Chapter IX: Liszt and the Present Time 271 (6)

Handel’s clavier-pieces are written in an extravagantly popular style. His suites, which moreover embrace not dance-forms only; his capriccios, variations and fantasias, flow like futile “water-music.” They are brilliant without being difficult, and entertaining without being suggestive. There is no colour on the sky of their landscapes; no tempest lashes their trees. We roll in our coaches on well-macadamised roads, the melody of the wheels reminding us meanwhile of this or that well-worn turn in the operas or oratorios. Seldom is a halt necessary in order to look at the view. Perhaps we may stop a moment longer than usual at those frequent singing sarabands in the popular style, at the charming salon-gigues (especially the long one in G minor), the genuine virtuoso’s Tarantella, or at the better F sharp minor suite with its short free prelude, staccato largo, insinuating fugue and dramatic gigue. Perhaps, also, the fugue with its _three beats_ from the E minor Prelude may please us; but there is a something which the whole fails to give us. It is an acquaintance--not a personal intimacy.

Quite other is the impression produced by the “galant” music of Philip Emanuel Bach. While his elder brother Friedemann stands somewhat nearer to Sebastian in kind, and actually wrote pieces, like the C minor fugue, of which the old man need not have been ashamed, Philip Emanuel, with greater decision and also with greater significance, pursued a different path. It is as if fate had marked out this difference. Sebastian Bach held Friedemann as the cleverer musician; but he frittered his life away. Philip was first set to study jurisprudence, and out of the painstaking lawyer grew the sober and energetic composer. The life of Philip was as simple as his father’s. In 1740, at the age of twenty-six, he went to the court of Frederick the Great, where he worked as royal cembalist and accompanist. In 1767 he went to Hamburg, and died there in 1788. He does not seem to have been able to agree with the King; and it is likely enough that he felt and worked more freely in Hamburg. Berlin was always having trouble with its people. Had Philip Emanuel stayed there, Berlin would have been the greatest centre of piano-playing in Germany, and its walls would have been associated with lasting memories of the ancestors of modern musical forms. Had Mozart, in later years, accepted the offer of Frederick William II. of a position as chief Kapellmeister with the extraordinary salary of three thousand thalers, Berlin would have been enabled to absorb a little of the musical life of Vienna. Or, later still, if the Academy of Singing had been given to Mendelssohn (who was a candidate), rather than to Rungenhagen, the intoxicating glory of Leipzig, which lasted for a time, would have been transferred to the banks of the Spree. But the spirit of Zelter remained over Berlin.

In 1753 Philip Emanuel published at his own expense his “Essay on the true Method of playing the Clavier.” This was the most copious work on clavier technique that had yet appeared. It was at the same time the sufficient apology for the technique of the thumb, which has become the ground-work of our fingering. When the extreme importance of the thumb had at last been recognised, it was not hard to investigate systematically the places of its application. The main rules were necessarily that, in ascending, the thumb of the right hand is put _after_ one or more black keys, and the thumb of the left hand in descending, and _vice versa_. The setting of the thumb on the black keys themselves must be avoided, and the passing over of one finger by another, which earlier had been the main feature in scale passages, was now abandoned. The whole art was built on the thumb, which passed under in the right place. This work of Philip Emanuel, which gives special attention to the legato, may be called a panegyric on the thumb. In this clear insight, as well as in the arrangement of his exercises, which begin with scales and chords, preferring the unison practice of the two hands, and advancing slowly to easy pieces, his work is still one of our most modern exercise-books. We might guess that in this diligent application of his thumb-technique to scales and broken chords, Philip Emanuel places in the forefront of his exercises certain scale figures which to-day could not correspond to the most pressing necessities of the piano-player. We should expect them to be a mere training of the hand, and no preparation for the real difficulties which appear in actual literature. A glance at the works of any great master will show us, however, that such is not the case. These very scales, chain-passages, and broken chords, which are the material of teaching, are also the figures of free composition. Some fashionable composers may have employed them extravagantly, because they were at the fingers’ ends of the players, but the most independent writers must use them, because they are, from the very nature of the clavier, the most fruitful in effect and most harmonious in sound. The old disruption of musical material into short passages of four or five notes was now antiquated. Performers practised the whole scale and the chord. And since Philip Emanuel carried through this natural training with methodical clearness, his teaching has been fruitful, and has not run merely _alongside_ of the literature. In his book we can clearly see how the clavier has contributed not least to the formation of modern secular musical perception. In this its equal temperament, which was so urgently necessary, and its complete presentation of the tone-material, which so to speak we have only to read off, have largely aided.

