"The piano bard, the piano rhapsodist, the piano mind, the piano soul is Chopin," said Rubinstein. "Tragic, romantic, lyric, heroic, dramatic, fantastic, soulful, sweet, dreamy, brilliant, grand, simple, all possible expressions are found in his compositions and all are sung by him on his instrument."
In these few, bold strokes one who knew him by virtue of close art and race kinship, presents an incomparable outline sketch of the Polish tone-poet who explored the harmonic vastness of the pianoforte and made his own all its mystic secrets.
Born and bred on Poland's soil, son of a French father and a Polish mother, Frédéric Chopin (1809-1849) combined within himself two natures, each complementing the other, both uniting to form a personality not understood by every casual observer. He is described as kind, courteous, possessed of the most captivating grace and ease of manner, now inclined to languorous melancholy, now scintillating with a joyous vivacity that was contagious. His sensitive nature, like the most exquisitely constructed sounding-board, vibrated with the despairing sadness, the suppressed wrath, and the sublime fortitude of the brave, haughty, unhappy people he loved, and with his own homesickness when afar from his cherished native land.
Patriot and tone-poet in every fibre of his being, his genius inevitably claimed as its own the soul's divinest language, pure music, unfettered by words. The profound reserve of his nature made it peculiarly agreeable to him to gratify the haunting demands of his lyric muse through the medium of the one musicalinstrument that lends itself in privacy to the exploitation of all the mysteries of harmony. Strong conviction in regard to his own calling and clear perception of the hidden powers and future mission of the piano early compelled him to consecrate to it his unfaltering devotion. He evolved from its more intimate domain effects in sympathy with those of the orchestra, yet purely individual. He enriched it with new melodic, harmonic and rhythmic devices adapted to itself alone, and endowed it with a warmth of tone-coloring that spiritualized it for all time.
To the piano he confided all the conflicts that raged within him, all the courage and living hope that sustained him. In giving tonal form to the deep things of the soul, which are universal in their essence and application, he embodied universal rather than merely individual emotional experiences, and thus unbared what was most sacred to himself without jarring on the innate reticence which made purely personal confidences impossible. Although his mode of expression was peculiarly his own, hehad received a strong impulse from the popular music of Poland. As a child he had become familiar with the folk-songs and dances heard in the harvest-fields and at market and village festivals. They were his earliest models; on them were builded his first themes. As Bach glorified the melodies of the German people, so Chopin glorified those of the Poles. The national tonality became to him a vehicle to be freighted with his own individual conceptions.
"I should like to be to my people what Uhland was to the Germans," he once said to a friend. He addressed himself to the heart of this people and immortalized its joys, sorrows and caprices by the force of his splendid art. Those who have attempted to interpret him as the sentimental hero of minor moods, the tone-poet in whom the weakness of despair predominates, have missed the leaping flames, the vivid intensity and the heroic manliness permeated with genuine love of beauty that animated him. True art softens the harshest accents of suffering by placing superior to itsome elevating idea. So in the most melancholy strains of his music one who heeds well may detect the presence of a lofty ideal that uplifts and strengthens the travailing soul. It has been said of him that he had a sad heart but a joyful mind.
The two teachers of Chopin were Adalbert Zwyny, a Bohemian violinist, who taught the piano, and Joseph Elsner, a violinist, organist and theorist. "From Zwyny and Elsner even the greatest dunce must learn something," he is quoted as saying. Neither of these men attempted to hamper his free growth by rigid technical restraints. Their guidance left him master of his own genius, at liberty to "soar like the lark into the ethereal blue of the skies." He respected them both. A revering affection was cherished by him for Elsner, to whom he owed his sense of personal responsibility to his art, his habits of serious study and his intimate acquaintance with Bach.
There is food for thought in the fact that this Prince Charming of the piano, whose magic touch awakened the Sleeping Beauty ofthe instrument of wood and wires, never had a lesson in his life from a mere piano specialist. Liszt once said Chopin was the only pianist he ever knew that could play the violin on the piano. If he could do so it was because he had harkened to the voice of the violin and resolved to show that the piano, too, could produce thrilling effects. In the same way he had listened to the human voice, and determined that the song of his own instrument should be heard. Those who give ear to the piano alone will never learn the secret of calling forth its supreme eloquence.
We can see and hear this "Raphael of Music" at the piano, so many and so eloquent have been the descriptions given of his playing. It is easy to fancy him sweeping the ivory keys with his gossamer touch that enveloped with ethereal beauty the most unaccustomed of his complicated chromatic modulations. We can feel his individuality pulsating through every tone evoked by those individualized fingers of his as they weave measures for sylphs of dreamland, or summon to warfareheroes of the ideal world. We are entranced by his luxuriant tone-coloring, induced to a large extent by his original management of the pedals. We marvel at his softly whispered, yet ever clearly distinct pianissimo, at the full, round tone of its relative fortissimo, that was never harsh or noisy, and at all the exquisitely graded nuances that lay between, with those time fluctuations expressive of the ebb and flow of his poetic inner being. No wonder Balzac maintained that if Chopin should but drum on the table his fingers would evoke subtle-sounding music.
