Farewell to Liszt! German Conservatories and their Methods.Berlin Again. Liszt and Joachim.
Farewell to Liszt! German Conservatories and their Methods.Berlin Again. Liszt and Joachim.
WEIMAR,September 24, 1873.
We had our last lesson from Liszt a few days ago, and he leaves Weimar next week. He was so hurried with engagements the last two times that he was not able to give us much attention. I played my Rubinstein concerto. He accompanied me himself on a second piano. We were there about six o'clock P. M. Liszt was out, but he had left word that if we came we were to wait. About seven he came in, and the lamps were lit. He was in an awful humour, and I never saw him so out of spirits. "How is it with our concerto?" said he to me, for he had told me the time before to send for the second piano accompaniment, and he would play it with me. I told him that unfortunately there existed no second piano part. "Then, child, you've fallen on your head, if you don't know that at least you must have a second copy of the concerto!" I told him I knew it by heart. "Oh!" said he, in a mollified tone. So he took my copy and played the orchestra part which is indicated above the piano part, and I played without notes. I felt inspired, for the piano I was at was a magnificent grand that Steinway presented to Liszt only the other day. Liszt was seated at another grand facing me, and the room wasdimly illuminated by one or two lamps. A few artists were sitting about in the shadow. It was at the twilight hour, "l'heure du mystère," as the poetic Gurickx used to say, and in short, the occasion was perfect, and couldn't happen so again. You see we always have our lessons in the afternoon, and it was a mere chance that it was so late this time. So I felt as if I were in an electric state. I had studied the piece so much that I felt perfectly sure of it, and then with Liszt's splendid accompaniment and his beautiful face to look over to—it was enough to bring out everything there was in one. If he had only been himself I should have had nothing more to desire, but he was in one of his bitter, sarcastic moods. However, I went rushing on to the end—like a torrent plunging down into darkness, I might say—for it was the end, too, of my lessons with Liszt!
In answer to your musical questions, I don't know that there is much to be told about conservatories of which you are not aware. The one in Stuttgardt is considered the best; and there the pupils are put through a regular graded method, beginning with learning to hold the hand, and with the simplest five finger exercises. There are certain things, studies, etc., whichallthe scholars have to learn. That was also the case in Tausig's conservatory. First we had to go through Cramer, then through the Gradus ad Parnassum, then through Moscheles, then Chopin, Henselt, Liszt and Rubinstein. I haven't got farther than Chopin, myself, but when I went to Kullak I studied Czerny's School for Virtuosen a whole year, which isthe book he "swears by." I'm going on with them this winter. It takes years to pass through them all, but when youhavefinished them, you are an artist.
I think myself the "Schule des Virtuosen" is indispensable, much as I loathe it. First, there is nothing like it for giving you a technique. It consists of passages, generally about two lines in length, which Czerny has the face to request you to play from twenty to thirty times successively. You can imagine at that rate how long it takes you to play through one page! Tedious to thelastdegree! But it greatly equalizes and strengthens the fingers, and makes your execution smooth and elegant. It teaches you to take your time, or as the Germans call it, it gives you "Ruhe(repose)," thegrand sine qua non! You learn to "play out" your passages ("aus-spielen," as Kullak is always saying); that is, you don't hurry or blur over the last notes, but play clearly and in strict time to the end of the passage. I saw Lebert, the head of the Stuttgardt conservatory, here this summer, and had several long conversations with him, and he told me he considered Bach the best study, and put the Well-Tempered Clavichord at the foundation of everything. The Stuttgardters study Bach every day, and I think it a capital plan myself. I have begun doing it, too. It was a great thing for me, that quarter of Bach that I took with Mr. Paine in Cambridge, and was one of your inspirations, when you "builded better than you knew."—I neversawa person with such an instinct to find out the right thing as you have! If it hadn't been for that, I should never havegot so familiarized with Bach, or got into the way of studying him for myself, as I have done a great deal. It is as great for the fingers as it is "good for the soul." Lenz, in his sketch of Chopin, says that Chopin told him when he prepared for a concert he never studied his own compositions at all, but shut himself up and practiced Bach!
However, I suppose it comes to the same thing in the end if one studies Bach, Czerny, or Gradus, only you mustkeep atone of them all the while. The grand thing is to have each of your five fingers go "dum, dum," an equal number of times, which is the principle of all three! Tausig was for Gradus, you know, and practiced it himself every day. He used to transpose the studies in different keys, and play just the same in the left hand as in the right, and enhance their difficulties in every way, butIalways found them hard enough as they were written! Bach strengthens the fingers and makes them independent. Czerny equalizes them and gives an easy and elegant execution, and Gradus is not only good for finger technique—it trains the arm and wrist also, and gives a much more powerful execution.
I think that in all conservatories they have at least six lessons a week, two solo, two in reading at sight, and two in composition. Then there are often lectures held on musical subjects by some of the Professors, or by some one who is engaged for that purpose. All large conservatories have an orchestra, composed generally out of the scholars themselves, with a few professionals hired to eke out deficiencies. With thisthe best piano scholars play their concertos once a month, or once in six weeks. The number of public representations varies in every conservatory. In the Hoch Schule in Berlin they have two yearly in the Sing-Akademie. Kullakprofessesto haveone, but he has so little interest in his scholars that he omits it when it suits his convenience. In Stuttgardt I believe they have four. I don't know much about the interior arrangements of Kullak's conservatory, because I only went to his own class. I lived too far away to attempt the theory and composition class. Liszt says that Kullak's pupils are always the best schooled of any, which rather surprised me, because there is a certain intimacy between him and Stuttgardt, and he always recommends scholars to the Stuttgardt conservatory.