The case is dissimilar with his treatment of the “manieren.”[102] On their employment he writes as follows: “No man, assuredly, hath doubted concerning the necessity of ‘manieren.’ We can observe it herefrom, that we meet them everywhere in great abundance. Everywhere are they indispensable, if one considers their use. They hang the notes together, and give them life; they give them, if it be necessary, a particular energy and weight; they make them pleasing and therefore awaken a peculiar attention; they assist to make clear what is their meaning, which may be sorrowful or glad or otherwise disposed, as it pleaseth, yet do they contribute of their own thereto; they give a notable part of opportunity and material to the true execution; a moderate composition can by them be aided, as without them the best air is empty and monotonous, and the plainest meaning must appear throughout obscure.” This is a judgment which surprises us in a man so intelligent and advanced as Philip Emanuel. He has not yet perceived that ornamentations were in his time only the relics of an earlier style. An appoggiatura, which takes away half or two-thirds of its note, and thus becomes a mere melodious retardation, or a double-shake which completely disintegrates its note, and requires to be expressed by an antiquated stenographic mark, is already a mere fossil in a period which gives such independence to the melody. It is not the notes which then appear which are fossil, but their arrangement as decorations. What had originally been truly decoration, in the heyday of figuration, had, in the course of the eighteenth century, long become an emancipated melodic phrase. The idea of the retardation, which earlier veiled itself under the name of appoggiatura with suspended main-note, was not allowed to step in openly; and the doppelschlag[103] or the trill could say plainly what they were, without masquerading as modest satellites of some main-note or other. Had Philip Emanuel but had the courage to discard the old signs, and to hear the customary ornamentations as independent music, he would have been able to spare himself much dead weight, to avoid much confusion, and to get rid of the trammels of many dead traditions, which have come down even to our day. He has in his book exhibited a stirring knowledge and an individual treatment of the “manners”; yet he was forced to maintain an arbitrary distinction between the “manners” and the other figurations, although between the turn and any other melodious line-curve there is no longer any essential difference whatever. He has not been able to introduce any system into the relation of the appoggiatura with its note; and, because he saw that the effect of the appoggiatura could be produced equally well without the little note, he has been obliged to take refuge in the sentence: “The appoggiaturas are partly written like other notes and thrown into the bar, and partly specially indicated by small notes; while the larger ones keep their full value to the eye, although in practice they lose something of it.” At this point he should have been able to see that a system of “manieren” as such was no longer possible.

From indications given by Philip Emanuel, it would seem that in these matters he was deliberately behind his time. He bemoans that the well-known marks in clavier-pieces were already beginning to be strange, and points to the careful way in which the French had always put in their marks. He delights as a rule in setting up the French as the masters of the clavier-exercise, and is vexed that people had an “evil prejudice” against their pieces, “which yet,” he says, “have always been a good school for clavier-players, forasmuch as this nation, by the smoothness and neatness of its playing, hath marked itself off specially from others.” Philip Emanuel’s love for the French is a very important point to keep in mind in appraising his works. Not only did he find in them the only great precedents for his “galant” style; he has also expressly continued the method of Couperin and Rameau by transcriptions, in the French manner and the French language. Nay, his endeavour, in his sonatas and rondos, to construct stiffer forms with _reprises_, appears as a mere continuation of the French rondo; and, however Italian the musical form may be, in more than one of his pieces, we inevitably think of the “Cyclopes” of Rameau. Possibly his whole book was suggested by Couperin’s “L’Art de toucher le clavecin,” and respect for this French tradition has hindered him from revolutionising the “manieren,” which still had their justification in France, so thoroughly as he did revolutionise the finger-exercise. It is thus very amusing to see how he himself challenges comparison with Couperin. He calls him “a teacher formerly so profound,” referring of course to the “manieren.” The “formerly,” of course, implies that Couperin had not yet learnt the thumb method, and had been too fond of changing the fingers on one note. In point of ornamentation it was _he_ that was conventional; and in point of fingering--why, old Sebastian, lately dead, stood between him and Couperin.

“Fantasia-making without strict tempo,” says Philip Emanuel in one place of the Essay, “seems in the main to be specially adapted for the expression of the emotions, because every kind of barring brings with it a certain constraint.” In this verdict and in its application lies for us to-day, viewed externally, the greatest surprise which Philip Emanuel offers us. He has, as a matter of fact, written many fantasias which are almost designed without bars, and thus very logically give expression to the character of improvisation which they bear. They are great recitatives full of reflective melodies, of linked staccati, of sounding broken chords, which the player, when moved, knows how to unfold. They were the last free specimens of the unfettered forms of the older time.

Not only in these fantasias, but as a rule in his whole creative energy, especially in the Hamburg period, Philip Emanuel exhibits that extempore humour and freedom, which has at all times given to clavier-pieces their greatest charm. He has sufficient invention to be rarely at a loss; and the pieces from his earlier “Württemberger Sonaten,” which are still more contrapuntal than the later, or from the later six volumes “Für Kenner und Liebhaber,”[104] have all that variety and multiplicity in unity which was also a feature of the collections of John Sebastian. But the desire for caprice works in him more strongly than the fulness of invention. He is untiring in pulling a melody humorously to pieces, in surprises of pause or in remarkable transitions. Occasionally his language positively dances, and it is hard to be certain whether it is intentional distortion--a cloak for poverty--or the genuine caprice of the moment which leads him after the charms of eccentricity. In any case he belongs to those rare and subtle natures which in a moment give us the genuine artistic touch of brotherhood.

Even in his harmonies his freedom is clearly noticeable. He does not object to write separate movements in different keys, which he often connects by direct transitions. The third Sonata in the “Kenner und Liebhaber” stands in the first movement in B minor, in the second in G minor, and in the third in B minor once more. The fifth Sonata, which is set in F major, begins quietly with a phrase in C minor. In the first Rondo of volume V. we find the chord of the seventh (G, E, B, C sharp), set at the key-deciding place, _in B minor_; a chord at which some of our best memories of Wagner are revived. For such things he was severely censured by his comrades in the profession.

