intensity and impetuosity, which, discerning truly, critics have so
often falsely interpreted, there can be no doubt. He was the subject
and in some ways the victim, of hereditary instability, a tendency, so
to speak, to go off at half-cock. In his life no trait comes out more
conspicuously, and its association with his powerful intellect, with
which it was always at odds, goes far to explain the anomalies and
paradoxes of his music. We see it constantly in his acts, where, if we
always remember that we are studying a great nature, which must be
analyzed respectfully and without vulgar curiosity, we may learn much
from observing it.
Peter Ilyitch Tschaïkowsky was born in a small Russian town in 1840.
As a very small boy he showed his ardent patriotism by kissing the
map of Russia, in his Atlas, and spitting at the rest of Europe.
When his French nurse remonstrated, he explained that he had
been careful to cover France with his hand. There already is his
temperament--passionate and tender. The Tschaïkowsky family early
moved to St. Petersburg, where Peter at first entered the School of
Jurisprudence, and later obtained a post in the Ministry of Justice.
All through his youth he was indolent, popular, fond of society, a
graceful amateur who played _salon_ pieces at evening parties. That his
serious interest in music was first aroused by his cousin's showing him
how to «modulate» is rather amusing when we remember the virtuosity and
daring of his mature harmonic style. «My cousin said it was possible to
modulate from one key to another,» he says, «without using more than
three chords. This excited my curiosity, and to my astonishment I found
that he improvised whatever modulations I suggested, even from quite
extraneous keys.» In 1861 he wrote to his sister that he was meditating
a musical career, but was still in doubt whether he could pursue it
successfully. «Perhaps idleness may take possession of me, and I may
not persevere.» But a little later all doubts had vanished, he had
given up his official work, withdrawn from society, and thrown himself
with characteristic ardor into his studies. He now sometimes sat up
all night working, and Rubinstein, his composition teacher at the
Conservatory, tells how on one occasion he submitted no less than two
hundred variations on a single theme. He made such good progress that
in 1866, a few years after his graduation, he was appointed professor
of harmony in the Moscow Conservatory.
From about this time date his first important compositions. «When first
he came to live in Moscow,» writes his friend M. Kashkin, «although he
was then six-and-twenty, he was still inexperienced and young in many
things, especially in the material questions of life; but in all that
concerned his work he was already mature, with a particularly elaborate
method of work, in which all was foreseen with admirable judgment,
and manipulated with the exactitude of the surgeon in operating.»
M. Kashkin's testimony is a valuable corrective to the widespread
impression that Tschaïkowsky composed in a mad frenzy of passion. No
good work, in art any more than in science, is done without that calm
deliberation which his strong mental grasp made possible to him. His
early compositions were for the most part operas, and, it must be
added, unsuccessful operas. «The Voievoda,» written in 1866, did not
satisfy him, and he burned the score. «Undine,» composed in 1870, was
not accepted by the theatrical authorities, who moreover mislaid the
manuscript; Tschaïkowsky, years later, recovered and destroyed it. In
1873 «Snegourotchka,» a ballet, in spite of some musical beauty, failed
for lack of dramatic interest. The success of «Kouznetz Vakoula,»
produced a year later, was ephemeral. Thus it was not until «The
Oprichnik,» which still holds the stage in Russia, was brought out,
when Tschaïkowsky was thirty-four, that he made a pronounced success.
The persistence with which he continued to labor during these years
seems to be overlooked by those who consider him a mere prophet of
lassitude and discouragement. Nor would such a man have undertaken and
discharged the drudgery of journalistic criticism as did Tschaïkowsky
in the four years from 1872 to 1876, when he was writing critiques for
the Moscow papers. Whatever fluctuations of mood he may have undergone
in these early years, and we may be sure they were many, his outward
life was an example of equability, diligence and patience.
