A recent event in the musical world of Laputa has been of such
extraordinary moment as to warrant me in making some communication of
same to your valuable sheet, and although in these days of electricity
one might reasonably imagine the cable would have outstripped me, still
by careful examination of American newspapers I find only meagre mention
of the remarkable musical occurrence that shook all Laputa to its centre
last month. As you know, we pride ourselves on being a thoroughly
musical nation; our symphony concert programs and our operatic repertory
contain all the novelties that are extant. To be sure, we are a little
conservative in our tastes and relish Mozart, and, must it be confessed,
even Haydn; but, on the other hand, we have a penchant for the
Neo-Russian school and hope some day to found a trans-Asiatic band of
composers whose names will probably be as hard as their harmonies are to
European and American ears.
The event I speak of transcends anything in the prodigy line that we
have ever encountered, for while we have been deluged with boy pianists,
infant violinists, and baby singers, _ad nauseam_, still it must be
confessed that a centenarian piano virtuoso who would make his début
before a curious audience on his hundredth birthday was a novelty
indeed, particularly as the aged artist in question had been studying
diligently for some ninety-five years under the best masters (and with
what opportunities!) and would also on this most auspicious occasion
conduct an orchestral composition of his own, a _Marche Funèbre à la
Tartare_, for the first time in public. This, then, I repeat, was a
prodigy that promised to throw completely in the shade all competitors,
in addition to its being an event that had no historical precedence in
the annals of music.
With what burning curiosity the night of the concert was awaited I need
not describe, nor of the papers teeming with anecdotes of the venerable
virtuoso whose name betrayed his Asiatic origin. His great-grandchildren
(who were also his managers) announced in their prospectus that their
great-grandfather had never played in public before, and with, of
course, the exception of his early masters, had never even played for
anybody outside of his own family circle. Born in 1788, he first studied
technics with the famous Clementi and harmony with Albrechtsberger. His
parents early imbued him (by the aid of a club) with the idea of the
extreme importance of time and its value, if rightfully used, in
furthering technique. So, from five hours a day in the beginning he
actually succeeded in practising eighteen hours out of the twenty-four,
which commendable practice (literally) he continued in his later life.
Although he had only studied with one master, the Gospadin Bundelcund,
as he was named, had been on intimate terms with all the great virtuosi
of his day, and had heard Beethoven, Steibelt, Czerny, Woelfl,
Kalkbrenner, Cramer, Hummel, Field, Hiller, Chopin, Mendelssohn, Liszt,
Henselt, and also many minor lights of pianism whose names have almost
faded from memory. Always a man of great simplicity and modesty, he
retired more and more amidst his studies the older he grew, and even
after his marriage he could not be induced to play in public, for his
ideal was a lofty one, and though his children, and even his
grandchildren, often urged him to make his début, he was inflexible on
the subject. His great-grandchildren, however, were shrewd, and, taking
advantage of the aged pianist's increasing senility, they finally
succeeded in making him promise to play at a grand concert, to be given
at the capital of Laputa, and, despite his many remonstrances, he at
last consented.
It goes without saying that the attendance at our National Opera House
was one of the largest ever seen there. The wealth and brains of the
capital were present, and all eagerly watched for the novel apparition
that was to appear. The program was a simple one: the triple piano
concerto of Bach, arranged for one piano by the Gospadin; a movement
from the G minor concerto of Dussek; piano solos, _L'Orage_, by
Steibelt; a fugue for the left hand alone, by Czerny, and a set of
etudes after Czerny, being free transcriptions of his famous _Velocity
Studies_, roused the deepest curiosity in our minds, for vague rumors of
an astonishing technique were rife. And, finally, when the stage doors
were pushed wide open and a covered litter was slowly brought forward by
six dusky slaves and gently set down, the pent up feelings of the
audience could not be restrained any longer, and a shout that was almost
barbaric shook the hall to its centre.
An Echtstein grand piano, with the action purposely lightened to suit
the pianist's touch, stood in the centre of the stage, and a large,
comfortable looking high-backed chair was placed in front of it. The
attendants, after setting the litter down, rolled the chair up to it,
and then parting the curtains carefully, and even reverently, lifted out
what appeared to be a mass of black velvet and yellow flax. This bundle
they placed on the chair and wheeled it up to the piano and then
proceeded to bring forth a quantity of strange looking implements, such
as hand guides, gymnasiums, wires and pulleys, and placed them around
the odd, lifeless looking mass on the chair. Then a solemn looking
individual came forth and announced to the audience that the soloist,
owing to his extreme feebleness, had been hypnotized previous to the
concert, as it was the only manner in which to get him to play, and that
he would be restored to consciousness at once and the program proceeded
with.
