HERZ, THALBERG, AND LISZT
The career of Henri Herz, his compositions and his style;
virtuosity and sensationalism; means of effect--Sigismund
Thalberg: his playing; the ‘Moses’ fantasia, etc.;
relation of Herz and Thalberg to the public--Franz Liszt:
his personality and its influence; his playing; his
expansion of pianoforte technique; difficulties of his
music estimated--Liszt’s compositions: transcriptions;
fantasia on _Don Giovanni_--Realistic pieces, Années de
pèlerinage--Absolute music: sonata in B minor; Hungarian
Rhapsodies; Conclusion.
There is no doubt that Chopin was one of the greatest players of his
day. In some respects he was probably the greatest, for it is hard to
believe that he could have been matched in delicacy, in beauties of
veiled harmony and melody, and in poetry. Yet as far as playing was
concerned his life was spent virtually in retirement; and this was,
as we have hinted in the preceding chapter, bitter to him. It was not
easy for him, we may be sure, to hear from the outer world the echoes
of uproarious applause raised to greet one battling virtuoso after
another. These men strode like conquering heroes over the earth. The
years Chopin spent in Paris were the very hey-day of the virtuosi. He
was excluded from such public triumphs as they enjoyed, partly because
he was too nervous and too sensitive to endure contact with great
audiences, partly because he lacked physical strength, and partly,
also, because to the general taste at that time his style of playing
and his music were too fine to be palatable. Mendelssohn wondered
whether or not Herz was prejudiced when he said that the Parisians
could understand and appreciate nothing but variations.
HENRI HERZ
I
This Henri Herz was, between the years 1830 and 1835, the most
celebrated pianist in Europe. He was Austrian by birth but in his youth
was taken to Paris to study at the Conservatoire, and thereafter made
Paris his home, and himself a Parisian.
Everywhere he played he was tremendously successful, whether in
France, Germany, or playing duets with Moscheles or Cramer in London,
or wandering over the continent of North America, and the islands
near it. He had _terriblement voyagé_, as he himself said in the
introduction to his most amusing book on his travels in America, _Mes
voyages_. His technique was, of course, quite out of the ordinary;
but so far as we may judge by his programs and by his compositions,
he put it to no exalted purpose. It was the day of variations and of
fantasias. Any time might serve for the former, and the virtuoso who
was also a keen man of business, with an eye on the public before
which he displayed himself and another on the publishers, generally
made use of airs popular in whatever land he might chance to be making
a present success. For example, among the publications of Henri Herz
one finds variations on the favorite air, _Le petit tambour_, on the
famous Irish air, ‘The Last Rose of Summer,’ on the Scotch air, ‘We’re
a’ noddin’,’ on the old song beloved of our grandmothers in this
country, ‘Gaily the Troubadour’; and _La Parisienne, marche nationale,
avec variations charactéristiques_. He published an arrangement of the
Marseillaise, an Austrian march, General Harrison’s quick-step, Empress
Henrietta’s waltz, numerous sets of quadrilles and other dances.
Perhaps we may never be sure how many of these publications he would
have acknowledged. In _Mes voyages_ he recounted how he found upon a
piano in a music shop a certain ‘Mlle. Sontag’s Waltz’ published as one
of his compositions. This was in the United States. The dealer in the
shop told Herz that this of all his compositions had made him famous in
the new country. Herz was about to protest that the music was none of
his, but was prevented by the counsel of his manager Ulmann, a man very
nearly as wily as the immortal P. T. Barnum, of whom, perhaps at bottom
a congenial soul, Herz had much to tell.
Fantasias were usually constructed on airs from the favorite operas of
the day. These, in the case of Herz, rarely amounted to more than a
series of variations, preceded by an introduction, and concluded with a
finale. Few showed much thought in structure, and indeed, such men as
Herz, Thalberg, and Liszt, could, and were expected to, improvise such
fantasias before the public.
But it would be a mistake to suppose that Herz’s elaborate
fantasias and variations lack cleverness and a very genuine
brilliance. An examination of many of them will prove to one even
at this day, when all are nearly or quite forgotten, that Herz
knew his piano astonishingly well. Let us look for a moment at
the _Variations brillantes_, opus 105, on a favorite motive from
Bellini’s _Sonnambula_. There is first an introduction. This is
withal desperately commonplace. It suggests posturings, meaningless
formalities, a whole technique of specious oratory. Yet it is a
technique. The weakness in such music is that it is ready-made. There
is no originality in it, nor any vitality. The eye discerns the stock
figures of the virtuoso laid one after the other across the page.
First, there are three measures of the chromatic scale, each measure
running through the octave, so that the second repeats the first, and
the third the second, with only the change of register. Moreover,
each measure is phrased by itself, and at the beginning of each there
is placed a mark of emphasis; so that there is not even an effect of
rushing or roaring from bottom to top, but only one of movement from
one point to another, like the leaping of the frog up the steep sides
of the well of our algebra problems. The final leap to the pinnacle of
high F, is worthy of the mountain goat.
This figure jumps its stages across our ears and out of sound. Then
follows a welling up of emotion. The orator condescends. He is affably
sentimental, will take us into his confidence, not without dignity,
however. Listen to the strains of this immortal melody! Here a heart
sings. What if it were Bellini’s heart, we now add upon our instrument
a long tremulous sigh of our own.
Once more the opening phrases. Here again the directions read,
_capriccioso_; and again the goat leaps up the scale from low F to
high. But here follows a passage of trills, long trills on F, on G, on
A, on B-flat, and so on, up and up to the highest of all F’s on the
keyboard; while the left hand surges and falls back in broken chords of
changing harmonies. Nothing could be more brilliantly effective. The
concluding measures of the introduction play with long, light scales
over a phrase or two of melody; and a long-drawn half-cadence, and a
fermata, announce at last that the piece is about to begin.
The statement of the theme itself is perfectly simple. One notices
the practically unvaried bass, the tum-tum of Hummel and Weber, and of
the lesser virtuosi. The first variation is, however, a masterpiece in
pianoforte style as far as the right hand is concerned. The mixture of
double and single notes is technically almost worthy of Chopin. But the
tum-tum bass perseveres and blights the whole. Still this variation
has a bright sparkle, the line of the upper part has a flowing grace,
and there is necessarily little of that repetition of one or two
stereotyped figures which in longer works almost strangles the life in
most music of the virtuoso type.
The second variation is hopelessly commonplace. The melody, scarcely
varied, is in octaves for the right hand, and the tum-tum for the left
is changed to a rat-a-tat-tat-a-ta-tat. The _raison d’être_ of the
variation is the crossing of the right hand over the left in the second
half of the first beat of _every_ measure, in order to dive, as it
were, into the deep accented note of the second beat. One cannot but
think of the leap of children from some upper loft to a hay-filled mow
beneath. Herz makes the right hand take such a flight here, over and
over again. One laughs with the delight of a child, yet wherein lies
the joy? Is it in the taking flight? The movement through the air? The
ultimate shock of landing?
