Chapter II: Part 2

C sharp major is the key of No. 6, and has a touch of the fantastic element that we find in the variations. No. 7 in C sharp minor-major is full of harmonic variety. My two favorites of the set are the valses in B flat and D minor. Both are poems. The one in B flat is a proof positive of Brahms’ “geniality.” In a small piano piece by the Russian Liadow, the same melodic and rhythmic idea is utilized; even the pretty modulation from B flat to D flat is not overlooked. Then on the page opposite in the valse in D minor, Brahms pilfers boldly from Schumann. In the Pièces Caractéristiques (Die Davidsbündler) No. 18, in C, certainly prompted Brahms, but with what ease and variety has he not handled the other man’s theme! It is like a sigh, an unshed tear, and is more Brahms than it is Schumann.

By a clever suspension we are at once led to dance No. 10 in G. The next valse in B minor might have been written by Schubert. It is a charming pendant to the Momen Musicale, or is it an impromptu in F minor?

There are sixteen in all and I have briefly indicated the principal ones, although there is yet another in the key of G sharp minor and a delightful one in A flat, No. 15. This has the true tang of Brahms, the amiability, the large, sweet nature, the touch of life that we call universal when we find it in Shakespeare. Brahms is far from being a poet of the universal, for he is too German, lacks marked profile and is more the philosopher than the bard. Yet has he something of fulness of life; the strenuous ideality that is always found in world-poets.

Remember, too, that I am considering the man from the points of view of his piano works. Consider the great German Requiem, the C minor symphony, the D minor piano concerto, before you class this composer as a specialist working within well defined limitations. I dislike playing the part of an advocate when all should be so clear in the Brahms question, but I do so because of his supreme indifference to what anyone thought of his theory and practice, and also because of the cloud thrown over him by his warmest enemies and most misguided admirers. That he lives, that he gains continually in strength, and this, too, in spite of the Brahmsianer, is a satisfactory guarantee of his genius.

Let me quote for you what Louis Ehlert--by no means a Brahmsianer--wrote of the Walzer: “Having in time assumed an ordinary and most material character, dance music has been led back to the domain of high art by Schubert and Chopin. Dancing may be accomplished in many ways: passionately, indifferently, distractedly or symbolically. The symbolic dancer will introduce in his motions the poetic idea underlying the dance; that is, the fleeting, half confidential, and yet not binding, contact of one person with another of the opposite sex, a sort of rhythmic dialogue without words. And Brahms possessed the gift of substantiating his mastery in this field by the charm of half revealed sentiment, by the modest denial of the scarcely uttered confession and by his power of rendering the wildest yearnings speechless with confusion.

“At times, it is true, he handles his subject in a more decided manner, but the most beautiful among his waltzes are those whose cheeks are tinged with blushes. Brahms carried the freshness of youth into his later years, and blushes are peculiarly becoming to him. His sweetest melodies are merely tinted with a rosy hue; they do not possess the deep, summery complexion of Schubert’s. The small opus has become the ancestor of a small literature, and many of our contemporary musicians have walked in the way of the Brahms waltzes.”

Elsewhere he says of the Love Song Waltzes for mixed quartet, with four-handed piano accompaniment: “Schumann and Chopin have themselves scarcely succeeded in arriving at a more intellectual and poetic form of the dance.” And remember Ehlert wrote of Brahms: “His fancy is lacking in melodic tide,” and also, “Brahms’ music has no profile; ... by this remark I do not mean absolute censure, for, like Handel, one can have too much profile, too much nose and chin, and too little of the full glance of the eye.”

I transcribe all this to show you the impression made upon his doubting contemporaries by this richly gifted composer.

IV

In op. 21 there are two sets of variations--one in D, on an original theme, the second in the same key, on a Hungarian song. They are both excellent preparatory studies for the more famous pair. In them we get the peculiar Brahms technic amply illustrated--for instance, the first variation of the opus. It begins with a characteristic figure in the bass, the harmonic extensions showing how ingeniously Brahms handled the arpeggio, avoiding a tone, accentuating another and gaining new color. There are some interesting variations in this set, No. 7, with its wide intervals; No. 9, another pedal bass effect with huge skips that look like yawning precipices, yet I do not particularly care for the set, although constant study of Brahms reveals new points of interest. The variations on a Hungarian song are even less fruitful in treatment, but will repay study.

When, however, we take up op. 24, variations and fugue on a theme by Handel, we begin to sense the extraordinary fertility of Brahms. The theme itself, in B flat, is a square-toed aria, and what Brahms does with it is most entertaining, ingenious and musicianly. From the very first variation, surely full of humor, we get a view of the possibilities of the variation form. I am not sure but that these variations are more ingenuous, less sophisticated, and contain less of the étude than the Paganini variations. As they are occasionally played I shall not go into detailed description of the difficulties, except to say that the entire twenty-five are alive with musical invention and a certain genial feeling, a geniality that eminently suits the ruddy-cheeked tune of Handel. There is the fifth variation in B flat minor, there is the fourth with its bass and treble dialogue, the fourteenth in double sixths and the energetic attack of the nineteenth are all noteworthy.

The fugue is a capital specimen of close treatment, yet in spirit very free. I do not begin to find it as dry as certain of the Beethoven fugues, and it is devilishly tricky.

