PIANOFORTE MUSIC AT THE TIME OF BEETHOVEN
The broadening of technical possibilities and its
consequences--Minor disciples of Mozart and Beethoven: J. N.
Hummel; J. B. Cramer; John Field; other contemporaries--The
pioneers in new forms: Weber and Schubert; technical
characteristics of Weber’s style; Weber’s sonatas, etc.; the
_Conzertstück_; qualities of Weber’s pianoforte music--Franz
Schubert as pianoforte composer; his sonatas; miscellaneous
works; the impromptus; the Moments musicaux--The
Weber-Schubert era and the dawn of the Romantic spirit.
Beethoven developed his own pianoforte technique to respond to his own
great need of self-expression. He not so much consulted the qualities
of the piano as demanded that it conform to his ideas. These ideas
were, in many cases, as grand as those which have later called upon
the full resources of the orchestra; and, therefore, as we have said,
he called upon the piano to do the full service of the orchestra. As
a result the instrument was taxed to its uttermost limits; but within
those limits lay many effects which were of no service to Beethoven.
Out of these effects a new race of musicians was to build a new style
of music. There grew up a technique, slave to the instrument, which
with well-nigh countless composers was an end in itself. With most
of these composers there was a dearth of ideas, but they rendered a
service to the art which must be acknowledged.
I
Among the most meritorious and the most influential of these musicians
was Johann Nepomuk Hummel (1778-1837). Hummel attracted the attention
of Mozart as a boy, and the latter took him as a pupil into his house
for two years. By the time he was eleven he was winning fame as a
virtuoso. The course of concert tours brought him to London, where he
settled for several years, to absorb what he could from the greatly
renowned Clementi. From then on he enjoyed a brilliant fame, not only
as a player, but as a composer as well. And for what was his playing
admired? For the remarkable clearness and evenness of his touch,
for one thing. So was the playing of Dussek, of Cramer, of Field,
of Moscheles, of Kalkbrenner, of Ferdinand Hiller, of any number of
others. Clearness and evenness of touch did not distinguish one great
player from another then, more than it does now. Yet they are qualities
endlessly bespoken by all biographers for their favorite pianists.
Hummel seems to have had in addition a grace of style not so common.
This may well have become part of him through the influence of Mozart.
And a certain grace characterizes his compositions. These comprise
caprices, dances, rondos, sets of variations, all manner of show
pieces, brilliant and graceful in their day, sonatas and concertos.
These pieces were popular, they were famous, they were in a way more
influential in shaping the growth of pianoforte technique than were the
sonatas of Beethoven. As a matter of fact, they present little in the
way of brilliance but scales and arpeggios. Yet even now they make the
piano sound with a captivating fluency.
One work may be signalized as marking a keen instinct for pianistic
effects, as really pointing to some such treatment of the keyboard as
Chopin, by reason of his immortal fancy, made unsurpassable, perfect.
This is the concerto in A minor. Here, as we should expect, he
indulged himself in weaving elaborate show-figures over an orchestral
groundwork of little or no musical value. But the show-figures are
often brilliantly effective. For example, after the piano has played
the second theme in the first movement, there follows a long quasi-solo
passage of mixed double and single notes, which, trivial as it may be
as music, gives what one might call a lot of jolly good fun. Notice the
wide spacing here and there, the frequent expeditions into the highest
registers, the marches from bottom to top and the oily trickling back
to middle again. Then in the development section there is good fun
too; and there is a coda which demands the wrist of a virtuoso such as
Chopin or Liszt, instantaneous skips of the arm, runs for both hands in
thirds, all remarkably fluent and all sprung right from the nature if
not the soul of the instrument.
The adagio is, of course, flaccid worthlessness; but the final rondo
has no little musical charm, and, as far as treatment of the pianoforte
goes, is not at all unworthy of Liszt. The triplet rhythm is in itself
brilliantly maintained; there are series of fourths and sixths, triplet
figures very widely spaced, and again single and double notes mixed
in the same group, runs in thirds, chromatic thirds, double trills,
a profusion, in fact, of most of the virtuoso’s stock in trade, all
gracefully and brilliantly displayed.
It will be noticed that the best of it is sheer figure work, without
pianoforte accompaniment, or lightly supported by the orchestra. And
this may point to one of the marks of its mediocrity as a whole, one of
the reasons why it sounds, after all, laughably old-fashioned in many
measures. This is no other than the lack of variety, of skill, and of
taste in accompaniment figures. In one of the unquestionably effective
passages already referred to--the first solo passages for the piano
in the first movement, after the second theme--the right-hand work
is modern; but the left hand has only the vapid, commonplace tum-tum
scheme of single note and chord. Not only is this formula repeated
flatly, without attempt at variety, in blissful ignorance of its
unworthiness; even the very notes are repeated as far as it is possible
to go without changing the harmony.
Here the question may arise as to whether this monotonous device is
more contemptible than the Alberti bass. The answer is that the Alberti
bass is essentially a harmonic formula. Its use makes a certain series
of harmonies vibrate under a melody. Its outline need not, should not,
be clear-cut, its notes must not be played evenly and unvaryingly.
Here, over this tum-tum figure, we have no melody, but a series of
effects; and the tum-tum figure does not serve primarily to furnish
harmony, but to keep up a commonplace rhythm to which the figures add
no diversion. And, whereas the Alberti bass is a flexible device,
this is rigid. It can be lightly played, but, even if unobtrusive, is
necessarily commonplace.
But Hummel on the whole contributed considerably to the technique that
belongs specially to the pianoforte, and most of his contributions have
a grace that makes them pleasant even while his inspiration is perhaps
often lower than mediocre. He was by many regarded as the equal of
Beethoven, a delightful proof of the power of pleasant, lively sound to
intoxicate.
A contemporary of Hummel highly praised by Beethoven was J. B. Cramer,
son of a well-known German musical family. He was another of Clementi’s
pupils. He, too, had the clear and even touch; but his compositions are
less effective than Hummel’s, probably because he had a more serious
ideal of music. Both as a pianist and as a composer he was famous in
his day; now he has but little fame left him except what still hangs
over the Studies he wrote. In the words of A. Marmontel,[31] we salute
in him the eldest son of Clementi, the direct representative, the
authorized furtherer of his school. He wrote, among other things,
one hundred and five sonatas. They are of the past; but the studies,
particularly the first sixteen, are still useful, not only in training
the fingers, but in inculcating some sense of good style into the brain
of the student.