There was a slight inclination on the part of the audience to hiss, but
its extreme curiosity speedily checked it and it breathlessly awaited
results. The doctor, for he was one, bent over the recumbent figure of
the pianist and, lifting him into an upright position, made a few passes
over him and apparently uttered something into his ear through a long
tube. A wonderful change at once manifested itself, and slowly raising
himself on his feet there stood a gaunt old man, with an enormous
skull-like head covered with long yellowish white hair, eyes so sunken
as to be invisible, and a nose that would defy all competition as to
size.
After fairly tottering from side to side in his efforts to make a bow,
the Gospadin (or, as you would say, Mister or Herr) Bundelcund fell back
exhausted in his seat, and while a murmur of pity ran through the house
his attendants administered restoratives out of uncanny looking phials
and vigorously fanned him. By this time the audience had worked itself
up to a fever pitch (at least eight tones above concert pitch) and
nothing short of an earthquake would have dispersed it; besides the
price of admission was enormous and naturally every one wanted the worth
of his money. I had a strong glass and eagerly examined the old man and
saw that he had long skinny fingers that resembled claws, a cadaverous
face and an air of abstraction one notices in very old or deaf persons.
To my horror I noticed that the doctor in addressing him spoke through a
large trumpet and then it dawned on me that the man was deaf, and hardly
was I convinced of this when my right hand neighbor informed me that the
Gospadin was blind also, and being feeble and exhausted by piano
practice hardly ever spoke; so he was practically dumb.
Here was an interesting state of things, and my forebodings as to the
result were further strengthened when I saw the attendants place the old
man's fingers in the technique-developing machines that encumbered the
stage, and vigorously proceeded to exercise his fingers, wrists, and
forearms, he all the while feebly nodding, while two other attendants
flapped him at intervals with bladders to keep him from going to sleep.
Again my right-hand neighbor, who appeared to be loquacious, informed me
that the Gospadin's mercenary great-grandchildren kept him awake in this
manner and thus forced him to play eighteen hours a day. What a cruelty,
I thought, but just then a few muffled chords aroused me from my
thoughts and I directed all my attention to the stage, for the
performance had at last begun.
Never shall I forget the curious sensation I experienced when the aged
prodigy began the performance of the first number, his own remarkable
arrangement for piano solo of the Bach concerto in D minor for three
pianos, and I instantly discovered that the instrument on which he
played had organ pedals attached, otherwise some of the effects he
produced could not have been even hinted at. His touch was weird, his
technique indescribable, and one no longer listened to the piano, but to
one of those instruments of Eastern origin in which glass and metal are
extensively used. The quality of tone emanating from the piano was
_brittle_, so to speak; in a word, sounded so thin, sharp, and at times
so wavering as to suggest the idea that it might at any moment break.
And then it made me indescribably nervous to see his talon-like fingers
threading their way through the mazes of the concerto, which was a tax
on any player, and though the three piano parts were but faintly
reproduced, the arrangement showed ability and musicianship in the
handling of it. But a vague, far-away sort of a feeling pervaded the
whole performance, which left me at the end rather more dazed than
otherwise.
During the uproarious applause that followed my neighbor again remarked
to me that though the old man did not appear to be as much exhausted as
he had anticipated, still he feared the worst from this great strain of
his appearing before such a public and under such exciting
circumstances, and then becoming confidential he whispered to me that
the agents for the Paul von Janko keyboard had approached the venerable
pianist, but after inspecting the invention the latter had replied
wearily that he was too old to begin "tobogganing" now. My neighbor
seemed to be amused at this joke, and not until the orchestra had begun
the tutti of the G minor concerto of Dussek (an intimate friend of the
Gospadin's, by the way) did he cease his chuckling.
The concerto was played in a dreary fashion, and only the strenuous
efforts of the attendants on each side of the soloist kept him from
going off into a sound nap during every tutti. The rest of the piano
program was almost the same story. The Steibelt selection, the
old-fashioned _L'Orage_, was no storm at all, but a feeble, maundering
up and down the keyboard. The Czerny fugue was better and the
performance of the same composer's _Velocity Studies_ was a marvel of
lightness and one might almost say volubility. In these etudes his
wonderful stiff arm octave playing, in the real old-fashioned manner,
showed itself, for in every run in single notes he introduced octaves.