The variations on the Paganini theme in A minor are frankly studies, but transcendental studies, only fit to be mentioned in company with Liszt’s. Apparently the top-notch of virtuosity had been reached and there remained nothing for Brahms to do but let an astonishingly fantastic imagination loose and play pranks that would have caused Schumann to shout with admiration. The very first variation is a subtle compliment to Schumann’s toccata, and the second, with the sixths in the left hand, is very trying for players with short-breathed fingers. In the third we get rolling rhythms that excite more than they lull. In the fourth Brahms asks too much of mortal man with a top trill on a chord, the left hand gambolling over the impossible. Then follow some octave studies the reverse of easy, especially the ninth in chords. The eleventh is a veritable toccata; the thirteenth one of the most brilliant and popular of the set. The fourteenth is terrible, exacting and long, for it closes the set. Brahms, to use a faded figure of speech piles Pelion upon Ossa in the coda.

The second book starts in with a tremendous and exciting study in double notes, and the sudden muscular contractions and expansion caused by alternations of double thirds and octaves is exhausting to anyone but a virtuoso. The tenth variation, marked Feroce, energico, exhibits skilful use of arpeggio forms, and the eleventh variation is simply baffling. In the next one we get a breathing spell, one of those green melodic oases in which Brahms proves to you how easy it is for a great, strong soul to be gentle and tender.

It may not be considered amiss here to take a passing glance at some of Brahms’ daily studies for the piano. Naturally a man fond of solving abstruse technical problems, he could scarcely let pass the studies of other composers without considering them in varied aspects. So he has taken Chopin’s tender, whispering study in F minor (op. 25), and broken it on the wheel of double sixths and thirds. It may be magnificent technic, but, as Rudyard Kipling would ask: Is it art? It is certainly legitimate experimenting, but I fancy not fit for publication. A flood of imitations have resulted, and in some cases Chopin has suffered exceedingly. Happily the extreme difficulty of the Brahms transcriptions will prevent them from ever becoming as popular as much of Chopin. They are written for a parterre of virtuosi.

The étude after Chopin is entertaining for the fingers, and of more educational value than Franz Bendel’s treatment of sixths in his B flat minor study, the étude Heroique.

But what shall I say of the Weber rondo, the so-called perpetual movement, topsy-turvied by Brahms, and actually played by him in concert? It is very bewildering and finally laughable. As a left hand study in velocity it is supreme. He has subjected a presto by Bach to two rather drastic treatments, and the famous chaconne he arranged for the left hand alone. This latter has one good point, it can be played easily by both hands, and the immortal piece enjoyed, for with Bach, Brahms is reverent to a degree.

The fifty-one studies recently published are little gold mines for the student of Brahms. They are more musical than Tausig’s daily studies and also more normal. In them may be found all the norms of Brahms’ technical figuration, the mixed rhythms, the curious extensions, the double notes in thirds and sixths, with all manner of ingenious fingering. Examine the fifth study, occupying but a page, and you will find the key to one of the most formidable difficulties in the Paganini studies. It is in broken octaves, arranged in scale fashion and taken at a rapid tempo. Various examples will be found of this figure. Then there are single finger exercises, skips, scales and interlocked octaves and chords. Both books are of the highest importance. Max Vogrich says that the title of the studies should be A Hospital for Disabled Virtuosi.

The twenty-one Hungarian dances were originally arranged for the piano and afterward transferred to the orchestra. They are so familiar in their orchestral garb that I need hardly allude to them except to say that some of them are not so well adapted for the piano. But there are a half dozen that will outlive all the Liszt rhapsodies, for Brahms has penetrated more deeply the Hungarian spirit, has caught color, swing, perfume, mad melancholy and reckless joy without a suspicion of the glittering embroidery of Liszt’s virtuoso-like paraphrases. These dances of Brahms can be made to sound superbly if played by a pianist with temperament, above all a pianist who has in his veins Magyar blood.

I wish I had been in Leipsic in January, 1859, among the big-wigs of music and listened to the first performance of the D minor, the first piano concerto, played by its composer, Johannes Brahms. The Gewandhaus must have been disgusted by “the symphony with piano obbligato,” as the critics called it; curiously enough, this work has set the pace for the modern concerto, of which Eugen d’Albert’s two works in B minor and E major are extreme examples.

Yet carefully read the D minor concerto to-day, and much of its so-called obscurity vanishes. When I first heard the work played by Wilhelmine Claus, an excellent artist, I confess that, fresh from “Chopinism,” this concerto sounded mournfully vague and uncertain. Its seriousness was, however, not its only drawback to popularity. “Where,” asked a bewildered public, accustomed to the panderings of “pianism,” “where are our trills, our scales, our runs all over the landscape of the keyboard? Give us our cadenza, our big triumphal entrance, and our brilliant finale, and we will endure a few bars from the orchestra;” bars, let it be said, that about suffice to allow the solo player to settle in his seat, recover his wind and nerve and warm his fingers.

But Brahms thought differently from the critic and public; to him a piano concerto was the sonata form amplified, and the piano, unless it had something to say, must hold its tongue between its burnished ivory teeth. Do not, however, imagine that the pianist has a few doleful chords to play. There are difficulties enough, and of a trying and unusual order. As for the seriousness of the work we cannot deny that it is dark at times, especially in the orchestra, and full of the strenuous, solid sincerity of the composer. I cannot help thinking here of what Hadow wrote for the benefit of those who find Brahms too grave and earnest:--

The same may be said of Æschylus and Dante, of Milton, of Wordsworth.... Music is an art of at least the same dignity as poetry or painting; it admits of similar distinctions, it appeals to similar faculties, and in it, also, the highest field is that occupied with the most serious issues.... If we are disposed to find fault with Brahms because the greater part of his music is grave and earnest, let us at least endeavor to realize how such a criticism would sound if it were directed against the Divina Commedia, or the Agamemnon, or Paradise Lost.