The Stuttgardters do have immense technique, and I think they are better taught how to study. It strikes me as if Stuttgardt were the place to get the machine in working order, but I rather think that Kullak trains the head more. There is a young American here named Orth, who studied two years with Kullak, then he spent a year in Stuttgardt, and now he is going to return to Kullak. He says he thinks that not Lebert, but Pruckner, is the real backbone of the Stuttgardt conservatory, but that even withhimone year is sufficient. Fräulein Gaul, on the contrary, with whom Lebert has taken the greatest possible pains, thinks him a magnificent master, and certainly he has developed her admirably. It is probably with him as with them all. If they take a fancy toyou, they will do a great deal for you; if not,nothing! Liszt is no exception to this rule. I've seen him snub and entirely neglect young artists of the most remarkable talent and virtuosity, merely because they did not please him personally.
———
BERLIN,October 8, 1873.
Voilà!as Liszt always says. Here I am back again in old Berlin, and if I ever felt "like a cat in a strange garret," I do now. I left dear little Weimar two days ago, and parted from our adored Liszt a week ago to-day. He has gone to Rome.Neverdid I feel leaving anybody or any place so much, and Berlin seems to me like a great roaring wilderness. The distances are soendlesshere. You either have to kill yourself walking, or else spend a fortune in droschkies. The houses all seem to me as if they had grown. There is an immense number of new ones going up on all sides, and the noise, and the crowd, and the confusion are enough to set one distracted, after the idyllic life I've been leading. Ah, well!Es war ebenZUschön!(It wastoobeautiful!)
Yesterday and to-day I've been looking about for a new boarding-place. I've had two invitations to dinner since my return, but everybody and everything seems so dull and stupid, prosaic and tedious to me, that I declined them both, and haven't given any of my friends my address until I have had a little time to let myself down gradually from the delights of Weimar.
Liszt was kindness itself when the time came to say good-bye, but I could scarcely get out a word, nor could I even thank him for all he had done for me. I did not wish to break down and make a scene, as I felt I should if I tried to say anything. So I fear he thought me rather ungrateful and matter-of-course, for he couldn't know that I was feeling an excess of emotion which kept me silent. I miss going to him inexpressibly, and although I heard my favourite Joachim last night, evenhepaled before Liszt. He is on the violin what Liszt is on the piano, and is the only artist worthy to be mentioned in the same breath with him.
Like Liszt, he so vitalizes everything that I have to take him in all over again every time I hear him. I am always astonished, amazed and delighted afresh, and even as I listen I can hardly believe that the mancanplay so! But Liszt, in addition to his marvellous playing, has this unique and imposing personality, whereas at first Joachim is not specially striking. Liszt's face is all a play of feature, a glow of fancy, a blaze of imagination, whereas Joachim is absorbed in his violin, and his face has only an expression of fine discrimination and of intense solicitude to produce his artistic effects. Liszt never looks at his instrument; Joachim never looks at anything else. Liszt is a complete actor who intends to carry away the public, who never forgets that he is before it, and who behaves accordingly. Joachim is totally oblivious of it. Liszt subdues the people to him by the very way he walks on to the stage. He gives his proud head a toss, throws an electric look out of his eagle eye, and seatshimself with an air as much as to say, "Now I am going to do just what I please with you, and you are nothing but puppets subject to my will." He said to us in the class one day, "When you come out on the stage, look as if you didn't care a rap for the audience, and as if you knew more than any of them. That's the way I used to do.—Didn't that provoke the critics though!" he added, with an ineffable look of malicious mischief. So you see his principle, and that was precisely the way he did at the rehearsal in the theatre at Weimar that I wrote to you about. Joachim, on the contrary, is the quiet gentleman-artist. He advances in the most unpretentious way, but as he adjusts his violin he looks his audience over with the calm air of a musical monarch, as much as to say, "I repose wholly on my art, and I've no need of any 'ways or manners.'" In reality I admire Joachim's principle the most, but there is something indescribably fascinating and subduing about Liszt's willfulness. You feel at once that he is a great genius, and that youarenothing but his puppet, and somehow you take a base delight in the humiliation! The two men are intensely interesting, each in his own way, but they are extremes.