The virtuoso is not a child. He is a clever man who plays upon what
is and ever will be the child in man,--his bump of wonder. And he does
not strike it with music, but with movement. It is not the notes of
his scales or of his runs, but the speed with which he accomplishes
them. Here in this second variation is proof of the case in point. If
in every measure the right hand, instead of taking its bold flight,
were to glide only one half as far and quietly relieve the left hand
of its accompanying chords of the second beat; and if the left hand,
so set free, were to play that resounding low note which was the
hay-mow to the right, but to the left is only a step downstairs, the
musical effect and the musical value of the piece would remain quite
unchanged. But Herz would not have played it so; for the reason that
he wrote this variation merely to show his right hand and arm in free,
sweeping movement through the air. Mark you, then: the great effect of
this second variation is wholly one of movement. Not only is there no
question of music; there is not even one of sound.
The third variation gives the theme to the left hand, and the right
flies up the keyboard in arpeggios and down in scales, at a high rate
of speed. From here the music expands freely into a sort of fantasia.
Fundamentally there are still variations, but they are not cut off
definitely from each other. Notice from here on, likewise, some
excellent writing for the keyboard, something of an independent and
melodious part for the left hand, brilliant chromatics, trills, and
runs that drop in whirling circles, tremolos, filigree scales over
smooth basses _à la_ John Field. Then there is a _Final_ in which the
theme is broken up into a lilting, extremely rapid waltz, and in which
the pianist is called upon to surmount difficulties of no trivial kind.
The series comes to an end in a coda, which, like many a classical
coda, swells big as the frog in the fable till it bursts.
These variations and all other variations of Herz are dead as the
facile hand that wrote them. There is nothing of musical life in them,
and consequently they never had a chance to prove themselves immortal.
But the point is not the lack of musical value in these pieces, but
the very striking presence of high technical skill. This, as found not
only here but in his concertos and other compositions, is the gauge of
his skill as a player, which by these signs was extraordinary. As a
musician he may very well have been a charlatan, but as a virtuoso he
was an adept. His universal success is, finally, proof that such a man
was the man that the public most wanted to hear.
Another indication of the public taste at that time, which, be it
remembered, was the time of Schumann and Chopin, is the fact that such
variations and fantasias as Herz now composed on familiar airs from
operas or household songs were, perhaps above all else, acceptable.
This again must mean that the general audience was interested not in
what we know as music, but in a movement of hands, arms, fingers, and
incidentally sounds, upon a musical structure with which they had not
to bother themselves. In other words one went to hear or to see what
the player could do, not to listen to what he could express of his own
emotion, or reveal of the emotional content of pianoforte music.
The pianoforte was, after all, a relatively new instrument. Though
Clementi, Mozart and Beethoven had written for it, they had not
forgotten that in the houses whither their music would find its way,
there were likelier to be harpsichords than pianofortes. It was not
until the time of Herz that the pianoforte had become familiar to
the household touch of prosperous tradesmen and artisans. Here was
created a new public, one which wished to relish its new possession,
to prune itself beside the blazing glory in which it might now boast
part-ownership.
There is an amusing passage in Von Lenz’s book[37] on the great
virtuosos. It was written in connection with Tausig, almost twenty
years after the death of Chopin. ‘His [Tausig’s] distinguishing
characteristic was,’ he wrote, ‘that he never played for _effect_,
but was always absorbed in the piece itself and its artistic
interpretation. This objectivity the general public never understood;
whenever serpents are strangled, it always wants to know just how big
and dangerous they are, and judges of this by the performer’s behavior.
The general public thinks that whatever appears easily surmounted, is
not really difficult, and that son or daughter at home might do it just
as well!’ The opera fantasias and variations of Herz, of Thalberg, and
even of Liszt had the advantage, from the manager’s point of view,
of making self-evident the bigness and dangerousness of the serpent;
for, that which was added to the familiar tune was no less than fangs,
coils, and fiery breath of the beast itself, which the knight of the
piano both created and destroyed.
II
As there were soldiers of fortune who, like Herz, made up by an
abundance of shrewd and witty sense, what they lacked in refinement,
there were others, like Sigismund Thalberg, whose outstanding quality
was elegance. Von Lenz called Thalberg the ‘only correct “gentleman
rider” of the piano.’ This may be taken to refer to his playing rather
than to his compositions. It was most beautiful playing, according to
all testimony, perfectly smooth, clear, sonorous, liquid, singing,
enriched by every quality, in fact, which may be derived from a perfect
and delicate mechanism governed by a fine ear. As a player he was by
many preferred to Liszt. This was a purely sensuous preference, based
entirely upon the qualities of sound which the two men were able to win
from the piano. In this regard Liszt and Thalberg may be considered
rivals of an equal endowment.
We must, however, limit ourselves to the quality of Thalberg’s
compositions, for astride of these he rode into the general
pianistic fray. He published eighty-three pieces or sets of pieces.
Three-quarters of these are variations or fantasias. As in the list
of Herz’s compositions, we find in that of Thalberg’s variations
on popular songs of many nations: on ‘God Save the King’ and ‘Rule
Britannia,’ on Viennese airs, and Styrian melodies, on ‘Home, Sweet
Home,’ ‘The Last Rose of Summer,’ and ‘Lily Dale.’ Then there are
fantasias and grand fantasias on two dozen or more operas: _Norma_,
_Sonnambula_, _La Muette de Portici_, _Oberon_, _Der Freischütz_,
_Guillaume Tell_, _Robert le Diable_, _Don Pasquale_, _La Fille du
régiment_, _Un Ballo in Maschero_ and many others. The original works
are of no particular merit except that of being amiable and pleasingly
written for the piano. The most successful of the grand fantasias seems
to have been that on airs from Rossini’s _Moïse_, over which we may
pause to find evidence of his purposes and his style.
This was indeed one of the grand pieces of the century. A glance
through the pages is enough to show that Thalberg was a master of the
stupendous. Herz had nothing to show like the colossal climax and close
of this fantasia on ‘Moses.’ On the other hand, it seems that nowhere
in this grandiose composition is there any writing so fine as that of
the first variation of Herz’s we have just discussed.
But Thalberg is much more of a musician, or is more willing to show
himself one, than Herz. There are touches of good part-writing, of
skillful imitation, and of the combining of two melodies. There is an
introduction, beginning as quietly as Moses slept in the rushes, which
Thalberg builds up more solidly, if not more effectively, than Herz
built up his. The accompaniment to the first theme, simple enough as it
is, shows a touch of flesh--is not the skin and bones of the ‘tum-tum.’
On the whole the left hand part is more varied throughout. There is an
episode in D-minor in which the left hand figures are flexible, and
upon the taking up again of reminiscences of the first broad theme in
the right hand, the left hand plays with phrases of the theme of the
section to come.
There is little unity in the piece, hardly a perceptible architecture.
