I.

Before touching the life of Clementi, the first of the great virtuosos

who may be considered distinctively composers for and players on the

pianoforte, it is indispensable to a clear understanding of the theme

involved that the reader should turn back for a brief glance at the

history of the piano and piano-playing prior to his time. Before the

piano-forte came the harpsichord, prior to the latter the spinet,

then the virginal, the clavichord, and monochord; before these, the

clavieytherium. Before these instruments, which bring us down to modern

civilized times, and constitute the genealogy of the piano-forte, we

have the dulcimer and psaltery, and all the Egyptian, Grecian, and Roman

harps and lyres which were struck with a quill or plectrum. No product

of human ingenuity has been the outcome of a steady and systematic

growth from age to age by more demonstrable stages than this most

remarkable of musical instruments. As it is not the intention to offer

an essay on the piano, but only to make clearer the conditions under

which a great school of players began to appear, the antiquities of the

topic are not necessary to be touched.

The modern piano-forte had as its immediate predecessor the harpsichord,

the instrument on which the heroines of the novels of Fielding,

Smollett, Richardson, and their contemporaries were wont to discourse

sweet music, and for which Haydn and Mozart composed some delightful

minor works. In the harpsichord the strings were set in vibration by

points of quill or hard leather. One of these instruments looked like

a piano, only it was provided with two keyboards, one above the other,

related to each other as the swell and main keyboards of an organ.

At last it occurred to lovers of music that all refinement of musical

expression depended on touch, and that whereas a string could be plucked

or pulled by machinery in but one way, it could be hit in a hundred

ways. It was then that the notion of striking the strings with a hammer

found practical use, and by the addition of this element the piano-forte

emerged into existence. The idea appears to have occurred to three men

early in the eighteenth century, almost simultaneously--Cristofori, an

Italian, Marins, a Frenchman, and Schrôter, a German. For years attempts

to carry out the new mechanism were so clumsy that good harpsichords

on the wrong principle were preferred to poor piano-fortes on the right

principle. But the keynote of progress had been struck, and the day

of the quill and leather jack was swiftly drawing to a close. A small

hammer was made to strike the string, producing a marvelously clear,

precise, delicate tone, and the "scratch" with a sound at the end of it

was about to be consigned to oblivion for ever and a day.

Gottfried Silbermann, an ingenious musical instrument maker, of

Freyhurg, Saxony, was the first to give the new principle adequate

expression, about the year 1740, and his pianos excited a great deal of

curiosity among musicians and scientific men. He followed the mechanism

of Cristofori, the Italian, rather than of his own countrymen. Schrôter

and his instruments appear to have been ingenious, though Sebastian

Bach, who loved his "well-tempered clavichord" (the most powerful

instrument of the harpsichord class) too well to be seduced from his

allegiance, pronounced them too feeble in tone, a criticism which he

retracted in after years. Silbermann experimented and labored with

incessant energy for many years, and he had the satisfaction before

dying of seeing the piano firmly established in the affection and

admiration of the musical world. One of the most authentic of musical

anecdotes is that of the visit of John Sebastian Bach and his son to

Frederick the Great, at Potsdam, in 1747. The Prussian king was an

enthusiast in music, and himself an excellent performer on the flute,

of which, as well as of other instruments, he had a large collection. He

had for a long time been anxious for a visit from Bach, but that great

man was too much enamored of his own quiet musical solitude to

run hither and thither at the beck of kings. At last, after much

solicitation, he consented, and arrived at Potsdam late in the evening,

all dusty and travel-stained. The king was just taking up his flute

to play a concerto, when a lackey informed him of the coming of Bach.