John Field is still another pupil of Clementi, the favorite pupil
according to well-founded tradition. He was born in Dublin in 1782
and died in Moscow in 1837. His addiction to good wines and whiskey,
and a consequent corpulence, broke down his health and his art. But
he was at one time one of the most beloved of pianists. With him
it was not only clearness and evenness of touch; there was poetry,
tenderness, and warmth as well. He was, of course, of the sentimental
school, the foremost of the professional pianists of that day in power
of expression. On a concert tour to Italy, undertaken toward the end
of his life and culminating in a long, miserable illness, he met
with little success; but elsewhere in Europe he exerted a charm upon
audiences which was almost hypnotic. His playing was wholly unperturbed
by signs of violent emotion, dreamy and indolent, yet of most unusual
sweetness and delicacy. He had enormous success as a teacher,
especially in Russia, where a great part of his life was spent; and
the mark he left upon the art of playing and of composing for the
pianoforte has never been wholly obliterated.
Most of his compositions have been neglected, or forgotten. They
include seven concertos, four sonatas, numerous rondos, sets of
variations, dances, and twenty or more little pieces to which he gave
the title of Nocturnes. These nocturnes are a new and a conspicuous
appearance in music. By them he is still remembered, by them a fairly
distinct style and form of pianoforte music were introduced. They were
indolently composed, negligently published, scattered here and there
over Europe; but they made an indelible impression upon men and women
of that day, especially upon those who had heard him play them himself,
and must be recognized as the prototype of the countless ‘nocturnes,’
‘songs without words,’ ‘reveries,’ ‘eclogues,’ and ‘idylls’ which have
since been written.
Just what distinguishes them from earlier works for the pianoforte
it is not easy to say exactly. The form, for one thing, seems new.
They are for the most part short, often not more than two pages long.
They consist of three sections, a long flowing melody, a contrasting
section which is for the most part melodious too, and a return to the
opening melody, commonly elaborated. There is in most of them a little
coda as well. Most short pieces of the day, and even of an earlier
time, were in the well-known forms of rondos or simple dances, from
which these are obviously quite distinct. But as far as form goes
they are not very different from the aria, except in that the middle
section generally maintains the accompaniment figures of the first
section and essentially the same mood as well, so that there is little
appreciable sense of demarcation. Other short pieces to which one looks
for a possible origin, such as those of Couperin and the preludes of
Bach, are far more articulate and far less lyrical. The sonatas of D.
Scarlatti and the Bagatelles of Beethoven are mostly pieces in two
sections, each repeated. The same is true of the _Moments musicals_
of Schubert. In the nocturnes of Field no distinct feature of form is
obtrusive. The intellectual element is wanting. There is no attempt
at crispness of outline, or antithesis or balance. They seem to be an
emanation of mood or sentiment, not a presentation of them. Hence they
represent a new type in music, one which has little to do with emotions
or ideas, with their arrangement or development, but lets itself flow
idly upon a mood.
In style they are wholly lyrical. The accompaniment is usually
monotonous and unvaried, but always flexible. Here, then, one looks
to find the Alberti bass; and here it presents itself most clearly in
the second stage of its development. The harmonic stream on which the
melody floats along is a series of chords broken into their constituent
parts so that they may be kept in a constant and gentle vibration. But,
whereas the Alberti bass in its first stage was a device applied to
the harpsichord and for that reason was always close within the span
of the hand, here in its second stage, now adapted to the pianoforte,
it has been expanded. The pedal can now be counted upon to blend the
relatively wide figures into one harmonic whole. Therefore, instead of
the original close grouping, we now find this wider one:
[Illustration: Music score]
This is no original invention of Field’s. Beethoven, in the sonata opus
90, wrote figures like this:
[Illustration: Music score]
But this figure, as will be seen, is sustained by a powerful,
quick-changing harmony. The bass part has a rhythmical significance as
important as its harmonic. With Field the function of such figures is
purely harmonic, and in the appreciation of such wide spacing, and in a
gentle gracefulness in the arrangement of the notes, he stands beyond
all his early contemporaries and, of course, beyond his predecessors.
He is the first to give to his accompaniment the flowing, undulating
line which touches with nearly unfailing instinct upon those notes that
will give his harmony most richness.
A similar instinct for what sounds well on the piano marks the
ornamentation with which he adorned his melodies, or those figures
into which he allowed the melodies to dissolve. In this most clearly
he is the predecessor of Chopin. It is perhaps worthy of note that he
was accustomed to add such ornaments _ex tempore_ when playing before
audiences. Only a few are written out in the published editions of
his works. We may have occasion to refer to this in speaking later of
Chopin.
As for the nature of the simple melodies themselves, they are sweet
and graceful, sometimes lovely. They are, of course, sentimental. One
may hesitate to call them mawkish, for a certain naïve freshness and
spontaneity despite a touch of something that is not wholly healthy.
It is easy to understand the charm they exerted upon those who heard
him play them. The complete lack of any harshness, of any passion or
poignancy, of any ecstasy, is delightfully soothing. But beyond this
gentle charm they have little to reveal. Liszt’s preface to a German
edition of a few of the nocturnes, published in 1859, suggests the rose
that died in aromatic pain. It is more unhealthy than the nocturnes
themselves, be it added in justice to Field.
Other composers and virtuosi of the time of Beethoven need scarcely
more than mention. Gelinek (d. 1825) and Steibelt (d. 1823) are
remembered for their encounters with Beethoven. Ignaz Moscheles
(1794-1870) came into close touch with Beethoven, but, like Cramer,
is chiefly of note as a teacher. He was, however, more than Cramer a
virtuoso, and less than he of profound musical worth. Chopin was fond
of playing his duets. Beethoven’s pupil Carl Czerny (1791-1857) is
well-known for his Études. Another pupil of Beethoven’s, Ferdinand
Ries, was successful as a virtuoso; and a pupil of Hummel’s, Ferdinand
Hiller, became an intimate friend of Chopin. The assiduousness with
which most of these men cultivated the possibilities of the pianoforte
is equalled only by the vacuousness of their compositions. But it is
not what these men produced that is significant; rather what they
represent of the tendencies of the time. Their music furnishes the
background of musical taste against which a better and more significant
art, both of playing and composing for the piano, built itself. Only
Hummel and Field are distinct in their musical gifts; the one in the
matter of sheer brilliant and graceful effectiveness, the other in the
appreciation of veiled and shadowy accompaniments and lyric sentiment.
The best of their accomplishments served to prepare the way for the
true poet and artist of the piano, Chopin. They, in a way, mined the
metals with which he was to work.
[Illustration]
Pianoforte Classics. From top left to bottom right:
Czerny, Hummel, Moscheles, Field.
II
Meanwhile two truly great musicians availed themselves of what was
being everywhere around them brought to light. These are Carl Maria
von Weber and Franz Peter Schubert. Both are perhaps most closely
associated with developments outside the sphere of the pianoforte; the
one with the growth of the national, romantic German opera, the other
with the first glorious burst of artistic song. Yet the pianoforte
works of both were destined to exert a powerful influence upon the
subsequent work of the great German composers of later generations,
upon Mendelssohn, Schumann and Brahms; and besides these upon Franz
Liszt as well.