We have now a section in B-flat minor, and here we have many a
tum-tum-tum in the left hand. Rossini’s melody in the right, however,
is interesting enough in itself to carry the music along. This section
is extended by variants of the theme and a great deal of rapid finger
work--single notes for the most part. The last section begins after a
_fermata_ with a few ponderous introductory measures in broken chords,
rather thickly scored, but portentous. The stalwart melody is played
by the right hand, crossed over the left or mixed in with it. And now
watch Thalberg, and see how the man can ride.
This is a march theme, simply started at first, then played with the
thumb of the right hand, which has time between its separate notes to
scamper up and down the keyboard. Notice, too, that when the right hand
is soaring too high to be brought back in time for the thumb to perch
again on its melody, the thumb of the left hand jumps into the breach
and saves the line. Right thumb, left thumb, left thumb, right thumb,
either will do. And so the hands are free to jump and run and fly. This
emancipation was said to be Thalberg’s accomplishment; but instances
of dividing the melody between the two hands may be found in the work
of Beethoven, Schubert, and Weber. It were needless to mention Bach in
this connection. However, it is just the sort of thing Thalberg needs,
and he uses it skillfully and successfully.
Meanwhile, the accompaniment grows apace. There are runs of thirds
for the right hand, which can thus indulge itself, knowing it need
not be home before dark, so to speak, that the left hand thumb can
wind the clock and keep the fire burning. There is next a suggestion
of pounding chords, but this gives way to a strange shivering run
of repeated notes--one remembers how Kuhnau told the story of the
frightened Israelites two hundred and fifty years before, there are
growing agitation, shrieks of the rising wind, dreadfully raucous
repeated octaves, now on E and, with a flash, on F, and a pounding
left hand that marches and rushes. It is like the shriek of the
approaching locomotive above the roar of its thundering speed. And just
as it should crash into view, or into something, there is the sudden
stillness of infinite night, and then our march theme, spun like a
thread of silver through flying runs. From thumb to thumb it winds, and
always pianissimo. The effect must have been one to make a listener
breathless with amazement. Little by little crescendo, a change from
B-flat major to G-major, a substitution of full chords or octaves for
the single thumb notes, and an extension of the runs into the clouds,
these bring about the close, a last page where left and right hand
together pound out the theme in repeated solid chords, with _tutta la
forza_. Sheer noise it is, here; and with all this overpowering bombast
the fantasia on ‘Moses’ comes to an end.
Such a work is well worth considering. We may not flatter ourselves
that even at this day we could resist its power under the hands of a
virtuoso. It would not by any means sound flat. But the instinctive
response to such sonority would perhaps be a cause for shame to those
who were conscious of even a little musical learning. The word trash
comes quickly to the lips, and the more readily when we know our
sensational heart has beat a trifle faster in spite of our better
reason. It is not, then, that the music is feeble or unsuccessful, but
that we distrust sensationalism and cherish a professional shame of it.
The paraphernalia of the sensationalist composer is necessarily
limited, and Thalberg’s fantasias and variations suffer principally
because of these limitations. He has a great knowledge and control of
the pianoforte, but can find only scant variety of use for them. He
must depend most upon speed and upon noise, and both are what we may
call cumulative effects. In other and less elegant words, he must use
lots of speed and lots of noise. His runs are masses of notes, very
frequently no more than arpeggios or chromatic scales. He throws a run
up from a melody note as you throw a ball into the air. It covers its
distance and drops. It is no more the style of Chopin than your ball is
like the flight of a bird. But the very fact that it goes up and down
with no more freedom of movement than the ball that is thrown in the
air, is what makes it purely sensational, purely a matter of speed in a
mass of sound. If it went otherwise than upon its automatic way, your
ears would be pricked from feeling into listening.
In the matter of noise the effect must still be massive. The
sensationalist composer must always write for the feeling, not the
listening ear, and he can best overpower the former by repeating chords
rapidly; for in doing this he not only makes a very mountain of noise
but adds the mountain of movement upon it. Of all the tricks of the
pianist this is the most vulgarly sensational; and yet, when it comes
to a matter of noise how else can he accomplish his purpose? In no
other way can he make such a din, and if he tries any other he shocks
the ear into listening.
So in many a way Thalberg is a slave to his purpose. The ear that has
been trained to listen cannot but be wearied or outraged; but forget
our recently acquired habit of listening (for even among many of the
exalted it is only half acquired) and Thalberg may still today become
what Schumann called him more than half a century ago,--a god--at the
piano. Rubinstein, by the way, was hardly the man to call him a grocer,
even though he dealt, as we have had to admit, with masses of notes.
There was a splendor about him, something fine and grand as well; but
like gods in general he was not to be, or may not now be approached,
else he loses his godhead, which resolves into an agitation of the ear.
There is no splendor in his music but the splendor of sensation.
If we examine the fabric of his music with a more technical eye
we shall find that he makes relatively little use of double notes,
relatively little demand upon the left hand as far as broad figures are
concerned, but much upon the lightness and freedom of the wrist in both
hands. There is, besides, the dividing of the melody between the thumbs
of both hands, already mentioned.
He had a very unusual power over melody on the piano. For this we have
the word of his none too amiable rival, Liszt, that Thalberg alone
could make the piano sing like the violin. He was invited to publish
an instruction book on _L’art du chant, appliqué au piano_. This is
composed of a few introductory paragraphs, and a dozen transcriptions
of melodies upon which the student was expected to work out the
precepts he had just read. The remarks may still be of some interest to
the pianist, but surely the transcriptions will be more so. The day for
that sort of music has gone by, but one may still delight in the skill
with which Thalberg was able to write melody, originally conceived
for voices or violin, with orchestral accompaniment, upon the piano.
None of these is so pretentious as some of the big transcriptions of
symphonies and overtures made by Liszt; but from the point of view of
workmanship all are quite equal to Liszt. The eighth--on a scene from
Meyerbeer’s _Il Crociato_--is tremendously effective in places. The
ninth--on a ballade from _Preciosa_--is exceedingly well done. The
tenth is a wholly charming transcription of one of the _Müller-Lieder_.
We may speak, in passing, of a nocturne in E major, opus 28, as
representative of the best of his original compositions. It is by no
means great music either in the sense of inspired emotion or of richly
varied workmanship; but it is well adapted to the piano, sweet in
melody, and not too sweet in mood. The obbligato treatment of the left
hand in the middle section is worthy of note as a sign of considerable
technical ability, the development of which probably atrophied under
the close pressure of a constant adulation. This Nocturne seems on
the whole rather above the average of Mendelssohn’s ‘Songs without
Words,’ by virtue of the treatment of the piano in it; and may, with
other of his original works, be gently slid into the company of Liszt’s
‘Consolations’ and ‘Love Dreams.’
