Chapter IX: Liszt and the Present Time 271 (7)

In company such as this Beethoven stands absolutely alone. It is true he has not yet wholly cast off the garment of his time. In many a harmonic phrase, in many a formal turn, he is a child of the period; above all in many a _naiveté_. And he not seldom exerts himself about passages which are utterly unworthy of him. He, the composer of the A major symphony, wrote at the same time the incredible “Battle of Vittoria.” Conscious advance, such as Wagner set before himself, is to him unknown; and we find among his later works various things that remind us of an earlier period, as, for example, the wonderfully Mozart-like C major Rondo for the pianoforte. But his _naiveté_ was strangely warped; and thus arose noteworthy mixtures of style, such as we so often observe in men who stand on the borders of two ages. His character was the most complicated that ever musician had; and only investigators who know not the demon of the great soul, can seriously ascribe the paltry avarice of the master to humane goodwill for the notorious nephew whom he supported. A soul like Beethoven’s is a mystery into which we can only penetrate slowly and with difficulty; and who knows--even if perhaps the deepest secrets of his “last style” should become common and familiar, whether even then the last word would have been said on this strangely complicated and distorted character? But Beethoven composed from the soul outward. This was the great novelty. And we must penetrate into his soul if we will rightly apprehend him.

The enthusiastic compiler, Thayer, who died while writing Beethoven’s biography--musical history has often been the death of its authors!--remarks very excellently how differently from others Beethoven already sketches out his work. The motives stand there in hasty cursive--applications of motives--tone-ideas in words--as a painter sketches or a poet notes down his observations or inspirations. It bubbles up not like Bach’s steady stream of self-restraint, but in a torrent of unmeasured passion, which regards self-restraint as a weak concession and the correctness of the “galants” as a lie. In this man music spoke in words, not in pictures. He had the unparalleled boldness to tear out his secret feelings, all bleeding as they were, and hold them up before his own gaze. It was the boldness of a Zarathustra-nature. He belonged to those who worship Bacchus, not to those who follow Buddha. In Thayer’s possession was a note from Beethoven to his friend Zmeskall of Domanovecz. “For the future I bid farewell to the cheerfulness which I sometimes enjoy; for yesterday, through your Zmeskallic chatter, I became quite gloomy. The devil take them--I don’t want to know anything of their universal morality. Might is the morality of men who distinguish themselves above others. It is my morality, anyhow. If you start on me again, I shall pester you until you find everything I do noble and praiseworthy.”

We shall then only understand Beethoven thoroughly when we leave form on one side and take music as a speech. It is no feeble paradox to say that the reason why Beethoven, in his operas and songs, paid so little attention to the words, was because the music was to him words enough. To this greatest of instrumental geniuses was revealed the great secret of pure music, which, precisely because it has no speech or language, speaks infinitely the more profoundly. Words obstruct it. When Beethoven, at the end of the Ninth Symphony, has recourse to the human voice, everyone feels that it was to him only the highest of all instruments, with which he can do yet more than with trombone or contrabass. It is the utmost triumph of the pure musician who can draw even the voice under his sway.

Music is to him a speech, because it is full of associations of ideas, which bring tones into relation with the outer world, and make them reverberate with a thousand inner meanings. In his orchestra we hear nature, as in his pianoforte we hear the orchestra. Not without reason has Bülow, in his edition of Beethoven, in more than one place translated the piano-piece for the reader into score, in order to make its content clearer. These are things which did not exist in Bach. The world of tone has sacrificed her great unity for the great fragmentariness of unveiled speech, and a never dreamt-of height was thus reached in that absolute tone speech, which formerly in Venice and in England had taken the place of the mediæval vocal music.

What a Gabrieli, a Bull, a Bird, a Couperin, each in his own way, had begun, was by Beethoven brought to full completion. Here was the perfect opposition to the Middle Ages. Here was the Michael Angelo who could stand alone against the ancients. The abstractions were perfected, the relations more general, the language more intelligible. If Beethoven began his first Symphony with a chord of the seventh, it was possible to understand what he meant by it. To this man, who completed one epoch in beginning another; to this symphonist and chamber-musician, the clavier must become a daily necessity. His life has been written in his works. Words, which could only fetter him, are kept at a distance; the notes tell the story by themselves.

If we would understand Beethoven’s language we must study the way in which he works out his motives. His peculiarities are the peculiarities of the naturalistic school. The melody mounts or falls as his emotion mounts or falls. He takes a motive and narrows it until its parts curve upon each other, and then again makes it greater and broader, until it lies open before us. This is a deep and mysterious language, which deals with the tones as a word, an expression; which looks on us, shall I say? like the eye of certain animals--we understand them through and through, and yet their speech is not ours. But the most powerful agent in stirring our emotion is the rhythm, that soul of all expression. It is the absolute pulse of things, which only the finer ears can hear in the outer world; it lies here before us in its artistic purity. The pauses, the leaps, the syncopations, the gigantic parallelisms of structure, the dynamic surprises, leave but a thin wall of partition between the phenomenal and the transcendental of music. There is no longer any reserve in the language. There are some movements in which Beethoven’s music stands at the very doors of verbal speech: such, for example, as the allegretto in Op. 14, 1 and the first movement of Op. 90. The words appear to tremble on the lips; but it would be the disappearance of the apparition were we to utter them.

