The correctness of applying the last clause to the musician will be questioned by those who delight in enlarging on the petty jealousies of musicians. It will be learned in time that these foibles belong only to petty musicians,and that no one knows better how to respect others as himself than one who has enjoyed the privilege of the musical education that educates.
Certain learned college professors were once heard discussing methods of literary criticism and interpretation. They spoke of external and technical forms, and how magnificently these were illustrated in the world's acknowledged masterpieces of literature. Every work read or studied, they decided, should be carefully weighed, measured and analyzed, and should be judged solely by the maxims and laws deduced from classical standards. The critical faculty must never be permitted to slumber or to sleep. Above all, the literary student should beware of trusting to impressions.
Not a word was uttered in regard to the contents of the masterpieces in question, the special emotions, the overwhelming passions they revealed, the mighty experiences of which they were the result. Nothing was said about the source of a great book in the life of its author, or its value as a record of what many minds and hearts of an entire epoch have thought, felt and desired. The learned professors were so deeply concerned with what they considered the demands of strict scholarship that they lost sight of the spirit which animates every true work of art. To them literature consisted of words, phrases, sentences, figures of speech, classical allusions, and well-constructed forms. They regarded it apparently as an artificial product, compounded according to traditional and cautiously prescribed recipes.
An aged man of letters present, one who was characterized by his ripe scholarship, his richly cultured personality, sat listening in silence to the conversation. Suddenly he rose up, and, in vibrant tones, exclaimed: "Where hath the soul of literature fled, its vital part? If we are to trample upon our impressions thebest that is within us will be chilled. Of what avail is education if it does not lead to the unfolding of our God-given intuitions? Friends, if the trend of modern criticism be to divorce literature from life, the throb and thrill of great art will soon cease to be felt."
The lesson conveyed by these words may with equal propriety be applied to the field of music. Viewing certain current tendencies the cultured musician is often moved to wonder where the soul of music has fled. The critical faculty is keenly alive to-day, but musical criticism, shorn of its better part, musical appreciation, can never lead to the insight requisite for true musical interpretation. Observation and perception, intellectual discernment and spiritual penetration are essential to gain insight into a great musical composition until its musical ideas, the very grade and texture of its style, are absolutely appropriated.
In his "Death in the Desert," Robert Browning tells of the three souls that make up the soul of man: the soul which Does; the soul which Knows, feels, thinks and wills, and thesoul which Is and which constitutes man's real self. Appreciation of music requires the utmost activity of all three souls. The more we are, the broader our culture, the more we think, feel and know, the more we will find in music. Dr. Hiram Corson, commenting on Browning's words, says the rectification, or adjustment of what Is, that which constitutes our true being, should transcend all other aims of education. If this fact were more generally accepted and enforced it could soon no longer be said that few persons reach maturity without the petrifaction of some faculty of mind and heart.
Every faculty we possess needs to be keenly alive for the interpretation of the best in music. One who is accustomed to earnest thinking, quick observation and sympathetic penetration will see, hear and feel much that utterly escapes those whose best faculties have been permitted to lie dormant, or become petrified. The interpreter of music must have vital knowledge of the inner, spiritual element of every work of art he attempts to reproduce. His imagination must be kindled by it, and musical imagination is infinitely more precious than musical mechanism.
It is by no means intended to underrate technical proficiency. No one can be a satisfactory exponent of music whose technique is deficient, however profound may be his musicianly understanding and feeling. At the same time, with every tone, every measure, mechanically correct, a performance may fail to move the listener, because it lacks warmth and glow. Only they can make others feel who feel themselves, but sentiment is apt to be confounded with sentimentality unless it is guided by a scholarly mind. The more feeling is spiritualized with thought the nobler it will be. Heart and head need to operate in company with well-controlled physical forces, in order that a fine interpretation of music may be attained. Faultless technique, in the service of a lofty ideal, indeed ceases to be mechanical and becomes artistic.
A musical work of art originates in the deep well of the fertile imagination of genius, andcan only be drawn forth when the composer is in that highly exalted frame of mind we call inspiration. The theme, or musical subject, is a vital spark of the divine fire, and has flashed unbidden into his consciousness, demanding undivided attention for its logical development. With infinite care he molds and groups the musical factors which are his working forces, and of which he has both an intuitive and a practical knowledge. The manifold forms he fashions all combine for one purpose, and lead persistently to one grand climax, from which they may return to the repose whence they came. Unity in diversity is the goal he sets before himself. All aglow though he is with the joy of artistic production, he dare not permit his mind to waver from the task in hand.
Music is not to be played with, and the labor of composition is no trifling matter. It demands the keenest mental activity, the most profound mental concentration. It demands consecration. The composer thinks and works in tones, in an ideal realm, far removed from the realities of the external world. His business is to bring his theme to its most magnificent unfolding, treating it with absolute definiteness, that his intention may be perfectly clear.
It is the business of the interpreter of music to be so thoroughly acquainted with the elements of which music is composed that he can promptly recognize the color, complexion and individual character of every interval, chord and chord-combination, every consonance and dissonance, every timbre and nuance, and every degree of phrasing and rhythm. He must have so complete a mastery of his materials and working forces that his imagination may be influenced unimpeded by the emanations from the composer's imagination which animate the moving forms he commands.
It is his business to respond with his whole being to the appeal of the musical masterpiece he attempts to interpret, and so express the emotions aroused by it from their slumbers in his own bosom that a responsive echo may be found in the bosoms of the listeners. A most ingeniously constructed music-box, with thepresentation of a complicated piece of music, may fail to move a heart that will be stirred to its depths by a simple song, into which the singer's whole soul has been thrown.
Though the mind of the inventive genius be a mystery that may not fully be explained, its product is within the grasp of the intelligent seeker. The æsthetic principles of musical construction rest on certain elementary laws governing both the human organism and the phenomena of sound, and may become familiar to any one who is capable of study. In the same way the established canons of musical expression, observed by the skilful artist, consciously or unconsciously, are traceable to natural causes. Without realizing the inherent properties of music, as well as its technical possibilities and limitations, we cannot know the art.