As to his melody, it is as delightful as is to be expected from “galant” music, and from that only. At one time it shows a charming sentimentalism, in which the stronger use of retardations has its share, now it is frisky and playful, toying with itself; in both cases anticipating Mozart. Specially characteristic of the author are numerous melodic phrases, the like of which have played an important part down to our own time. Philip Emanuel used them with the greatest depth and penetration in the F sharp minor movement of the A major sonata (No. IV. in Kenner und Liebhaber, vol. i). In all these points he manifests his independence; and in spite of his study of the French, it is but seldom that, as in the “Siciliana” of one of his sonatas in the “Musikalisches Allerley,” we catch an echo of a phrase from Couperin.

Like all the “galants,” he wrote much. A considerable number of his works were printed in his own time in the magazines or separately. Among these the sonatas to Frederick the Great to Charles Eugene of Württemberg, to Amalie of Prussia, and the “Kenner und Liebhaber,” take the first place. But yet more remained unprinted. Prosniz has counted four hundred and twenty of his clavier pieces, of which two hundred and fifty were printed. There is no modern comprehensive edition of his works, but the “Kenner und Liebhaber” has been very beautifully reissued by Krebs in the Berlin Academy collection of original editions. Apart from the first volume these are written exclusively for pianoforte.

The name of Philip Emanuel generally rises to our lips when we speak of the origins of the modern forms of chamber-music and symphony. This is correct enough if we are content to establish his claims as an agent in the crystallisation of the two main forms of classical composition--the Sonata and the Rondo. But the creator of these forms he was not; he found them very far advanced in France and Italy, and on the other hand he handles them so freely that their regulation cannot be said to have been completed till the days of Haydn and Mozart. Thus he is in these points also but an intermediary.

The strict sonata introduces first a main subject, then in an allied key an allied subject; next the middle section[105] in which these subjects are developed and completed; and lastly it repeats the exposition, transposing the subordinate subject, however, with a view to the finale, into the main key.

In the Rondo, on the contrary, there is _one_ main theme and many subordinate motives. The main theme is chiefly melodious; the by-themes alternate in all kinds of forms among the repetitions of the melodic strophe.

To the Sonata and the Rondo all older dance and fantasia forms gradually gravitated. The Sonata is the more dramatic, the Rondo the more lyrical. The Rondo, considered as to logical content, is the more organic; but advance and climax are wanting to it. The Sonata on the other hand, is, because of its _reprises_, less intellectual than architectural; but it has the sobriety of greatness. Usually, in thinking of the forms of this musical age, our thoughts dwell on the Sonata--in which form as a rule the first movement was cast. But the Rondo was equally important, and is equally often used in the second or last movement. Purer dance-forms were always in use as intermezzos between the movements.

In Philip Emanuel, then, we see a preference for the types of the sonata and the rondo which prepares the way for their sole supremacy. He only needed to proceed eclectically. Not only the French Rondo but the Italian Sonata had led to the _reprise_ form. Philip Emanuel did not advance far beyond these models. A second theme is not universal in his works; and only the modulation of the keys within the first half, to the dominant or relative major, is strongly stamped on them. The Sonata movement with him still admits of all _tempi_. In the third of the “Kenner und Liebhaber” Sonatas the peculiar sonata-form is not on the whole adhered to, but allegretto, andante, cantabile, follow each other in free fashion. On the other hand, in the following piece, the first and the last movements both show the sonata-form; but in the first of the “Württembergers” only the last movement has the stricter sonata-style. The third sonata of Volume II. of the “Kenner und Liebhaber” is actually written in a single movement. On the other hand the second Württemberger begins with a genuine sonata with double subject; and in the Kenner und Liebhaber, Vol. III. No. 2, the type of the modern sonata appears in full development. We see then from these examples that while Philip Emanuel uses the _reprise_ of the first part almost universally, he is yet far removed from the classical model of the sonata. In a word, we shall find in him nothing that is not already to be found in Rameau, Scarlatti, or above all, his great father.

The Rondo was more in accordance with his genius. Here, where he had fully developed French models, it cannot be denied that with all his freedom in detail he has brought the form appreciably nearer to the classic type. Even Beethoven was often unable to improve on his alternations of intermediate movements, or the grace with which he returns to the air and makes his theme gently rock to and fro. He loves those simple popular rondo airs, which, as we listen, we all seem to have heard before. As couplets[106] he prefers to use technically brilliant figures, which in their turn offer a good contrast to the air. He is untiring in toying with the theme. He makes it now break off in the middle, now become sentimental; now it becomes questioning. As time goes on he develops his whole power of expression, so that he is far removed from a stiff alternation of theme with couplet. In a fantasia (K. and L. v.; last piece), which is perhaps his most charming composition, he blends the rondo-form most skilfully with the free style of an improvisation, and thus shows himself on his best side. Hardly less delightful is the last piece in Volume VI., a Fantasia-Rondo whose main theme is a kind of hunting-call. In this movement the hunt is interrupted by a beautiful romantic _andante_, then by emotional reveries in _larghetto sostenuto_, and in the conclusion the reflective style gains the upper hand.

