HAYDN, MOZART, AND BEETHOVEN
The ‘Viennese period’ and the three great classics--Joseph
Haydn; Haydn’s clavier sonatas; the Variations in F
minor--W. A. Mozart; Mozart as pianist and improvisator;
Mozart’s sonatas; his piano concertos--Ludwig van Beethoven;
evolution of the modern pianoforte--Musical qualities of
Beethoven’s piano music; Beethoven’s technical demands; his
pianoforte sonatas; his piano concertos; conclusion.
The association of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven with Vienna affords
historians a welcome license to give to a conspicuous epoch in the
development of music a local habitation and a name. Their work is
commonly granted to constitute a more or less definite era known as the
Viennese period. All three speak, as it were, a common idiom. There is
a distinct family likeness between their separate accomplishments. They
were personally acquainted. Haydn and Mozart were warm friends, despite
the difference in years between them. Mozart was among the first in
Vienna to recognize the greatness latent in Beethoven, who later was
for a while even the pupil of Haydn. Moreover, all three reckoned among
their friends the same families, even the same men and women. The
three great men now sit on golden chairs, enshrined in the same niche,
Beethoven considerably to the fore.
The insulation which circumstances of time and space may seem to have
woven about them proves upon investigation to be quite imperfect. To
begin with, Bach was but a year dead, D. Scarlatti still alive, and
Rameau with more than a decade yet to live when Haydn was writing his
first mass and along with it clavier sonatas for the benefit of his
few pupils. Mozart had written his three immortal symphonies in 1786,
before Emanuel Bach had ceased publishing his sonatas for _Kenner und
Liebhaber_. On the other end, Moscheles was a famous though very young
pianist before Beethoven had half done writing sonatas; and Carl von
Weber’s _Freischütz_ had begun to act upon the precocious Richard
Wagner before Beethoven had completed his ninth symphony, his last
sonata, his great mass and his great quartets.
Merely as regards pianoforte technique the period was a transitional
one. Even the Beethoven sonatas as late as opus 27 were published
for either harpsichord or pianoforte. Both Mozart and Beethoven were
influenced by men who, in a narrow sense, seem far more than they to
belong to a modern development. Clementi, for example, deliberately
burned his harpsichords and clavichords behind him in the very year
Beethoven was born, and from then on gave up his life to the discovery
of new possibilities and effects upon the pianoforte, by which his
pupils Cramer and Field paved the way for Chopin.
Yet, all signs to the contrary, the Viennese period remains a period
of full fruition, and this because of the extraordinary genius of the
men whose works have defined it. Each was highly and specially gifted
and poured into forms already made ready for him a musical substance
of rare and precious quality. In considering keyboard music we have to
deal mostly with this substance, in fact with the musical expression of
three unusual and powerful personalities.
It is to be regretted that Haydn and even Mozart have been in no
small measure eclipsed by Beethoven. This is especially true of their
keyboard music. It may be questioned whether this be any more just for
being seemingly natural. There are many reasons to account for it. The
most obvious is the more violent and fiery nature of Beethoven, his
explicit and unusual trials. These, wholly apart from his music, will
for ever make the study and recollection of him as a man of profound
interest. Haydn can urge but a few young years of hardship for the
human sympathy of generations to come. Mozart’s disappointments, so
sickening to the heart that puts itself in tune with him, have after
all but the ring of hard luck and merit disregarded, to which the weary
world lends only a passing ear. But Beethoven’s passionate nature, his
self-inflicted labor of self-discipline, his desperate unhappiness and
the tragic curse of his deafness, are the stuff out of which heroes are
made.
So his music, reflecting the man, is heroic in calibre. Even its humor
is titanic. It will impress by its hugeness and its force many an
ear deaf to more engaging and more subtle language. Its poignancy is
unmistakable, nearly infallible in its appeal; so that Beethoven is a
name with which to lay even the clod under a spell.
But another reason why Mozart and Haydn lie hidden or but partly
perceived in the shade of Beethoven, is more recondite, is, in fact,
paradoxical. This is no other than the extreme difficulty of their
music. Clara Schumann, writing in her diary of the music of Richard
Wagner, which she rejected in spite of the world’s acclaim, conceived
that either she or the world at large had gone mad. To one who writes
of the difficulties of Haydn’s and Mozart’s sonatas a similar idea is
likely to occur. At the present day they are put into the hands of
babes and sucklings, in whose touch, however, there is no wisdom. Yet
if ever music needed a wise hand, it is these simple pieces; and a lack
of wisdom has made them trivial to the world.
The art of the pianist should be, as Emanuel Bach declared, that of
drawing from his instrument sounds of moving beauty, beautiful in
quality, in line and in shading. His tools are his ten fingers which he
must train to flexibility, strength and security. It is right that as
soon as he can play a scale or shake a trill, he should put his skill
to test upon a piece of music. So the teacher lays Haydn and Mozart
under the clumsy little fingers of boy and girl. ‘Stumble along there
on your way to great Beethoven, whom you must approach with firm and
tested stride.’ That is the burden of the pædagogic lay. It echoes in
the mind of riper age, Haydn and Mozart have been put aside, like the
perambulator, the bib and the high table chair; or, like toys, are
brought out rarely, to be smiled upon.
If they are toys, then maturity should bring a sense of their exquisite
beauty and meaning, and may well shudder at the destruction youth made
imminent upon them. This it all too rarely does, because only ten
fingers in ten thousand can reveal the loveliness of these sonatas, and
because, also, ears are rare that now delight in such a revelation. You
must give to fingers the skill to spin sound from the keyboard that is
like the song of birds, or, if more vocal, is more like the voice of
fairies than the voice of man. It is easier to make thunder; and even
mock thunder intimidates. So your player will pound Beethoven, and
lightning will flash about his head as the sarcastic Heine fancied it
about Liszt’s. Some will scent sacrilege and cover their ears from the
noise. But let the soulless man play Mozart and his hearers will cover
their mouths, as all well-bred people are trained to do when boredom
seeks an outlet.
Technically Haydn and Mozart may be held to have condemned their music
to the sort of galley-service it now performs. Both wrote perhaps the
majority of their sonatas for the use of their pupils. Bach wrote the
‘Well-tempered Clavichord’ with what seems to be the same purpose;
but Bach’s aim was constantly to educate and to expand the power of
the students under his care; whereas both Haydn and Mozart may be
often suspected of wishing rather to simplify their music than to tax
and strengthen the abilities of their high-born amateurs. There is
something comical in the fact that even with this most gracious of
intentions both were occasionally accused of writing music that was
troublesome, i.e., too difficult. Haydn may have been grieved to be
found thus disagreeable. Mozart’s letters sometimes show a delicate
malice in enjoyment of it. But one can hear Beethoven snort and rage
under a similar reproach.
Yet the wonder is that sonatas so written should be today full of
freshness and beauty. This they undoubtedly are. Composed perfunctorily
they may have been, but the spirit of music is held fast in most of
them, no less appealing for being oftener in smiles than tears. And if
to evoke this spirit in all her loveliness from a box of strings chance
to be the ideal of some player, let him take care to bring to the
sonatas of Haydn and Mozart the most precious resources of his art and
he will not call in vain.
I
The prevalent mood in Haydn’s music is one of frank cheerfulness.
His native happy disposition, his kindliness and his ever-ready,
good-natured humor, won him friends on every hand. These qualities
in his music recommended it to the public. For the public wanted
light-hearted music. Italian melody had won the world. Haydn’s happy,
almost jovial melodies and his lively, obvious rhythms spread over the
world almost as soon as he began to write.
From the start, however, he treated his art seriously. He was never
a careless writer, though he had the benefit of little regular
instruction. Clavier sonatas he had composed for his pupils were so
much copied and circulated in manuscript that a piratical publisher
finally decided money could be made from them. He had written quartets
for strings, which were received with favor at soirées given by Porpora
and men of rank. He won the approval of men like Wagenseil, Gluck, and
Dittersdorf. All his work, though simple, is beautifully and clearly
done.
He was not, like Mozart and Beethoven, a great player on the
harpsichord or piano. In this respect, and, indeed, in many others,
he is a little like Schubert. Both men wrote extremely well for the
keyboard. The music of both has an unusual stamp of spontaneous
originality. In Haydn’s music as in Schubert’s the quality of
folk-melodies and folk-rhythms is very distinct. In spite of most
obvious differences in temperament and in circumstances, they speak of
the same race unconsciously influenced by Slavic elements.