For Ehlert the D minor concerto was “his first crusade into the promised land of art.” He furthermore finds it penetrating, rugged and unpleasant, but of “undisguised grandeur.... Its score represents the act of divorce between the pianist Brahms and the universal composer.”

The first tutti covers all but five pages; but how entrancingly enters the opening subject! I find it simply captivating and without a trace of harshness. Of course if you will thump the piano like some pianists who believe that both Bach and Brahms are dry, pedantic music-worms, you cannot expect any response full of musical and intellectual charm. And let me say now that half the harm done to Bach and Brahms is that so successfully accomplished by pianists who fail to discern the exquisite musical quality of these composers. Give the public less arithmetic and more emotional and tonal variety, and presently you may find Bach and Brahms ending a programme instead of escorting a reluctant audience to its seat.

On page eleven of the concerto stands the second theme of the first movement in F. Show me anything lovelier, more suave, even in Mozart, and I will be surprised. It is the earnest and strict polyphonic treatment throughout and not any paucity of melodic material that irritates those that still believe music is made, like bonbons, to tickle the palate and soothe digestion. There is admirable logic in the working out section and plenty of finger, wrist and arm breaking technic. The last two pages--pages thirty-two and thirty-three--coming as they do, will force any strong musical man to exert himself.

The second movement, an adagio, gives us after Brahms the thinker, Brahms the poet. It is in the key of D and could only have been conceived by a man of the highest musical ideas and deep feeling. There is an episode on page thirty-six that gives the lie to the critics with strabismic hearing. It is in melody and harmony, simply golden. The rondo is in strict form, full of classic glee, and very effective, even in the old-fashioned piano sense. It demands enduring, honest fingers, and much breadth of style.

Properly speaking, the second piano concerto in B flat, op. 83, belongs to my so-called second manner of the composer. In it there is less of the philosophic brooding of the first concerto. It is more passionate, more fluent, more direct and more dramatic. It shows the same unerring grasp of construction; but there is, throughout, more of the musician of the world, less of the introspective and contemplative poet. It is brilliant--especially the passage work--for the piano. The enunciation of the first theme by the horn is memorable; beautiful, too, is the violoncello solo in the slow movement, while the Hungarian finale contains some of the most charming pages written for piano and orchestra. It is dashing and piquant, and the second theme is truly Magyar.

This concerto is always sure to be more popular than the first, with its Faust-like questionings. Brahms has dared to be worldly and less recondite for once.

V

It seems to me that the pièce de résistance of the Brahms piano music is the Paganini Variations; those famous, awesome, o’er-toppling, huge, fantastic, gargoylean variations erected, planned and superimposed by Brahms upon a characteristic theme of Paganini.

Brahms and Paganini! Was ever so strange a couple in harness? Caliban and Ariel, Jove and Puck. The stolid German, the vibratile Italian! Yet fantasy wins, even if brewed in a homely Teutonic kettle. Brahms has taken the little motif--a true fiddle motif--of Paganini, and tossed it ball-wise in the air, and while it spiral spins and bathes in the blue, he cogitates, and his thought is marvellously fine spun. Webs of gold and diamond spiders and the great round sun splashing about, and then deep divings into the bowels of the firmament and growlings and subterrene rumblings, and all the while the poor maigre Paganini, a mere palimpsest for the terrible old man of Hamburg, from whose pipe wreathed musical smoky metaphysics, and whose eyes are fixed on the Kantean categories.

These diabolical variations, the last word in the technical literature of the piano, are also vast spiritual problems. To play them requires fingers of steel, a heart of burning lava and the courage of a lion. You see, these variations are an obsession with me.

Now take up the Chopin Preludes, and the last, a separate one, op. 45, in the key of C sharp minor. It begins with an idea that Mendelssohn employs in his Song Without Words in A minor, “Regret,” I think, is the fanciful name given it by the publishers; but play until you come to the thirteenth bar, and, behold, you are landed in the middle of Brahms. I do not mean to say that Brahms copied Chopin, but the mood and its physical presentation are identical with some of the music of the later Brahms, the Brahms of the second period. The most curious part about this coincidence is that the ten bars that follow do not sound like Chopin, but Brahms--oh, so Brahmsian, that bitter-sweet lingering, that spiritual reverie in which the musical idea is gently propelled as if in some elusive dream. Then there are the extended chords, the shifting harmonic hues, the very bars are built up like Brahms. Of course Brahms would have been Brahms without Chopin; he really owes the Pole less than he owes Schumann, nevertheless here we are confronted with a startling similarity of theme and treatment.

I fancied that Bach anticipated everyone in modern music, but Chopin anticipating Brahms is almost in the nature of a delicate, ironical jest; yet it is not more singular than Beethoven anticipating Schumann and Chopin in the adagio of the sonata, op. 106, and in the arioso dolente of the sonata, op. 110.

There is nothing new under the sun, said some venerable polyphonic pundit, in omphalic contemplation on the banks of the Ganges, and music amply illustrates this eld saying.

But to op. 76, Clavierstücke von Johannes Brahms. This opus is divided into eight numbers, capriccios and intermezzi; for the composer disliked excessively giving his music set names, although it seems to me that with his intense Teutonism he might have followed Schumann’s example and avoided the Italian nomenclature as much as possible.

