Agripplna,  58 

Alcina,  72 

Alessandro,  68-69 

Alexander  Balus,  80 

Alexander's  Feast,  72-73 

Allegro,  il  Penseroso,  ed  il  Moderate, 
L',K 

Almira,  56 

Aria  con  variazioni,  B  flat  major,  478 

Athalia,  71 

Birthday  Ode,  61 

Chaconne,  G  major,  65 

"Chandos"   Anthems,   64-65 

Concerti  grossi,  76 

Deborah,  71 

Dettingen  Te  Deum,  79 

Esther,  71 

Firework  Music,  81,  84 

Funeral  Anthem,  73 

Giulio  Cesare,  68 

Haman  and  Mordecai,  66,  70-71 

"Harmonious  Blacksmith,  The,"  65, 

75 

Hercules,  80-81 
Israel  in  Egypt,  76-77,  277 

"The  people  shall  hear/'  77 
Jephtha,  80,  82 

"How  dark,  O  Lord,*'  82 

"Waft  her,  angels/'  80 
Joshua,  80,  119 

"Oh,  had  I  Jubal's  lyre,"  80 
Judas  Maccabaeus,  80,  81 

"Glory  to  God,"  80 
"Largo,"  see  Serse 

Messiah,  53,  76,  77-79,  81-82,  83,  84, 
119,  120,  153,  288 

"Hallelujah"  Chorus,  55,  78 

"He  shall  feed  his  flock,"  78 

"I  know  that  my  Redeemer  liveth," 
78 

"The  people  that  walked  in  dark- 
ness," 142 

"Worthy  is  the  Lamb/'  78 
Nero,  56 


INDEX  627 

Handel,  George  Frideric — (Continued) 
Occasional  Oratorio,  80 
Ode  for  St.  Cecilia's  Day,  77,  316-317 
Ottone,  67 
Passion,  63-64 
Pieces  pour  le  clavecin,  65 
Poro,  70 

Radamisto,  66-67 
Resurrezione,  La,  57 
Riccardo  Primo,  57 
Rinaldo,  60-61,  98 

"Cora  sposa"  60 

"Lascia  ch'io  pianga"  60 
Rodrigo,  56,  57 
Samson,  79 
Saul,  76,  77 

Dead  March,  76 
Semele,  79 

"Where'er  you  walk/*  79 
Serse,  74-75 

"Largo"    ("Ombra,    mai   fu"),   55, 

74-75,  302 
Susanna,  80 

"Ask  if  yon  damask  rose  be  fair," 

80 

Tamerlano,  68 
Teseo,  61,  66 
Theodora,  80 
Trionfo  del  tempo  e  del  disingannot 

115-7 
Triumph  of  Time  and  Design,  The, 

57 

Utrecht  Te  Deum,  61 

Water  Music,  62-63,  75,  81 
Handel  Commemoration   (1784),   83 
Handel  Gesellschaft,  84 
Handel  Society  (London),  84 
Hanover,    Prince    Ernst    Augustus    of 

(Duke  of  York)  (1674-1728),  57,  58 
Hansel    und    Gretel    (Humperdinck), 

559 
Hanslick,  Eduard  (1825-1904),  433,  493, 

495>  520,  521,  559>  562 

Hark,  Hark,  the  Lazjt!  (Schubert),  249, 
251,  263 

"Harmonious  Blacksmith,  The"  (Han- 
del), 65,  75 

Harold   en  Italie   (Berlioz),   346,   350, 

351-352,  356»  383 
Hartmann,  Georges  (?-igoo),  541, 
Harzreise  im  Winter  (Goethe),  485 
Haschka,  Lorenz  Leopold  (1749-1827), 

119 
Hasse,  Faustina  (Bordoni)  (1693-1783), 

44,  68-69,  72,  87 

Hasse,  Johann  Adolf  (1699-1783),  41-45, 
72,  87,  88,  112,  125,  132 

Artaserse,  72,  76,  88,  131 
Hastings,  Warren  (1732-1818),   116 
Hausmann,  Robert  (1852-1909),  498 
Haussmann,     Baron     Georges-Eugene 

(1808-1891),  427 


628 


INDEX 


Haydn,  Franz  Josef  (1732-1809),  88, 
101,  102-123,  124,  128,  140,  141, 
142,  143,  144,  i45-*46,  i52>  153. 
155,  159,  162,  167-168,  169,  170, 
171,  180,  181,  188,  191,  196,  207, 

212,    217,    227,    229,    244,    252,    253, 

293>  3*7»  327>  382,  396>  402,  44^, 

487.  542.  575>  594 
"Ghasse,  La'"  Symphony,  117 
"Clock"    Symphony,   see   "Salamon" 

No.    11 
Creation,  The,  119-120,  121,  122,  153, 

244 

"The  Heavens  are  telling/'  120 
"With  verdure  clad,"  120 

"Drum  Roll"  Symphony,  402 

"Farewell"  Symphony,   109-110,   117 

Fedelta  premiata,  La,   112 

Gott  erhalte  Franz  den  Kaiser,  119, 
122 

Isola  disabitata,  U,  ILS 

"Oxford"  Symphony,  105,  114,  117 

piano  sonatas,  122 

"Russian"  Quartets,  111 

"Salamon"   Symphonies,   117-118 
2nd,  114 
5th,  117 
nth  ("Clock"),  122 

Seasons,  The,  120-121 

string  quartets,   122-123 

"Toy"  Symphony,  ias 
Haydn,    Maria    Anna    (Keller)    (1729- 

1800),  106,  110,  121 
Haydn,  Michael  (1737-1806),  128,  130, 

209 

"Haydn"  Quartets  (Mozart),   145,  146 
Haym,  Nicolo  (1679-1729),  61,  66 
"Hebrides"    Overture    (Mendelssohn), 

274,  275,  276,  284,  291,  470 
Hegel,  Georg  Wilhelm  Friedrich  (1770- 

1831),  272 
Heidegger,    John    James    (1659-1749), 

66,  70,  71,  72,  74 

Heifetz,  Jascha  (1901-    ),  132,  583 
"Heiligenstadt  Testament"  (Beethoven), 

170-174,  176 
Heine,  Heinrich   (1797-1856),  23,  219, 

244,  272,  301,  302,  320,  321,  329,  517, 

534 

Heldburg,  Helen  Franz,  Baroness  von 
(morganatic  wife  of  Grand  Duke 
Georg  of  Saxe-Meiningen),  497 

Heldenleben,    Ein    (Richard    Strauss), 

563-564,  565 
Helsingfors    Philharmonic    Orchestra, 

577>  581 

Hempel,  Frieda  (1885-    )»  220 
Henri  III,  King  of  France  (1551-1589), 

16 
rlenrici,  Christian  Friedrich  (Picander) 

(1700-1764),  42 


Herbeck,    Johann    Franz    von    (1831- 

1877),  260 

Herbert,  Victor  (1859-1924),  526 
Heritage  of  Music,    The   (H.  J.   Foss, 

editor),  160 
Herman,  Woody,  607 
Hernani  (Hugo),  320,  449 
"Heroic"  Polonaise  (Chopin),  323 
Herold,  Louis-Joseph-Ferdinand  (1791- 
1833),  320 

Zampa,  320 

Herrmann,  Bernard  (1911-    ),   75-76 
Herz,    Henri    (Heinrich)    (1806-1888), 

296,  311 
Herzogenberg,    Elisabeth    (Von    Stock- 

hausen)    von    (1847-1892),    484-485, 

495>  499 
Herzogenberg,    Baron     Heinrich    von 

(1843-1900),  484 
Hesse- Cassel,      Karl,      Landgrave      of 

(1670-1730),  31 
Hill,  Aaron  (1685-1750),  60 
Hiller,    Ferdinand     (1811-1885),    280, 

282,  286,  306,  308,  311,  317,  326,  346, 

347'  383 

Hitler,  Adolf  (1889-1945),  208,  571 
Hoffman,     Ernst     Theodor     Amadeus 

(1776-1822),  213,  219,  399 
Hofmannsthal,  Hugo  von  (1874-1929), 

568,  569,  570,  571 
Hogarth,  William  (1697-1764),  74,  82, 

610 
Hohenlohe,    Gustav    Adolf,    Cardinal 

(1823-1896),  386,  534 
Hohenlohe-Schillmgfurst,  Prince  Kon- 

stantin  von  (1828-1896),  385 
Hohenlohe-Schillingfurst,  Princess  Ma- 
rie   (Sayn-Wittgenstein)    von    (1837- 

1920),  385,  386 
Hohenzollern,  house  of,  36 
Holy  Alliance,  236 
Holz,  Karl  (1798-1858),  205 
Home,  Sweet  Home  (Sir  Henry  Bishop), 

232 
Homer  (circa  ninth  century  B.C.),  480, 

576 

Homme  arme,  L',  12 
Horace     (Quintus     Horatius    Flaccus) 

(65-8  B.C.),  451,  576 
Horst  Wessel  Song,  119 
Hugo,  Victor  (1802-1885),  282,  320, 

342,  349*  353>  449>  45*~452>  529-530 
Huguenots,  Les  (Meyerbeer),  245,  409 
Huit  Scenes  de  Faust  (Berlioz),  343, 

360;   see  also  Damnation   de  Faust, 

La  (Berlioz) 
Humbert  I,  King  of  Italy  (1844-1900), 

468 
Humboldt,  Baron  Alexander  von  (1769- 

1859),  272,  316 

Hummel,    Johann    Nepomuk     (1778- 
293»  294,  317 


Humperdinck,    Engelbert    (1854-1921), 
442,  559 

Hansel  und  Gretel,  442,  559 
Huneker,  James  Gibbons  (1860-1921), 

301,  322,  324,  328,  444,  516-517,  563, 

5&i 
Hungarian  Rhapsodies  (Liszt),  391-392 

Hunten,  Franz  (1793-1878),  296,  311 
Hunter,  John  (1728-1793),  115 
Hiittenbrenner,    Anselm     (1794-1868), 

255,  256,  260,  264 

Hiittenbrenner,  Josef  (1796-1882),  256 
Huysmans,  Joris  Karl  (1848-1907),  543 


Iberia  (Debussy),  551-552 

I'm  Always  Chasing  Rainbows  (Car- 
roll), 325 

Immortal  Beloved/*  letter  to  the 
(Beethoven),  176-178,  344 

Incoronazione  di  Poppaea,  Lf  (Monte- 
verdi), 85-86 

Indy,  Vincent  d'  (1851-1931),  178,  544, 

564 

Inferno  (Dante),  515 
Ingres,  Jean-Auguste-Dominique  (1780- 

1867),  320 
Innocent  VIII  (Giovanni  Battista  Cibo) 

Pope  (1432-1492),  5 
Invitation  to  Music  (CBS),  572 
Invitation  to  the  Dance  (Weber),  208, 

212,  217 

Interior  Causes  of  the  Exterior  Weak- 
ness of  the  Church,  The  (Sayn-Witt- 

genstein),  386 

Iphigenie  en  Aulide  (Gluck),  96-98,  414 
Iphi genie  en  Tauride  (Gluck),  99-100, 

101,  185,  340 
Isabella  II,  Queen  of  Spain  (1830-1904), 

380 
Ismail  Pasha,  Khedive  of  Egypt  (1830- 

1895),  462 

Israel  in  Egypt  (Handel),  76-77,  277 
Italiana  in  Algeri,  L'  (Rossini),  229 
"Italian"     Symphony     (Mendelssohn), 

276-277,  284,  291 

J 

Jackson,  Andrew  (1767-1845),  321 
ames  II,  King  of  England  (1633-1701), 

61 

Janina,  Countess  Olga,  387-388 
Jaques-Dalcroze,  Iimlle  (1865-        ),  538 
Jarnefelt,  Aino,  see  Sibelius,  Aino  (Jar- 

nefelt) 

Jarnefelt,  Armas  (1869-  ),  579 
Jarnefelt,  Arvid  (1861-  ),  581 
Jarnefelt,  Eero  Nikolai  (1863-1937), 

577>  585~586 


INDEX  629 

Jarnefelt,  General,  577 

Jeanrenaud,       Ce"cile-Charlotte-Shopie, 

see    Mendelssohn-Bar  tholdy,    Cecile 

(Jeanrenaud) 
Jeanrenaud,  M.,  281 
Jeanrenaud,  Mme,  281 
Jennens,  Charles  (1700-1773),  77 
Jephtha  (Handel),' So,  82 
Joachim,  Joseph  11831-1907),  187,  282, 

289,  310,  311,  364,  366,  388,  470,  472, 

473,  478,  480,  484,  493,  494.  49s 
Joachim  Quartet,  480,  498,  583 
Jockey  Club  (Paris),  321,  428 
John  the  Divine,  St.,  10 
Johnson,  Samuel  (1709-1784),  83 
Jornmelli,  Niccolo  (1714-1774),  76 
Jonson,  Ben  (i572?-i6$7),  63,  571 
Josef  II,  Holy  Roman  Emperor  (1741- 

179°)'  9S»  128,  139,  140,  i4*>  i47»  H8-- 

151,  154,  155 

Joseffy,  Rafael  (1852-1915),  388 
Joshua  (Handel),  80,  119 
Josquin    Des    Pres    (i444?-i52i),    5-7, 
20,  395,  601 

Masses,  ist  booK  of,  6 
Journal  des  debats  (Paris),  353,  360,  363, 

373 

Judas  Maccabaeus  (?-i6o  B.C.),  So 
Judas  Maccabaeus  < Handel),  So,  81 
Julius  III  (Giovanni  Maria  del  Monte) 

Pope  (1487-1555)'  8 
Jullien,  Louis-Antoine  (1812-1860),  362 
Jungfrau  von   Orleans,  Die   (Schiller), 

519 

"Jupiter"  Symphony  (Mozart),  153,  586 
Juvenal    (Decimus    Junius    Juvenalis) 

(6o?-i40),  129 


Kajanus,  Robert  (1856-1933),  577,  579. 