Weber died in London, whither he had gone to superintend the first
performances of his opera _Oberon_, in 1826, about forty years of age.
Schubert died in Vienna in 1828, only thirty-one years old. Both were
much younger than Beethoven, but both were his contemporaries, and
both, moreover, owed much to his influence. The expanded form and warm
feeling of their sonatas show this unmistakably. On the other hand,
neither was truly at his best in this long form. The cast of their
genius led them to new paths, put them in sympathy with other forms,
affiliated them more with the new than with the old. Their sonatas are
a breaking down, a crumbling; measures and pages in them, however,
stand out amid the ruins like foundation stones for the music to come.
Their shorter pieces seem not at all related to the classical music of
the Viennese period, to have nothing in common with the music of Haydn,
Mozart, and Beethoven.
Of the two, Weber is far more the virtuoso. There are many pages of
his music which are little more than effect. Furthermore, in his
combination of pianistic effect and genuine musical feeling, he
composed pieces which even today are in the repertory of most pianists,
and which this permanence of their worth has led historians and critics
to judge as the prototype of much of the pianoforte music of the
nineteenth century, chiefly of concert music. Yet in the expansion of
pianoforte technique Weber invented little. To him belongs the credit
of employing what was generally common property in his day for the
expression of fanciful and delightful ideas.
The list of his pianoforte works is not very long. It includes several
sets of variations, some dances, four big sonatas, two concertos, and
the still renowned _Konzertstück_ in F minor, and several pieces in
brilliant style, of which the _Polacca_ in E major, the _Polonaise_ in
E flat, and the famous ‘Invitation to the Dance’ are the best known.
Let us look over the variations. In such a form composers have usually
shown the limits and the variety of their technique. The resources
which Weber can call upon to vary his theme are not very numerous, not
very original. His plan is almost invariably to announce his theme
simply and then dress it up in a number of figures. The theme itself
undergoes no metamorphosis, as we have seen it do in the variations of
Bach and of Beethoven. It is unmistakable in all the variations. It
is always clearly a groundwork upon which garlands are hung, which is
never for long concealed.
Of the nature of these figures and garlands little need be said. Opus 6
is a set of variations on a theme from the opera ‘Castor and Pollux,’
written by his friend and teacher, the famous Abbé Vogler. The first
five variations are hardly in advance of the work of Handel. The sixth,
however, presents an interesting use of broken octaves and is very
difficult. The seventh presents the theme in octaves in the bass, and
the eighth is the theme unmistakable, in the form of a mazurka.
Opus 7 is a set of seven variations on a theme in C major. The fourth
of these presents some difficulties in wide chords for the left hand.
Weber’s fingers were very long and slender and broad stretches were
easy for him. The fifth is built up of sweeping figures that mount
from the low registers to the high in brilliant effect. This sort of
climbing _crescendo_ is to be found again and again in Weber’s work.
It is undoubtedly effective, but points to no intensive development of
pianoforte technique. The sixth variation presents the theme in form
of a chorale, a presentation which may still delight those who ever,
conversely, find something marvellous in the rendering of ‘Nearer, My
God, to Thee’ in rag-time. The seventh is a _Polacca_, very brilliant
and full of thirds and arpeggios in contrary motion.
Seven variations on a popular Romanza were published as opus 28. The
fifth has some interesting passages of broken sixths which are modern
enough in sound, but which can be found in other music of the time.
Then there is a Funeral March, in which upper and lower registers of
the instrument are contrasted in a series of imaginary orchestral
effects. The seventh demands a light, active wrist. It is a series
of rapid double notes, sometimes for both hands, in an excellent
‘étude’ manner, of which Weber had already made use in the delightful
_Caprice_, opus 12. In such work we have perhaps the model for most
studies in the special technique of the wrist, perhaps also of the
fifth number of Schumann’s ‘Symphonic Variations.’
There is, in addition, a set of variations on a Bohemian melody, opus
55, equally ordinary. A set published as opus 40 is perhaps the most
pretentious and likewise the most varied. Here we have in the first
variation some open, flowing counterpoint in which the theme is pretty
well disguised; in the second some effective whirring figures for
the left hand; in the third some brilliant broken octaves and double
notes. The fourth is in the style of a fugue, _pianissimo_. The fifth
furnishes sharp contrast. The eighth is very brilliant and the last is
in Spanish style, which seems to depend upon a lavish use of triplet
turns.
What one can hardly fail to observe is the great similarity in all his
passage work. Two styles of runs he uses in nearly all his pieces. One
is as follows:
[Illustration: Music score]
The other is what one might call an over-reaching figure, in this
manner:
[Illustration: Music score]
Sometimes, as well as over-reaching the chordal harmony at the top, he
anticipates it by a chromatic step at the beginning, thus:
[Illustration: Music score]
With such and similar figures, with scant variety, page after page of
his music is filled. His passage work seldom makes demands upon more
than the simplest harmonies. Long runs are generally clearly founded on
the simple scale. In rhythms he shows little subtlety.
This general stock in trade of pianoforte technique has become
hopelessly old-fashioned. Thus the once blindingly brilliant _Polacca_
in E major, the grand polonaise, the rondo, and such pieces, now sound
almost laughable. In the _Polacca_ one hears the thumping tum-tum
figures, this time heavy chords monotonously repeated, that we have
spoken of in the concerto of Hummel. However, the brief section in B
major must give us pause. There the genius Weber speaks, the composer
of _Der Freischütz_, the man who prepared the orchestra for Mendelssohn
and Wagner. The long _crescendo_ leading back to the main theme
foreshadows Schumann.
In the sonatas there is a great deal of very good music. The quality
of the ideas in them is often golden. Moreover, there are many passages
of startlingly good writing for the pianoforte. The first, in C major,
was published in 1812, as opus 42. The first theme is announced _mezza
voce_, after two preliminary measures of highly dramatic character.
The theme itself has something of the quality of a folk-song, a touch
of the martial, as well, a theme that at once endears itself to the
hearer as the melodies of _Der Freischütz_ endeared themselves to all
Germany. But, then, note the over-reaching figure which now appears in
the transitional section, and later, clamped to a definite harmonic
sequence, does for the second theme in G major. One cannot but enjoy
it, yet Hummel is not more mediocre. The theme and variations which
constitute the slow movement are not conspicuous; but the syncopations
in the minuet, the perverse avoidance of the measure accent, cast a
shadow forward upon Schumann and Brahms. The effect of the hushed
triplets in the trio is orchestral. The famous rondo, in perpetual
motion, scarcely calls for comment.
The second sonata, in A-flat major, must become precious to one who
troubles, in these days, to study it. The quality of the themes in the
first movement is rare and beautiful. The mysterious tremolo which
alone accompanies the announcement of the first theme, points to that
imagination in Weber which later developed the orchestra so richly.