Most of the music of Herz and Thalberg has been forgotten, and that
which might still be successfully played, is now banished from the
concert stage as trash. It is true not only that one finds a great
sameness in it, but also that in the light of a longer familiarity
with the instrument and of strides in executive skill on the keyboard
little of it presents what may seem to us today even ingenuity. Yet
to estimate its value as well as its significance in the world of
pianoforte music one must not forget the purpose for which it was
written; namely, to display the composer’s skill as a performer, and
the brilliant and powerful resources of the instrument, and at the same
time to win a livelihood from the world by stirring its inhabitants to
a frenzied delight. The aim to succeed with the public, no matter what
the means, has something of the heroic in it, and in music which has
been the means of such success there must be some element of bigness.
This bears no relation to the greatness of service to an ideal which
is sacred. It is in every way profane. Yet it is at the same time a
force always to be reckoned with, the more so as the development of
society gives the power to the mass of people to assert its own tastes
and demand its own enjoyments. To such a development the universal
success of Herz and Thalberg is related. It is because of still further
development that their wonders have become commonplaces, not because
either their purpose or their music is intrinsically contemptible. Both
these are respectable as manifestations of energy and great labor; and
that the two great players achieved a victory which won the applause of
the whole world, indicates a streak of the hero in the cosmos of both.
III
We may conceive Herz and Thalberg each to be an infant Hercules,
strangling serpents in his cradle, if we compare them with Franz Liszt,
who, above all else, represents virtuosity grown to fully heroic
proportions. He was the great and universal hero in the history of
music. He cannot be dissociated from the public, the general world
over which he established his supremacy by feats of sheer muscular
or technical skill. Even the activity of his mind was essentially
empirical. Especially in the realm of pianoforte music he won his
unique place by colossal energy put to test or to experiment upon the
public through the instrument. The majority of his compositions in this
branch of music are _tours de force_.
His manifold activities in music all reveal the truly great virtuoso,
whom we may here define as an agent of highest efficiency between
a created art and the public to which it must be related. We will
presently analyze some of his compositions for the pianoforte, but
without presuming to draw from features of them so discovered any
conclusions as to their musical vitality or their æsthetic value.
These conclusions must be left to the wisdom and sense of posterity;
whatever they may prove to be, one cannot at present but recognize in
Liszt first and foremost the intermediary. He so conducted himself
in all his musical activities, which, taken in the inverse order
of their importance, show him as a writer upon subjects related to
music, as a conductor, as a composer, and as a pianist. He worked
in an indissoluble relation with the public, and by virtue of this
relation appears to us a hero of human and comprehensible shape, though
enormous, whose feet walked in the paths of men and women, and whose
head was not above the clouds in a hidden and secret communion which we
can neither define nor understand.
Many qualities in his character and in his person, which, of course,
are of no importance in estimating the value of his compositions,
made his peculiar relation with the public secure. His face was very
handsome, brilliantly so; he had a social charm which won for him a
host of friends in all the capitals of Europe; he was fascinating
to men and women in private, and in public exercised a seemingly
irresistible personal magnetism over his audiences. He was, moreover,
exceedingly generous and charitable, quick to befriend all musicians,
especially men younger than he, and to lend his aid in, movements of
public benefaction. He was an accomplished linguist, and cosmopolitan,
indeed international in his sympathies. As a teacher he inspired his
many pupils with an almost passionate affection and feeling of loyal
devotion. All these qualities set him quite apart from the wizard
Paganini, with whom alone his technical mastery of his instrument was
comparable. Paganini was wrapped in mystery, whether he wove the veil
himself or not; Liszt was thoroughly a man of the world.
Liszt’s playing was stupendous. At least two influences fired him not
only to develop a technique which was limited only by the physically
impossible, but to establish himself as the unequalled player of the
age. Already as a youth when he first came to Paris this technique
was extraordinary, though probably not unmatched. It was the wizardry
of Paganini, whom he heard in Paris, that determined him to seek an
attainment hitherto undreamed of in skill with the keyboard. This
he achieved before he left Paris to journey away from the world in
Switzerland and Italy. During his absence Thalberg came to Paris and
took it by storm. Back came Liszt post-haste to vanquish his rival and
establish more firmly his threatened position. The struggle was long
and hotly fought, but the victory remained with Liszt, who, though he
had not that skill in a kind of melody playing which was peculiar to
Thalberg, towered far above his rival in virility, in fire, and in
variety.
We may thus imagine him established by force of arms as king of all
pianists. He never relinquished his royal prerogatives nor could he
tolerate a challenge of his power; but he proved himself most a hero
in the use to which he put this enormous power. He chose the master’s
highest privilege and made himself a public benefactor. It is true that
he never wholly discarded the outward trappings of royal splendor. He
played operatic fantasias like the rest; made, of his own, fabrics
which were of a splendor that was blinding. But the true glory of his
reign was the tribute he paid to men who had been greater than kings
in music and the service he rendered to his own subjects in making
known to them the masterpieces of these men, the fugues of Bach, the
last sonatas of Beethoven, the works of Chopin. It was largely owing to
Liszt that the general public was educated to an appreciation of these
treasures, even that it became aware of its possession of them. It may
be added that the pupils of this man, who was the most outstanding and
overpowering of all the pianoforte virtuosi, made wholly familiar to
the world a nobler practice of virtuosity in service to great music.
Here, however, must be mentioned one great contemporary of Liszt’s,
Clara Schumann, who, possessed of greatest skill, made her playing, in
even greater degree than Liszt, the interpreter of great music. It is
one of the richest tributes to Liszt as a pianist that he may in some
respects be compared with that noble woman.
It seems to have been above all else the fire in Liszt’s playing which
made it what it was, a fire which showed itself in great flames of
sound, spreading with incredible rapidity up and down the keyboard,
which, like lightning, was followed by a prodigious thunder. Yet it was
a playing which might rival all the elements, furious winds, tumultuous
waters, very phenomena of sounds. Caricatures show him in all sorts of
amazing attitudes, and many draw him with more than two hands, or more
than five fingers to a hand. At the piano he was like Jupiter with the
thunder-bolts, Æolus with the winds of heaven, Neptune with the oceans
of the earth in his control. And at the piano he made his way to the
throne which perhaps no other will ever occupy again.
Just what was the effect of Liszt’s accomplishments upon pianoforte
technique must be carefully considered, and such a consideration will
bring us to problems which we may venture to assert are of profound
interest to the pianist and to the musician. Broadly speaking he
expanded the range of technique enormously, which is to say that he
discovered many new effects and developed others which had previously
been but partially understood. The _Douze Études d’exécution
transcendante_ may be taken to constitute a registry of his technical
innovations.
First, in these, and in all his music, he makes a free and almost
constant use of all the registers of the keyboard, the very low and
the very high more than they had been used before, and the middle with
somewhat more powerful scoring than was usual with any other composers
excepting Schumann. Particularly his use of the low registers spread
through the piano an orchestral thunder.
The ceaseless and rapid weaving together of the deepest and the
highest notes made necessary a wide, free movement of both arms, and
more remarkably of the left arm, because such rapid flights had hardly
been demanded of it before. The fourth étude, a musical reproduction
of the ride of Mazeppa, is almost entirely a study in the movement of
the arms, demanding of them, especially in the playing of the inner
accompaniment, an activity and control hardly less rapid or less
accurate than what a great part of pianoforte music had demanded of the
fingers.