581 

Kalevala,  577,  584,  588 
Kalkbrenner,     Friedrich     (1788-1849), 

123,  320 
Karsavina,  Thamar  Pavlovna  (1885-    ), 

596»  597 

Kayserling,  Baron  Karl  von,  49 
Kean  (Dumas  pere),  451 
Keats,  John  (1795-1821),  266,  540 
Keiser,  Reinhard  (1674-1739),  54~55>  56 
Kernble,  Charles  (i775-l854)»  221-222, 

o'ro     94j2 

Kent,Victoria,  Duchess  of  (1786-1861), 

224 
Kerensky,      Alexander      Feodorovich 

(1881-       ),  590 
Kind,    Johann   Friedrich    (1768-1843), 

216 
Kinderscenen  /Schumann),  502,  308,  549 


630  INDEX 

King  Lear  (Shakespeare),  451,  455,  465 
"King  of  Prussia"  Quartets  (Mozart), 

146 
Kinsky,  Prince  Ferdinand  Johann  Ne- 

pomuk  (?-i8i2),  190,   197,  255 
Kiss  Me  Again  (Herbert),  7 
Kleine  Nachtmusik,  Eine  (Mozart),  149 
Klopstock,    Gottlob    Friedrich    (1724- 

1803),  96 

Knobel,  Theo,  285 

Kochel,  Ludwig  von  (1800-1877),  134 
Koczwara,  Franz  (?-i79i),  194 

Battle  of  Prague,  The,  194 
Kodaly,  Zoltan  (1882-       ),  561 
Koechlin,  Charles  (1867-        ),  550 
Komer,  Karl  Theodor  (1791-1813),  215 
Koussevitzky,  Nathalie  (Ushkov),  609 
Koussevitzky,      Serge      Alexandrovich 

(1874-        ),  no,  592,  605 
Krehbiel,  Henry  Edward   (1854-1923), 

588 

Kreisler,  Fritz  (1875-       ),  494 
Kreisleriana  (Schumann),  301,  302,  500 
Kreutzer,  Leon,  364 
"Kreutzer"  Sonata  (Beethoven),  206 
Kuhnau,  Johann  (1660-1722),  38 
Kuznetsov,  N.  D.,  526 


Lablache,  Luigi  (1794-1858),  320,  337 
Lac  des  cygnes,  Le  (Tchaikovsky),  515, 

520 

Lachner,  Franz  (1803-1890),  431 
Lady  of  the  Lake,  The  (Scott),  262 
La  Harpe,  Jean-Francois  de  (1739-1803), 

99 

Lalla  Rookh  (Moore),  .304-305 
Lalo,   Victor- Antoine-Edouard     (1823- 

1892),  546 
Lamartine,    Alphonse-Marie-Louis    de 

1790-1869),  393,  529 
Lambert,  Constant  (1905-    ),  488 
Lang,  Margarethe,  212,  213,  214 
Lange,    Aloysia    (Weber)    (1760-1839), 

136,  137,  139,  141 
Lange,  Josef  (1751-1831),  139 
Larrivee,  Henri  (1737-1802),  96-97 
Lasso,  Orlando  di  (i53O?-i594),  9,  12, 
14-18,  20,  25,  119,  278,  395,  534 

Gustate  et  videte,  17 

Lagrime  di  San  Pietro,  17 

madrigals,  5th  book  of,  17 

motets,  ist  book  of,  15 

seven  penitential  psalms,  18 
/Last   Judgment,   The    (Michelangelo), 

45 

Laussot,  Eugene,  418 
Laussot,  Jessie  (Taylor)  (2-1905),  418 
Lavigna,  Vincenzo  (1777-1837),  446 


Lavignac,  Alexandre- Jean- Albert  (1846- 

19*6),  531 
Lawrence,  Thomas  Edward  (1888-1935), 

396 

Leblanc,  Georgette  (1875-1941),  543 
Lee,  Vernon  (Violet  Paget)  (1856-1935), 

100 
Legouve,    Gabriel-Ernest    (1807-1903), 

353>  38o 

Legros,  Joseph  (1730-1793),  96,  97 
Lehmann,  Liza  (1862-1918),  75 
Leipzig,  battle  of,  193 
Lelio  (Berlioz),  343,  347,  348,  350-351, 

369*  372 

Lenau,  Nikolaus  (1802-1850),  559 
Leo,  Leonardo  (1694-1744),  278 
Leonardo  da  Vinci  (1452-1519),  8,  14, 

159,  168 
Leoncavallo,  Ruggiero  (1858-1919),  534, 

566 
"Leonora"  Overtures  (Beethoven) 

ist,  183-184 

2nd,  184 

3rd,  183,  184,  185 
Leopold    II,    Holy    Roman    Emperor 

(1747-1792),  155,  156 
Lepanto,  battle  of,  10 
"Les  Adieux"  Sonata  (Beethoven),  190, 

191 
Lesueur,  Jean-Francois  (1760-1837),  189, 

34° »  34  * 
Levi,  Hermann  (1839-1900),  402,  442, 

443»  556,  561 

Lewes,  George  Henry  (1817-1878),  329 
Leyer  und  Schwert  (Korner),  215 
Lichnowsky,   Prince   Karl   (1756-1814), 

153,    168,    169,    175,    186,    191,    197, 

206 
Liebesverbot,  Das   (Wagner),   404-405, 

4<>7»  425 
Lind,  Jenny  (Mme  Otto  Goldschmidt) 

(1820-1887),  287,  289,  290,  450 
Linley,  Thomas  (1756-1778),  129 
"Linz"  Symphony  (Mozart),  143,  144, 

*49 
Lippe,  Prince  Leopold  of  (1821-1875), 

476 
Lippe,  Princess  Friederike  of  (1825-?), 

476     - 

Liszt,  Adam  (?-i827),  375,  376 
Liszt,  Anna  (Lager)  (?-i866),  375,  376, 

377 
Liszt,    Daniel    (1839-1859),    378,    381, 

385 
Liszt,  Blandine,  see  Ollivier,  Blandine 

(Liszt) 
Liszt,    Cosima,    see    Wagner,    Cosima 

(Liszt  von  Biilow) 

Liszt,  Franz  (Ferenc)  (1811-1886),  28, 
169,  185,  200,  225,  244,  245,  266, 
275,  282,  290,  297,  300,  304,  305, 


Liszt,  Franz  (Ferenc) — (Continued) 
310,  320,  322,  323,  324,  325,  326, 
3*9*  33<>»  333'  338»  345>  347»  349. 
351'  353*  355>  356,  3&>.  361,  365, 
366»  367»  371'  374-394'  4*4>  4*7* 
418-419,  420,  425,  431,  435~436> 
437,  438,  443-444'  472,  473,  478, 
486,  487,  511,  534,  556,  559,  564, 

565,  573 

chorus,  soloists,  and  orchestra 
Christus,  392 
Masses,  392 

"Coronation,"  387 
Psalm  XIII,  392 
St.  Elisabeth,  389,  392 
opera 

Don  Sanche,  375 
orchestra 
symphonic  poems 

Mazeppa,  393 

Orpheus,  393 

Preludes,  Le$,  393 

Tasso,   lamento    e    trionfo,   391, 

393 
symphonies 

"Dante,"  381,  393 
"Faust,"  381,  385,  393 
organ 

Ad     nos     ad     salutarem     undam 
(Meyerbeer),  391 
piano 

Anne'es  de  pelerinage,  377,  391 
Au  bord  d'une  source,  392 
Au  lac  de  Wallenstadt,  392 
Tre  Sonetti  di  Petrarca,  392 
Auf  Fliigeln  des  Gesanges  (Men- 
delssohn), 278 

Don  Juan  Fantaisie  (Mozart),  391 
Etudes  transcendantesf  380 
Fantasia  on  Niobe  (Pacini),  378 
Grand  Galop  chromatique,  380 
Harmonies  poetiques  et  religieuses 
Benediction    de    Dieu    dans    la 

solitude,  393 
Hungarian   Rhapsodies,  391 

2nd,  391-392 
Deux  legendes,  393 

Saint-Francois  d'Assise  predicant 

aux  oiseauxy  393 
Saint-Fran cois    de    Paule    mar- 
chant  sur  les  flots,  393 
Liebestraum,  A  flat  major,  392 
Rigol'etto  Paraphrase  (Verdi),  391 
Soirees  de   Vienne  (Schubert),  391 
Sonata  in  B  minor,  391,  392 
Waltz  from  Gounod's  Faust,  391 
piano  and  orchestra 

concertos,  392 

Little  Orchestra  Society   (New  York), 
572 


INDEX  631 

"Little  Russian"  Symphony  (Tchai- 
kovsky), 508-509,  511 

Lobkowitz,  Prince  Ferdinand  Philipp, 
88 

Lobkowitz,  Prince  Josef  Franz  (1772- 
1816),  168,  190,  197,  198,  255 

Lockspeiser,  Edward  (1905-    ),  55*~552 

Loeffler,    Charles    Martin    (1861-1935), 

5^4 
Lohengrin  (Wagner),  286,  413,  416, 418- 

419,  420,  425,  429,  430,  512,  579 
Lohenstein,  Daniel  Casper  von  (1635- 

1683),  48 
London  Music  in  1888-89  as  Heard  by 

Corno  di  Bassetto  (Shaw),  142 
Loon,    Hendrik    Willem    van    (1882- 

1944),  194 
Louis  XI,  King  of  France  (1423-1483), 

5>6 
Louis  XII,  King  of  France  (1462-1515), 

6,  396 
Louis    XIII,    King    of    France    (1601- 

1643)-  455 
Louis    XIV,    King    of    France    (1638- 

1715),  86 
Louis  XV,  King  of  France  (1710-1774), 

32,  108,  127 
Louis  XVI,  King  of  France  (1754-1793)* 

95 
Louis  XVIII,   King  of   France   (1755- 

1^24),  339 
Louis-Philippe,  King  of  France  (1773- 

1850),  243,  318,  335, 339,  353,  362,  376, 

380 

Louys,  Pierre  (1870-1925),  539,  540 
Loyola,  Ignatius,  St.  (1491-1556),  19 
Lucrezia  Floriani   (George   Sand),  334 
Ludwig  I,  King  of  Bavaria  (1786-1868), 

275,  432 
Ludwig  II,  King  of  Bavaria  (1845-1886), 

429-431,  432,  435,  436,  437,  438,  441 
Lully,    Jean-Baptiste    (1632-1687),    86, 

98 
Luther,  Martin  (1483-1546),  7,  23,  46, 

275 

Ein  feste  Burg  ist  unser  Gott,  23,  274 
Luttichau,  Wolf  Adolf  August  Baron 
von  (1786-1863),  415 


M 


McCormack,  John   (1884-1945),  79 
Macbeth  (Shakespeare),  495 
Macbeth  (Verdi),  450,  461 
Maeterlinck,  Maurice  (1862-1949),  537, 

543,  544,  583 
Maffei,   Contessa   Clara   (?-i886),  451, 

464,  466 

Mahler,  Gustav  (1860-1911),  184 
Mahmud  II,  Sultan  of  Turkey  (1785- 

1839),  237 
Malbrouck  s'en  va-t-en  guerre,  194 


632  INDEX 

Malibran,     Maria     Felicita      (Garcia) 

(1808-1936),  273,  320 
Mallarme,  Stephane   (1842-1898),  535, 

538 
Miilzel,  Johann  Nepomuk  (1772-1838), 

192,  193-194.  i96 
Manchester,  Charles  Montagu,  Duke  of 

(1656-1722),  57 
Manfred  (Byron),  307 
Manfred  (Schumann),  306,  307,  312 
Manzoni,  Alessandro  (1785-1873),  461, 

463 
"Manzoni"  Requiem  (Verdi),  463-464 

Marcellus  I,  Pope,  St.  (?~3O9)»  1° 
Marcctlus  II  (Marcello  Cervlno),  Pope 

(1501-1555),  8 

Marchand,  Louis  (1669-1732),  32 
Marche  slave  (Tchaikovsky),  514 
Margaret,  Archduchess  of  Austria,  19 
Margherita,    Queen    of    Italy    (1851- 

1926),  468 
Maria,  Holy  Roman  Empress  (?-i6o3), 

i9 
Maria  Feodorovna,  Tsarina  of  Russia 

(Sophia  Dorothea  of  Wiirttemberg) 

(1747-1828),  101,  in 
Manage  de  Figaro,  Le  (Beaumarchais), 

147 
Maria    Theresa,    Empress    of    Austria 

(1717-1780),   93,    98,    103,    no,    126, 

127,  128,  130,  131,  138,  157,  165 
Marie  Amelie,  Queen  of  France  (1782- 

1866),  335 
Marie    Antoinette,    Queen    of   France 

(m5~-m$)>  93>  96,  98,  136 
Mario,  Cavaliere  di  Candia  (Giovanni 

Matteo)  (1810-1883),  244 
Markova,  Alicia  (1911?—    ),  607 
Marlborough,  John  Churchill,  Duke  of 

(1650-1722),  67 
Marks,  G.  W.  pseudonym  of  Johannes 

Brahms,  471 
Marmontel,    Antoine-Francpis     (1816- 

1898),  53*»  532 
Marschner,    Heinrich    August    (1795- 

1861),  298,  400,  402,  403 
Marseillaise,  La  (Rouget  de  Lisle),  23, 

519 

Martha  (Flotow),  414 

Martin,  Marie-Genevieve,  see  Berlioz, 
Marie  (Recio) 

Martin,  Sotera  Vilas,  360 

Martini,  Giovanni  Battista  (1706-1784), 
129 

Martyre  de  Saint-Sebastien,  Le  (D'An- 
nunzio),  550 

Martyre  de  Saint-Sebastien,  Le  (De- 
bussy), 550-551 

Marxsen,  Eduard  (1806-1887),  471 

Mascagni,  Pietro,  (1863-1 945),  184,  570 

Massenet,  Jules-Emile-Fr&ieric  (1842- 
1912),  500,  519,  522,  532-533*  540>  546 


Mattei,  Stanislao  (1750-1825),  227 
Mattheson,  Johann  (1681-1764),  55-56 

Cleopatra,  55 
Maute  de  Fleurville,  Antoinette-Flore 

(Chariat)   (?~i884),  531 
Maura  (Stravinsky),  602 
Maximilian  II,  Holy  Roman  Emperor 

(1527-1576),   15,   19 
Mayrhofer,  Johann  (1787-1836),  255 
Mazarin,  Mariette,  568 
Measure    for    Measure    (Shakespeare), 

404 
Meek,  Nadejda  Filaretovna  von  (1831- 

1894),  5i2-5i2>  5*4>  5l5-5iQ>  5*7>  5^o, 

524-525,  528,  529,  532 
Medea  (Euripides),  495 
Medici,  house  of,  15 
Medici,     Catherine     de',     Queen     of 

France   (1519-1589),    16 
Medici,  Ferdinand  de',  Grand  Duke  of 

Tuscany  (1663-1713),  56 
Medici,    Giovan    Gastone    de*    (1671- 

1737)*  56 

Meditations  poetiques  (Lamartine),  393 
Meftstofelef  (Boi'to),  465 
Mehul,     ttienne-Nicolas     (1763-1817), 