There is something orchestral about the whole work, not only about
this sonata either. But his orchestral treatment of the piano is as
different from Beethoven’s as the scoring of his overtures is different
from that of Beethoven’s symphonies. There is a sensuous element in the
beauty of sounds which is lacking in Beethoven; a quality which stirs
the imagination to picture strange lands and countries, dim, mysterious
forests, strange moods of moonlight. It is romantic music, it is
picture music. The passage work at the end of the first section, which
really serves in place of a second theme, is superb. It is in the main
nothing but a series of arpeggios, sometimes with anticipatory notes
in his conventional and elsewhere often tiresome manner, sometimes
over-reaching; but the full chords in the left hand, a sort of rich
strumming, gives it all a buoyancy, an _essor_, which can hardly be
paralleled. The return to the first theme at the end of the development
is again orchestral. So is the whole treatment of the andante and
variations; orchestral in the sense that it suggests instruments of
various tone-colors, or rather that it almost brings the colors out of
the piano itself. The minuet is wonderfully gay, suggesting Schumann
again. The sonata may be taken as a whole as the best of Weber’s works
for the piano.
The last two sonatas, published in 1816 and 1822, contain very
beautiful passages. The final rondo of the former, in D major, is
astonishingly modern. The wide spacing of the figure work which
constitutes the main theme, its sharp accents, the broad sweep of its
plunges and soarings, the happy waltz swing of the second episode, the
irresistible charm with which two melodies are combined, above all,
the unflagging vigor of the whole movement, these must give joy to all
pianists and all listeners. The minuet of the last sonata must have
been well known to Brahms.
The four sonatas are all very long works. They all consist of four
movements, all but the last in the conventional order of allegro,
andante, minuet, and rondo. In the last the minuet follows the opening
allegro. It might well have been called a scherzo. The breadth of plan
suggests Beethoven. There have not been lacking critics who judged the
sonatas greater than those of Beethoven. No one today would be likely
to make such a misjudgment. They lack the splendid compactness, the
logical balance of the sonatas of Beethoven. The treatment of the
triplex form is rambling and loose. There is hardly a suggestion of
organic unity in the group. But there is splendid music in them, a
fine healthy vigor, an infusion of spontaneous, genuine folk-spirit.
And what they possess that is almost unique in pianoforte music is a
sort of narrative quality, difficult if not impossible to analyze.
They suggest romantic tales of chivalry, of love and adventure. To say
they are dramatic implies an organic life which they have not. They
are perhaps histrionic. They suggest the illusions of the stage. Yet
there is withal a free, out-of-doors spirit in them, something wholly
objective and healthy. They are not the outpourings of perfervid
emotions. They are not the lyrical outburst of a mood. They are like
brilliant tapestries, like ancient chronicles and cycles of romantic
legends.
For at least two of his most famous works in another field we have
been furnished tales. To be sure, there is not much to be said of the
popular ‘Invitation to the Dance.’ The introduction and the end alone
are program music; but they put the waltz into a frame which adds
much to its charm. Here is a romanticist at work, a teller of stories
in music. No composer for the pianoforte has had just his skill. The
old narrative stories of Kuhnau, Bach’s lively little _Capriccio_,
Beethoven’s sonata opus 81, afford no prototype. Neither do the little
pieces of Couperin. What Weber gives us is something different. It is
not a picture, not a representation, it is somehow the thing itself.
As for the waltz, it is too well known to need comment. The technical
art of which it makes use is surprisingly small. A few runs, a few
skips, a few variations in the steady waltz-accompaniment, these are
all. But the work has always been and always will be captivating, from
the charming, delicate conversational interchange between the gallant
and his selected partner, which forms the introduction, to the same
polite dialogue which tells us we have come to the end.
The _Konzertstück_ in F minor is a much bigger work. We quote from
Grove’s Dictionary the translation of the story which it tells: ‘The
Châtelaine sits all alone on her balcony, gazing far away into the
distance. Her knight has gone to the Holy Land. Years have passed by,
battles have been fought. Is he still alive--will she see him again?
Her excited imagination calls up a vision of her husband lying wounded
and forsaken on the battlefield. Can she not fly to him and die by his
side? She falls back unconscious. But Hark! what notes are those in the
distance? Over there in the forest, something flashes in the sunlight;
nearer and nearer, Knights and Squires with the cross of the Crusaders,
banners waving, acclamations of the people, and there--it is he! She
sinks into his arms. Love is triumphant. Happiness without end. The
very woods and waves sing the song of love. A thousand voices proclaim
his victory.’
Probably the music which Weber wrote to this story of olden days has
had as great a measure of popular admiration and acclaim as any piece
that has ever been written for the pianoforte. Much of it is beautiful.
The opening measures for the orchestra are equal to any of the pages
from _Der Freischütz_ or from _Euryanthe_; the solo passages for the
pianoforte which follow have a fine breadth; the march theme, which,
_pianissimo_, announces the return of the Crusaders is effective,
rather in the manner of Meyerbeer, a fellow-student with Weber at the
feet of the Abbé Vogler. On the other hand, much of the display work
given to the pianoforte is hopelessly old-fashioned. We have the Weber
staples again, the tum-tum bass, the close-rolling arpeggios repeated
endlessly, the busy little figure before mentioned, which here, as in
the famous Rondo in C, scampers from low to high. The final motives,
which represent universal joy, are trivial, banal. Even the _glissando_
octaves have now only the shine of tinsel, and much is sadly tarnished.
But on the whole there is a fresh spirit in the work, an enjoyment,
frank and manly, in the brilliancy of the pianoforte; an abandonment to
the story, that still may carry a listener along.
Weber’s pianoforte works have astonishing individuality in spite of
the commonplaceness of the stuff which he often brings in, either to
fill them up or to add brilliancy. There is an effusion in most of
them of manly vigor that never becomes weakened into sentimentality,
and there is a great deal of romance in the chivalric strain. His
harmonies are simple, though often richly scored, and he is a master of
the art of suggestion by silence. His melodies have the stamp of the
Teutonic folk-song. Though some years of his youth and manhood were
spent in Prague and in Vienna, he assimilated practically nothing of
the Slavic characteristics which can be found in the music of Haydn and
Schubert, even in that of Brahms. He made use of the entire keyboard in
relatively huge dynamic effects, and he had, as we have said, an almost
unique power to bring forth suggestions of orchestral coloring.
His compositions are not architectural as Beethoven’s are. They suggest
great canvases, full of color and movement. Thus the pianoforte sonatas
seem to manifest the same quality of imagination which was able to make
of the overtures to his operas brilliantly colored fantasies, after
which Mendelssohn and Wagner shaped their art. And it is worthy of note
that the same stereotyped figure work which plays such a part in his
keyboard music is abundantly evident in these overtures. The figures
out of which the allegro sections of the overture to _Oberon_ are made
are just such figures as one will find in the pianoforte sonatas,
variations and concertos.