And what an example he has left for teachers. Delicately strung as he was, he must often have endured tortures from the best of his pupils, but so thoroughly was he consecrated to his art that he never faltered in his efforts to lift those who confided in him to the aërial heights he had found. A vivid picture of his method of teaching is given in the lectures on "Frédéric Chopin's Works and Their Proper Interpretation," by the Pole, Jean Kleczynski.
The basis of this method consisted in refinement of touch, for the attainment of which a natural, easy position of the hand was considered by Chopin a prime requisite. He prepared each hand with infinite care before permitting any attempt at the reproduction of musical ideas. In order to place it to advantage he caused it to be thrown lightly on the keyboard so that the five fingers rested on the notes E, F sharp, G sharp, A sharp and B, and without change of position required the practice of exercises calculated to insure independence. The pupil was instructed to go through these exercises first staccato, effected by a free movement of the wrist, an admirable means of counteracting heaviness and clumsiness, then legato-staccato, then accented legato, then pure legato, modifying the power from pp to ff, and the movement from andante to prestissimo.
He was exceedingly particular about arpeggio work, and insisted upon the repetition of every note and passage until all harshness and roughness of tone were eliminated. "Is thata dog barking?" he was known to exclaim to an unlucky pupil whose attack in the opening arpeggio of a Clementi study lacked the desired quality. A very independent use of the thumb was prescribed by him. He never hesitated about placing it on a black key when convenient, and had it passed by muscle action alone in scales and broken chords whose zealous practice in different forms of touch, accent, rhythm and tone were demanded by him.
Individualization of the fingers was one of his strong points, and he believed in assigning to each of them its appropriate part. "In a good mechanism," he said, "the aim is not to play everything with an equal sound, but to acquire beautiful quality of touch and perfect shading." Of prime importance in his eyes was a clear, elastic, singing tone, one whose exquisite delicacy could never be confounded with feebleness. Every dynamic nuance he exacted of fingers that fell with freedom and elasticity on the keys, and he knew how to augment the warmth and richness of tone-coloring by setting in vibration sympathetic harmonicsof the principal notes through judicious employment of the damper pedal.
By precept and example he advocated frequent playing of the preludes and fugues of Bach as a means of cultivating musical intelligence, muscular independence and touch and tone discrimination. His musical heroes were Bach and Mozart, for they represented to him nature, strong individuality and poetry in music. At one time he undertook to write a method or school of piano-playing, but never progressed beyond the opening sentences. A message directly from him would have been invaluable to students, and might have averted many unlucky misapprehensions of himself and his works. Those of his contemporaries who have harkened with rapture to his playing have declared that he alone could adequately interpret his tone-creations, or make perfectly intelligible his method. Pupils of his and their pupils have faithfully endeavored to transmit to the musical world the tradition of his individual style. The elect few have come into touch with his vision of beauty, but it hasbeen mercilessly misinterpreted by thousands of ruthless aspirants to musical honors, in the schoolroom, the students' recital and the concert hall.
Whoever plays Chopin with sledge-hammer fingers will deaden all sense of his poetry, charm and grace. Whoever approaches him with weak sentimentalism will miss altogether his dignity and strength. It has been said of him that he was Woman in his tenderness and realization of the beautiful; and Man in his energy and force of mind. The highest type of artist and human being is thus represented. To interpret him requires simplicity, purity of style, refined technique, poetic imagination and genuine sentiment—not fitful, fictitious sentimentality.
In regard to the much discussed tempo rubato of Chopin many and fatal blunders have been made. Players without number have gone stumbling over the piano keys with a tottering, spasmodic gait, serenely fancying they are heeding the master's design. Reckless, out-of-time playing disfigures what is meantto express the fluctuation of thought, the soul's agitation, the rolling of the waves of time and eternity. The rubato, from rubare, to rob, represents a pliable movement that is certainly as old as the Greek drama in declamation, and was employed in intoning the Gregorian chant. The recitative of the sixteenth century gave it prominence, and it passed into instrumental music. Indications of it in Bach are too often neglected. Beethoven used it effectively. Chopin appropriated it as one of his most potent auxiliaries. In playing he emphasized the saying of Mozart: "Let your left hand be the orchestra conductor," while his right hand balanced and swayed the melody and its arabesques according to the natural pulsation of the emotions. "You see that tree," exclaimed Liszt; "its leaves tremble with every breath of the wind, but the tree remains unshaken—that is the rubato." There are storms to which even the tree yields. To realize them, to divine the laws which regulate the undulating, tempest-tossed rubato, requires highlymatured artistic taste and absolute musical control.
Too sensitive to enjoy playing before miscellaneous audiences whose unsympathetic curiosity, he declared, paralyzed him, Chopin was at his best when interpreting music in private, for a choice circle of friends or pupils, or when absorbed in composition. It is not too much to say for him that he ushered in a new era for his chosen instrument, spiritualizing its timbre, liberating it from traditional orchestral and choral effects, and elevating it to an independent power in the world of music. Besides enriching the technique of the piano, he augmented the materials of musical expression, contributing fresh charms to those prime factors of music melody, harmony and rhythm. New chord extensions, passages of double notes, arabesques and harmonic combinations were devised by him and he so systematized the use of the pedals that the most varied nuances could be produced by them.