215 

Joseph,  215 
Mein  Leben   (Wagner),  398,  403,  433, 

436 
Metstersinger,  Die   (Wagner),  47,  370, 

419,  426,  432-434 
Melba,   Nellie    (Mitchell)    (1861-1931), 

237 

Memoires  (Berlioz),  348,  360,  363,  366 
Mendelssohn,  Moses  (1729-1786),  267- 

268 

Mendelssohn  -  Bartholdy,       Abraham 
(1776-1835),  268,  270,  277,  278,  280 
Mendelssohn-Bartholdy,      Cecile-Char- 
lotte-Sophie      (Jeanrenaud)       (1819- 

1853),  267,  281,  284 
Mendelssohn-Bartholdy,  Fanny  Cacilie 

(1805-1847),  268,  289 
Mendelssohn-Bartholdy,     Felix     (1809- 
1847),  22,  39,   1.20,    151,   185,   187, 
207,  219,  241,  244,  263,  264,  267- 
291,  297,  298,  300,   301,  303,  304, 
3°5»  3°6»  310,  312,  316,  320,  321, 
326,  328,  343,  347,  359,  382,  416, 
421,  423,  460,  483,  571 
Antigone,  incidental  music,  283,  285 
Ath&lie,  incidental  music,  284 

"War  March  of  the  Priests,"  284 
Auf  Flugeln  des  Gesanges,  278-279, 

290 

concertos,  piano  and  orchestra 
ist,  G  minor,  275 
2nd,  D  minor,  281 
Rondo  brillant,  278 
concerto,    violin    and    orchestra,    £ 
minor,  187,  287,  291 


Mendelssohn-Bartholdy,     Felix — (Con- 
tinued) 

"Consolation,"  290 

Elijah,  288-289,  29° 
"It  is  enough,"  289 
"O  rest  in  the  Lord,"  289 

Fingal's  Cave,  274,  275,  276,  284,  291, 

47° 
"Hebrides"    Overture,    ~ee    Fingal's 

Cave 

Hochzeit  des  Camacho,  Die,  270 
Hymn  of  Praise,  see  Lobgesang 
"Italian"  Symphony,  276-277,  284, 

291 

Lieder  ohne  Worte,  263,  275,  290,  291 
Lobgesang  (Hymn  of  Praise  or  "2nd" 

Symphony),  282-283 
Meeresstille  Overture,  279 
Midsummer  Night's  Dream,  A,  inci- 
dental music,  285-286,  291,  571 

Funeral  March,  286 

Intermezzo,  286 

Nocturne,  286 

Overture,   271-272,   275,   276,   285, 
286,  291 

Scherzo,  286 

Wedding  March,  286,  290 
Oedipus  Coloneus,  incidental  music, 

283 
overture 

Fingal's  Cave,  274,  275,  276,  284, 
291,  470 

"Hebrides,"  see  Fingal's  Cave 

Hochzeit  des  Camacho,  Die,  270 

Meeresstille,  279 

Midsummer    Night's    Dream,    A, 
271-272,  275,  276,  285,  286,  291 

Ruy  Bias,  282,  286,  291 

Schone  Melusine,  Die,  278 

'"Trumpet,"  277 
piano  solo 

Capriccio  "brillant,  275 

Lieder  ohne  Worte,  263,  275,  290, 
291 

Prelude  and  Fugue,  E  minor,  291 

Rondo  capriccioso,  291 

Songs  Without  Words,  see  Lieder 
ohne  Worte 

Variations  serieuses,  291 
"Reformation"   Symphony,  274,  275 
Rondo  brillant,  piano  and  orchestra, 

278 

Ruy  Bias  Overture,  282,  286,  291 
St.  Paul,  278,  280,  281,  321 

"But  the  Lord  is  mindful  of  His 

own,"  280 

Schone  Melusine,  Die,  Overture,  278 
"Scotch"   Symphony,   274,  284,   285, 

291 
Songs   Without    Words,   see   Lieder 

ohne  Worte 
"Spring  Song/1  290 


INDEX  633 

Mendelssohn-Bartholdy,     Felix  —  (Con- 

tinued) 
symphonies 

ist,  C  minor,  269,  274 

snd,    B    flat    major    (Lobgesang). 

282-283 
$rd,  A  minor  ("Scotch"),  274,  284, 

285,  291 
4th,  A  major  ("Italian"),  276-277, 

284,  291 
5th,    D    minor    ("Reformation*'). 

*74>  275 

"Trumpet"  Overture,  277 
Mendelssohn-Bartholdy,     Leah     (Salo- 

mon) (1777-1842),  268,  281,  285 
Mendelssohn-Bartholdy,     Paul     (1813- 

1874),  269,  283,  288 
Mendelssohn  -  Bartholdy,        Rebecka 

(1811-1858),  269 

Mendes,  Catulle  (1841-1909),  536 
Menter,  Sophie  (1848-1918),  388,  574 
Menuhin,  Yehudi  (1917-        )*  132 


Mery  La  (Debussy),  545,  546, 

55  1.  592 

Merelli,  Bartolommeo,  447,  448 
Merim^e,  Prosper  (1803-1870),  320,  329 
Mesmer,  Franz  Anton  (1733-1815),  128 
Messager,    Andr£-Charles    (1853-1929), 

543 
Messiah  (Handel),  53,  76,  77-79,  81-82, 

83,  84,  119,  120,  153,  288 
Metastasio    (Pietro    Trapassi)     (1698- 
1782),  88,  91,  93,  95,  104,  131,  147,  156 
Methode  des  methodes  pour  le  piano 

(Fetis  and  Moscheles),  324 
Metropolitan  Opera  and  Real  Estate 

Company  (New  York),  566-567 
Metropolitan      Opera     House      (New 
York),  184,  228,  237,  465,  518,  549, 
566-567,  571,  607 
Mettemich-Sandor,     Princess     Pauline 

(1836-1921),  427,  428 
Metternich-Winneburg,    Prince    Clem- 

ens (lyys-^SQ).  1J9>  236,  375 
Meyerbeer,  Giacomo  (Jakob  Liebmann 
Beer)    (1791-1864),    150,   212,    238, 
243,  270,  275,  301,  311,  319,  337, 
347*  357»  359»  3^2,  383,  385,  391, 
405,  406,  407,  409,  413,  417,  421- 
422,  427,  428,  461,  462,  571 
Huguenots,  Les,  245,  409 
Prophete,  Le,  391 

"Ad  nos  ad  salutarem  undam,"  391 
Michelangelo   Buonarroti    (1475-1564), 

*4>  45*  364 
Midsummer  Night's  Dream,  A    (Men- 

delssohn), 271-272,  275,  276,  285-286, 

290,  291,  571 
Midsummer  Night's  Dream,  A  (Shake- 

speare), 271,  285,  571 
Mignon  (Thomas),  530 
Mikado,  The  (Gilbert  and  Sullivan),  465 


634  INDEX 

"Militaire"  Polonaise  (Chopin),  322 
Miliukov,    Paul    Nikolaeivich    (1859- 

1943)*  5^9 

Miller,  Mitchell,  572 
Milton,  John  (1608-1674),  77,  79 
''Minute"  Waltz  (Chopin),  322 
Mirabeau,    Honore-Gabriel    Riquetti, 

Comte  de  ( 1749-1 79 1),  268 
Miranda,  Anthony,  572 
Missa  Papae  Marcelli   (Palestrina),  8, 

10,  12,  13,  14,  18 
Missa    solennis   (Beethoven),    200-202, 

203,  401 

Mohammed  (tfol-d^),  20 
Moke,  Mme  (mother  of  Mme  Camille 

Pleyel),  347,  348,  371 
Moke,  Marie,  see  Pleyel,  Marie  (Moke) 
Moliere     (Jean  -  Baptiste     Poquelin) 

(1622-1673),  91,  98,  570 
Mona  Lisa  (Leonardo  da  Vinci),  10 
Monet,  Claude  (1840-1926),  542 
Montagu,    John    Montagu,    Duke    of 

(1689-1749),  81 
Montesquieu,  Comte  Robert  de  (1855- 

1921),  543 

Monteverdi,  Claudio  (1567-1643),  25, 
85-86 

Incoronazione  di  Poppaea,  V,  85-86 
Montez,  Lola  (1818-1861),  381,  431 
"Moonlight"  Sonata  (Beethoven),  175, 

181,  191 

Moore,  Thomas  (1779-1852),  304 
Morlacchi,  Francesco  (1784-1841),  215, 

216,  217,  409 
Morzin,  Count  Ferdinand  Maximilian 

von,  106 
Moscheles,  Ignaz  (1794-1870),  158,  269, 

280,  282,  288,  290,  294,  295,  297,  317, 

324 

Moszkowski,  Moritz  (1854-1925),  388 
Mottl,  Felix  (1856-1911),  369 
Mozart,     Constanze     (Weber)     (1763- 

1842),   139,   140,   143,  145,   148,   149, 

i55>  i57-i59>  209 

Mozart,  Karl  Thomas  (1784-1858),  275 
Mozart,  Leopold  (1719-1787),  124,  125, 

126-127,  128,  129,  130,  131,  132-134, 

i35>  i3<5»  i37»  !38,  139»  MS*  X44»  i45> 

164*  396 
Mozart,    Maria    Anna    (Pertl)    (1720- 

1778),  125,  127,  129,  135,  136 
Mozart,     Maria     Anna     ("Nannerl") 

(1751-1829),  125,  126,  127,  128,  129, 

143 

Mozart,  Wolfgang  Amadeus  (1756- 
1791),  14,  22,  24,  45-46,  90,  101, 
107,  112-113,  117,  118,  124-161, 
162,  164,  165,  167,  69,  70,  171, 
181,  183,  188,  195,  196,  207,  209, 

212,  214,  227,  229,  231,  234,  244, 
251,  252,  254,  258,  262,  269,  270, 
275,  291,  293,  300,  317,  320,  327, 


Mozart,  Wolfgang — (Continued) 

345'  355>  365>  372,  380,  382,  383, 
391'  394>  396,  446,  4?i*  49<>»  522, 
526,  542,  555,  569,  570,  575,  592 

Bastien  und  Bastienne,  128 

Clemenza  di  Tito,  La,  156 

concerto,  flute,  harpsichord,  and  or- 
chestra, C  major  (K.2Q9),  136 

concertos,  piano  and  orchestra,  142- 

143 

E  flat  major  (K.27i),  135 
A  major  ££414),  143 
B  flat  major  (£.450),  143 
A  major  (K.488),  143 
C  minor  (K.4gi),  143 
D    major    ("Coronation")    (K.537), 

155 
concerto,  two  pianos  and  orchestra, 

E  flat  major  (^365),  137 
concertos,  violin  and  orchestra,  132 
"Coronation"   Concerto,   piano   and 

orchestra  (K.537),  155 
Cost  fan  tutte,  154-155 
Don  Giovanni,  101,  149-151,  152,  165, 
263,  278,  317,  345,  400,  403 

"II  mio  tesoro"  150 

"La  ci  darem"  150,  317 

minuet,  15,  270 
Entfuhrung    aus    dem    Serail,    Die, 

101,  129,  137,  139,  140,  154 
fantasia,    piano,    C    minor    (K475), 

141-142 

Finta  giardiniera,  La,  132 
Finta  semplice,  La,  128 
"Haffrier"  Serenade,  135 
"Haffner"    Symphony    (^385),    144, 

149 

"Haydn"  Quartets,  145-146 
Idomeneo,  Re  di  Greta,  137,  138,  156 
"Jupiter"    Symphony    (K.55i),     153, 

586 

"King  of  Prussia"  Quartets,  146 
Kleine  Nachtmusik,  Eine,  149 
"Linz"  Symphony  (^425),   143,  144, 

149 

Lucio  Silla,  131 

Missa  brevis,  F  major  (K.192),  134 
Missa  brevis,  D  major  (K.194),  134 
Mitridate,  Re  di  Ponto,  130 
Nozze  di  Figaro,  Le,   143,   147-149, 

23 1»  278,  370 
"Voi  che  sapete,"  148 
"Paris"  Symphony  (K.2g7),  144 
"Prague"  Symphony  (^504),  149 
quartets,  strings,  145-146 
G  major  ("Haydn")  (£.387),  146 
D   minor  ("Haydn")  (K42i),   146 
C  major  ("Haydn")  ^465),  146 
"Haydn"  Quartets,  145,  146 
"King  of  Prussia"  Quartets,  146 
quintet,   strings,   G   minor   (K.5i6), 
160 


Mozart,  Wolfgang — (Continued) 
Re  pastor e,  II,  132 

"L'amero,  sard  costante"   132 
Requiem,    D    minor,    155-156,    157, 

i58-i59>  337 

Kyrie,  159 

Lacrymosa,  158 

Schauspieldirektor,  Der,  146-147 
Sinfonia  concertante  (1^.364),  137 
Sogno  di  Scipione,  II,  131 
sonatas,  piano,  142 

A  minor  (K.3io),  142 

A  major  (^331),  142 
symphonies,  143-144,  151-153 

D  major  ("Paris")  (K.297),  144 

C  major  (^338),  137 

D  major  ("Haffner")  (£-385),  144, 
149 

C  major  ("Linz")  (£425),  143,  144* 

H9 

D  major  ("Prague")  ^.504),  149 
E  flat  major  (K.543),  144,  152,  490 
G  minor  (K..55O),  152-153 
C  major  ("Jupiter")  (K.55i),   153, 

586 

Veilchen,  Das,  141 
ZcS.de,  137 
Zauberftote,  Die,  129,  145,  155,  156- 

i5>  355»  394 
"Bei      mannern,      welche     Ltebe 

fuhlen"   157 
"Der  holle  Rache"  157 
"In  diesen  heil'gen  Hallen,"  157 
"O  Isis  und  Osiris"  157 
Mozart  and  Salieri  (Rimsky-Korsakov), 

158 
Mozart:    The    Man    and   His    Works 

(Turner)*  160 

Much  Ado  About  Nothing  (Shake- 
speare), 368 

Miiller,  Wilhelm  (1794-1827),  250,  272 
Mullerlieder  (Wilhelm  Miiller),  250 
Murat,  Joachim  (1771-1815),  229 
Murdoch,    William    (1888-1942),    331, 

479 

Music  Since  1900  (Slonimsky),  600-601 
Musical  Times,  The  (London),  363 
Musset,     Louis-Charles-Alfred     (1810- 