It is in fact by recognizing the possibilities of movement in the arm
that Liszt did most to expand pianoforte technique. One finds not only
such an interplaying of the arms as that in ‘Mazeppa’ and other of his
compositions, but a playing of the arms together in octave passages
which leap over broadest distances at lightning speed. Sometimes these
passages are centred, or rather based, so to speak, on a fixed point,
from and to which the arms shoot out and back, touching a series of
notes even more remote from the base, often being expected to cover
the distance of nearly two octaves, as in the beginning of the first
concerto. There are samples of this difficulty in ‘Mazeppa’; and also
of other runs in octaves for both hands, which are full of irregular
and wide skips.
In the long and extremely rapid tremolos with which his music is
filled, it is again the arm which is exerted to new efforts. The last
of the études is a study in tremolo for the arm, and so is the first of
the Paganini transcriptions. The tremolo, it need hardly be said, is no
invention of Liszt’s, but no composer before him demanded either such
rapidity in executing it, or such a flexibility of the arm. The tremolo
divided between the two hands, as here in this last study, and the
rapid alternation of the two hands in the second study, depend still
further on the freedom of the arm. It is the arm that is called upon
almost ceaselessly in the tenth study; and the famous _Campanella_ in
the Paganini series is only a _tour de force_ in a lateral movement of
the arm, swinging on the wrist.
The series, usually chromatic, of free chords which one finds surging
up and down the keyboard, often for both hands, may well paralyze the
unpracticed arm; the somewhat bombastic climaxes, in which, _à la_
Thalberg, he makes a huge noise by pounding chords, are a task for
the arm. All of the last part of the eleventh étude, _Harmonies du
soir_, is a study for the arm. Indeed even the wide arpeggios, running
from top to bottom of the keyboard in bolder flight than Thalberg
often ventured upon, the rushing scales, in double or single notes,
the countless cadenzas and runs for both hands, all of these, which
depend upon velocity for their effect, are possible only through the
unmodified liberation of the arm.
All this movement of the arm over wide distances and at high speed
makes possible the broad and sonorous effects which may be said
to distinguish his music from that of his predecessors and his
contemporaries. It makes possible his thunders and his winds, his
lightnings and his rains. Thus he created a sort of grand style which
every one must admit to be imposing.
Beyond these effects it is difficult to discover anything further so
uniquely and so generally characteristic in his pianoforte style. He
demands an absolutely equal skill in both hands, frequently throughout
an entire piece. He calls for the most extreme velocity in runs of
great length, sometimes in whole pages; and for as great speed in
executing runs of double notes as in those of single. A study like the
_Feux-Follets_ deals with a complex mixture of single and double notes.
All these things, however, can be found in the works of Schumann, or
Chopin, or even Beethoven. Yet it must be said that no composer ever
made such an extended use of them, nor exacted from the player quite
so much physical endurance and sustained effort. Moreover, against the
background of his effects of the arm, they take on a new light, no
matter how often they had a share in the works of other composers.
It can hardly be denied, furthermore, that this new light which they
seem to give his music, by which it appears so different from that of
Schumann and even more from that of Chopin, is also due to the use
to which he puts them. With Liszt these things are indisputably used
wholly as effects. Liszt follows Thalberg, or represents a further
development of the idea of pianoforte music which Thalberg represents.
He deals with effects,--with, as we have said elsewhere of Thalberg,
masses of sound. Very few of his compositions for the pianoforte offer
a considerable exception, and with these we shall have to do presently.
The great mass of études, concert or salon pieces, and transcriptions,
those works in which he displays this technique, are virtuoso music. He
shows himself in them a sensationalist composer. Therefore the music
suffers by the necessary limitations mentioned in connection with Herz
and Thalberg, with the difference that within these limitations Liszt
has crowded the utmost possible to the human hand.
His great resources still remain speed and noise. He can do no more
than electrify or stupefy. It must not be forgotten that in these
limitations lies the glory of his music, its quality that is heroic
because it wins its battles in the world of men and women. It is superb
in its physical accomplishment. It shows the mighty Hercules in a
struggle with no ordinary serpent, but with the hundred-headed Hydra.
Yet if he will electrify he must do so with speed that is reckless,
and if he will overpower with noise he must be brutal. Hence the great
sameness in his material, trills, arpeggios, scales, and chromatic
scales, which are no more than these trills, arpeggios, scales, etc.,
even if they be filled up with all the notes the hand can grasp. Hence
also the passages of rapidly repeated chords in places where he wishes
to be imposing to the uttermost.
It would be an interesting experiment to take from Liszt’s pianoforte
music all these numerous effects and put them together in a volume;
then to classify them, and, having mastered three or four of the
formulas, to try to find any further difficulties. It is doubtful
if, having so mastered the few types, one would need to make great
effort to play the whole volume from cover to cover. And these effects
constitute the great substance of Liszt’s music. He fills piece
after piece with solid blocks of them. The page on which they are
printed terrifies the eye, yet they demand of the player only speed
and strength. Inasmuch as these may be presupposed in a theoretical
technique, the music is, theoretically, not technically difficult.
The higher difficulties of pianoforte playing are not to be met in
music that conforms to technical types, but in music the notes of
which appear in ever changing combinations and yet are of separate and
individual importance. Such music presents a new difficulty almost
in every measure. In playing it the mind must control each finger
in its every move, and may not attend in general but must attend in
particular. The player who can play the twelve études of Liszt will
find the Well-tempered Clavichord and the Preludes of Chopin more
difficult to play. In the _tours de force_ of Liszt his technique is of
itself effective; in the music of Bach or Chopin it must be effectual.
Having a colossal technique he can play Liszt, but he must ever
practise Bach and Chopin.
IV
Liszt wrote a vast amount of music for the pianoforte. There is not
space to discuss it in detail, and, in view of the nature of it and the
great sameness of his procedures, such a discussion is not profitable.
For a study of its general characteristics it may be conveniently and
properly divided into three groups. These are made up respectively of
transcriptions, of a sort of realistic music heavily overlaid with
titles, and of a small amount of music which we may call absolute,
including a sonata and two concertos.
The transcriptions are well-nigh innumerable. Some he seems to have
made with the idea of introducing great orchestral masterpieces into
the family circle by means of the pianoforte. So we may consider the
transcriptions, or rather the reductions of the nine symphonies of
Beethoven, of the septet by the same composer, and of the _Symphonie
Fantastique_ and the ‘Harold in Italy’ of Berlioz. He has succeeded in
making these works playable by ten fingers; but he did not pretend to
make them pianoforte music. He had an astonishing skill in reading from
full score at sight, and in these reductions he put this skill at the
service of the public.