No subsequent composer down to the present day has procured from the
pianoforte the special kind of mysterious, colorful effects which
Weber was able to procure therefrom; but both Schumann and Brahms are
clearly indebted to him for more general and more technical procedures.
In connection with this it may be mentioned that by comparison with
Chopin, the perfect, the pianoforte music of both Schumann and Brahms
often appears orchestral. And it may be added that Chopin was not
especially familiar with Weber’s work.
III
If the certain chivalric romanticism of Weber’s music is hard to
analyze, the special charm of Schubert’s is wholly elusive. We have to
do with an utterly different nature. Weber was an aristocrat, a rover
among wild companions, a hanger-on at the theatre for a while, if you
will, but none the less of distinguished birth, of polished manners
and of fine wit. Schubert was more than any other of the composers,
even more than Haydn, a man of the people. He was happy to mingle
with the peasants, happy to play hours at a time for their dancing.
Beethoven is said to have modelled the music of the country people’s
dance in the ‘Pastoral Symphony’ upon the music he heard played in a
certain country tavern to which at one time he delighted to go. Brahms
in his impoverished boyhood used to earn a few pence by playing for
the sailors’ dancing in the taverns along the waterfront of Hamburg.
But Beethoven regarded himself, as we have said, as the high priest of
an exalted art; and Brahms was hardly less imperious. Yet Schubert,
for all his ideals which rose ever and ever higher, for all the fact
that he numbered acquaintances in the same aristocratic families which
had seen Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven come and go, remained a man of
the people, a singer in the sway of his art, a loveable, reckless,
sentimental and affectionate boy.
All his music is lyrical. The song is never absent from his
pianoforte works, no matter how instrumental parts of them may be.
He is essentially a melodist. His rhythms have the lilt of a dance.
These two elements are not disguised. They undergo no intellectual
transformations. They are as obvious as in the folk-songs and dances of
the country people with whom he loved to associate. Hence the almost
complete lack of sophistication in his music, the naturalness which
distinguishes it from all other music.
His harmonies are strange and warm. They lack the subtlety of Mozart on
the one hand, the frankness of Weber on the other. They have not the
expressive significance of Beethoven. They seem rather to go beside
his music than to go under it. One listens through them, so to speak,
as one might look upon a procession through a colored mist that now
conceals, now discloses, that always plays magic tricks with the sight.
Two harmonic procedures appear more or less regularly in his music. One
is the interchange of major and minor, the other the bodily shifting
of the harmonic fabric up and down the scale. The latter are changes
rather than modulations. By reason of these unexpected, unaccountable
harmonies, his music sounds now near, now far. One moment it is with us
and familiar, the next it is aloof and strange.
Schubert’s hands were thick, his fingers short and fat. Though he was
not an elegant or a polished player, he had great beauty of touch and
a natural, easy fluency, especially in the rapid passages of his own
works. Richard Heuberger, in his excellent book on Schubert, points
to the fact that most of Schubert’s pianoforte music is written in
keys that require the use of many black notes on the keyboard; and
suggests, as one reason for this, that Schubert found it easier to
play in such keys. It is generally admitted that the key of G major is
the most difficult for the pianist.
Schubert’s pianoforte music comprises many long sonatas, two sets
of impromptus, a set of short pieces called ‘Musical Moments’ and
a number of waltzes and other dances. The sonatas are for the most
part unsatisfactory as such. In such extended forms there is need
of an intellectual command of the science of music, and a sense of
great proportions, both of which Schubert lacked. Hence the separate
movements, the first and even more often the last, are loose and
rambling in structure, and too long for the work as a whole. There
is so little cohesion in the group that one may in most cases take
the individual movements quite out of it and play them with perfect
satisfaction.
Not all the movements are over-long, and some of the sonatas can be
enjoyed in their entirety. Perhaps the most satisfactory from the
point of view of structure is that in A minor, opus 42. In this the
first movement is admirably constructed, firmly knit, full of distinct
contrast, and in the middle section well developed. The andante and
variations is undeniably long, but the formal preciseness of the
following movement and of the rondo succeeds in giving to the group a
definiteness and balance which will pass muster.
A sonata in D major, opus 120, is considerably shorter, but is even
from the point of view of form less satisfactory. The first movement
reveals one of Schubert’s great weaknesses. It happens here to be
almost inconsiderable, but it is none the less evident. This is the
lack of ideas in the treatment of the development section. There are
nine measures which give the impression that Schubert was content
to keep his music going with makeshifts. We have nothing of any
significance, a series of octaves in the left hand answered by a
series in the right, and a full chord at the beginning of each measure,
whereby a desired modulation from the key of C-sharp minor to that of A
major is accomplished.
This is bare music. The passage is so short that it hardly mars the
movement seriously, but unhappily other movements are nearly destroyed
by the weakness at which this one hints. For example, the first
movement of a sonata in A minor, opus 143, which contains themes
that are truly inspired, breaks hopelessly adrift in the development
section. The section is fatally long, too. And what does it offer to
hold our interest? Only measure after measure of an unvaried dotted
rhythm, for the most part in the right hand over chords which may be
beautiful but are seemingly without any aim. Schubert either does not
know what to do or he is utterly lost in dreaming.
This is real tragedy in music, the ruin of most beautiful ideas by a
fatal weakness. The opening theme promises even more than that of the
earlier sonata in the same key. It is most mysterious, most suggestive,
the very best of Schubert. And the second theme is of unearthly
beauty. But in this weak movement both are lost, both thrown away. The
whole sonata suffers in consequence. The andante is not especially
noteworthy, but the scherzo is a masterpiece, not only of expression,
but of workmanship; and so is the final rondo.
Similarly, the sonata in B-flat major, written not long before he died,
falls into a heap of ruins. The first theme of the first movement is
matchless in beauty. Schubert is loth to leave it, we are loth to have
it go. A strange melody in F-sharp minor does for a second theme, and
this simply rambles on through sudden changes of harmony until it
reaches the key of F major, only to give way to measure after measure
of equally aimless wandering, with only figures to save the music
from amorphousness. Note then a closing theme of perfect beauty! Play
it with all tenderness, with all the delicate suggestion you can put
into it, and still even this first section of the music is long and
overbalanced. There is a wealth of poetry in it, even a great depth of
feeling and a heart-moving sadness. It seems a sacrilege to decry it;
yet there it stands, frustrate.
The development section is what one would expect, weak in structure.
Yet the second part of it is strangely moving, from the establishment
of the key of D minor to the return of the first theme. The life of the
music seems held in suspense. There is only a steady hushed tapping of
triads, measure after measure, swaying from D minor to F major and ever
back again, with reminiscences of the rambling measures in F major of
the first section, floating here and there like mist in a dull rain.
