Gives up Kullak for Deppe. Deppe's Method in Touch and in
Scale-Playing. Fräulein Steiniger. Pedal Study.
BERLIN, _December 11, 1873_.
Since I last wrote you I have taken a very important step, which is
_this_: After taking three or four lessons of Kullak I HAVE GIVEN HIM
UP! and am now studying under a new master. His name is Herr
Capelmeister Deppe. I suppose you will all think me crazed, but I think
I know what I am about. He seems to me a very remarkable man, and is to
me the most satisfactory teacher I've had yet. Of course I don't count
in the unapproachable Liszt when I say that, for Liszt is no
"_professeur du piano_," as he himself used scornfully to remark.
I made Herr Deppe's acquaintance quite by chance, at a musical party
given for Anna Mehlig by an American gentleman living here. I had often
heard of him, and was very anxious to know him, but somehow had never
compassed it. He is a conductor, to begin with, and I have often seen
him conduct orchestral concerts. In fact, that was what he first came to
Berlin for, a few years ago--to conduct Stern's orchestral concerts
during the latter's absence in Italy. Deppe is an accomplished
conductor, and I have never heard Beethoven's second Overture to Leonora
sound as I have under his bâton.
But it was Sherwood who first called my attention to him as a teacher.
He rushed into my room one day, and said, "Oh, I've just heard the most
beautiful playing that ever I heard in my life!" I asked him who it was
that had taken him so by storm, and he said it was a young English girl
named Fannie Warburg, and that she was a pupil of Deppe's. "Well, what
is it about her that is so remarkable," said I. "Oh, _everything_!--execution,
expression, style, touch--all are _perfect_! I never heard anything to
equal her, and I feel as if I never wanted to touch the piano again."
This was such strong language for Sherwood, who is generally very
critical and anything but enthusiastic, that my interest was immediately
excited. He went on to tell me that Deppe had been training this young
English girl, now only eighteen years of age, with the greatest care,
for six years, and that he had such an interest in her that he did not
confine himself to giving her lessons only, but set himself to form her
whole musical taste by taking her to the best concerts and to hear the
great operas, calling her attention to every peculiarity of structure in
a composition, and giving her all sorts of hints which only a man of
profound musical culture _could_ give. Sherwood said, moreover, that in
summer he made her go to Pyrmont, which is a watering place near
Hanover, where he goes himself every year, and that there he heard her
play _every day_ Mozart's concertos and all sorts of things. I thought
to myself at the time that the man who would take so much trouble for a
pupil as that, would have been just the one for me, for it was easy to
see that Deppe was teaching more for the love of Art than for love of
money--a rare thing in these materialistic days! Afterward, you know,
Miss B. spoke to me about him in Weimar, and I wrote you what she said.
Well, as I was saying, I went to this musical party given to Anna
Mehlig, where there were a number of musicians and critics. I was
listening to Mehlig play, when suddenly Sherwood, who was also present,
stole up to me and said, "Come into the next room and be introduced to
Deppe." At these magic words I started, and immediately did as I was
bid. I found Deppe in one corner looking about him in an absent sort of
way. He was a man of medium height, with a great big brain, keen blue
eyes and delicate little mouth, and he had a most cheery and sunny
expression. He shook hands, and then we sat down and got into a most
animated conversation--all about music. I told him how interested I was
by all I had heard of him--how I had returned to Kullak for a last
trial--how tired I was of his eternal pedagogism, and how I should like
to study with _him_.
He asked me what my chief difficulty was, whereupon I answered "the
technique, of course." He smiled, and said "that was the smallest
difficulty, and that anybody could master execution if they knew how to
attack it, unless there was some want of proper development of the
hand." I said I had studied very hard, but that I hadn't mastered it,
and that there was always some hard place in every piece which I
couldn't get the better of. He said he was sure he could remedy the
deficiency, and that if I would show him my hand without a glove, he
could tell directly what I was capable of. I wouldn't pull it off,
however, because I was afraid he might find some radical defect or
weakness in it, but I was so charmed with the way he made light of the
technique, and with the absolute certainty he seemed to have that I
could overcome it, that I promised him that I would go and play to him
the following Wednesday.