Over Beethoven’s realm broods a deep tragedy. A constraining seriousness speaks to us--the dark abyss of passionate emotion: a total pitilessness, a gloomy brooding, accents of misery, a unison of terror. Beethoven began his piano publications with the three sonatas (Op. 2.) dedicated to Haydn; works full of inexhaustible inspirations, of the ravishing freshness of youth. The second is introduced by sharp accents and those broad extensions of chords by means of octaves, which remained to the end characteristic of the author. Another man would have begun the piece _after_ this tragic cry, with the contrapuntally-rocking motive. But the first of his greater tragic outbreaks was the mighty Sonata in C minor, the so-called Pathétique, which he dedicated to his patron Lichnowsky. Upon the heavy, slow introductory passage follows the stormy First Movement, whose themes are, first, a tempest of rage, secondly, an utter despair; and the Grave intrudes its monitory remembrances in the midst. Unity of colouring is preserved. Over the second singing movement, and the third with its rondo-like passages, lies the same sombre tone; and the conclusion is sharply cut short.

Beethoven revels in the gloomy. He buries himself in deep tones, as in the Andante of the Pathétique or in Op. 22, its cheerfulness notwithstanding. Later, on the magnificent Broadwood, which he received from England as a present, he goes with delight into the regions of the deep. A mystic tremolo attracts him; and the “trios” of his scherzi are full of the sonorous murmuring of billowy chords.[113]

A new and grand expression of pain is the last movement of the Moonlight Sonata (Op. 27, 2), which is as full of hopelessness as the last movement of the other Sonata of this great pair (Op. 27, 1) is full of invigoration. The threatening strokes of the quaver chords which sharply define each repetition of the stormy motive-passages, the quivering secondary theme, the unrestful rests, the melodies, which seek to calm down the seething bass; all this was a world of seriousness which the clavier had not yet learned to know.

But this was still a _composition_, compared with the naturalistic chaos of the Recitative Sonata (Op. 31, 2). This first movement is a remarkable embodiment of gloomy brooding, which is continually being disturbed by despairing cries, until it finally loses itself in that resignation of utter indifference, which is a typical form of Beethoven’s tragic finales.

It seems to me beyond question that the impulse which drove Beethoven to compose great piano-pieces was supplied by the concerto-form. The concerto, in its secular character, had not remained without its advantages; it was broader and freer than the regular sonata. It avoids _reprises_ in the first movement, and arranges the divisions with more circumspection. In order to give the clavier-player a chance to rest, the orchestra must take over some independent parts. It begins with a broadly planned section, which so to say arouses curiosity, in which various themes are treated; and portions of this introduction are then inserted between the successive entries of the pianoforte, or even simultaneously with them. The piano itself appears usually three times. In the first and last of these the music is to some extent repetition, the intermediate section is a kind of free fantasia. Even in Mozart a strict unity of theme between the orchestral and the solo sections is not always to be observed; it was Beethoven who first carried it thoroughly out. He it was who with visible affection fashioned the concerto form. It is no accident that the two last of his pianoforte concertos, the G major and E flat major, to-day enjoy an exuberant popularity. What Mozart had promised in his C minor concerto, these perform to admiration. They are built entirely on that plastic sensuousness which is the essence and the aim of the concerto. Their themes are remarkably adapted for a polyphonous orchestral development, for a delicate imitation on the piano, or for the storm of the fullest harmonies.

The technique, whether of the piano or of the orchestral colouring, though joyous, is yet severe. Far from all coquetry and all mere show--the technique stands, especially in the cheerful E flat major, on a height of extraordinary purity. The form is clear, but not so precise as not to admit of modifications in single sections, especially those devoted to the solo instrument. The intellectual G major, the technical E flat major, represented an extreme of happy sympathetic innovation.

We only need to compare the great Waldstein Sonata in C major (Op. 53) with the Concertos, in order at once to see that the latter have stood godfather to the former. There are not merely external likenesses, as when the piano figures a theme which might have been played already on the orchestra, or when more important divisions close with a long shake, as in all concertos the piano sections usually do on the re-entrance of the tutti; or when with passages played pianissimo, and hurrying ghostlike, or in octaves, an effect is introduced which in Beethoven’s concertos the delicate piano is generally used to play out in contrast with the orchestra. Rather the important likeness lies in the whole broad outline. The themes appear as a rule twice, as is naturally the case in the concerto; the exposition is done leisurely and cheerfully; a cadenza, such as Beethoven had already used (_e.g._, in Opp. 2, 3, and 27, 2), gives to the conclusion of the first movement a specially concerto-like quality. The second slow movement is a short emotional transition, such as Beethoven has written so exquisitely in the G major and E flat major concertos; and the last movement, far from being a “concession” to the “light-robed” muse, is a spirited rondo, in brilliant style it is true, but in its augmentations and diminutions, its _stretto_ and the trill-conclusion, a genuine Beethoven--as no other could be.

As thus the dependence on the broad effects to which the concerto style had accustomed the hearer, gave to the first movement of the sonata a new form and extent which it had hitherto not known, it was possible for Beethoven to infuse into it a tragic content which soars far above the general coloration of the “Pathétique” and the brooding naturalism of the “Recitative” Sonata. Here for the first time we hear those trumpet-calls to the battle with Fate, those heavy rolling waves at the return to the first theme, which later in Op. 111 found so concentrated an expression. A monumental epic develops itself about the conflict, which usually forms the content of first movements. This mighty form represents a mighty picture.