In melody and general conception his tone-poems sprang spontaneously from his glowingfancy, but they were subjected to the most severe tests before they were permitted to go out into the world. Every ingenious device that gave character to his exquisite cantilena, and softened his most startling chord progressions, was evolved by the vivid imagination of this master from hitherto hidden qualities of the pianoforte. Without him neither it nor modern music could have been what it is. An accentuation like the ringing of distant bells is frequently heard in his music. To him bell tones were ever ringing, reminding him of home, summoning him to the heights.
James Huneker, the raconteur of the Musical Courier, discussing the compositions of Chopin, in his delightful and inspiring book, "Chopin, the Man and His Music," calls the studies Titanic experiments; the preludes, moods in miniature; the nocturnes, night and its melancholy mysteries; the ballades, faery dramas; the polonaises, heroic hymns of battle; the valses and mazurkas, dances of the soul; the scherzos, the work of Chopin the conqueror. In the sonatas and concertos he seesthe princely Pole bravely carrying his banner amid classical currents. For the impromptus alone he has found no name and says of them: "To write of the four impromptus in their own key of unrestrained feeling and pondered intention would not be as easy as recapturing the first 'careless rapture of the lark.'"
Unquestionably the poetry of Chopin is of the most exquisite lyric character, his leadership is supreme. So original was his conception, so finished his workmanship, so sublime his purpose, that we may well exclaim with Schumann, "He is the boldest, proudest poetic spirit of the time." "His greatness is his aristocracy," says Oscar Bie. "He stands among musicians in his faultless vesture, a noble from head to foot."
PAGANINI
PAGANINI
That fine old bard who shaped the character of Volker the Fiddler in the Nibelungen Lay, had a glowing vision of the power of music and of the violin. Players on the videl, or fiddle, abounded in the days of chivalry, but Volker, glorified by genius, rises superior to his fellow minstrels. The inspiring force of his martial strains renewed the courage of way-worn heroes. His gentle measures, pure and melodious as a prayer, lulled them to sorely-needed rest.
And what a wonderful bow he wielded! It was mighty and long, fashioned like a sword,with a keen-edged outer blade, and in his good right hand could deal a deft blow on either side. Ever ready for action was he, and his friendship for Hagen of Tronje furnished the main elements of that grim warrior's power. Together they were long invincible, smiting the foe with giant strokes, accompanied by music.
The modern German poet, Wilhelm Jordan, in his Sigfridsage, clothes Volker with the attributes of a violin king he loved, and represents him tenderly handling the violin. His noble portrayal of a violinist testifies no more fully to the mission of the musician than the creation of the Nibelungen bard. In August Wilhelmj, once hailed by Henrietta Sontag as the coming Paganini, Richard Wagner saw "Volker the Fiddler living anew, until death a warrior true." So he wrote in a dedicatory verse beneath a portrait of himself, presented to "Volker-Wilhelmj as a souvenir of the first Baireuth festival."
The idea of a magic fiddle and a wonderworking fiddler was strongly rooted in the popular imagination of many peoples, throughmany ages. Typical illustrations are the Wonderful Musician of Grimm's Fairy Tales, whose fiddling attracted man and beast, and the lad of Norse folk-lore who won a fiddle that could make people dance to any tune he chose. In Norway the traditional violin teacher is the cascade-haunting musical genius Fossegrim, who, when suitably propitiated, seizes the right hand of one that seeks his aid and moves it across the strings until blood gushes from the finger-tips. Thenceforth the pupil becomes a master, and can make trees leap, rivers stay their course and people bow to his will.
Those of us who were brought up on English nursery rhymes early loved the fiddle. Old King Cole, that merry old soul, was a prime favorite, notwithstanding his fondness for pipe and bowl, because when he called for them he called for his fiddlers three and their very fine fiddles. According to Robert of Gloucester, the real King Cole, a popular monarch of Britain in the third century, was the father of St. Helena, the zealous friend of church music. The nursery satire of doubtfulantiquity is our sole evidence of his devotion to the art.
That John who stoutly refused to sell his fiddle in order to buy his wife a gown placed the ideal above the material. It is to be hoped Mrs. John enjoyed music more than gay attire. Certainly the dame who was forced to dance without her shoe until the master found his fiddling-stick knew the worth of the fiddler's art.
It may have been from a play on the word catgut that so many of these ditties represent pussy in relation with the fiddle. True fiddler's magic belonged to the cat whose fiddling made the cow jump over the moon, the little dog laugh and the dish run away with the spoon. Rarely accomplished too was the cat that came fiddling out of the barn with a pair of bagpipes under her arm, singing "Fiddle cum fee, the mouse has married the humble bee."
Scientists tell us that crickets, grasshoppers, locusts and the like are fiddlers. Their hind legs are their fiddle-bows, and by drawingthese briskly up and down the projecting veins of their wing-covers they produce the sounds that characterize them. Was it in imitation of these small winged creatures that man first experimented with the friction of bow and strings as a means of making music? Scarcely. It was the result of similar instinct on a larger human scale.
String instruments played with a bow may be traced to a remote period among various Oriental peoples. An example of their simplest form exists in the ravanastron, or banjo-fiddle, supposed to have been invented by King Ravana, who reigned in Ceylon some 5,000 years ago. It is formed of a small cylindrical sounding-body, with a stick running through it for a neck, a bridge, and a single string of silk, or at most two strings. Its primitive bow was a long hairless cane rod which produced sound when drawn across the silk. Better tone was derived from strings plucked with fingers or plectrum, and so the rude contrivance remained long undeveloped.
