The tropical weather in the early part of last month set a dozen
problems whizzing in my skull. Near my bungalow on the upper Wissahickon
were several young men, camping out for the summer. One afternoon I was
playing with great gusto a lovely sonata by Dussek--the one in
A-flat--when I heard laughter, and, rising, I went to the window in an
angry mood. Outside were two smiling faces, the patronizing faces of two
young men.
"Well!" said I, rather shortly.
"It was like a whiff from the eighteenth century," said a stout, dark
young fellow.
"A whiff that would dissipate the musical malaria of this," I cried, for
I saw I had musicians to deal with. There was hearty laughter at this,
and as young laughter warms the cockles of an old man's heart, I invited
the pair indoors, and over some bottled ale--I despise your new-fangled
slops--we discussed the Fine Arts. It is not the custom nowadays to
capitalize the arts, and to me it reveals the want of respect in this
headlong irreverent generation. To return to my mutton--to my sheep:
they told me they were pianists from New York or thereabouts, who had
conceived the notion of spending the summer in a tent.
"And what of your practising?" I slyly asked. Again they roared. "Why,
old boy, you must be behind the times. We use a dumb piano the most part
of the year, and have brought a three-octave one along." That set me
going. "So you spend your vacation with the dumb, expecting to learn to
speak, and yet you mock me because I play Dussek! Let me inform you, my
young sirs, that this quaint, old-fashioned music, with its faint odor
of the _rococo_, is of more satisfying musical value than all your
modern gymnasiums. Of what use, pray, is your superabundant technics if
you can't make music? Training your muscles and memorizing, you say?
Fiddlesticks! The _Well-tempered Clavichord_ for one hour a day is of
more value to a pianist technically and musically than an army of
mechanical devices.
"I never see a latter-day pianist on his travels but I am reminded of a
comedian with his rouge-pot, grease-paints, wigs, arms, and costumes.
Without them, what is the actor? Without his finger-boards and
exercising machines, what is the pianist of today? He fears to stop a
moment because his rival across the street will be able to play the
double-thirds study of Chopin in quicker _tempo_. It all hinges on
velocity. This season there will be a race between Rosenthal and Sauer,
to see who can vomit the greater number of notes. Pleasing, laudable
ambition, is it not? In my time a piano artist read, meditated, communed
much with nature, slept well, ate and drank well, saw much of society,
and all his life was reflected in his play. There was sensibility--above
all, sensibility--the one quality absent from the performances of your
new pianists. I don't mean super-sickly emotion, nor yet sprawling
passion--the passion that tears the wires to tatters, but a poetic
sensibility that infused every bar with humanity. To this was added a
healthy tone that lifted the music far above anything morbid or
depressing."
I continued in this strain until the dinner-bell rang, and I had to
invite my guests to remain. Indeed, I was not sorry, for all old men
need some one to talk to and at, else they fret and grow peevish.
Besides, I was anxious to put my young masters to the test. I have a
grand piano of good age, with a sounding-board like a fine-tempered
fiddle. The instrument, an American one, I handle like a delicate
thoroughbred horse, and, as my playing is accomplished by the use of my
fingers and not my heels, the piano does not really betray its years.
We dined not sumptuously but liberally, and with our pipes and coffee
went to the music room. The lads, excited by my criticisms and good
cheer, were eager for a demonstration at the keyboard. So was I. I let
them play first. This is what I heard: The dark-skinned youth, who
looked like the priestly and uninteresting Siloti, sat down and began
idly preluding. He had good fingers, but they were spoiled by a
hammer-like touch and the constant use of forearm, upper-arm, and
shoulder pressure. He called my attention to his tone. Tone! He made
every individual wire jangle, and I trembled for my smooth, well-kept
action. Then he began the _B-minor Ballade_ of Liszt. Now, this
particular piece always exasperates me. If there is much that is
mechanical and conventional in the Thalberg fantasies, at least they are
frankly sensational and admittedly for display. But the Liszt _Ballade_
is so empty, so pretentious, so affected! One expects that something is
about to occur, but it never comes. There are the usual chromatic
modulations leading nowhere and the usual portentous roll in the bass.
The composition works up to as much silly display as ever indulged in by
Thalberg. My pianist splashed and spluttered, played chord-work
straight from the shoulder, and when he had finished he cried out,
"There is a dramatic close for you!"
"I call it mere brutal noise," I replied, and he winked at his friend,
who went to the piano without my invitation. Now, I did not care for the
looks of this one, and I wondered if he, too, would display his biceps
and his triceps with such force. But he was a different brand of the
modern breed. He played with a small, gritty tone, and at a terrible
speed, a foolish and fantastic derangement of Chopin's _D-flat Valse_.