The tonal language is one that is not translatable into words. It is composed of an infinite variety of tone-forms, now sharply contrasted, now gradually blending into one another, all logically connected, all tending toform a perfect whole. The profusion of harmonic, melodic, dynamic and rhythmic changes it brings forth invests it with a meaning far beyond that of words, a musical meaning. Every masterpiece of music clothes in tonal form some idea which originated in the composer's mind. To the interpreter it is given to invest it with living sound.
Chords and chord combinations all have their individual characteristics. Some cause satisfaction, for instance, others unrest. When a chord of the dominant seventh is heard, the educated musician knows that a solution is demanded. The unspoiled ear and taste instinctively feel something unfinished, and are disturbed if it be not followed by a return to the key chord. Where the faculties are dormant or petrified, its significance will be unobserved.
The story is told of a young lady whose musical education had been utterly hollow and false, but who, having been overwhelmed with flattery for her voice and her singing, was deluded into a belief that she was destined to shine as a star on the operatic stage. She consulted thefamous basso, Karl Formes, who good-naturedly had her sing for him. He perceived at once that she possessed neither striking talent nor adequate training.
As a supreme test he struck on the piano a chord of the dominant seventh, and asked the young aspirant for dramatic glory what she thought it meant. Presuming it to be incumbent upon a prospective prima donna to have uppermost in her mind the grand passion, she replied, in a sentimental tone, "Love!" Promptly Karl Formes sounded the solution to the chord. "There is your answer," quoth he. "I ask a question, and it is thought I speak of love. Go home, my good girl, and seek some other avocation. You have a fair voice, but you are tone-deaf. You can never make a musician."
A favorite motto of the piano teacher Leschetitzky is, "Think ten times before you play once." If this rule were more generally observed we should have better interpreters of music. A great composition should completely occupy mind and heart before it is attacked byfingers or voice. In that case it would be analyzed as to its form, its tonal structure, its harmonic relations, its phrasing and rhythms, and its musical intention would become luminous. The interpreter would understand where accents and other indications of expression should occur and why they should so occur, and would be able, in however feeble a way, to find and reveal the true heart music that lies hidden in the notes.
It is never too early in a course of music study to consider the requirements of musical expression. Persistent observance of them will inevitably quicken the artistic sense. The rules to which they have given rise are for the most part simple and easily explained. For obvious reasons, all musical interpretation is expected to imitate song as closely as possible. The human voice, the primitive musical instrument, in moments of excitement, ascends to a higher pitch, increasing in intensity of tone as it sweeps upward. Consequently every progression from lower to higher tones, whether played or sung, demands a crescendo unlesssome plainly denoted characteristic of the music calls for different treatment. A descending passage, as a return to tranquillity, requires a decrescendo.
"The outpouring of a feeling toward its object, whether to the endless heavens, or forth into the boundless world, or toward a definite, limited goal, resembles the surging, the pressing onward of a flood," said the great teacher, Dr. Adolph Kullak. "Reversely, that feeling which draws its object into itself has a more tranquillizing movement, that especially when the possession of the object is assured, appeases itself in equable onward flow toward the goal of a normal state of satisfaction. The emotional life is an undulating play of up-surging and subsidence, of pressing forward beyond temporal limitations and of resigned yielding to temporal necessities. The crescendo and decrescendo are the means employed in music for the portrayal of this manifestation of emotional life."
Another important matter which may to a great extent be reduced to rule is that of accentuation. Through it a tone-picture is invested with animation, and a clue is given to the disposition of tonal forms. Accents are always required to mark the entrance of a theme, a phrase or a melody. Where there are several voices, or parts, as in a fugue, each voice denotes its appearance with an accent. Every daring assertion hazarded in music, as in speech, demands special emphasis. Dissonances need to be brought out in such prominence that they may not appear to be accidental misconceptions, and that confident expectation may be aroused of their ultimate resolution. Accentuation must be regulated by the claims of musical delivery. At all times too gentle an accent is without effect, too glaring an accent is to be condemned.
Hans von Bülow strenuously advised young musicians to cultivate their ears and strive to attain musical beauty in what is termed phrasing, which he regarded as the real beginning of greatness in a performer. Phrasing and time keeping are two of the prime essentials in musical delivery, and cannot be neglected with impunity.
Time may well be called the pulse of music. Upon some occasions the pulse beats more rapidly than others. It is incumbent on the interpreter of music to ascertain the harmonic and other causes which determine the tempo of a musical composition, as well as those which make slight variations from it admissible. Among other points to be noted is the fact that sudden transition from repose to restless activity calls for an accelerando, while the reverse requires a rallentando.
It is absolutely imperative for one who would interpret music to cultivate the memory. The musician who cannot play or sing without notes is compelled to expend a large amount of mental activity on reading these, and will find it difficult to heed the manifold requirements of musical expression and delivery, of which a few hints have here been given. A musical composition is never thoroughly understood until it has been intelligently memorized. One who can play or sing without notes is as free asa bird to soar aloft in the blue ether of musical imagination.
FRANZ LISZT
FRANZ LISZT
Every interpreter of music longs for appreciative listeners, and young musicians, in especial, often lament the lack of these. It is well to remember that the genuine musical artist is able to create an atmosphere whose influences may compel an average audience to sympathetic listening. A good plan for the artist is to be surrounded in fancy with an audience having sensitively attuned ears, intellectual minds, and warm, throbbing hearts. Music played in private before such an imaginary audience will gain in quality, and when repeated before an actual public will hold that public captive.
We have it from Ruskin that all fatal faults in art that might otherwise be good arise from one or other of three things: either from the pretence to feel what we do not; the indolence in exercise necessary to obtain the power of expressing the Truth; or the presumptuous insistence upon, or indulgence in, our own powers and delights, with no care or wish that theyshould be useful to other people, so only they should be admired by them.