What was thus given in the Waldstein was deepened and unified in the Appassionata (Op. 57). The uniform colouring of the Pathétique is here deepened by hints taken from the concerto. A sublime and rhythmical theme, based upon the simplest harmony, a solemn unison, dominates the first movement. The second theme, lyrical as it appears, is really only fashioned out of the first. As the movement progresses, we seem to hear mysterious winds, stormy seas, convulsions of nature. A cadenza, straight from the heart, leads to the most colossal _stretto_ ever written: a wild upheaving, a sudden down-sinking and extinction. Its spiritual connection with the choral-like andante con moto is obvious. The note of aspiration is heard throughout, first by pauses, then by a clearer and clearer expression in those deeply-felt variations, which finally repeat their theme. The despair of the final movement is the last act--a giant melody, uttered in piercing cries, sinking down panting in the middle, and at the end breaking out into Bacchanalian revelry, in which laughter and ruin are inextricably mingled.

This was the most comprehensive tragic picture ever drawn by Beethoven on the piano; and it has therefore remained a unique composition. His works tell us that he outgrew the epoch in which misery is enjoyed. His tragic art leads us beyond despair not to Nirvana, but to the Elysian fields. Hymns of joy sound around him. Strong joy, Dionysian strength, was the aim of this Faust. What he once depicted in the wonderful monologue of Op. 27, 1, becomes his life. In the Elysian Fields the fugue of adolescence returns to him, giving him repose and safety. In it he allows the tragedy of Op. 106 to tower heavenwards. Or, ethereal, world-dissolving glories shine around him--these are the bright, cheerful phrases of the E major or A flat major Sonatas, in which they now give the theme, now the figuration, or in the scherzo, grow up in flowery profusion. Into this serenity he allows the tragedy of the last Sonata (Op. 111) to pass at last. After a movement of wild outcry come the simply resigned variations, which finally mount from dull earthly devotion to angelic harmonies, to end in the glitter of their smile, in the bright sphere of their unearthliness.

To understand the joyous Beethoven of later years we must remember the capricious Beethoven of youth. A strong leaven of cheerfulness lay in him, a healthy will, which knew how to be humorous.

The sportive Beethoven lies in the lap of Nature. There he hears the entrancing imitations of his Haydn Sonatas, the hurrying ghost-like scherzo with its Schubert-like romantic middle movement (Op. 10, 2), the sparkling Rondo of the Variation Sonata. This we must hear played by Risler in order to appreciate its inimitable humour and poetry, which is based entirely on the soft touch of the contrary motions. The most perfect of Nature prayers, a Pastoral Symphony on the pianoforte, is the _Pastorale_ (Op. 28). Not only the second movement with its bird-like middle part; nor only the third with its extreme cheerfulness, nor the fourth with its outlook on the woods, its delight in the chase, its joyous conclusion; but also, and in the highest degree, the first movement, are confessions of Beethoven’s natural symbolism. This work stands on that indefinable border-line between the comic and the tragic, which is the unfailing mark of the intensest poetry. It is a complete picture of the world. Beethoven’s scherzi, his most peculiar form of art, which in the Sonata take the place of the old minuets, stand on this ground, and might be termed “secular,” in comparison with the dramatic embodiments of his first movements, or the complete picturings of the last.

The Rondos exhibit a similar process of alteration. In them first, so early as the time of Philip Emanuel Bach, had the capacity of tonic art to “let a theme speak,” been exercised. They allowed a theme its full expressive value. To Beethoven, accordingly, in his first period, such rondos appealed with the strongest effect, and their charming melodies throng in his earlier sonatas. But he was able to give this form a still deeper meaning. In place of the melodies he adopts genuine motives of pregnant brevity, which, as in Op. 10, 3, he develops with characteristic reserve. These pieces, as contrasted with the old melodic rondo, show a convincing naturalism. To the old rondo they are related as his scherzo to the minuet. Equally significant is his love for certain diatonically moving accompaniment figures, as in Op. 14, 1, or Op. 28; he thus avoids the impression of a regularly harmonised theme, and allows the naturalistic motive to predominate over the formal melody.

In the treatment of form in general, the sonatas exhibit a series of different experiments, which are of emotional interest. His other chamber music--the Violin Sonatas, the Trios, and all the rest, to which I now only allude--could not accomplish the suppression of form like the free, pure piano-pieces. The great Fantasia for chorus, orchestra, and piano (the latter treated in concerto fashion), which we value as an anticipation of the Ninth Symphony, was unique in its disregard of rule. Psychologically viewed, the sonata-form is much richer in content, and unravels the most wonderful mazes. Here is the history of the re-constituted sonata-form; a history which is too complicated to run in a straight line.

Down to Op. 10 on the whole we stand on the classical ground of the sonata. In the three Sonatas, Op. 10, appear the first important irregularities. Both in the first and in the second Sonatas there is, in the “free” part, a quite new theme introduced, which points to a definite design; and in the third we find that wonderful D minor movement, with its utter abandonment to melancholy, which by means of a stretto[114] in the Largo raises itself absolutely out of the contemporary style. Yet all this was new only in tone; it was no more absolutely new in idea than the Grave of the Pathétique or the Variation Sonata with its Marcia Funebre, where the middle section is introduced by means of realistic drum-reverberations.

