It was about fifteen years ago that Thalberg, who has just died only
fifty-nine years old, was in this country. Jenny Lind had been here
some years earlier, and Alboni and Grisi a little later, and
Vieuxtemps and Sivori and Ole Bull a dozen years before. Jullien, with
his monster orchestra, had given monstrous concerts in the monstrous
hall of Castle Garden, and many a musician of less fame had come to
try his fortune. But we had had neither of the acknowledged masters of
the piano, the founders of the modern school of playing--Liszt and
Thalberg. Liszt, spoiled and capricious, played very seldom. Chopin,
more a composer than a performer, we in America had never supposed
would cross the sea: so sensitive, so delicate, so shadowy, his life
seemed to exhale, a passionate sigh of music. In the stormy,
blood-soaked, ruined Paris of to-day it is not easy to imagine those
evenings at the Prince Czartoryski's, when Chopin played in the
moonlight the mazurkas and polonaises and waltzes which moonlight or
dreams seem often to have inspired, but through which the proud
movement of the old Polish dance and song triumphantly rings.
In George Sand's _Letters of a Traveller_ Chopin also appears, but
sadly and hopelessly. What Xavier de Maistre says of the Fornarina and
Raphael is the undertone of all the passages of the book that speak of
Chopin--"She loved her love more than her lover." Then came the burial
at the Madeleine, with his own funeral march beating time to his
grave. The mere pianist who had aroused the most enthusiasm in this
country was Leopold de Meyer, who came more than twenty years ago. His
was a blithe, exhilarating style. There was a grotesque little plaster
cast of him in the shop-windows at the time, representing him
crouching over the instrument, with enormous hands spread upon the
keyboard, and his fat knees crowding in to cover all the rest of the
space. It was slam-bang playing, but so skilful, and with such a
tickling melody, that it was irresistibly popular. His "Marche
Marocaine," a brilliant _tour de force_, was always sure to captivate
the audience; and his success was indisputable.
De Meyer's concerts were sometimes given in the old Tabernacle in
Broadway, near Leonard Street, the circular church which for so many
years was the chief public hall in the city. The platform was almost
in the centre, and the aisles radiated from it. The galleries went
quite around the building, and, except for the huge columns which
supported a dome, it was convenient both for hearing and seeing. Here
were some of the great antislavery meetings in the hottest days of the
agitation. The anniversaries were held here, and it was the scene of
all popular lectures and of concerts. A few blocks above, upon
Broadway, near Canal Street, was the old Apollo Hall, where the first
Philharmonic concerts took place. In those early days of the German
music--days which followed the City Hotel epoch and the Garcia
opera--people were so unaccustomed to the proprieties of the
concert-room that the Easy Chair has even known some persons to
whisper and giggle during the performance of the finest symphonies of
Beethoven and Mozart, and so excessively rude as to rustle out of the
hall before the last piece was ended.
Upon one such occasion it said to its neighbor, as they were coming
out:
"It is a pity such ill-mannered people should thrust themselves among
ladies and gentlemen."
"Ill-mannered!" quoth its neighbor; "I assure you they are carriage
company from the neighborhood of Union Square."
In these days of universal respectful attention at the Philharmonic
concerts it is but a curious reminiscence of long-passed boorishness,
this of persons who whispered and giggled, and rustled out before the
end, at concerts, to the disturbance of all mannerly people.
As the city grew the concerts came up-town, and were for some time
given at Niblo's concert-room. But, wherever they were, one person was
for many years constantly familiar, sometimes as general director,
sometimes as pianist to accompany singing, always modest, courteous,
and efficient, a man widely and most kindly remembered--Henry C. Timm.
Like most of our musical benefactors, he was a German, and gave
lessons in piano-playing. He was not one of the great virtuosos, but
his touch was delicate and nimble, and he had a sincere love of his
art. Often and often, at a house always pleasant from that
reminiscence, with the consent of parent and pupil, and to his own
great delight, the hour designed for the scholar's scales and
exercises was given to the master's playing. He was fond of Weber's
"Invitation to the Waltz," and he played it with force and precision
and the utmost delicacy. Mr. Timm had a pale, smooth, sharp face, a
rather prim manner, and a quick, modest gait. He was most
simple-hearted, and loved a joke; and his fun was all the more
effective from his very sober face and his lisp. It was his wife who
was long the most efficient actress at Mitchell's old Olympic in the
palmy days of burlesque.