Strains of the first theme drift by, there are low muffled trills on D.
Finally, the tapping ceases, as rain might cease; a quiet scale, like
drops from the branches of some wet tree, falls to a low trill, and,
after a silence, the first theme comes back into the music.
One can hardly find sadder or more beautiful music than these measures,
or than the lovely first theme; and yet the movement is strangely
without form and void. The andante which follows it is overdrawn. The
repetitions of the sections in A major might have been omitted to
better effect; but there is no looseness of structure. The music is
unspeakably sad, with the sadness of the songs of the _Winterreise_.
The scherzo is flawless, the final rondo long but well sustained. Yet,
by reason of the aimlessness of long measures in the first movement,
the sonata as a whole is like a condemned building. And in this sonata,
too, there is an intensity of mood that, except for the last movement,
should succeed in welding the whole group together. Even the last
movement is not entirely independent.
What is most lamentable in all this is that Schubert poured much of
his most inspired music into the sonatas. Little of his music presents
more intrinsically beautiful material. In no other of his pianoforte
pieces did he show such a wide and varied control of the technical
possibilities of the instrument. Yet all would seem to be of little or
no avail. Many of the most precious of his poetic fancies lie buried in
these imperfect works.
Though Schubert was not a virtuoso, he displayed instinct for and
ingenuity in devising pianoforte effects. In the huge ‘Wanderer
Fantasy,’ opus 15, he seems to have set himself the task of awakening
the greatest possible resonance of the instrument. The big chords
and arpeggios in the first movement are not, however, overpoweringly
effective. The variations in the second are more successful. They
certainly look impressive on the printed page, and the sound of the
climax is gigantic. But the stupendous is not natural to Schubert on
the whole. He is more of a poet than a virtuoso. The first movement and
the scherzo of the sonata in D major, opus 53, are big in effect. The
spacing and rhythm in the _piu lento_ section of the first movement
has been pointed out by Heuberger as significant. The vigorous first
subject of the scherzo can make the piano ring. But in general Schubert
shows at his best as regards pianoforte writing in more delicate
measures, and in brilliant rather than massive and sonorous effects.
The last movement of the sonata in A major, opus 120, is a good example
of a piquant style of which he was master. Here the long scales
terminating in chords high up on the keyboard are quite dazzling.
He was not especially original in accompaniment figures. One finds a
great deal of mediocre Alberti-bass stuff. On the other hand, he is a
master in weaving a more subtle sort of arabesque about his melodies,
or over or below them. One sees this not far from the beginning of
the adagio movement of the big fantasy opus 15, in the ornamentation
of the Fantasia, opus 27, and in the Trio of the Scherzo in opus 147.
The closing measures of the first section of the first movement of
this sonata are very like Chopin. There are many passages of excellent
free writing for the instrument, such as the C major section of the
allegretto in opus 164. This, and, in another way, the second section
of the minuet in opus 122, are very like passages in the Schumann
_Carnaval_. On the whole his treatment of the pianoforte is more
delicate and more distinguished than Weber’s.
Dr. Oskar Bie has remarked wisely in his history of pianoforte music
that to one who has not a soft touch the beauties of Schubert’s music
will not be revealed. It is particularly in lovely, veiled passages
that he excels. Except for the final rondo almost all of the sonata
in B-flat major to which we have referred is to be played very nearly
_pianissimo_. The poetic and generous Schumann felt that in certain
parts of the andante of the great C major symphony, a spirit from
heaven might be walking through the orchestra, to which the instruments
would seem to be listening. There are many passages in the pianoforte
music which suggest such ghostly visitations, which whisper far more
than speak. And in such places Schubert’s scoring will be found to be
matchless, as delicate as Chopin’s, though less complicated.
In spite of the many inspired themes in the sonatas, and of the variety
and richness of pianoforte effects with which they are often presented,
the works are, as we have already said, too faulty or too weak in
structure to hold a secure and honored place in pianoforte literature.
It is vain to speculate on what Schubert might have done with the form
had he lived longer. The last sonata is discouraging.
But in shorter forms there is no doubt that he was a supreme and
perfect artist. The two sets of impromptus and the set of shorter
pieces called the _Moments Musicals_ are masterpieces. It is hardly an
exaggeration to say that in them lie concealed the root and flower of
the finest pianoforte literature produced during the next half century
or more in Germany. Mendelssohn, Schumann, and Brahms owe immensely to
them.
Each set of Impromptus consists of four pieces. The title was not
given to them by Schubert, but was added by the publishers of the
first editions, the Haslingers of Vienna. Schumann suggested that the
first, second, and fourth of the second set might be taken as three
movements of a sonata in F minor. The first of these is very much after
the manner of the first movements of Schubert’s sonatas; but the first
section is not repeated, and the section which at first might suggest a
real development section is repeated entirely at the end of the piece.
The first impromptu of the first set is built on a single phrase. The
quality of the music is legendary. A sharp preliminary G claims our
attention, and then the story begins, _pianissimo_, a single voice,
answered, as it were, by a chorus; and what this voice sings, or rather
chants, is the burden of the rest. One might fancy the piece a series
of variations but that there seems to be some story progressing with
it. At times the theme is smooth and serene, as in the A-flat major
section near the beginning, where it floats along over a rolling
accompaniment. Later on it is passing through dark, wild forests. The
agitated triplet octaves, inexorably on G, suggest the ‘Erl King.’ And
so ever on, the same phrase, as if it were a lone soldier on his way
through a land now wild and dreary, now sunny. During the last two
pages the restless triplet figures are never still, and always they
come back to beat on G. Just before the end the agitation stops, but
still the G persists, in long octaves, and still the tramp of the
soldier keeps on. What it may mean no one can tell. The impression is
that the strange music continues on, long after our ears have heard it
die away.
The second impromptu is for the most part in a light and happy vein.
There is a constant flow of triplet figures, wonderfully graceful and
sinuous, over the simplest of accompaniments. A sudden change of mood,
an abrupt modulation, usher in a section in the nature of a trio. There
is a bold melody, greatly impassioned, very much after the manner of
Schumann; a breadth of style and a power wholly different from the
light figure-work which has preceded it. But back to the lighter mood
the music comes again, back to the flow of exquisite, light sound, only
to be brought once more to a sudden check. There is a short coda of
greatest vehemence and brilliance.
Here is salon music of a wholly new variety. It has nothing in common
with the showy polonaises and rondos of Weber, nor yet with the
sentimental nocturnes of Field. In fact, one would find it difficult to
find its parallel elsewhere in the literature of pianoforte music, its
strange combination of ingenuousness and grace and wild passion.
The third is in G-flat major, though it is perhaps better known in the
key of G, to which Haslinger took the liberty of transposing it, much
to the harm of its effect. It is in the nature of a reverie, akin to
the nocturnes of Field in spirit, but far broader in plan and more
healthy in sentiment.