An essential change is to be observed in the two sonatas Op. 27. We are at the beginning of the nineteenth century, not far from the time of the composition of the Eroica Symphony. Beethoven was fully conscious of the freedom of these sonatas (E flat major and C sharp minor): he inscribed both “Sonata quasi una fantasia.” In the E flat major a dainty andante movement meets us, whose voices are strongly interwoven. It develops itself slightly, in variation manner, but it is interrupted, once by a sustained melody, again by a stormy episode in C major. What has become of the rondo with its couplets? There follows the apparition of a rolling, beating, gigantic scherzo, beginning in C minor and ending in C major. The C (always _attacca subito_) prepares us for the bright A flat major adagio, which gently takes us up till the whole idea is exhausted. Finally we have the wholesome, powerful, and busy E flat major movement, arranged in free rondo-form, with its stirring reminiscences of the adagio. The twin sonata in C sharp minor is the so-called Moonlight, with its classical first movement, which was a unique expression of melancholy; and which, only slightly interrupted by the episodic allegretto, breaks out again into the despair of the presto agitato, which we have learnt to know as one of the most deeply tragical of Beethoven’s outbursts. Of a sonata as a regular composition there was here no further idea. These were transcripts from experiences.

The experiences of Beethoven’s life in the following period, so far as they are recorded in the diary of the piano-sonatas, exhibit a certain archaic character. In this period from 1803-4 (the period of Op. 31) to 1811 (Op. 81 a) lie the most varied tendencies in confusion. It is a mighty attempt in all possible paths, but the reader will soon see that every path leads to a definite goal. In all the paths there is an attempt to grasp certain great elementary principles, which lie outside the direct development, and which are made subservient to the new spirit.

This archaism of form appears first as an application of old forms to modern purposes. In the G major (Op. 31, 1) we are surprised by strange retrogressions--which yet are not mere retrogressions. The rosy coloration of the adagio draws past recollections into new life. The third movement shows us Bach’s application of the pedal bass, transfigured by passing through the mind of Beethoven. In Op. 31, 3 the minuet returns again, and in other passages, with their simply-cut melodies on “Alberti” basses[115] we seem to have gone back a generation. In the “easy” sonata (Op. 49) and the “Ländler” (Op. 79) this tendency reaches its height. It is a return to nature; a growth of simplicity, in all points, however trifling; the reaction experienced by every mature genius. Beethoven never wholly lost this tendency to reaction. He became in his later days more Mozartian than he had been even in his youth, and more of a Bach than Bach himself.

The second path leads us back not to the form but to the essential nature of Beethoven’s youthful period. The delicate work of the porcelain age lives again in him; above all in the charming F sharp major Sonata, of which he himself was so fond. It is quite extraordinary how in Beethoven the spirit of a past time receives life under astonishingly new forms. This graceful filigree-work, with its sweeping unearthly conclusion in the first section,[116] built entirely on delicate inspirations, piquant harmonies, dainty modulations--has wonderfully shot up in such colour, as autumn blossoms only can offer. Take next the famous Les Adieux, dedicated to his pupil, the Archduke Rudolf (E flat major). It shows a delight in the minute and the intimate, such as we meet in old Dutch pictures. There is not a passing-note, not a modulation, which was not worked under the magnifying glass. I should myself not like to omit the last movement, known as the “Wiedersehen.”

The beautiful characteristics of the “Absence” Sonata are well known; the various metamorphoses of the three descending notes, more or less obvious, but always helping to enlarge the meaning of the first idea [see, for instance, in the first Adagio, bar 7; also the bass of each phrase from bar 10 (third quaver) to the first double bar; then in the Allegro, bars 19-21, in the bass, and the semibreves just before the repeat; also in the “free” part after the repeat mark; and 13 bars from the end of the movement, left hand, etc.], the meaning of a dreary longing, which Beethoven tries to portray in the “Lebewohl” movements. The tender expression of the Andante, the trembling joy and almost overpowering delight of the “Wiedersehen,” the sweet charm of the delicate prolongation of this movement at the _Poco andante_ near the close, all these cannot but deserve mention here. Of course there was nothing new in having three movements labelled with such names as these. What _was_ new was the inner unity which was attained in this piece, and which was only equalled by the delicacy of the workmanship itself. To this (so to speak) archaic and delicate style was added the world-embracing Art which found its proper field in the C major (Waldstein, Op. 53) and the F minor (Appassionata, Op. 57) sonatas. Thus was the proper foundation laid for the grandiose poems of the last six Sonatas, which lead the three streams into one course.

The first of these (Op. 90) is in two movements, like the last: the first, a thoughtful and restful movement without reprise, with a new motive in its development; the second, a slow rondo, embracing the parts of the theme fugally. It is a work which, like all these last sonatas, is never thought of as a “piece,” but stands before us in one transparency, laying bare the inmost fibres of the man.

In Op. 101 an unparalleled height of thematic development is attained. Rhythmical motives are plentiful; the smoothly flowing six-eight time; the same with accent completely displaced (as in bar 29, etc.); the vigorous dotted quaver and semiquaver of the Vivace; the prominent formula of the section in B flat in the same movement, etc. As before in the Appassionata, the boundaries between first and second themes fade away before the consciousness of their unity. The Sonata exhibits thematic in all its forms. The fugue half changes into the rondo, free in expression, lively in character. An unearthly sweep of music, born tone by tone, rolls over us; the _e a_ of the motive is its air-built scaffolding. It is the streaming forth of the most inward intuition of tone; a special kind of absolute naturalism, which yet enfolds in itself the future of music. We think of the “Bagatelles,” which Beethoven wrote and published at this time, cabinet-pieces of remarkably genuine character.