Frederick was more agitated than he ever had been in the tumult of

battle. Crying aloud, "Gentlemen, old Bach is here!" he rushed out to

meet the king in a loftier domain than his own, and ushered him into the

lordly company of powdered wigs and doublets, of fair dames shining with

jewels, satins, and velvets, of courtiers glittering in all the colors

of the rainbow. "Old Bach" presented a shabby figure amid all this

splendor, but the king cared nothing for that. He was most anxious to

hear the grand old musician play on the new Silbermann piano, which was

the latest hobby of the Prussian monarch.

It is not a matter of wonder that the lovers of the harpsichord and

clavichord did not take kindly to the piano-forte at first. The keys

needed a greater delicacy of treatment, and the very fact that the

instrument required a new style of playing was of course sufficient to

relegate the piano to another generation. The art of playing had at the

time of the invention of the piano attained a high degree of efficiency.

Such musicians as Do-menico Scarlatti in Italy and John Sebastian Bach

in Germany had developed a wonderful degree of skill in treating the

_clavecin_, or spinet, and the clavichord, and, if we may trust the old

accounts, they called out ecstasies of admiration similar to those which

the great modern players have excited. With the piano-forte, however, an

entirely new style of expression came into existence. The power to play

soft or loud at will developed the individual or personal feeling of the

player, and new effects were speedily invented and put in practice. The

art of playing ceased to be considered from the merely objective point

of view, for the richer resources of the piano suggested the indulgence

of individuality of expression. It was left to Emanuel Bach to make

the first step toward the proper treatment of the piano, and to adapt

a style of composition expressly to its requirements, though even he

continued to prefer the clavichord. The rigorous, polyphonic style of

his illustrious father was succeeded by the lyrical and singing

element, which, if fantastic and daring, had a sweet, bright charm very

fascinating. He writes in one of his treatises: "Methinks music

ought appeal directly to the heart, and in this no performer on

the piano-forte will succeed by merely thumping and drumming, or by

continual arpeggio playing. During the last few years my chief endeavor

has been to play the piano-forte, in spite of its deficiency in

sustaining the sound, so much as possible, in a singing manner, and

to compose for it accordingly. This is by no means an easy task, if we

desire not to leave the ear empty or to disturb the noble simplicity of

the cantabile by too much noise."

Haydn and Mozart, who composed somewhat for the harpsichord (for until

the closing years of the eighteenth century this instrument had

not entirely yielded to the growing popularity of the piano-forte),

distinguished themselves still more by their treatment of the latter

instrument. They closely followed the maxims of Emanuel Bach. They

aimed to please the public by sweet melody and agreeable harmony, by

spontaneous elegance and cheerfulness, by suave and smooth simplicity.

Their practice in writing for the orchestra and for voices modified

their piano-forte style both as composers and players, but they never

sacrificed that intelligible and simple charm which appeals to the

universal heart to the taste for grand, complex, and eccentric effects,

which has so dominated the efforts of their successors. Mozart's most

distinguished contemporaries bear witness to his excellence as a player,

and his great command over the piano-forte, and his own remarks on

piano-playing are full of point and suggestion. He asserts "that the

performer should possess a quiet and steady hand, with its natural

lightness, smoothness, and gliding rapidity so well developed that the

passages should flow like oil.... All notes, graces, accents, etc.,

should be brought out with fitting taste and expression.... In passages

[technical figures], some notes may be left to their fate without

notice, but is that right? Three things are necessary to a good

performer"; and he pointed significantly to his head, his heart, and

the tips of his fingers, as symbolical of understanding, sympathy, and

technical skill. But it was fated that Clementi should be the Columbus

in the domain of piano-forte playing and composition. He was the father

of the school of modern piano technique, and by far surpassed all his

contemporaries in the boldness, vigor, brilliancy, and variety of his

execution, and he is entitled to be called first (in respect of date)

of the great piano-forte virtuosos, Clementi wrote solely for this

instrument (for his few orchestral works are now dead). The piano, as

his sole medium of expression, became a vehicle of great eloquence and

power, and his sonatas, as pure types of piano-forte compositions, are

unsurpassed, even in this age of exuberant musical fertility.