1857)*  329>  53i 
Mussorgsky,   Modest   Petrovich   (1838- 

1881),  346,  372,  506,  535 
Boris  Godunov,  535 
Night  on  Bald  Mountain,  A,  346 
My  Reverie  (Clinton),  539 

N 

Napoleon  I,  Emperor  of  the  French 
(1769-1821),  121,  163,  180-181,  186, 
190,  196,  211,  213,  228,  229,  268,  292, 
339>  352,  3%  372,  445 


INDEX  635 

Napoleon  III,  Emperor  of  the  French 

(1808-1873),  245,  339>  3%  3$8>  3^5> 

427,  428,  457,  486,  530 
National    Broadcasting  Company,   108 
NBC  Symphony  Orchestra,  608 
Neefe,  Christian   Gottlob   (1748-1798), 

165,  167 

Nelson,  Horatio,  Lord  (1758-1805),  130 
Neri,  St.  Filippo  (1515-1595)'  10-11,  13 
Nerval,  Gerard  de  (Gerard  Labrunie) 

(1808-1855),  342,  343 
Neue  freie  Presse  (Vienna),  433 
Neue  Zeitschrift  fur  Mustk   (Leipzig), 

296-297,  300,  305,  310,  473,  478,  486, 

489,  500,  529 

Neumann,  Angelo  (1838-1910),  441 
New  Friends  of  Music  (New  York),  118 
New   Philharmonic   Society   (London), 

365 
Newcastle,     Thomas      Pelham-Holles, 

Duke  of  (1693-1768),  66 
Newman,  Ernest  (1868-        ),  343,  396- 

397*  398»  402,  404-405 •  4i9 
Newmarch,    Rosa    (Jeafrreson)    (1857- 

1940),  521 

Newton,  Sir  Isaac  (1642-1727),  61 
Nicholas  I,  Tsar  of  Russia  (1796-1855), 

380 
Nicolai,  Carl  Otto  (1810-1849),  448 

Lustigen  Weiber  von  Windsor,  Die, 

448 
Nietzsche,  Friedrich    (1844-1900),   398, 

436,  562,  563 

Night  Thoughts  (Young),  293 
Nijinsky,  Waslav  (1889-1950),  538,  550, 

597*  599 
Nikisch,  Arthur   (1855-1922),  39,  388, 

561,  564 

Niobe  (Pacini),  378 
Noces    villageoises,    Les    (Stravinsky), 

602-603,  605 

Nocturnes  (Debussy),  54i-542»  547 
Norma  (Bellini),  294,  320,  448 
Nostits,  General,  215 
Notre-Dame  de  Paris  (Hugo),  353 
Noverre,  Jean-George  (1727-1810),  90 
Nozze  di  Figaro,  Le  (Mozart),  143,  147- 

149,  231,  278,  370 
Nur  wer  die  Sehnsucht  kennt  (Goethe), 

521 
Nutcracker,    The,    ballet    and    suite 

(Tchaikovsky),  525-526 


O,  Dry  Those  Tears  (Del  Riego),  589 
Oberon  (Weber),  212,  222,  223-224 
Obreskov  (Potocka),  Countess,  336 
Ode  /or  St.  Cecilia's  Day  (Dryden),  77 
Ode  to  Joy  (Schiller),  202 
Oedipus  Coloneus  (Sophocles),  283 


636  INDEX 

Offenbach,   Jacques    (1819-1880),    229, 

240,  53°>  57° 
Oh!  Susanna  (Foster),  7 
Oiseau  de  feu,  L*  (Stravinsky),  596,  597 
Okeghexn,  Jean  de  (i43O?-i495),  5,  20 
Ollivier,  Blandine   (Liszt)   (1835-1862), 

37%  38i,  385,  386 
Ollivier,  Emile  (1825-1913),  385 
Orange,  William  V,  Prince  of  (1748- 

1806),  127 
Oratorians,  10 
Orfeo  ed  Euridice  (Gluck),  91-93,  94, 

97-98 
Orlando  di  Lasso,  see  Lasso,  Orlando 

di 

Orpheus  (Stravinsky),  609-610,  611 
Otello  (Verdi),  233,  4®4-465>  4^6,  4^7 
Othello  (Shakespeare),  232,  464,  465 
Ottobuoni,     Cardinal     Pietro     (1667- 

i74°)'  57 
"Oxford"  Symphony  (Haydn),  105,  114, 

117 

Pachelbel,  Johann  (1653-1706),  25 
Pachmann,    Vladimir   de    (1848-1933), 

3?i 
Pacini,  Giovanni  (1796-1867),  378 

Niobe,  378 
Paderewski,    Ignace    Jan    (1860-1941), 

381,  522 
Paganini,  Nicolo  (1782-1840),  26,  264, 

272,  275,  317,  326,  349,  350,  356,  376, 

377>  479 
Paisiello,  Giovanni  (1740-1816),  231 

Barbiere  di  Siviglia,  II,  231 
Palatine  of  the  Rhine,  Karl  Theodor, 

Elector  (1733-1799).  !35»  209 
Palestrina,      Giovanni     Pierluigi     da 

(15*5^-1594).  3>  8-*4.   i5»   *7»    l8» 

19,  2O,  22,  46,  52,  85,  l62,  275,  278, 

446,  534,  601,  604 

Assumpta  est  Maria,  12—13,  18 

Improperia,  9 

Masses,  first  book  of,  8 

Masses,  fourth  book  of,  13 

Masses,  seventh  book  of,  13 

Missa  Papae  Marcelli,  8,  10,  12,  13, 
14,  18 

Tu  es  pastor  avium,  12 
Papillons  (Schumann),  295,  297,  301 
Paradise  Lost  (Milton),  119 
Parry,    Sir    Charles    Hubert   Hastings 

(1848-1918),  51 
Parsifal  (Wagner),  369,  390,  422,  435, 

441,  442-443.  535>  5$7»  579 
Pasta,  Giuditta  (1798-1865),  294,  320 
"Pastoral"  Symphony  (Beethoven),  188, 

190,  194,  277,  346,  491 
'Pattetique"  Sonata  (Beethoven),  170 


"Pathetique"  Symphony  (Tchaikovsky) 

517,  518,  527,  528 

Paton,  Mary  Anne  (1802-1864),  223 
Patti,   Adelina   (Baroness   Cederstrom) 

(1843-1919),  232,  245,  246 
Paul  I,  Tsar  of  Russia  (1754-1801),  101, 

111 
Paul    IV    (Giovanni    Pietro    Caraffa), 

Pope  (1476-1559),  8-9 
Paul     V     (Camillo     Borghese),     Pope 

(1552-1621),  7 

Pauly,  Rose  (1905?-       ),  568 
Pedro   II,   Emperor   of   Brazil    (1825- 

1891),  438 
Pelissier,  Olympe,  see  Rossini,  Olympe 

.(Pelissier) 
Pelleas   et   Melisande    (Debussy),    150, 

535>  537>  539*  54  ^  542-543 
Pelleas    et    Melisande     (Maeterlinck), 

537»  582 

Pepusch,  Johann  Christoph  (1667-1752), 
64,  69 

Beggar's  Opera,  The,  64,  69,  74,  78 
Pergolesi,     Giovanni     Battista     (1710- 
1736),  244,  278,  600,  601,  606 

Stabat  Mater,  244 
Petite  Messe  solennelle  (Rossini),  242, 

246 
Petrarch    (Francesco    Petrarca)    (1304- 

1374)'  15'  17 
Petrouchka  (Stravinsky),  597-598,  599, 

611 

Pfeiffer,  Tobias,  164 
Pfistermeister,   Franz  von  (1822-1912), 

429 

Philadelphia  Exposition  of  1876,  437 
Philharmonic  Society  of  London,  203, 

364 
Philharmonic  -  Symphony     Orchestra 

(New  York),  568 
Philharmonic-Symphony     Society      of 

New  York,  608 
Philip  II,  King  of  Spain  (1527-1598), 

19 
Piave,    Francesco    Maria    (1810-1876), 

452,  456 

Picander,  see  Henrici,  Christian  Fried- 
rich 

Picasso,  Pablo  (1881-        ),  603,  609 

Piccinni^  Niccola  (1728-1800),  99,  136 
Iphigenie  en  Tauride,  99 

Piccioli,  504 

Pietists,  28 

Pique-Dame  (Tchaikovsky),  524,  525, 
526 

Pirro,  Andr£  (1869-       ),  36 

Pitt,  William  (1759-1806),  102 

Pius  IV  (Giovanni  Angelo  de'  Medici) 
Pope  (1499-1565),  7,  9,  10 

Pius  V  (Michele  Ghislieri),  Pope,  St. 
(1504-1572),  10 


INDEX 


637 


Pius  IX   (Giovanni  Maria   Mastai-Fer- 

retti),  Pope  (1792-1878),  246,  384 
PlancM,  James  Robinson  (1796-1880), 

Planer,  Amalie,  406 

Planer,  Natalie  (Bilz)  (1826-1886?),  403 

Plato  (i27?-347  B.C.),  3 

Pleyel,  Camille  (1788-1855),  348 

Pleyel,  Marie-Felicite-Denise,  called 
Caraille  (Moke)  (1811-1875),  346, 
347-348,  365,  368-369 

"Plon-PJon,"  see  Bonaparte,  Napoleon- 
Joseph-Charles 

Poe,  Edgar  Allan  (1809-1849),  545,  549 

Pohiola's  Daughter  (Sibelius),  584,  586, 
588 

Pohlenz,  Christian  August  (1790-1843), 
285 

"Polish"  Symphony  (Tchaikovsky),  208, 

509*  511 
Polzelli   (Franchi),  Luigia   (1760-1832), 

110 
Pompadour,    Jeanne-Antoinette    Pois- 

son,  Marquise  de  (1721-1764),  127 
Ponte,    Lorenzo    da    (1749-1838),    147, 

149,  154,  234 

Pcpe,  Alexander  (1688-1744),  61,  66 
Porpora,   Niccola    (1686-1766),   72,   73, 

76,.  104-105 
Potocka,     Countess     Delphine     (1807- 

1^77)'  327'  337 

Pourtales,  Comtesse  de,  599-600,  604 
Prelude    a     I'Apres-midi    d'un    faune 

(Debussy),  537,  538-539*  547>  55° 
Preludes,  Les  (Liszt),  393 
Pre-Raphaelites,  535 
Primavera  (Botticelli),  534 
Prince    Regent,    the,    see    George   IV, 

King  of  England 

Prokofiev,   Serge  Sergeivich   (1891-    ), 
561,  599,  601,  6n 

Scythian  Suite,  601 
Promessi  sposi,  I  (Manzoni),  461 
Prophete,  Le  (Meyerbeer),  391 
Proust,  Marcel  (1871-1922),  543 
Prussia,    Amalia,    Princess    of    (1723- 

1787),  126 

Prussia,  Princess  Augusta  of,  see  Au- 
gusta,  Empress   of  Germany 
Prussia,    Frederika    Charlotte    Ulrika, 

Princess  Royal  of  (Duchess  of  York) 

(1767-1820),   154 
Puccini,  Giacomo  (1858-1924),  227,  465 

Girl  of  the  Golden  West,  The,  227 
Purcell,  Henry  (1658-1695),  59,  63,  86 

Dido  and  Aeneas,  59,  86 
Pushkin,  Alexander  Sergeievich  (1799- 

1837),  !&•  5*3»  5*5»  524 


Quinault,  Philippe  (1635-1688),  98 


Racine,  Jean  (1639-1699),  96,  284 

Radziwill,  Prince  Valentin,  321 

Raff,  Joseph  Joachim  (1822-1882*,  366, 

3^7 

"Raindrop"  Prelude  (Chopin),  331 
Rake's  Progress,  The  (Hogarth),  610 

Rameau,     Jean-Philippe     (1683-1764), 

75.  89,  95»  124»  37°*  37^ 
Tambourin,  75 

Raphael  (Raffaele  Sanzio)  (1483-1520), 

*4 

Rasoumovsky,    Count    Andreas    Kyril- 
lovich  (1752-1836),  185,  206 

"Rasoumovsky"   Quartets   (Beethoven), 
185,  186,  206,  207 

Ravel,      Maurice-Joseph      (1875-1937), 

218,  346,  546,  551,  553,  594 
Jeux  d'eau,  546 
Ondine,  553 
Rapsodie  espagnole,  546 

Re  past  ore,  II  (Mozart),  132 

Redo,    Marie    (Marie-Genevieve    Mar- 
tin), see  Berlioz,  Marie  (Recio) 

"Reformation"    Symphony     (Mendels- 
sohn), 274,  275 

Reicha,  Anton  (1770-1836),  341 

Reinecke,  Karl  (1824—1910),  483 

Reinhardt,  Max  (1873-1943),  393 

Reinken,   Johann    Adam    (1623-1722), 
24»  25,  34 

Rellstab,   Heinrich   Friedrich    Ludwig 
(1799-1860),  250 

Rembrandt    Harmenszoon    van    Rijn 
(1606-1669),  80 

Rem£nyi,     Eduard     (1830-1898),     366, 

472r    484 

Renoir,     Pierre- Auguste     (1841-1919), 

542 
Requiem    (Grande  Messe   des    morts) 

(Berlioz),  353~355 
Requiem     ("Manzoni")     (Verdi),    355, 

463-464 

Reszke,  Edouard  de  (1853-1917),  237 
"Revolutionary"  Etude  (Chopin),  324.- 

325 

Revue  blanche,  La  (Paris),  542 
Rheingold,   Das    (Wagner),    420,    422, 

424,  425,  441;  see  also  Ring  des  Nib- 

elungen,  Der 

"Rhenish"  Symphony  (Schumann)  >  309 
Richard  I  ("the  Lion-Hearted"),  King 

of  England  (1157-1199),  69 
Richter,   Hans    (1843-1916),   433,   435. 

