The compositions of the younger school of Russian composers are far too numerous to be passed in review. In no country has there been a more active or a more fruitful musical life; and nearly all of the many composers have written sometimes much, sometimes little, for the pianoforte. In general these composers may be divided into two groups, one of which is clearly still guided by the musical ideals of Western Europe, still more or less dependent on Schumann and Chopin; the other drawing its enthusiasm and its inspiration from the great Five.
The compositions of the younger school of Russian composers are far too numerous to be passed in review. In no country has there been a more active or a more fruitful musical life; and nearly all of the many composers have written sometimes much, sometimes little, for the pianoforte. In general these composers may be divided into two groups, one of which is clearly still guided by the musical ideals of Western Europe, still more or less dependent on Schumann and Chopin; the other drawing its enthusiasm and its inspiration from the great Five.
The most prominent in the former group is Anton Arensky (b. 1861), who is master of a smooth, flowing pianoforte style, and who has the art of writing melody for the pianoforte. Among his short pieces Walter Niemann[39]mentions three published as opus 42, the Esquisses, opus 24, twenty-four pieces, opus 36, and the well-knownBasso ostinatoin which he finds no trace of German influence. To these may be added the little piece,Près de la mer, from opus 52, and the effect concert study, opus 36, No. 13. With Arensky Niemann also reckons Genari Karganoff and Paul Juon.
Alexander Glazounoff (b. 1865) has more fire than Arensky, but in spite of his pronounced loyalty to Russian ideals in music, the influences of Schumann and Chopin are evident in his pianoforte style. Apart from several short pieces, he has written a Theme and Variations, opus 72, and two sonatas, one in B-flat, opus 74, and one in E, opus 75, both of which are more distinguished by fluent writing than by characteristically Russian ideas. The Prelude and Fugue, opus 62, is the most unusual and the most profound of his works for pianoforte.
The pianoforte works of Serge Rachmaninoff are essentially Russian, in many ways a fulfillment of the promise given by Balakireff’s. The style is brilliant and always effective. Melodies, harmonies are unusual, and his rhythms are bold and full of at times a savage life. He may be said to have won attention as a composer for the pianoforte by the Prelude in C-sharp minor; of which it must be said that endlessly as it has been played it still remains a piece of profound meaning and effect. He has published at least twenty-three preludes, of which this still remains the best-known, with the possible exception of that in G minor. Here again there is a spirit not common to Western Europe; one hears it in the steady powerful rhythm, the outbursts of sound, the strange intensity of the melody of the middle section.
The two sonatas, opus 28 in D minor, and opus 36 in B-flat minor, seem on the whole less powerful and vigorous than the three concertos, of which the third, opus 30, in D minor, is truly a gorgeous work. There are, besides these big works and the preludes, some études, opus 33, some variations on a theme of Chopin, opus 22, and a few salon pieces, mostly in brilliant style.
Anatole Liadoff (b. 1855) and Nicholas de Stcherbatcheff (b. 1853) also draw generously upon their native music. The former is more of a painter in music, fond of color; the latter is fond of short forms and is master of a dainty style. More intensely national than these, though, strictly speaking, not Russian, is the Lett Joseph Wihtol (b. 1863). He has interested himself deeply in the folk-songs of his own province, which are more like Swedish than Russian folk-songs; and his most considerable work is a set of variations, opus 6, on a Lettish theme. Niemann[40]likens them to the Ballade of Grieg.
Finally, among the most interesting of all the Russian composers, although in some respects the least Russian among them, is to be reckoned the late Alexander Scriabin. His works for the pianoforte comprise a great many sets of short pieces, some études, a concerto, and ten sonatas. On the whole they give a very distinct impression that Scriabin is not a creative genius of the highest order; and he has given over the fresh, albeit humble, life of the music of his native land only at first to imitate Chopin, Schumann, and Brahms; and later to devise a sort of music which is unusual without wholly justifying itself.