Then again these little pieces are not always well named, for the rhapsodies are seldom rhapsodies in the conventional sense, and the intermezzi are, I suppose, intended to fill in, as the name indicates, some intermediate place; but as a matter of fact they do not, for they are often bunched together. It is to be supposed that Brahms attached some intellectual significance to these titles that is caviare to the general.

The first capriccio of op. 76 is in the key of F sharp minor, the brief, restless introductory suggesting, but rather faintly, Schumann. The principal melody is structurally in the style of Mendelssohn, but the harmonization and development of a sort that would have repelled the gentle Felix, who disliked anything bristling or forbidding. The mood-color is gloomy, even to despair. There is a ray of light in the diminished chord that preludes the return of the theme, which is treated in inversion--a characteristic trick of Brahms. Near the close the melody is sounded in quarter-noted chords and most resolutely, but soon melts away into vaporous figuration, the piece ending in the major, but without a ray of sunshine.

The second capriccio is the familiar one in B minor, played staccato throughout, and a piquant and almost agreeable piano composition. Do you know that I never hear it without being reminded of the fourth number in Schumann’s Die Davidsbündler, which is also in B minor. It is as if Brahms took that syncopated page and built over it his capriccio, with its capricious staccati and ingenious harmonic changes. Of course the resemblance vanishes after the third bar; it is really more spiritual than actual.

Interesting it is to follow the permutations of the composer. On page nine there is a refreshing and perfectly sane modulation from E major to F, and the return to the subject is cleverly managed. The frisky yet somewhat saturnine character is maintained to the end, and the doubling up on page twelve is very effective. A genuine piano piece is this B minor capriccio.

We now come to the lovely A flat intermezzo, which occasionally strays in an uneasy fashion on the concert stage. A few pianists play this tender wreath of moonbeams and love, but either too slow or too fast. To play Brahms sentimentally is to slay Brahms; yet this charming intermezzo in A flat must not be taken too slow. It exhales an odor of purity, of peace, that is not quite untroubled, and nothing sweeter can be imagined than the dolce on the first page that follows a ritenuto and introduces a break in the melody. Its two pages are the two pages of a masterpiece. They give us Brahms at his best and in his most lovable mood.

The next intermezzo is more shy and more diffident. Marked allegretto grazioso, its graciousness is veiled by a hesitating reserve which further on becomes almost painful. Mark where the double notes begin, mark the progression and its dark downward inflection. But it is a beautiful bit of writing, with some of the characteristics of a nocturne, but full of questionings, full of enigmatic pain. Brahms, too, suffered severely from Weltschmerz.

The second book of op. 76 is a distinct advance in mastery of material, in the expression and realization of moods almost too recondite and remote. The C sharp minor capriccio which begins the book is more lengthy and more ambitious than any in the work. It is an agitated, passionate composition, driving through darkness and storm without relief, until a silent poco tranquillo is reached; but the point of repose is soon abandoned and the turmoil begins anew and the ending is full of gloom and fierceness. I catch Schumann in spots; for example, near the end of the second line on the second page, when a rank modulation stares you in the face, but with the eyes of Robert the Fantastic. The tempest-like character of the capriccio is marked. It is a true soul-storm in which the spirit, buffeted and drenched by the wind and wave of adversity, is almost subdued; but the harsh and haughty coda shows indomitable courage at the last. It is a powerful companion picture for Schumann’s Aufschwung.

Then follow in the next intermezzo perfect calm, perfect repose of mind and body. In the slow moving triplets Brahms indicates those curves of quiet that enfold us when we are at one with ourselves, with nature. Indescribably lovely is the first page of this intermezzo. Even the section in F sharp minor is gracious and without a hint of the tragic. The piece ends in A major stillness.

The next number is also an intermezzo, and with my absurd feeling for similarities I hear in it an echo of Chopin’s F minor nocturne. The resemblance is not as rhythmic as it is melodic. For gray days this intermezzo was written; go play it when the sun is holding high and heated revelry in the heavens and you will feel, rather than see, a shadow cross your inner vision. It is our pessimistic Brahms again, and the mood for the moment is almost one of mild self-torture. A nocturne in gray, not too profound, too poignant, rather a note of melancholy is sounded, a thin edge of light that stipples the gloom with really more doubt than despair.

The eighth and last number of the opus is a capriccio, a genuine, whirling, fantastic capriccio. It is not easy to play; needing light, sure fingers and a light, gay spirit. In the second section we encounter a melody of the later Brahms type. It delights in seizing remote keys, or rather contiguous keys, that are widely disparate in relationship and forcing them to consort, the result being perversely novel and sometimes startling. Some of the modulatory work is very interesting, particularly the enharmonic progressions at the bottom of the second page. The capriccio fitly closes a volume of original and suggestive piano music, but music that is sealed to the amateur searching for showy or mere mellifluous effects. After you have played Bach and Beethoven, after you have exhausted--if such a thing is possible--Chopin and Schumann, you will perhaps grasp the involuted and poetical music contained in op. 76 of Brahms.

At last we reach op. 79, the two rhapsodies much talked of, much wrangled over and seldom played.

