The rivalry of Clementi and Mozart as exponents of piano-forte playing
in their day was continued in their schools of performance. The original
cause of this difference was largely based on the character of the
instruments on which they played. Clementi used the English piano-forte,
and Mozart the Viennese, and the style of execution was no less the
outcome of the mechanical difference between the two vehicles of
expression than the result of personal idiosyncrasies. The English
instrument was speedily developed into the production of a richer,
fuller, and more sonorous tone, while the Viennese piano-forte continued
for a long time to be distinguished by its light, thin, sweet quality of
sound, and an action so sensitive that the slightest pressure produced
a sound from the key, so that the term "breathing on the keys" became
a current expression, Clementi's piano favored a bold, masculine,
brilliant style of playing, while the Viennese piano led to a rapid,
fluent, delicate treatment. The former player founded the school which
has culminated, through a series of great players, in the magnificent
virtuosoism of Franz Liszt, while the Vienna school has no nearer
representative than Tgnaz Moscheles, one of the greatest players in the
history of the pianoforte, who, whether judged by his gifts as a
concert performer, a composer for the instrument which he so brilliantly
adorned, or from his social and intellectual prominence, must be set
apart as peculiarly a representative man. There were other eminent
players, such as Hummel, Czerny, and Herz, contemporary with Moscheles
and belonging to the same _genre_ as a pianist, but these names do not
stand forth with the same clear and permanent luster in their relation
to the musical art.
Ignaz Moscheles was born at Prague, May 30, 1794, his parents being
well-to-do people of Hebrew stock. His father, a cloth merchant, was
passionately fond of music, and was accustomed to say, "One of my
children must become a thoroughbred musician." Ignaz was soon selected
as the one on whom the experiment should be made, and the rapid
progress he made justified the accident of choice, for all of the family
possessed some musical talent. The boy progressed too fast, for he
attempted at the age of seven to play Beethoven's "Sonata Pathétique."
He was traveling on the wrong road, attempting what he could in no
way attain, when his father took him to Dionys Weber, one of the best
teachers of the time. "I come," said the parent, "to you as our first
musician, for sincere truth instead of empty flattery. I want to find
out from you if my boy has such genuine talent that you can make a
really good musician of him." "Naturally, I was called on to play," says
Moscheles, in his "Autobiography," "and I was bungler enough to do it
with some conceit. My mother having decked me out in my Sunday best, I
played my best piece, Beethoven's 'Sonata Pathétique.' But what was my
astonishment on finding that I was neither interrupted by bravos nor
overwhelmed by praise! and what were my feelings when Dionys Weber
finally delivered himself thus:
"'Candidly speaking, the boy has talent, but is on the wrong road, for
he makes bosh of great works which he does not understand, and to which
he is utterly unequal. I could make something of him if you could hand
him over to me for three years, and follow out my plan to the letter.
The first year he must play nothing but Mozart, the second Clementi, and
the third Bach; but only that: not a note as yet of Beethoven; and if
he persists in using the circulating libraries, I have done with him for
ever.'"
This scheme was followed out strictly, and Moscheles at the age of
fourteen had acquired a sufficient mastery of the piano to give a
concert at Prague with brilliant success. The young musician continued
to pursue his studies assiduously under Weber's direction until
his father's death, and his mother then determined to yield to his
oft-repeated wish to try his musical fortunes in a larger field, and win
his own way in life. So young Ignaz, little more than a child, went to
Vienna, where he was warmly received in the hospitable musical circles
of that capital. He took lessons in counterpoint from Albrechts-burger,
and in composition from Salieri, and in all ways indicated that serene,
tireless industry which marked his whole after-career. Moscheles spent
eight years at Vienna, continually growing in estimation as artist and
beginning to make his mark as a composer. His own reminiscences of the
brilliant and gifted men who clustered in Vienna are very pleasant, but
it is to Beethoven that his admiration specially went forth. The great
master liked his young disciple much, and proposed to him that he should
set the numbers of "Fidelio" for the piano, a task which, it is needless
to say, was gladly accepted. Moscheles tells us one morning, when he
went to see Beethoven, he found him lying in bed. "He happened to be in
remarkably good spirits, jumped up immediately, and placed himself, just
as he was, at the window looking out on the Schotten-bastei, with the
view of examining the 'Fidelio' numbers which I had arranged. Naturally,
a crowd of street-boys collected under the window, when he roared out,
'Now, what do these confounded boys want?' I laughed and pointed to his
own figure. 'Yes, yes! You are quite right,' he said, and hastily put on
a dressing-gown."
Moscheles's associations were even at this early period with all the
foremost people of the age, and he was cordially welcome in every
circle. He composed a good deal, besides giving concerts and playing in
private select circles, and was recognized as being the equal of Hummel,
who had hitherto been accepted as the great piano virtuoso of Vienna.
The two were very good friends in spite of their rivalry. They, as well
as all the Viennese musicians, were bound together by a common tie, very
well expressed in the saying of Moscheles: "We musicians, whatever we
be, are mere satellites of the great Beethoven, the dazzling luminary."