The collection of thirty-four sonatas for pianoforte published by
Peters includes, with perhaps one exception, the best of his work for
that instrument alone. On looking over them one cannot but be struck by
the general similarity of any one to the others. Some are more frankly
gay, more boyish, than others; some tempered by seriousness. It may
be added, however, that those of a later period do not seem generally
more profound than those of an earlier one. The later ones are more
elaborate, sometimes musically more complicated, but a single mood is
on the whole common to them all.
The same is in part true of Mozart’s sonatas. Except as these show
distinct traces of the various influences under which he came from time
to time, they do not differ strikingly from each other. There is over
both Haydn’s and Mozart’s keyboard music a normal cast of thought, as
there is over the music of Couperin. In this they suffer by comparison
with Beethoven, as Couperin suffers by comparison with Bach. One would
have no difficulty in choosing ten Beethoven sonatas, each one of which
is entirely distinct from the others, not by reason of form or style
or content, but by reason of a very special emotional significance.
One could not choose ten Haydn sonatas of such varied character. One
does not, in other words, sit down to the piano with a volume of Haydn
sonatas, expecting to confront a wholly new problem in each one, to
meet a wholly new range of thought and feeling, passing from one to the
other. One looks for the same sort of thing in each one, and with few
exceptions one finds it.
To what is this due? To the nature of the man or to the circumstances
under which most of the sonatas were written? Or is it due to public
taste of the day and the consequent attitude of the man towards the
function of music? To answer these questions would lead us far afield.
But it is doubtless in large measure owing to this fact that Haydn, and
Mozart too, have been thought to concern themselves primarily with form
in music. And Beethoven has again and again been described as the man
who overthrew the supremacy of the formal element in music, to which
his predecessors are imagined to have sworn prime allegiance.
It is a great injustice so to stigmatize Haydn and Mozart. The beauty
of their music is far more one of spirit than one of form. In his own
day Haydn was thought to be an innovator, not in the matter of form,
but in the spirit with which he filled forms already familiar. This may
be said to be the spirit of humor. Weitzmann[30] cites an interesting
passage in the _Musikalisches Handbuch_ for the year 1782 which speaks
of Haydn as ‘A musical joke-maker, but like Yorick, not for pathos
but for high comic; and this in music most exasperating (_verzweifelt
sehr_). Even his adagios, where the man should properly weep, have the
stamp of high comedy.’ And a most joyous humor fills the Haydn sonatas
full to overflowing. That is the secret of the charm they will exert
on any one who takes the time to study them today, a charm which has
little to do with formal perfection.
Let us look into a few of the sonatas. Most of them were written
between 1760 and 1790. The few written earlier than 1760 are so
obviously teaching pieces that, though they won him fame, we need not
trouble to study them. Take, however, a sonata from the set published
in 1774, known as opus 13, in C major (Peters No. 15). The whole first
movement is built upon two rhythmical phrases which by their lilt
and flow cannot fail to delight the dullest ear. There is the dotted
sixteenth figure of the first theme, a theme frankly melodious for all
its rhythmical vivacity; and later the same opening notes, with playful
triplets added. Nothing profound or serious about it, but yet a wealth
of vitality; and nearly all accomplished with but two voices.
The adagio seems not at all conspicuous, yet compare it with an adagio
of Clementi to see how much genuine life it has. Then the rapid little
last movement, with its rocking, tilting figures, all as sparkling as
sunlight. Here again, only two voices in most of the movement.
Another sonata in the same set in F major (Pet. 20) is a little more
developed. The quick falling arpeggio figures following the first theme
are a favorite, comical device of Haydn’s. The second theme, if so
it may be called, is only a series of scampering notes, with a saucy
octave skip at the end; the whole full of smiles and laughter. The fine
harp-like runs in the development section are reminiscent of Emanuel
Bach. Haydn is noticeably fond of sudden and abrupt changes of harmony.
There is one in the first section of this movement. But often he is
surprisingly chromatic, more subtle in harmony than the naïve character
of his music would lead one to expect him.
In the opus 14, published in 1776 by Artaria, there are some joyous
sonatas. The first theme of one in G major (Pet. 11) suggests Schubert
by its sweetness. There is a minuet instead of a slow movement, and
the final presto is a theme with lively variations. The Alberti bass on
which the fourth variation floats is irresistibly naïve. Another sonata
in E-flat seems richer. It is hardly less naïve and less humorous than
the others in the set, but there is a warmer coloring. The overlapping
imitations in the fourth, fifth, and sixth measures are strangely
poignant, especially as they appear later in the restatement. There is
a minuet instead of a slow movement, of which the trio is especially
beautiful. The way in which the first phrase seems to be prolonged into
five measures, once more suggests Schubert.
It is, of course, nearly impossible to characterize the sonatas in
words, or to distinguish any striking feature in one which may not be
found in another. There are two sonatas in E-flat (Pet. 1 and 3) among
the last he wrote. These appear at first sight more profound than the
earlier ones, but it is hard in studying them to find them so. They are
more fully scored, more fully developed, perhaps more moderately gay.
But it is still the Haydn which spoke in the earlier ones. Premonitions
of Schubert are again evident in the second of these sonatas (Pet. 3),
in the second section of the slow movement, and in the brief passage in
E-flat minor in the minuet. There are very fine moments in the first
movement, too. It will be observed that the second theme is very like
the first. This is frequently the case with Haydn, a feature which
points to his dependence on Emanuel Bach. Even in his symphonies it
shows itself, conspicuously in the great symphony in D major, No.
7, in Breitkopf and Härtel’s edition. In the sonata in question,
however, there is no lack of secondary material of varied and decided
character; for example, the transitional section between the first and
second themes; the broad closing theme of the first section, with its
alternate deep phrases and high answers; and the carefully wrought
measures which open the development section.
The effect of the measures which bring this section almost to a close
and then lead on into the recapitulation is almost magical. We approach
the romantic. The strange power of silence in music is nowhere better
employed, a power which the old convention of constant movement had
kept concealed, at least in instrumental music. Mention has been made
of the pauses in Emanuel Bach’s music and in Clementi’s; but here in
Haydn’s sonata is a passage of more than twenty measures in which
silence seems to reign. Something calls on high and there is silence.
Then from some deep down range there is a faint answer. And so the high
calls across silence to the deep, again and again, as if one without
the other might not prevail against some spirit of silence.
Such a passage as this, and many another in Haydn’s music, suggest
Beethoven. One is quick to exclaim, ‘Ah! this foreshadows the great man
to come!’ Almost as if the music had no merit but by comparison. Yet
Haydn’s music should be taken at its own value. Only in that way may
the charm of it, and the genuine beauty as well, be fully appreciated.
Surely it has a life and a spirit all its own, without which music
would be poorer.
Only one clavier work of special significance, apart from the sonatas,
remains to be mentioned. This is a very beautiful series of variations
on a theme in F minor. They present, of course, the familiar features
of Haydn’s style, clear and ‘economic’ part-writing, perfect balance
and lucidity in form, abrupt, unprepared chords, furnishing what Hadow
has aptly called ‘points of color’; and still, smooth, chromatic
progressions which are somehow naïve. The theme itself is in two
sections, with a ‘trio’ section in F major, full of ascending and
descending arpeggio figures which seem in Haydn’s music like the
warble of a bird’s song, odd little darts and flurries of sound. There
is over the whole a changing light of plaintive and gay which is rather
different from the perpetual sunshine of the sonatas.
It is needless to say that the theme undergoes no such metamorphosis
in the course of the variations as Bach’s theme in his Goldberg
Variations. The accompaniment may be said to remain practically
the same throughout the set. The first variation leads the melody
through half-steps, in syncopation, and numerous trills are brought
in to beautify the almost too ingenuous major section. In the second
variation the melody is dissolved, so to speak, into a clear stream of
rapid counterpoint which curves and frets above and below the familiar
accompaniment. The final restatement of the theme leads by abrupt soft
modulations into a long coda in which traces of the theme still linger.
The whole set makes up a masterpiece in pianoforte literature, and may
be ranked as one of the most beautiful pieces of music in the variation
form.
II
Mozart’s keyboard music is astonishingly different from Haydn’s.
Because both men have fallen into the obscurity of the same shadow,
one is likely to speak of them as if both were but a part of one
whole. The differences between them are not merely matters of detail.