In 1877, however, there was some sort of tragic happening. That it
was somehow connected with an unhappy marriage, that it resulted in a
complete nervous breakdown, these things we know.[E] It is unnecessary
to probe for more specific details; it is enough to note that for a
long time he was broken and despairing, that through all the rest
of his life his mental temper, never bright, was shadowed with a
pathological gloom. He left the Conservatory suddenly, and was abroad a
year. He wrote one of his friends, «On the whole, I am robust; but as
regards my soul, there is a wound there that will never heal. I think
I am _homme fini_.... Something is broken in me; my wings are cut and
I shall never fly very high again.» He says that had he remained a day
longer in Moscow he should have drowned himself, and it is said that he
did go so far, in his terrible depression, as to stand up to his chest
in the river one frosty September night, «in the hope of literally
catching his death of cold, and getting rid of his troubles without
scandal.»
But he took the better way; indeed, the best years, the quietest and
most fruitful years, of his life were yet before him. As robust in
character as he was sensitive and impetuous in temperament, he pulled
himself together, and wrote in the next year his masterly Fourth
Symphony, his best opera, «Eugene Oniegin,» said to be the second most
popular opera in Russia, and many other strong works. He returned
also, in the fall of 1878, to his post at the Conservatory, but, by
the generosity of an anonymous lady,[F] was soon enabled to give up
teaching and devote himself entirely to composition. From this time
on, except for a conducting tour through western Europe in 1888, and
one to America a few years later, he stayed chiefly in the country,
in studious solitude. His mode of life at Maidanova, a little village
where in 1885 he took a house, has been described by M. Kashkin, who
often visited him. After working all the morning, and taking a simple
but well-cooked dinner, Tschaïkowsky always went for a long walk,
no matter what the weather. «Many of his works were planned and his
themes invented,» we are told, «in these long rambles across country.»
After tea he worked again until supper-time, and after supper the
two friends, ordering a bottle of wine and dismissing the servant,
would devote themselves to playing four-hand music. M. Kashkin tells
one or two interesting stories of Tschaïkowsky at this period. His
impulsiveness, it seems, took the form in money matters of a fairly
reckless generosity. So lavishly did he shower coppers on all the
peasant children in the neighborhood, that he could not go for his
walk without being surrounded by them. In one afternoon he is said to
have dispensed fourteen shillings of his own and all of M. Kashkin's
small change. A friend once asked him where he «invested his capital.»
Convulsed with laughter, he answered that his last investment of
capital had been in a Moscow hotel, and that where his next would be he
did not know.
The events of his tour in 1888 he has himself narrated with
characteristic modesty and charm, in a fragment of diary. One can
read between the lines that he was everywhere the center of admiring
interest, but with fine literary instinct he constantly subordinates
himself to the people and events through which he moved. How lovable
are his vainly continued efforts to enjoy the music of Brahms, his
eagerness to record the little kindnesses of his friends, his dignified
reticence about his enemies, his hearty appreciation of work far
inferior to his own! «I trust,» he says, «that it will not appear like
self-glorification that my dithyramb in praise of Grieg precedes the
statement that our natures are closely allied. Speaking of Grieg's
high qualities, I do not at all wish to impress my readers with the
notion that I am endowed with an equal share of them. I leave it to
others to decide how far I am lacking in all that Grieg possesses in
such abundance.» This warm appreciation of others, combined with so
pathetic a lack of self-confidence that on more than one occasion he
burned the score of a work which was coldly received, was so extreme
in Tschaïkowsky that one of his friends pronounced him the least
conceited of composers. Like all sensitive people, indeed, he was
painfully conscious of social bonds; what was due him from others,
and what in turn was due them from him--these intangibles, so easily
forgotten by most men, were to him heavy realities. It is touching
to see how dependent he was on the friendliness of the orchestra he
was leading, and he was so impressible by criticism that long after
his fame was established he could repeat word for word Hanslick's and
Cui's early attacks upon him. On the other hand, M. Kashkin says that
when he was conducting the works of others he was so sensible of his
responsibility that his face wore a look of physical pain. When he was
dying of cholera, in terrible agony, he thanked all about his bedside
for the consideration they showed him, and his last remark reminds one
of Charles the Second's «I am afraid, gentlemen, I am an unconscionable
time a-dying.» He turned to his nephews after an unusually severe
attack of nausea with the exclamation, «What a state I am in! You will
have but little respect for your uncle when you think of him in such a
state as this!» He died at St. Petersburg, in October, 1893.