The Rondo was so attractive to him because by its means he was able the more easily to bring his beloved “affettuoso” into expression. And his inner genius was not so much formal as lyrical. In his music there is even to-day a strong spiritual charm, to which the slight archaism adds a pleasant flavour. In his Rondos he comes very near to us, and not less in those little characteristic pieces which, written in dance-form, followed French models in the very style of the inscriptions. He uses for titles proper names, such as Hermann, Buchholz, Böhmer, Stahl; and such more general appellations as La Xenophone, La Sibylle, La Complaisante, La Capricieuse, L’Irrésolue, La Journalière, and Les Langueurs Tendres--names, it will be remembered, used also by Couperin. La Sibylle has a wonderfully beautiful melody; and Les Langueurs Tendres is such an unsurpassable air in two mournful voices, that it bears endless repetition. Nothing has ever been written to surpass this tender clavichord-sadness.

The great counterpoint of Bach is now forgotten with extraordinary rapidity. The ancestor of the following generation is Philip Emanuel. Wherever we look, to the London Bach, Johann Christian, to the Austrians--anywhere--we find the work influenced by his style. “He is the father and we the boys,” said Mozart.

Haydn knew well what he owed to Philip Emanuel, and was as little chary to acknowledge it as Mozart. In actual essentials Haydn made no advance in clavier-music. The stream is perhaps a little clouded, and it is not till Mozart’s time that it again becomes clear. Haydn’s genius lay in composing for the orchestra, not for the piano. He has of course written clavier sonatas--they number thirty-five--and other pieces in which the clavier takes part; as numerous and light as the works of all these “galant” musicians. But his trios are to be preferred to the sonatas for piano only; there is more depth in them; and the ideas are lit up more brightly by the instrumental combination. Only in the sonatas after 1790, as in the first in E flat major (Br. and H.) does something more noteworthy emerge--but by that time Haydn had studied Mozart.

Still further, in his pieces, Haydn is no great virtuoso. In his Trios he knows well how to make the most of the character of the clavier, by contrasting it with the strings, by means of arpeggios, all kinds of passages, full chords, and the beloved octave-melodies. But a more interesting virtuoso performance, such as that in the F minor variations, appears very rarely. The ornamental work is still extensive, but within limits; and much of it is written out in full, just as the cadenzas, which used to appear in small notes, are now preferably printed in the usual type. At the end of the century everything was taken away from the caprice of the player, except the great cadenzas at the conclusion of the concerto-movements. Philip Emanuel had taken a last important step, when, in his Sonata dedicated to the Prussian Princess Amalie, he wrote out exactly for the second time the ornamentations and alterations in the frequent repetitions of musical phrases of a few bars, instead of leaving them to the pleasure of the players. To judge by his preface, caprice in these matters must have flourished like a green bay-tree; and he takes great credit to himself for having been the first to offer accurately formulated “alternative _reprises_,” which run no risk of spoiling the whole aim and meaning of the piece. His point of view is interesting. It is, he says, not possible to avoid altering a musical phrase in repeating it. This conception is endorsed by all his contemporaries and successors in style, in their works: Haydn and Mozart cannot be conceived apart from this mannerism of altering a musical idea in repetition by slight turns and adornments. This method is the fixed law of movement of their musical ideas, and dictates their progress through long stretches in advance. Deep founded in the general delight in variation so characteristic of the time, it enables us to understand that great development which forms a whole branch of musical history--the development, namely, of improvised “manieren” into strict and firm melodies.

As far as _form_ is concerned, the work already begun is continued by Haydn. The Sonata-form tends to limit itself more and more to the first movement; more and more clearly does the “second theme” crystallise itself; slow-drawn movements are preferred more and more in the second place, and graceful rondo-like movements in the third--without, however, any appearance of compulsion. The only relic of the traditional “suite” of dances, which Haydn retains in his sonatas or symphonies, is the “Minuet” which he is so fond of using as an intermezzo.[107] The old dance-forms, _as_ dances, were so speedily forgotten, that in a certain trio a delicate slow waltz is marked as “allemande”--whereas the old allemande is not even written in the time of a waltz, apart from the difference in style.[108]

Haydn received more from the clavier than he gave to it. He transferred to the orchestra the clavier-forms of the time, and thus pointed out to it the path to the symphony. Without doubt the modern symphony, in the first instance, is to be traced to the clavier pieces of Philip Emanuel Bach; and Haydn, to whom fell the task of the intermediary, was the first to put the rich development of this chamber-music to practical use. Clavier and orchestra always advance in mutual rivalry, treading on each other’s heels. In Haydn it was the clavier that aided the orchestra; in Beethoven the orchestra aided the clavier; Mozart, standing between, gives to each its own.

Thus it is that Mozart has given much, and much of its special character, to the clavier. This equilibrium--and Mozart is always the very personification of equilibrium--is most striking in his piano-concertos, which justly enjoy the renown of having created an epoch in this class. Especially remarkable is the C minor concerto, in which the piano experienced one of its chief emancipations. On one side stood the orchestra, on the other the instrument, and yet neither of these two great rivals loses anything of its essential nature; rather, they owe to this very rivalry many of their best effects. When clavier and orchestra address and answer each other; when the clavier intertwines itself with the strings and the wood, and they in turn blend with the clavier; when in the running strife each sounds in its own style and gives birth to a natural variation of phrases and to delicate alterations of the constituent forms; all proceeds in accordance with that self-evident logic which, at such critical points in artistic history, naturally dispenses with internal laws.