These three fatal faults must be avoided, or conquered, by the person who would interpret music.
Listening is an art. It requires close and accurate attention, sympathy, imagination and genuine culture. Listening to music is an art of high degree. Many derive exquisite enjoyment from it, for music is potent and universal in its appeal. To listen intelligently to music is an accomplishment few have acquired.
A great painting presents itself as a completed whole before the observer's eye. It holds on the canvas the fixed place given it by the master from whose genius it proceeded. No intermediary force is needed to come between it and the impression it makes on the beholder. Music, on the contrary, must be aroused from the written, or printed page toliving tone by the hand or voice of the interpreter, and but a fragment at a time can be made perceptible to the listener's ear. Like a panorama, it comes and goes before the imagination, its kaleidoscopic tints and forms now sharply contrasted, now almost imperceptibly graduated one into the other, but all shaping themselves into a logical union, stamped with the design of a creative mind. Properly to inspect the successive musical images, and grasp their significance, in parts and as a whole, demands keen mental alertness.
Many are content to listen to music for the mere sensuous impression it creates as it wraps itself about the inner being, lulling a perturbed spirit to rest, or awakening longing and aspiration, joy and sadness, according to the nature of the music and the hearer's mood. Some even take pleasure in formulating into words the sensations evoked by the ebb and flow of the tonal waves, and fancy they are thus deriving intellectual profit from music.
From both ways of listening helpful results may accrue, but by no means the greatest.Music is far beyond words, and in attempting to translate it into these we miss its musical meaning, the best that is in it. As listeners we derive our highest æsthetic and intellectual satisfaction from the ability to follow, even anticipate, the composer's intention, now finding our expectations fulfilled, now being agreeably disappointed. Failure to catch the opening phrase and preliminary rhythms of the composition makes it impossible to appreciate the tonal forms into which they develop. Nor may the mind linger over any one part, if we would grasp the work as an unbroken whole. That musical creation alone can afford the noblest delights that prompts and rewards the act of thus closely following the composer's thought.
An instance of absolute knowledge of music appears in an anecdote told of Johann Sebastian Bach. When he was present at the performance of a fugue and one of his two most musical sons was with him, he would, as soon as the theme was heard, whisper what devices and developments he thought should be introduced. If the composer had conformed to his idea ofconstruction he would jog his son to call attention to the fact. Otherwise, his exceeding modesty and reverent comprehension of the difficulties of the art made him the most lenient of critics.
Few have reached the luminous heights this master of masters trod. Even a well-cultivated ear and taste may often be baffled by the intricacies of a fugue, symphony or other great work of musical art heard for the first time. The best listener beyond the pale of genius will at times feel as one astray in a labyrinth of beauty to which for the moment no clue appears. A single representation will rarely suffice to reveal the full worth of a masterpiece of music. By hearing it often, by admitting it, or some reproduction of it, to our own fireside, we will become familiar with its contents and learn truly to know it.
Those who are fortunate enough to have been surrounded from childhood up by the choicest gems of the tonal language, and whose minds are of the deceptive order, will insensibly attain a refinement of taste anddelicacy of perception no learned dissertation on music could afford. At the same time, an acquaintance with the materials and elements of which the art is composed and with the laws that govern them, is essential to enable even one who has heard much to gain the complete enjoyment that comes from understanding. Confident as we are that Prometheus captured his fire from Heaven, we ought to learn something of its attributes before we accept it at his hands, that we may be able to distinguish a true spark of the divine flame from a phosphorescent will-o'-the-wisp.
The idea so largely accepted that music is an unfathomable mystery, like all half truths has wrought much mischief, and has greatly retarded musical progress in social life. Behind the Divine Art, as behind Religion, lies the inscrutable mystery of Life, and in both there is a Holy of Holies only the consecrated may enter. Before the portals of this are reached there is a broad, fertile field for intellectual activity that all may work to advantage, preparing the way to the inner sanctuary.
The musician is continually confronted with fresh evidence of the popular ignorance, even among students of music, in regard to the outward form and inner grace of what is conceded to be the most popular of all arts. In a roomful of professed music lovers a definition of counterpoint was recently called for, and no one present could give an intelligent answer. This led to a discussion of musical questions which resulted in the disclosure that not one of the company could define melody, harmony or rhythm, or had the slightest conception of the meaning of the simplest component parts of the art in whose service they were making plentiful sacrifices. Some knowledge of these things is absolutely imperative, not alone to the student, but to one as well who would listen intelligently to music.
Sound and motion constitute the essence of music. Its raw materials are an infinitely rich mass of musical sounds that bear within themselves the possibility of being molded into form. By the musical builders of the past they have been carefully considered, mathematically calculated, and have finally resolved themselves into a recognized scale, composed of tones and half tones. These are the composer's plastic resources. He shapes them precisely as the sculptor fashions the pliable clay with which he strives to bring his ideal to realization.
All sounds are the result of atmospheric vibrations affecting the ear. Musical sound, or tone, is produced by regular vibrations, and differs from mere noise whose vibrations are irregular and confused. The pitch of a musical tone rises in proportion with the rapidity of the vibrations that produce it. Tones may be perceived by the human ear ranging from about sixteen vibrations in a second to nearly forty thousand, more than eleven octaves. Only about seven octaves are used in music. The science of acoustics is full of interesting facts of this kind, and is of profound value to any one who would gain an insight into the structure of music. It is unfortunately much neglected.
The prime elements of music are Melody,Harmony and Rhythm. They are perhaps as little realized as its raw materials. Melody is a well ordered succession of musical sounds, heard one at a time, and selected from a defined, accepted series, not taken at random from a heterogeneous store. Harmony is a combination of well-ordered sounds heard simultaneously, and with suitable concord, or agreement. Rhythm is measured movement, or the periodical recurrence of accent; and signifies symmetry and proportion.