Accordingly on the following Wednesday I presented myself. I had
expected to stay about half an hour, but I ended by staying _three solid
hours_, and we talked as fast as we could all the while, too! So you may
imagine we had a good deal to say. He lives in two little rooms on the
Königgrätzer Strasse, only four doors from the W.'s, where I boarded for
so long. Now if I had only known I was close to such a teacher! We must
often have passed each other in the street, and where _was_ my good
angel that he did not touch my arm and say, "There's the man for
you?"--Frightful to think how near one may be to one's best happiness,
or even salvation, and not know it!
Deppe's front room was pretty much filled up with a grand piano, which,
as well as the chairs and most other articles of furniture, was covered
with music. I glanced over the pieces a little, and there was nearly
every set of Etudes under the sun, it seemed to me, as well as concertos
and pieces by all the great composers, fingered and marked with pencil
in the most minute way. It was enough simply to turn the leaves, to see
what a study he must have made of everything he gave his scholars. His
inner room had double doors to it to prevent the sound from penetrating.
I rapped at the outside one, and presently I heard a great turning and
rattling of keys, and then they opened, and Deppe was before me. He put
out his hand in the most cordial and friendly way, and greeted me with
the most winning smile in the world. I took off my things and began to
play to him. He listened quietly, and without interrupting me. When I
had finished he told me that my difficulties were principally mechanical
ones--that I had conception and style, but that my execution was uneven
and hurried, my wrist stiff, the third and fourth fingers[F] very weak,
the tone not full and round enough, that I did not know how to use the
pedal, and finally, that I was too nervous and flurried.
"If possible, you must get over this agitation," said he. "_Hören Sie
Sich spielen_ (Listen to your own playing). You have talent enough to
get over all your difficulties if you will be patient, and do just as I
tell you." "I will do anything," I said. "Very good. But I warn you that
you will have to give up all playing for the present except what I give
you to study, and _those_ things you must play very slowly."
This was a pleasant prospect, as I was just preparing to give a concert
in Berlin, under Kullak's auspices, and had already got my programme
half learned! But I had "invoked the demon," and I felt bound to give
the required pledge.--So here I am, after four years abroad with the
"greatest masters," going back to first principles, and beginning with
five-finger exercises! I had never been given any particular rule for
holding my hand, further than the general one of curving the fingers and
lifting them very high. Deppe objects to this extreme lifting of the
fingers. He says it makes a _knick_ in the muscle, and you get all the
strength simply from the finger, whereas, when you lift the finger
moderately high, the muscle from the whole arm comes to bear upon it.
The tone, too, is entirely different. Lifting the finger so very high,
and striking with force, stiffens the wrist, and produces a slight jar
in the hand which cuts off the singing quality of the tone, like closing
the mouth suddenly in singing. It produces the effect of a blow upon the
key, and the tone is more a sharp, quick tone; whereas, by letting the
finger just fall--it is fuller, less loud, but more penetrating. I
suppose the hammer falls back more slowly from the string, and that
makes the tone _sing_ longer.
Don't you remember my saying that Liszt had such an extraordinary way of
playing a melody? That it did not seem to be so loud and cut-out as most
artists make it, and yet it was so penetrating? Well, dear, _there_ was
the secret of it! "_Spielen Sie mit dem Gewicht_ (Play with weight),"
Deppe will say. "Don't strike, but let the fingers _fall_. At first the
tone will be nearly inaudible, but with practice it will gain every day
in power."--After Deppe had directed my attention to it, I remembered
that I had never seen Liszt lift up his fingers so fearfully high as the
other schools, and especially the Stuttgardt one, make such a point of
doing.[G] That is where Mehlig misses it, and is what makes her playing
so sharp and cornered at times. When you lift the fingers so high you
cannot bind the tones so perfectly together. There is always a break.
Deppe makes me listen to every tone, and carry it over to the next one,
and not let any one finger get an undue prominence over the other--a
thing that is immensely difficult to do--so I have given up all pieces
for the present, and just devote myself to playing these little
exercises right.