The first rhapsody is in B minor and is as unrhapsodic as you can well imagine. It is drastic, knotty, full of insoluble ideas, the melodic contour far from melting and indeed hardly plastic. The mood is sternly Dorian and darkling. It is the intellectual Brahms who confronts us with his supreme disdain for what we like or dislike; it is Brahms giving utterance to bitter truths, and only when he reaches the section in D minor does he relax and sing in smoother accents; but those common chords in B flat ruthlessly interrupt the Norse-like melody, and we are once again launched on the sea of troubled argument. This B minor rhapsody always sounds to me as if its composer were trying to prove something algebraic, all the while knitting his awful brows in the most logical manner. There is little rhapsody in it, but of intellectual acrimoniousness much. The second melody has an astringency that is very grateful to mental palates weary of the sweets of other composers.

This melody in B is another typical one of the sort referred to above. You could swear it is Brahms, even if heard in a dark room with your ears closed--to be very Irish! The merging of this theme into the first is characteristically accomplished, and the old dispute is renewed. As acrid as decaying bronze is this rhapsody, and yet its content is intellectual and lofty, the subsidiary melody in D minor being the one bit of relief throughout. There are scales in the piece, but surely not for display, and the regularly constructed coda is very interesting. This first rhapsody is for the head rather than the heart.

But the second in G minor is magnificent; more ballade-like than rhapsodic, yet a distinct narrative and one about which I love to drape all manner of subjective imaginings. The bold modulation of the theme, its swiftness, fervor and power are very fascinating. I love to think of my favorite, Browning’s Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came. With what mastery and economy of means are not the most dramatic effects compassed! Begin with the chord in E minor so rapidly translated into G minor, and thence onward. You can fairly revel in the exhibition of tragic force, in the free, firm, bold handling of a subject stripped of all musical verbiage and reduced to its lowest mathematical term. The working out is famous in its intensity, in its grip; never for a moment is the theme lost, never for a moment is subsidiary material introduced. There is no padding, and the great, gaunt skeleton of the structure would be exposed if it were not for the rush, the color, the dynamic density of the mass. A wonderful, glorious, bracing tone-picture in which Brahms, the philosopher, burns the boats of his old age and becomes for the time a youthful Faust in search of a sensation. A hurricane of emotion that is barely stilled at the end, this rhapsody reminds me of the bardic recital of some old border ballad. In it there is tragedy and the cry of bruised hearts; in it there is fierce action, suffocating passion and a letting loose of the elements of the soul. It is an epic for the keyboard, and before its cryptic tones we shudder and are amazed!

VI

Op. 116 is made up of two books of small pieces called Fantaisien and divided into capriccios and intermezzi, seven in all. A bold, restless capriccio, a presto in D minor, begins the set. Here is the later Brahms with a vengeance. Cross accents, harmonic cross-relations, and what Hadow calls organic unity in the emotional aspect with organic diversity in the choice of keys. Very daring, very difficult is this energetic composition. In the seventeenth bar we find the Hungarian creeping in, in the characteristic Brahms style, but it only peeps at you for a few bars and is lost in the hurly-burly of mixed rhythms and tonalities. The entire character of the piece is resolute, vigorous and powerful. It is finely developed both in the emotional and intellectual aspects.

The intermezzo in A minor which follows is lovely. In its native simplicity it is almost as noteworthy as the introduction to the Chopin Ballade in F major-A minor. Its sweet melancholy has the resigned quality that Maeterlinck speaks of when describing an old man who sits serenely in his chair and listens to the spiritual messages in the air; sits humbly, peacefully, with sweetly folded hands, and awaits--awaits what? The tranquillity of this nocturne is unbroken even in the second part, where a whispering figure in the treble enlaces the theme. It is another of those vaporish mysteries, those shadowy forms seen at dusk near the gray, thin edges of forests. Whether from caprice or logic Brahms makes a chromatic détour of an entire line before the coda. It is as interesting as it is unusual. This intermezzo is for pure, pious souls, and it is not very young music. It contains an unusual sequence of chords of the seventh in two parts, the fifths being omitted.

Of different calibre is the capriccio in G minor. No. 3 of the set. Passionate, agitated and intensely moving is the first theme, and the second in E flat major recalls to Mr. Fuller-Maitland the style of the early piano sonatas. But there is freer modulation and more economy of material. Brahms was not a young man when he wrote this opus, yet for the most part it is astonishingly youthful and elastic. There is fire and caprice in this composition that make it extremely effective for the concert stage.

More remote, but exquisitely tender and intimate, is the intermezzo which begins the second book of op. 116. It is my favorite number, and its caressing accents set you dreaming. In the entire range of piano literature I cannot recall a more individual and more beautiful piece of music, and I am fully conscious that I am writing these words and all they implicate.

Solemnly the triolen are sung in the bass, but the treble phrase that follows is purely feminine and questioning. So slender are the outlines of this piece that they seem to wave and weave in the air. The pianissimi are almost too spiritual to translate into tone; and yet throughout, despite the stillness of the music, its rich quiet, there is no hint of the sensuous. The luxuriance of color is purely of the spirit--the spirit that broods over the mystery and beauty of life. Brahms’ music is never sexless; but at times he seems to withdraw from the dust, the flesh-pots and the noise of life, and erects in his heart a temple wherein may be worshipped Beauty.

Of ineffable, haunting beauty is this intermezzo; and it is worth a wilderness of some sonatas and loudly trumpeted rhapsodies by men acclaimed of great reputation. The ending is benign.

The next intermezzo, in E minor, is, I confess, gnomic for me. It is marked andante con grazia ed intimissimo sentimento. It is in six-eight time, and built on phrases of two notes. Intimate, yes, but the intimacy is all on the side of the composer, for you must long pursue this cryptic bit of writing before you begin to unravel its complicated meanings. The composition is extremely original, extremely poetic; more like a sigh, a half-uttered complaint of a melancholy soul. To play it you must first be a poet, then a pianist.