Then suddenly rises before us the “Grand Sonata” (Op. 106). We recognise no longer the old well-known features. It has assumed the forms of the giant-world; it laughs in its greatness, in its childlikeness. Will it really permit itself to be played by human hands? We are at the mysterious limits of piano-music. Rhythms marked by sharp blows, modulations in thirds, enharmonics, narrow-cut successions of chords[117]--these are the very hand of Beethoven. The first movement works with its three themes--an Olympian poem--as far as the _stretto_. Its development rests on a fugal foundation. The scherzo is all rhythm; in the trio, it is all unrhythmical; mystical colours, sliding passages from B flat minor to D flat major, as in the Ninth Symphony from D minor to B flat major. The Adagio is so to speak the last possibility of the old form, wide as life itself, Michael Angelo-like in its strenuous longing for F sharp major. The transitional passage, the Largo, which introduces the last movement, like an old Toccata, tries this and that, prelude-wise, and striving after fixed forms. The three-voiced giant-fugue is the deliverance, in whose retardations the old storm, however, still conceals itself. But there is a joy in the mighty straining of these dissonances, which Bülow ought not to have tried to soften. Theme and counter-theme, “cancrizans” canon,[118] lyrical episodes, dainty counter-motives, inversions, new canonic motives, tied up again with the fugue, contrary motions, diminutions. This old lofty tone speech remained serious; it is the refuge of the anchorite who turns back to the powers of Nature, and finds rest in the wise observation of the stars. It is the utmost of art for art. Who is there whom it troubles?

* * * * *

Three flowers bloom in this late garden, three unique documents of a pure masterdom: the “playing” sonata, the “landscape” sonata, the “life” sonata. The first is on the heights of pure technique, the second is a clarified objective picture, the third is pure subjective inwardness.

Op. 109 opens with a graceful impromptu-like harp-play of broken chords, which twice thicken themselves in recitative songs. A somewhat hard sounding scherzo stands in the midst. It is closed by the variations on that never-to-be-forgotten melody in E major, which, through reflective romance, cheerful étude-like activity, sober fugues, bright trill-heights, lead back to the captivating simplicity of their theme. The freedom of the first movement and the confinement of the second are both made use of by the third.

We have a landscape in the A flat major (Op. 110). Over the sward rises the tender song. Butterflies and sun-glitter are the accompaniment. A wholesome strength mounts up and cheerfully wings its way. In a pause of meditation it comes to rest; and from the contemplation rises the old eternal lamentation of man. From its last breathed tones ascends the fugue, the great law of nature. Once again the lament, broken, helpless, dashing itself blindly against fate--and all the more dazzling is the fugue, embracing all, Truth with its disregard of the individual.[119] Thus does Beethoven express his pantheism.

But even this sonata seems feeble in comparison with the unheard-of intensity and greatness of Op. 111. The master sits at the piano, and his hands run preluding over the keys, in broad, piercing, dashing chords, which become closer and intenser round the node-point of the dominant. From the dominant grows a theme of savage grandeur, of Titanic power, all-embracing in its widening grasp, its Medusa-locks flying in the air, crushing out all sweetness and softness, till, as it came, it sinks terribly to earth, in those helpless _diminuendo_ chords,[120] with no _ritardando_, such as Beethoven alone experienced. In the elemental song of the Adagio comes the release. In its variations it spreads itself out into a world-embracing grandeur, till its wisdom attains the two extremes of deep internal ardour and ethereal brightness, whose opposition is developed in the last pages in broad lines. The earth remains below; the minor conclusions are forgotten; the forms have become a twilight dream; only when _our_ soul meets the Master-Soul does man attain to these realms.

* * * * *

At this time the inventive composer-publisher Diabelli had a good idea. He composed a childish waltz in C major, and invited fifty of the most distinguished composers and virtuosos of Vienna and the Austrian states to be kind enough to set variations to it. Beethoven sent him thirty-three variations, which appeared as Op. 120. Diabelli may well have been astonished. He had perhaps some dread of the “last” Beethoven who was then so full of youth. But he had not expected anything of this kind. Perhaps he did not quite know whether it was all done in earnest. Even the name of Beethoven did not aid the venture much. The world during many years troubled itself little about it, and let the strange colossus alone. It was reserved for Bülow, who had the keenest sense for the last efforts of Beethoven’s genius, to penetrate deeply into the great mass. He observed that the thirty-three variations are no co-ordinated series; they are an inner drama, like one of the later sonatas. They rise from the explanatory sections which lay out the theme, through a gentle minor group, by a double fugue, into calmer regions; a minuet concludes, which is no minuet, but one of those wonderful resurrections which were the old Master’s special love. The variations are a testament, as the Goldberg variations were those of Bach. From melody to canon, from gloom to parody, from archaism to anticipations of the future, from popularity to the philosophy of the hermit, from mysticism to dance, from technical glitter to the mystery of enharmonics, they lead us along three and thirty paths to different realms.

Beethoven’s last Grand Piano, by Graf, Vienna, with four strings to each note, on account of his deafness. ]

[110] _Pigtail and Tuft_, a combination of “Bigwig” and
“High and Mighty,” with “Sir Oracle.”

[111] Meaning the “leader” of the band, practically the
conductor in those days.

[112] The author here uses a term to describe Dussek, which
I remove to the foot of the page, viz. _Epigonus_, which
means “one born after,” in the sense of a descendant who
merely continues his father’s work. Often it is equivalent
to our “decadent.”

[113] The author may perhaps refer to the Scherzi of Op. 2,
No. 3, in C, or Op. 7 in E flat.

[114] The student is not likely to find the passage marked
with this word, but the author is none the less correct in
his description, for it must be played so.