Mozart is the great virtuoso who, even as a boy, was the astonishment of Europe. It is not to be expected that he should content himself with the intimate reflectiveness of the pianoforte; he drags it out into the great world; he needs the concerto-form just as he needs great concert halls. The new pianoforte, with its fuller and more subtly expressive tones, is precisely adapted to his aims, and he is the first to launch the pianoforte on its decisive career. With his triumphal progresses the popularity of the new instrument was not likely to decline. The great enchanter leaves the tiny victories of the spinet far behind; his public recitals in hired halls, which henceforward become more and more popular, demand new feats. He has to work on bold lines; he has to bring into use the special features of the instrument he adopted; the rippling scale-passage, the variety of tone, the _forte_, the _pianissimo_, the hundred gradations between these extremes, the altogether new possibilities of sentimental expression which were now at the disposal of the public performer. But amid all the intoxication of the concert hall, the virtuoso remains an artist; the idol of the hour retains his deeper feeling. As he was only truly himself when, after the furore of publicity, he touched the notes in solitude or before a few friends, so in his concertos, behind the external glitter, a romantic soul lies hidden. In the beautiful Romance in the D minor Concerto, for example, the soul looks out on us with a wonderful and never-to-be-forgotten intensity.

In almost all his pieces Mozart composes according to the bidding of the moment. He is an “occasional” composer. In the concertos the occasion was his own appearance on the stage. In the duets and double pianoforte pieces he found the occasion in his association with his sister. From this species of performance he drew new effects. The D major sonata for two pianos stands alone in the skilful and effective blending of the two instruments. His four-handed sonatas are astonishingly successful in the individualisation of the hands, and started a numerous class of clavier-pieces which have been too often misused. We shall not appreciate such duets, if we take the clavier as a diminutive orchestra.[109] But here again Mozart has been unwilling utterly to sacrifice combined effects to individual demands.

Through the ravishing chamber-music in which, especially in the quintett for oboe, clarinet, horn, fagotto and pianoforte, the splendid treatment of the pianoforte with regard to the wind deserves notice; through all the melodious pieces for piano and violin, the trios, the quartetts; to the numerous smaller clavier-pieces, the fashionable variations, the relics of the suites, the scattered fugues, the fantasies so rich in variety; we follow Mozart to the eighteen pure piano sonatas, which are the very miniature mirror of his unfailing musical invention. We shall treat them in chronological order, for here for the first time we perceive a distinct development which renders such treatment the most natural and advantageous.

At first we meet the daring harmonies and enharmonic changes by which every innovator makes himself notorious, and which draw on him the first severe criticisms. But there is not yet the concentration of later works. A light counterpoint runs through the whole, a conscientious treatment of the themes, which bears witness to sound training. A striking feature is the unforced inventiveness in motives, which succeed one another in unfailing profusion. Intellectual themes, as for example in the B flat major, remind us of Philip Emanuel. The form becomes more distinct, the rules of sonata-arrangement more rigid. But it is not till we reach the A minor (1778) that the full brilliancy of form is seen. This piece has all that wonderful proportion and balance even in the smallest parts, which was, and remained, Mozart’s most peculiar characteristic. Proportion in the well-balanced opposition of themes in all three divisions, in the liveliness of the piquant semiquaver runs, which already leave Scarlatti far behind, in the brilliant and yet simple execution of the last movement--proportion, indeed, is everywhere.

After 1778 our impressions deepen. The D major is the creation of Mozart’s indestructible caprice. The motives become ever more tuneful, more _speaking_: in the C major we hear the phrases as though sung; we seem to hear words with pauses for breath, as from a distant exquisite opera. The melodies run after each other, and--what is so typical a feature of Mozart--it is by this that our attention is held rather than by any inner development of the themes.

Engraved 1764, by J. B. Delafosse (b. 1721) after L. C. de Carmontelle (? about 1790).]

The A major sonata is an excellent example of this melodic regularity. Its contours are of an unimagined loveliness, and its airs of a magic delicacy. The Turkish March stands out in variegated national colours, far removed from every triviality--if only we give to the Janissary rhythm its full due.

The airs become broader, the piquancies more daring, until the allegretto of the B flat major with its jubilant sevenths stands before us as a new peak of Philip Emanuel’s Rondo forms. Here is that bright laughter, which from Mozart’s lips has the most delightful of sounds.

This was in 1779. In 1784 Mozart has entered upon the second half of his life, the unhappy half, and the C minor sonata appears. New tones now strike upon our ear, harsh, strong, broad, intense. But all is still in proportion. The hand is freer, rushing more boldly from the heights of the piano to its depths; bolder also are the episodes which are the pivots of the thoughts. In all is the sweet intoxication in the bewildering sound of the pianoforte, and the air so full of soul, growing richer in retardations, and more and more taking the lines which Mozart decisively fixed for the beautifully-formed melody. A strange reserve, the reserve of maturity, characterises the last movement, otherwise so flowing; its expressive raggedness forbodes new things, the victory of matter over form--in a word, Beethoven; and then, in this period of Figaro and Don Giovanni, we meet the F major, the most sombre in content of all his writings (1788). With its two movements we are accustomed, not improperly, to connect the Rondo written in 1786. Counterpoint has slowly advanced to its old position--the sign of the mature man, who is seeking his fixed abode. This it is which stiffens the weft into what at times is a solidity worthy of Bach. The dominion over the world of tone is now absolute, the melodies sing heavenward, as for example in the theme of this andante, which came spontaneously from his soul.