Something of the airiness of the second impromptu is to be found in
the fourth; but here the runs have an harmonic significance rather
than a melodic. They are flowing chords, successive light showers of
harmonies. The very sameness of the figuration adds to the charm, and
does not, it may be added, take away from the difficulty. Only twice is
the gentle vibration so produced interrupted for long; once to give way
to a short melody, once during the long, impassioned middle-section in
C-sharp minor.
What stands out in this group of pieces as a whole is the restraint
in form, so lacking in the sonatas, and the fineness of pianoforte
style. There is a great economy of writing. The piano is left to speak
for itself; it is not often taxed to make music grand enough for the
orchestra. In the second and fourth of the series an accompaniment is
hardly more than suggested, except in the impassioned middle sections;
yet the passage work is in no way of the virtuoso type. It has a
refinement that is, apart from Bach, Mozart, and Chopin, unusual in
pianoforte music. And what is ever worthy of notice in all the work of
Schubert is the prevalent _pianissimo_. The spiritual visitor is ever
present. One feels that Schubert was wholly lost in his music, that he
surrendered himself utterly to the delight of sound, of softest sound.
The four works are equally inspired. They are full of ecstasy, full of
rapture.
The impromptus of the second set are not so invariably fine, yet as a
whole they are a momentous contribution. The first and the fourth are
longer and more elaborate than any in the first set, and consequently
one feels in them the lack of proportion and control which weakened the
sonatas. The third is, as a matter of fact, a series of variations;
and they can hardly be said to suffer from any weakness. Rather they
are exceedingly well done. However, better variations have been
written--not, it may be remarked, by Weber--and the form is dangerously
likely to prove stupid except in the hands of a man who has a special
skill in it. There is necessarily lacking a chance for that spontaneity
and freedom which one associates more with Schubert than with any other
composer.
The last impromptu is conspicuous for a gay brilliance, perhaps a
better brilliance than Weber revealed, but a less effective one.
It suggests Liszt. Passages remind one of the _Gnomenreigen_. There
can be no mistaking the Hungarian quality of the melodies, the mad,
rhapsodical, Gypsy style.
The first impromptu contains more of the quality of the extraordinary
Schubert; is perhaps too long, but is full of fine inspiration and
romantic fancy. The opening theme is in ballade style, with a rather
incongruous touch of conventionality here and there. The second theme
is purely lyrical, though the persistent eighth-note rhythm in which
it is presented gives it a spirit of restlessness. It is thrice
repeated, and the figure-work in the high registers which adorns the
third statement of it is effective and beautiful. The theme itself
is silenced unexpectedly and the figure-work leads down again into
the deep registers, where it flows in a hushed arpeggio figure. Over
this a third theme is suggested, which, with its answer woven in the
accompaniment, constitutes a distinct second section of the piece,
releases a different mood. It is for the most part soft, yet it is
strangely impassioned. It leads back again to the first theme and the
whole is repeated, with a change only of key. At the end, the first
theme once more adds a touch of the ballade. The two measures before
the final chords have all the strange power of suggestion which one
associates with Schubert, leaving one with the impression that the
music has rather passed on than ended, as if the song, like that of the
‘Solitary Reaper,’ could have no ending.
There is no contemporary music with which one may compare these
impromptus. They are not sentimental idylls like the nocturnes of
Field, nor show pieces like the shorter works of Weber. They have
nothing in common with the music of the contemporary virtuosi, nor
with that of any virtuosi. They are extraordinarily rich in genuine
musical worth, and, like all of Schubert’s music, in form or out of
form, inspired. Even more remarkable are the six short pieces called
‘Musical Moments.’ Three of these are but two pages long; only one more
than four. Each is wholly different from the others in mood. In all of
them the _pianissimo_ prevails. Schubert is whispering, not speaking.
They are essentially pianoforte music, too. Though there is nothing
elaborate in the style of them, not the slightest trace of a striving
for new effects, yet it may be questioned if any German pianoforte
music shows greater understanding of what one might call the secret and
intimate qualities of the instrument.
There is practically no thickness of scoring. Only the trio sections of
the first and last are open to even suspicion in this regard. There is
no commonplaceness or makeshift in the accompaniments. The monotonous
tum-tum of the third is necessary in the expression of the mood of
dance and song which the piece embodies, of wild dancing and intensely
emotional song, more than half sad. The workmanship of all is delicate,
whether it be deliberate or instinctive. There is in all a great
appreciation of effects of contrast, of loud and soft, which are the
very first of the peculiarities of the instrument; an appreciation of
the sonority, rich but not noisy, which the pedal allows; of the charm
of soft and distinct passage notes, of vigorous, percussive rhythm. All
is perhaps in miniature; but the six pieces are the essence of German
pianoforte music, both in quality and style; the very root and stock of
the short pieces of Schumann and Brahms by which they are distinguished.
As to the nature of the separate pieces, little need be said. They are
pure music, perfect art. In the sound of them are their completeness
and their justification. The first may suggest dreams. The figure
out of which it is made is of the woodland. It suggests the horns of
elf-land faintly blowing. It is now near, now far. As the notes of the
bugle will blend in echoes till the air is full of a soft chord, so
does this phrase weave a harmony out of its own echo that, like the
sounds of a harp blown by the wind, is more of spirit than of flesh.
Even in the trio something of this echo persists.
The remaining five keep us closer to earth, are of more substantial
and more human stuff. Yet note in the second, in the second statement
of the first theme after the first episode, how a persistent E-flat
suggests again the ghostly visitor to which the music itself seems
to listen. The third is, as has been suggested, a dance, soft yet
half barbaric. Is the melody sad or gay? It is blended of both, like
the folk-songs of the Slavs and the Celts, the character of which it
breathes. One is tempted to ask if there ever was _softer_ music than
Schubert’s. The music enters its coda here thrice _piano_, and twice on
its way to the end it grows still softer.
The fourth suggests a prelude of Bach, except for the trio, which again
has the character of a folk-song and again is softer than soft. The
fifth is a study in grotesque. Even here there are fine effects, such
as the echo of the first phrases; but the general impression is of
almost savage accents and harsh dissonances. The last has a touch of
Beethoven, though the melodies are of the kind that Schubert alone has
ever heard, and the harmonies here and there rise, as it were, like
shifting, colored mist across the line of the music.
It cannot be said that the melodies and harmonies of either the
Impromptus or the ‘Musical Moments’ are more inspired than those of
the sonatas. Indeed, there are passages in the latter of more profound
and more intense emotion than finds expression in the shorter pieces.