[Beside his playing and his compositions, what Liszt has done for music and for musicians, and why, therefore, he stands so pre-eminently the greatest and the best beloved master in the musical world, may appear to the general reader in the following extract taken from a translation inDwight's Journal, Oct. 23, 1880, of "Franz Liszt, a Musical Character Portrait" by La Mara, in theGartenlaube: "We must count it among the exceptional merits of Liszt, that he has paved the way to recognition for innumerable aspirants, as he always shows an open heart and open hands to all artistic strivings. He was the first and most active furtherer of the immense Bayreuth enterprise, and the chief founder of the Musical Societies or Unions that flourish throughout Germany. And for how many noble and philanthropic objects has he not exerted his artistic resources! If, during his earlier virtuoso career, he made his genius serve the advantage of others far more than his own—saving out of the millions that he earned only a modest sum for himself, while he alone contributed many thousands for the completion of Cologne Cathedral, for the Beethoven monument at Bonn, and for the victims of the Hamburg conflagration—so since the close of his career as a pianist his public artistic activity has been exclusively consecrated to the benefit of others, to artistic undertakings, or to charitable objects. Since the end of 1847, not a penny has come into his own pocket either through piano-playing and conducting, or through teaching. All this, which has yielded such rich capital and interest to others, has cost only sacrifice of time and money to himself."]—ED.
Kullak as a Teacher. The Four Great Virtuosi, Clara Schumann,Rubinstein, Von Bülow, and Tausig.
Kullak as a Teacher. The Four Great Virtuosi, Clara Schumann,Rubinstein, Von Bülow, and Tausig.
BERLIN,November 7, 1873.
I've been in a sort of mental apathy since I got back—the result, I suppose, of so much artistic excitement all summer. Of course I am practicing very hard, and I am taking private lessons of Kullak again. I played him my Rubinstein concerto two weeks ago and told him I wanted to play it in a concert. He says I need more power in it in many places, and by practicing it every day I hope I shall at last work up to it, as I've conquered the technical difficulties in it. There were two pages in it I thought I nevercouldmaster. It is the same with all concertos. They are fearfully difficult things to play, and far more difficult,Ithink, than solos are, because the effort is so sustained. They are to me the most interesting things to listen to of all, and I can't imagine how you can think that piano and orchestra are "not made to go together." However, I never myself appreciated concertos until I came to Germany. Kullak is the most awfully discouraging teacher that can be imagined. When you play to him, it is like looking at your skin through a magnifying glass. All your faults seem to start out and glare at you. I don't think, though, that I ever fairly do myself justicewhen I play to him, because he has a sort of benumbing effect on me, and I feel to him something the way that Owen did to old Peter in Hawthorne's story of "The Artist of the Beautiful." I can't help acknowledging the truth of his observations even when I am wincing under them, and I yet feel at the same time that he does not wholly get at the soul of the thing. Kullak issopedantic! Heneveroverlooks a technical imperfection, and he ties you down to the technique so that you never can give rein to your imagination. He sits at the other piano, and just as you are rushing off he will strike in himself and say, "Don't hurry, Fräulein," or something like that, and then you begin to think about holding back your fingers and playing every note even, etc. Now I never expect to get that perfection of technique that all these artists have who have been training throughout their childhood while their hand was forming. Kullak's own technique is magnificent, but now that I've graduated, as it were, he ought to let me play my own way, and not expect me to play ashedoes, and then I could produce my own effects. That is just the difference between him and Liszt. Liszt's grand principle is, to leave you your freedom, and when you play to him, you feel like a Pegasus caracoling about in the air. When you play to Kullak, you feel as if your wings were suddenly clipped, and as if you were put into harness to draw an express wagon! However, I don't think it would be well to go to Liszt without having been through such a training first, for you want to know what you are about when you study withhim. You must havea good solidbasisupon which to raise his airy super-structures. Kullak I regard as the basis.
You ask me in your letter to write you a comparison—a summing up—between Clara Schumann, Bülow, Tausig and Rubinstein, but I don't find it very easy to do, as they are all so different. Clara Schumann is entirely a classic player. Beethoven's sonatas, and Bach, too, she plays splendidly; but she doesn't seem to me to have anyfinesse, or much poetry in her playing. There's nothing subtle in her conception. She has a great deal of fire, and her whole style is grand, finished, perfectly rounded off, solid and satisfactory—what the Germans callgediegen. She is ahealthyartist to listen to, but there is nothing of the analytic, no Balzac or Hawthorne about her. Beethoven's Variations in C minor are, perhaps, the best performance I ever heard from her, and they are immensely difficult, too; I thought she did them better than Bülow, in spite of Bülow's being such a great Beethovenite. I think she repeats the same pieces a good deal, possibly because she finds the modern fashion of playing everything without notes very trying. I've even heard that she cries over the necessity of doing it; and certainly it is a foolish thing to make a point of, with so very great an artist as Clara Schumann.—If people couldonlybe allowed to have their own individuality!
Bülow's playing is more many-sided, and is chiefly distinguished by its great vigor; there is no end to his nervous energy, and the more he plays, the more the interest increases. He is my favourite of the four. But he plays Chopin just as well as he does Beethoven, andSchumann, too. Altogether he is a superlative pianist, though by no means unerring in his performance. I've heard him get dreadfully mixed up. I think he truststoomuch to his memory, and that he does not prepare sufficiently. He plays everything by heart, and such programmes! He always hits the nail plump on the head, and such a grasp as he has! His chords take firm hold of you. For instance, in the beginning of the two last movements of the Moonlight Sonata, you should hear him run up that arpeggio in the right hand so lightly and pianissimo, every note so delicately articulated, and thencrash-smashon those two chords on the top! And when he plays Bach's gavottes, gigues, etc., in the English Suites, a laughing, roguish look comes over his face, and he puts the most indescribable drollery and originality into them. You see that "he sees the point" so well, and that makesyousee it, too. Yes, it is good fun to hear Bülow do these things.—Perhaps the best summing up of his peculiar greatness would be to say that he impresses you as using the instrument only to express ideas. With him you forget all about the piano, and are absorbed only in the thought or the passion of the piece.