Melody, unexhausted and inexhaustible, is the initial force, or, as Dr. Marx has called it, the life-blood of music. Within itself it bears the germ of harmony and rhythm. A succession of tones without harmonious and rhythmic regulation would be felt to lack something. Melody has been designated the golden thread running through the maze of tone, by which the ear is guided and the heart reached. Helmholtz styled it the essential basis of music. In a special sense, it is artistically constructed song. The creation of an expressive melody is a sure mark of genius.
Harmony arranges musical sounds with reference to their union, and is regulated by artistic and æsthetic rules and requirements. It has endless modes of transforming, inverting and intensifying its materials, thus continually affording new means of development. All the intervals and chords used in music had to be discovered, one by one. It often took more than a century to bring into a general use a chord effect introduced by some adventuresome spirit. Our scale intervals are the slowly gained triumphs of the human mind. Modern music did not emerge from the darkness of the past until harmony, as we know it, came into active being.
Both melody and harmony are controlled by rhythm. It is the master force of the musical organism. Before man was the ebb and flow of nature had its rhythm. On this elementary rhythm, the one model music finds in nature, the inventive mind of man has builded the wonderfully impressive art rhythms existing in the masterpieces of music.
Melodies are made up of smaller fragments,known as motives, phrases and periods, or sentences, all of which are judiciously repeated and varied, and derive their individuality from the characteristics of their intervals and rhythms.
A motive is the text of a musical composition, the theme of its discourse. The most simple motive, with proper handling, may grow into a majestic structure. In Beethoven's Fifth Symphony three G flats in eighth notes, followed by an E flat in a half note, form a text, as of Fate knocking at the door, which, when developed, leads to tremendous conflict ending in victory. Those notes that repeat and modify the motive and are combined under one slur constitute the phrase, which is similar to a clause in a sentence of words. A period, or sentence, in music, comprises a musical idea, complete in itself, though of a nature to produce, when united with other harmonious ideas, a perfect whole.
A simple melody is usually composed of eight measures, or some number divisible by four. There are exceptions, as in "God Save theKing," our "America," of which the first part contains six measures, the second part eight.
Habit and instinct show us that no melody can end satisfactorily without some cadence leading to a note belonging to the tonic or key chord. Very often the first part of a melody will end on a note of the dominant chord, from which a progression will arise in the second part that leads satisfactorily to a concluding note in the tonic chord.
Counterpoint, literally point against point, is the art of so composing music in parts that several parts move simultaneously, making harmony by their combination. During the fifteenth, sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the masters of counterpoint shaped the musical materials in use to-day. So anxious were they to attain perfection of form they often lost sight of the spirit which alone can give vitality to musical utterances. The great Bach infused this into his fugues, the highest manifestation of the contrapuntal, or polyphonic music of old.
Meanwhile the growth of the individual ledto the growth of monophony in music, in which one voice stands out prominently, with an accompaniment of other voices. Its instrumental flower was reached in the symphony. Melody reigns supreme in monophonic music. Both the canon and the fugue form a commonwealth, in which all voices are rated alike. Viewed rightly, this suits the modern democratic instinct, and there is to-day a tendency to return to polyphonic writing. It is individuality in union. In the hands of genius it affords the most refined kind of harmony.
A thorough knowledge of counterpoint shows the mistake of regarding it merely as a dull relic of a dead past. It is a living reality that, if correctly studied, leads to a solid, dignified, flowing style, rich in design, and independent in its individuality. Counterpoint, said a critic in the London Musical News, shows the student how to make a harmonic phrase like a well-shaped tree, of which every bough, twig and leaf secures for itself the greatest independence, the fullest measure of light and air. Composer, interpreter and listener may allprofit by a comprehension of counterpoint.
From its infancy modern music has been affected by two perpetually warring factors, the Classical and the Romantic. The first demands reverence for established ideals of formal beauty; the second, striking a note of revolt, compels recognition of new ideals. As in all other departments of art and life, progress in music comes through the continual conflict between the conservative and the radical forces. A position viewed as hazardous and unsuitable in one age, becomes the accepted position of the next, and those who have been denounced as musical heretics come to be regarded as musical heroes. Very often the untutored public, trusting to natural instincts, will be in advance of the learned critic in accepting some startling innovation. Old laws may pass away, new laws may come, but the eternal verities on which all manifestations of Truth and Beauty are based can never cease to be.
"The scientific laws of music are transitory, because they have been tentatively constructed during the gradual development of the musicalfaculty," says W. H. Hadow, in his valuable "Studies in Modern Music." "No power in man is born at full growth; it begins in germ, and progresses according to the particular laws that condition its nature. Hence it requires one kind of treatment at one stage, another at another, both being perfectly right and true in relation to their proper period. But there are behind these special rules certain psychological laws which seem, so far as we can understand them, to be coeval with humanity itself; and these form the permanent code by which music is to be judged. The reason why, in past ages, the critics have been so often and so disastrously at fault is that they have mistaken the transitory for the permanent, the rules of musical science for the laws of musical philosophy."
An acquaintance with form as the manifestation of law is essential to an intelligent hearing of music. The listener should have at least a rudimentary knowledge of musical construction from the simplest ballad to the most complex symphony. Having this knowledgeit will be possible to receive undisturbed the impressions music has to give, and to distinguish the trivial and commonplace from the noble and beautiful.
The oftener good music is heard the more completely it will be appreciated. Therefore, they listen best to music who hear the best continually. The assertion is often heard that a person must be educated up to an enjoyment of high class music. Certainly, one who has heard nothing else must be educated down to an enjoyment of ragtime, with its crude rhythms.
"We know a true poem to the extent to which our spirits respond to the spiritual appeal it makes," says Dr. Hiram Corson. It is the same with a true musical composition. We must take something to it, in order to receive something from it. Beyond knowledge comes the intuitive feeling which is enriched by knowledge. Through it we may feel the breath of life, the spiritual appeal, which belongs to every great work of art and which must forever remain inexplicable.