It was at Niblo's that Thalberg played. Many of the virtuosos had
been--like De Meyer--so extravagant in their action, and so evidently
what we now call "sensational," that there was great curiosity to see
the master whose name had been familiar since 1830, and famous since
1835, when he first played in Paris. The comparative estimate of the
two men, Liszt and Thalberg, was that the former was a player of
eccentric genius, the latter of consummate talent: a judgment which is
very apt to spring from a superficial theory that eccentricity is the
signet of genius. The long hair, the wild aspect of Paganini, did much
to confirm this feeling.
At the concerts of Thalberg there were some preliminary performances,
and then a gentleman with side whiskers and no mustache,
unostentatiously dressed, entered upon the platform. His manner was
grave and tranquil, and he bowed respectfully as he seated himself at
the instrument. Immediately, without a flourish or grimace, steadily
and calmly watching the audience, he touched the piano, and it began
to sing. There was no pounding, no muscular contortion. Nothing but
his hands seemed to be engaged, and apparently without effort they
exhausted the whole force of the instrument. It was in every respect
except its great effectiveness the reverse of De Meyer's playing. The
effect, indeed, was astonishing. When the player arose, as quietly and
gravely as he had seated himself, there was a tumult of applause, to
which he bowed and tranquilly withdrew.
The characteristic of his style is well known. It was a series of
harmonious combinations of all the resources of the key-board, through
which the melody was clearly articulated. It was by study and by long
practice only that he carried this method to its perfection. Thus in
one of his great fantasias, that from Mozart's "Don Giovanni," the
sentiment of the whole opera was reproduced. Perhaps you do not admire
brilliant variations upon a theme selected from the opera, but in this
performance you are affected by the passionate movement of the entire
work. It is a wonderful epitome. The same respect which he showed for
his audience and for himself, and which made him always a
self-possessed gentleman, he also had for his instrument. De Meyer
seemed to suppose that the full range and power of the piano could not
be developed except by grotesque methods. Other players treat it as if
impatient of its limitations, and resolved to make an orchestra of a
feeble key-board. But Thalberg instinctively apprehended the character
of the instrument, and respected its limitations as well as its
powers, and knew that its utmost resource was attainable by skilled
motion rather than by brute force. Therefore he played with his hands,
and not with his knees and his body. But the force of his fingers was
magical, and the volume of sound that followed was as great as any
player evoked.
Thalberg was a player only, and not, in the sense of Chopin, a
composer. What are called his compositions are arrangements and
adaptations of themes from operas treated to develop them with all the
richness of the instrument. The originality is in the method of
instrumentation, and in this he was original, and is really the
founder of the present piano school. As a player his characteristic
was the cantabile--the singing quality; and this he had beyond all
players. The flowing sweetness of his style is indescribable. There
were many, indeed, who complained of a want of fire, and denied him
that passion without which no work of art is perfect. But it was
impossible to hear him play his fantasia from "Don Giovanni," for
instance, without perceiving all the passion of the original. Mozart
was not lost under his hands. And the impression of coldness was
largely due, doubtless, to the tranquillity and propriety of his
appearance and manner.
The most generally popular of his successors at the piano in this
country was undoubtedly Gottschalk, who was here quite as early as
Thalberg, whose fame eclipsed all others. Upon his arrival Gottschalk
played privately at a small party. He was a foreign-looking youth,
with a peculiarly dull eye, and taciturn, but he was familiar with
every kind of music. When he was asked he played Chopin, and with
great skill. But his chief successes were his West Indian melodies,
which were full of picturesque suggestion. His execution was rapid,
brilliant, and forcible, but a great deal of his playing was too
evidently _tours de force_. It was always interesting to watch his
audience, when, upon being recalled, he began one of the West Indian
strains. There was a minor monotonous theme in them which fascinated
the listeners. They heard the beat of the tambourine, and saw the
movement of the dance, and with them all the characteristic scenery
and association of the tropics filled their imaginations. The languid
grace, the rich indolence, the gay profusion of the lands where the
banana grows, they felt and saw.
How many admirable players and singers have come among us! And when,
as now, one drops through the bridge of Mirza, a host of Easy Chairs
pause for a moment to remember how many there were, and to delight in
thinking how many more there will be. Once it was the sailor who
crossed the sea to find El Dorado and Cathay, now it is the artist who
follows in the fascinating quest. But sailor and artist seeking gold
in far countries, like the pollen-powdered bee sucking honey in the
flowers, bring as rare a treasure as they find.