In fact they may resemble each other more in detail than in general
qualities. The spirit of Mozart’s music is wholly different from the
spirit of Haydn’s. If with Haydn we may associate a frank good nature
and something of the peasant’s sturdiness, in Mozart’s music we have to
do with something far more subtle, far more graceful, and almost wholly
elusive. It has been said of Mozart’s music that its inherent vitality
is all-sufficient to a listener. In other words, there is neither any
need nor any desire to interpret it, either in terms of another art or
as an expression or a symbol of human emotion. It is perhaps unique in
being sheer sound and nothing else. It is the thinnest gossamer spun
between our ears and stillness. It is of all music the most ethereal,
the most spiritual, one might almost say the least audible.
His life was utterly different from Haydn’s. To begin with, he was
twenty-four years younger. He was most carefully and rigorously trained
in his art, from infancy, by his father and by the greatest musicians
in the world, whom he met on his triumphant tours over Europe. As a
child he was all but adored in Vienna, in all the great cities of
Italy, in London, in Paris, and in Brussels. As a youth fortune began
to forsake him. He was not so much neglected as unappreciated. He was
underpaid, harassed by debt. He was without an established position,
chiefly apparently because in the nature of things he could not be
but young. He died at last in Vienna, in more or less miserable
circumstances, at the age of thirty-five. Thus a life could end that in
early years had been the marvellous delight of nearly a whole world.
He was always a virtuoso as well as a composer. He played the violin
excellently; he played the piano as no man in his time could play it
and as perhaps no man has played it since. His playing was not so much
distinguished by brilliance as by beauty. The quality of his tone was
of that kind which once heard can never be forgotten. It haunted the
minds of men long after he was dead. Even the memory of it brought
tears.
His compositions give only a slight idea of what the range of his
playing was. He seems to have moved people most at times when he
improvised. This he would often do in public, according to the custom
of the day; but in private, too, he would often go to his piano and
pour his soul out hour after hour through the night in improvised
music of strange and unusual power. Something of the quality of these
outpourings seems to have been preserved in the fantasia in C minor.
The sonatas and rondos have little of it. Neither have the concertos.
Franz Niemetschek, one of his most devoted friends and author of the
first of his biographies, said, as an old man, that if he dared ask the
Almighty for one more earthly joy, it would be that he might once again
before he died hear Mozart improvise. The improvisations of Beethoven,
marvellous as they were, never took just the place of Mozart’s in the
minds of those who had been privileged to hear the younger man as well.
Mozart did not compose his piano music at the piano, as Schumann
and Chopin did. The improvisations were not remembered later and
put down in form upon paper. They seem to have been something apart
from his composing. He wrote music away from the piano, at his desk,
as most people write letters--in the words of his wife. Most of the
sonatas, too, were written for the benefit of pupils. Few of them
make actually trying demands upon technical brilliance. Their great
difficulty is more than technical, or than what is commonly regarded
as technical--strength, velocity, and endurance. Yet no music more
instantly lays bare any lack of evenness or any stiffness in the
fingers. Mozart cared little for a brilliant style. His opinion of
Clementi has already been mentioned. He preferred rather a moderate
than an extremely rapid tempo, condemned severely any inaccuracy or
carelessness, likewise any lack of clearness in rhythm. But, above all,
he laid emphasis on a beautiful and singing quality of tone.
His avoidance rather than cultivation of brilliancy alone makes
his music often suggest the harpsichord. There is an absence of
the technical devices then new, which have since become thoroughly
associated with the pianoforte style. Yet from 1777 Mozart devoted
himself to the pianoforte. An instrument made especially for him, which
he invariably used in his many concerts in Vienna, has been preserved.
The keyboard has a range of five octaves, from the F below the bass
staff to the F above the treble staff. The action is very light, the
tone rather sharp and strong. It can be damped, or softened, by means
of a stop which pulls a strip of felt into position between the strings
and the hammers.
Concerning the pianoforte sonatas it may be said again that few depart
from a normal, prevailing mood. Some are exceptional. Knowing his
great gift of improvising and how rich and varied his improvisations
were, it is perhaps a temptation to read into them more definite
emotions than are really implied. Yet it is easy to pick from the later
sonatas at least three which not only differ considerably from the
earlier sonatas, but differ likewise from each other. Nevertheless,
two or three traits are common to them all. They mark Mozart’s sonatas
distinctly from Haydn’s and, indeed, from all other sonatas.
First, there is rare melodiousness about them all. The quality of the
melodies is hard to analyze. There is little savor of the folk-song, as
there is in many of Haydn’s melodies. They are not so clearly cut, not,
in a way, of such solid stuff. Neither, on the other hand, have they a
peculiar germinating vigor which we associate with Beethoven. They seem
to spin themselves as the music moves along. The movements seem to flow
rather than grow. Mozart was none the less a great contrapuntist, one
of the greatest among composers. But his music seems strangely to _pass
through_ counterpoint, not to be built up of it. It has therefore a
quality of litheness or supple flexibility which distinguishes it from
that of other composers and gives it a preëminent grace. In this regard
it is akin only to the music of Couperin and Chopin.
In the second place, the harmonic coloring is subtle and suggestive.
His music seems to play about harmonies rather than with them. The
simplest chords and modulations have a sort of shimmer. An instance in
orchestral music comes to mind--the second themes in both the first
and last movements of the inspired symphony in G minor, particularly
the treatment of the second theme in the restatement section of the
last movement. The effect is due largely to the chromatic half-steps
through which his melodies glide, noticeably into cadences, and to
the same chromatic hovering about tonic, dominant and subdominant
chords. Oftener than not the fine thread of his melody only grazes
the notes proper to its harmony, touching just above or below them
in swift, light dissonances. Frequently the harmonic foundation is
of the simplest kind. Modulations to remote keys or vague drifting
of the whole harmonic fabric, such as one finds, for instance, in
the first pages of the Fantasia in C minor, are rare. Usually the
harmonic foundation is astonishingly simple. It is the wholly charming
unwillingness of the melodies to be flatly chained to it that gives the
whole such an elusive color.
There is a wealth of passing notes, of anticipations and suspensions,
of every device which may aid melody to belie its unavoidable relations
to harmony. These take from most of his pianoforte music all trace of
commonplaceness. Most of it has a graceful distinction which we may
call style. Take even the opening theme of the great sonata in A minor.
The nature of the theme is bold and declamatory; yet the very first
note avoids an unequivocal allegiance to the harmony by a D-sharp. Or
observe in the last movement of the sonata in C minor (K. 457) how
the short phrases of the melody not only anticipate the harmony in
beginning, but delay acknowledging it again and again.
In the third place, the scoring of Mozart’s sonatas is usually lighter
than that of Haydn’s. We have to do with a finer set of fingers, for
one thing, which are unexcelled in lightness and sweetness of touch,
fingers which prefer to suggest oftener than to declaim. The treatment
of inner voices is more airy. One thinks again of Couperin and even
more of Chopin. There is a better understanding of pianoforte effects,
not effects of brilliance but of delicate sonority combined with
grace. The last movement of the sonata in A minor just mentioned, is a
masterpiece of style, and yet for the most part is hardly more than a
whisper of sound. The passage work in the last movement of a beautiful
sonata in F major (K. 332), the chord figures of the _Piu allegro_
section of the Fantasia, even the F-sharp minor section of the familiar
_Alla Turca_ are the work of a man with an unusually fine sense of what
fitted the pianoforte. Mozart also expected more of the left hand than
Haydn expected. In all his pianoforte music there is more delicacy than
there is in Haydn’s, more sophistication, too, if you will. It is more
difficult to play.
Of the many sonatas, rondos and fantasias only a few may be discussed
in detail. Three sonatas written before Mozart settled in Vienna, in
1781, are very fine. These are in A minor (K. 310), in A major (K.
331) and in F major (K. 332). That in A minor was written in 1778.
The first movement is more stentorian than Mozart’s music usually is.
It is dominated by a strong rhythmical motive throughout, used with
fiery effect in the development section over a series of rumbling pedal
points. There is something assertive and martial about it, like the
ring of trumpets over a great confusion. The second theme seems to be
but an expression of energy in more civilian strain. It is perilously
near virtuoso stuff; but the movement as a whole is splendid by reason
of its force. It is Mozart in a very unusual mood, however.
The second movement is a picture in music, according to Mozart himself,
of a charming little girl, who has ‘a staid manner and a great deal
of sense for her age.’ Yet something of the boldness of the first
movement still lingers. The mood is beautifully lyrical and poetic, the
style, however, very free and broad. It lacks the intimate tenderness
of most of Mozart’s slow movements. The last movement is magical. The
fine, delicate scoring, the short phrases, as it were breathless, the
beautiful shifting of harmonies, the constantly restless unvaried
movement, weave a texture of music that must make us ever wonder at the
nature of the mysterious, elusive spirit that whispers all but unheard
behind so much of Mozart’s music.