When Pythagoras, Father of Musical Science, some six centuries before our era, marked and sounded musical intervals by mathematical division on a string stretched across a board, he was unconsciously laying the foundation for our modern pianoforte. How soon keys were added to the monochord, as this measuring instrument was named, cannot positively be ascertained. We may safely assume it was not slow in adopting the rude keyboard ascribed by tradition to Pan pipes, and applied to the portable organ of early Christian communities.
After the tenth century the development ofthe monochord seems to have begun in earnest. Two or more strings of equal length are now divided and set in motion by flat metal wedges, attached to the key levers, and called tangents, because they touched the strings. In response to the demand for increased range, as many as twenty keys were brought to act on a few strings, commanding often three octaves. Guido d'Arezzo, the famous sight-reading music teacher of the eleventh century, advised his pupils to "exercise the hand in the use of the monochord," showing his knowledge of the keyboard. The keyed monochord gained the name clavichord. Its box-like case was first placed on a table, later on its own stand, and increased in elegance. Not until the eighteenth century was each key provided with a separate string.
No unimped triumphal progress can be claimed for the various claviers or keyboard instruments that came into use. Dance music found in them a congenial field, thus causing many serious-minded people to regard them as dangerous tempters to vanity and folly.In the year 1529, Pietro Bembo, a grave theoretician, wrote to his daughter Helena, at her convent school: "As to your request to be allowed to learn the clavier, I answer that you cannot yet, owing to your youth, understand that playing is only suited for volatile, frivolous women; whereas I desire you to be the most lovable maiden in the world. Also, it would bring you but little pleasure or renown if you should play badly; while to play well you would be obliged to devote ten or twelve years to practice, without being able to think of anything else. Consider a moment whether this would become you. If your friends wish you to play in order to give them pleasure, tell them you do not desire to make yourself ridiculous in their eyes, and be content with your books and your domestic occupations."
A different view was entertained in England during Queen Elizabeth's reign, where claviers were in vogue styled virginals, because, as an ancient chronicle explained, "virgins do most commonly play on them." Thevirginal was usually of oblong shape, often resembling a lady's workbox. With the Virgin Queen it was a prime favorite, although not named expressly for her as the flattering fashion of the time led many to assume. If she actually did justice to some of the airs with variations in the "Queen Elizabeth Virginal Book," she must indeed have been proficient on the instrument. Quaint Dr. Charles Burney (1726-1814) declares, in his "History of Music," that no performer of his day could play them without at least a month's practice.
The clavier gave promise of its destined career in the Elizabethan age. Shakespeare immortalized it, and William Byrd (1546-1623) became the first clavier master. He and Dr. John Bull (1563-1628), says Oscar Bie, in his great work on "The Clavier and Its Masters," "represent the two types which run through the entire history of the clavier. Byrd was the more intimate, delicate, spiritual intellect; Bull the untamed genius, the brilliant executant, the less exquisitely refined artist. It is significant that these two types stand together on the threshold of clavier art." Bull had gained his degree at Oxford, the founding of whose chair of music is popularly attributed to Alfred the Great.
As early as the year 1400 claviers had appeared whose strings were plucked by quills attached to jacks at the end of the key levers. To this group belonged the virginal, or virginals, the clavicembalo, the harpsichord, or clavecin, and the spinet. Stops were added, as in the organ, that varied effects might be produced, and a second keyboard was often placed above the first. The case was either rectangular, or followed the outlines of the harp, a progenitor of this clavier type. It was often highly ornamented, and handsomely mounted. Each string from the first had its due length and was tuned to its proper note.
The secular music principle of the sixteenth century that called into active being the orchestra led also to a desire for richer musical expression in home and social life than the fashionable lute afforded, and the clavier advanced in favor. In France, by 1530, the dance, thatpromoter of pure instrumental music, was freely transcribed for the clavier. Little more than a century later, Jean Baptiste Lully (1633-1687) extensively employed the instrument in the orchestration of his operas, and wrote solo dances for it.
François Couperin (1668-1733), now well-nigh forgotten, although once mentioned in the same breath with Molière, wrote the pioneer clavier instruction book. In it he directs scholars how to avoid a harsh tone, and how to form a legato style. He advises parents to select teachers on whom implicit reliance may be placed, and teachers to keep the claviers of beginners under lock and key that there may be no practicing without supervision. His suggestions deserve consideration to-day.
He was the first to encourage professional clavier-playing among women. His daughter Marguerite was the first woman appointed official court clavier player. He composed for the clavier little picture tunes, designed to depict sentiments, moods, phases of character and scenes from life. He fashioned many charming turns of expression, introduced an occasional tempo rubato, foreshadowed the intellectual element in music and laid the corner-stone of modern piano-playing. Jean Philippe Rameau (1683-1764) continued Couperin's work.
What is generally recognized as the first period of clavier-virtuosity begins with the Neapolitan Domenico Scarlatti (1683-1757), and Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750), the German of Germans. The style of Scarlatti is peculiarly the product of Italian love of beautiful tone, and what he wrote, though without depth of motive, kept well in view the technical possibilities of the harpsichord. His "Cat's Fugue," and his one movement sonatas still appear on concert programmes. In a collection of thirty sonatas he explained his purpose in these words: "Amateur, or professor, whoever thou art, seek not in these compositions for any profound feeling. They are only a frolic of art, meant to increase thy confidence in the clavier."
In Germany, with grand old Father Bach,the keyboard instrument was found capable of mirroring a mighty soul. The germ of all modern musical design lies in his clavier writings. It has been aptly said of this master of masters that he constructed a great university of music, from which all must graduate who would accomplish anything of value in music. Men of genius, from Mozart to the present time, have extolled him for the beauty of his melodies and harmonies, the expressiveness of his modulations, the wealth, spontaneity and logical clearness of his ideas, and the superb architecture of his productions. Students miss the soul of Bach because of the soulless, mechanical way in which they deface his legacy to them.