The European violin is the logical outcomeof the appliance of the bow to those progenitors of the pianoforte, the Greek monochord and lyre, precisely as our music is the outgrowth of the diatonic scale developed by the Greeks from those instruments. Numerous obstacles stand in the way of defining its story, but it is known that from the ninth century to the thirteenth bow instruments gained in importance. They divided into two classes—the viol proper, with flat back and breast and indented sides, to which belonged the veille, videl, or as it has been called, guitar-fiddle, and the pear-shaped type, such as the gigue and rebec. The latter is what Chaucer calls the rubible.
Possibly an impulse was given the fiddle by the Moorish rebab, brought into Spain in the eighth century, but ancient Celtic bards had long before this used a bow instrument—the chrotta or crwth, derived from the lyre, which was introduced by the Romans in their colonizing expeditions. As early as 560 A. D., Venantius Fortunatus, Bishop of Poitiers, wrote to the Duke of Champagne:
"Let the barbarians praise thee with the harp,Let the British crwth sing."
"Let the barbarians praise thee with the harp,Let the British crwth sing."
This instrument, whose name signifies bulging box, was common in Britain, and was used in Wales until a comparatively recent period. One of its distinguishing features was an opening in the lower part for the admission of the fingers while playing. A fine specimen is preserved in the South Kensington Museum, corresponding well to the following description by a Welsh poet of the fifteenth century: "A fair coffer with a bow, a girdle, a finger-board and a bridge; its value is a pound; it has a frontlet formed like a wheel with the short-nosed bow across. In its centre are the circled sounding-holes, and the bulging of its back is somewhat like an old man, but on its breast harmony reigns, from the sycamore melodious music is obtained. Six pegs, if we screw them, will tighten all its chords; six advantageous strings are found, which, in a skilful hand, produce a varied sound."
In this same museum is a curious wedge-shaped boxwood fiddle, decorated with allegorical scenes, and dated 1578. Dr. Burney states that it has no more tone than a violin with a sordine. It is said to have been presented by Queen Elizabeth to the Earl of Leicester, and bears both of their coats-of-arms in silver on the sounding-board. Besides her other accomplishments, the Virgin Queen, we are told, was a violinist. During her reign we find the violin mentioned among instruments accompanying the drama and various festivities, and viols of diverse kinds were freely used. Shakespeare, in Twelfth Night, has Sir Toby enumerate among Sir Andrew Aguecheek's attractions skill on the viol-de-gamboys, Sir Toby's blunder for the viola da gamba, a fashionable bass viol held between the knees. A part was written for this instrument in Bach's St. Matthew Passion, and a number of celebrated performers on it are recorded in the eighteenth century. Two of these were ladies, Mrs. Sarah Ottey and Miss Ford.
Violers and fiddlers formed an essential part of the retinue of many monarchs in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Charles II., of England, had twenty-four at his court, with red bonnets and flaunting livery, who played for him while he was dining according to the custom he had known at the French court during his exile. Place was grudgingly yielded to the violin by friends of the less insistent viol. Butler, in Hudibras, styled it "a squeaking engine." Earlier writers mention "the scolding violin," and describing the Maypole dance tell of not hearing the "minstrelsie for the fiddling." Thus all along its course it has had its opponents and deriders as well as its friends.
The soft-toned viol had deeply indented sides to permit a free use of the bow, was mostly supplied with frets like a guitar, and had usually from five to seven strings. Its different sizes corresponded with the soprano, contralto, tenor and bass of the human voice. An extremely interesting treble viol much in vogue in the eighteenth century was the violad'amore, with fourteen strings, the seven of gut and silver being supplemented by seven sympathetic wire strings running below the finger-board and tuned in unison with the bowstrings, vibrating harmoniously while these are played. A remarkably well preserved specimen of this instrument, made by Eberle of Prague, in 1733, and superbly carved on pegbox and scroll, is in the fine private violin collection of Mr. D. H. Carr, of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It is one of the few genuine viola d'amores extant. The owner says of it: "The tone is simply wonderful, mellow, pure and strong, and of that exquisite harmony that comes from the throne of Nature. I know of no other genuine viola d'amore, and it compares with the modern copies I have seen as a Raphael or a Rubens with some cheap lithograph." These modern copies are the result of recent efforts to revive the use of this fascinating instrument. A barytone of a kindred nature was the viola di bordone or drone viol, so called because there was a suggestion of the buzzing of drone-flies, or humble bees, in thetones of its sympathetic strings, which often numbered as many as twenty-four. These violas recall the Hardanger peasant fiddle of Norway, of unknown origin and antiquity, whose delicate metallic under strings quaver tremulously and mysteriously when the bow sets in motion the main strings.
At one time every family of distinction in Britain deemed a chest of viols, consisting for the most part of two trebles, two altos, a barytone and a bass, as indispensable to the household as the piano is thought to-day. It was made effective in accompanying the madrigal, that delightful flower of the Elizabethan age. Singers not always being available for all of the difficult voice parts viols of the same compass supplied the lack. It was but a step for masters of music to compose pieces marked "to be sung or played," thus contributing to the forces that were lifting instrumental music above mere accompaniment for song or dance.