The sonata in F major and that in A major were written the following
year, and are of strikingly different character, both speaking of
the Mozart whose playing was long remembered for its quality of
heart-melting tenderness. Unlike the first movement of the A minor
sonata, the first movement of the F major is full of a variety of
themes and motives. It is rather lyrical in character. The first theme
has a song-like nature; and a beautiful measure or two of folk-song
melody makes itself heard in the transition to the second theme, which
is again lyrical. The development section opens with still another
melody. There is an oft-repeated shifting from high register to low.
The whole is wrapped in a veil of poetry. The slow middle movement is
unexcelled among all slow movements for purity of style, for perfection
of form, for refinement, but also tenderness of sentiment; and the last
movement flows like a brook through Rondo Field. One cannot choose
one movement from the others as being more beautiful either in spirit
or workmanship; and the three together compose one of the flawless
sonatas of pianoforte literature.
The more familiar sonata in A major is more irregular. It has, by
the way, no movement in the triplex form. The first is an air and
variations. It has long been a favorite with amateur and connoisseur
alike. The naïve beauty of the air is irresistible. The variations
throw many traits of Mozart’s style into prominence, particularly
in the first and fifth, his love of entwining his harmonies, so to
speak, with shadows and passing notes. The scoring of the fourth is
wonderfully beautiful. The sixth is perhaps unworthy to follow the
fifth. After the almost inevitable monotony of the variation form,
it is perhaps to be regretted that the second movement, a minuet,
continues the key of the first. The movement itself is of great charm.
The trio is happily in D major. One would be glad to have it in any
key, so exquisite and perfect is its beauty. The last movement, a rondo
_alla Turca_, takes up the key of A again. That it is in minor, not
major, hardly suffices to break the monotony of tonality which may
threaten the interest of the sonata as a whole. The rondo is engagingly
jocund, but more ordinary than Mozart is elsewhere likely to allow
himself to be.
Two later sonatas have a more serious _allure_ than these earlier ones.
That in C minor (K. 457), composed in 1784, is commonly considered his
greatest sonata. Why such a distinction should be insisted upon, it is
difficult to see. The C minor sonata is more weighty than the others,
but is it for that reason greater? Must music to be great, hint of the
tragic struggles of the soul? Such is the merit often ascribed to this
sonata, as if there were no true greatness in a smile. Without setting
up a standard of the great and the trivial in music, we may grant that
the work has a compelling force. Let us not liken it to Beethoven. It
still has the charm of which only Mozart was the master, that charm
which remains one of the intangible, inexplicable things in music.
A sonata in F major (K. 533) was composed in 1788. The whole work is
characterized by a possibly too prominent contrapuntal ingenuity. There
is besides a boldness in harmonies, especially in the slow movement,
which makes one wonder into what strange lands Mozart strayed when he
sat improvising at the keyboard.
The sonatas as a whole rest, as we have said, upon a harmonic
foundation which is relatively simple. The great Fantasia in C minor
differs from them in this regard more than in any other. If, as Otto
Jahn suggested in his ‘Life of Mozart,’ this fantasia may offer us some
suggestion of what Mozart’s improvisations were like, we may be sure
that such outpourings wandered into harmonies rich and strange.
The fantasia was composed in 1785, the year after the C minor sonata,
to which it was at one time thought to have been intended as an
introductory movement. An earlier fantasia in D minor is fragmentary.
It ends abruptly and leaves an impression of incompleteness on the mind
of the listener. The C minor fantasia is without definite form, but the
return of the opening motive at the end gives it a logical balance. It
divides itself into five or six sections. The tempo is not very fast in
any one of them, but there is an uneasy current of unrest running under
the whole.
It would be foolish to attempt an analysis of what may be its emotional
content. It calls for no such analysis, but stands as another instance
of the strange power Mozart’s music has to satisfy of itself alone.
It must remain, like his other work, mysterious and of secret origin.
Only one section is given a key-signature. The others are without
harmonic limitation. Perhaps the opening section, and the brief part
of it repeated at the end, are the most impressive. The motive out of
which they are built is of unfathomable significance; their harmonies
rise and fall as slowly and mysteriously as the tide. Of the quality
of other more melodious sections, of the occasional charm and grace
that here and there rise, as it were, on the wings of light; of the
passionate harmonies that die away into silence before the slow opening
motive returns inexorably, nothing can be said. There comes over it in
memory the light that never was on land or sea. It is a poet’s dream.
III
We have now to consider the pianoforte concertos which as a whole
may be taken to be the finest of his works for the instrument. They
were written primarily for his own use, seventeen of them in Vienna
between 1783 and 1786, some earlier, however, and a few later. They
are concertos in the modern sense, not like the concertos of Sebastian
Bach. In the latter we find the clavier treated in much the same style
as the orchestra or the _tutti_, as it was, and still is, generally
called. In the Mozart concertos, on the other hand, the solo instrument
is given a rôle which will show off to the best its peculiar qualities.
The Vivaldi form of concerto, such as Bach used, was a modified rondo;
that is to say, there was one chief subject, usually announced at the
beginning by the tutti. This subject properly belonged to the tutti,
and the solo instrument was given various episodes of contrasting
material, between which the orchestra usually was introduced with
ritornelles based upon the chief subject. The whole was a sort of
dialogue between soloist and orchestra.
The form of the concerto which Mozart used was clearly as follows: an
expanded triplex form for the first movement, a slow movement in song
form, and a rondo of the French type for the finale. Moreover, he used
the solo instrument not only alone, but with the orchestra; in such
cases writing a brilliant sort of _fioritura_ for it, which added a
special and distinct color to the ensemble. Such a form of concerto was
apparently first employed by Christian Bach in London. From him Mozart
learned the use of it. He was not, therefore, as has often been stated,
the true ‘father’ of the modern concerto. Nevertheless it was he who
first used the form with enduring success, and it may be considered as
his special contribution to the standard musical forms.
A brief outline of the first movement of one of his concertos will
illustrate the manner in which the triplex form was used in all of
them, and in which, with few modifications, it has continued to be used
by most composers. Let us take the wonderfully delightful concerto
in A major (K. 488). The movement opens with a long section for the
orchestra. The first theme is announced at once. Later comes the
lovely second theme, in the _tonic_ key, be it noted. There is then
a short coda, and the orchestra comes to a full tonic cadence and
allows the piano to take up the music. The function of this orchestral
introduction is to introduce the two themes out of which the movement
now proceeds to build itself, conforming pretty closely to the triplex
model.
The piano has the first theme practically alone, the orchestra merely
suggesting an inner voice in the harmony from time to time. In the
transitional passage to the dominant key which follows, the piano
serves chiefly to spin a few figures over the chords carried by the
orchestra. Then the piano has the second theme, now in the dominant,
alone; after which it is repeated by the orchestra, the piano adding
a touch of ornamental color here and there. Pianoforte and orchestra
now play together, the piano taking the rôle of soloist in a series of
scales and figures. A full cadence in E major ends the first section.
The development section is not long. It will be noticed that the
pianist is really soloist through it all, the delicate figure work
which he has to perform being always evident above the harmonies or
themes of the orchestra.
The long opening section for orchestra at the beginning of the concerto
is cut down to a few measures in the restatement. The transitional
passage between first and second themes is very much shortened
likewise. Finally, after the music has progressed duly according to
the conventions governing the restatement section in the triplex form,
the orchestra makes a pause. Here the pianist is supposed to play
what is known as a _cadenza_--a long passage usually testing both him
and his instrument to the limit of their abilities. These cadenzas
were commonly improvised, and in them Mozart must have displayed the
greatness of his power both as a musician and as a player. The cadenza
came to an end with a long trill, after which the orchestra, usually
without the piano, added the completing coda.
The second and third movements were usually in some simpler form.
The second was most frequently an aria, the third a rondo. The
whole was primarily a piece for the virtuoso, while the orchestra,
save when announcing themes or playing ritornelles, served mainly
as an accompaniment to the brilliant soloist. It might well, be it
understood, carry on the thematic development of the music, thus
leaving the pianist free to weave every sort of arabesque; but from now
on the concerto was a form of music which was deliberately planned to
show off the special qualities of a solo instrument.