His "Twelve Little Preludes" alone contain the materials for an entire system of music. The "Inventions," too often treated as dry-as-dust studies, are laden with beautiful figures and devices that furnish inspiration for all time. As indicated by their title, which signifies a compound of appropriate expression and just disposition of the members, they were designed to cultivate the elements of musical taste, as well as freedom and equality of the fingers. His "Well Tempered Clavichord" has been called the pianist's Sacred Book. Its Preludes and Fugues illustrate every shade of human feeling, and were especially designed to exemplify the mode of tuning known as equal temperament, introduced into general use by Bach, and still employed by your piano tuner and mine.
Forkel, his biographer, has finely said that Bach considered the voices of his fugues a select company of persons conversing together. Each was allowed to speak only when there was something to say bearing on the subject in hand. A highly characteristic motive, or theme, as significant as the noblest "typical phrase," developing into equally characteristic progressions and cadences, is a striking feature of the Bach fugue. His "Suites" exalted forever the familiar dance tunes of the German people. His wonderful "Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue" ushered the recitative into purely instrumental music.
As a teacher he was genial, kind, encouraging and in every respect a model. He obliged his pupils to write and understand as well as sound the notes. In his noble modesty he never held himself aloof as superior to others. When pupils were discouraged he reminded them how hard he had always been compelled to work, and assured them that equal industry would lead them to success. He gave the thumb its proper place on the keyboard, and materially improved fingering. Tranquillity and poetic beauty being prime essentials of his playing, he preferred to the more brilliant harpsichord, or spinet, the clavichord, whose thrilling, tremulous tone, owing to its construction, was exceedingly sensitive to the player's touch. The early hammer-clavier, or pianoforte, invented in 1711, by the Italian Cristofori, who derived the hammer idea from the dulcimer, did not attract him because of its extreme crudeness. Nevertheless, it was destined to develop into the musical instrument essential to the perfect interpretation of his clavier music.
His son and pupil, Philipp Emanuel Bach (1714-1788), proceeding on the principles established by his illustrious father, prepared the way for the modern pianist. His important theoretical work, "The True Art of Clavier Playing," was pronounced by Haydn the school of schools for all time. It was highly extolled by Mozart, and to it Clementi ascribed his knowledge and skill. In his compositions he was an active agent in the crystallization of the sonata form. From him Haydn gained much that he later transferred to the orchestra.
Impulse to the second period of clavier virtuosity was given by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) and Muzio Clementi (1752-1832). Mozart, who led the Viennese school, developed the singing style of playing and the smooth flowing legato. Leaving behind him the triumphs of his wonder-boyhood with spinet and harpsichord, he boldly entered the public concert-hall with the pianoforte, now greatly advanced by the improvements of Silbermann. Mozart brought into use its special features, showed its capacity for tone-shadingand for the reflection of sentiment, and may well be said to have launched it on its career. Tradition declares that his hand was fashioned for clavier keys, and that its graceful movements afforded the eye no less pleasure than the ear. His noble technique, based on his profound study of the Bachs, was spiritualized by his own glowing fancy. In his playing, as in his compositions, every note was a pearl of great price. With his piano concertos he showed how clavier and orchestra may converse earnestly together without either having its individuality marred. The same equilibrium is maintained in his piano and violin sonatas and his other concerted chamber music, amid all their persuasive and eloquent discourse. His charming four-hand and double piano pieces, written for himself and his gifted sister Marianne, and his solo clavier sonatas would prove his wealth of musical invention had he not written another note.
Clementi, born in Rome, passed most of his life in London, where he attracted many pupils. Without great creative genius, he occupiedhimself chiefly with the technical problems of the pianoforte. He opened the way for the sonority of tone and imposing diction of the modern style. His music abounded in bold, brilliant passages of single and double notes. He is even credited with having trilled in octaves with one hand. Taking upon himself the management of an English piano factory, he extended the keyboard, in 1793, to five and a half octaves. Seven octaves were not reached until 1851. His "Gradus ad Parnassum" became the parent of Etude literature. Carl Tausig said: "There is but one god in technique, Bach, and Clementi is his prophet."
Losing the spirituality of a Mozart the Viennese school was destined to degenerate into empty bravura playing. Before its downfall it produced a Hummel, a Moscheles and a Czerny, each of whom left in their piano studies a valuable bequest to technique. Karl Czerny (1791-1857), called king of piano teachers, numbered among his pupils, Liszt, Doehler, Thalberg and Jaell. The Clementi school was continued in that familiar writer ofEtudes, Johann Baptist Cramer (1771-1858), and began to show respect for the damper pedal. Its most eminent virtuoso was John Field (1782-1837) of Dublin.
Between these two schools stood Ludwig von Beethoven (1770-1827), a giant on lofty heights. Every accent of his dramatic music was embodied in his piano compositions. Tones furnished him unmistakably a language that needed no commentary. "In him," says Oscar Bie, "there were no tricks of technique to be admired, no mere virtuosity to praise; but he stirred his hearers to the depths of their hearts. Amid his storm and stress, whispering and listening, his awakening of the soul, an original naturalism of piano-playing was recognized, side by side with the naturalism of his creative art. Rhythm was the life of his playing." A union of conception and technique was a high aim of Beethoven, and he prized the latter only as it fulfilled the requirements of his idealism. "The high development of the mechanical in pianoforte playing," he wrote to a friend, "will end in banishing allgenuine emotion from music." His prophetic words might serve as a warning to-day.
LILLIAN NORDICA
LILLIAN NORDICA
The past century has given us the golden age of the pianoforte. Advanced knowledge of acoustics and improved methods of construction have made it the magnificent instrument we know in concert hall and home, and to which we now apply the more intimate name, piano. Oscar Bie calls it the music teacher of all mankind that has become great with the growth of modern music. As a photograph may convey to the home an excellent conception of a master painting in some distant art gallery, so the piano, in addition to the musical creations it has inspired, may present to the domestic circle intelligent reproductions of mighty choral, operatic and instrumental works. Through its medium the broad field of musical history and literature may be surveyed in private with profit and pleasure.