When musicians make demands musical instrument makers are ever ready to meet them, and the viol steadily improved. One who contributed to its progress was Gasper Duiffoprugcar (1514-1572) a luthier and mosaic inlayer, known in the Tyrol, in Bologna, Paris and Lyons. The belief that he originated the violin rests chiefly on the elaborately ornamented forgeries bearing his name, the work of French imitators from 1800 to 1840. There is an etching, supposed to be a copy of a portrait of himself carved on one of his viols with this motto: "I lived in the wood until I was slain by the relentless axe. In life I was silent, but in death my melody is exquisite."
The words might apply to the perfected violin, whose evolution was going on all through that period of literary and artistic activity known as the Renaissance. When or at whose hands it gained its present form is unknown. The same doubt encircles its first master player. Perhaps the earliest worthy of mention is one Baltzarini, a Piedmontese, appointed by Catherine de Medici, in 1577, to lead the music at the French court, and said to have started the heroic and historical ballet in France.
He is sometimes confounded with ThomasBaltzar, a violinist of Lubec, who, in 1656 introduced the practice of shifting in London, where he wholly eclipsed David Mell, a much admired clockmaker fiddler, although the latter, as a contemporary stoutly averred, "played sweeter, was a well-bred gentleman, and was not given to excessive drinking as Baltzar was." His marvelous feat of "running his fingers to the end of the finger-board and back again with all alacrity" caused a learned Oxford connoisseur of music to look if he had hoofs. Notwithstanding the jovial tastes of this German, he was appointed leader, by Charles II., of the famous violins, and had the final honor of a burial in Westminster Abbey.
Here reposed also in due time his successor in the royal band, John Banister, who had been sent by the king to France for study, and who was the first Englishman, unless the amateur Mell be counted, to distinguish himself as a performer on the violin. He wrote music for Shakespeare's Tempest, and was the first to attempt, in London, concerts at which the audience paid for seats. Announcements of theinitial performance, September 30, 1672, read: "These are to give notice that at Mr. Banister's house (now called the Musick School) over against the George Tavern in White Friars, this present Monday will be performed musick by excellent masters, beginning precisely at four o'clock in the afternoon and every afternoon for the future at precisely the same hour."
Credit for shaping the first violin has been given Gasparo Bertolotti (1542-1609), called Gasparo da Salo, from his birthplace, a suburb of Brescia, that pearl of Lombardy so long a bone of contention among nations. Violins were doubtless made before his time, but none are known to-day dated earlier than his. A pretty legend tells how this skilful viol-maker imprisoned in his first violin the golden tones of the soprano voice of Marietta, the maiden he loved and from whom death parted him. Her likeness, so the story runs, is preserved in the angel face, by Benevenuto Cellini, adorning the head. The instrument thus famed was purchased for 3,000 Neapolitan ducats by Cardinal Aldobrandini, who presented it to thetreasury at Innsprück. Here it remained as a curiosity until the French took the city in 1809, when it was carried to Vienna and sold to a wealthy Bohemian collector, after whose death it came into the possession of Ole Bull.
Gasparo's pupil, Giovanni Paolo Maggini (1581-1631), improved the principles of violin-building, and gave the world the modern viola and violoncello. A rich viola-like quality characterizes the Maggini violin. De Beriot used one in his concerts, and its plaintive tone was thought well suited to his style. He refused to part with it for 20,000 francs when Wieniawski, in 1859, wished to buy it. To-day it would command a far higher price. It is stated on authority that not more than fifty instruments of its make now exist, although a large number of French imitations claim recognition.
While Gasparo was founding the so-called Brescian school, Andrea Amati (1520-1580), a viol and rebec maker of picturesque Cremona, began to make violins, doubtless to fill the orders of his patrons. He must have believed the pinnacle of fame reached when King Charles IX. of France, in 1566, commissioned him to construct twenty-four violins, twelve large and twelve small pattern. They were kept in the Chapel Royal, Versailles, until 1790, when they were seized by the mob in the French Revolution, and but one of them is known to have escaped destruction. Heron-Allen, in his work on violin making, gives a picture of it, obtained through the courtesy of its owner, George Somers, an English gentleman. Its tone is described as mellow and extremely beautiful, but lacking in brilliancy.
As the Amati brothers, Antonio and Geronimo (Hieronymous) Amati continued their father's trade, producing instruments similar to his. The family reached its flower in Nicolo Amati (1596-1684), son of Geronimo. He originated the "Grand Amatis," and attained a purer, more resonant tone than his predecessors, although not always adapted to modern concert use. One of his violins was the favorite instrument of the French virtuoso Delphine Jean Alard (1815-1888), long violinprofessor at the Paris Conservatoire. It has been described as sounding like the melodious voice of a child heard beside the rising tide. Another fine specimen was exhibited by Mr. J. D. Partello, in 1893, at the World's Fair, in Chicago.