It was almost inevitable that in most concertos the genuinely musical
element should be regarded as of less and less importance. The public
expected, and indeed still expects, to hear or even to see a virtuoso
display the uttermost limits of his skill in such pieces. The
improvised cadenzas were in the hands of most players a nuisance which
marred the work as a whole beyond repair. But the Mozart concertos,
written as they were for occasions of his public appearance, have a
true musical value. We know enough of his improvising to be sure that
his cadenzas added and did not subtract from this.
Their chief beauty is here, as in his other music, the melodious
freshness of his themes, the delightful subtlety of his harmony. The
constant stream of arabesque which the piano adds to this intrinsically
beautiful foundation is in the main simple. It is surprising how little
Mozart added to the virtuoso style of pianoforte literature, even how
little he made use of what, through Clementi and Dussek, was already
common property. There are practically no octave passages, and no
passages in double notes. He uses only scales, arpeggios and trills.
But his art of combining these with the orchestra has never been
excelled. In this regard his concertos stand far above those of the
virtuosi like Hummel, Dussek, and John Field. Their tone-color is not
only that which the essentially colorless pianoforte can afford; it is
a beautiful interweaving of many colors. His treatment of the orchestra
is always distinguished, never haphazard or indifferent. Delicate as
the coloring may be to ears now accustomed to heavier and more sensuous
blendings, it is not watery and faded. It is still exquisitely clear
and suggestive. As the first of composers to make such effective use
of the cold yet brilliant tone of the pianoforte in combination with
the various warmer tones of the orchestra, he may be said to have set a
standard of excellence which subsequent concertos have oftener fallen
short of than attained. Hundreds have been written. The fingers of one
hand might perhaps count the number of those which as works of art are
comparable to Mozart’s.
It must be admitted that Mozart was not equally inspired in all his
concertos. That in D major (K. 537), composed in 1788 and known as the
‘Coronation Concerto,’ savors unpleasantly of the _pièce d’occasion_.
The themes of the first movement are almost ludicrously commonplace.
Those of the _Larghetto_ are hardly more distinguished, and the last
movement can be recommended for little more than brilliance. The
concertos in D minor (K. 466) and in C minor (K. 491) are, on the
contrary, inspired throughout. That in A major (K. 488) one might
well be tempted to call the most charming of Mozart’s pianoforte
compositions, but that such distinctions are gratuitous and unpleasant.
The second theme of the first movement is surely one of the loveliest
in all music. The last movement is irresistibly charming, with the
sparkle of sunshine on laughing water. The andante between the first
and last is of that sort of music which words cannot describe. Indeed
there is in all of Mozart’s music, as we have said, a self-sufficient
vitality which makes it a perfect satisfaction for the ear. One does
not feel stirred to seek a meaning beneath it. It is almost natural
music. There is nothing labored, nothing symbolic; and it is almost
uniquely beautiful. Surely, as far as pianoforte music is concerned
we shall wait nearly half a century before that abstract grace again
appears, this time in the works of Frédéric Chopin.
IV
The pianoforte sonatas of Beethoven hold an undisputed place in the
literature for that instrument. Whatever the future of music may
be, they can hardly be dethroned. They must always, it would seem,
represent the broadest, deepest and highest dimensions to which the
sonata can develop. Music which has since been written under the name
of sonata has been and will be compared with the sonatas of Beethoven,
has been and will be found wanting either in form, in content or in the
union of the two, by comparison with those of the great master of Bonn.
In the matter of musical value they may be equalled, in many matters
concerning the treatment of the pianoforte they have been excelled; but
as sonatas they will probably hold their high place for ever, scarcely
approached.
Improvements in the structure of the instrument itself have something
to do with their massiveness. The growth of the pianoforte to
serviceable maturity was a slow process, and not until Beethoven was
well advanced in years was he able to secure one which could carry the
burden that his powerful imagination would put upon it.
In the year 1711 Bartolomeo Cristofori, a Florentine, made the first
piano, that is to say, an instrument the strings of which were struck
by hammers operated by means of a keyboard. That the volume of sound
so produced would be soft or loud in accordance with the pressure
brought to bear on the keys by the player gave the instrument its
name--_Piano_(soft)-_forte_(loud). The harpsichord, it will be
remembered, did not offer the player such a chance for expression and
for the gradation of sound. The clavichord was inferior to the new
instrument in volume and resonance. However, sixty years of experiment
and invention were required to bring the pianoforte to the point at
which it began wholly to displace its predecessors in the favor of
composers and virtuosi.
Of the many difficulties which manufacturers had to overcome, only a
few need be mentioned. The most serious was the problem of making a
frame strong enough to resist the tension of the heavier wire strings.
This was met by tension bars, by metal braces, and finally by the
invention of a cast-iron frame, not, however, until after Beethoven
had ceased writing for the pianoforte. The problem of the action was
complicated by the necessity for the hammers to fall back instantly
from the strings as soon as they had struck them. This falling back is
known as the escapement, and it was chiefly by devices of escapement
that two great pianoforte actions came to be differentiated from each
other by the end of the eighteenth century. These actions are known as
the Viennese and the English.
With the former are associated the names of Stein and Streicher. It was
a light action and the tone of the Viennese pianos was correspondingly
light and fine. It had little volume and in melodies was sweet and
clear but not full. It was for such pianos that Haydn and Mozart wrote
their sonatas. Both men first acquired their keyboard technique on the
harpsichord, and later both naturally adopted a piano the light action
of which demanded approximately the same sort of touch as that which
they had already mastered. A style of music developed from the nature
of the instrument which was little different from harpsichord music.
Effects of fleetness and delicacy marked it.
In 1777 Mozart had visited the Stein factories, then in Augsburg,
and had been much pleased by a device with which Stein’s pianos were
equipped: a lever, worked by the knee, which lifted the dampers
from all the strings at once, allowing them a fuller and richer
vibration in loud passages than was necessary in softer ones. This
_genouillière_ soon gave way to the _pedal_ which had been invented
for the same purpose by the English manufacturers. Pedal effects
distinguish pianoforte music from harpsichord music perhaps more
than any other feature. These are chiefly effects of sonority, of
combining in one relatively sustained mass of sound notes which lie
far apart on the keyboard, outside the span of the hand. These notes,
of course, cannot be struck together, but, when struck one after the
other, can be blended and sustained by means of the pedal. There
must be supposed in the pianoforte a tone which unaided will vibrate
longer after its string has been struck than the dry, short tone of
the harpsichord. Such a sustained, rich tone the Viennese pianos did
not have. They suggested but few possibilities in pedal effects to
Haydn and Mozart. For them the close spacing of harpsichord music was
natural. They ventured little in wide combinations, in sonorous masses
of sound.
[Illustration]
Beethoven’s Broadwood Pianoforte.
_From a drawing made on the day after his funeral_.
The English action, on the other hand, was more resilient and more
powerful, the tone of the English pianos correspondingly fuller and
richer. The instruments at once suggested a range of effects quite
different from the harpsichord. Thus Clementi begins as early as 1770
to build up a new keyboard technique, demanding strength as well as
fleetness and lightness, using octaves, double notes, heavy chords
and wider and wider spacing. This becomes the new idea of playing the
piano. Mozart is judged by contemporaries who have heard Clementi and
his pupils, to have little technique, i.e. in the new style. He is
still a cembalist. Composers have a new power within their control,
the power to stir now by mere volume of sound, to do more than please
or amuse, to impress by power and breadth of style. The piano becomes
second in volume, in quick changing variety and multiplicity of effects
only to the orchestra. Sonatas approach the symphony in depth and
meaning. The ideas of the new style are spread over Europe by Clementi
and his disciples. The great maker of pianofortes in Paris, Sebastian
Érard, copies the English action.
Beethoven grew up with the new idea of pianoforte music. The pianoforte
presented to him in Bonn by Graf Waldstein was probably of the
light-toned Viennese make; but as early as 1796 he came in touch with
English pianos on a concert trip to Berlin and other cities. In 1803 he
came into possession of an Érard, through the generosity of one of his
Viennese patrons, Prince Lichnowsky. It never wholly pleased him. His
wish was for one of the heavy sonorous English pianos. In 1817 it was
fulfilled. Thomas Broadwood sent him an exceptionally powerful and fine
one from his establishment in London, in token of admiration. The Érard
was given away, the last colossal sonatas were composed. Even after
this piano had outworn its usefulness Beethoven kept it by him. Even
after he received a piano especially made for him by a Viennese maker
named Graf, strung with four strings to a note in consideration of his
deafness, he retained his Broadwood. Both were side by side in his room
at the Schwarzspanierhaus when he died.
