There are other sonatas by Beethoven that indicate efforts on his part
to be less trammeled by considerations of form. Regard as an example
the "Sonata Quasi Una Fantasia," Opus 27, No. 2, generally, and by no
means inaptly, called the "Moonlight Sonata." This begins with the
broad and beautiful slow movement, with its sustained melody, a poem
of profound pathos in musical accents. It is followed by an
Allegretto, "_une fleur entre deux abimes_" (a flower 'twixt two
abysses) Liszt called it; and then comes the concluding movement, a
Presto agitato, which is one of Beethoven's most impassioned
creations. There are only three movements, and the usual sequence is
inverted, for the last of the three is the Sonata movement. At the end
of the Adagio sostenuto and at the end of the Allegretto as well, is
the direction "_attacca subito il sequente_," indicating that the
following movement is to be attacked at once and denoting an inner
relationship, a psychological connection between the three movements.
Throughout the work the themes are of extraordinary beauty and
expressiveness even for a Beethoven and the whole is a genuine drama
of human life and experience. This impression is produced not only by
the very evident psychological connection between the movements, but
by the manner in which the composer holds on to his themes, developing
them through bar after bar as if he himself appreciated their beauty
and were reluctant to let go of them and introduce new material. The
entire first movement, practically a song without words of the most
exquisite poignancy, is built on a single motive with a brief episode
which is more like an improvisation than a set part of a movement;
while the last movement consists of four eloquent themes with only the
merest suggestion of connecting episodes. The working out in the last
movement is almost wholly a persistent iteration of the second theme.
This persistent dwelling upon theme and the psychological relation
between the different movements make this "Moonlight Sonata" to me the
most modern sounding of Beethoven's pianoforte works, although when
mere structural greatness is considered, most critics will incline to
rank it lower than the "Sonata Appassionata" and the four last
sonatas, Op. 106 and 109-11. Undoubtedly, however, it is the most
"temperamental" of his sonatas--and herein again the most modern. My
one quarrel with Von Buelow is that he made it so popular by his
frequent playing of it and his exceptionally poetic interpretation of
it, that the great virtuosos shun it, very much as they shun the sixth
Chopin waltz (Mme. Dudevant's dog chasing its own tail), because it is
played by every pianoforte pupil of every girls' boarding school
everywhere.
Striving for Freedom.
In addition to what I have said of this sonata, it was an immense gain
for greater freedom of form, and it is to be regretted that it is a
more or less isolated instance and that Beethoven did not adopt it as
a standard in shaping his remaining sonatas. Its most valuable
attribute from the modern point of view is a characteristic to which I
already have called attention several times--the fact that its several
movements stand in psychological relation to one another; that there
is such real soul or temperamental connection between them, that it
would be doing actual violence to the work as a whole if any one
movement were to be played without the others or if their sequence
were to be inverted.
But, you may ask, is there not in all sonatas this psychological
inter-relationship of the several movements? Have we not been told
again and again that there is?
Undoubtedly you, and others who have been misinformed by enthusiasts
who are unable to hear music in anything that has been composed since
Beethoven, have been told so. But the sonata, with a few exceptions
like the "Moonlight," simply is a group usually of four movements,
three long-ones with a shorter one between, and, save for their being
in related keys, there is no temperamental relationship between the
movements whatsoever, and to talk of there being such a thing is
nonsense. I believe the time will come when virtuosos will not
hesitate to lift single movements out of the Beethoven sonatas and
place them on their programs and that there will be a sigh of relief
from the public because it can hear a movement that still sounds fresh
and modern without being obliged to listen to two or three others that
do not. Heresy? Maybe. Galileo was accounted a heretic--yet the world
moves and the musical world with it.
The Beethoven Periods.
Beethoven was an intellectual as well as a musical giant. He thought
before he wrought. The division of his activity into three periods, in
each of which he is supposed to have progressed further along the road
of originality and greatness, is generally accepted. Nevertheless, it
is an arbitrary one, especially as regards the pianoforte sonatas,
since it has been seen that the first movement of one of his earliest
works, the third sonata (Opus 2, No. 3), is one of his most original
contributions to music, and one of the most strikingly developed
movements in sonata form that he has given us. The period division
which assigns this sonata as well as the "Sonata Pathetique" to the
first period is absurd. The fact is, that the works of the so-called
first and second periods overlap; but there is a decided change in his
style when we come to his third period which, in the pianoforte
sonatas, begins with Opus 109. (The beginning of this period usually
is assigned to the sonata Opus 101, which seems to me too early.)
Because here a restless spirit seems to be brooding over his work, it
is thought by some that his mind and heart were warped by his
misfortunes--his deafness, the ingratitude of a worthless nephew to
whom he had been as a father, and other family and material troubles.