This he followed, at a break-neck _tempo_, with Brahms' dislocation of
Weber's _C major Rondo_, sometimes called "the perpetual movement." It
was all very wonderful, but was it music?
"Gentlemen," I said, as I arose, pipe in hand, "you have both studied,
and studied hard," and they settled themselves in their bamboo chairs
with a look of resignation; "but have you studied well? I think not. I
notice that you lay the weight of your work on the side of technics.
Speed and a brutal _quasi_-orchestral tone seem to be your goal. Where
is the music? Where has the airy, graceful valse of Chopin vanished?
Encased, as you gave it, within hard, unyielding walls of double thirds,
it lost all its spirit, all its evanescent hues. It is a butterfly
caged. And do you call that music, that topsy-turvying of the Weber
_Rondo_? Why, it sounds like a clock that strikes thirteen in the small
hours of the night! And you, sir, with your thunderous and grandiloquent
Liszt _Ballade_, do you call that pianoforte music, that constant
striving for an aping of orchestral effects? Out upon it! It is hollow
music--music without a soul. It is easier, much easier, to play than a
Mozart sonata, despite all its tumbling about, despite all its notes.
You require no touch-discrimination for such a piece. You have none. In
your anxiety to compass a big tone you relinquish all attempts at finer
shadings--at the _nuance_, in a word. Burly, brutal, and overloaded in
your style, you make my poor grand groan without getting one vigorous,
vital tone. Why? Because elasticity is absent, and will always be
absent, where the fingers are not allowed to make the music. The
springiest wrist, the most supple forearm, the lightest upper arm cannot
compensate for the absence of an elastic finger-stroke. It is what
lightens up and gives variety of color to a performance. You are all
after tone-quantity and neglect touch--touch, the revelation of the
soul."
"Yes, but your grand is worn out and won't stand any forcing of the
tone," answered the Liszt _Ballade_, rather impudently.
"Why the dickens do you want to force the tone?" said I, in tart
accents. "It is just there we disagree," I yelled, for I was getting
mad. "In your mad quest of tone you destroy the most characteristic
quality of the pianoforte--I mean its lack of tone. If it could sustain
tone, it would no longer be a pianoforte. It might be an organ or an
orchestra, but not a pianoforte. I am after tone-quality, not tonal
duration. I want a pure, bright, elastic, spiritual touch, and I let the
tonal mass take care of itself. In an orchestra a full chord
_fortissimo_ is interesting because it may be scored in the most
prismatic manner. But hit out on the keyboard a smashing chord and,
pray, where is the variety in color? With a good ear you recognize the
intervals of pitch, but the color is the same--hard, cold, and
monotonous, because you have choked the tone with your idiotic,
hammer-like attack. Sonorous, at least, you claim? I defy you to prove
it. Where was the sonority in the metallic, crushing blows you dealt in
the Liszt _Ballade_? There was, I admit, great clearness--a clearness
that became a smudge when you used the damper pedal. No, my boys, you
are on the wrong track with your orchestral-tone theory. You transform
the instrument into something that is neither an orchestra nor a
pianoforte. Stick to the old way; it's the best. Use plenty of finger
pressure, elastic pressure, play Bach, throw dumb devices to the dogs,
and, if you use the arm pressure at all, confine it to the forearm. That
will more than suffice for the shallow dip of the keys. You can't get
over the fact that the dip is shallow, so why attempt the impossible?
For the amount of your muscle expenditure you would need a key dip of
about six inches. Now, watch me. I shall, without your permission, and
probably to your disgust, play a nocturne by John Field. Perhaps you
never heard of him? He was an Irish pianist and, like most Irishmen of
brains, gave the world ideas that were promptly claimed by others. But
this time it was not an Englishman, but a Pole, who appropriated an
Irishman's invention. This nocturne is called a forerunner to the Chopin
nocturnes. They are really imitations of Field's, without the blithe,
dewy sweetness of the Irishman's. First, let me put out the lamps. There
is a moon that is suspended like a silver bowl over the Wissahickon. It
is the hour for magic music."
Intoxicated by the sound of my own voice, I began playing the _B-flat
Nocturne_ of Field. I played it with much delicacy and a delicious
touch. I am very vain of my touch. The moon melted into the apartment
and my two guests, enthralled by the mystery of the night and my music,
were still as mice. I was enraptured and played to the end. I waited for
the inevitable compliment. It came not. Instead, there were stealthy
snores. The pair had slept through my playing. Imbeciles! I awoke them
and soon packed them off to their canvas home in the woods hard by.
They'll get no more dinners or wisdom from me. I tell this tale to show
the hopelessness of arguing with this stiff-necked generation of
pianists. But I mean to keep on arguing until I die of apoplectic rage.
Good-evening!