Rubinstein you've heard. Most people put him next to Liszt. Your finding him cold surprised me, for if there is a thing he is celebrated here for, it is the fire and passion of his playing, and for his imagination and spontaneity. I think that Tausig, Bülow, and Clara Schumann, all three, have it all cut and dried beforehand, how they are going to play a piece, but Rubinstein creates at the instant. He plays withoutplan. Probablythe afternoon you heard him he did not feel in the mood, and so was not at his best. As a composer he far outranks the other three.
Tausig resembled Liszt more in that subtlety which Liszt has, and consequently he was a better Chopin player than anybody else except Liszt. I never shall forget his playing of Chopin's great Ballade in G minor the very first time I heard him in concert. It is a divine composition, and his rendering of it was not only all warmth and fervour; it was also so wonderfully poetic that it fairly cast a spell upon the audience, and a minute or two went by before they could begin to applaud. It was like a dream of beauty suspended in the air before you—floating there—and you didn't want to disturb it. Tausig had an intense love for Chopin, and always wished he could have known him. I think that he had more virtuosity, and yet more delicacy of feeling, than either Rubinstein or Bülow. His finish, perfection, and above all his touch, were above anything. But, except in Chopin, he was cold, at least in the concert room. In the conservatory he seemed to be a very passionate player; but, somehow, in public that was not the case. Unfortunately, I had studied so little at that time, that I don't feel as if I were competent to judge him. He was Liszt's favourite, and Liszt said, "He will be the inheritor of my playing;" but I doubt if this would have been, for the winter before Tausig died, Kullak remarked to me that his playing became more and more "dry" every year, probably on account of his morbid aversion to "Spectakel," as he called it; whereas Liszt gives the reins to the emotions always.
When I was in Weimar I heard a great deal about Tausig'sescapadeswhen he was studying there as a boy. They say he was awfully wild and reckless at that time, and Liszt paid his debts over and over again. Sometimes in aristocratic parties, when Liszt did not feel like playing himself, he would tell Tausig to play, and perhaps Tausig would not feel like it, either. He had the most enormous strength in his fingers, though his hands were small, and he would go to the piano and pretend he was going to play, and strike the first chords with such a crash that three or four strings would snap almost immediately, and then, of course, the piano was used up for the evening!
Tausig's father once procured him a splendid grand piano from Leipsic, and shortly after, Tausig whittled off the corners of all the keys, so as to make them more difficult to strike, and his father had to pay a large sum to have them repaired. Another time he was presented with a set of chess-men, and the next day some one on visiting him observed the pieces all lying about the floor. "Why, Tausig, what has happened to your chess-men?" "Oh, I wanted to see if they were easily broken, so I knocked up the board." He seemed to be possessed with a spirit of destruction. Gottschal told me that one time when Tausig was "hard up" for money, he sold the score of Liszt's Faust for five thalers to a servant, along with a great pile of his own notes. The servant disposed of them to some waste-paper man, and Gottschal, accidentally hearing of it, went to the man and purchased them. Then he went to Liszt to tell him that he had the score. As it happened the publisher had written for itthat very day and Liszt was turning the house upside down, looking for it everywhere.
At that time he was living in an immense house on a hill here, that they call the Altenburg. Liszt occupied the first floor, a princely friend the second, and the top story was one grand ball-room in which were generally nine grand pianos standing. They used to give the most magnificent entertainments, and Liszt spent thirty thousand thalers a year. He lived like a prince in those days—very different from his present simplicity. Well, he was in an awful state of mind because his score was nowhere to be found. "A whole year's labor lost!" he cried, and he was in such a rage, that when Gottschal asked him for the third time what he was looking for, he turned and stamped his foot at him and said, "You confounded fellow, can't you leave me in peace, and not torment me with your stupid questions?" Gottschal knew perfectly well what was wanting, but he wished to have a little fun out of the matter. At last he took pity on Liszt, and said, "Herr Doctor,Iknow what you've lost. It is the score to your Faust." "Oh," said Liszt, changing his tone immediately, "do you know anything of it?" "Of course I do," said Gottschal, and proceeded to unfold Master Tausig's performance, and how he had rescued the precious music. Liszt was transported with joy that it was found, and called up-stairs, "Carolina, Carolina, we're saved! Gottschal has rescued us;" and then Gottschal said that Liszt embraced him in his transport, and could not say or do enough to make up for his having been so rude to him. Well,you would have supposed that it was now all up with Master Tausig; but not at all. A few days afterward was Tausig's birthday, and Carolina took Gottschal aside, and begged him to drop the subject of the note stealing, for Liszt doted so on his Carl that he wished to forget it. Sure enough, Liszt kissed Carl and congratulated him on his birthday, and consoled himself with his same old observation, "You'll either turn out a great blockhead, my little Carl, or a great master."