We have reached the limit of the “galant,” over whose fields dark clouds are already gathering. But we are also at its highest point. In Mozart the ideal of popular music was more fully realised than its father, Philip Emanuel, could ever have dreamed. Mozart’s well-balanced nature preserved the clavier from superficiality; and he himself was saved by an early death from sacrificing this balance to the sombre thought of a new time. His sense for form brought the sonata into more typical shape, but the endless melody and the free intelligence of his music took all sharpness from the forms. No music can be less easily described in words than his; and therefore, as a great beautiful sound, it was the best content which the forms of the galant popular epoch could find. It is not till we have left youth behind that we see proportion and equilibrium in this repose; and it is then, as Otto Jahn says, that we are amazed at the wonderful wealth of this art and at ourselves for being so slow to feel it.

[96] Both these adjectives apply to decorative ornament.
The general idea of “baroque” is “odd” or “outrageous.”
“Rococo” implies an elaborate want of good taste.

[97] “Dux,” the _leader_, _i.e._ the “subject” of the
fugue; “Comes,” the _attendant_, _i.e._ the “answer.” So
called because the one follows the other as a matter of
course, like master and servant.

[98] Meaning “The Philosophy of Spinoza,” _i.e._ an
illustration of Spinoza’s method, given in musical notes.

[99] It is impossible to describe this action in words. See
the diagrams in Grove’s “Dictionary of Music,” vol. ii. pp.
716 and 718.

[100] I possess a Zumpe pianoforte, date 1766, which is
apparently the earliest surviving made by him in England.
E. W. N.

[101] Such a judgment of Handel, which would be ungracious
in the mouth of an Englishman, is not unfitting in a
German. England alone, apparently, knows and cares about
Handel, the athlete in _choral_ music.

[102] _i.e._ the ornamentations, turns, appoggiaturas, etc.

[103] The doppelschlag was the “turn,” beginning with the
_note above_.

[104] “For professors and amateurs.”

[105] Various names have been used for this “middle
section” of the “sonata form,” _e.g._--“Development,”
“Fantasia,” “Free part,” “_Durchführung_, carrying
through,” “Working-out.”

[106] The word “couplet” is here used as in Couperin, and
other old French composers. It means the subsidiary themes
or sections which alternate with the main subject in these
ancient rondos. Call the main theme A, the subsidiary ones
B, C, D, etc. Then the course of the movement is--A, B, A,
C, A, D, A, etc., and B, C, D, etc., are called “couplets.”

[107] See, for instance, Haydn’s earliest string quartets,
where he commonly has _two_ minuets, one on each side of
the “slow” movement.

[108] Does not “allemande” here simply mean “German” waltz?

[109] It is a great pity, and a great loss in every
way, that the careful _artistic_ playing of duets on
one pianoforte has largely ceased. What Moscheles and
Mendelssohn were not ashamed to do in public, surely is not
an unworthy employment. It should be revived, if only to
popularise Schubert’s beautiful works for four hands, the
widespread ignorance of which is a simple disgrace to us
all.

Beethoven

When a great scheme was started in Berlin for a common monument to Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, it was plain to see that the artists felt themselves in the presence of a very mixed task; but it was not so clear where the incongruity lay. They stood under the influence of the popular opinion, which binds these three heroes under a single yoke, and they were the victims of this influence. Nations have an instinct of symmetry in the classification of their great men. The ancients had their seven sages; to-day we are content with two or three; but even so the combinations are none the less strained. The false ideas due to the pairing of Bach and Handel, or of Goethe and Schiller, are hardly to be numbered. The triumvirate of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, is the very acme of perversity. Haydn and Mozart, though two fundamentally different natures, have yet in common the similar features of the age. But Beethoven is as little like them as Goethe is like Racine. We have only to glance round a salon in the Vienna of the last century. The old Haydn and the old Salieri sit smiling and friendly on a sofa; they move in the stilted fashion of the eighteenth century; they retain in their carriage all the features of the “Zopf und Schopf”[110] period; and in every judgment, in every gesture, they show their antagonism to unrestrained emotion. Over against them a young man is leaning on the piano. His demeanour is modish though untidy, and smacks of the Rhine; his movements natural but wooden; his hair is loose and disordered; his compliments are few; he accepts strangers only on compulsion; his playing is perhaps too vigorous, too full of feeling; and the ideas which he incorporates in his works are in their originality half revolutionary, half romantic. This new-comer is Beethoven, a man so different from the settled type, from the old “composers of the Empire,” as he himself calls them, that it is easy to anticipate the future which he himself is conjuring up. He is the first of the Titans, the first of the great fragmentary natures, the first tone-artist who breaks the forms of music to pieces on the iron of his emotions. A strange Providence closes his outward ears, and thus gaining a clearer vision, he receives from Nature herself unheard-of inspirations. How this strange new man, this romantic raver, could be coupled with Haydn and Mozart is a wonder; but popular opinion accounts for it. Beethoven came to Vienna just as Mozart began to be missed. The world gave him the honour of attaching him to the classic school. But it is a mere blunder to treat him as the end of an epoch--he is the beginning of a new one.