Nicolo Amati's influence was felt in his famous pupils. Foremost among these was Antonio Stradivarius (1644-1737), whose praises have been sung by poets, and whose life was one of unwavering service. His first attempts were mere copies, but after he was equipped with his master's splendid legacy of tools and wood, his originality asserted itself. His "Golden" period was from 1700 to 1725, but he accomplished good work until death overtook him. From his bench were sent out some seven thousand instruments, including tenors and violoncellos. Of these perhaps two thousand were violins.
A romance encircling this master of Cremona tells that in youth he loved his master's daughter, but that failing to win her heart and hand, he gave himself wholly to his work.He married, finally, a wealthy widow whose means enabled him to pursue his avocation undisturbed by monetary anxieties. His labors steadily increased the family property until "as rich as Stradivarius" became a common saying in Cremona. Because of his achievements and his personal worth, he was held in high esteem. Members of royal families, prelates of the church, men of wealth and culture throughout Europe, were his personal friends as well as his clients. His handsome home, with his workshop and the roofshed where he stored his wood, was, until recently, exhibited to visitors. To-day not a vestige of it remains. Weary of the importunities of relic-seekers, the Cremonese have torn it down, and have banished violins and every reminder of them from the town.
The tone of a Stradivarius, in good condition, is round, full and exceedingly brilliant, and displays remarkable equality as the player passes from string to string. Dr. Joseph Joachim, owner of the famous Buda-Pesth Strad, writes of the maker that he "seems to havegiven his violins a soul that speaks and a heart that beats." The Tuscan Strad, one of a set ordered by Marquis Ariberti for the Prince of Tuscany, in 1690, was sold two hundred years later to Mr. Brandt by a London firm for £2,000. Lady Hallé, court violinist to Queen Alexandra, owns the concert Strad of Ernst (1814-1865), composer of the celebrated Elegie, and values it at $10,000. A magnificent Stradivarius violin, with an exceedingly romantic history, belongs to Carl Gaertner, the veteran violinist and musician of Philadelphia, and could not be purchased at any price.
Another violin-builder from Nicolo Amati's workshop was Andrea Guarnerius (1630-1695), whose sons, Giuseppe and Pietro, followed in his footsteps. The family name reached its highest distinction in his nephew, Giuseppe (Joseph) Guarnerius (1683-1745), called del Gesu, because on his labels the initials I. H. S., surmounted by a Roman cross, were placed after his name, indicating that he belonged to a Jesuit society.
This Joseph of Cremona figures in story as aman of fascinating, restless personality, who for weeks would squander time and talents and then set to work with a zeal equalling that of Master Stradivarius. Tradition has it that he was once imprisoned for some bit of lawlessness, and was saved from despair by the jailor's daughter who brought him the tools and materials required for violin-building. What he esteemed the masterpiece of his lonely cell he presented as a souvenir to his gentle friend.
The violin about which this legend is woven, dated 1742, was bought by Ole Bull from the famous Tarisio collection, and is now the property of his son, Mr. Alexander Bull. It has an unusually rich, sonorous tone and splendid carrying powers. Similar qualities are attributed to the Paganini Guarnerius del Gesu, 1743, known as the "Canon" and kept under glass at the Genoa Museum. Mr. Hart, a violin authority, places highest in this make the "King Joseph," 1737, long in the private collections of Mr. Hawley, Hartford, Connecticut, and of Mr. Ralph Granger, Paradise Valley,California, and recently put on the market by Lyon & Healy, of Chicago.
An interesting Nicolo Amati pupil was Jacob Steiner (1621-1683), a Tyrolese, who, although bearing a glittering title, "violin maker to the Austrian Emperor," was harassed with financial perplexities and died insane. His most noted violins were the sixteen "Elector Steiners," one sent to each of the Electors and four to the Emperor. During his life the average price of his violins was six florins. A century after his death the Duke of Orleans, Louis Philippe's grandfather, paid 3,500 florins for one of them. It is also recorded that an American gentleman on La Fayette's staff, in the Revolutionary War, exchanged for a Steiner 1,500 acres of the tract where Pittsburg now stands. Mozart's violin, in the Mozarteum at Salzburg, is a Steiner.
Many violin-makers did good work in the past, many are achieving success to-day. It has been confidently asserted that the violin reached its highest possibilities in the old Brescian and Cremona days. Why should this bethe case? The same well-defined principles, based on acoustics and other modern sciences, that have led to the steady improvement of other musical instruments ought surely to be of some advantage to the violin. Indeed, who knows but the day may come when the present will be considered its golden age.
While the men of Cremona were still fashioning their models the want of good strings was felt. This was met by Angelo Angelucci, known as the string-maker of Naples, a man who loved music and passed much time with violinists. Through his painstaking efforts such perfection was reached that Tartini, who was born the same year as he, 1692, could play his most difficult compositions two hundred times on the Angelucci strings, whereas he was continually interrupted by the snapping of others. Improvements in the bow, often called the tongue of the violin, are due to the house of Tourte, in Paris, in the eighteenth century, lightness, elasticity and spring coming to it from Francis Tourte, Jr.