[115] See Op. 31, No. 3, first movement in E flat, bar 46
and ff.

[116] Apparently the passage referred to is the 10 bars
which precede the second subject, in the first movement of
the F sharp major sonata.

[117] Things corresponding to these expressions, which
convey scarcely anything in themselves, will be found in
this order in bars 1-3; bars 5, 6, 9, 10; bars 25, 26; bar
18, et cetera, of the first movement; and will illustrate
the author’s system of description.

[118] “Cancrizans” (_cancer_, a crab), is an adjective
applied to a tune that is the _same_ whether you play it
from the beginning to the end, or the reverse way. Here it
is used to characterise some rather mild reversions of the
theme, _e.g._--first section with two sharps, bars 15-17.

[119] This appears to be a subtle reference to the
“inversion” of the subject when the fugue is resumed.
The “individual” must learn to see things right side up,
knowing they are upside down!

[120] Thirteen bars from the end of the movement. _N.B._--A
curious instance of “cribbing” on the part of Chopin stands
confessed in the following passage.

The Virtuosos

Beethoven’s playing was naturalistic. In him there were no tricks of technique to be admired, no mere virtuosity to praise; but the hearers were stirred to their hearts. In this storm and stress, this whispering and listening, this awakening of the soul, they recognised an original naturalism of piano-playing, standing by the side of the naturalism of his creative art. Rhythm was the life of his playing. He thought out all technique with a view to rhythm. In the Berlin Library is a collection of Cramer’s Études, containing a series of annotations by Schindler, the well-known biographer of Beethoven. The expressions are so remarkable that the spirit of Beethoven has not unjustly been detected in them. Shedlock, in fact, has published them simply as Beethoven’s elucidations of Cramer, whose Études the Master is known to have prized exceedingly. In every Étude the _melos_, or latent melodic air, which lies at the base of the figurations, is brought into prominence, and the rhythmical presentation of these figurations is made as accurate as possible. The rest is for the most part left to the time, the diligence, and the ability of the player. Thus could a great creator look at Études. Of necessity he looked at them from a totally different point of view from the virtuoso pure and simple. He cared chiefly for the presentation of the idea, for the inwardness of the piece. Everything that was written down in concrete notes served to him but as a means for that expression, the mastery of which was the mastery of interpretation. From this point of view Beethoven would have written his “Klavierschule,” of which he often spoke in his latter years. With mere fingering and wrist action he would have had little indeed to do.

This great task was undertaken by a band of artists who must not be undervalued. They stood in the first rank of virtuosos. It is precisely at this time that technique first properly arises as an art; and their zeal in the attempt to solve the new problem was great indeed. They discover new possibilities of expression, they disclose new effects in the capacities of the pianoforte, and they reveal an inventive power in these new paths which offers the most surprising beauties. We must consider them from the right side, and never forget that the development of the piano could never have taken place so naturally and organically unless its technical advance had gone on in parallel lines with its spiritual progress.

I have here no other aim than to view things under a certain _species aeternitatis_. What was done by Bird, Bull, Couperin, or Pasquini, though to-day perhaps only one in a thousand piano-players knows their names, was of more importance than a Polacca of Kalkbrenner or an Étude of Ludwig Berger. We have a fixed horizon; what is not within it remains outside it. Lives of entire and rich content, sorrows and joys of extreme intensity, may sink into oblivion; they are in history a mere grain in the quicksand. It is useless to look up in my index the name of everybody who has composed a Rondo or given piano-lessons in Moscow. We must content ourselves with those who, by the great halting-places, have deserved a monument on the way: those only without whom history would offer a distinct blank.

A very great work is represented by the theoretical piano-schools, which followed one another at this time in close succession. If in the little book of Philip Emanuel Bach there was the beginning of a unifying system, on which the following age had only to build, yet, in the face of the most varying theories of the first half of our century, we can but recognise that piano-teaching, from mere excess of zeal, never succeeded in developing a genuine system. It has always been the tendency of the piano-teacher to keep in the past an ideal to worship, while with the present he has such a poor understanding that every new method of instruction makes a _tabula rasa_ of the preceding method, begins all afresh, and allows the pupil salvation only according to its private judgment. Piano-study has never enjoyed the advantage possessed by other sciences, of building up from century to century, each upon the last. In theory it has remained a mere mosaic; and it has been saved only by practice.

It is practice also that gives a certain systematisation, not to the teaching, but to the history of teaching. All the separate workers at the great task, little as they admit the possibility of salvation outside their own creed, are yet driven forward by the stream of time and by the results of experience; and the law of averages brings about a clear advance apart from their personal agency. If we compare the systems of the eighteenth century, the schools of Philip Emanuel, of Marpurg, and that of Daniel Gottlob Türk, which closes this series, with the works of the epoch on which we have now entered, we see clearly how practice has marked out the path for theory, always reflecting upon itself, itself inducing its decomposition into its constituent _à priori_ and empirical parts, and finally limiting itself to a mere application of experience.

The Pianoforte School which was written by Adam was a kind of pronunciamento of the Paris Conservatoire. This Conservatoire, founded in the midst of the troubles of the Revolution, ultimately gave French technique a position to which for a long time it had been a stranger. Adam’s principle is to put the “manieren” more on one side, and to avoid that too eager devotion to the teaching of general composition with which the books of the eighteenth century had been occupied. In its place he brings the study of touch more prominently forward. The day of the spinet is over; the hammer-clavier now dominates the world, and leads theorists to attempt methods of touch which may correspond to its possibilities of delicate expression. The pedals also begin to play their part. Adam recognises four pedals, of which one is our damper-raiser, and three serve for soft effects. Gradually they have been reduced to two, the damper-raiser and the so-called “soft” pedal.