Piano composers and virtuosos rapidly increase. Carl Maria von Weber (1786-1826) stood on the threshold of the fairyland of romance. His scheme of a dialogue, in the opening adagio of his "Invitation to the Dance," followed by an entrancing waltz and a grave concluding dialogue, betokens what he might have accomplished for the piano had he lived longer. Franz Schubert (1797-1828) and Robert Schumann (1810-1856) were the evangelists par excellence of the new romantic school. Schubert, closely allied in spirit to the master-builder, Beethoven, was unsurpassed in the refinement of his musical sentiment. The melody flooding his soul beautified his piano compositions, to which only a delicate touch may do justice. His Impromptus and Moments Musical, small impressionist pieces, in which isolated musical ideas are clothed in brief artistic forms adapted to the timbre of the instrument, may well be thought to have placed piano literature on a new basis.
The romantic temperament of Robert Schumann was nurtured on German romantic literature and music. His impressions of nature, life and literature he imprisoned in tones. He was a profound student of Bach, to whom he traced "the power of combination, poetry andhumor in the new music." Infusing his own vital emotions into polyphonic forms he gave the piano far grander tone-pictures than those of Couperin. The dreamy fervor and the glowing fire of an impassioned nature may be felt in his works, but also many times the lack of balance that belongs with the malady by which he was assailed.
His love of music became early interwoven with love for Clara, the gifted daughter and pupil of his teacher, Friedrich Wieck. To her he dedicated his creative power. An attempt to gain flexibility by means of a mechanical contrivance having lamed his fingers, he turned from a pianist's career to composition and musical criticism. In becoming his wife Clara gave him both hands in more senses than one, and they shone together as a double star in the art firmament. Madame Schumann had acquired a splendid foundation for her career through the wise guidance of her father, whose pedagogic ideas every piano student might consider with profit. Her playing was distinguished by its musicianly intelligence andfine artistic feeling. Earnest simplicity surrounded her public and her private life, and the element of personal display was wholly foreign to her. She was the ideal woman, artist and teacher who remained in active service until a short time before her death, in 1896.
Those were charmed days in Leipsic when the Schumanns and Mendelssohn formed the centre of an enthusiastic circle of musicians, and created a far-reaching musical atmosphere. Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847), in his work for the piano, adapted to drawing-room use technical devices of his day, and in his "Songs without Words" gave a decisive short-story form to piano literature. His playing is described as possessing an organ firmness of touch without organ ponderosity, and having an expression that moved deeply without intoxicating. Living in genial surroundings, he was never forced to struggle, and although he climbed through flowery paths, he never reached the goal he longed for until his heart broke.
Delicate, sensitive, fastidious, Frédéric Chopin (1809-1849) delivered his musical message with persuasive eloquence through the medium of the piano. It was his chosen comrade. With it he exchanged the most subtle confidences. Gaining a profound knowledge of its resources he raised it to an independent power. Polish patriotism steeped in Parisian elegance shaped his genius, and his compositions portray the emotions of his people in exquisitely polished tonal language. Spontaneous as was his creative power he was most painstaking in regard to the setting of his musical ideas and would often devote weeks to re-writing a single page that every detail might be perfect. The best that was in him he gave to music and to the piano. He enlarged the musical vocabulary, he re-created and enriched technique and diction, and to him the musician of to-day owes a debt that should never be forgotten. "He is of the race of eagles," said his teacher, Elsner. "Let all who aspire follow him in his flights toward regions sublime."
The man who, by his demands on the piano, induced improvements in its manufacture thatmaterially increased its sonority and made it available for the modern idea, was Franz Liszt (1811-1886). He will always be remembered as the creator of orchestral piano-playing and of the symphonic poem. The impetuous rhythms and unfathomable mysteries of Magyar and gipsy life surrounding him in Hungary, the land of his birth, strongly influenced the shaping of his genius. Like the wandering children of nature who had filled the dreams of his childhood, he became a wanderer and marched a conqueror, radiant with triumphs, through the musical world. Chopin, who shrank from concert-playing, once said to him: "You are destined for it. You have the force to overwhelm, control, compel the public."
The bewitching tones of the gipsy violinist, Bihary, had fallen on his boyish ears "like drops of some fiery, volatile essence," stimulating him to effort. On the threshold of manhood he was inspired to apply the methods of Paganini to the piano. All his early realistic and revolutionary ideas found vent in his pianistic achievements. He gained marvelousfulness of chord power, great dynamic variety, and numerous unexpected solutions of the tone problem. Many technical means of expression were invented by him, and a wholly new fingering was required for his purposes. He taught the use of a loose wrist, absolute independence of the fingers and a new manipulation of the pedals. To carry out his designs the third or sustaining pedal became necessary. His highest ambition, in his own words, was "to leave to piano players the foot-prints of attained advance." In 1839 he ventured on the first pure piano recital ever given in the concert hall. His series of performances in this line, covering the entire range of piano literature, in addition to his own compositions, given entirely without notes, led the public to expect playing by heart from all other artists.
As a great pianist, a composer of original conceptions, a magnetic conductor, an influential teacher, an intelligent writer on musical subjects and a devoted promoter of the interests of art, he stands out in bold relief, one of the grand figures in the history of music. Hispiano paraphrases and transcriptions are poetic re-settings of tone-creations he had thoroughly assimilated and made his own. In his original works, which Saint-Saëns was perhaps the first to appreciate, students are now beginning to discover the ripe fruits of his genius. Faithful ones among the pupils who flocked about him in classic Weimar spread wide his influence, but also much harm was done in his name by charlatans who, calling themselves Liszt pupils, cast broadcast the fallacy that piano pounding was genuine pianistic power.
Large hearted, liberal minded, whole souled in his devotion to his art and its true interests, Franz Liszt seemed wholly without personal jealousies, and befriended and brought into public notice a large number of artists. Hector Berlioz declared that to him belonged "the sincere admiration of earnest minds, as well as the involuntary homage of the envious." At the opening of the Baireuth Temple of German Art, in 1876, Richard Wagner paid him this tribute in the midst of a joyful company: "Here is one who first gave me faith in mywork when no one knew anything of me. But for him, my dear friend, Franz Liszt, you might not have had a note from me to-day."