Three eminent virtuosi, Corelli, Tartini andViotti, whose united careers spanned a period of 150 years, prepared the way for modern methods of violin-playing. Arcangelo Corelli (1653-1713) left his home in Fusignano, near Bologna, a young violinist, for an extended concert tour. His gentle, sensitive disposition proving unfitted to cope with the jealousy of Lully, chief violinist in France, and with sundry annoyances in other lands, he returned to Italy and entered the service of Cardinal Ottoboni in Rome. In the private apartments of the prelate there gathered a choice company of music lovers every Monday afternoon to hear his latest compositions. Besides his solos these comprised groups of idealized dance tunes with harmony of mood for their bond of union, and played by two violins, a viola, violoncello and harpsichord. They were the parents of modern Chamber Music, the place of assemblage furnishing the name.
Refined taste and purity of tone, we are told, distinguished the playing of Corelli, and to him are attributed the systematization of bowing and the introduction of chord-playing.He heads the list of musicians who protest against talking where there is music. On one occasion when his patron was addressing some remarks to another person, he laid down his violin, and on being asked the reason said "he feared the music was disturbing the conversation." This did not prevent him from being held in the highest esteem. After his death Cardinal Ottoboni had a costly monument erected over his grave in the Pantheon, and for many years a solemn service, consisting of selections from his works, was performed there on the anniversary of his funeral.
It was during a period of retirement in the monastery of Assisi that Giuseppi Tartini (1692-1770) resolved to quit the law course in the University of Padua and seek a career with his violin. He became a great master of this, a composer of works still regarded as classics, and a scientific writer on musical physics. His letter to his pupil, Signora Maddelena Lombardini, contains invaluable advice on violin practice and study, especially on the use of the bow, and his treatise on the acoustic phenomenon known as "the third sound," together with his work on musical embellishments, may at any time be read with profit.
It was after hearing the eccentric violinist Veracini that His Satanic Majesty appeared to Tartini in a dream and played for him a violin solo surpassing in marvelous character anything that he had ever heard or imagined. Trying to write it down in the morning he produced his famous "Devil's Sonata," with its double shakes and sinister laugh, a favorite of the violinist, but to the composer ever inferior to the music of his dreams. It is rather curious that anything of a diabolic nature should be associated with this man of amiable and gentle disposition, whose care of his scholars, according to Dr. Burney, was constantly paternal. Nardini, his favorite and most famous pupil, came from Leghorn to Padua to attend him, with filial devotion, in his last illness.
The talents of Corelli and Tartini seem to have been combined in the Piedmontese, Giovanni Battiste Viotti (1753-1824), a man ofpoetic, philanthropic mind, whose sensitive, retiring disposition unfitted him for public life. Wherever he appeared he outshone all other performers, yet there was constantly something occurring to wound him. At the Court of Versailles he left the platform in disgust because the noisy entrance of a distinguished guest interrupted his concerto. In London, after his means had been crippled by the French Revolution, he was accused of political intrigue.
While living in seclusion near Hamburg he composed some of his finest works, among them six violin duets, which he prefaced with the words: "This work is the fruit of leisure afforded me by misfortune. Some of the pieces were dictated by trouble, others by hope." At one time he embarked in a mercantile enterprise, in London, his transactions being regulated by the strictest integrity, but, as was inevitable, he soon returned to Paris and his art. After he had abandoned the concert room one of his greatest pleasures was in improvising violin parts to the piano performances of his friend, Madame Montegerault, to the delight of all present. He never had more than seven or eight pupils, but his influence has been widely felt. Many anecdotes are told of his kindness and generosity, and it is an interesting fact that among those who sought his advice and patronage was no less a personage than Rossini.
It must be because genius is little understood that its manifestations have so often been attributed to evil influences. The popular mind could only explain the achievements of the Genoese wizard of the bow, Nicolo Paganini (1784-1840) by the belief that he had sold himself body and soul to the devil who stood ever at his elbow when he played. When, after a taxing concert season, the weary violinist retired to a Swiss monastery for rest and practice amid peaceful surroundings, rumor had it that he was imprisoned for some dark deed. To crown the delusion, his spectre was long supposed to stalk abroad, giving fantastic performances on the violin. It is his apparition Gilbert Parker conjures up in "The Tall Master."
Paganini is described as a man of tall, gaunt figure, melancholy countenance and highly wrought nervous temperament. His successors have all profited by his development of the violin's resources, the result of combined genius and labor. He was practically a pioneer in the effective use of chords, arpeggio passages, octaves and tenths, double and triple harmonics and succession of harmonics in thirds and in sixths. His long fingers were of invaluable service to him in unusual stretches, and his fondness for pizzicato passages may be traced to his familiarity with the twang of his father's mandolin. He shone chiefly in his own compositions, which were written in keys best suited to the violin. Students will find all that he knew of his instrument and everything he did in his Le Stregghe (The Witches), the Rondo de la Clochette, and the Carnaval de Venise, which have been handed down precisely as he left them in manuscript.
Signora Calcagno, who at one time dazzled Italy by the boldness and brilliancy of her violin playing, was his pupil when she was sevenyears old. The only other person who could boast having direct instructions from him was his young fellow townsman, Camillo Ernesto Sivori (1815-1894), who was in his day a great celebrity in European musical centres, and who was familiar to concert-goers in this country, especially in Boston, during the late forties and early fifties. He was thought to produce a small but electric tone, and to play invariably in tune. To him his master willed his Stradivarius violin, besides having given him in life the famous Vuillaume copy of his Guarnerius, a set of manuscript violin studies and a high artistic ideal.