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A great opponent of all use of the pedal was Hummel. In our time it is no longer necessary to point out that the pedal, an integral part of the hammer-clavier, deserves not to be rejected, but simply to be treated on its own artistic lines. But Hummel stands, in his theoretic relations, so strongly on the foundations of tradition, that his attitude can excite no surprise. His “Ausführliche theoretisch-praktische Anweisung zum Pianofortespiel,” which appeared in 1828, is the crown of the united exertions of piano theory. This voluminous work, which gained with difficulty a circulation that it soon lost for ever, is a system, carried out into the minutest details, of all the technical capacities of the piano; so systematic, indeed, that here theory, by deductive methods, discovered effects which practice could not have attained alone. It is an unparalleled example of theoretic speculation, and yet really nothing more than the extension of Marpurg’s or Türk’s old-fashioned methods. These countless headings in capital letters, each describing a different class of “passage,” these numbered possibilities of fingering, these pedantic elucidations, beginning always from the first over again, are nothing but, as he calls them, an “Anweisung,” mere directions, abstraction from reflection outward. Any one who has mastered the first part has the second already at his fingers’ ends, but this master of dissection troubles himself not a whit on that point, and knows no economy in pupilage. He is opposed to learning by heart, since the fingers, he says, ought to find the keys without sight: so far is he from the modern view that only a complete mastery of a piece renders adequate interpretation possible. He troubles himself little about a science of touch. He introduces the “manieren”; but, contrary to the method of the eighteenth century, he makes the trill begin on the upper note. So far is a system of execution from his purpose that he can actually write as follows: “Runs and notes going upwards are executed crescendo, downwards diminuendo; but there are cases in which the composer intends the reverse, or that they should be played with even strength.” Hummel’s book is to-day a monument of misguided diligence, great in its patient calculation of permutations, but a dead curiosity.

If, on the other hand, we look at Kalkbrenner’s Paris Pianoforte School, which he dedicated “to all the conservatoriums in Europe,” we see--with no heavy artillery--advances of all kinds which in part fill up the perspective of Adam. Where Hummel has ten main classes of fingered passages, he has only six; five-finger exercises for the unmoving hand; scales in all forms; thirds, sixths, and chord-forms; octaves with the wrist; trills; overlapping of the hands. In this there is more thrift, while there is no talk of absolute completeness. The “manieren” slowly cease to occupy important chapters; the pedals again come by their own; for Kalkbrenner as a Parisian hates the dry tone of the Vienna pianoforte. Execution also begins to receive a systematic treatment. Interesting references are made to punctuation in order to illustrate musical phraseology; conclusions on the tonic are a full stop; on the dominant a semicolon; while interrupted cadences are a note of exclamation. This is naive enough, but it is at any rate a beginning.

We are thus already standing at the point at which clavier theory decomposes itself into its elements. If Hummel was the great theoretician, Czerny was the great man of practice; a quite unique person, the hero of all piano-teachers, whose practical eye runs equally over all the possibilities of playing, and works them out in separate parts; the genius of the Étude. He it was who discovered the great secret that no separation of methods of fingering is of any avail in practice, but that the perfection of the fingers must be carried out solely on the basis of their mechanical gymnastic. It is useless to try to apply my five fingers to so many theoretically possible permutations; the important question is what practical use can be made of my fingers according to their physical structure. Czerny has no obsolete rules of practice, but a science of mechanism; thus taking the very opposite pole to Hummel. Piano-study, which with Couperin and Philip Emanuel was still a part of a musical training with just the necessary amount of mechanics, became with him primarily the gymnastic of the fingers with the addition of instruction in touch and execution. Long past are the times when the good old clavier was only used to “fill” the song, which was after all the essence of music. From music we have come to the fingers. A science of the fingers is constructed, and the fingers are trained as earlier only the throat was trained. Technique has remembered her own ways, and made the last first. The emancipation of finger-gymnastic was an epoch-marking point in the treatment of the piano, the desired answer of theory to practice, which for a long time had recognised the specific art of the piano. It was perhaps the last important stride in its emancipation when the results of practice were made the groundwork of instruction. Czerny, in his great Pianoforte School, his Opus 500, is almost entirely free from the _à priori_ theory. He transfers mechanics to music. With good results he treats individual cases, as for example, when he appends to the beginning of passages a finger-exercise not given in the scale; he designs immediately to return to the usual fingering in order to arrive duly at the extreme notes with the extreme fingers, and to avoid unnecessary underpassing. It was reserved for a later time not merely to bring the note-material lying before us into harmony with economic fingering, but also to make execution, which with Czerny has but a loose dependence on the finger-exercise, re-act upon the fingers. Bülow, for example, is fond of unusual fingering, in which the execution forbids any too easy playing, and a too loose rendering is prevented by irregularities in the succession of the fingers.