437*  493»  497>  499-  577 
Richter,   Jean   Paul   Friedrich    (1765- 

1825),  293,  294,  295 
Ricordi,  Giovanni  (1785-1833),  447 
Rienzi    (Wagner),    402,    408-409,    410., 

411,  413,  414'  415*  425 


638  INDEX 

Rienzi,  the  Last  of  the  Tribunes  (Bul- 

wer-Lytton),  408 
Rigoletto   (Verdi),  391,  449,  45<>»  452- 

453»  454»  455'  4&>,  4^3 
Rimsky-Korsakov,  Nikolai  Andreievich 
(1844-1908),  158,  218,  506,  508,  510, 

527*  595-596»  597 

Mozart  and  Salieri,  158 

Scheherazade,  597 
Ring  des  Nibelungen,  Der  (Wagner), 

225,  226,  241,  384,  419,  420,  422,  423, 

424,  426,  429,  430,  433,  435,  436-44<>> 

442,  512,  539,  565 
Ringling  Brothers-Barnum  and  Bailey 

Circus,  607 

Ritter,  Alexander  (1833-1896),  557 
Ritter,  Franziska  (Wagner)  (1829-1895), 

557 

Ritter,  Julie  (1795-1869),  418,  424 
Ritter,  Karl,  424 

Road  to  Xanadu,  The  (Lowes),  397 
Rob  Roy  overture  (Berlioz),  348 
Robinson,  Anastasia  (1698?-!  755),  67 
Rodrigue  et  Chimene  (Mendes),  536 
Roerich,       Nikolai       Konstantinovich 

(1874-        ),  597,  599 
Roger-Ducasse,  Jean-  Jules  (1873-        ), 

545 
Rohan,   Prince  Louis   de   (1734-1803), 

no 

Roi  Lear  overture,  Le  (Berlioz),  348 
Rot  s'amuse,  Le  (Hugo),  452 
Rolland,  Remain  (1866-1944),  54,  563, 

564 

Roman  de  Tristan,  Le  (Bedier),  549 
Romeo    and    Juliet,    overture-fantasia 

(Tchaikovsky),  506-507,  515 
Romeo  et  Juliette  (Berlioz),  343,  356- 

357>  36l>  365»  370.  373>  5°7 
Rosamunde,      Filrstin      von      Cypern 

(Schubert),  258-259 
Rose,  Billy  (1899-        ),  607 
Rosenkavalier,  Der  (Richard   Strauss), 


Rosenthal,  Moriz  (1862-1946),  388 
Rossetti,    Dante    Gabriel    (1828-1882), 

535 
Rossi,   Giovanni   Gaetano   (1828-1886), 

237 

Rossignol,  Le  (Stravinsky),  595,  601-602 
Rossini,   Anna   (?-i82y),   226-227,  229, 

230,  235,  240 

Rossini,    Gioacchino    Antonio    (1792- 

1868),  219,  220,  221,  222-223,  224, 

226-247,   248,   249,   258,   270,   281, 

296>  3*9»  375*  383>  385.  446,  452, 

460,  461,  463,  464,  466,  511,  573 

Alma-viva,    ossia    L'  inutile    precau- 

zione,  see  Barber  of  Seville,   The 

Barber  of  Seville,  The,  226,  230-232, 

233,  240,  242,  243,  246,  247,  370, 

466 


Rossini,  Gioacchino — (Continued) 
Barber  of  Seville,  The — (Continued) 

"Lesson  Scene,"  370 

Calumny  Song,  232 

"Largo  al  factotum,"  226,  232 

overture,  232 

"Una  voce  poco  fa,"  232 
Cambiale  di  matrimonio,  La,  227 
Cenerentola,  La,  233 

overture,  233 
Comte  Ory,  Le,  240 
Donna  del  lago,  La,  235 
Elisabetta,     Reghina     d'Inghilterra, 

230 
Gazza  ladra,  La,  234 

overture,  234 
Italiana  in  Algeri,  L',  229 

overture,  229 
Maometto  II,  239 
Mo'ise,  239-240 
Mose  in  Egitto,  239,  466 
Peches  de  viellesse,  246 

Hygienic    Prelude    for    Morning 
Use,  A,  246 

Miscarriage  of  a  Polish  Mazurka, 

246 

Petite  Messe  solennelle,  242,  246 
Pietra  del  paragone,  La,  228 
Plaint  of  the  Muses  on  the  Death  of 

Lord  Byron,  The,  238 
Scala  di  seta,  La,  228 

overture,  228 
Semiramide,  236—237 

overture,  237 

Siege  de  Corinthe,  Le,  239,  241 
Signor  Bruschino,  II,  228-229 
Stabat  Mater,  242,  243-244 

"Quis  est  homo,"  246 
Tancredi,  229,  246 

"Di  tantt  palpiti,"  229 

overture,  229 
Viaggio  a  Reims,  II,  238 
William  Tell,  234,  241-242,  243,  246, 

334 

"Asile  hereditaire,"  242 
overture,  237,  242,  373 
Zelmira,  235 
Rossini,    Giuseppe    (1759-1839),    226- 

227,  240 

Rossini,     Isabella     Angela     (Colbran) 
(1785-1845),  230,  232,  234-235,  236, 
237,  240,  243 
Rossini,   Olympe   (Pelissier),   243,   245, 

246 
Rothschild,  Baron  Jacques  de   (1792- 

1868),  321 
Roubilliac,  Louis-Francois  (1695-3762), 

74 
Rousseau,  Henri  ("le  douanier")  (1844- 

191°)'  574 
Rousseau,  Jean-Jacques  (1712-1778),  96 


Roustan,  Mme.  (Octavie  de  la  Ferron- 

mere),  530,  531 
Royal  Academy  of  Music  (London),  66, 

68,  69,  70 
Rubini,  Giovanni  Battista  (1795-1854), 

320 
Rubinstein,  Anton  Grigorievich  (1829- 

1894),  201,  298,  371,  486,  504,  505, 

506,  518 

Rubinstein,  Arthur  (1886-        ),  598 
Rubinstein,  Ida,  550,  606 
Rubinstein,       Nikolai       Grigorievich 

(1835-1881),  371,  504-505,  506,  508, 

509,  512-513,  514,  516,  518,  519,  520, 

521 

Rudolf  Josef  Rainer,  Archduke  of  Aus- 
tria, Cardinal   (1788-1831),   190-191, 

197,  200,  255 
Rungenhagen,    Carl    Friedrich    (1778- 

1851),  276 

Ruskin,  John  (1819-1900),  160 
Ruspoli,  Francesco  Maria   Capizucchi, 

Prince,  57 

Russian  Gazette,  The,  510 
Ruy  Bias  (Hugo),  282 
Ruy  Bias  Overture  (Mendelssohn),  282, 

286,  291 
Ryder,    Albert    Pinkham    (1847-1917), 

542 


Sachs,  Hans  (1494-1576),  413,  429 
Sacre   du   printemps,  Le    (Stravinsky), 

189,  599-&n>  6°3>  6°7»  611 
Saidenberg,  Daniel  (1906-        ),  572 
Saint-Saens,      Charles-Camille      (1835- 

1921),  94,  245-246,  372,  388,  438,  527, 

534>  535 

Caprice  on  Airs  de  Ballet  from  Al- 
ceste  (Gluck),  94 

Variations  on  a  Theme  of  Beetho- 
ven, two  pianos,  534 
Saint-Simon,  Claude-Henri,  Comte  de 

(1760-1825),  376 
Sainte-Beuve,  Charles- Augustin  (1804- 

1869),  245,  329,  342 
St.  John  Passion  (Bach),  40-42,  46,  47, 

63-64 
St.  Matthew  Passion  (Bach),  18,  37,  38, 

40,  41,  42-43*  46,  47*  64>  78,  272-273, 

288 
St.  Paul  (Mendelssohn),  278,  280,  281, 

312 

Salieri,  Antonio  (1750-1825),  101,  122, 
147,  158,  167,  252,  317,  375 

Dandides,  Les,  101 
Salome  (Richard  Strauss),  566-567,  568, 

5%  57<> 

Salome  (Wilde),  566 
Salomon,    Johann    Peter    (1745-1815), 

113,  114,  119 


INDEX  639 

"Salomon"   Symphonies   (Haydn),    114, 

117-118,  122 
Sammartini,  Giovanni  Battista  (1701- 

1775),  88,  129 
Samson  (Handel),  79 
Samson  Agonistes  (Milton),  79 
Sanborn,  Pitts  (1879-1941),  229 
Sand,      George     (Aurore     Dudevant) 

(1804-1876),   105,  227,  329-330,  331, 

333»  334-335>  3/8,  381,  385>  389 
Sarto,  Andrea  de!  (1486-1531),  605 
Satie,    Erik-Alfred-Leslie     (1866-1925), 

536-537'  547 
Saul  (Handel),  76,  77 
Saxe-Meiningen,    Grand    Duke    Georg 

of  (1826-1914),  497 
Saxe-Weimar,    Carl    Friedrich,    Grand 

Duke  of  (1783-1853),  365 
Saxe-Weimar,    Ernst    Augustus,    Duke 

of  (1688-1748),  26,  33 
Saxe-Weimar,  Prince  Friedrich  Ferdi- 
nand Constantin  of  (1758-1793),  397 
Saxe-Weimar,  Prince  Johann  Ernst  of 

(1696-1715),  26 
Saxe-Weimar,  Johann  Ernst  III,  Duke 

of  (?-i7<>7),  26,  33 
Saxe-Weimar,  Karl  Alexander,  Grand 

Duke  of  (1818-1901),  384 
Saxe-Weimar,     Karl     August,     Grand 

Duke  of  (1757-1828),  397 
Saxe-Weimar,  Wilhelm   Ernst,   Grand 

Duke  of  (1662-1728),  26,  29,  30,  31, 

32,  33*  37 
Saxe-Weissenfels,    Christian,    Duke    of 

(1681-1736),  32,  44 
Saxe-Weissenfels,  Johann  Georg,  Duke 

of,  53 
Saxony,  Christiane  Eberhardine,  Queen 

of  Poland  and  Electress  of  (P-I727), 

40 
Saxony,    Friedrich    Augustus    I    ("the 

Strong"),   Elector   of    (Augustus    II ; 

King  of  Poland)  (1670-1733),  39,  40, 

45,  329 
Saxony,  Friedrich  Augustus  II,  Elector 

of  (Augustus  III,  King  of  Poland) 

(1696-1763),  45,  49,  50 
Sayn-Wittgenstein,    Princess    Carolyne 

von  (1819-1887),  333,  367,  368,  381- 

382,  384,  385,  386,  387,  389,  393,  437 
Sayn-Wittgenstein,     Marie     von,     see 

Hohenlohe  -  Schillingfurst,  Princess 

Marie 
Sayn-Wittgenstein,      Prince      Nicholas 

von  (1812-1864),  386 
Scala  di  seta,  La  (Rossini),  228 
Scalchi,  Sofia  (1850-?),  237 
Scarlatti,    Alessandro    (1659-1725),    56, 

57,  76,  112 
Scarlatti,  Domenico  (1685-1757),  57,  65, 

124,  380 


640  INDEX 

Schauffler,  Robert  Haven  (1879-       ), 

475 

Scheherazade  (Rimsky-Korsakov),  597 
Scheibe,  Johann  Adolf  (1708-1776),  47- 

48 
Schelling,  Ernest  (1876-1939),  194 

Victory  Ball,  A,  194 
Scherman,  Thomas  K.  (1916-    ),  572 
Schikaneder,      Emanuel      (1748-1812), 

155,  156,  183 
Schiller,   Johann   Christoph   Friedrich 

von   (1759-1805),  28,  202,   204,  241, 

252,  5*9 
Schloezer,   Boris   de   (1884-       ),    602, 

609 

Schmidt,  Johann  Christoph,  63 
Schnabel,  Artur  (1882-       ),  495 
Schnack,  Fritz,  482,  486 
Schnorr  von  Carolsfeld,  Ludwig  (1836- 

1865),  430 
Schnorr  von  Carolsfeld,  Malwine  (Gar- 

rigues).  (1825-1 904),  430 
Schober,  Franz  von   (1798-1883),   254, 

255,  266 
Schonberg,  Arnold  (1874-       ),  5,  568, 

594 
Schopenhauer,      Arthur      (1788-1860), 

398,  421,  439 

Schott,  B.,  and  Sons,  427-428 
Schrattenbach,    Sigismund   von,  Arch- 
bishop of  Salzburg  (?-i772),  125,  128, 
131 
Schroder-Devrient,  Wilhelmine   (1804- 

1860),  400,  408,  409,  410,  412,  415 
Schroeter,  Mrs.  John  Samuel,  115,  116 
Schubart,    Christian   Friedrich   Daniel 

(1739-1791),  133 
Schubert,    Anna    (Kleyenbock)    (1783- 

1860),  253,  256 
Schubert,  Ferdinand  (1794-1859),  264, 

266,  300 

Schubert,  Franz  Peter  (1797-1828),  141, 
205,  221,  236,  248-266,  291,  294, 
295,  296,  297,  300,  303,  310,  380, 
391,  488,  561 

operas  and  incidental  music 
Fierrabras,  258 
Rosamunde,  Furstin  von   Cypern, 

258-259 

Zwillingsbruder,  Die,  255 
piano  solo,  262—263 
fantasias 

C  major  ("Wanderer"),  262,  263 

G  major  (sonata-fantasia),   262, 

263 

impromptus,  263 
Moments  musicaux,  263 

F  minor,  259 
sonatas,  262-263 

A  minor  (Opus  42),  262 

A  major  (Opus  120),  262 

A  major  ("Grand"),  262 


Schubert,  Franz  Peter — (Continued) 
piano  solo — (Continued) 
sonatas — (  Con  tinued) 
B  flat  major  ("Grand"),  262 
G  major  (sonata-fantasia),  263 
"Grand"  Sonatas,   262-263 
waltzes,  263 

quartets,  string,  257-258,  263 
A  minor,  258 
D    minor    ("Tod    und    das    Mad- 

chen"),  258 

Quartettsatz  in  C  minor,  257 
quintets 
piano  and  strings,  A  major  ("For- 

ellen"),  257 

strings,  C  major,  258,  263 
songs,  249-251,  254 
Am  Meerf  251 
Atlas,  Der,  250 
Ave  Maria,  250,  251,  262 
Doppelgdnger,  250 
Du  bist  die  Ruh',  251 
Erlkonig,  Der,  250,  251,  254,  259 
Forelle,  Die,  257 
Gretchen  am  Spinnrade,  254 
Hark,  Hark,  the  Lark!,  249, 251, 263 
Schafers  Klagelied,  256 
Schone  Mullerin,  Die,  250 
Schwanengesang,  250,   263 
Stadt,  Die,  250 
Stdndchen,  250 

Tod  und  das  Madchen,  258 
Who  is  Sylvia?,  251,  263 
Winterreise,  Die,  250,  263 
symphonies 

5th,  B  fiat  major,  254,  260-261 
7th  (gth),  C  major,  264-265,  286, 

300 
8th,  B  minor  ("Unfinished"),  260- 

261 

"Grand,"  C  major  (?),  262 
Schubert,     Franz     Theodor     Florian 

(1763-?),  252,  253,  254,  256,  266 
Schubert,  Ignaz  (1785-1844),  252 
Schubert,      Maria      Elisabeth      (Vietz) 