By this time it will be clear enough that this was no puling
complainer, but a delicate, high nature of great emotional intensity,
subjected to a cruel interaction of temperament and circumstances,
and yet capable of nobly constructive artistic work. His life,
candidly examined, reveals modesty, dignity, elevation of ideal and
of character. Yet it does illustrate, too, in many ways, that lack of
emotional balance which underlies the peculiar quality of his music.
His mere method of approaching his art, in the first place, is
significant. All his early efforts, as we have seen, were operas;
he wrote altogether ten operas, and the Pathetic Symphony is the
last fruit of a genius dramatic rather than symphonic. At thirty
Tschaïkowsky was unable to read orchestral scores with ease, and
preferred to study the classics through four-hand arrangements,
while his distaste for the purest form of music was so great that
he protested he could hardly keep awake through the performance of
the masterly A-minor Quartet of Beethoven. This attitude toward the
string quartet, which is in music what engraving or etching is in
representative art, is very anomalous in a young composer, and shows
so disproportionate an interest in the merely expressive side of music
that it is hard to understand how Tschaïkowsky ever became so great a
plastic master as his last two symphonies, for all their freight of
passion, show him to be.
He never, in fact, wholly outgrew certain peculiarities which are
direct results of his emotional instability, his slavery to mood. His
persistent use of minor keys, for example, is, as the doctors say,
symptomatic. The minor is naturally the medium of vague, subjective
moods and fantasies, of aspiration, longing, and doubt; it is
the vehicle of morbidly self-bounded thoughts, whose depressing
gloom is equalled only by their seductive and malign beauty. Such
thoughts we find too often in Chopin, Grieg, and, it must be added,
in Tschaïkowsky. Of the first thirty songs he wrote, seventeen are
in the minor mode. Of course too much should not be argued from a
detail of this sort, but the major system is so naturally the medium
of vigorously objective thought that we instinctively suspect the
health of a mind which harps continually upon the minor. By a somewhat
similar tendency towards self-involution, the natural result of intense
emotionality, Tschaïkowsky inclines to monotony of rhythm; he gets
hypnotized, as it were, by the regular pulsation of some recurring
meter, and he continues it to the verge of trance. An example is
the long pedal-point on D, in the curious 5-4 measure of the second
movement of the Pathetic Symphony. This is like the wailing and rocking
of the women of a savage tribe over the death of a warrior; it is at
once wild and sinister. But perhaps the most striking evidence of
this servitude to passion we are trying to trace in Tschaïkowsky is
his constant use of climax. It seems to be quite impossible for him
to preserve a mean-tone; he is always lashing himself into a fury,
boiling up into a frenetic fortissimo, after which he lapses into
coma until some phrase of melody or impulse of rhythm jostles his
imagination again, and he presses on toward a new crisis. The effect of
these cumulative whirlwinds of passion is often tremendous, is unique,
indeed, in music; yet one longs sometimes in the midst of them for a
less turbulent attitude, for the equable beauty of Bach or Mozart. The
atmosphere is surcharged. One feels that this noble but willful spirit
has sat too long in the close chamber of personal feeling, that one
must throw wide the windows and let in the fresh winds of general human
existence.
Yet, after all, the imperfections of Tschaïkowsky's music are due
rather to the overwhelming richness of his emotions than to any
shortcomings of mind; his case is an artistic embarrassment of riches,
and his critic must avoid the fallacy of supposing, because his
constructive power is sometimes inadequate, that it is ever meager.
On the contrary, he is a man of great intellectual force. It is too
bad to be so busy with Tschaïkowsky the pessimist that one forgets
Tschaïkowsky the artist. His melodic fertility alone is enough to rank
him with the great constructive musicians. His devotion to Mozart, and
to the Italian opera-writers, was no accident; by the spontaneity and
beauty of his melodies he has «approved himself their worthy brother.»