III
Beethoven developed his technique with the aim of drawing the utmost
sonority and variety from the pianoforte. His demands on the instrument
were far beyond the capabilities of the Viennese pianos. Streicher,
who married Stein’s daughter and carried on the business of the firm
in Vienna, exerted his ingenuity constantly to improve his pianos
according to the demands of Beethoven, finally gave over the ideal of
lightness of action and of tone, largely through Beethoven’s influence.
Beethoven left the harpsichord far behind him. He conceived his sonatas
for an instrument of vastly greater possibilities. He filled them with
passages of chords, of double notes, of powerful arpeggio figures
surging from low registers to high, all combined by the pedal, in the
use of which he was a great innovator. He refused allegiance to the old
ideal of distinctness to which Hummel, Mozart’s pupil, was still loyal,
that he might be free when he chose to deal with great masses of sound.
The quality of his genius has, of course, much to do with this; but
the massiveness which, among other things, distinguishes his pianoforte
sonatas from those of Mozart and Haydn is in no little measure due to
a new idea of the instrument, which had been born of the possibilities
of the English pianofortes, not inherited from the harpsichord. He
concerned himself with a new range of effects beyond the powers of his
two great predecessors. He found in the pianoforte an instrument fit to
express huge ideas and powerful emotions. Of such, therefore, he was
free to compose his sonatas.
Such works were not, we may be sure, written for the practice of his
pupils, as so many of Haydn’s and Mozart’s sonatas had been. Most of
them contained some measure of the outpouring of his own heart and
soul, sometimes not less tremendous than the content of his symphonies.
Each was to him in the nature of a great poem, an epic; most have a
distinct life and spirit of their own. Into this poetic life must
one plunge who would understand. There is a great mood to be caught,
an emotion, sometimes an idea. Beethoven thought deeply about the
meaning of his art. Colors of sound, intervals, rhythms, qualities
of melody, keys, all had for him a symbolism, sometimes mysterious,
sometimes definite. He regarded himself as a poet, speaking a language
more suggestive than words. In those who listened to his music he
expected an imagination quick to feel the life in it, to respond to
it, to interpret it. Countless anecdotes reveal the close association
Beethoven felt to exist between his music and the world of nature, of
human life, of the spirit rising in spite of fate. Most are perhaps not
to be relied upon. But scarcely less numerous are the ‘interpretations’
of his music, written down for us by students, by historians, by
philosophic musicians; and all these, welcome or unwelcome, must be
taken as reactions to a poetic chemistry at work in the music itself.
The thing is there, and Beethoven was conscious of having put it there.
He was intensely conscious of his individuality. He was proud of his
skill to reveal in music his emotions or his ideals. Little of such
aristocracy, in a broad sense, is evident in Haydn or Mozart. They
may seem to have taken themselves far less seriously. Beethoven knew
himself the high priest of a great art. He demanded from others the
respect due to such an one. His spirit rises majestic from his music,
or from a great part of it. It speaks in an unmistakable voice. One
listens to great stories, great epics, great tragedies, all part of the
life of a man of enormous vitality, enormous force. One hardly listens
as to music, rather as to a poet and a prophet.
Correspondingly, his music undergoes a development noticeably parallel
to the course of his life. The pianoforte sonatas alone are nearly
a complete record of the various phases through which his character
passed from young manhood almost to the time of his death. They
compose, as it were, a great book in many chapters. At times one might
regard them as a diary. Beethoven confided himself to his piano.
He was a very great and an unusual player. His style was, as we have
inferred, wholly different from Mozart’s. To begin with, it was
much more varied. In the matter of runs alone one finds a deeper
appreciation of legato and staccato, and the shades between. Mozart’s
runs are oftenest of the ‘pearly’ variety, detached and sparkling.
Beethoven much more frequently than Mozart requires a close, legato
manner of playing. This, in the matter of scales, will give them a
sweep and curve, rather than a ripple, make them a rush of sound,
rather than a series of distinct notes; as, for example, the short
scale passages in the first movement of the sonata opus 7, those for
the left hand in the first movement of opus 78, and the long scale
passages at the end of the first movement of opus 53. In other sorts
of runs the legato execution which is required makes of them almost a
series of broken chords; as in the final movement of opus 26, in the
first movement of the concerto in G major. Even where the playing may
be slightly staccato in style the pedal is employed to give the runs
more significance as harmonies than as series of separated notes; as
in the third variation of the middle movement in the sonata opus 57,
or the figures which build up the transitional sections of the first
movement of opus 110.
It is hardly to be denied, paradoxical as it may seem, that in
many ways Mozart seems to demand a careful legato touch even more
than Beethoven. That is perhaps because of the lighter texture of
the fabric. The pedal is of less help, the fingers must do more of
themselves. But the light runs which add so much to the charm of his
music stand apart from this. They are intended to stand out distinctly
in their separate notes. So, of course, are many in the sonatas of
Beethoven, and the use of the pedal itself is an art of expression, not
a makeshift to hide the clumsiness of fingers. The point of difference
is that Beethoven often writes series of notes which are effective as a
series; Mozart more often runs, the separate notes of which each must
sparkle with its own light.
With Beethoven, too, legato series of chords are frequent; in Haydn and
Mozart they hardly exist. Beethoven’s use of double notes and chords
is ahead of his time. Take the finale of the sonata in C major, opus
3, No. 3, as a simple example. The staccato chord motive in the last
movement of opus 27, No. 2, the first movement of the G major concerto,
the first movement of opus 81, are but few examples out of many that
might be chosen.
But, above all, it is by the use of the pedal that Beethoven goes ahead
of his predecessors. The building up of great harmonies, either by
wide-ranging, rapid figures, or by massive chords piled one on top of
the other, was from the start characteristic of him. The trio of the
scherzo in the sonata in C major, number three of the first published
sonatas, offers a magnificent example, foreshadowing the colossal
effects of passages in the sonatas opus 53 and opus 57 and at the
beginning of the huge concerto in E-flat major.
The extent to which he mastered the difficulties of the keyboard in
nearly all directions and his truly great inventiveness in pianistic
effects, have filled his works with sheer technical difficulties
which must ever task the skill of even the most remarkable virtuosi.
He demands velocity and strength in the fingers, great endurance and
power, flexibility of the wrist both in its usual up and down movement
and in its movement from side to side, a sure free use of the arm.
Skill in thirds and sixths, in octaves, in trills, double trills and
even triple trills, in wide skips, in repeated notes, all this and
more he demands of the player. It is ludicrous to think that certain
contemporaries denied him distinction as a pianist, largely because he
played according to no recognized method. As if any method of that day
or even this could be expected to limit hands that could play, to say
nothing of devise, such music as his!
He practically exhausted the resources of the pianoforte of his day. Of
this he was aware, and his ear, growing ever finer in its appreciation
of orchestral color, was at times tired of the limited tones of this
single instrument. He is reported to have said of it that it is and
remains an unsatisfactory instrument. At times he seems to have written
for it as he would write for the orchestra. In the first movement
of the ‘Waldstein’ sonata (opus 53) he actually wrote the names of
instruments over phrases which they might be fancied playing. This one
instance, together with passages which do not seem quite suited to the
nature of the piano, must not mislead us, however, to judge the sonatas
as orchestral rather than pianistic music.
Beethoven was thoroughly familiar with his piano. The instrument has
been further improved since his day. Particularly the lower registers
have been given greater sonority, and the instrument as a whole has
gained much in sustaining power. Therefore it is inevitable that
certain passages which he conceived upon the Broadwood or the Érard of
1820 or earlier are not wholly fitting to the modern piano. This is
especially true of passages in the lower registers. The accompaniment
to the noble second theme in the first movement of the sonata opus 57
is, for example, unquestionably thick. It is too low and muddy for the
present-day piano. Many similar instances might be mentioned, most of
which, however, prove only that pianos have changed. His frequent use
of close accompaniment figures is perhaps intrinsically old-fashioned;
but, on the other hand, wider figures would have been less sonorous
on the piano he wrote for than those he used. It is, however, in such
matters that Beethoven’s pianoforte music is, from one point of view,
not entirely satisfactory to the pianist of today. If in other respects
it is at times seemingly orchestral, if successive repetitions of the
same phrase seem to tax the pianoforte too far, that does not take from
it all as a whole the honor of being one of the greatest contributions
to pure pianoforte literature.