(1756-1812),  253 

Schuch,  Ernst  von  (1846-1914),  568 
Schumann,   August    (1773-1826),    292- 

293 

Schumann,  Clara  Josephine  (Wieck) 
(1819-1896),  245,  279,  282,  294,  296, 
298,  299-300,  301,  302,  304,  305,  306, 
307,  308,  309,  310,  311,  325,  401,  414, 
473»  475-476>  482,  485*  488,  497~498, 
499 

Schumann,  Eduard  (?-i839),  300 
Schumann,  Emilie,  292 
Schumann,  Felix  (1854-1879,  493 
Schumann,  Johanna  Christiana  (Schna- 
bel) (1771-1836),  293,  294,  298 
Schumann,  Julie  (Contessa  Radicati  di 
Marmorito)  (1845-1872),  485 


INDEX 


641 


Schumann,  Marie  (1841-1929),  499 
Schumann,    Robert   Alexander   (1810— 

1856),    22,    36,     143,     150,    201,    212, 

225,  251,  263,  273,  279,  285,  287, 
291,  292-313,  319,  323,  326,  331, 

342-343,  355,  359,  360,  369,  380, 

382-383,  414,  473,  474,  475,  476, 

477,  482,  483,  486,  489-490.  49J> 
499*  D^OJ.  5~9»  5^* 

Album  filr  die  Jugend,  301,  306, 
307-308 

Carnaval,    279,    296,    297,    298,  301, 

3<>3>  474 
Concerto   for   piano   and   orchestra, 

A  minor,  306,  307,  312 
Davidsbundlertdnze,  Die,  201 
Etudes  symphoniques,  296,  298 
Tantasiestiicke,  301,  302,  303,  500 
Faust,  scenes  from,  309 
Genoveva,  306-307,  383 

overture,  307 

Kinderscenen,  302,  308,  549 
Kreisleriana,  301,  302,  500 
Manfred,  incidental  music,  306,  307, 

312 
overtures 

Genoveva,  307 

Manfred,  307,  312 
Papillons,  295,  297,  301 
Paradies  und  die  Pert,  Die,  304-305 
piano  compositions,  301-302,  313 

Album  fur  die  Jugend,  301,  306, 
307-308 

Carnaval,  279,  296,  297,  298,  301, 

303 
Davidsbundlertanze,  Die,  301 

Etudes  symphoniques,  296,  298 
Fantasie,  C  major,  301,  302,  337, 

338 

Fantasiestiicke,  301,  302,  303,  500 
Kinderscenen,  302,  308,  549 

Traumerei,  291,  302 
Kreisleriana,  301,  302,  500 
Papillons,  295,  297,  301 
sonatas,  302 

F  minor,  299,  302 
Studien    nach    Capricen    von    Pa- 

ganini,  295 
Waldscenen,  308 

Vogel  als  Prophet,  308 
quartet,   piano    and   strings,   E    fiat 

major,  304 
quintet,   piano   and   strings,   E    fiat 

major,  304,  312 
"Rhenish"  Symphony,  309 
songs,  302-303,  312 

Beiden  Grenadiere,  Die,  303 
Dichterliebe,  303 
Erstes  Grun,  303 
Ich  grolle  nicht,  303 
Lotusblume,  Die,  303 


Schumann,  Robert  —  (Continued) 

songs  —  (Contin  ued) 
Nussbaum,  Der,  303 
Widmung,  303 

"Spring"  Symphony,  303 

symphonies,  303-304,  312 

ist,  B  fiat  major  ("Spring"),  303 
3rd,  E  fiat  major  ('4Rhenish")»  309 
4th,  D  minor,  303 
G  minor  (fragment),  295,  303 

Waldscenen,  308 

Schumann,  Rosalie  (?-i833),  295 
Schumann-Heink,     Ernestine      (1861- 

1936),  251,  280,  568 
Schwarzenburg,    Karl    Philipp,    Prince 

zu  (1771-1820),  119 
Schweitzer,  Albert  (1875-    ),  24,  37 
Schwind,  Moritz  von  (1804-1871),  255, 

261 
"Scotch"     Symphony     (Mendelssohn), 

274,  284,  285,  291 
Scotti,  Antonio   (1866-1936),   460 
Scott,  Sir  Walter  (1771-1832),  235,  262 
Scriabin,       Alexander       Nikolaievich 

(1872-1915),  600 
Scribe,     Agustin-Eugene     (1791-1861), 

240,  405,  406,  407,  455,  456,  457 
Seasons,  The  (Haydn),  120-121 
Seasons,  The  (Thomson),  120 
Sechter,  Simon  (1788-1867),  265-266 
Sembrich,  Marcella  (Praxede  Kochan- 

ska)  (1858-1935),  157 
Semiramide   (Rossini),   236-237 
Senefelder,  Aloys  (1771-1834),  209 
Senesino  (Francesco  Bemardi)   (1680?- 


Seven  Lively  Arts,    The   (musical   re- 

view), 607 
Sforza,  house  of,  5 
Sgambati,   Giovanni    (1841-1914),   388, 

53^ 

Shakespeare,  William   (1564-1616),  77, 

182,  192,  206,  232,  249,  251,  271,  273, 

285,  342,  346-347>  35°>  35$>  357*  3<5i> 

3^8»  399»  404»  464*  4$5»  466»  5°7>  5^ 

Shaw,  George  Bernard  (1856-    ),  118, 

141-142,  157,  180,  271,  289,  292,  312, 

394,  419,  465,  481,  483,  519,  542 

Sheridan,     Richard     Brinsley     (i75l~ 

1816),  129 

Sherlock  Holmes  (Conan  Doyle),  397 
Sibelius,  Aino  (JSrhefelt),  577,  578 
Sibelius,  Christian  (?-i868),  575 
Sibelius,  Jean  (1865-    ),  291,  519,  574- 

593*  594 
chamber  music 
Drops  of  Water,  violin  and  cello, 

575 

quartets 

strings,  B  flat  major,  576 
Voces  intimae,  strings,  585,  586, 
587 


642  INDEX 

Sibelius,  Jean — (Continued) 
chorus 
Song  of  the  Athenians,  male  voices, 

581 
concerto    for   violin   and    orchestra, 

D  minor,  582—583 
orchestra 
Bard,  The,  587 
En  Saga,  578,  579 
Fantasia,   sinfonica,  see   6th   Sym- 
phony 

Finale,  see  Finlandia 
Finlandia,  581,  588 
Impromptu,  see  Finlandia 
incidental  music 

to  Belshazzar's  Feast,  584 

to  King  Christian  II,  579,  588 

to  Kuolema,  581 

Valse  triste,  291,  581 
to  Pelleas  et  Melisande,  583-584 
Karelia,  overture  and  suite,  579 
Kullervo   (with  voices),  577-578 
Legends,  579,  580,  581 

Lemminkainen's  Home-Coming, 

579*  58° 

Swan  of  Tuonela,  The,  579,  580 
Luonnotar,  587 
Oceanides,  The,  588 
Pohjola's  Daughter,  584,  586,  588 
string  suite,  576 
symphonies 

ist,  E  minor,  580-581 

2nd,  D  major,  582,  589 

3rd,  C  major,  583,  584,  586 

4th,  A  minor,  574,  584,  585,  586- 

587>  589>  59i 

5th,  E  flat  major,  589-590 
6th,  D  minor,  590,  591 
7th,  C  major,  589,  591-592 
8th,  592,  593 
Tapiola,  592 

Sibelius,  Maria  Charlotta  (Borg),  575 
Siebold,  Agathe  von,  481-482 
Siegfried  (Wagner),  420,  424,  425,  435, 
436,  440;  see  also  Ring  des  Nibelun- 
gen,  Der 

Siegfried  Idyl  (Wagner),  436 
Signor  Bruschino,  II  (Rossini),  228-229 
Siloti,  Alexander  (1863-1945),  388,  584, 

596 
Simone  Boccanegra  (Verdi),  456,  457, 

464 
Sinfonia   domestica  (Richard  Strauss), 

566,  569 

Sistine  frescoes  (Michelangelo),  10 
Sistine  Madonna  (Raphael),  13 
Sitwell,  Sacheverell  (1900-    ),  380,  389 
Sixtus  V  (Felice  Peretti),  Pope  (1521- 

1590),  12 

Skarbek,  Count  Caspar,  315 
Skarbek,  Countess  Caspar,  315 


Sleeping   Beauty,   The   (Tchaikovsky), 

525-524  " 

Slonimsky,   Nicolas  (1894-    ),  600-601 
Smallens,  Alexander  (1889-    ),  97,  565 
Smart,  Sir  George  (1776-1867),  223 
Smetana,  Bedfich  (1824-1884),  388,  578 
Smith,  John  Christopher  (1712-1795), 

63 
Smithson,  Harriet,  see  Berlioz,  Harriet 

(Smithson) 
Societe    Philharmonique    (Paris),    364, 

365 
Soirees    de    I'orchestre,    Les    (Berlioz), 

360 

Sonnambula,  La  (Bellini),  294 
Sonnleithner,  Ignaz,  Edler  von  (1770- 

1831),  259 

Sonnleithner,  Josef  (1766-1835),   183 
Sonnleithner,  Leopold  (1797-1873),  259 
Sophocles    (497?-405    B.C.),    370,    568, 

604 

South  Wind  (Douglas),  16 
Spaun,  Josef  von  (1788-1865),  252-253, 

255 

Speaks,  Oley  (1876-1948),  75 
Spinoza,  Baruch  (1632-1677),  12 
Spohr,    Ludwig     (Louis)    (1784-1859), 

190,  213,  220,  288,  307,  410,  423 
Spontini,  Casparo  Luigi  Pacifico  (1774- 
1851),  214,  215,  218-219,  238,  270, 
3*6,  347*  365,  409,  413 

fernand  Cortez,  214 

Olympic,  218-219,  347 

Vestale,  La,  214,  365 
"Spring"  Symphony  (Schumann),  303 
Squire,  J.  H.,  Celeste  Octet,  392 
Stabat  Mater  (Rossini),  242,  243-244 
Stamitz,   Johann    Wenzel    (1717-1757)* 

*35 

Standchen  (Schubert),  250 
Steele,  Sir  Richard  (1671-1729),  60 
Steffani,  Agostino  (1654-1728),  58-59 
Stendhal    (Marie-Henri    Beyle)    (1783- 

1842),  234,  248,  320 
Stern,  Daniel,  see  Agoult,  Marie,  Com- 

tesse  d' 

Stiedry,  Fritz  (1883-    ),  118 
Stirling,  Jane  Wilhelmina  (1804-1859), 

335»  336,  337 
Stockhausen,  Elisabeth  von,  see  Her- 

zogenberg,  Elisabeth  von 
Stockhausen,   Julius    von    (1826-1906), 

480 

Stoeckel,  Carl  (1858-1925),  588 
Stokowski,  Leopold  (1882-    ),  36,  572, 

608 

Strauss,  Franz  (1822-1905),  556 
Strauss,  Johann  (1825-1899),  103,  151, 
217,  321,  485,  505 

fledermaus,  Die,  559 
Strauss,  Josephine  (Pschorr),  556 


Strauss,  Pauline  (De  Ahna)  (1863-1950), 
560,  569 

Strauss,  Richard  (1864-1949),  91,  99, 
123,  190,  251,  285,  303,  345,  346, 
391,  466,  492,  497,  550,  551,  556- 

573>  574>  577>  583,  588,  594,  601 
concertos 
Burleske,    piano    and    orchestra, 

557»  560 

ist,  for  Horn  and  Orchestra,  572 
2nd,  for  Horn  and  Orchestra,  572 
for  Oboe  and  Orchestra,  572 
incidental  music 

to  Le  Bourgeois-gentilhomme*  570 
operas 

Aegyptische  Helena,  Die,  571 
Arabella,  571 
Ariadne  auf  Naxos,  570 

Grossmachtigtse    Prinzessin,  570 
Capriccio,  572 
Daphne,  571 
Elektra,  99,  228,  557,  567,  568,  569, 

570 

Feuersnot,  565 

Frau  ohne  Schatten,  Die,  570-571 
Friedenstag,  571 
Guntram,  560,  565 
Intermezzo,  571 
Liebe  der  Danae,  Die,  572 
Rosenkavalier,  Der,  565,  569-570, 

571 
Salome,  566-567,  568,  569,  570 

Dance  of  the  Seven  Veils,  567 
Schweigsame  Frau,  Die,  571 
orchestra 

Also  sprach  Zarathustm,  562 
Aus  Italien,  557-558,  578 
Don  Juan,  558-559,  562,  577 
Don  Quixote,  563,  570,  572 
Heldenleben,  Ein,  563-564,  565 
Macbeth,  558,  562 
Metamorphoses,  572 
Serenade,  wind  instruments,  556 
Sinfonia  domestica,  566,  569 
Symphony,  D  minor,  556 
Till  Eulenspiegels  lustige  Streiche, 

557*  561-562,  563,  570 
Tod  und  Verklarung,  559,  560 
songs,  560-561 
Allerseelen,  561 
Cacilie,  561 
Heiligen  drei  Konige  aus  Morgen- 

land,  Die,  561 
Morgen,  561 
Ruhe,  meine  Seele,  561 
Standchen,  561 
Traum    durch    die    Dammerung, 

561 

Stravinsky,  Feodor  (1843-1902),  595 
Stravinsky,    Mme    (composer's    second 
wife),  609 


INDEX  643 

Stravinsky,  Igor  Feodorovich 
(1882-       ),  123,  208,  509,  594-611 
ballets 

Apollon  Musagetes,  604 

Baiser  de  la  fee,  Le,  604,  606,  607 

Card  Party,  The,  607 

Danses  concertantes,  607-608 

Noces    villageoises,    Les,    602-603, 

605 

Oiseau  de  feu,  L',  596,  597 
Orpheus,  609-610,  611 
Petrouchka,  597-59^  599»  ?n 
Pulcinella    (after    Pergolesi),    602, 

606 

Sacre  du  print emps,  Le,  189,  599- 
601,  603,  607,  61 1 

Great  Sacred  Dance,  601 
Scenes  de  ballet,  607 
chamber  music 
Baiser  de  la  fee,  Le,  arrangement 

violin    and    piano    of    Diverti- 
mento from,  606 
Duo  Concertant,  violin  and  piano, 
605-606,  609 