In rearranging smaller works for the piano, such as songs of
Schumann, Chopin, Schubert, Mendelssohn, and Franz, he worked far
more for the pianist. He saw clearly the great problem which such a
rearrangement involved, that qualities in the human voice for which
these songs were conceived were wholly lacking in the pianoforte, and
that he must make up for this lack by an infusion of new material
which brought out qualities peculiar to the instrument. In so far as
possible he took the clue to these infusions from the accompaniment
to the songs he worked on. In some songs the accompaniment was the
most characteristic feature, or the most predominant element. There
his task was light. The transcription of the Erl King, for example,
meant hardly more than a division of the accompaniment as Schubert
wrote it between the two hands in such a way that the right would be
able to add the melody. There is practically nothing of Liszt in the
result. Schubert’s accompaniment was a pianoforte piece in itself.
Again, the accompaniment of ‘Hark, Hark, the Lark’ was originally
highly pianistic. But here the piano could sing but a dry imitation of
the melody; and Liszt therefore enriched the accompaniment, preserving
always its characteristic motive, but expanding its range and adding
little runs here and there, which by awakening the harmonious sonority
of the piano concealed its lack of expressive power in singing melody.
The result was a masterpiece of pianoforte style in which the melody
and graceful spirit of the song were held fast.
Those songs the accompaniments of which were effective on the
pianoforte seemed to blossom again under his hand into a new
freshness. His skill was delicate and sure. Even in the case where
the accompaniment was without distinction he was often able so to add
arabesques in pianoforte style as to make the transcription wholly
pleasing to the ear. The arrangement of Chopin’s song, ‘The Maiden’s
Wish,’ offers an excellent example. Here, having little but a charming
melody and varied harmonies to work on, he made a little piece of the
whole by adding variations in piquant style. But often where he had no
accompaniment to suggest ideas to him, he was either unsuccessful, as
in the transcription of Wolfram’s air from _Tannhäuser_, or overshot
the mark in adding pianistic figuration, as in that of Mendelssohn’s
_Auf Flügeln des Gesanges_. He touched the Schumann and Franz songs,
too, only to mar their beauty.
It may be that these transcriptions served a good end by making at
least the names and the melodies of a number of immortal songs familiar
to the public, but there can be no doubt that these masterpieces
have proved more acceptable in their original form. Most of Liszt’s
transcriptions have fallen from the public stage. Amateurs who have the
skill to play them have the knowledge that, for all their cleverness,
they are not the songs themselves. And those which have been kept alive
owe their present state of being to the favor of the pianist, who
conceives them to be only pieces for his own instrument.
The number of Liszt’s transcriptions in the style of fantasias is very
great. Like his predecessors and his contemporaries he made use of
any and every tune, and the airs or scenes from most of the favorite
operas. There are fantasias on ‘God Save the King’ and _Le Carnaval de
Venise_, on _Rigoletto_, _Trovatore_, and _Don Giovanni_. The name of
the rest is legion. The frequency with which a few of them are still
heard, would seem to prove that they at least have some virtue above
those compositions of Herz and Thalberg in a similar vein; but most of
them are essentially neither a better nor a worthier addition to the
literature of the instrument and have been discarded from it. Those who
admire Liszt unqualifiedly have said of these fantasias that they are
great in having reproduced the spirit of the original works on which
they were founded, that Liszt not only took a certain melody upon which
to work, but that he so worked upon it as to intensify the original
meaning which it took from its setting in the opera. The _Don Giovanni_
fantasia is considered a masterpiece in thus expanding and intensifying
at once.
But what, after all, is this long fantasia but a show piece of the
showiest and the emptiest kind? How is it more respectable than
Thalberg’s fantasia on themes from ‘Moses,’ except that it contains
fifty times as many notes and is perhaps fifty times louder and
faster? It is a grand, a superb _tour de force_; but the pianist who
plays it--and he must wield the power of the elements--reveals only
what he can do, and what Liszt could do. It can be only sensational.
There is no true fineness in it. It is massive, almost orchestral.
The only originality there is in it is in making a cyclone roar from
the strings, or thunder rumble in the distance and crash overhead. On
the whole the meretricious fantasia on _Rigoletto_ is more admirable,
because it is more naïve and less pretentious.
This _Reminiscenses de Don Juan par Franz Liszt_, dedicated to his
Majesty Christian Frederick VIII of Denmark with _respectueux et
reconnaissant hommage_, begins with a long and stormy introduction,
the predominant characteristic of which is the chromatic scale. This
one finds blowing a hurricane; and there are tremolos like thunder and
sharp accents like lightning. The storm, however, having accomplished
its purpose of awe, is allowed to die away, and in its calm wake comes
the duet _La ci darem la mano_, which, if it needed more beauty than
that which Mozart gave it, may here claim that of being excellently
scored for the keyboard. Liszt has interpolated long passages of
pianistic fiorituri between the sections of it, at which one cannot but
smile. Then follow two variations of these themes, amid which there is
a sort of cadenza loosing the furious winds again, and at the end of
which there is a veritable typhoon of chromatic scales, here divided
between the two hands in octaves, there in thirds for the right hand.
The variations are rich in sound, but commonplace in texture. Finally
there is a _Presto_, which may be taken as a coda, founded upon Don
Giovanni’s air, _Finch’ han dal vino_, an exuberant drinking song. The
scoring of this is so lacking in ingenuity as well as in any imposing
feature as to be something of an anti-climax. It trips along in an
almost trivial manner, with a lot of tum-tum and a lot of speed. Toward
the end there is many a word of hair-raising import: _sotto voce_,
_martellato_, _rinforzando_, _velocissimo precipitato_, _appassionato
energico, arcatissimo_, _strepitoso_, and a few others, all within the
space of little over three pages. There is also another blast or two
of wind. In the very last measures there is nothing left but to pound
out heavy, full chords with a last exertion of a battle-scarred but
victorious gladiator. And in spite of all this the last section of
the work is wanting in weight to balance the whole, and it seems like
a skeleton of virtuosity with all its flesh gone. It must be granted
that the recurrence of the opening motives at moments in the middle of
the fray, and at the end, gives a theoretical unity of structure which
similar fantasias by Herz and Thalberg did not have; but on the whole
it might well be dispensed with from the work, which, in spite of such
a sop to the dogs of form, remains nothing but a pot-pourri from a
favorite opera.
This huge transcription, as well as the delicate arrangements of
songs, the transcriptions of the overtures to ‘William Tell’ and
_Tannhäuser_, and of Mendelssohn’s ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’ music, as
well as the elaborations of Schubert’s Waltzes and other short pieces
may, if you will, be taken as an instance of a professional courtesy
or public benefaction on the part of Liszt; but they stand out none
the less most conspicuously as virtuoso music. What Liszt really
did in them was to exploit the piano. They effect but one purpose:
that of showing what the piano can do. At the present day, when the
possibilities of the instrument are commonly better known, they are a
sort of punching bag for the pianist. Surely no one hears a pianist
play Liszt’s arrangement of the overture to _Tannhäuser_ with any sense
of gratitude for a concert presentation of Wagner’s music. Nor does one
feel that the winds and thunders in the _Don Giovanni_ fantasia may
cause Mozart to turn in his grave with gratitude. One sees the pianist
gather his forces, figuratively hitch up his sleeves, and if one is
not wholly weary of admiring the prowess of man, one wets one’s lips
and attends with bated breath. Something is to be butchered to make a
holiday in many ways quite Roman.