To me, however, Beethoven seems in these sonatas to be chafing more
and more under the restraint of form and to be struggling to free
himself from it, bending all his intellect to the task. Frankly, I do
not think that in these last sonatas he achieved his purpose. He had
outgrown the form he himself had perfected, and the thoughts which
toward the last he endeavored to mould in it called for absolutely
free and untrammeled development. He had become too great for it and,
as a result, it cramped and hampered him in his latest utterances. It
is my firm belief that had Beethoven come upon the scene fifty years
later, he would not have composed a single sonata, but have revived
the suite in modern style, as Schumann practically did in his
"Carnaval," "Kreisleriana," and "Faschingschwank aus Wien," or have
created for the pianoforte something corresponding to the freely
developed tone poems of Richard Strauss.
Because, however, Beethoven wrote thirty-two pianoforte sonatas and
because he was for many years the all-dominating figure in the musical
world, every great composer who came after him and composed for the
pianoforte experimented with the sonata form, and always, be it noted,
with less success and less importance to the real progress of music
toward freedom of expression than when he followed his own inner
impulse and wrote the mood pieces, the "music of intention," the
subjective expressions of indicated thoughts and feelings, that were
more consonant with the tendencies of the romantic period which
followed Beethoven and for which he may be said to have paved the way.
For just as Bach brought the contrapuntal form to such perfection that
those who came after him could not even begin where he left off, let
alone surpass him, so Beethoven brought the sonata form to such
perfection that no further advance in it was possible. No wonder
therefore that the pianoforte sonatas of the romanticists are
comparatively few in number and the least satisfactory of their works.
These composers seem to have written sonatas simply to show that they
could write them and under a mistaken idea that length is a measure of
greatness and that shorter pieces are minor achievements, whereas as
much genius can be displayed in a nocturne as in a sonata.
Sonatas Now Old-fashioned.
Lawrence Gilman, one of our younger American critics, in his "Phases
of Modern Music," a collection of essays, brief but containing a
wealth of suggestion and breathing throughout the spirit of
modernity, sums up the matter in speaking of Edward MacDowell's
"Keltic Sonata": "I cannot help wishing that he might contrive some
expedient for doing away, so far as he himself is concerned, with the
sonata form which he occasionally uses, rather inconsistently, as a
vehicle for the expression of that vision and emotion that are in
him; for, generally speaking, and in spite of the triumphant success
of the 'Keltic,' Mr. MacDowell is less fortunate in his sonatas than
in those freer and more elastically wrought tone poems in which he
voices a mood or an experience with epigrammatic concision and
directness. The 'Keltic' succeeds in spite of its form, ... though
even here, and notwithstanding the freedom of manipulation, one
feels that he would have worked to still finer ends in a more
flexible and fluent form. He is never so compelling, so persuasively
eloquent, as in those impressionistically conceived pieces in which he
moulds his inspiration upon the events of an interior emotional
program, rather than upon a musical formula necessarily arbitrary
and anomalous." This applies to pianoforte music in general since
Beethoven. Such I believe to be the consensus of opinion among the
younger generation of critics, to whom, after all, the future
belongs, as well as the opinion of those older critics who refuse to
allow themselves to be pitchforked by their years into the ranks of
the old fogies and who still hold themselves ever receptive to
every new manifestation in music that is based on a union of mind and
heart.
Unless otherwise specifically mentioned I have, in speaking of the
sonata form, referred to it in connection with the pianoforte. But it
also is the form employed for the symphony (which simply is a sonata
for orchestra); for pianoforte trios, quartets and quintets; for
string quartets and other branches of chamber music (which are sonatas
written for the combination of instruments mentioned and such others
as are employed in chamber music), and for concertos (which are
sonatas for the combination of a solo instrument like the pianoforte,
violin or violoncello, with orchestra). In these branches the sonata
form has held its own more successfully than on the pianoforte, and
for several extraneous reasons. In the symphony it is due largely to
the greater variety that can be achieved through orchestral coloring;
in chamber music largely to the somewhat super-refined and timorous
taste of its devotees which would regard any startling innovation as
highly indecorous; and in the concerto to the fact that a soloist who
appears at an orchestral concert is supposed to play a concerto simply
because the orchestra is there to play it with him, although he, as
well as the audience, probably would find a group of solos far more
effective. In fact I think that much of the applause which usually
follows a great pianist's playing of a concerto is due not so much to
the audience's enthusiasm over it as to the hope that he may be
induced to come out and play something alone. So far as the symphony
is concerned, it is liberating itself more and more from the sonata
form and taking the direction indicated by Liszt in his symphonic
poems and by Richard Strauss in his tone poems, the freest form of
orchestral composition yet conceived.
The First Romantic Composers.