It must be observed at this point that the world had meanwhile become really musical--or perhaps less truly musical than music-loving. Nay, more; political events, as formerly church ceremonies, could now be celebrated in music. The famous concerto which Beethoven gave in honour of the Vienna Congress was perhaps the first great occasion on which music lent itself in festal manner to the adornment of public events. It was now no longer a mere incident in a commemorative display, but to a great extent pure music; and the rapid and vigorous education of men to instrumental music by the classical masters was the necessary precedent condition of the attainment of this point. In these matters the clavier played its important part as an intermediary and a teacher; it made the innovations into current coin, scattered them among people in their homes, and accustomed their ears to understand better and better the absolute language of music, as it dealt in wider and wider abstractions. The publishers were more active, the issues more frequent, the popular settings more numerous and artistic. Even the great men themselves take a share in the work. A frequent phenomenon in the music-trade is that composers like Clementi, Dussek, and Pleyel, themselves open publishing houses--and secure the advertisement of their wares, oftener perhaps than was really necessary.

International exchange became more active year by year. If we look to London, we see Johann Christian Bach at work, helping to give form to the Sonata; we observe Haydn and Pleyel in vigorous rivalry for the favour of the public; we see the virtuoso Clementi from Italy setting up a clavier-school. In Petersburg meanwhile lives the Englishman, Field, one of the chief nocturne-romancists, and Klengel and Berger, the Germans, all three brought out by Clementi. Next we see there also J. W. Hässler, the ex-hatter, who has left behind such agreeable works that Bülow regarded him as a good intermediary between Mozart and Beethoven. In Paris the opera is the favourite agent of musical pleasure. With Gluck the old quarrel between the Italian and the northern manner is renewed. Chamber-music retreats into the back-ground. Schobert and Eckard, decorative musicians, are hardly known beyond the border; and Adam and Kalkbrenner, who restore the fame of French clavier-technique, leave productive art on one side.

In Vienna there is a swarm of prominent figures. Gradually the city is preparing itself for the state of things which in 1820 W. C. Müller thus describes in one of his “Letters to German Friends”: “It is incredible how far the enthusiasm for music, and especially for skill on the piano, is now being carried. Every house has a good instrument. The banker Gaymüller has five by different makers; and the girls especially play a great deal.” Indeed, a glance at the society of Vienna at that time shows us innumerable ladies, ranging from the merest amateurs to the maturest artistic performers, thronging round the great and the mediocre alike. Even Beethoven, the misanthrope, sees himself surrounded by them; he cannot keep from them, nay, he often does not choose to do so. The Baroness Ertmann, Julia Guicciardi, Nanette Streicher, are some of the actual persons of the fair sex, who, amid innumerable legendary beings, hovered about the Master. As usual where social life forms the basis of culture, the ladies come to the front. Invitations fly in bewildering profusion; the great houses exchange their guests; new compositions are made known in the salons before they find a publisher; and when they are published, old acquaintances become subscribers. This narrow circle gives a great opportunity for the advance of chamber-music. An accurate observer will notice how the modern international musical public slowly develops itself from this old-fashioned, close corporation.

The names of the best teachers are in every mouth. Czerny, who was destined to raise Vienna technique to its height, and to become the teacher of a Liszt, tells us in his Memoirs who were known as the best teachers in Vienna at the commencement of the century: “Wölffl, distinguished by his bravura-playing; Gelinek, universally popular for his brilliant and elegant execution; Lipawsky, a great sight-player, renowned for his performance of Bach’s fugues. I still remember how Gelinek once told my father that he was invited out for an evening to break a lance with a foreign player. ‘We mean to hew him in pieces,’ said Gelinek. Next day my father asked Gelinek how the fight of yesterday had gone. ‘Oh,’ said he, ‘I shall remember yesterday’s fight. The young man has a devil. I never heard such playing. He improvised fantasias on an air I gave him, as I never heard even Mozart improvise. Then he played compositions of his own, which are in the highest degree wonderful and grand, and he brings out of the piano effects the like of which we never heard of!’ ‘Ah,’ said my father, astonished, ‘what is this man called?’ ‘He is,’ said Gelinek, ‘a little, gloomy, dark, and stubborn-looking young fellow, and he is called Beethoven.’”

Beethoven was discontented. He knew what lay within him, and yet could not help seeing how the crowd preferred to shout itself hoarse over the brilliant exponents of technique, then beginning to swarm over Vienna. He was brought into a contest not only with Gelinek, but with Wölffl, who was renowned for his abnormally long fingers. Such contests are a mark of the times. As yet the division of labour between composers and interpreters had not been introduced. Playing and invention had a more intimate association. The following is the programme of the “Academy,” which Mozart performed in 1770 at Mantua: “First, a symphony of his own composition; secondly, a pianoforte concerto, which he will play at sight; thirdly, a sonata just placed before him, which he will provide with variations and afterwards repeat in another key. Then he will compose an aria to words given to him, sing it himself, and accompany it on the clavier. Next, a sonata for the cembalo on a motive supplied him by the first violin[111]; a strict fugue on a theme to be selected, which he will improvise on the piano; a trio, in which he will take the violin part _all’improviso_; and, finally, the last symphony of his own composition.” No sharper contrast can be conceived than this performance offers to the modern concert. Almost all is here arranged for sight-playing and improvisation, or for the instantaneous exertion of inventive or executant skill. There is in this still a good deal of the earlier notion of music, in which the conception and visible development of a theme was preferred to the performance of a completed work. Later, the demand for such instantaneous performances gradually disappears. In Mozart the cadenza at the conclusion of the concerto-movements remained as the last refuge of the improviser in the written-out piece. Beethoven insisted that his E flat major concerto should be performed without an improvised cadenza.