Dithyrambe,  606 

Histoire  du  soldat,  L*  (seven  in- 
struments), 602 
Octuor,  604 
Suite   italienne,    arrangement    for 

violin    and    piano    of    excerpts 

from  Pulcinella,  606 
Trois  Pieces  pour  quatuor  a  COT' 

des,  602 
concertos 
Capriccio,    piano    and    orchestra, 

599,  604,  606 
piano  and  wind  instruments,  599, 

606 

violin  and  orchestra,  605,  606 
Mass  (Latin),  610 
operas 

Mavra,  602 

Oedipus  Rex  (opera-oratorio),  604, 

606,  609 

Rake's  Progress,  The,  610 
Renard,  Le,  602 
Rossignol,  Le,  595,  601-602 
orchestra 
Baiser  de  la  fee,  Le,  Divertimento 

from,  606 

Chant  du  rossignol,  Lef  602 
Chant  funebre,  596 
Circus  Polka,  607 
Dumbarton  Oaks,  concerto  grosso 

in  E  flat  major,  608 
Concerto  ("Basel")*  strings,  in  D 

major,  609 

Ebony  Concerto,  607 
Feu  d'artifice,  595,  596 
Four  Norwegian  Moods,  609 
Ode,  609 


644  INDEX 

Stravinsky,  Igor — (Continued) 
orchestra — f  Con  t  inued) 

Oiseau  de  feu,  L'y  suite  from,  596- 

597 
Dance  of  Katschei,  596,  597 

Persephone  (with  chorus,  tenor, 
female  speaking  voice),  606- 
607 

Scherzo  fantastique,  595,  596 

Star-Spangled  Banner,  The,  or- 
chestration of,  611 

Symphonic  de  psaumes  (with 
chorus),  604-605,  606 

Symphony  in  C,  608,  609 

Symphony   in    Three   Movements, 
'  608-609 

Symphony,  E  flat  major,  595 
piano  solo 

Sonata,   604 

Trois  Mouvements  de  Petrouchka, 

59^-599 
two  pianos 
Concerto  for  two  unaccompanied 

pianos,  599 

Sonata  for  two  pianos,  599,  609 
song    cycle,   mezzo-soprano    and   or- 
chestra (Faune  et  la  bergere,  Le), 

595 

Stravinsky,  Katerina  Gabriela  (com- 
poser's first  wife),  609 

Strepponi,  Giuseppina,  see  Verdi,  Giu- 
seppina  (Strepponi) 

Strindberg,  Johan  August  (1849-1912), 

576 
Stuart,    Charles    Edward,    the    Young 

Pretender  (1720-1788),  79-80 
Suares,  Andre"  (1866-    ),  555 
Sullivan,   Sir   Arthur   Seymour   (1842- 
1900),  31,  259,  465 

Mikado,  The,  465 
Sullivan,  Thomas  F.,  611 
Sun,  The  (New  York),  567-568 
Supervia,  Conchita  (1899-1936),  233 
Suppe,  Fran?  von  (1819-1895),  409 
Siissmayr,    Franz    Xaver    (1766-1803), 

156,  158,  159     • 
Swan  of  Tuonela,  The  (Sibelius),  579, 

580 
Swieten,   Baron   Gottfried   van   (1734- 

1803),  153,  158,  168 
Sylphides,  Les,  90,  322,  596 
Symphonie    de    psaumes    (Stravinsky), 

604-605,  606 
Symphonie  fantastique    (Berlioz),   341, 

342,  343-346,  347»  348,  359'  369*  37*> 

3%  39^  522 
Symphonie     funebre     et     triomphale 

(Berlioz),  358 

Symphony  Society  of  New  York,  592 
Szigeti,  Josef  (1892-    ),  132,  606 


Tadolini,  Giovanni  (1793-1872),  244 
Taglioni,    Marie    Sophie    (1804-1844), 

300 
Taine,       Hippolyte-Adolphe       (1828- 

1893),  245 
Talleyrand-Perigord,    Charles-Maurice 

de,  Prince  of  Benevento  (1754-1838), 

196 

Tamburini,   Antonio    (1800-1876),   244 
Tannhauser    (Wagner),    24,    291,    311, 

368,  383'  384*  385'  4ii-4i3»  4*4>  4i5> 
417,  420,  423,  425,  427,  428,  430,  433, 

543>  560'  579'  601 
Tapiola  (Sibelius),  592 
Tasso,  Torquato    (1544-1595),   60,  98, 

229,  343 

Tasso,  lamento  e  trionfo  (Liszt),  393 
Tate,  Nahum  (1652-1715),  77 
Tausig,  Carl  (1841-1871),  388 
Taylor,    Chevalier    John    (1703-1772), 

51,  82 
Tchaikovskaya,     Alexandra      (Assiere) 

(1813-1854),  502 
Tchaikovskaya,    Alexandra,   see    Davi- 

dova,  Alexandra   (Tchaikovskaya), 
Tchaikovskaya,      Antonina     Ivanovna 

(Miliukova)      (i  849-1 917),      51 3-5 1 4, 

5*5>  5i6 
Tchaikovsky,     Anatol     Ilyich     (1850- 

1915)'  5°2,  512,  5H'  524 
Tchaikovsky,     Ilya     Petrovich     (1795- 

1880),  502,  503,  504,  506 
Tchaikovsky,     Modest     Ilyich     (1850- 

1916),  502,  512,  514,  524,  526,  527 
Tchaikovsky,  .piotr  Ilyich  (1840-1893), 
1-18,   187,  194,  206,   208,  304,  338, 
345'   37i'   399,   438,   498,  502-528, 
529'  532,  564'  58°*  595'  599'  601, 
602,  604,  606 
ballets 

Aurora's  Wedding,  524 
Lac  des  cygnes,  Le,  515,  520 
Nutcracker,  The,  525-526 
Sleeping  Beauty,  The,  523-524 
chamber  music 
quartet,  strings,  D  major,  508 

"Andante  cant ab He"  508 
trio,  strings,  A  minor,  519-520 
concertos 
piano  and  orchestra 

ist,  B  flat  minor,  509-510,  511 
2nd,  G  major,  521-522 
violin    and    orchestra,    D    major, 

187,  516,  518,  520-521 
operas,  508 
Eugen  'Oniegin,  513,  515,  516,  518- 

519'  524 
lolanthe,  526 
Joan  of  Arc,  519 
Oxana's  Caprices,  522 


INDEX 


645 


Tchaikovsky,   Piotr— (Continued) 
operas — (Contin  ued) 
Pique-Dame,  524,  525,  526 
Vakula  the  Smith,  507-508,  522 
Voyevoda,  The,  505 
orchestra 

Capriccio  italien,  519 
Francesco,  da  Rimini,  515 
Manfred   Symphony,   522 
Marche  slave,  514 
Mozartiana,  522 
Nutcracker  Suite,  525-526 
overtures 
-fantasia     Romeo     and    Juliet, 

506-507,  515 

solennelle,  "1812"  194,  519,  581 
symphonies 

ist    ("Winter    Daydreams"),    G 

minor,  505,  509 
2nd  ("Little  Russian"),  C  minor, 

508-509,  511 
grd    ("Polish"),   D    major,    208, 

5<>9>  5*1 
4th,  F  minor,  208,  507,  515-514, 

515*  5l6-5i8,  523 
5th,  E  minor,  194,  498,  517,  518, 

522-523 
6th     ^{Pathetique")>    B    minor, 

517,  518,  527,  528 
Manfred,  522 
Tempest,  The,  515 
piano  solo 

Humor esque,  606 
sonata,  G  major,  516 
Souvenir  de  Hapsal,  507 

Chant  sans  paroles,  507 
songs 

Mezza  notte,  503 

Nur  wer  die  Sehnsucht  kennt,  519 
Te  Deum  (Berlioz),  363-364 
Telemann,  Georg  Philipp  (1681-1767), 

3^  54>   125 
Tempest,  The  (Shakespeare),  182,  347, 

350,  351 
Terence     (Publius     Terentius     Afer) 

(igo?-i59?  B.C.),  272 
Teresa  de  Jesus,  St.  (1515-1582),  18 
Terry,  Charles  Sanford  (1864-1936),  48 
Texier,  Rosalie,  see  Debussy,  Rosalie 

(Texier) 
Thackeray,  William  Makepeace  (1811- 

1863),  62 

Thai's,  St.  (4th  century),  306 
Thalberg,  Sigismond  (1812-1871),  300 

305,  3*7>  378 

fantasia  on  Rossini's  Moise,  378 
Thayer,    Alexander   Wheelock    (1817- 

1897),  168 

Theatrical  Register  (London),  82 
Theocritus  (3rd  century  B.C.),  539 


Theodora,  Empress  of  the  East  (508?- 

548),  69 
Thomas,  Charles-Louis-Ambroise 

(1811-1896),  530,  531 
Mignon,  530 

Thomas,  Theodore  (1835-1905),  569 
Thompson,  Oscar  (1887-1945),  535»  553 
Thomson,  James  (1700-1748),  120 
Thomson,  Virgil  (1896-    ),  608 
Thoreau,    Henry  '  David    (1817-1862): 

601 

Three  Blind  Mice,  144 
Thun,    Count    Johann    Josef    (1711- 

1788),   143,   144 

Tibbett,  Lawrence  (1896-    ),  457 
Tichatschek,  Joseph"  Aloys  (1807-1886), 

408,  410,  412 

Tieck,  Ludwig  (i773-l833>>  22O»  4^ 
Till     Eulenspiegels     htstige     Streiche 
(Richard  Strauss),  557,  561-562,  563, 
570 

Times,  The  (London),  274 
"Tod     und    das    Madchen"     Quartet 

(Schubert),  258 
Tod  und  Verkliirung  (Richard  Strauss), 

559,  560 

Tolstoi,  Count  Lev  (1828-1910),  160 
Tonkiinstlerorchester  (Berlin),  564 
Toscanini,  Arturo  (1867-  ),  108,  220, 

228,  467,  588 

Tovey,  Sir  Donald  Francis  (1875-1940), 
12/76-77,  88,  143,  184,  195,  221,  276, 
338,  370 

"Toy"  Symphony   (Haydn),   122 
Toye,  Francis  (1883-    ),  303,  449 
Tragic  Overture  (Brahms),  494-495^ 
Traite    de    I3 instrumentation    et    d'or- 
chestration  (Opus   10)  (Berlioz),  360 
Travlata,  La   (Verdi),  454-455 
Treitschke,     Georg     Friedrich     (1776- 

1842),   183,  185 

Trent's  Last  Case  (Bentley),  397 
Tristan  und  Isolde  (Wagner),  47,  150. 
384,  390,  399>  412>  4*8>  424»  425'  426- 
427,  429.  434>  534>  549>  5&>>  6°1 
Trovador,  El  (Gutierrez),  451,  453>  456 
Trovatore,    11    (Verdi),    453~454.    455> 

460,  463 
Troyens,  Les  (Berlioz),  343,  367^  368- 

37^5  373 
Turgeniev,    Ivan    Sergeievich    (1818- 

1893),  482,  483,  611 
Turner,  Joseph  Mallord  William  (1775- 

1851),  542 

Turner,  Walter  James  Redfern  (1889- 
1946),   160,   220-221,   340,   354,   355* 

Two  '  Gentlemen    of    Verona    (Shake- 
speare),  154 
Tyers,  Jonathan  (?-i767),  7-i 


646 


INDEX 


U 


"Unfinished"  Symphony  (Schubert), 
260-261 

Universal  Exposition  of  1862  (Lon- 
don), 460 


Vaisseau  fantdme,  Le  (Dietsch),  428 
Valois,  house  of,  15 
Variations  serieuses  (Mendelssohn),  291 
Vasnier,  M.,  533,  534 
Vasnier,  Mme,  533 
Vauxhall  Gardens  (London),  74,  81 
Verdi,  Carlo  (^1867),  445,  453,  461 
Verdi,    Giuseppe    Fortunio    Francesco 
(1813-1901),    230,    233,    241,    245, 
247*   338>  355'   37°'   383»  445-468, 
534.  58o,  594 
operas 
A'ida,  461,  462-463,  465 

"Celeste  A'ida"  463 
Aroldo,  457 
Ballo  in  maschera,  Un,  457—458 

"Eri  tu,"  457 
Don   Carlos,  460-461 
"O   Carlo,  ascolta"  461 
"O  don  -fatale,"  461 
Ernani,  449^-450,  451-452 

"Ernani,  involami,"  449—450 
Falstaff,  370,  466-467,  570 
Finto  Stanislao,  II,  see  Giorno  di 

regno,  Un 

Forza  del  destino,  La,  459-460,  461 
"Pace,  pace"  460 
"Solenne  in  quest'ora,"  460 
Giorno  di  regno,  Un,  448,  466 
I  ago,  see  Otello 
Lombardi  alia  prima  crotiata*  /, 

449>  451 

Luisa  Miller,  450 
Macbeth,  450,  461 
Maledizione,  La,  see  Rigoletto 
Masnadieri,  I,  450 
Nabucodonosor     (Nabucco),    448- 

449>  453 
Oberto,   conte   di  Bonifacio,  447, 

451,  466 
Otello,  233,  464-465,  466,  467 

"Ave  Maria"  465 

"Salce,  salce"  465 
Rigoletto,  391,  449,  450,  452~453> 
454.  455»  46o»  463 

"Caro   nome"   452—453 

"La  donna  e  mobile"  453 

quartet,  453 

Simone  Boccanegra,  456-457,  464 
Stiffelio,  457 
Traviata,  La,  454—455 

"Ah!  fors  e  lui,"  455 

"Di  Provenza  it  mar"  455 


Verdi,  Giuseppe — (Continued) 
operas — (Continued) 

Traviata,  La — (Continued) 
Drinking  Song,  455 
"Sempre    libera"    455 
Trovatore,  II,  453-454*   455*   460, 

463 

*'Ai  nostri  monti,"  454 
Anvil  Chorus,  454 
"11    balen,"  454 
Miserere,  454 
"Stride  la  vampa,"  454 
Vepres  siciliennes,  Les,  456 
Vespri  siciliani,  I,  456-457 
Requiem  ("Manzoni"),  355,  463-464 
string  quartet,  E  minor,  463 
Verdi,   Giuseppina    (Strepponi)    (1815- 
1897),  447,  449,  451,  453,  458,  459, 
460,  466,  467 
Verdi,    Luigia    (Uttini)    (?-i85i),    445, 