Deppe not only insists upon the fingers being as curved as possible, so
that you play exactly on the tips of them, but he turns the hand very
much out, so as to make the knuckles of the third and fourth fingers
higher than those of the first and second, and as he does _not_ permit
you to throw out the elbow in doing this, the _turn must be made from
the wrist_. The _thumb_ must also be slightly curved, and quite free
from the hand. Many persons impede their execution by not keeping the
thumb independent enough of the rest of the hand. The moment it
contracts, the hand is enfeebled. The object of turning the hand outward
is to favour the third and fourth fingers, and give them a higher fall
when they are lifted. This strengthens them very much. It also looks
much prettier when the outer edge of the hand is high, and one of
Deppe's grand mottoes is, "When it _looks_ pretty then it is right."
After Deppe had put me through five-finger exercises on the foregoing
principles, and taught me to lift each finger and let it fall with a
perfectly loose wrist, (a most deceitful point, by the way, for it took
me a long while to distinguish when I was stiffening the wrist
involuntarily and when I wasn't,) he proceeded to the scale. He always
begins with the one in E major as the most useful to practice. His
principle in playing the scale is _not_ to turn the thumb under! but to
turn a little on each finger end, pressing it firmly down on the key,
and screwing it round, as it were, on a pivot, till the next finger is
brought over its own key. In this way he prepares for the thumb, which
is kept free from the hand and slightly curved.--He told me to play the
scale of E major slowly with the right hand, which I did. He curved his
hand round mine, and told me as long as I played right, his hand would
not interfere with mine. I played up one octave, and then I wished to go
on by placing my first finger on F sharp. To do that I naturally turned
my hand outward, so as to make the step from my thumb on E to F sharp
with the first, but it came bang up against Deppe's hand like a sort of
blockade. "Go on," said Deppe. "I can't, when you keep your hand right
in the way," said I. "My hand isn't in the way," said he, "but _your_
hand is out of position."
So I started again. This time I reflected, and when I got my third
finger on D sharp, I kept my hand slanting from left to right, but I
prepared for the turning under of the thumb, and for getting my first
finger on F sharp, by turning my wrist sharply out. That brought my
thumb down on the note and prepared me instantly for the next step. In
fact, my wrist carried my finger right on to the sharp without any
change in the position of the hand, thus giving the most perfect legato
in the world, and I continued the whole scale in the same manner. Just
try it once, and you'll see how ingenious it is--only one must be
careful not to throw out the elbow in turning out the wrist. As in the
ascending scale one has to turn the thumb under twice in every octave,
Deppe's way of playing avoids twice throwing the hand out of position as
one does by the old way of playing straight along, and the smoothness
and rapidity of the scale must be much greater. The direction of the
hand in running passages is always a little oblique.
Don't you remember my telling you that Liszt has an inconceivable
lightness, swiftness and smoothness of execution? When Deppe was
explaining this to me, I suddenly remembered that when he was playing
scales or passages, his fingers seemed to lie across the keys in a
slanting sort of way, and to execute these rapid passages almost without
any perceptible motion. Well, dear, _there_ it was again! As Liszt is a
great experimentalist, he probably does all these things by instinct,
and without reasoning it out, but that is why nobodys else's playing
sounds like his. Some of his scholars had most dazzling techniques, and
I used to rack my brains to find out how it was, that no matter how
perfectly anybody else played, the minute Liszt sat down and played the
same thing, the previous playing seemed rough in comparison. I'm sure
Deppe is the only master in the world who has thought that out; though,
as he says himself, it is the egg of Columbus--"when you know it!"
Deppe always begins the scale in the middle of the piano, and plays up
three octaves with the right, and down three octaves with the left hand.
He says that all the difficulty is in going up, and that coming back is
perfectly easy, as all you have to do is to let the fingers run! He
always makes me play each hand separately at first, and very slowly, and
then both hands together in contrary direction, gradually quickening the
tempo. After that in thirds, sixths, octaves, etc.
* * *
BERLIN, _December 25, 1873_.