The next intermezzo is really a minuet. It is in E, and finely differentiated from its companions of the volume.

A capriccio, also in D minor, closes this work. It is quite brilliant, and, oddly enough, contains a full-fledged bravoura passage, in the nature of a cadenza, and after the most approved modern manner. It, too, would be extremely effective in concert.

Op. 117, three intermezzi, leads off with a delicious cradle song, which I cannot quite agree with Max Vogrich, as being fit to lull to slumber a royal babe. Indeed, the child rocked to sleep by Brahms is not so aristocratic nor so delicate as the infant of the Chopin Berçeuse but it is just as precious, even if homelier. The character of the music is confessedly Scottish, and has for a motto Herder’s “Schlaf sanft, mein kind, schlaf sanft und schön!” The harmonies are thick, crowded, and the melody charmingly naïve and childlike. One might reasonably expect from Brahms the vision of some intellectual looking baby, its skull covered with metaphysical bumps and from its mouth issuing sounds of senile wisdom. But this is not the case, for it is a real lullaby we listen to, even if the second section is darker than one expects. The return of the subject with the octave in the upper voice is well managed, and the composition ends in cooing repose.

An intermezzo in B flat minor follows, and after playing and digesting it let me hear no more complaints about Brahms’ style being “unpianistic.” This number has been called Schumannish, but the comparison is a surface one. Its pages are truly Brahms, and very difficult it is to play in its insolent, airy ease.

The last intermezzo of the book in C sharp minor is of sterner stuff. Fuller-Maitland finds in it a suggestion of the finale of Brahms’ third symphony. For me it is most exotic, and has a flavor of the Asiatic in its naked, monophonic, ballad-like measures. There is an evident narrative of sorrowful mien, and you encounter a curious refrain in A, as if one expostulated at the closing of some gruesome statement. Of weighty import is this piece, and in it there is smothered irony and slightly veiled suffering, and in it there stalks an apparition of woe, of ennui. Page fourteen shows the hand of a master.

There are some who find this op. 117 a distinct gain over the previous work. I cannot truthfully say that I appreciate this criticism, for both volumes contain gems of the purest. Temperament has naturally its own preferences. I have broadly indicated my favorite numbers, and perhaps next year may discover new beauties in the compositions that now fail to make a strong personal appeal. Certain it is that no number should be slighted.

We now near the end, for only op. 118 and op. 119 remain to be considered. The first intermezzo in A minor of the former opus starts off in an exultant mood--a mood of joyful anticipation. In it you are glad to be alive, to breathe the tonic air, to be smothered in the sunshine. Tell me not in doleful numbers that Johannes Brahms cannot be optimistic, cannot hitch his wagon to a star, cannot fight fate. There is passionate intensity and swift motion in this intermezzo. While playing it you are billowed up by the consciousness of power and nobility of soul. The tonality is most diverting and varied.

The succeeding intermezzo is in F minor, and is andante. A very graciously pretty piano piece it is, and well within the grasp of a moderate technic. The melodic material is copious and rich, and the harmonies very grateful. For example, play the F sharp section and the following measures after the double bar in F sharp major; how genial, what resource in modulatory tactics, what appreciation of diversity in treatment!

A stirring and royal ballade in G minor follows. It is Brahms of the masculine gender, the warlike, impetuous recounter of brave deeds and harsh contest. Although the key coloring is gloomy, there is too much action, spirit and bravery in the ballade for gloom to perch long on the banners of the composer. A wonderful second subject in B interrupts the rush of the battle, which is soon resumed. Even its pauses are brilliant.

The fourth intermezzo in A flat has quite a savor of the rococo, with its gentle theme and response. Something of the Old World hovers in its rustling bars, the workmanship of which is very ingenious, especially in the management of the basses in the second part. There is a tiny current of agitation in this intermezzo, despite its delicacy of contour, its lightness of treatment.

No. 5 is a romance suffused with idyllic feeling. There is atmosphere and there is the heart quality, a quality lacking in most modern composers. A very grateful composition, simple and serene, is this romance.

E flat minor is the key of the last intermezzo of op. 118, and a trying composition it is, requiring nimble fingers, fleet fingers and a light, strong wrist. The idea reminds me of one of Brahms’ earlier pieces, a mere kernel of a figure, which is expanded, amplified, broadened, deepened by the composer at will. It is full of fantastic poetry, and there is sweep and vision in the composition, which has a ring of dolour and is full of the sombreness of a sad, strong soul.

Op. 119 ends the Brahms music for the piano. The daily studies were doubtlessly written before. But the four pieces that comprise op. 119 may be said to be practically the last music for the instrument he loved so faithfully. There is no falling off in inspiration or workmanship. The idea and its expression are woven in one strand; there is much polishing of phrase and no lack of robustness.

The opening number is in B minor, an intermezzo, an adagio, and full of reverent, sedate music. Since Beethoven no one can vie with Brahms in writing a slow, sober movement; one in which the man, moral, intellectual and physical, girds up his loins, conserves his forces and says his greatest and noblest. The sustained gravity, the profound feeling never mellows into the pathetic fallacy, and of the academic there is not a trace. This adagio is deeply moving.

The next intermezzo in E minor is of extreme loveliness; its poco agitato is the rustling of the leaves in the warm west wind, but they are flecked by the sunshine. A tremulous sensibility informs this andantino, and its bars are stamped by genius.