Few more inspiring tunes can be found anywhere than the opening theme
of his B-flat minor Piano Concerto, with its splendid and tireless
vigor, or the broad, constantly unfolding cantilena of the second theme
in the Fifth Symphony. His pages are plentifully scattered with phrases
of rare grace, of a fresh and original charm. His harmony, too, for
all its radicalism, is generally firm and well controlled, and his
rhythm, however monotonous at times, is never vague. In polyphony (the
simultaneous progress of different melodies) he is a powerful master,
as any one may see by examining, for example, the masterly variations
in his Orchestral Suite, opus 55. He is probably, on the whole, a
greater master of general construction than any of his contemporaries
except Brahms.
It is evident, then, that this curiously paradoxical personality was
gifted with an intellectual strength that went far toward dominating
the turbulent passions which, on the whole, it could not quite
dominate. But one needs, after all, no careful statistical proof of the
rationality of Tschaïkowsky's music. The fact that it survives, that it
is widely listened to and loved, proves _a priori_ that, however tinged
it may be with personal melancholy, it is not ultimately pessimistical
or destructive in effect. For it is the happy fortune of art that it
cannot fully voice the destructive forces of anarchy and despair.
Its nature precludes the possibility, for anarchy is chaos, despair
is confusion, and neither can be the subject of that clearly organic
order which is art. The artist may, of course, express sadness; his
work, if it is to be comprehensively human, must be reflective of the
ebb as well as the flow of vital power. But it cannot mirror complete
dejection, the absolute lapse of power; for without power there is no
organization, and without organization there is no art. The melodic
invention, the harmonic grasp, the rhythmic vigor, in a word the
powerful musical articulation, everywhere present in Tschaïkowsky's
best work, remove it far from the inarticulate moanings of despair.
Such faculties as his are anything but disintegrating or decadent;
however much individual sadness may attend their exercise, they are
upbuilding and creative. Tschaïkowsky commands our admiration more than
our pity because, in spite of the burdens of his temperament and the
misfortunes of his experience, he contributed to beauty, and beauty is
the standing confutation of evil.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE.--Much of Tschaïkowsky's early work was for
piano, but most of his piano pieces are light if not trivial in
character. They are amusing to play over, but do not fairly represent
his genius. Seventeen of them are to be had in an album in the
Collection Litolff. The Sonata, op. 37, on the other hand, in spite
of its marked resemblance to Schumann's F-sharp minor Sonata, is
one of the finest of modern sonatas for piano. The Concertos are
masterly, but very difficult. Most of the important orchestral works
are arranged for four hands. The most interesting are the Pathetic
Symphony, the Fifth Symphony, which should be equally well known, the
Orchestral Suites, particularly the third, op. 55, with its charming
_Tema con Variazioni_, and the Overture, Romeo and Juliet. Of the
chamber-works, the third String Quartet, op. 30, and the Trio, are
especially good. Twenty-four of Tschaïkowsky's songs are published in
an album by Novello, Ewer & Co., and many separately by G. Schirmer
and others.
FOOTNOTES:
[E] Since the present paper was written, the biography of Tschaïkowsky
by his brother has shown that in this unhappy marriage the only fault
we can attribute to the composer was a quixotic chivalry in marrying
a young woman who had declared her love for him. He married her from
sympathy without loving her. Of course such a step could lead to
nothing but misery; but however unwise, it was at least generous and
honorable.
[F] This lady, according to the new biography, was Frau von Meck, the
widow of a wealthy railway engineer. Her interest in Tschaïkowsky's
work, and her generous gifts of money, were of great value to him all
his life.