Most of these works are brilliantly written for the keyboard, but until in the later works he has begun to develop a new harmonic system they offer no difficulties but those of Chopin and Liszt. The études, opus 12 and opus 42, are an epitome of his technical equipment. His many experiments in rhythms and in harmonies never seem to ring quite true; and almost instinctively one takes them to be a substitute for musical expression. The first set—opus 12—is not very startling. Already in these pieces he shows the influence of Brahms. The second deals with triplet groups of octaves and single notes for both hands, one group containing two octaves with a single note between, the next two single notes with an octave between, thus progressing alternately through the piece. The complexity is in many ways a rhythmical one, for two groups in sequence will seem to be divided into three beats, each accented by an octave. The third is a study in the movement of the arm such as is required in many of Brahms’ pieces. The sixth, a study in sixths, is perhaps more after the manner of Chopin, though it lacks entirely the grace and inner melodiousness which is above all else characteristic of Chopin’s music. The tenth is by all means the most difficult, a truly brilliant study in double notes for the right hand.One finds in several of the studies of this set that the initial direction of the left hand accompaniment figures is downward. This is a characteristic feature in Scriabin’s style, and in part accounts for a strange ethereal, not to say pale, quality in his pianoforte music. His harmonies instead of being solidly founded in the bass, seem to drift downward from the upper part.
The difficulties of the second set of studies, opus 42, are almost exclusively rhythmical, and may be taken as a further development or an expansion of the rhythmical processes to be found in many of the Brahms variations on a theme of Paganini. In the first study the left hand is phrased into five groups against triplets in the right, and in the eighth there is a combination of a rhythm of five beats with one of nine. There is no doubt that the rhythmical systems of European music are restricted and unvaried, and that there is a vast field in the future of music for the development of more subtle and complex systems. Therefore Scriabin’s experiments point forward. If only he had a little more spontaneous sense of melody and harmony to make of these rhythmical studies something more than experiments! In this series the falling of the accompaniment figures is even more noticeable than in the earlier one.
The harmonies in both series tend to be most unusual without being self-sufficient. They run parallel to the system of earlier masters without seeming related to it. The meaning of this statement will perhaps be clear by a reference to two of the short studies in opus 65. In the first of these the right hand plays continuously in ninths, in the second it plays in sevenths—major, not minor. The effect of both is presumably melodic; that is, we are to listen to a melody, played not in octaves, but in ninths or sevenths, the latter of which may be said to be almost the harshest interval in music. Now this is not so much an expansion ofharmony as it is a concentration on a particular interval, which is, as it were, extracted from all relation to our harmonic system and given an isolated independence. Then it is made to stalk alongside the general progression of the music. This is no hour to speak of forced effects in music. Music is expanding about us and touching notes we never dreamed of, and we may hardly venture to criticize without running the risk of finding in the end that we had a cloddish ear, insensitive to a nascent beauty since grown resplendent. Yet in all open-mindedness it is hard not to find Scriabin’s harmonic procedures arbitrary and often dry as dust.
Few of his short pieces are genial. There is a sort of stiffness in them and they are strangely barren. Leaving aside the early ones which are close to Schumann and Chopin, one comes upon aSatanische Dichtung, opus 36, which is lineally descended from Liszt’s Mephisto waltz, then upon two short pieces, opus 57, the one calledDésir, the otherCaresse dansée; a Poem and a Prelude, opus 59; and Two Poems, opus 63, the first calledMasque, the secondEtrangeté. These last seem to us the best.
There are ten sonatas, of which we have examined the fifth, seventh, ninth, and tenth. The fifth seems to owe its origin to thatPoëme de l’extasewhich inspired one of his orchestral pieces. There is enormous dramatic fire, but it is a fire that has little heat. The seventh shows throughout that arbitrary selection of the harsh seventh we have noted in the study opus 65, No. 2; but the second theme has a rich beauty. Scriabin has directed that it be played now with a celestial voluptuousness, now very purely, with profound tenderness (douceur). The ninth and tenth seem very fine music. The former is touched with morbidness. Scriabin intended it to be expressive of some most extraordinary shades of mood or feeling, if we mayjudge by his indications here and there. We may well ask what is alangueur naissante, or again how we may express in musicune douceur de plus en plus caressante et empoisonée. In the tenth we have to do with avolupté douloureuse, and many other remarkable phrases of intellectualized emotion; but the sonata is a powerful and a moving work, suggesting kinship with the symphonic poems of Richard Strauss. Scriabin’s style is always finished. In general he demands more of the pianist than the piano, that is he has not called forth the intimate and finest qualities of the instrument but has treated it as an orchestra. There are pronounced mannerisms, such as a fondness for descending chromatic motives, and that downward dropping of accompaniment figures before noticed. All in all, his pianoforte music is likely to shine more and more brilliantly, as a highly specialized but isolated achievement.