Tausig had a great ambition to be a composer, and in his early youth he published a number of compositions. Later on he became intensely critical of his own work, and finally bought up all the copies he could lay hands on and burnt them! This is entirely characteristic of his sense of perfection, which was extreme, and may serve as an example to young composers who are ambitious of saying something in music, when very often they have nothing to say! Indeed, I am often amazed at the temerity with which men will rush into print, quite oblivious of the fact that it requires enormous talent to produce even a short piece of music that is worth anything. Only a genius can do it.
Tausig, in my opinion,didpossess exceptional genius in composition, though he left but few works behind him to attest it. Prominent among these are his unique arrangements of three of Strauss's Waltzes. He had a passion for philosophy, and was deeply read in Kant and Hegel. These "arrangements" betray his metaphysical and tentative turn, and could only havebeen the product of the highest mental force and culture. Calling the waltz itself the warp of the composition, then through its simple threads we find darting backwards and forwards a subtle, complicated and tragic mind, an exquisitely refined and delicate sentiment, and a piquante, aerial fancy, until finally is wrought a brilliant and bewildering transcription—transfiguration rather—of endless fascination and tantalizing beauty, which no one but a virtuoso can play and no one but a connoisseur can comprehend. In a peculiar manner his music leaves astampupon the heart, and to those who can appreciate it, Tausig, as a composer, is a deep and irreparable loss.—If he had not original ideas of his own, he certainly possessed the power of putting an entirely new face on those of others.
Gives up Kullak for Deppe. Deppe's Method in Touch andin Scale-Playing. Fräulein Steiniger. Pedal Study.
Gives up Kullak for Deppe. Deppe's Method in Touch andin Scale-Playing. Fräulein Steiniger. Pedal Study.
BERLIN,December 11, 1873.
Since I last wrote you I have taken a very important step, which isthis: After taking three or four lessons of KullakI have given him up!and am now studying under a new master. His name is Herr Capelmeister Deppe. I suppose you will all think me crazed, but I think I know what I am about. He seems to me a very remarkable man, and is to me the most satisfactory teacher I've had yet. Of course I don't count in the unapproachable Liszt when I say that, for Liszt is no "professeur du piano," as he himself used scornfully to remark.
I made Herr Deppe's acquaintance quite by chance, at a musical party given for Anna Mehlig by an American gentleman living here. I had often heard of him, and was very anxious to know him, but somehow had never compassed it. He is a conductor, to begin with, and I have often seen him conduct orchestral concerts. In fact, that was what he first came to Berlin for, a few years ago—to conduct Stern's orchestral concerts during the latter's absence in Italy. Deppe is an accomplished conductor, and I have never heard Beethoven's second Overture to Leonora sound as I have under his bâton.
But it was Sherwood who first called my attention to him as a teacher. He rushed into my room one day, and said, "Oh, I've just heard the most beautiful playing that ever I heard in my life!" I asked him who it was that had taken him so by storm, and he said it was a young English girl named Fannie Warburg, and that she was a pupil of Deppe's. "Well, what is it about her that is so remarkable," said I. "Oh,everything!—execution, expression, style, touch—all areperfect! I never heard anything to equal her, and I feel as if I never wanted to touch the piano again."
This was such strong language for Sherwood, who is generally very critical and anything but enthusiastic, that my interest was immediately excited. He went on to tell me that Deppe had been training this young English girl, now only eighteen years of age, with the greatest care, for six years, and that he had such an interest in her that he did not confine himself to giving her lessons only, but set himself to form her whole musical taste by taking her to the best concerts and to hear the great operas, calling her attention to every peculiarity of structure in a composition, and giving her all sorts of hints which only a man of profound musical culturecouldgive. Sherwood said, moreover, that in summer he made her go to Pyrmont, which is a watering place near Hanover, where he goes himself every year, and that there he heard her playevery dayMozart's concertos and all sorts of things. I thought to myself at the time that the man who would take so much trouble for a pupil as that, would have beenjust the one for me, for it was easy to see that Deppe was teaching more for the love of Art than for love of money—a rare thing in these materialistic days! Afterward, you know, Miss B. spoke to me about him in Weimar, and I wrote you what she said.
Well, as I was saying, I went to this musical party given to Anna Mehlig, where there were a number of musicians and critics. I was listening to Mehlig play, when suddenly Sherwood, who was also present, stole up to me and said, "Come into the next room and be introduced to Deppe." At these magic words I started, and immediately did as I was bid. I found Deppe in one corner looking about him in an absent sort of way. He was a man of medium height, with a great big brain, keen blue eyes and delicate little mouth, and he had a most cheery and sunny expression. He shook hands, and then we sat down and got into a most animated conversation—all about music. I told him how interested I was by all I had heard of him—how I had returned to Kullak for a last trial—how tired I was of his eternal pedagogism, and how I should like to study withhim.
He asked me what my chief difficulty was, whereupon I answered "the technique, of course." He smiled, and said "that was the smallest difficulty, and that anybody could master execution if they knew how to attack it, unless there was some want of proper development of the hand." I said I had studied very hard, but that I hadn't mastered it, and that there was always some hard place in every piece which I couldn't get the better of. He said he was sure he could remedythe deficiency, and that if I would show him my hand without a glove, he could tell directly what I was capable of. I wouldn't pull it off, however, because I was afraid he might find some radical defect or weakness in it, but I was so charmed with the way he made light of the technique, and with the absolute certainty he seemed to have that I could overcome it, that I promised him that I would go and play to him the following Wednesday.