VII
JOHANNES BRAHMS
[Illustration: JOHANNES BRAHMS]
VII
JOHANNES BRAHMS
Of all the figures of modern music, brilliant and varied as they are,
impressing one with the many-sidedness and wide scope of the art,
there is perhaps only one, that of Johannes Brahms, which conveys the
sense of satisfying poise, self-control and sanity. Others excel him
in particular qualities. Grieg is more delicate and intimate, Dvořák
warmer and clearer in color; Saint-Saëns is more meteoric, Franck more
recondite and subtle, and Tschaïkowsky more impassioned; but Brahms
alone has Homeric simplicity, the primeval health of the well-balanced
man. He excels all his contemporaries in soundness and universality.
In an age when many people are uncertain of themselves and the world,
victims of a pervasive unrest and disappointment, it is solacing
to find so heroic and simple a soul, who finds life acceptable,
meets it genially, and utters his joy and his sorrow with the old
classic sincerity. He is not blighted by any of the myriad forms of
egotism,--by sentimentality, by the itch to be effective at all costs,
or to be «original,» or to be Byronic or romantic or unfathomable. He
has no «message» for an errant world; no anathema, either profoundly
gloomy or insolently clever, to hurl at God. He has rather a deep and
broad impersonal love of life; universal joy is the sum and substance
of his expression.
It is hard to say whether the unique greatness of Brahms depends more
on this emotional wholesomeness and simplicity or on the intellectual
breadth and synthetic power with which it is combined. Probably the
truth is that true greatness requires the interaction of the two. At
any rate, Brahms is equally remarkable, whether considered as a man or
as a musician, for both. In his personal character frankness, modesty,
simple and homely virtue were combined with the widest sympathy, the
most far-ranging intelligence, extreme catholicity and tolerance. In
music he prized equally the simplest elements, like the old German
folk-songs and the Hungarian dances, and the most complex artistic
forms that are evolved from them by creative genius. Like Bach and
Beethoven, he spanned the whole range of human interests; deep feeling
fills his music with primitive expressiveness, and at the same time
great intellectual power gives it the utmost scope and complexity.
Lacking either trait he would not have been himself, he could not have
performed his service to music.
There are many anecdotes illustrating the simple, large traits of
the man. His pleasures were homely, his ambitions inward and vital.
He cared little for fame, and was annoyed by the foolish adulation
of the crowd. To a long and flowery speech addressed to him on the
presentation of some sort of tribute he answered, with admirable
brevity and utter prose, «Thank you very much.» Once when a party
of his friends were gathered together to sample a rare old wine,
somebody pompously announced, «What Brahms is among the composers, this
Rauenthaler is among the wines.» «Ah,» snapped out Brahms, «then let's
have a bottle of Bach now.» He often remarked that one could never
hope to get upon the level of such giants as Bach and Beethoven; one
could only work conscientiously in one's own field. He had the disgust
of shams that one expects in so sincere a lover of the genuine, and the
armor of roughness and sarcasm with which he protected himself against
the pretentious was formidable. When the University of Cambridge
offered him a degree, suggesting that he write a new work for the
occasion, he replied that if any of his old works seemed good enough to
them he should be happy to receive the honor, but that he was too busy
to write a new one. There was about him something shaggy, bear-like,
and one can imagine the foxes and weasels scattering at his growl.
But for everything fresh and genuine Brahms had the heartiest love. He
is one of the innumerable army of great men of whom biography loves
to relate that they always carried candy in their pockets for the
children, and a lady described in a letter how she had seen him on the
hotel piazza, on all-fours, clambered over by young playmates. He was
on cordial terms with waiters and servants, and told Mr. Henschel with
emotion the story of a serving-maid who lost her position in order
to shield a careless postman, who, being married, could not afford to
lose his. Another pretty story, showing at once his modesty and his
catholicity of taste, recounts how all the musical friends of the wife
of Johann Strauss, the great waltz composer, were writing their names,
with phrases from their works, on her fan. When it was his turn, the
composer of the German Requiem wrote the opening phrase of the «Blue
Danube» waltz, and underneath it the words, «Not, I regret to say, by
your devoted friend, Johannes Brahms.» Thus wholesome and unaffected
was the character of this great man.