It was natural that Beethoven’s conception of music as an art akin
to poetry, conveying a more or less definite expression, should have
great influence upon the forms in which he wrote. The sonata filled up
enormously from his inspiration. To begin with, the triplex form took
on more and more dramatic life. The development is to be noticed in
several ways, some slower to make their appearance than others. Almost
at once the contrasting natures of the first and second themes become
apparent. Haydn, it will be remembered, often used but a variant of the
first theme for the second, much as Emanuel Bach had done; but making
his setting of the second theme far clearer. Mozart used distinctly
different themes, but both were, as a rule, melodious, different in
line but not in nature. On the other hand, the first three sonatas of
Beethoven show a complete differentiation of the themes. The second and
third are conspicuous and show a procedure in the matter of themes from
which Beethoven rarely departed.
The first theme in the first movement of the sonata in A major, opus
2, No. 2, is positive in character, not lyric, not subtle, though in
this case humorous. It is assertive and not likely to undergo radical
change or development in the movement. That the first two measures are
squarely on notes of the tonic chord should not be unobserved. The
second theme is lyric, subtle, likely to change color and form as it
passes through the various phases in store for it. The first and second
themes of the next sonata may be characterized in almost the same
words. And this is likely to be the case in nearly all movements in the
triplex form which Beethoven will write. The first theme is likely to
be assertive and strong, the second to offer a fundamental contrast in
mood and style.
Both themes tend more and more to have a dramatic independence and
significance. The movement grows, as it were, out of the conflict or
the union of the two ideas which they express. A great vitality spreads
into the connecting passages between them. These passages may develop
from the nature of the first theme, as, for instance, in the sonatas
opus 13, opus 31, No. 2, and opus 53, or they may present wholly new
ideas often not less significant than the themes themselves, as in
opus 10, No. 3, and in opus 57. Similarly the closing measures of the
exposition take on a new meaning, as in the last movement of opus 27,
No. 2, and opus 31, No. 2.
In the early sonatas, where Beethoven is somewhat preoccupied with the
piano itself as a vehicle for the display of the pianist’s power, these
intermediate measures have little musical merit. Such passages will
be found in the first movements of opus 10, No. 3, and opus 22, both
rather ostensibly virtuoso music. In the later sonatas such objective
effectiveness is rare.
The development sections fill up with enormous vitality; and, finally,
there grows a coda at the end of the movement in which in many cases
the movement reaches its topmost height. In fact, Beethoven’s treatment
of the coda makes of the triplex form something almost new. Where in
classical form the movement might be expected to cease, in the sonatas
of Beethoven it will be found often to flow on into a wholly fresh
stanza, seeming at times the key or the fruition of the movement as a
whole. The wonderfully beautiful and long coda at the end of the first
movement of the sonata opus 81 is a superb case in point.
The remaining movements of the sonatas expanded under the same
powerful imagination. Let one compare the variations which form the
slow movement of opus 10, No. 2, with those in the slow movement of
opus 106, or those which constitute the second and last movement of
the last sonata. In these later variations we find something of the
same change of the theme into various metaphors as that found in the
Goldberg Variations of Bach. It is not so much an idea adorned as an
idea expanded into countless new ideas. The variations written for the
publisher Diabelli on a waltz theme are indeed exactly comparable to
those of Bach.
To slow movements in song form or in triplex form he appended the
codas in the nature of an epilogue which added so much to the first
movements. The adagio of opus 10, No. 3, offers a fine example.
Frequently the slow movement led without pause into the next, more
frequently than in the sonatas of his predecessors.
The rondo took on a weight and significance to which it was scarcely
considered sufficient by the older masters. The rondo which is the last
movement of opus 53 is of huge proportions.
Beethoven frequently composed his sonatas in four movements, following
in this the model offered by the symphonies of his predecessors. The
added movement was descended from the minuet. In some of the sonatas
it still bears the name and occupies its traditional place between the
slow movement and the last movement, notably in the sonatas opus 2,
No. 1, and opus 10, No. 3. In opus 2, No. 2, and opus 2, No. 3, the
movement is called a scherzo and has lost not its dance rhythm but its
dance character. In opus 31, No. 3, the scherzo has not even the triple
rhythm which usually distinguished it. It follows the first movement
and is itself followed by a minuet and a final rondo. In 106 it is
again the second movement, and in 110 can be recognized in spirit,
without a name, likewise as second movement. The scherzos introduce
into the later sonatas, as into the symphonies, a note of something
between irony and mystery, a strange development from the sunny dances
of Haydn; a sort of harsh echo of life in dense valleys from which
Beethoven has long since ascended.
And finally the fugue finds place in the scheme, sounding invariably a
note of triumph, as of the power of man’s will and the immutable law of
order in the universe.
Thus by extending the length of the various movements, by adding
distinct and significant themes in transitional and closing sections of
the triplex form, by incorporating additional movements in the sonata
group, by introducing forms like the scherzo and the fugue, which,
though they had been found in the suite, had been almost never employed
by the composers of sonatas, Beethoven enormously expanded the sonata
as a whole. But even more remarkable was the tendency which showed
itself relatively early to give a unity and coherence to the group.
This was an inevitable result of Beethoven’s attitude towards music.
He felt himself, as we have said, a poet. His music was consciously
the expression of almost definite emotions, definite ideals. These by
reason of the nature of the man were of heroic proportions, finding
an adequate vehicle of expression only in music of broad and varied
design. The sonata offered in pianoforte music the possibilities of
such expression. The various movements afforded a chance for the play,
the contrast and change of moods great in themselves. The length of
the work as a whole predicated the widest possible limits. It needed
but ideas strong enough to dominate and fill these limits to give
to the group an organic life, to establish a close connection, even
a fundamental interdependence between the erstwhile independent and
separate movements.
Such ideas Beethoven did not at once bring to the sonata. Only the last
sonatas, beginning with opus 101, are truly so firmly knit or welded
that the individual movements are incomplete apart from the whole, that
the demarcation between them fades or does not exist at all. In the
first sonatas he is clearly preoccupied with expanding the power of
expression of the instrument, with technical problems, with problems
of form in the separate movements. The organic life which is to mark
the last sonatas is not a matter of external structure, of thematic
relationship. M. Vincent d’Indy points to the resemblance between the
first notes of the first theme of the final movement in opus 13 and
the second theme in the first movement of the same sonata, as an
indication of the tendency thus early evident in Beethoven to give to
the sonata group a consolidation more real than a mere conventionally
accepted arrangement. Even earlier instances may be found of such
resemblances in the thematic material of the various movements. The
theme of the rondo of opus 10, No. 3, may well have come from the
second theme of the first movement. Indeed, it is not hard to believe
that in the very first of the published sonatas, opus 2, No. 1,
Beethoven employed a modification of the opening theme of the first
movement as basis for a contrasting episode in the last.
But do such devices succeed in giving to a whole sonata an indissoluble
unity? Hardly. They may make of one movement a sequel to a previous
movement. Analogies may be found in the work of the great novelists.
Beatrice Esmond plays a part in ‘The Virginians,’ but that does not
necessarily mean that ‘Henry Esmond’ is incomplete as a work of
art without the later novel. Brahms, it will be remembered, worked
studiously to construct a sequence of movements from somewhat the
same thematic material, notably in the F-sharp minor pianoforte
sonata and in his first symphony. But more than such reminiscences or
such recrudescences is necessary to give to a group of movements the
closely interdependent organic life that we find in the later Beethoven
sonatas. The movements of the popular _Sonata Pathétique_ have an
independent and a complete life of themselves. It is familiarity with
the sequence in which Beethoven arranged them that truly holds them
together, the still accepted ideal of a purely conventional arrangement.
Somewhat later Beethoven tried experiments which are more significant.
There are the two sonatas published as opus 27. Each is a sonata _quasi
una fantasia_,--in the manner of a fantasy. The first is conspicuous
by diversity or irregularity of form. It is not easy to decide upon
the limits of the various movements. A beautiful, long, slow section
is, as it were, engulfed by an impassioned short allegro in C major,
from which it emerges again almost unvaried. It comes to a definite
close, but the flash of the C major section across the progress of
the music has left an impression of incompleteness, has destroyed, as
it were, the equilibrium of the whole so far. The piece is obviously
still fragmentary, still indeterminate. More must come to give us a
satisfying sense of completeness. So we are propelled by restlessness
into another allegro, this time a much longer section, more or less
developed, in C minor, clearly a scherzo in character. It is wild.