Accordingly on the following Wednesday I presented myself. I had expected to stay about half an hour, but I ended by stayingthree solid hours, and we talked as fast as we could all the while, too! So you may imagine we had a good deal to say. He lives in two little rooms on the Königgrätzer Strasse, only four doors from the W.'s, where I boarded for so long. Now if I had only known I was close to such a teacher! We must often have passed each other in the street, and wherewasmy good angel that he did not touch my arm and say, "There's the man for you?"—Frightful to think how near one may be to one's best happiness, or even salvation, and not know it!
Deppe's front room was pretty much filled up with a grand piano, which, as well as the chairs and most other articles of furniture, was covered with music. I glanced over the pieces a little, and there was nearly every set of Etudes under the sun, it seemed to me, as well as concertos and pieces by all the great composers, fingered and marked with pencil in the most minute way. It was enough simply to turn the leaves, to see what a study he must have made of everythinghe gave his scholars. His inner room had double doors to it to prevent the sound from penetrating. I rapped at the outside one, and presently I heard a great turning and rattling of keys, and then they opened, and Deppe was before me. He put out his hand in the most cordial and friendly way, and greeted me with the most winning smile in the world. I took off my things and began to play to him. He listened quietly, and without interrupting me. When I had finished he told me that my difficulties were principally mechanical ones—that I had conception and style, but that my execution was uneven and hurried, my wrist stiff, the third and fourth fingers[F]very weak, the tone not full and round enough, that I did not know how to use the pedal, and finally, that I was too nervous and flurried.
"If possible, you must get over this agitation," said he. "Hören Sie Sich spielen(Listen to your own playing). You have talent enough to get over all your difficulties if you will be patient, and do just as I tell you." "I will do anything," I said. "Very good. But I warn you that you will have to give up all playing for the present except what I give you to study, andthosethings you must play very slowly."
This was a pleasant prospect, as I was just preparing to give a concert in Berlin, under Kullak's auspices, and had already got my programme half learned! But I had "invoked the demon," and I felt bound to give the required pledge.—So here I am, after four years abroad with the "greatest masters," going backto first principles, and beginning with five-finger exercises! I had never been given any particular rule for holding my hand, further than the general one of curving the fingers and lifting them very high. Deppe objects to this extreme lifting of the fingers. He says it makes aknickin the muscle, and you get all the strength simply from the finger, whereas, when you lift the finger moderately high, the muscle from the whole arm comes to bear upon it. The tone, too, is entirely different. Lifting the finger so very high, and striking with force, stiffens the wrist, and produces a slight jar in the hand which cuts off the singing quality of the tone, like closing the mouth suddenly in singing. It produces the effect of a blow upon the key, and the tone is more a sharp, quick tone; whereas, by letting the finger just fall—it is fuller, less loud, but more penetrating. I suppose the hammer falls back more slowly from the string, and that makes the tonesinglonger.
Don't you remember my saying that Liszt had such an extraordinary way of playing a melody? That it did not seem to be so loud and cut-out as most artists make it, and yet it was so penetrating? Well, dear,therewas the secret of it! "Spielen Sie mit dem Gewicht(Play with weight)," Deppe will say. "Don't strike, but let the fingersfall. At first the tone will be nearly inaudible, but with practice it will gain every day in power."—After Deppe had directed my attention to it, I remembered that I had never seen Liszt lift up his fingers so fearfully high as the other schools, and especially the Stuttgardt one, make such a point ofdoing.[G]That is where Mehlig misses it, and is what makes her playing so sharp and cornered at times. When you lift the fingers so high you cannot bind the tones so perfectly together. There is always a break. Deppe makes me listen to every tone, and carry it over to the next one, and not let any one finger get an undue prominence over the other—a thing that is immensely difficult to do—so I have given up all pieces for the present, and just devote myself to playing these little exercises right.
Deppe not only insists upon the fingers being as curved as possible, so that you play exactly on the tips of them, but he turns the hand very much out, so as to make the knuckles of the third and fourth fingers higher than those of the first and second, and as he doesnotpermit you to throw out the elbow in doing this, theturn must be made from the wrist. Thethumbmust also be slightly curved, and quite free from the hand. Many persons impede their execution by not keeping the thumb independent enough of the rest of the hand. The moment it contracts, the hand is enfeebled. The object of turning the hand outward is to favour the third and fourth fingers, and give them a higher fall when they are lifted. This strengthens them very much. It also looks much prettier when the outer edge of the hand is high, and one of Deppe's grand mottoes is, "When itlookspretty then it is right."
