As the great musical artists, especially the pianists, arrive one
after the other, and lead the town captive, one asks, not whether
there be any limit to the number, but to the skill. Last year there
was the prodigy, the phenomenon, the boy Hofmann, and all the
superlatives were spent in his praise. This year it is Rosenthal--valley
of roses--and sweet as their attar is his spell. "Well, what is he?"
"Simply miraculous; never was there anything like him." "But
Rubinstein?" "Yes, a great genius, but he himself said that at every
concert he dropped notes enough to furnish two concerts." "Then it is
skill only, _technique_?" "Not at all; it is perfection of feeling,
conception, touch, everything. Perhaps not the greatest of composers.
But for playing--ah!"
Rapture is one kind of criticism. Perhaps in music, the effect of
which is emotional, rapture, if you know the person, is the best
criticism. The artist who can kindle to the utmost enthusiasm of
delight a musically sensitive person who is also an exquisitely
skilful player, and whom mere marvels of execution do not affect
beyond reason, may be accepted as a very remarkable artist.
Temperament also counts for much in estimating musicians. Natures are
sympathetic. A silent, separate chord vibrates in response to a thrill
of sound which leaves other things unmoved. The heart of the young man
speaks to the psalmist, but the old man's may be dull and unawakened.
The homoeopathic formula, like cures like, may be adapted to musical
criticism at least so far as to say that like touches like.
When Cecilia says that she has been enchanted by the playing of any
artist, the quality of her feeling and expression justly interprets
the character of his performance. When Jenny Lind first sang in
America one of the most accomplished critics said that he must wait a
little to decide whether she was a great singer. That critic could
never really hear her. Another said that she was a consummate
ventriloquist. He meant that in the Herdsman's Song and the other
Volkslieder and native melodies there was an effect of vocalism which
seemed to him a trick. But to others it suggested wide, solitary
horizons, the sadness and seclusion of remote Northern life. Mere
imagination, retorted the critics. Yes, but to what does art,
especially musical art, appeal? Rubinstein, as he said of himself,
dropped notes without number under the piano. Thalberg did not, nor
Henri Herz. But they dropped something which Rubinstein did not. The
sunshine of a December day in this latitude is often cloudless and
beautiful. But it unfolds no rose and restores no leaf to the bare
bough.
A sweet and true, a full-volumed and thoroughly trained voice, is a
rare gift to any man. But without a certain quality in the singer it
is a perfect fruit without flavor. The singing that haunts us, which
becomes part of our life, which fills the memory with tender and happy
images of other days and scenes, is not necessarily that of the finest
voices, but of that mingling in music of voice and skill and feeling
which weave an enchanted spell. Those who have known the troubadour
Riccardo have doubtless heard what are called greater voices, artists
who hold for a triumphant moment the hazardous peak of the high C,
whose roulades and phrasing are exquisite and admirable. But the
singer whom they wish to hear, whose singing is a part of life, like
the beauty of flowers and the dawn, is the singing of the troubadour
Riccardo. It is so with Cecilia's playing, and it is impossible to
suppose a person sensitive to music who could escape its spell.
When she sits at the piano and touches the keys, they respond, as one
whom she fascinated said, with such smooth sweetness that you think
there is conscious pleasure to them in that pressure. It is apparently
as gentle, he insisted, as that of the breeze upon the grass which
lightly sways beneath it. The impression upon this sensitive youth was
a test of the character of her playing. If he had said she sings with
her fingers he would have said what he doubtless thought, and what is
true. She plays German songs--some of the familiar songs in the
collections, or something of Lassen's or Weit's, or Abt's, or one of a
thousand other songs, and the playing is like exquisite singing. It
fills the mind with pictures, with persons, with scenes, and with that
unspeakable content which only such music can give to the lovers of
music. "What on earth is it all about?" said the Senator at the
Symphony Concert, "and why do people come here?" The Hottentot would
have asked the same question if he had heard the Senator upon the
stump.
If the fairy godmother who presides over the cradle should give the
newcomer the choice of gifts, what gift more precious could the young
stranger ask than the power of giving a pleasure so pure as that which
Cecilia's playing imparts? It is one of her praises that if the choice
had been given to her she would instantly have selected the very power
which the good fairy bestowed. For in giving the pleasure she does
only what she delights to do and would have chosen to do. One
philosopher, speaking to the Easy Chair of another, whose serenity was
as undisturbed by events as the firmament by clouds, said of himself
that he subdued more devils before breakfast every day than his serene
brother had encountered in his whole life. Yet the serene brother's
lofty repose was not less admirable because it was a quality of
temperament, and not a triumph of the will; and it is not less the
merit of Cecilia that the happiness she diffuses is as involuntary as
the fragrance of the sweetbrier.
What is done without effort seems not to have been taught, and it is
not easy to fancy Cecilia drudging at exercises and laboring at
scales. Canaries, indeed, are trained to sing, and even young birds to
fly. Yet the training is but showing them how to give themselves free
play. To express entire facility we say that an act is done as
naturally as a bird sings. Not less naturally does Cecilia play. You
listen, and the song which you knew seems to sing itself, but
enveloped with a richness and fulness of flowing accompaniment which
is like the harping of aerial choirs. Then with others she plays the
great music, concerted Bach or Beethoven, Chopin, Schumann, or Wagner,
Weber or Mendelssohn; now an old gavotte, now a quaint fantasia, and
why not a toccata of Galuppi Baldassero? It is more than a hint or a
reminiscence, although it is not an orchestra. But when those fingers
kindred with Cecilia's sweep the keys together, the listener wonders
whether the hearer of the full orchestra has caught from it the subtle
and exquisite significance of the strain which has poured from those
enchanted pianos.
The piano is called an inadequate instrument. Perhaps it is, until you
hear Cecilia play. Then by some secret sympathy you find yourself
murmuring, "Not so sweetly sang Plumer as thou sangest, mild,
childlike, pastoral M----; a flute's breathing less divinely
whispering than thy Arcadian melodies when, in tones worthy of Arden,
thou didst chant that song sung by Amiens to the banished Duke, which
proclaims the winter wind more lenient than for a man to be
ungrateful!"