A scholarly teacher and composer for the violin was the German Ludwig Spohr (1784-1859), who was born the same year as the wizard Paganini, and who, although having less scintillant genius than the weird Italian, is believed to have had a more beneficent influence over violin playing in his treatment of the instrument. He set an example of purity of style and roundness of tone, and raised the violinconcerto to its present dignity. His violin school is a standard work.
From the beginning of the nineteenth century to the present time the lists of excellent violinists have rapidly increased and heights of technical skill have been reached by many that would have dazzled early violin masters. The special tendencies of gifted leaders have divided players into defined schools. Among noted exponents of the French school may be mentioned Alard and his pupil Sarasate, Dancla and Sauret. Charles August de Beriot (1802-1870) was the actual founder of the Belgian school whose famous members include the names of Vieuxtemps, Leonard, Wieniawski, Thomson and Ysaye. Ferdinand David (1810-1873), first head of the violin department at the Leipsic Conservatory, gave impulse to the German school. Among his famous pupils are Dr. Joseph Joachim, known as one of the musical giants of the nineteenth century; August Wilhelmj, the favorite of Wagner, and Carl Gaertner, who, with his violin has done so much to cultivate a taste for classical music in Philadelphia. Among the many lady violinists who have attained a high degree of excellence are Madame Norman Neruda, now Lady Hallé, Teresina Tua, Camilla Urso, Geraldine Morgan, Maud Powell and Leonora Jackson.
The only violinist whose memory was ever honored with public monuments was Ole Bull (1810-1880), who has been called the Paganini of the North. Two statues of him have been unveiled by his countrymen, one in his native city, Bergen, Norway, and one in Minneapolis, Minnesota. These tributes have been paid not so much to the violinist who swayed the emotions of an audience and who could sing a melody on his instrument into the hearts of his hearers, as to the patriot, the man who turned the eyes of the world to his sturdy little fatherland, and who gave the strongest impulse for everything it has accomplished in the past half century in art and in literature. Another patriot violinist was the Hungarian Eduard Remenyi (1830-1898), who first introduced Johannes Brahms to Liszt, and should always be remembered as the discoverer of Brahms.
The great demand of the day in the violin field, as in that of other musical instruments, is for dazzling pyrotechnic feats. It has perhaps reached its climax in the young Bohemian Jan Kubelik, whose playing has been pronounced technically stupendous. In the mad rush for advanced technique, the soul of music it is meant to convey is, alas, too often forgotten.
JENNY LIND
JENNY LIND
Our first queen of song was Vittoria Archilei, that Florentine lady of noble birth who labored faithfully with the famous "Academy" to discover the secret of the Greek drama. It was she who furthered the success of the embryo operas of Emilio del Cavalieri, late in the sixteenth century, and roused enthusiasm by her splendid interpretation for Jacopo Peri's "Eurydice," the first opera presented to the public. She was called "Euterpe" by her Italian contemporaries because her superb voice, artistic skill, musical fire and intelligence fitted her to be the muse of music. Her memory has been too little honored.
When Lully was giving opera to France he secured the co-operation of Marthe le Rochois,a gifted student of declamation and song at the Paris Académie Royale de Musique, for whose establishment he had obtained letters patent in 1672. So great was his confidence in her judgment that he consulted her in all that pertained to his work. Her greatest public triumph was in his "Armide." This earliest French queen of song is described as a brunette, with mediocre figure and plain face, who had wonderful magnetism and sparkling black eyes that mirrored the changeful sentiments of an impassioned soul. Her acting and voice-control were pronounced remarkable. Her superior powers, unspoiled simplicity, frankness and generosity are extolled by that quaint historian of the opera, Dury de Noinville. On her retirement from the stage, in 1697, the king awarded her a pension of 1,000 livres in token of appreciation, and to this the Duc de Sully added 500 livres. She died in Paris in the seventieth year of her age, her home having long been the resort of eminent artists and literary people.
Katherine Tofts, who made her début inClayton's "Arsinoe, Queen of Cyprus," about 1702, was the first dramatic songstress of English birth, and is described by Colley Cibber as a beautiful woman with a clear, silvery-toned, flexible soprano. Her professional career brought her fortune as well as fame, but was short-lived. In the height of her bloom her reason gave way, and although judicious treatment restored it for a time, she did not return to the stage. As the wife of Mr. Joseph Smith, art connoisseur and collector of rare books and prints, she went to Venice, where her husband was British Consul, and lived in much state until, her malady returning, it became necessary to seclude her. Wandering through the garden of her home she fancied herself the queen of former days. Steele, in the "Tattler," attributes her disorder to her stage habit of absorbing herself in imaginary great personages.
While Mrs. Tofts reigned in Clayton's opera, Signora Francesca Margarita de l'Epine, a native of Tuscany, sang Italian airs before and after it. Tall, swarthy, brusque in manner, she had a voice and a style that made her famous.It was she who inaugurated the custom of giving farewell concerts. Meeting with brilliant success at a performance announced as her last appearance, "she continued," says Dr. Burney, "to sing more last and positively last times and never left England at all." There was a rivalry between the two queens of song, which being a novelty, furnished gossip and laughter for all London. Hughes, that "agreeable poet," wrote of it: