If a pianoforte recital which begins with a Bach fugue continues with
a Beethoven sonata, it does not require a very discriminating ear to
note the difference between the two. The Beethoven sonata is in a
style so entirely distinct from that of the fugue, and sounds so
wholly unlike it, that it seems as if Bach had exerted no influence
whatsoever upon the greatest master of the period that followed his
death. Although Haydn and Mozart were nearer Bach in point of time
than Beethoven was, a sonata by either of them, if it chanced to be on
the program, would show the same difference in style, the same radical
departure from the works of the master of counterpoint, as the
Beethoven sonata.
The question naturally suggests itself, did Bach's influence cease
with his death? And the fact that this question calls for an answer
and that this answer leads to a general consideration of the interim
between Bach and Beethoven, again shows how broad in its scope as an
instrument is the pianoforte and how comprehensive in its application
to music as a whole is the music of that instrument. Two works on a
recital program furnish a legitimate basis for a discussion of two
important periods in the development of music! Who would have thought
there was so much to a pianoforte recital?
"It would have been an eminently pardonable mistake for any
intelligent musician to have fallen into, in the third quarter of
the eighteenth century, if he had concluded that Johann Sebastian
Bach's career was a failure, and that his influence upon the
progress of his art amounted to the minimum conceivable. Indeed,
the whole course of musical history in every branch went straight
out of the sphere of his activity for a long while; his work
ceased to have any significance to the generation which succeeded
him, and his eloquence fell upon deaf ears. A few of his pupils
went on writing music of the same type as his in a half-hearted
way, and his own most distinguished son, Philipp Emanuel, adopted
at least the artistic manner of working up his details and making
the internal organization of his works alive with figure and
rhythm. But even he, the sincerest composer of the following
generation, was infected by the complacent, polite superficiality
of his time; and he was forced, in accepting the harmonic
principle of working in its Italian phase, to take with it some of
the empty formulas and conventional tricks of speech which had
become part of its being, and which sometimes seem to belie the
genuineness of his utterances and put him somewhat out of touch
with his whole-hearted father."
This passage from one of the most admirably thought-out books on music
I know, Sir Hubert Parry's "Evolution of the Art of Music," is no
exaggeration. For many years after Bach's death, for nearly a century
in fact, his influence was but little felt. And yet so aptly does the
development of art adjust itself to human needs and aspirations, the
very neglect into which Bach fell turned music into certain channels
from which it derived the greater freedom of expression essential to
its progress and gave it the tinge of romanticism which is the essence
of modern music.
The greatness of Johann Sebastian Bach, on the technical side at
least, now is so universally acknowledged, and professional musicians
understand so well what their art owes to him, we are apt to think of
him as the only musician of his day, whereas his significance was but
little appreciated by his contemporaries. There were, in fact, other
composers actively working on other lines and turning music in the
direction it was destined to follow immediately after Bach's
death--and for its own ultimate good, be it observed. The simple fact
is, that pure counterpoint culminated in Bach. What he accomplished
was so stupendous that his successors could not keep up with him. They
became exhausted before they even were prepared to begin where he left
off. And yet the reaction from Bach was, as I have indicated,
absolutely necessary to the further progress of music.
The scheme of musical development which the reader should bear in mind
if he desires to understand music, and to arrive at that understanding
with some kind of system in his progress, was briefly as follows:
Three Periods of Musical Development.
First we have counterpoint, the welding together of several themes
each of equal importance. This style of composition culminated in
Bach. Its most elaborate form of expression was the fugue; but it also
employed the canon and impressed into its service certain minor forms
like the allemande, courant, chaconne, gavotte, saraband, gigue, and
minuet.
Next, after Bach music began to develop according to the harmonic
system, or, if I may be permitted for the sake of clarity to use an
expression which technically is incorrect, according to the melodic
system. That is, instead of combining several themes, composers took
one theme or melody and supported it with an accompaniment so that the
melody stood out in clear relief. This first decided melodic
development covers the classical period, the period after Bach to
Beethoven, and its highest form of expression was the sonata, which in
the orchestra became the symphony.
The romantic period comes after Beethoven. This, to characterize it by
the readiest means, by something external, something the eye can see,
is the "single piece" period, the period in which the impromptu of
Schubert, the song without words of Mendelssohn, the nocturne of
Chopin, the novelette of Schumann, takes the place of the sonata,
which consists of a group of pieces or movements. Composers begin to
find a too exacting insistence upon correctness of form irritating.
Expression becomes of more importance than form, which is promptly
violated if it interferes with the composer's trend of thought or
feeling. Pieces are written in certain moods, and their melody is
developed so as to follow and give full expression to the mood in
which it is conceived. New harmonies are fearlessly invoked for the
same purpose. Everything centres in the idea that music exists not as
an accessory to form, but for the free expression of emotion. In his
useful and handy "Dictionary of Musical Terms," Theodore Baker defines
a nocturne as a title for a piano piece "of a dreamily romantic or
sentimental character, but lacking a distinctive form." When we see
the title "Sonata" over a composition we think of form. When we see
the title "Nocturne" we think of mood, not manner. The title arouses
within us, by anticipation, the very feeling, the very mood, the very
emotional condition which the composer is seeking to express. The form
in which he seeks to express it is wholly a secondary matter. A
composition is a sonata because it follows a certain formal
development. It is a nocturne because it is "dreamily romantic or
sentimental." In no better way, perhaps, could the difference between
the classical period of music and the romantic period which set in
after Beethoven be explained. The romanticist is no more hampered by
form than the writer of poetry or fiction is by facts. Form dominates
feeling in classical music, feeling dominates form in romantic music.
We still are and, happily, ever shall remain in the romantic period.
The greatest of all romanticists and, up to the present time, the
greatest of all composers is Richard Wagner, whose genius will be
appreciated more and more as years go by until, as may be the case, a
still greater one will arise; although as dramatic literature
culminated in Shakespeare, so music may have found its greatest master
for all time in Wagner. Wagner, of course, was not a composer for the
pianoforte, but when he reached back and to the fuller harmony
inherited from Beethoven added the counterpoint of Bach, thus
combining the two great systems of composition, he indicated the only
method of progress possible for music of all kinds.
Rise of the Melodic School.
It must not be supposed that the melodic school which came in after
Bach and which, so far as the classical form of the sonata is
concerned, culminated in Beethoven, was the mushroom growth of a
night. So much has been said of Bach that a person unfamiliar with the
history of music might draw the erroneous conclusion that Bach was the
only composer worth mentioning before the classical period and Germany
the only country in which music had flourished. On the contrary, Bach
was the climax of a school to which several countries had each
contributed its share, partly vocal, partly instrumental. Palestrina's
name naturally comes to mind as representative of the early period of
Italian church music; there also was the "Belgian Orpheus," Orlandus
Lassus (or Lasso), the greatest composer of the Flemish school; and
England had its Gibbons and other madrigal composers. Their music was
vocal and requires to be considered more thoroughly under the head of
vocal music, but it also was contrapuntal and played its part in the
general development of the art before Bach came upon the scene. Of
course, there also was instrumental music in counterpoint before
Bach's day. There is "Queen Elizabeth's Virginal Book," a manuscript
collection of music made either during her reign or shortly afterward
and containing pieces for the virginal by Tallis, Bird, Giles, Dr.
John Bull and others, including also the madrigalist, Gibbons. The
Englishman, Henry Purcell (1658-1695); the Frenchman, Francois
Couperin (1668-1733), who wrote a harpsichord method; the Germans,
Hans Leo von Hasler (1564-1612) and Froberger; and the Italian,
Frescobaldi--these were some among many composers of counterpoint more
or less noted in their day.
Bach, however, brought the art of counterpoint to perfection, so that,
so far as it is concerned, he neither required nor even so much as
left room for a successor. It may not be pertinent to the argument,
yet it may well be questioned whether, had the classical trio, Haydn,
Mozart, and Beethoven, endeavored to carry on the contrapuntal school,
they would not, in spite of their genius, have relegated music to a
more primitive state than it occupied when Bach died. It seems a
fortunate circumstance to me that Bach's son appears to have realized
his inferiority to his father and that, in consequence, he turned from
counterpoint to the development of harmony--the working out of a
clearly defined theme or melody supported by accompaniment.
Counterpoint is said to be polyphonic, a term composed of two Greek
words signifying many-voiced, the combination in music of several
parts or themes. Opposed to it is homophonic, or single-voiced, music,
in which one melody or part is supported by an accompaniment. Italy,
with its genius for the sensuous and emotional in music, already had
developed a school of melodic music, and to this Philipp Emanuel Bach
turned for a model. In Italy the pianoforte, through its employment
for the freer harmonic support of dramatic solo singing in opera, an
art form that is indigenous to Italy, gradually had emancipated itself
there from counterpoint and acquired a style of its own. Girolamo
Frescobaldi (1583-1644), a famous Italian pianoforte and organ
virtuoso, whose first organ recital in St. Peter's, Rome, is said to
have attracted an audience of thirty thousand, and whose mantle fell
upon his two most renowned pupils, the German, Johann Jacob Froberger,
and the Italian, Bernardo Pasquini, not only experimented with our
modern keys, seeking to replace with them the old ecclesiastical modes
in which Palestrina wrote, but also simplified the method of notation.
For even what seems to us so simple a matter as the five-line staff is
the result of slow evolution.
Scarlatti's Importance as Composer and Virtuoso.
The Italian genius who gave the greatest impulse to the progress of
pianoforte music and who, for his day, immensely improved the
technique of pianoforte playing, was Domenico Scarlatti (1683-1757),
the famous son of a famous father, Alessandro Scarlatti, the leading
dramatic composer of his time. Domenico Scarlatti interests us
especially because he is the only one of the early Italians whose work
retains an appreciable foothold on modern recital programs. Von Buelow
edited selections from his works, and I recall from personal
experience, because I was at the concert, the delight with which some
of these were received the first time Von Buelow played them on his
initial visit to this country during the season of 1875-76. Amateurs
on the outlook for something new (even though it was very old) took up
Scarlatti, and this early Italian's suddenly acquired popularity was
comparable with the "run" on the Rachmaninoff "Prelude" when it was
played here by Siloti many years later.
Scarlatti has been called the founder of modern pianoforte technique.
Although he composed for the harpsichord, he understood the instrument
so thoroughly and what he wrote for it accords so well with its
genius, that by unconscious anticipation it also was adapted to the
genius of the modern pianoforte. It still is pianistic; more pianistic
and more suitable to the modern repertoire than a good deal of music
by greater men who lived considerably later. I should say, for
example, that Scarlatti's name is found more frequently on pianoforte
recital programs than Mozart's, although Mozart was incomparably the
greater genius. But there is about Scarlatti's music such a quaint and
primitive charm that one always listens to it with the zest of a
discoverer, whereas Mozart's pianoforte music, although more modern,
just misses being modern enough. This clever Italian gives us the
early beginnings of the sonata form. He merely lisps in sonata
accents, it is true, but his lisp is as fascinating as the ingenuous
prattle of an attractive child. His best, known work, "The Cat's
Fugue," the subject of which is said to have been suggested to him by
a cat gliding over the keyboard, is indeed contrapuntal. But even
this is a movement in a sonata, and the characteristic of his works as
a whole is the fact that in most of them he developed and worked out a
melody or theme, and that he established the fundamental outlines of
the sonata form.
Comparatively few laymen have more than a vague idea of what is
meant by sonata form. To them a sonata simply is a composition
consisting of several movements, usually four, three of them of
considerable length, with a shorter one (a minuet or scherzo)
between the first and second or the second and fourth. A sonata,
however, must have one of its movements (and generally it will be
found to be the first) written in a certain form. Regarding the
Scarlatti sonatas, suffice it to say here that with him the form
still is in its primitive simplicity. For example, the true sonata
movement as we now understand it employs two themes, the second
contrasting with the first. As a rule, Scarlatti is content with
one theme. It is the peculiar merit of Philipp Emanuel Bach that he
introduced a second theme into his sonatas, or suggested it by
striking modulations when he employed only one theme, and thus
paved the way for its further elaboration by Joseph Haydn. Mozart
elaborated the form still further, and then came Beethoven, with
whom the classical period reached its climax and whose sonatas for
all practical purposes have completely superseded those of his
forerunners.
Rise of the Amateur.
Characteristic of the period of transition from Bach to Beethoven,
from the fugue to the sonata, was the development of popular interest
in music. Scarlatti begins a brief introduction to a collection of
thirty of his pianoforte pieces which were published in 1746, by
addressing the "amateur or professor, whoever you be." Significant
in this is the inclusion of, in fact the seeming preference given to
the amateur. Music of the counterpoint variety had been music for
the church, the court and the professional. Now, with the development
of the freer harmonic or melodic system, it was growing more in
touch with the people. During Philipp Emanuel Bach's life the increase
of popular interest in music was remarkable. The titles that began
to appear on compositions show that composers were reaching out for a
larger public. Bie quotes some of them: "Cecilia Playing on the
Pianoforte and Satisfying the Hearing"; "The Busy Muse Clio";
"Pianoforte Practice for the Delight of Mind and Ear, in Six Easy
_Galanterie Parties_ Adapted to Modern Taste, Composed Chiefly for
Young Ladies"; "The Contented Ear and the Quickened Soul"; while
Philipp Emanuel Bach inscribes some of his pieces as "easy" or "for
ladies." Evidently the "young person" figured as extensively in the
calculations of musical composers then as she does now in those of
the publishers of fiction. Musical periodicals sprang up like
mushrooms--"Musical Miscellany," "Floral Garnerings for Pianoforte
Amateurs," "New Music Journal for Encouragement and Entertainment
in Solitude at the Pianoforte for the Skilled and Unskilled," such
were some of the titles. These periodicals often went the way of most
periodical flesh and in the customary brief period, but they show a
quickened public interest in music--the "contented ear and the
quickened soul," so to speak.
Changes in Musical Taste.
If I dismiss Philipp Emanuel Bach rather curtly and, in this portion
of the book at least, do the same with Haydn and Mozart, this is not
because I fail to appreciate their importance in musical history, but
because they have failed to retain their hold on the modern pianoforte
repertoire. The simple fact is that the pianoforte as an instrument
has outgrown their music. We can get more out of it than they gave it.
If we bear in mind that the pianoforte, as well as music itself, has
developed, it will aid us in understanding why so much music, once
considered far in advance of its time and even revolutionary, has so
soon become antiquated. Why ignore facts? Some examples of primitive
music still survive because they charm us with their quaintness. But
the classical period is retiring more and more into the shadow of
history. Whatever importance Haydn and Mozart may possess for the
student, their pianoforte music, so far as practical program-making is
concerned, is to-day a negligible quantity. I remember the time when,
as a pupil, I pored with breathless interest over the pages of
Mozart's "Sonata in A Minor" and his "Fantasy and Sonata in C Minor."
But to-day, when I read in a book published about twenty-five years
ago that Mozart indulged in harmonies, chord progressions and
modulations, "sometimes considered of doubtful propriety even now" and
"quite as harshly censured as are to-day the similar licenses of
free-thinking composers"--I wonder where they are. For his own day,
nevertheless, Mozart was an innovator, as every genius is; for it is
through those daring deviations of genius from established rule and
tradition, which contemporaries regard as unjustifiable license, that
art progresses. This should be borne in mind by those who were
intolerant toward the opponents of Wagner, yet now are guilty of a
similar solecism in proclaiming Richard Strauss a charlatan.
Assuming that the modern pianoforte pupil is but indifferently
nourished on the Mozart pabulum, let me add that this composer also
was a virtuoso, and by his choice of the pianoforte over the
clavichord did much toward making the modern instrument more popular.
He also developed the sonata form so that Beethoven found it ready
moulded for his genius. In fact the sonata form as we know it is so
much a Mozart creation that Mr. Hanchett, in his "Art of the
Musician," suggests calling the sonata movement proper a mozarta--a
suggestion which I presume will never be adopted.
Beethoven and the Epoch of the Sonata.
In the history of music there are three figures that easily tower
above the rest. Each represents an era. They are Bach, who stands for
counterpoint, the epoch of the fugue; Beethoven, who represents the
epoch of the sonata; Wagner, who represents the epoch of the
music-drama. The first two summed up in themselves certain art forms
which others had originated. Bach's root goes back to Palestrina,
Beethoven's to Scarlatti. Wagner presents the phenomenon of being both
the germ and the full fruition of the art form for which he stands. It
is conceivable that the work of these men will at some time fall into
desuetude, for in art all things are possible, and the classical
period seems to be losing its grip on music more and more every day
and we ourselves may live to see the sonata movement become obsolete.
It certainly is having less and less vogue, and a composer who now
writes a sonata with undeviating allegiance to its classical outlines,
deliberately invites neglect, because the listener no longer cares to
have his faculties of appreciation restricted by too rigid insistence
upon form, preferring that genius should have the utmost latitude and
be absolutely untrammeled in giving expression to what it has to say.
Nevertheless, music always will bear the impress of these three master
minds, just as our language, although we do not speak in blank verse,
always will bear the impress of Shakespeare. "I don't think much of
that play," exclaimed the countryman, after hearing "Hamlet" for the
first time. "It's all made up of quotations!" Equally familiar, not to
say colloquial, are certain musical phrases, certain modulations,
which have come down to us from the masters.
Although Beethoven no longer is the all-dominant figure in the musical
world that he was fifty years ago, and it requires a performance of
the "Ninth Symphony" given under specially significant circumstances
(such as the conducting of a Felix Weingartner) to attract as many to
a concert hall as would be drawn by an ordinary Wagner program, I
trust I shall know how to appreciate his importance to the development
of musical art and approach him with the reverence that is his due.
Like all great men who sum up an epoch, he found certain things ready
to hand. The Frenchman, Jean Philippe Rameau (1683-1764), "the creator
of the modern system of harmony," had published his "Nouveau Systeme
de Musique Theorique"; the sonata movement from its tentative
beginnings under Scarlatti had been developed through Philipp Emanuel
Bach, Haydn and Mozart into a definite art form awaiting the final
test of a great genius--which Beethoven proved to be.
Beethoven's Slow Development.
I already have pointed out that while pianoforte and orchestra have
developed side by side, the general belief that the pianoforte merely
has been the handmaiden of the orchestra is a mistaken one. On the
contrary, until the end of the classical period, at least, the
pianoforte was the pioneer. It has blazed the way for the orchestra
and led it, instead of bringing up the rear. Thus the sonata form
was developed by the pianoforte and then was handed over by that
instrument to the orchestra under the name of symphony, which, the
reader should bear in mind, simply is a sonata written for orchestra
instead of for the pianoforte. Even Beethoven, before he composed
his first symphony, which is his Opus 21, tested his mastery of the
form and his ideas regarding certain further developments in it, by
first composing thirteen pianoforte sonatas, including the familiar
"Pathetique," which used to be to concert programs what Liszt's
"Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2" is now--the _cheval de battaille_, on
which pianists pranced up and down before the ranks of their
astonished audiences and unfortunate amateurs sought to retain
their equilibrium.
This experimentation, this comparatively slow development, was
characteristic of Beethoven; is, in fact, characteristic of every
genius who works from the soul outward. "Like most artists whose spur
is more in themselves than in natural artistic facilities, he was very
slow to come to any artistic achievement," writes Sir Hubert Parry.
"It is almost a law of things that men whose artistic personality is
very strong, and who touch the world by the greatness and the power of
their expression, come to maturity comparatively late, and sometimes
grow greater all through their lives--so it was with Bach, Gluck,
Beethoven and Wagner--while men whose aims are more purely artistic
and whose main spur is facility of diction, come to the point of
production early and do not grow much afterward. Such composers as
Mozart and Mendelssohn succeeded in expressing themselves brilliantly
at a very early age; but their technical facility was out of
proportion to their individuality and their force of human nature, and
therefore there is no such surprising difference between the work of
their later years and the work of their childhood as there is in the
case of Beethoven and Wagner."
In writing sonatas Haydn and Mozart had been satisfied with grace of
outward form and a smooth and pretty flow of melody within that form.
Beethoven was a man of intellectual force as well as of musical
genius. He applied his intellect to enlarging the sonata form, his
musical genius to supplying it with contents worthy of the greater
opportunities he himself had created for it. There is a wonderful
union of mind and heart in Beethoven's work. The sonata form, as
perfected by him, is a monument to his genius. It remains to this day
the flower of the classical period.
The Passing of the Sonata.
Nevertheless, the Beethoven sonatas no longer retain the place of
pre-eminence once accorded them on pianoforte recital programs. When
Von Buelow was in this country during the season of 1875-76 he
frequently gave concerts at which he played only Beethoven sonatas.
I doubt if any of the great pianists of to-day could now awaken as
much public interest by such programs as Von Buelow did. I remember
the concert at which, among others of the Beethoven sonatas, this
virtuoso played Opus 106 ("Grosse Sonata fuer das Hammerklavier").
After he had played through part of the first movement he became
restless, and from time to time peered over the keyboard and into
the instrument as if something were wrong with it. Finally he broke
off in the middle of the movement, rose from his seat and walked
off the stage. When he reappeared, he had with him an attendant from
the firm of manufacturers whose pianofortes he used, and together
they fussed over the instrument for a while, before the attendant
made his exit and the irate little pianist began the sonata all over
again. We considered the mishap that gave us opportunity to hear him
play so much of the work twice, a piece of great good luck for us.
Would we so consider it now?
Von Buelow has passed into musical history as a great Beethoven
player, and such he undoubtedly was. I doubt, however, if he was a
greater Beethoven player than several living pianists. Some seasons
ago Eugene d'Albert played a Beethoven program. His performance did
not evoke the enthusiasm he anticipated. In fact there were
intimations in the comments on his performance that he was not as
great a Beethoven player as he thought he was. Personally, and having
a very clear recollection of Von Buelow's Beethoven recitals,
because I attended every one he gave in New York, and in my mind's
eye can see him sitting at the pianoforte, bending away over, with
his ear almost to the keyboard, I think d'Albert played his
Beethoven program quite as well. What had happened, however, was
this: A little matter of thirty years had passed and with it the
classical period and its efflorescence, the sonata form, had faded
by just so much, and by just so much no longer was considered by the
public the crucial test of a pianist's musicianship. Incidentally it
is worth noting that the public usually is far ahead of the
profession and of the majority of critics in appreciating new
tendencies in music and in realizing what is passing away; and the
same thing probably prevails in other arts.
Orchestral Instead of Pianistic.
I am aware that Beethoven was a pianist of the first rank and that
within the limitations of the sonata form he developed the capacity
of the pianoforte. I also have read Richard Strauss's opinion, in his
edition of Berlioz's work on instrumentation, that Beethoven treated
the orchestra pianistically. Nevertheless, from the modern viewpoint
the essential fault of the sonata, Beethoven's sonatas included,
seems to me to be that it is too orchestral and not sufficiently
_claviermaessig_ (pianistic) in character; not sufficiently adapted to
the genius of the pianoforte as we know it to-day. It is possible
that for the times in which they were composed, the sonatas of Haydn,
Mozart and Beethoven were most pianistic. But as music has become
more and more an intimate phase of life, and as our most intimate
instrument, the instrument of the household, is the pianoforte, we
understand its capacity for the intimate expression of moods and
fancies, the lights and shadows of life, as it never was understood
before. The modern lover of music, if I may judge his standpoint
from my own, feels that while the sonatas of the masters I have
named were written for the pianoforte, they were thought out for
orchestra, and that even a Beethoven sonata is an engraving for
pianoforte of a symphony for orchestra. He composed nine symphonies
and thirty-two sonatas. If he had written his nine symphonies for
pianoforte, we would have had nine more sonatas. If he had composed
his sonatas for orchestra, we would have had thirty-two more
symphonies.
This orchestral (as opposed to pianistic) character of the Beethoven
sonatas accounts for passages in them so awkwardly written for the
instrument that they are difficult to master, and yet, when mastered,
are not effective in proportion to their difficulty. Between enlarging
the capacity of an instrument through the problems you give the player
to solve and writing passages that are awkwardly conceived for it, and
hence ineffectual after they have been mastered, there is a great
difference. Chopin, Liszt and others pile Pelion on Ossa in their
technical requirements of the pianist; but when he has surmounted
them, he has climbed a mountain, and from its peak may watch the world
at his feet. I think the orchestral character of much that Beethoven
wrote for the pianoforte partly accounts for the fact that his sonatas
no longer attract the great virtuosos as they formerly did and that
the public no longer regards them as the final test of a pianist's
rank.
I speak so unreservedly because I have lived through the change of
taste myself. By way of personal explanation I may be permitted to
say, that while I am not a professional musician, music was so much a
part of my life that I studied the pianoforte almost as assiduously as
if I had intended becoming a public player, and that I was proficient
enough to meet once a week with the first violinist and the first
violoncellist of the New York Philharmonic Society for the practice of
chamber music. If there is any one who should worship at the shrine of
the sonata form, and especially at that of the Beethoven sonatas, it
should be myself, for I was brought up on the form and those sonatas
were my daily bread. When I went to the Von Buelow Beethoven recitals
it was with book in hand, to follow what he played note for note for
purposes of study and assimilation. Those were years when, in the
hours during which one seeks communion with one's other self, the
Beethoven sonatas were the medium of communication. But now--give me
the men who emancipated themselves from a form that fettered the
individuality of the pianoforte, Chopin, Liszt, Schumann, and the
pianoforte scores of the Wagner music-dramas, which actually sound
more pianistic than the sonatas of the classical period and in which
it is a delight to plunge oneself and be borne along on a flood of
free, exultant melody.
Nevertheless, the sonata has had a great part to play in the history
and development of music and has played it nobly, and we must no more
forget this than we should allow present-day hero worship to supplant
the memory of the heroes who went before. The sonata is the firm and
solid bridge over which music passed from the contrapuntal period to
the romantic, and doubtless there still are some who prefer to linger
on the bridge rather than cross it to the promised land to which it
leads. Always there are conservatives who stand still and look back;
and that these still should let their eyes rest longingly on the great
master of the classical epoch, Beethoven, is, to say the least,
comprehensible. One would have to be unresponsive indeed not to be
thrilled by the story of his life--his force of character, his rugged
personality, his determination in spite of one of the greatest
misfortunes that could befall a musician, deafness; and the
intellectual power which he displayed in bending a seemingly rigid art
form to his will and making it the receptacle of his inspiration.
Well may these considerations be borne in mind whenever a Beethoven
sonata is on a pianoforte recital program. If it does not move us as
profoundly as music more modern does, that is not because its composer
was less deeply concerned with the problems of life than those who
have come after him. For his time he was wonderfully "subjective,"
drawing his inspiration from the heart, yet always preserving a sane
mental poise. If to-day the sonatas of this great genius and splendid
man seem to us less dramatic and emotional than they once did to
audiences, it is because of the progress of music toward greater
plasticity of expression and our conviction that such should be its
mission.