Fancy the gayest, blithest intermezzo, marked “joyfully” and you will hear the enchanting one in C. The theme is in the middle voice, and the elasticity, sweetness and freedom throughout are simply delightful. It is three pages of undefiled happiness, and only to be compared to that wonderful rhythmic study in A flat by Chopin, the supplementary study in the Fetis method. But Chopin is so sad and Brahms so merry, yet the general architectonic is not dissimilar.

A very Schumannish and vigorous rhapsodic in E flat closes the set, and is in all probability the last piano piece penned by the composer. In it Brahms returns to an early love, Schumann, and there are echoes of the march of the Davidsbündler in the beginning; no one but Brahms could have written the section in C minor or A flat. This rhapsodie is for me not as interesting as the one in G minor, but it is brilliant, and requires wrists of steel.

One who is better qualified to speak on the subject than myself, Mr. Max Vogrich, made the following suggestions as to the order in which these pieces may be played in concert. He writes:--

As the pianist cannot possibly play all twenty pieces in one concert, he must perforce undertake the painful task of selection. Every concert player knows that he can never win over his audience to sympathy, unless himself in fullest sympathy with the compositions which he performs. He will therefore play op. 116 through, and find in the very first number (Capriccio) an exquisite and highly effective piece, teeming with trying octave passages. If he will, he can sufficiently exhibit his technic--and his muscular fortitude--in this number. No. 2 (Intermezzo) and No. 3 (Capriccio) will strike him as less effective. But in No. 4 (Intermezzo) he will discover a gem of the first water, an adagio enchanting in its wondrous sonority--a study in tone. The two next following intermezzi, again, will afford less complete gratification by reason of their overcharged seriousness, also the Capriccio, conceived somewhat in the spirit of a study, and forming the close of op. 116. Quickly taking up op. 117 (Three Intermezzi), the player opens it at No. 1, a slumber song, but one excelling, in depth of feeling, delicacy and absorbedness of mood, anything ever produced in this class of poetry, Schumann’s Träumerei excepted. It was penned by a king, and only a king should play it to lull to slumber a royal babe.

Would anyone be moved to tears by pure music, let him listen to the two succeeding intermezzi, especially the last, which is fitted to bring sentimental souls to the verge of despair. Brahms must have experienced much evil in his life! Finally, our growingly enthusiastic pianist reaches op. 118 and op. 119. And now he cannot tear himself away from the piano. No further thought of concert or audience disturbs him now; nor can he devote a thought to careful selection.

He further remarks that:

Since the days of the Fantasiestücke, the Kinderscenen, the Kreisleriana and the Novelletten, that is, since more than half a century, the entire range of piano literature has had nothing to show which could be even remotely compared in intellectual import with these twenty pieces by Brahms.

Brahms has the individual voice, and in his piano music his almost Spartan simplicity sometimes unmasks the illusory quality of the instrument. Yet, I protest if you tell me that he does not write Klaviermässig. His technics are peculiar, but they make the piano sound beautiful; an eloquent tone is needed for Brahms, and your ten fingers must be as ten flexible voices. He never writes salon music, with its weak, vapid, affected mien. You needs must play much Chopin and Liszt, for too much Brahms makes the fingers sluggish, that is sluggish for the older and more rapid-fingered composers.

Touching on the content of his piano music we find much variety. He has felt the pessimism of his times, but his ideals were noble, and no man could prefer Fielding as an author and not be robust in temperament. He is often enigmatic and hard to decipher. Often and purposely he seems to engage himself in a hedge of formidable quickset, but once penetrate it and you find blooming the rarest flowers, whose perfume is delicious. To me this is the eternal puzzle; that Brahms, the master of ponderous learning, can yet be so tender, so innocent of soul, so fragile, so childlike. He must have valiantly protected his soul against earthly smudging to keep it so pure, so sweet to the very end. I know little of his life, except that he was modest to gruffness, that he loved beer, the society of women and good cooking. Very material all these, but the man was nevertheless a great poet and a great musical thinker.

His piano music is gay, is marmoreal in its repose, is passionate, is humorous, is jolly, is sad, is depressing, is morbid, recondite, poetic, fantastic and severe. He pours into the elastic form of the sonata hot romantic passion, and in the loosest textured smaller pieces he can be as immovable as bronze, as plastic as clay. He is sometimes frozen by grief and submerged by thought, but he is ever fascinating, for he has something to say and knows how to say it in an individual way. Above all he is profoundly _human_ and touches humanity at many contacts.

Let me conclude by quoting from that just critic of Brahms, Louis Ehlert: “It is characteristic of his nature that he was born in a Northern seaport, and that his father was a contrabassist. Sea air and basses, these are the ground elements of his music. Nowhere is there to be found a Southern luxuriance, amid which golden fruits smile upon every bough, nor that superabundance of blissful exuberance that spreads its fragrant breath over hill and dale. Now here, however, on the other hand, may there be met that enervating self-absorption, renunciation of effort or Southern brooding submission to fate.... He neither dazzles nor does he conquer with an assault. Slowly but surely he wins all those hearts that demand from art not only that it shall excite, but also that it be filled with sacred fire and endowed with the lovely proportions of the beautiful.”

Brahms is indeed an artist of the beautiful and nowhere is this better exemplified than in his piano music.