453 
Verdi,     Margherita     (Barezzi)     (1821- 

1840),  446,  447,  448 
Verlaine,   Paul   (1844-1896),   531,   533, 

540,  546  f 
Vernet,       Emile- Jean-Horace       (1789- 

1863),  243,  347,  348 
Verona,  Congress  of,  236 
Vestale,  La  (Spontini),  214 
Vestris,     Gaetan     Apolline     Balthasar 

(1729-1808),   97 
Vestris,    Lucia    Elizabeth    (1797-1856), 

223 
Viardot-Garcia,    Michelle    Ferdinande 

Pauline  (1821-1910),  334 
Victoire  Mme  (1733-1799),  127 
Victor   Emmanuel   II,   King   of   Italy 

(1820-1878),  457 

Victoria,    Queen    of    England    (1819- 
1901),   224,   284-285,   289,  307,   379, 
389-390,  423-424 
Victoria,  Agustin  de,  18 
Victoria,  Tomas  Luis  de  (1540-1611), 

13.  i4>  18-20,  73 
Canticae  beatae  Virginis,  20 
Officium  defunctorum,  19,  73 
Victory  Ball,  A  (Schelling),  194 
Vienna,  Congress  of,  196 
Vigny,  Comte  Alfred- Victor  de  (1797- 

1863),  342 

Villon,  Francois   (1431-1464?),  540-541 
Vines,  Ricardo  (1875-    )>  54^ 
Virgil    (Publius    Virgilius    Maro)    (70- 

19  B.C.),  367,  369 
Vitoria,  battle  of,  193 
Vivaldi,  Antonio  (1675?-! 743),  26 
Vogl,  Johann  Michael  (1768-1840),  254- 

255,  256,  259,  262 
Vogler,  Abbe  Georg  Josef  (1749-1814), 

210,  212,   217 

Voltaire,     Francois-Marie    Arouet     de 
(1694-1778),  97,  128,  229 


INDEX 


647 


Voyage   musical  en  Allemagne  et   en 
Italic  (Berlioz),  360 

W 

Wagenseil,    Georg    Christoph    (1715- 

1777),  126 

Wagner,  Adolf  (1774-1835),  398 
Wagner,  Albert  (1799-1874),  398,  401 
Wagner,    Carl    Friedrich    (1770-1813), 

397,  398 
Wagner,    Cosima    (Liszt    von    Biilow) 

(1837-1930),  378,  385,  387,  389,  390, 

403,  422,  424,  431,  432,  433»  435>  436, 

443,  444,  475,  476,  560 
Wagner,   Eva,   see   Chamberlain,   Eva 

(Wagner) 
Wagner,    Isolde,    see    Beidler,    Isolde 

(Wagner) 
Wagner,   Johanna   (Patz)    (1774-1848), 

221,  397>  398»  399»  400 
Wagner,  Johanna  (1826-1894),  412,  415 
Wagner,   Minna   (Planer)    (1809-1866), 

403-404,  405-406,  407,  409,  410,  414, 

416,  417,  418,  420,  422-423,  424,  428, 

429,  438,  45 1 
Wagner,  Rosalie  (1803-1837),  398,  401, 

402 
Wagner,  Siegfried  (1869-1930),  431,  435, 

444 
Wagner,  Wilhelm  Richard  (1813-1883), 

17,  22,  24,  47,  91,  123,   151,   194. 

212,  221,  224,  225>  226,  241,  242, 
245,  246  276,  279,  288,  290,  291, 
295,  297,  304,  306,  307,  308,  310, 

311,  338,  339>  345>  357»  359>  3&>> 
361,  368,  37^  383>  3%  385>  387> 
389*  39i»  395-444»  445>  45°>  451* 
452,  456,  461,  462,  469,  475,  478» 
479,  486,  510,  512,  517,  520,  531, 
534.  535»  536,  54<>>  543~544»  55^ 
557»  558,  559»  56o>  5^5*  57<>>  57** 
573>  576,  579*  58°'  594 
instrumental  compositions 

American  Centennial  March,  437 
Faust,  seven  scenes  from,  401 
Faust  Ouvertilre,  Eine,  407 
Kaisersmarsch,  437 
overture,  B  flat  major,  401 
Siegfried  Idyl,  436 
symphony,  C  major,  401,  443 
operas 

Feen,  Die,  401,  402,  403,  425 

overture,  402 

Fliegende    Hollander,    Der,    408, 
409-411,    414,    4*5'    424»    43° 

"Die  Frist  ist  um"  411 

overture,  410,  411 

Senta's  Ballad,  411 

Spinning  Chorus,  411 
Gotterdammerunzr.  Die,  see  Ring 

des  Nibelungen,  Der 


Wagner,  Richard — (Continued) 
operas — (Continued) 
Liebesverbot,  Das,    404-405,   407, 

425 

overture,  405 
Lohengrin,  413,  416,  418-419,  420, 

425,  429,  430,  512,  579 
Bridal  Chorus,  286,  413,  419,  434 
prelude,  419 
Wedding     March,     see     Bridal 

Chorus 
Meistersinger  iron  Niirnberg,  Die, 

47»   37°'  4*9>   426,   432-4§4 
Dance  of  the  Apprentices,  434 
Preislied,  434 
prelude,  434 
quintet,  434 
"Wahn!  wahn!,"  434 
Novice  de  Palerme,  La,  see  Liebes- 

verbot,  Das 

Ollandese    dannato,  U,  see  Flie- 
gende Hollander,  Der 
Parsifal,   369,   390,   422,  435,    441, 

442-443,  535'  567>  579 
Good  Friday  Spell,  443 
prelude,  443 
Rheingold,  Das,  see  Ring  des  Az- 

belungen,  Der 
Rienzi,  402,  408-409,  410,  411,  413, 

414,  415,  425 
overture,  409 

Ring  des  Nibelungen,  Der,  225, 
226,  241,  384,  419,  420,  422, 
423,  424,  426,  429,  430,  433, 
435,  43&-44<>>  442,  512,  539* 

565 
Gotterdammerung,  Die,  420,  425, 

435,  440,  443>  5/2 
Siegfried's  Funeral  Music,  440 
Siegfried's  Rhine  Journey,  440 
Rheingold,   Das,  420,  422,    424, 

425,  441 
prelude,  422 
Siegfried,  420,  424,  425,  435,  436-- 

440 

Waldweben,  440 
Walkure,  Die,  420,  422,  424*  425, 

440,  441 
Brunnhilde's  Immolation  Aria, 

440       ^ 
Liebesliedj  440 
Ride  of  the  Valkyries,  440 
Wotan's  Farewell,  440 
Siegfried,  see  Ring  des  Nibelungen, 

Der 

Tannhauser,  24,  291,  311,  368*  383» 
384,    385,    4i1~4i3>   4*4>    4*5> 
417,  420,   423,  425,  427,   428, 
430>  433,    543>  5^    579>  6<>i 
Bacchanale,  413 
Elisabeth's   Prayer,  413 
"Evening  Star,"  291,  413,  434 


648  INDEX 

Wagner,  Richard — (Continued) 
operas — (Continued) 

Tannhauser — (Continued) 
Festmarsch,  413 
Hymn  to  Venus,  412 
overture,  413 
Pilgrims'  Chorus,  413 
Venusberg  Scene  (original),  412, 

426 
Venusberg    Scene    (Paris),    428, 

601 

Tristan  und  Isolde,  47,  150,  384, 
390*  399>  412,  418,  424,  425, 
426-427,  429,  434,  534,  549> 
560,  601 

Liebesnacht,  426,  427 
Liebestod,  426 
prelude,  427 
prelude  to  Act  III,  427 
Walkiire,  Die,,  see   Ring  des  Ni- 

belungen,  Der 
songs,  five,  424 
Schmerzen,  540 
Trdume,  424,  540 
writings 

Hochzeit,  Die,  401 

Judenthum  in  die  Musik,  Das,  421, 

422,  423 

Junge  Siegfried,  Der,.  420 
Leubatd,  399,  400 
Mein  Leben,  398,  403,  433,  436 
Oper  und  Drama,  422 
Siegfrieds  Tod,  420 
Vaisseau  fantdme,  Le,  408,  428 
Wailly,       Armand-Franc,ois-Leon       de 

(1804-1863),  355 
Waldstein,      Count      Ferdinand     von 

(1762-1823),  166,  167,  168 
"Waldstein"  Sonata  (Beethoven),  182 
Wales,    Frederick    Lewis,     Prince    of 

(1707-1751).  7*>  72,  73 
Walewski,    Comte    Alexandre-Florian- 

Joseph  (1810-1868),  385 
Walkure,  Die  (Wagner),  420,  422,  424, 

425,  440,  441;  see  also  Ring  des  Ni- 

belungen,  Der 
Walpole,  Horace>  Earl  of  Orford  (1717- 

i797)>  540 

Walsegg,  Count  Franz  von,  159 
Walsh,  John  (^-1736),  60 
"'Wanderer'*  Fantasia   (Schubert),  262, 

263 
Wanhal,  Johann  Baptist   (1739-1813), 

111,  145 

Wartburg  (Eisenach),  23-24,  411,  412 
Wasielewski,  Joseph   von   (1822-1896), 

292 

Water  Music  (Handel),  62-63,  75,  81 
Waterloo,  battle  of,  142 
Waverley  overture  (Berlioz),  342,  343 
Weber,  Aloysia,  see  Lange,  Alovsia 


Weber,  Carl  Maria  von  (1786-1826), 
135-136*  150,  208-225,  226,  233, 
236,  238,  258,  269,  270,  271,  293, 
296,  343*  365>  369>  399>  400,  402, 

Abu  Hassan,  213 

Conzertstiick,  208,  218,  219,  274,  365 

Drei  Pintos,  Die,  218 

Euryanthe,   220-221,    222,   224,   225, 

236,  258 

overture,  208,  219 

Freischiltz,  Der,   212,   216-217,   218- 
220,  221,  223,  258,  269,  399,  411 
"Durch  die  Walder"  220 
"Leise,  leise,"  220 
overture,   208,    221 
Invitation  to  the  Dance,  208,  212,  217 
jubilee  cantata,  217 
Kampf  und  Sieg,  215 
'Leyer  und  Schwert,  215 
Masses,  208 

Oberon,  212,  222,  223-224 
'"Ocean,    thou    mighty    monster," 

223 

overture,  208,  224 
overtures,  423 
Preciosa,  218 
Rubezahl,  210,  211 
Sylvana,  212—213,  214 
symphonies,  C  major,  211 
Turandot  overture,  208 
Waldmachen,  Das,  210,  212 
Weber,    Caroline    (Brandt)    von,    213, 
214,  216,  217,  218,  219,  222,  223,  224 
Weber,   Constanze,   see   Mozart,   Con- 

stanze  (Weber) 
Weber,  Franz  Anton  von  (1734?-!  8 12), 

209,  210,  211,  212,  213 
Weber,  Fridolin   (1733-1779),   135-136, 

139 
Weber,  Genofeva  (Brenner)  von  (1764- 

1798),  209 

Weber,  Marie  Cacile  (?-i793),   139 
Webern,  Anton  von  (1883-1945),  568 
Wegelius,  Martin  (1846-1906),  576,  579 
Weingartner,    Felix    (1863-1942),    388, 

564 
Weinlig,     Christian    Theodor     (1780- 

1842),  401 
Wellington,    Arthur    Wellesley,    Duke 

of  (1769-1852),  193,  236,  238 
Well  -  Tempered      Clavichord,      The 

(Bach),  35-36,  37,  49,  51,  65,  165,  294* 

315,  324,  330 
Wesendonck,    Mathilde    (Luckemeyer) 

(1828-1902),  423,  424-425,  429,  438, 

Wesendonck,    Otto    (1815-1896),    423, 

424,  425,  427,  429,  438,  441 
Wetzler,   Hermann   Hans   (1870-1943), 

569 


INDEX 


649 


Whistler,  James  Abbott  McNeill  (1834- 

1903)*  542 

Who  is  Sylvia?  (Schubert),  251,  263 
Wleck,  Clara  Josephine,  see  Schumann, 

Clara  (Wleck) 
Wieck,  Friedrich  (1785-1873),  279,  293- 

294,  295,  296,  297*  299-300,  301,  400 
Wilde,  Oscar  Fingal  O'Flahertie  Wills 

(1856-1900),  566 
W7ilhelm     I,     Emperor     of     Germany 

(1797-1888),  438,  486,  566 
Wilhelm    II,    Emperor    of    Germany 

(1859-1941),  564 
Withelm   Tell  (Schiller),  241 
Wilhelm j,    August    Daniel    Ferdinand 

Victor  (1845-1908),  440,  574 
William  V,  Duke  of  Bavaria  (?-i626), 

16,   17 
William    Tell   (Rossini),   234,  241—242, 

243'  246,  334 
\Vinckelmann,  Johann  Joachim  (1717— 

1768),  90 
"Winter     Daydreams'"     (Tchaikovsky), 

505.  509 

Wittelsbach,  house  of,  15 
Wodziriska,    Countess    Marja    (?-i8g6), 

327,  328,  329 
Wodziriski,  Count,  327 
Wojciechowski,  Titus,  317,  318 
Wolf,  Hugo  (1860-1903),  303,  488,  561, 

564 

Wood,  Sir  Henry  J.  (1869-1944),  84 
Wordsworth,  William  (1770-1850),  163, 

601 


Wotton,  Tom  $.,  363-364 

WQXR  (New  York),  104,  517 

Wiirth,  Karl,  pseudonym  of  Johannes 

Brahms,  471 
Wurttemberg,  Eugen,  Duke  of  (1758- 

1822),  211 
Wurttemberg,  Ludwig,  Duke  of  (1756— 

1817),  211 
Wyzewa    and    Saint-Foix    (Tepdor    de 

Wyzewa  and  Georges  de  Saint-Foix, 

W\  A.  Mozart t  Sa  vie  musicale  et  son 

oewwre,  de  I'enfance  a  la  pleine  ma- 

turite),  132 


Y 


Young,  Edward  (1683—1765),  293 
Young   Pretender,   see  Stuart,  Charles 

Edward 

Ysaye,  Eugene  (1858-1931),  541 
Ysa^e  Quartet,  537 


Zachau,     Friedrich     Wilhelm      (1663- 

1712),  54,  63,  82 
Zaremba,     Nikolai     Ivanovich     (1821— 

1879),  504 
Zauberftote,    Die    (Mozart),    129,    145, 

i55»  15&-157>  355>  394 
Zelter,  Carl  Friedrich  (1758-1832),  269, 

272,  273,  276 

Zweig,  Stefan  (1881-1942),  571 
Zywny,  Adalbert  (1756-1842),  315,  316 


120  582