But most of the sonatas are in ruins. Their beauties are fragmentary
and isolated; whereas nearly all the Impromptus and all the ‘Musical
Moments’ have a beauty and firmness of line and design as well as of
content. For this reason they stand as the best of his pianoforte
works; and of their kind they are unexcelled in music. They are
genuinely beautiful music; they are perfectly suited to the piano,
drawing upon its various qualities without showing them off; they are
finished in detail, balanced and well-knit in structure. A new epoch in
the art begins with them.
It should be mentioned that Schubert’s waltzes and other dances bear
very clearly the stamp of his great genius. They are not elaborate.
Much of their beauty is in their naïve simplicity. They gain nothing by
being dressed up in the gaudy raiment which Liszt chose to hang upon
many of them. They should be known and played as Schubert wrote them,
not as profound or as brilliant music, but as spontaneous melodies in
undisguised dance rhythms. They are, in fact, dance music, full of the
spirit of merry-making, not in the least elegant or sophisticated. To
our knowledge there is no other music of equal merit and charm composed
in this spirit expressly for the piano. Schubert is unique among the
great composers in having treated dance forms and rhythms thus strictly
as dances.
V
All the work of Weber and most of that of Schubert fall within the
lifetime of Beethoven. The three great men constitute the foundation
of the pianoforte music of the great German composers of the next
generation. But Beethoven’s influence is largely spiritual, as Bach’s.
There was nothing more to be done with the sonata after he finished,
and long before his death the progress of pianoforte music had taken
a new turn. It is not inconceivable that before very long Beethoven’s
sonatas will be regarded as the culmination and end of a period of
growth, just as the music of Bach is already regarded; that he will
appear materially related only to what came before him, and to have
died without musical heir. The last sonatas rested many years generally
unknown. His peculiar and varied treatment of the pianoforte in them
found few or no imitators. The technique of the instrument that
Schumann and Chopin employed was not descended from him; rather from
Weber on the one hand and from Mozart and Hummel on the other.
Even in the matter of form he exercised hardly more than a spiritual
influence, as regards pianoforte music alone. Schumann and Chopin both
wrote sonatas, but the sonatas of neither show kinship to those of
Beethoven. The Brahms sonatas are more closely related to Weber than
to Beethoven. The Liszt sonata in B minor and the Liszt concertos are
constructed on a wholly new plan that was suggested by Berlioz; and the
two long works of César Franck are not even called sonatas. The sonata
in pianoforte music alone had had its day. The form remained but the
spirit had fled. If music came back to it at all, it came back to sit
as it were among ruins.
The change which came over music was but the counterpart of the change
which came over men and over society. It was evident in literature
long before it affected music. It might in many ways be said to have
reached music through literature. The whole movement of change and
reformation has been given the name Romantic. It was accompanied in
society by violent revolutions, prolonged restlessness, the awakening
of national and popular feeling. It is marked in literature and in
music by intensely self-conscious emotion, by an appeal to the senses
rather than to the intellect, by a proud and undisguised assertion of
individuality.
Most great music is romantic music. The preludes of Bach, the little
pieces of Couperin, a great deal of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven have
a personal warmth which is essentially romantic. Music draws its life
more directly from emotions than the other arts. But there are signs
in the music of these men of an objective, an external ideal, to which
they have conformed the expression of their emotions. They do not work
upon the spur of emotional excitement alone. That is but the germ from
which their music starts. They have a power to sustain. They work with
music; and the ideas which they choose to work with are chosen from a
thousand others for the possibilities they contain of expansion, of
alteration, of adaptability to the need of the work as a whole. Within
the limits of this work emotional inspiration plays its part, adding
here and there a bit of harmony, a new phrase. These are romantic
touches. These reveal the quick or the inert nature back of the music.
But back of it all the architectural brain presides, building a
structure of broad design, or of exquisite proportions. The ideal is
commonly known as classical; and these composers are properly called
classical.
The Romantic composers, on the other hand, treasure their moods.
They enshrine their separate inspirations. It is the manner of their
time. They are, as we have said, emotionally self-conscious. This is
one of the marks by which we may know them. The architectural ideal
loses their devotion. They lack, in the first place, the prime desire
to sustain, in the second place, the power. The change shows itself
distinctly in the works of Weber and Schubert, both of whom are
recognized as the first of the Romantic composers.
Take, for example, the sonatas of Weber. The movements are, as we have
ventured to suggest, like broad pictures. They are a series of figures,
of colors and shadows, like tapestries. They conform to the rules of
form, but they have little or nothing of the spirit of it. They seem
to cover the outlines of a story. They suggest the theatre. So little
is their form all-sufficing that we are tempted to fit each with a
chronicle taken from olden days of knighthood. At last Weber does so
himself--gives us stories for two of his compositions.
And the sonatas of Schubert, what a ruin are they! Moments of hot
inspiration, of matchless beauty; well-nigh hours of fatal indifference
and ignorance. On the other hand, he has left us short pieces which
the publishers must needs call impromptus for lack of any other name;
‘Musical Moments,’ each the full and perfect expression of a single,
swift inspiration. His muse whispers in his ear and before she has
flown away he has written down what she prompted. She makes short
visits, this muse. So much the worse for him if she starts him upon a
sonata. He is soon left with nothing but a pen in his hand.
Weber with his stories, Schubert with his short forms, are the
prototypes of most of the Romantic composers to come. We shall find
everywhere signs of the supremacy of the transient mood. Stories will
be lacking, at least in pianoforte music; but there will be titles,
both vague and specific, labelling the mood so that the music may
exert an added charm. There will be something feverish, something not
entirely healthy in it all. As we shall see, composers will expend
their all in a single page. Yet there will come a warmth and a now sad,
now wild poetry.
The virtuosi, and Weber among them with his showy polaccas and
rondos, speak of the change. They appeal to the general public. They
are sensationalists. The aristocratic amateurs will no longer hold
musicians in dependence. There is a mass of people waking into life.
The crowd makes money, it buys pianos; it will pay to hear a man, or
a woman, perform on the household instrument. It will submit to the
intoxicating, swift fingers, to the display of technique. Not that
the aristocratic amateurs were always less open to such oratorical
persuasion; but the public now holds the money bags, and it will pay
to hear fingers, to see flying arms and streaming hair. Who will care
to hear a man improvise a fugue in five parts? How will they judge
virtue but by virtuosity?
On the other hand, men will begin to write about their art, to defend
their new ideals, to criticize and appreciate the outpourings of each
genius as he comes along, to denounce the virtuosi who have nothing
to show but empty show. A musician holds a place now as a man, a man
of the world and of affairs. He makes a name for himself as a poet, a
critic, a satirist. And on the verge of all this new development stand
Weber and Schubert; the brilliant, witty patriot, the man who spent
his energy that a national opera might be established in the land of
his birth; and the man who had no thoughts but the joy of his art, the
warmth of music, no love but the love of song, the singer of his race
and his companions.
FOOTNOTES:
[31] _Les pianistes célèbres._ 2d edition, Paris, 1878.