II

A MODERN MUSIC LORD

By the side of the Blue Sea is a great and green oak tree girt with a
golden chain.
Day and night a marvellous and learned cat crawls around this oak.
When he crawls to the right he sings a song;
When he crawls to the left he tells a story.
It is there you must sit down and learn the understanding of Russian
legends....
There the spirit of Russia and the fantasy of our ancestors come to
life again.

PHILIP HALE, after PUSHKIN.

I

There you have Russia: when the Russian is not singing songs, saturated with vodka or melancholy, he is spinning stories shot through with the fantastic, or grim with the pain and noise of life. In the European Concert his formidable bass tones make his neighbor’s voice sound thin and piping. Napoleon prophesied that before the end of the century Europe would be either Republican or Cossack, and only a few years ago the Moscow _Gazette_ exultantly proclaimed that the “twentieth century belongs to us.” By no means an anti-Slavophile in music, Henry Edward Krehbiel, as far back as 1885, uttered his warning, “’Ware the Muscovite!”

On the doorsill of the new century this old-young nation, if not master, is almost a determining factor in politics, art and literature. Tolstoy straddles the two hemispheres, having written one of the greatest novels of the century, and like some John Knox of the North, he thunders at our materialism and cries, “Ye of little faith, follow me, for I alone am following the true Christ Jesus, our Lord and Saviour!”

In politics Russia is the unknown quantity that fills the sleep of statesmen with restless dreams. In painting she is frankly imitative and too closely chained to the technical ideals of Paris; in sculpture the name of Antokolsky rivals Rodin, while in music she is a formidable foe of Germany.

One is almost tempted to write that much Russian music, certainly all modern Russian piano music comes from Frederic Chopin, if you did not remember Chopin’s Slavic affiliations. Yet in a sense it is true. Chopin plays a big part in the harmonic scheme of all latter-day composers, Wagner not excepted. Not alone in the use of dispersed harmonies was he a pioneer, but in the employment of the chromatic scale, in the manipulation of mixed scales, the exotic scales savoring of Asiatic origin; Tschaïkowsky and Dvorák transferred to a broader canvas and subjected to a freer handling many of the Polish master’s ideas. To deny to Chopin originality of themes, rhythms and harmonic invention would be pushing the story back one notch too many. Weber, Rossini, Grieg, Liszt, Dvorák, Glinka, indeed all the nationalists in music, might also be challenged critically on the score of originality.

If Russian music, the only organized musical speech of the nation, owes something to Chopin, Michael Glinka was unquestionably its father, for, like Weber, he lovingly plucked from the soil the native wild flowers and gave them a setting in his Ruslan and Life for the Czar. In his train and representing the old Russian school are Alexander Darjomisky and Alexander Seroff, while with “Neo-Russia” rudely blazoned on their banner, follow the names Cesar Cui, Rimski-Korsakoff, Borodin, Balakireff, Liadow, Glazounow, Stcherbatcheff, Arenski, Moussorgsky, Vladimir Stassoff and others. Outside of this pale and viewed with suspicious eyes stand the figures of Anton Rubinstein, who went to Germany and made music more Teutonic than Russian, and Piotor Ilyitch Tschaïkowsky, who, like Chopin had French blood in his veins, his mother being the descendant of a family of French emigrants.

It would be interesting to compare the cosmopolitanism of Tschaïkowsky and Ivan Turgenev. The great novelist, one of the greatest in Russia and France, was regarded by his contemporaries in the same fashion as the little masters regarded Tschaïkowsky. The big men like Gogol, Pushkin, Dostoïewsky were followed by scores of imitators, who wore their blouses untucked in their trousers. This was their symbol, and their watchword was “We are going to the people.” It was a savage reaction against cosmopolitan influences, for Russia has successively suffered from the invasion of English, French and German ideas, customs, manners and even costumes. The rabid Slavophilist would have none of these; he hated Italian pictures, German philosophy and French literature.

Now Turgenev, loving Russia with a great love, yet exiled himself to study his country from afar. He saw her faults, he knew her rash, crass ignorance, her greed for foreign flattery, and he also felt her heartbeat. Not even Tolstoy is more drenched with affection for his land, not even Tolstoy wrote with more passion and pathos of his countrymen. But Turgenev lived in Paris. He was a great artist in words as well as ideas, and his artistry was so much damning evidence against him by the cultivators of the new Chauvinisme. What was form and finish to them that were “going to the people?” And so this noble man went to his grave discredited by his own people, and homage was accorded him by a foreign nation. It broke his heart, and the same rank nationalism certainly embittered the last days of Tschaïkowsky who, like Turgenev, practised his art passionately and persistently; and while the little men, Cui, Borodin and the rest, were theorizing and dabbling with nationalism, he, like a patient architect, reared his superb tonal edifices, built of the blood and brawn and brain of Russia, even though here and there the architecture revealed his Western European predilections.

In a word, Turgenev, Tschaïkowsky and Tolstoy were travelled men; they drank deeply at all the founts of modern poetry and philosophy, and each, without losing his native quality, expressed himself after the manner of his individual nature and experience, and how infinitely wider in range, depth and versatility are the utterances of these three masterful artists when compared with the narrow, provincial and parochial efforts of their belittlers! And then the three are great, not alone because of their nation; they are great personalities who would make tremble the ground of any other land.

Rubinstein alone seems to have slipped between the stools of race and religion. Born a Jew, raised a Christian, and of Polish origin, he played the piano like a god, and his compositions are never quite German, never quite Russian. He has been called the greatest pianist among the composers and the greatest composer among the pianists, yet has hardly received his just due.