In music, as in other arts, periods overlap. We have seen that during
Bach's life Scarlatti in Italy was laying the foundations of the
harmonic system and shaping the outlines of the sonata form which was
to develop through Philipp Emanuel Bach, Haydn and Mozart and find its
greatest master in Beethoven. Likewise, even while Beethoven was
creating those works which are the glory of the classical period, two
of his contemporaries, Carl Maria von Weber, who died one year before
him, and Franz Schubert, who survived him by only a year, were writing
music which was destined to turn the art into new channels. Weber
(1786-1826) is indeed regarded as the founder of the romantic school
through his opera "Der Freischuetz." It seems to me, however, that
Schubert (1797-1828) contributed quite as much to the new movement
through his songs, while the contributions of both to the pianoforte
are important. Weber was a finished pianist, had an enormous reach (he
could stretch a twelfth), and besides utilizing the facility thus
afforded him to add to the brilliancy of pianoforte technique (as in
his well-known "Concert Piece for Piano and Orchestra"), he
deliberately, in some of his compositions, ignored the sonata form and
wrote a "Momento Capriccioso," a "Polonaise," a "Rondo Brilliant," a
"Polacca Brilliant" and the fascinating "Invitation to the Dance." The
last, even in its original form and without the elaborations in
Tausig's version of it, and the "Concert Piece" still are brilliant
and effective numbers in the modern pianoforte repertoire. Considering
the age in which they were composed, their freedom from pedantry is
little short of marvelous.
Schubert's Pianoforte Music.
Schubert was not a virtuoso and passed his life almost in obscurity,
but we now recognize that, although he lived but thirty-one years, few
composers wrought more lastingly than he. Of course, the proper place
for an estimate of his genius is in the chapter on song, but as a
pianoforte composer he is, even to this day, making his influence more
and more felt. Living in Vienna, Beethoven's city, and a fervent
admirer of that genius, it was natural that he should have composed
sonatas, and there is a whole volume of them among his pianoforte
works. Nevertheless, so original was his genius and so fertile, that,
in addition to his numerous other works, he composed eight impromptus,
among them the highly poetic one in G flat major (Opus 42, No. 2),
usually called "The Elegy"; another in B flat major (Opus 142, No. 3),
which is a theme with variations, some of them brilliant, others
profoundly expressive; and the beautifully melodious one in A flat
major; six dainty "Moments Musicals"; the exquisite little waltz
melodies from which Liszt fashioned the "Soirees de Vienne"; the
"Fantasia in G," from which the popular minuet is taken; and the
broadly dramatic "Fantasia" on a theme from his song, "The Wanderer,"
for which Liszt wrote an orchestral obbligato, thus converting it into
a highly effective and thoroughly modern fantasy for pianoforte and
orchestra. These detached compositions are as eloquent in their appeal
to-day as if they had been written during the last ten years instead
of during the first quarter of the last century. They are melodious
with the sustained melody that delights the modern ear. There is not,
as in the sonata form or, for that matter, in all the classical music
that Schubert heard around him, the brief giving out of a theme, then
an episode, then another brief theme and so on, all couched in the
formulas in which the classicists delighted, but instead of these
postulates of formality, melody fully developed and wrought out by one
who reveled in it and was willing that his hearers should revel in it
as well. To distinguish between the classicists and this early
romantic composer, whose work survives in all its freshness and beauty
to this day, it may be said that their music was thematic--based on
the kind of themes that lent themselves to formal working out as
prescribed by the sonata formula; whereas these detached pieces of
Schubert are based on melodies--long-drawn-out melodies, if you wish,
and be grateful that they are--that conjure up mood pictures and
through their exquisite harmonization exhale the very fragrance of
romanticism.
Naturally, the sonatas from his pen are more set. Nevertheless, so
long as it seems that we must have sonatas on our recital programs,
the neglect of those by Schubert is shameful. I am willing to stake
his sonata No. 5, in A minor, against any sonata ever written, and
from several of the sonatas single movements can be detached which I
should think any pianist would be glad to add to his repertoire. Among
these is the lithesome scherzo from the sonata No. 10, in B flat
major, and the beautiful slow movement (Andante sostenuto) from the
same work.
Schubert also wrote many valuable pianoforte duets, among them several
sets of marches and polonaises and an elaborate and stirring
"Divertissement a l'Hongroise," which last seems to foreshadow the
"Hungarian Rhapsodies" of Liszt. In these and the detached pianoforte
solo pieces a special value lies in that they do not appear to have
been composed as a protest against the sonata form, but spontaneously
and without a thought on Schubert's part that he was doing anything in
any way remarkable. They are expressions of musical feeling in the
manner that appealed to him as most natural. The "Moments Musicals"
especially are little mood pieces and impressionistic sketches with
here and there a bit of realism. Who, for example, is apt to forget
Essipoff's playing of the third "Moment" in Hungarian style, with a
long crescendo and diminuendo (the same effect used by Rubinstein,
when he played his arrangement of the "Turkish March" from Beethoven's
"Ruins of Athens"), so that it seemed as if a band of gypsies
approached from afar, danced by, and vanished in the distance?
Thoroughly modern is Schubert, a most modern of the moderns, whether
we listen to his original pianoforte compositions, or to the
Schubert-Liszt waltzes, or "Hark, Hark, the Lark," "To Be Sung on the
Water" (barcarolle) and other songs of his which have been arranged
for the pianoforte by Liszt.