A rival of Liszt in the concert field, especially before a Parisian public, was Sigismund Thalberg (1812-1871), who visited this country in 1855 and literally popularized the piano in America. Alfred Jaell and Henri Herz, who had preceded him, doubtless prepared the way for his triumphs. He and the "Creole Chopin," Louis Moreau Gottschalk, attracted much attention by several joint appearances in our musical centres of the time. Thalberg was a pupil of Hummel, and felt the influence of his teacher's cold, severely classic style. He possessed a well-trained, fascinating mechanism, with scales, chords, arpeggios and octaves that were marvels of neatness and accuracy, and a tone that was mellow and liquid, though lacking in warmth. His operatic transcriptions, in which a central melody is enfolded in arabesques, chords and running passages, have long since become antiquated, but his art ofsinging on the piano and many of his original studies still remain valuable to the pianist.
When Liszt and Thalberg were in possession of the concert platform, they occupied the attention of cartoonists as fully as Paderewski at a later date. Liszt, his hair floating wildly, was represented as darting through the air on wide-stretched pinions with keyboards attached—a play on Flügel, the German for grand piano. Thalberg, owing to his dignified repose, was caricatured as posing in a stiff, rigid manner before a box of keys.
Rubinstein and Von Bülow offer two more contrasting personalities. Anton Rubinstein (1830-1894) was the impressionist, the subjective artist, who re-created every composition he played. The Russian tone-colorist he has been called, and the warmth and glow with which he invested every nuance can never be forgotten by those who were privileged to hear his Titanic interpretations, over whose very blemishes was cast the glamor of the impassioned temperament that caused them. "May Heaven forgive me for every wrong note Ihave struck!" he exclaimed to a youthful admirer after one of his concerts in this country during the season of 1872-3. Certainly the listener under the spell of his magnetism could forgive, almost forget. Hans von Bülow (1830-1894) was the objective artist, whose scholarly attainments and musicianly discernment unraveled the most tangled web of phrasing and interpretation. His Beethoven recitals, when he was in America in 1875-6, were of especial value to piano students. As a piano virtuoso, a teacher, a conductor and an editor of musical works, he was a marked educational factor in music.
In his youth Johannes Brahms (1833-1897), the great apostle of modern intellectual music, made his début before the musical world as a brilliant and versatile pianist. Once, when about to play in public Beethoven's magnificent Kreutzer Sonata, with Remenyi, who was the first to recognize his genius, he discovered that the piano was half a tone below concert pitch, and rather than spoil the effect by having the violin tuned down, the boy of nineteen unhesitatingly transposed the piano part which he was playing from memory into a higher key. The fire, energy and breadth of his rendering, together with the splendid musicianship displayed by this feat, deeply impressed the great violinist Joachim, who was present, and who became enthusiastic in his praise. Schumann, on making his acquaintance, proclaimed the advent of a genius who wrote music in which the spirit of the age found its consummation, and who, at the piano, unveiled wonders. By others he has been called the greatest contrapuntist after Bach, the greatest architectonist after Beethoven, the man of creative power who assimilated the older forms and invested them with a new life entirely his own. His piano works are a rich addition to the pianist's store, but whoever would unveil their beautiful proportions, all aglow as they are with sacred fire, must have taken a master's degree.
Two pupils of Liszt stand out prominently—Carl Tausig (1841-1871) and Eugene D'Albert (1864- ——). The first was distinguished by his extraordinary sense for style, and was thought to surpass his master in absolute flawlessness of technique. To the second Oscar Bie attributes the crown of piano playing in our time. Peter Iljitch Tschaikowsky (1840-1893), the distinguished representative of the modern Russian school, was an original, dramatic and fertile composer and wrote for the piano some of his highly colored and very characteristic music. Edward Grieg (1843- ——), the national tone-poet of Norway, has given the piano some of his most delightful efforts, fresh with the breezes of the North.
The veteran French composer, Charles Camille Saint-Saëns (1835- ——), has won great renown as a pianist, and was one of the most precocious children on record, having begun the study of the piano when under three years of age. He was the teacher that knew how to develop the individuality of the young Russian, Leopold Godowsky, who has done such remarkable work on two continents, as a teacher and piano virtuoso.
Perhaps the most famous piano teacher of recent times is Theodore Leschetitzky, of Vienna. His method is that of common sense, based on keen analytical faculties, and he never trains the hand apart from the musical sense. His most renowned pupil is Ignace Jan Paderewski, the magnetic Pole, whose exquisite touch and tone long made him the idol of the concert room, and who, with time, has gained in robustness, but also in recklessness of style. Another gifted pupil of the Viennese master is Fannie Bloomfield Zeisler, of Chicago, an artiste of rare temperament, musical feeling and nervous power, of whom Dr. Hanslick said that her virtuosity was stupendous, her delicacy in the finest florid work as marvelous as her fascinating energy in the forte passages.
The great tidal wave set in motion by the piano has swept over the civilized world, carrying with it hosts of accomplished pianists. Of some of those who are familiar figures in our musical centres it has been said that Teresa Carreño learned from Rubinstein the art of piano necromancy; that Rosenthal is an amazing technician whose interpretations lack tenderness; that De Pachmann is on terms of intimacy with Chopin, and that Rafael Joseffy, the disciple of Tausig, combines all that is best in the others with striking methods of his own.
Great is the piano, splendid its literature, many its earnest students, numerous its worthy exponents. That it is so often made a means of empty show is not the fault of the piano, it is due to a tendency of the day that calls for superficial glamor. Herbert Spencer was not so wrong as some of the critics seem to think when, in his last volume, he said that teachers of music and music performers were often corrupters of music. Those certainly are corrupters of music who use the piano solely for meaningless technical feats.