As you may imagine, this is anything but a "Merry Christmas" for me, for
I am simply the most completely _bouleversée_ mortal in this world! Here
I was a month ago preparing to give a concert of my own. Then I have the
good or bad luck to make Herr Deppe's acquaintance, and to find out how
I "ought" to have been studying for the last four years. I give up
Kullak and my concert plan, thinking I'll study with Deppe and come out
under his auspices. After two lessons with him, comes your letter with
the news of this awful national panic in it.--_Could_ anything be worse
for a person who has really _conscientiously_ tried to attain her
object? I'm like the professor who gave some lectures to prove a certain
theory, and when he got to the fourteenth, he decided it was false, and
devoted the remaining ones to pulling it all down!
However, after practicing the scale on Deppe's principles, I find that
they open the road to an ease, rapidity, sureness and elegance of
execution which, with my stiff hand, I've not been able to see even in
the dim distance before! One of his grand hobbies is _tone_, and he
never lets me play a note without listening to it in the closest manner,
and making it sound what he calls "_bewüsst_ (conscious)."--No more
mechanical "straying of the hands over the keys (as the novelists always
say of their heroines) thinking of all sorts of things the while," but
instead, a close pinning down of the whole attention to hear whether one
finger predominates over the other, and to note the effect produced. I
was perfectly amazed to see how many little ugly habits I had to correct
of which I had not been the least aware. It seems as though my ears had
been opened for the first time! Such concentration is very exhausting,
and after two or three hours' practice I feel as if I should drop off
the chair.
I forgot to say before, that Deppe enjoins sitting very low--that
is--not higher than a common chair. He says one may have "the soul of an
angel," and yet if you sit high, the tone will not sound poetic.
Moreover, in a low seat the fingers have to work a great deal more,
because you can't assist them by bringing the weight of your arm to
bear. "Your elbow must be _lead_ and your wrist a _feather_." Of course
the seat must be modified to suit the person. I prefer a low seat
myself, and have even had my piano-chair cut off two inches.
Before definitely deciding to give up Kullak and come to _him_, Deppe
insisted that I should hear one of his scholars play. Fannie Warburg is
in England on a visit, so I could not hear _her_, but he has another
young lady pupil of whom he is very proud, named Fräulein Steiniger.
This young lady had been originally a pupil of Kullak's, and I had heard
her play once in his conservatory. She was a girl of a good deal of
talent, but not a genius. Deppe said that when she came to him she had
all my defects, only worse. She has been studying with him in the most
tremendous manner for fifteen months, and he wanted me to see what he
had made of her in that time. She was going to play in a concert in
Lübeck, and he was to rehearse her pieces with her on Saturday for the
last time. He begged me to come then, and accordingly I went.
I was very much struck by her playing, which was remarkable, not so much
for sentiment or poetry, of which she had little, but for the _mastery_
she had over the instrument, and for the perfection with which she did
everything. There was a clarity and limpidity about her trills and runs
which surprised and delighted. Her left hand was as able as the right,
and had a way of taking up a variation like nothing at all and running
along with it through the most complicated passages, which almost made
you laugh with pleasure! There was a wonderful vitality, elasticity and
_snap_ to her chords which impressed me very much, and a unity of effect
about her whole performance of any composition which I don't remember to
have heard from the pupils of other masters. The position of the hand
was exquisite, and all difficulties seemed to melt away like snow or to
be surmounted with the greatest ease. I saw at a glance that Deppe is a
magnificent teacher, and I believe that he has originated a school of
his own.
Fräulein Steiniger played a charming Quintette by Hummel, a beautiful
Suite by Raff, a Prelude and Fugue by Bach, and two Studies, and all, as
it seemed to me, exactly as they _ought_ to be played. After she had
finished, we had a long talk about Kullak. She said she staid with him
year after year, doing her very best, and never arriving at anything. At
last, as he did nothing for her, she resolved to strike out for herself,
and went to Deppe, who was at that time conducting Stern's orchestral
concerts, and asked him if he would not allow her to play in one of
them. Deppe received her with his characteristic kindness and
cordiality, but told her that before he could promise he must first hear
her in private, and he set a time for the purpose.