At a period in which instantaneous performances were so popular, contests of the kind mentioned above were not misplaced. But Beethoven had more to suffer in them than others, since his genius had already outgrown them. He was a poet who loved to live apart and to offer his gifts in a more intimate fashion. How wonderfully did that very deafness, which turned his genius inward, preserve him in later years from public playing and conducting! But, before, he had been forced to enter the lists not only with Wölffl, with Gelinek, with the renowned technist Hummel, but actually with so contemptible an artist as Steibelt. This Steibelt was one of the disgraces of the age. Bespattered with praise, he rushed through Europe with his trashy compositions, his battles, thunder-storms, Bacchanals, which he played _ad libitum_, while his wife struck the tambourine in concert with him. The populace was enraptured, for Steibelt and Madame tickled their nerves with sparkling shakes and tremolos. At the house of the Count von Fries he fell in with Beethoven. A quintett of Steibelt’s and the B flat major trio of Beethoven’s (Op. 11) were played. In the latter occur the variations on a theme of Weigl, from the opera L’Amor Marinaro. Beethoven was out of humour and would not play. A week later the same company met again. On this occasion a quintett by Steibelt is again played, and to it Steibelt adds a series of wild clattering variations on the same theme of Weigl. Such “Leit-motive” attacks are familiar in these contests. It is well known that underlying Mozart’s Zauberflöte overture is a theme which Clementi had already used in his B flat major Sonata. Clementi had played it in a contest with Mozart, who did not care much for the Italian “mechanical” artist. But Beethoven this time avenged himself bitterly on Steibelt. After a long persuasion from his friends he stepped negligently to the piano, struck with one finger a few notes from the just-played quintett, and twisted it in and out until he had produced a fantasia; but Steibelt, before the conclusion of the piece, left the room and never came near him again.

Thus Beethoven lived in a world with which he had no sympathy. It is true that there were some houses in which the higher class of music was openly cultivated. Such a house was that of Van Swietens, where Beethoven often played to a late hour from Bach’s Wohltemperiertes Klavier. But the multitude, whose musical horizon was bounded by the Italian opera, occupied itself with the glitter and splash of the executants. In such a city old Diogenes might have sought long for a man. A composer of the best class, Friedrich Wilhelm Rust, who in the midst of his capriccios in the style of Philip Emanuel often showed features reminding us of Beethoven, died at Dessau in 1796 alone and inglorious. A Franz Schubert lived close by Beethoven, but no one knew of his existence. Those who are heard of are virtuosos and writers for the pianoforte. Dussek, however, is of importance not only from the technical point of view, but from that of true _art_. He is noteworthy also as the first musician to compose almost wholly for the piano, with or without accompaniment. How distant are the times when we could feel surprise when a piece appeared written for piano alone! And this man, within the limits of his genius, made the poetry of the piano into a life-work. It is as if for the first time an anticipation of Chopin rose before us; but the likeness is after all only in externals. Dussek is the bourgeois romancist, when he spends his whole year in the country with his lady-love; but he is the true son of the eighteenth century when he in turn attaches himself to successive princely patrons. Especially devoted was he to the musical Prussian Prince Louis Ferdinand, on whose death at Saalfeld he wrote a suitable composition. His style would seem to have been noble and full, and his pieces are more charming than was usual at the time. Unlike Hummel he was very partial to the pedal; and it is in his pages, perhaps, that we find it for the first time accurately employed. His works themselves are of all kinds and degrees of merit. When, led by his national temperament (he was a Czech), he gives full play to the dance forms in the last movement, he strikes a fine and fresh note. He was one of the first to use syncopations effectively. But he has also written a final movement, that of the E flat major sonata in 6/8 time, which has a true and solid worth over and above its dance-form. He is less attentive to his first movements, and his most famous sonata, that in A flat major, which he entitled “Retour à Paris,” disappoints in this regard our expectations. In his second movements he is quicker to light on tones which, by their tender character, linger in the memory; as above all in the slow movement of the D major in 2/4 time.

After all, if Dussek does not stand among the immortals, he yet, in intellect and power of invention, ranks among the lesser stars[112] to whom we owe the full elaboration of the popular forms. His style is soon grasped. We know one of his sonatas already as soon as we hear the first bars. A broad first theme gives us a good tune; then it goes smoothly flowing through grateful passages to the second theme in the dominant or relative key. Other runs give the fingers some further opportunity for bravura; perhaps a third scrap of melody peeps out, and we are at the landmark of the first double bar. Next some suitable free fantasia is arranged, which sounds more scholastic than it is; we pass with it through a series of related keys--until a motive already known, the first theme, brings us back again with a smooth glide to the beginning, from which point the movement practically repeats itself. In the following movements there is a longer melody adorned with variations. In the third a seductively familiar theme tickles our fancy, which at times spreads itself out in bravuras, or gives itself effect in a very poor imitation of a fugue.