After Deppe had put me through five-finger exercises on the foregoing principles, and taught me to lifteach finger and let it fall with a perfectly loose wrist, (a most deceitful point, by the way, for it took me a long while to distinguish when I was stiffening the wrist involuntarily and when I wasn't,) he proceeded to the scale. He always begins with the one in E major as the most useful to practice. His principle in playing the scale isnotto turn the thumb under! but to turn a little on each finger end, pressing it firmly down on the key, and screwing it round, as it were, on a pivot, till the next finger is brought over its own key. In this way he prepares for the thumb, which is kept free from the hand and slightly curved.—He told me to play the scale of E major slowly with the right hand, which I did. He curved his hand round mine, and told me as long as I played right, his hand would not interfere with mine. I played up one octave, and then I wished to go on by placing my first finger on F sharp. To do that I naturally turned my hand outward, so as to make the step from my thumb on E to F sharp with the first, but it came bang up against Deppe's hand like a sort of blockade. "Go on," said Deppe. "I can't, when you keep your hand right in the way," said I. "My hand isn't in the way," said he, "butyourhand is out of position."
So I started again. This time I reflected, and when I got my third finger on D sharp, I kept my hand slanting from left to right, but I prepared for the turning under of the thumb, and for getting my first finger on F sharp, by turning my wrist sharply out. That brought my thumb down on the note and prepared me instantly for the next step. In fact, my wrist carriedmy finger right on to the sharp without any change in the position of the hand, thus giving the most perfect legato in the world, and I continued the whole scale in the same manner. Just try it once, and you'll see how ingenious it is—only one must be careful not to throw out the elbow in turning out the wrist. As in the ascending scale one has to turn the thumb under twice in every octave, Deppe's way of playing avoids twice throwing the hand out of position as one does by the old way of playing straight along, and the smoothness and rapidity of the scale must be much greater. The direction of the hand in running passages is always a little oblique.
Don't you remember my telling you that Liszt has an inconceivable lightness, swiftness and smoothness of execution? When Deppe was explaining this to me, I suddenly remembered that when he was playing scales or passages, his fingers seemed to lie across the keys in a slanting sort of way, and to execute these rapid passages almost without any perceptible motion. Well, dear,thereit was again! As Liszt is a great experimentalist, he probably does all these things by instinct, and without reasoning it out, but that is why nobodys else's playing sounds like his. Some of his scholars had most dazzling techniques, and I used to rack my brains to find out how it was, that no matter how perfectly anybody else played, the minute Liszt sat down and played the same thing, the previous playing seemed rough in comparison. I'm sure Deppe is the only master in the world who has thought that out; though, as he says himself, it is the egg of Columbus—"when you know it!"
Deppe always begins the scale in the middle of the piano, and plays up three octaves with the right, and down three octaves with the left hand. He says that all the difficulty is in going up, and that coming back is perfectly easy, as all you have to do is to let the fingers run! He always makes me play each hand separately at first, and very slowly, and then both hands together in contrary direction, gradually quickening the tempo. After that in thirds, sixths, octaves, etc.
———
BERLIN,December 25, 1873.
As you may imagine, this is anything but a "Merry Christmas" for me, for I am simply the most completelybouleverséemortal in this world! Here I was a month ago preparing to give a concert of my own. Then I have the good or bad luck to make Herr Deppe's acquaintance, and to find out how I "ought" to have been studying for the last four years. I give up Kullak and my concert plan, thinking I'll study with Deppe and come out under his auspices. After two lessons with him, comes your letter with the news of this awful national panic in it.—Couldanything be worse for a person who has reallyconscientiouslytried to attain her object? I'm like the professor who gave some lectures to prove a certain theory, and when he got to the fourteenth, he decided it was false, and devoted the remaining ones to pulling it all down!
However, after practicing the scale on Deppe's principles, I find that they open the road to an ease, rapidity,sureness and elegance of execution which, with my stiff hand, I've not been able to see even in the dim distance before! One of his grand hobbies istone, and he never lets me play a note without listening to it in the closest manner, and making it sound what he calls "bewüsst(conscious)."—No more mechanical "straying of the hands over the keys (as the novelists always say of their heroines) thinking of all sorts of things the while," but instead, a close pinning down of the whole attention to hear whether one finger predominates over the other, and to note the effect produced. I was perfectly amazed to see how many little ugly habits I had to correct of which I had not been the least aware. It seems as though my ears had been opened for the first time! Such concentration is very exhausting, and after two or three hours' practice I feel as if I should drop off the chair.
I forgot to say before, that Deppe enjoins sitting very low—that is—not higher than a common chair. He says one may have "the soul of an angel," and yet if you sit high, the tone will not sound poetic. Moreover, in a low seat the fingers have to work a great deal more, because you can't assist them by bringing the weight of your arm to bear. "Your elbow must beleadand your wrist afeather." Of course the seat must be modified to suit the person. I prefer a low seat myself, and have even had my piano-chair cut off two inches.
Before definitely deciding to give up Kullak and come tohim, Deppe insisted that I should hear one of his scholars play. Fannie Warburg is in England ona visit, so I could not hearher, but he has another young lady pupil of whom he is very proud, named Fräulein Steiniger. This young lady had been originally a pupil of Kullak's, and I had heard her play once in his conservatory. She was a girl of a good deal of talent, but not a genius. Deppe said that when she came to him she had all my defects, only worse. She has been studying with him in the most tremendous manner for fifteen months, and he wanted me to see what he had made of her in that time. She was going to play in a concert in Lübeck, and he was to rehearse her pieces with her on Saturday for the last time. He begged me to come then, and accordingly I went.