The Russian and Scandinavian composers, especially Balakireff and Rachmaninoff, and Edvard Grieg, have been the most successful in introducing some freshness and youth into pianoforte music by means of national idioms of melody, harmony, and rhythm. Among the Poles, Ignace Paderewski has shown himself, on the whole, too cosmopolitan in manner, though many of his works, especially the brilliant concerto in A minor, contain Polish matter. Dvořák was too little a pianist to enrich the literature of pianoforte music with more than a few slight dances and Humoresques of Bohemian character. Recently Ernst von Dohnányi, a most brilliant pianist, has done more. Two concertos in splendidly brilliant style and two sonatas are among the most significant of his publications. The Italian Giovanni Sgambati (b. 1843) has shown himself whollyclassical in his interests and natural tendencies, drawing his technique, however, considerably from Chopin. From Spain, however, a breath of freshness has come into pianoforte music. The works of Isaac Albéniz are among the most brilliant and most effective of all compositions for the instrument. The most considerable are the four sets of pieces calledIberia, and of these the second and third contain the best. All are so thoroughly saturated with Spanish harmonies, rhythms and melodies that taken as a whole this brilliant collection suffers from too much sameness. Yet there is some variety of mood. There is melancholy in the lovely melodies of theAlmeria, a certain fineness in both theTrianaand theEl Albaicin, an incredible coarseness inLavapies. Albéniz’s treatment of the piano is astonishing, considering the directness with which his music appeals to the senses. One would not believe, to hear the music played, into what desperate intricacies the pianist has had to cut his way. And all to hang a garland on a tune, but a tune that heats with the very heart of Spain, and a garland that is a cloak of all the colors ever seen at a bull-fight. Grieg is an expatriate beside Albéniz. Never has such intensity of national life, joy, passion, pride, and melancholy threatened to burst the very limits of sound.
Composers in England have not written a great deal for the pianoforte. Sir A. C. Mackenzie’s Scottish Concerto is an outstanding work, and recently Cyril Scott and Percy Grainger have added works to piano literature which have charm and interest. Scott experiments with modern systems of harmony, but Grainger has chosen to make use of the uniquely beautiful songs and dances of England, Scotland, and Ireland. His arrangements of many of these are effective; and as music they have the perennial freshness of the melodies about which they are woven.
In the United States but one name stands out prominentlyamong the composers for the pianoforte. This is Edward MacDowell, who wrote numerous short pieces, études and concert pieces, as well as three big sonatas and two concertos. MacDowell’s treatment of the keyboard can hardly be said to be original, but the concertos, and among the shorter pieces theHexentanzprove to be highly effective. Many of the short pieces, which are grouped together in sets, are charming. On the whole there is little suggestion of a new spirit in the work of this composer of a new land. Now and then he uses negro rhythms, as in the ‘Uncle Remus,’ sometimes he uses Indian motives, as in the ‘Indian Lodge’ of the ‘Woodland Sketches.’ His forms and his style are perhaps more akin to those of Grieg, with whom, indeed, his music will be often compared, than to the earlier Romantics. Unfortunately, however, instead of in a national idiom, he speaks in an intensely personal one. Short phrases and rhythms which are seldom varied seem almost to hamper his music, almost to clog its movement. On the other hand, as in some of the ‘Sea Pieces,’ he writes sometimes in a broad and open style, seeming to shake off the fetters of too intense a mannerism.
Ethelbert Nevin wrote several sets of short pieces, ‘In Arcady,’ ‘Venezia,’ and others, which have at least the charm of simple, sweet melody.
Mr. Arthur Foote and Mrs. H. H. A. Beach have shown themselves masters of an effective pianoforte style, a mastery that has on the whole been rare in this country.[41]