V
The second group of music to be observed consists of original pieces
of a more or less realistic type. Nearly all have titles. There are
_Impressions et Poésies_, _Fleurs mélodiques des Alpes_, _Harmonies
poétiques et réligieuses_, _Apparitions_, _Consolations_, _Légendes
and Années de pèlerinage_. There are even portraits in music of the
national heroes of Hungary. In the case of some the title is an
after-thought. It indicates not what suggested the music but what
the music suggested. There are two charming studies, for example,
called _Waldesrauschen_ and _Gnomenreigen_, which are pure music
of captivating character. They are no more program music than
Schumann’s ‘Fantasy Pieces,’ nor do they suffer in the slightest from
the limitations which a certain sort of program is held to impose
upon music. First of all one notices an admirable treatment of the
instrument. There is no forcing, no reckless speed nor brutal pounding.
Then the quality of the music is fresh and pleasing, quite spontaneous;
and both are delightful in detail.
Others are decidedly more realistic than most good music for the
pianoforte which had been written up to that time. Take, for example,
the two Legends, ‘The Sermon of the Birds to St. Francis of Assisi,’
and ‘St. Francis of Paule Walking on the Waves.’ These are picture
music. In the one there is the constant twitter and flight of birds, in
the other the surging of waters. Both are highly acceptable to the ear,
but perhaps more as sound than as music. They depend upon effects, and
the effects are those of imitation and representation. The pieces lose
half their charm if one does not know what they are about.
There seems to be no end of the discussion which has raged over the
relative merits of so-called program music and absolute music. It
has little relation to the beauty of sound in both kinds; else the
triumphant beauty of much program music would have long since put an
end to it. The Liszt Legends are as delightful to the ear as any other
of his pieces which have no relation to external things. What we have
to observe is that they deal with effects, that is with masses of
sound--trills, scales and other cumulative figures; that, finely as
these may be wrought, they have no beauty of detail nor any detailed
significance. Here is no trace of that art of music which Chopin
practised, an art of weaving many strands of sound in such a way that
every minute twist of them had a special beauty, a music in which
every note had an individual and a relative significance. The texture
of the ‘Legends’ is perhaps brilliantly colored, but it is solid or
even coarse in substance, relatively unvaried, and only generally
significant. But it serves its purpose admirably.
In the _Années de pèlerinage_ one finds a great deal of Liszt in
a nut-shell. The three years of wandering through Switzerland and
Italy netted twenty-three relatively short pieces, to which were
later added three more, of Venetian and Neapolitan coloring, a
_gondoliera_, a _canzona_, and a _tarantella_. All these pieces bear
titles which are of greater or lesser importance to the music itself.
It must be admitted that only a title may explain such poor music
as _Orage_, _Vallée d’Obermann_ and _Marche funèbre_ (in memory of
Emperor Maximilian of Mexico). These pieces are inexcusable bombast.
The _Vallée d’Obermann_, which may claim to be the most respectable
of them, is not only dank, saturated with sentimentality, but lacks
spontaneous harmony and melody, and toward the end becomes a mountain
of commonplace noise to which one can find a parallel only in such
songs as ‘Palm Branches’ (_Les Rameaux_). The ‘Chapel of William Tell,’
the ‘Fantasia written after a reading of Dante,’ the three pieces
which claim a relation to three sonnets of Petrarch, and the two _Aux
cyprès de la villa d’Este_, are hardly better. There is an _Éclogue_, a
piece on homesickness, one on the Bells of Geneva, an ‘Angelus’ and a
_Sursum Corda_ as well. Three, however, that deal with water in which
there is no trace of tears--_Au lac du Wallenstedt_, _Au bord d’une
source_, and _Les jeux d’eaux à la Villa d’Este_--are wholly pleasing
and even delightful pianoforte music. Especially the second of these is
a valuable addition to the literature of the instrument. The suggested
melody is spontaneous, the harmonies richly though not subtly colored,
the scoring exquisite.
Yet, though in looking over the _Années de pèlerinage_ one may find but
a very few pieces of genuine worth, though most are pretentious, there
is in all a certain sort of fire which one cannot approach without
being warmed. It is the glorious spirit of Byron in music. There is the
facility of Byron, the posturing of Byron, the oratory of Byron; but
there is his superb self-confidence too, showing him tricking himself
as well as the public, yet at times a hero, and Byron’s unquenchable
enthusiasm and irrepressible passionateness.
Finally we come to the small group of big pieces in which we find the
sonata in B minor, the two concertos, several études, polonaises and
concert pieces. Among the études, the great twelve have been already
touched upon. Besides these the two best known are those in D-flat
major and in F minor. The former is wholly satisfactory. The latter
is at once more difficult and less spontaneous. The two polonaises,
one in C minor and one in E major, have the virtues which belong to
concert pieces in the style of Weber’s _Polacca_, the chief of which is
enormous brilliance. In addition to this that in C minor is not lacking
in a certain nobility; but that in E major is all of outward show.
The two concertos are perfect works of their kind, unexcelled in
brilliancy of treatment of both the orchestra and the piano, and that
in E-flat major full of musical beauty. Both are free in form and
rhapsodical in character, effusions of music at once passionate and
poetical. That in A major loses by somewhat too free a looseness of
form. Even after careful study it cannot but seem rambling.
The sonata in B minor is perhaps Liszt’s boldest experiment in
original music for the pianoforte alone. One says experiment quite
intentionally, because the work shows as a whole more ingenuity than
inspiration, is rather an invention than a creation. There are measures
of great beauty, pages of factitious development. At times one finds a
nobility of utterance, at others a paucity of ideas.
As to the themes, most of them are cleverly devised from three
motives, given in the introduction. One of these is a heavy, descending
scale (_lento assai_); another a sort of volplane of declamatory
octaves which plunge downward the distance of a diminished seventh,
rise a third, and down a minor seventh again through a triplet; the
third a sort of drum figure (_forte marcato_). The initial statement
of these motives is impressive; but it is followed by a sort of
uninteresting music building which is, unhappily, to be found in
great quantity throughout the whole piece. This is no more than a
meaningless repetition of a short phrase or figure, on successive
degrees of the scale or on successive notes of harmonic importance.
Here in the introduction, for example, is a figure which consists
of a chord of the diminished seventh on an off beat of the measure,
followed by the downward arpeggio of a triad. This figure is repeated
five times without any change but one of pitch; and it is so short and
the repetitions so palpable that one feels something of the irritation
stirred by the reiterated boasting of the man who is always about to do
something.
The long work spins itself out page after page with the motives of
the introduction in various forms and this sort of sparring for time.