She had prepared Beethoven's great E flat Concerto, which everybody
plays here. It is as difficult for Deppe to listen to that concerto as
it is for Liszt to hear Chopin's B flat minor Scherzo. "We poor
conductors!" he will exclaim, "will the artists _always_ keep bringing
us Beethoven's E flat Concerto? Why not, for once, the B flat, or a
Mozart concerto? _Then_ we should say '_Ja, mit Vergnügen_ (Yes, with
pleasure).' _Aber Jeder will grossartig spielen heutzutage_ (But
everybody wants to play on a grand scale now-a-days). The mighty rushing
torrent is the fashion, but who can do the wimpling, dimpling streamlet?
Nobody has any fingers for the _kleine Passagen_ (little fine
passages). Sie _haben_, Alle, _keine Finger_ (_None_ of them have any
fingers)." He then winds up by saying _he_ is the only man in Germany
who knows how to give them "fingers." "_Ich weiss worauf es ankommt_
(_I_ know what it depends on)!"
Nevertheless, he listened patiently for the thousandth time to the E
flat concerto, as Steiniger played it. He then quietly called her
attention to the fact that _she_ had "no fingers," and she was in
perfect despair. He saw that she was energetic and willing to work, and
he at once took her in hand and began to drill her. She withdrew
entirely from society and devoted herself to practicing, following his
directions implicitly. She is now a beautiful artist, and he chalks out
every step of her career. I don't doubt she will play in the Gewandhaus
in Leipsic eventually, which is the height of every artist's ambition,
and stamps you as "finished." Then you are recognized all over the
world. Deppe does not mean to let her play here till she has first
played in many little places and succeeded. As he said to me the other
day, "When you wish to spring over tall mountains, you must first jump
over little mounds (_kleine Graben_.)" He counsels me to take a lesson
of this young lady every day for a time, so as to get over the technical
part quickly.
As for Deppe's young protégée, Fannie Warburg, whom he has formed
completely, everybody says that she is wonderful. Fräulein Steiniger
says that when you hear her play you feel almost as if it were something
holy, it is so perfect and so extraordinarily spiritual. She is only
eighteen. Deppe showed me the list of compositions that she has already
played in concerts elsewhere, and I was astonished at the variety and
compass of it. Every great composer was represented.
Among other refinements of his teaching, Deppe asked me if I had ever
made any pedal studies. I said "No--nobody had ever said anything to me
about the pedal particularly, except to avoid the use of it in runs, and
I supposed it was a matter of taste." He picked out that simple little
study of Cramer in D major in the first book--you know it well--and
asked me to play it. I had played that study to Tausig, and he found no
fault with my use of the pedal; so I sat down thinking I could do it
right. But I soon found I was mistaken, and that Deppe had very
different ideas on the subject. He sat down and played it phrase by
phrase, pausing between each measure, to let it "sing." I soon saw that
it is possible to get as great a virtuosity with the pedal as with
anything else, and that one must make as careful a study of it. You
remember I wrote to you that one secret of Liszt's effects was his use
of the pedal,[H] and how he has a way of disembodying a piece from the
piano and seeming to make it float in the air? He makes a spiritual form
of it so perfectly visible to your inward eye, that it seems as if you
could almost hear it breathe! Deppe seems to have almost the same idea,
though he has never heard Liszt play. "The Pedal," said he, "is the
_lungs_ of the piano." He played a few bars of a sonata, and in his
whole method of binding the notes together and managing the pedal, I
recognized Liszt. The thing floated!--Unless Deppe wishes the chord to
be very brilliant, he takes the pedal _after_ the chord instead of
simultaneously with it. This gives it a very ideal sound.--You may not
believe it, but it is _true_, that though Deppe is no pianist himself,
and has the funniest little red paws in the world, that don't look as if
they could do anything, he's got that same touch and quality of tone
that Liszt has--that indescribable _something_ that, when he plays a few
chords, merely, makes the tears rush to your eyes. It is too heavenly
for anything.