I was very much struck by her playing, which was remarkable, not so much for sentiment or poetry, of which she had little, but for themasteryshe had over the instrument, and for the perfection with which she did everything. There was a clarity and limpidity about her trills and runs which surprised and delighted. Her left hand was as able as the right, and had a way of taking up a variation like nothing at all and running along with it through the most complicated passages, which almost made you laugh with pleasure! There was a wonderful vitality, elasticity andsnapto her chords which impressed me very much, and a unity of effect about her whole performance of any composition which I don't remember to have heard from the pupils of other masters. The position of the hand was exquisite, and all difficulties seemed to melt away like snow or to be surmounted with the greatest ease.I saw at a glance that Deppe is a magnificent teacher, and I believe that he has originated a school of his own.
Fräulein Steiniger played a charming Quintette by Hummel, a beautiful Suite by Raff, a Prelude and Fugue by Bach, and two Studies, and all, as it seemed to me, exactly as theyoughtto be played. After she had finished, we had a long talk about Kullak. She said she staid with him year after year, doing her very best, and never arriving at anything. At last, as he did nothing for her, she resolved to strike out for herself, and went to Deppe, who was at that time conducting Stern's orchestral concerts, and asked him if he would not allow her to play in one of them. Deppe received her with his characteristic kindness and cordiality, but told her that before he could promise he must first hear her in private, and he set a time for the purpose.
She had prepared Beethoven's great E flat Concerto, which everybody plays here. It is as difficult for Deppe to listen to that concerto as it is for Liszt to hear Chopin's B flat minor Scherzo. "We poor conductors!" he will exclaim, "will the artistsalwayskeep bringing us Beethoven's E flat Concerto? Why not, for once, the B flat, or a Mozart concerto?Thenwe should say 'Ja, mit Vergnügen(Yes, with pleasure).'Aber Jeder will grossartig spielen heutzutage(But everybody wants to play on a grand scale now-a-days). The mighty rushing torrent is the fashion, but who can do the wimpling, dimpling streamlet? Nobody has any fingers for thekleine Passagen(little fine passages). Siehaben, Alle,keine Finger(Noneof them have any fingers)." He then winds up by sayingheis the only man in Germany who knows how to give them "fingers." "Ich weiss worauf es ankommt(Iknow what it depends on)!"
Nevertheless, he listened patiently for the thousandth time to the E flat concerto, as Steiniger played it. He then quietly called her attention to the fact thatshehad "no fingers," and she was in perfect despair. He saw that she was energetic and willing to work, and he at once took her in hand and began to drill her. She withdrew entirely from society and devoted herself to practicing, following his directions implicitly. She is now a beautiful artist, and he chalks out every step of her career. I don't doubt she will play in the Gewandhaus in Leipsic eventually, which is the height of every artist's ambition, and stamps you as "finished." Then you are recognized all over the world. Deppe does not mean to let her play here till she has first played in many little places and succeeded. As he said to me the other day, "When you wish to spring over tall mountains, you must first jump over little mounds (kleine Graben.)" He counsels me to take a lesson of this young lady every day for a time, so as to get over the technical part quickly.
As for Deppe's young protégée, Fannie Warburg, whom he has formed completely, everybody says that she is wonderful. Fräulein Steiniger says that when you hear her play you feel almost as if it were something holy, it is so perfect and so extraordinarily spiritual.She is only eighteen. Deppe showed me the list of compositions that she has already played in concerts elsewhere, and I was astonished at the variety and compass of it. Every great composer was represented.
Among other refinements of his teaching, Deppe asked me if I had ever made any pedal studies. I said "No—nobody had ever said anything to me about the pedal particularly, except to avoid the use of it in runs, and I supposed it was a matter of taste." He picked out that simple little study of Cramer in D major in the first book—you know it well—and asked me to play it. I had played that study to Tausig, and he found no fault with my use of the pedal; so I sat down thinking I could do it right. But I soon found I was mistaken, and that Deppe had very different ideas on the subject. He sat down and played it phrase by phrase, pausing between each measure, to let it "sing." I soon saw that it is possible to get as great a virtuosity with the pedal as with anything else, and that one must make as careful a study of it. You remember I wrote to you that one secret of Liszt's effects was his use of the pedal,[H]and how he has a way of disembodying a piece from the piano and seeming to make it float in the air? He makes a spiritual form of it so perfectly visible to your inward eye, that it seems as if you could almost hear it breathe! Deppe seems to have almost the same idea, though he has never heard Liszt play. "The Pedal," said he, "is thelungsof the piano." He played a few bars of a sonata, and in his whole method of binding the notestogether and managing the pedal, I recognized Liszt. The thing floated!—Unless Deppe wishes the chord to be very brilliant, he takes the pedalafterthe chord instead of simultaneously with it. This gives it a very ideal sound.—You may not believe it, but it istrue, that though Deppe is no pianist himself, and has the funniest little red paws in the world, that don't look as if they could do anything, he's got that same touch and quality of tone that Liszt has—that indescribablesomethingthat, when he plays a few chords, merely, makes the tears rush to your eyes. It is too heavenly for anything.