There is no division into separate movements, yet there are clear
sections. These may be briefly touched upon. Immediately after the
introduction there is a fine-sounding phrase in which one notices the
volplane motive (right hand) and the drum motive (left hand). It is
only two measures long, yet is at once repeated three times, once in B
minor, twice in E minor. Then follow measures of the most trite music
building. The phrases are short and without the slightest distinction,
and the ceaseless repetition is continued so inexorably that one may
almost hear in the music a desperate asthmatic struggle for breath. One
is relieved of it after two or three pages by a page of the falling
scale motive under repeated octaves and chords.
There is next a new theme, which seems to be handled like the second
theme in the classical sonata form, but leads into a long section of
recitative character, in which the second and third motives carry the
music along to a singing theme, literally an augmentation of the drum
motive. This is later hung with garlands of the ready-made variety, and
then gives way to a treatment of the volplane motive in another passage
of short breathing. The succeeding pages continue with this motive,
brilliantly but by no means unusually varied, and there is a sort of
stamping towards a climax, beginning _incalzando_. But this growth of
noise is coarse-grained, even though the admirer may rightly say that
it springs from one of the chief motives of the piece. It leads to a
passage made up of the pompous second theme and a deal of recitative;
but after this there comes a section in F-sharp major of very great
beauty, and the _quasi adagio_ is hauntingly tender and intimate. These
two pages in the midst of all the noise and so much that must be judged
commonplace will surely seem to many the only ones worthy of a great
creative musician.
After them comes more grandiose material, with that pounding of chords
for noise one remembers at the end of Thalberg’s fantasia on ‘Moses,’
then a sort of dying away of the music which again has beauty. A double
fugue brings us back to a sort of restatement of the first sections
after the introduction, with a great deal of repetition, scantness of
breath, pompousness, and brilliant scoring. Just before the end there
is another mention of the lovely measures in F-sharp major. There is a
short epilogue, built on the three motives of the introduction.
This sonata is a big work. It is broadly planned, sonorous and heavy.
It has the fire of Byron, too, and there is something indisputably
imposing about it. But like a big sailing vessel with little cargo it
carries a heavy ballast; and though this ballast is necessary to the
balance and safety of the ship, it is without intrinsic value.
* * * * *
In view of Liszt’s great personal influence, of his service rendered
to the public both as player and conductor, of his vast musical
knowledge, his enthusiasms and his prodigious skill with the keyboard,
one must respect his compositions, especially those for the pianoforte
with which we have been dealing. Therefore, though when measured
by the standards of Bach, Mozart and Chopin they cannot but fall
grievously short, one must admit that such a standard is only one of
many, and furthermore that perhaps Liszt’s music may have itself set
a new standard. Certainly in many ways it is superlative. It is in
part the loudest and the fastest music that has been written for the
piano, and as such stands as an achievement in virtuosity which was not
before, and has not since been, paralleled. Also it is in part the most
fiery and the most overpowering of pianoforte music. It is the most
sensational, as well, with all the virtues that sensationalism may hold.
These are, indeed, its proved greatness, and chief of them is a direct
and forceful appeal to the general public. It needs no training of
the ear to enjoy or to appreciate Liszt’s music. Merely to hear it is
to undergo its forceful attraction. Back of it there stands Liszt,
the pianist and the virtuoso, asserting his power in the world of men
and women. However much or little he may be an artist, he is ever the
hero of pianoforte music. So it seems fitting to regard him last as
composer of nineteen Hungarian Rhapsodies, veritably epics in music
from the life of a fiery, impetuous people. Rhythms, melodies, and
even harmonies are the growth of the soil of Hungary. They belonged to
the peasant before Liszt took them and made them thunderous by his own
power. What he added to them, like what he added to airs from favorite
operas, may well seem of stuff as elemental as the old folk-songs
themselves: torrents and hurricanes of sound, phenomena of noise. The
results are stupendous, and in a way majestic.
As far as pianoforte music is concerned Liszt revealed a new power
of sound in the instrument by means of the free movement of the arms,
and created and exhausted effects due to the utmost possible speed.
These are the chief contributions of his many compositions to the
literature of the piano. His music is more distinguished by them than
by any other qualities. In melody he is inventive rather than inspired.
His rhythms lack subtlety and variety. Of this there can be no better
proof than the endless short-windedness already observed in the sonata
in B minor, which is to be observed, moreover, in the Symphonic Poems
for orchestra. As a harmonist he lacks not so much originality as
spontaneity. He is oftener bold than convincing. One finds on nearly
every page signs of the experimentalist of heroic calibre. He is the
inventor rather than the prophet, the man of action rather than the
inspired rhapsodist. He is a converter into music oftener than a
creator of music.
Hence we find him translating caprices of Paganini into caprices for
the pianoforte; and when by so doing he has, so to speak, enlarged
his vocabulary enormously, he gives us, in the _Douze Études_, a sort
of translation of the pianoforte itself into a cycle of actions.
Again he translates a great part of the literature of his day into
terms of music: _Consolations_, _Harmonies poétiques et réligieuses_,
_Légendes_, _Eclogues_ and other things. Even Dante and Petrarch are so
converted, not to mention Sénancourt, Lamartine, Victor Hugo, Byron,
and Lenau, with other contemporaries. The Chapel of William Tell,
the Lake of Wallenstadt, the cypresses and fountains at the Villa
d’Este, even the very Alps themselves pass through his mind and out
his fingers. In this process details are necessarily obscured if not
obliterated, and the result is a sort of general reproduction in sound
that is not characterized by the detailed specialities of the art of
music, that is, of the art of Bach, Mozart, and Chopin. And even of
Schumann, it may be added, for Schumann’s music runs independently
beside poetry, not with it, so closely associated, as Liszt’s runs.
The question arises as to how this generalization of music will appear
to the world fifty years hence. Is Liszt a radical or a reactionary,
after all? Did he open a new life to music, a further development of
the pianoforte, or did he, having mastered utterly all the technical
difficulties of the pianoforte, throw music back a stage? Internally
his music has far less independent and highly organized life than
Chopin’s. But by being less delicate is it perhaps more robust, more
procreative? At present such hardly seems to be the case. A great part
of the pianoforte music of Liszt is sinking out of sight in company
with that of Herz and Thalberg--evidently for the same reason; namely,
that it is sensationalist music. Its relations to poetry, romanticism,
nature or landscape will not preserve it in the favor of a public whose
ear little by little prefers rather to listen than to be overpowered.
Yet, be his music what it may, he himself will always remain one of the
great, outstanding figures in the history of music, the revealer of
great treasures long ignored. Whatever the value of his compositions,
he himself, the greatest of all pianoforte virtuosi, set the standard
of the new virtuosity which, thanks to his abiding example, becomes
less and less a skill of display, more and more an art of revelation.
FOOTNOTES:
[37] W. von Lenz: ‘The Great Piano Virtuosos of Our Time.’ Translated
from the German by Madeline R. Baker, New York, 1899.