We have been plunged into music that, far from fulfilling the need
of more that we felt after the opening sections, leaves us more than
ever unsatisfied. There follows a brief adagio, promising an ultimate
solution of all the mystery and uncertainty, seeming, by the long
trills and slowly descending single notes at the end, really to
introduce the satisfying order which must follow out of such chaos. The
final rondo is orderly and stable from the beginning. At the end comes
a repetition of phrases from the adagio, as to remind us of a promise
now fulfilled, and a lively little coda sends us away cheerful and
refreshed.
The nature of this music is such that up to the final rondo its various
sections must, if taken from the whole, affect us as being fragmentary
and unsatisfying. The work is more a fantasy than a sonata. The triplex
form is not to be found in it. But it is accepted as a sonata, as is
the previous one, opus 26, or Mozart’s sonata in A major, beginning
with a theme and variations; and the close interdependence of its
various sections, æsthetic if not thematic, points unmistakably to the
method of the last sonatas.
The movements of the sonata in C-sharp minor, opus 27, No. 2, are from
the point of view of form complete in themselves. Moreover, the first
and last movements are perfectly in triplex form. But this sonata, too,
is to be regarded, according to Beethoven himself, as in the nature
of a fantasy. This is because of the quality of improvisation which
pervades it all, which cannot be hidden even by the perfect finish
of the form. And the entire improvisation seems to be sprung of one
mood, the whole music related to one fundamental idea. Whether or not
it was inspired by the beautiful lady to whom it is dedicated, for
whom Beethoven had an apparently lasting though vain passion, need not
concern us. The music as it stands is full of the deepest and most
passionate feeling. The slow movement has a great deal the nature of a
prelude. Its lyric quality is passive; but it sings of emotions which
must assert themselves in active and more violent self-expression. And
so, passing under, as it were, the shadowy ephemeral second movement
which may veil but not suppress them, they burst out in the last
movement with the power of a great storm.
Is the unity here merely one which great familiarity with the work as
a whole may account for? One can point to no logical incompleteness in
any one of the movements. Is their union in our mind essentially one of
association? It is more than that. There is a single emotion underlying
the work as a whole, which must seek further and different utterance
than the first movement affords it; which the second movement may
belie but not extinguish; to which only the fantastic coda of the last
movement gives ultimate release.
In both these sonatas there is a unity which cannot be destroyed. In
both, however, it is artistic rather than organic, and this may be
said of the subsequent sonatas up to opus 101. This, and the three
succeeding sonatas, seem almost to be musical dramas, more than tone
poems. They are huge allegories in music. The form which they take is
one which is built up note by note out of the conflict of vast forces,
natural or spiritual powers, rather than human emotions. Three of them
work up to great fugues. The other two, opus 109 and opus 111, to
towering series of variations.
One may take the sonata in A-flat, opus 110, for analysis. The first
movement, in very simple triplex form, is seemingly complete in itself.
Yet there is something mystical and visionary about it. The two themes
out of which it is constructed seem to float in the air; but there
is suggestion in the transitional sections and in the development
sections of inchoate forces in the deep. The whole movement rather
whispers than speaks. It is a mystery. There follows immediately an
allegro in F minor, a harsh presentment, as it were, of human energy
spent for naught. There are snatches of a trivial, popular song; there
is a trio made up of one long, down-hill run, repeated over and over
again, coming down only to be tossed high again by a sharply accented
chord; a restless agitation throughout, ironical, even cynical. The end
comes suddenly with crashing chords out of time, and, finally, a quick
breathing out, as if the whole vanished in air. It is an extraordinary
movement, seeming instantaneous. One is amazed and bewildered after it.
Then comes a passage in the character of recitative. The whole mood
becomes intensely sorrowful, grief-stricken, tragic. A melody full of
anguish mounts up, the cry of bitter hopelessness, endless suffering.
It ceases and is followed by a silence. Out of this rises in single
notes, _pianissimo_, a voice, as it were, of hope and strength. It is
woven into a fugue as if in only such discipline were there promise of
victory, not for Beethoven alone, but for the human race.
The fugue rises to a climax, but only to be broken off by an abrupt
and boding modulation. Once again the anguished voice is heard, now
broken with weariness (_ermattend_, in Beethoven’s own expression).
The section is in G minor. When the melody ceases the music seems
to beat faintly on in single notes. Suddenly there is a soft chord
of G major. The effect is one of the most beautiful Beethoven ever
conceived. And then the chords follow each other, swelling to great
force. Hushed at first, the fugue speaks again. This time the melody is
inverted. Extraordinary mastery of the science of music is now brought
to bear upon weaving a fitting and glorious ending to the great work.
The fugue subject in its original intervals is employed in diminution
as a background of counterpoint against which the same subject, in
augmentation, rises into greater and greater prominence. The music
gains in strength. It mounts higher and higher; at last it seems to
blaze in triumph.
Here is a sonata which seems to have an organic life. The whole work is
not only expressive of varied and powerful emotions, it seems to build
itself out of the conflict that goes on between them. One is hardly
conscious in listening that it may be divided into movements. One hears
the unfolding of a single mighty work. And in this case, be it noted,
the effect has little to do with thematic relationships between the
various movements.
By thus filling a conventional group of movements with one and the
same life, Beethoven brought the sonata to a height beyond which it
can never go. It may, indeed, be asked whether these last works are
sonatas, whether they be not some new form. Yet the steps by which they
evolved are clear, and in them all there are manifold traces of their
origin. There is no other literature for the pianoforte comparable to
them in scope and power. The special quality of their inspiration each
must judge for himself, whether it move him, appeal to him, suit his
taste in beauty of sound. But to that inspiration no one can deny a
grandeur and nobility, a heroic proportion unique in pianoforte music.
V
The sonatas, from first to last, are Beethoven’s chief contribution
to this special branch of music. Two of the five concertos have held
their place beside these, the fourth in G major and the fifth in E-flat
major. The huge proportions of the latter will probably not impress so
much as they have in years past. It is commonly called the ‘Emperor’
concerto. In the first movement there are many measures which give
an impression of more or less perfunctory, intellectual working-out.
The middle movement is inspired throughout, and the modulation from B
major to the dominant harmony of E-flat major just before the final
rondo is wonderfully beautiful. The subject of the rondo has a gigantic
vigor. The G major concerto is of much more delicate workmanship and,
from the point of view of sheer beauty of sound, is more effective to
modern ears. The treatment of the solo instrument is more consistently
pianistic, adds more in special color, therefore, to the beauty of the
whole. The slow movement fulfills an ideal of the concerto which up to
that time and even later has been almost ignored. It is a dialogue,
a dramatic conversation between the orchestra and the piano, the one
seeming to typify some dark power of fate, the other man. Its beauty is
matchless. It is worthy of remark that both the G major and the E-flat
major concertos begin with passages for the solo instrument.
Besides the sonatas and the concertos Beethoven published several sets
of shorter pieces, rondos, dances, variations, and ‘Bagatelles.’ They
are hardly conspicuous, and, in comparison with the longer works, are
insignificant. The thirty-three variations on a waltz theme of A.
Diabelli, published in 1823 as opus 120, are marvellous as a _tour de
force_ of musical skill; second, however, to the Goldberg Variations
of Bach, to which they seem to owe several features. Is it possible
that a variation like the twenty-eighth owes something to Weber as well?
The pianoforte works of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven represent a fairly
distinct epoch in the development of music for the instrument. At the
beginning men belonging to a rather different period were still living,
some were still at work. At the end a new era was forming itself.
The insulation which seems to surround the three great composers
proves, as we have said, on close inspection to be imperfect. Still,
their work represents one phase of development. As such, it is easy
to trace the evolution of one definite form, the sonata, under the
influences which each brought to bear on it. Similarly one can trace
the constant expansion of the pianoforte technique from the time when,
adapted to instruments of light action and tone, it differed but little
from the harpsichord technique, to the time when, formed upon the
massive Broadwood pianos with their resonant tone, it brought from the
instrument powerful and varied effects second only to the orchestra.
The epoch has, on the other hand, more than an historical significance.
It brought into music the expression of three geniuses of the highest
order. Each has its own special charm, its own character, its own
power. One should not be valued by comparison with the others. What
Haydn gave, what Mozart gave, and what Beethoven gave, all are of
lasting beauty and of lasting worth. From Haydn the common joys and a
touch of the common sorrows of people here under the sun; from Mozart
a grace that is more of the fairies, a voice from other stars singing
a divine melody; from Beethoven the great emotions, great depths of
despair, great heights of exaltation, half man, half god, of that
heroic stuff of which Titans were made.
FOOTNOTES:
[30] _Geschichte des Klavierspiels und der Klavierlitteratur._