The applause after this was so great and the flappers at the pianist's
side plied him so vigorously that the Gospadin actually began playing
the _Hexameron_, that remarkably difficult and old set of variations on
the march in _Puritani_, by Liszt, Chopin, Pixis, and Thalberg.
These he played, it must be confessed, in a masterly manner, but at the
end he introduced a variation, prodigious as to difficulty, which I
failed to recognize as ever having seen it in the printed copy of the
composition. Again my right-hand neighbor, appearing to anticipate my
question on the subject, informed me that it was by Bundelcund himself,
and that he had been angered beyond control by the refusal of the
publishers to print it with the rest, and had written a lengthy letter
to Liszt on the subject, in which he told him that he considered him a
charlatan along with Henselt, Chopin, Hiller, and Thalberg, and that he
was the _only_ pianist worth speaking of, which information threw an
interesting side light on our Asiatic virtuoso's character, and showed
that he was made of about the same metal, after all, as most of your
European manipulators of ivory.
By this time the stage had been cleared of the piano and the litter, and
a conductor's stand was brought forward, draped in black velvet trimmed
with white, and appropriately wreathed with tuberoses, whose
deathly-sweet odor diffused itself throughout the house and caused an
unpleasant shudder to circulate through the audience, who were beginning
to realize the mockery of this modern dance of death, but who remained
to see the end of the sad comedy. The orchestra, which was reinforced by
several uncanny looking instruments, strange even to Asiatic eyes, were
seated, and then the dusky servants lifted with infinite care the aged
Bundelcund into a standing posture, placed him at the stand, and while
four held him there the two flappers were so unremitting in their
attentions that one might suppose the old man's face would be sore,
were it not for its almost total absence of flesh, and also his long,
thick hair, which fell far below his waist.
Standing in an erect attitude he was an appalling figure to behold, and
the two lighted tapers in massive candelabras on each side of the desk
lighted up his face with an unholy and gruesome glare. The funereal
aspect of the scene was heightened by the house being in total darkness,
and though many women had fainted, oppressed by the charnel-house
atmosphere that surrounded us, still the audience as a whole remained
spellbound in their seats. The medical man now plied the
conductor-pianist with the contents of the mysterious phial, and placing
a long, white ostrich plume in his hand, he made a signal for the
orchestra to begin. The conductor, despite his deafness, appeared to
comprehend what was going on and feebly waved the plume in air, and the
first gloomy chords of the _Marche Funèbre à la Tartare_ were heard. Of
all the funeral marches ever penned this composition certainly outdid
them all in diabolical waitings and the gnashing of teeth of damned
souls.
It was the funeral march of some mid-Asiatic pachyderm, and the whole
herd were howling their grief in a manner which would put Wagner,
Berlioz, and Meyerbeer to shame; for such a use of brass had never been
even dreamed of, and the peculiar looking instruments I first spoke of
now came to the fore and the din they raised was positively hellish.
Those who could see the composer's face afterward declared it was
wreathed in smiles, but this, of course, I could not see; but I did see,
and we all saw, after the rather abrupt end of the march (which finished
after a long-drawn-out suspension, _capo d'astro_, resolved by the use
of the diseased chord of the minor thirteenth into a dissipated fifth),
the venerable virtuoso suddenly collapse, and suddenly fall into the
arms of the attendants, whose phlegm, while being thoroughly Oriental,
still smacked of anticipation of this very event. Instantly the lights
went out and a panic ensued, everyone getting into the street somehow or
other. I found myself there side by side with my neighbor, who informed
me in an oracular manner that he had expected this all along.
Then an immense crowd, angered by the cruel exhibition which they had
witnessed, searched high and low for the miscreant and mercenary
great-grandchildren who had so ruthlessly sacrificed their talented
progenitor for the sake of pelf, but they were nowhere to be found, and
they doubtlessly had escaped with their booty to a safe place. The
doctor had also disappeared and with him all traces of the Gospadin
Bundelcund, and soon after sinister rumors were spread that the man we
had heard performing was a _dead man_ (horrible idea!) that he had been
dead for years, but by the aid of that new and yet undeveloped science,
hypnotism, he had been revived and made to automatically perform, and
that the whole ghastly mummery was planned to make money. Certain it was
that we never heard of any of the participants in the affair again, and
I write to you knowing that American readers will be interested in this
queer musical and psychical prodigy. His epitaph might be given in a
slightly altered quotation, "Butchered to make a Laputian's holiday."