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The mechanics of the fingers formed the first part of piano-instruction; touch and execution were the second. Their importance as means to the mechanism of music was fully seen; and in the “Technical Studies” of Plaidy, or in Köhler’s “Methode für Klavierspiel und Musik” (1857), they are as exhaustively handled as before had been the “manieren” or the thorough-bass. The former contents himself with the simple terms, Legato, Staccato, Legatissimo, and Portamento; the latter gives a more mechanical division, always according to the use of the fore-arm, the finger-joints, the wrist, or the elbow. Neither is complete, neither supplies a systematic advance on the lines of his predecessors; and we should be astonished at these divergences if we set the numerous schools of these times, from a theoretical point of view, over against one another. Practically considered, however, they agree well enough. The holding of the hand as enjoined by Philip Emanuel Bach has remained on the whole unaltered down to the present day. With trifling differences, which concern the relation of the extreme fingers to the middle finger, and the profile of the back of the hand, Bach, Türk, Müller, Hummel, Logier, Kalkbrenner and the rest, are at one as to the support of the arm which carries the hand, and of the hand which carries the fingers as they descend. In Paris Logier constructed an instrument to hold the hand in practice, in shape like a bracket, which he named “chiroplast.” Kalkbrenner, in his “Guide-mains,” introduced some modifications on the chiroplast; but such mechanical contrivances gained no general acceptance. Logier’s speciality was his prefatory note that the finger must remain in continual touch with the key. With this was allied that special kind of sensuously charming touch which differentiated the Parisian school from the brilliant playing of the Viennese and the emotional style of the English. That _carezzando_, or stroking of the keys, was a favourite practice of Kalkbrenner and Kontski in Paris. To-day Risler remains perhaps alone in this school with his pure sensuous charm of touch.

If, in the whole great group of technical artists, which is bounded on the one side by Wölffl, Wanhal, Kozeluch, Eberl, in Mozart’s generation, and on the other by Thalberg and Liszt in ours, we should look for truly pre-eminent spirits, then we should have remaining Clementi, the father of all technique; Hummel, the inventor of the modern piano-exercise; and Czerny, the genius of teaching. But if we ask for the lines of the motion which runs through this epoch, we observe the victory of a virtuoso impulse, which goes back to Hummel, over a plainer and more intellectual tendency which has its rise in Clementi. The school of Clementi prefers the English pianoforte with its heavier but richer touch; that of Hummel the Viennese, with its lighter tone, which lends itself more easily to effects.

But it is not possible to draw a sharp line between the two groups. A Moscheles serves not less the spirit of Clementi than that of Hummel. The simplicity of Cramer, the counterpoint of Klengel, the plainness of Ludwig Berger, the intensity of Field, belong to the circle of Clementi’s influence. Berger’s pupils, Greulich, Heinrich Dorn, Wilhelm Taubert, Albert Löschhorn, whose studies still live, carry this style down to our own time. The teaching of Hummel lived on in Ferdinand Hiller, Benedict, Wilmers, Baake, Ernst Pauer, the Viennese Pixis. While Beethoven left behind him as actual pupils only the Archduke Rudolf and Ferdinand Ries, a respectable imitator, his temporary pupil Czerny passed over into the wake of Hummel, and brought the Viennese style to a final victory. Kalkbrenner, Moscheles, Weber, Liszt, Thalberg, Döhler, Madame Oury, Madame Pleyel, Theodore Kullak, Pollini, of whom many belong externally to Clementi’s school, passed as apostles of Viennese technique to all lands from St Petersburg to London, from Paris to Milan.

Certain traditions of musical coteries and centres of instruction exhibit with this international character some more or less important local groups. In Prague men adored Tomaschek, the composer of Eclogues and Rhapsodies; Dionysius Weber, the first director of a Conservatorium there; and his successor Kittl. From Tomaschek’s school proceeded Alexander Dreyschock, the specialist of the left hand; Ignaz Tedesco, the “Hannibal of octaves”; and Schulhoff, the fashionable composer. In the middle of the century the Prague tradition was upheld by Proksch.

In Frankfort lived Vollweiler, who enjoyed a widespread renown as a teacher, and later went to St Petersburg; and Aloys Schmitt, whose delicate Études have been taken up by Bülow into his great collection of educational pieces.

Vienna alternates, but never loses in wealth. Berlin and St Petersburg as yet produced no fixed or permanent school. Leipzig takes its colour from the foundation of the Conservatorium with Mendelssohn and Moscheles and their fellow-citizen Schumann. England, from Clementi to Moscheles, imported a constant succession of Continental artists. The influence of the Conservatorium runs far and wide. A Strassburger named Hüllmandel, who took up his abode in Paris in 1776, had started clavier-instruction there. His pupil Jadin was director of the piano at the new Conservatoire. For forty-six years after 1797, Adam, whose name we remember because of his improved piano-school, carried on his labours in Paris. He was a tasteful professor, and brought the Parisian renown to its height. Kalkbrenner, the acrobat, succeeded him. Adam’s colleague, Pradher, was the teacher of those worst of fashionable composers, Herz, Hünten, Rosellen, shallowest and emptiest of musicians. Within the same walls was a Chopin!

The life of the great virtuosos is a reflection of the unrest inseparable from their calling. It is indeed no longer a life of adventure, as with Marchand and Froberger; there is method in the madness. The life of the executant, no less than the execution, has found its form. The concert-campaigns are the foundation; the warrior returns to his home at greater and greater intervals; until at last, when delight in recitals has waned along with the pliancy of the fingers, some resting-place or other is found--a share in a piano-manufactory or a steady round of instruction. During the campaigns instruction also takes a kind of locomotive form; devoted pupils follow the master, and leave him at fitting places, to pitch their tents there and make room for other peregrinating pupils. Or, on the other hand, pupils swarm from all parts of the earth to a place which the Master is always leaving, but to which he constantly returns--like the summer students of German universities--a type of professional existence of which Liszt’s Weimar period gives perhaps the most famous exemplification.