to bring forward much of the lighter kind--meaning what we call the
dilettante class of music. The numbers appeared week by week, and the
continuation was always postponed for the next, often at the most
thrilling passages--in the approved style of the clever magazine. The
authors’ names are only given when they are very well known. Among
these distinguished men are many whose names have not remained in the
memory of history--fashionable composers, such as every epoch has
in plenty. But there are also Philip Emanuel Bach, Kirnberger, and
many others of the great Bach School. Most of it is clavier-music.
Operatic airs, which occasionally appear, are so arranged that the
voice part, under which the words are printed, is played by the
right hand, and the completing orchestral notes are written small
in the upper staves. There are also popular songs in abundance. A
French spirit breathes through these pages; a fashionable spirit of
enjoyment. The short character-pieces, which the French loved so
dearly to introduce with significant titles, are mingled plentifully
with sonatas and rondos, arranged in the Italian manner. Under the
character-pieces, in the appropriate places, as in the biblical
stories of Kuhnau, the explanatory programme-text is printed. Thus
in a piece called “La Spinoza,”[98] the developments are marked as
being philosophic reflections on a certain theme. Two pieces, called
“Wonderment” and “Youthful Joy,” easily explain themselves. In one
piece entitled, “Two friends grumbling over their wine,” by the
arrangement and form of the two voices, in right and left hands, is
represented how they converse, console each other, gain courage,
and wait for a friendly glance of fortune. The most humorous is a
short clavier-piece, “A Compliment,” which, usually in two voices,
exhibits the following spirited contents: “If you are well, I am
charmed.” “Rather I am glad that I see you so well” (Repeated). “I
have heard that you have been poorly: I am sorry to hear it.” “Heaven
be praised I am recovered.” “But I am ashamed”--“allow me”----They
quarrel who shall bring the chair, and finally sit down. “I recommend
myself”--“and _I_ recommend _myself_”--“to your friendship.”
It was precisely at this period, when the clavier first became
truly popular, that its construction was rapidly and constantly
improved. It was then that the separation of the two systems of
mechanism--the so-called English, and the Viennese--took place. The
names mean nothing, for both systems alike arose in Germany proper.
The distinction lies in the fact that in the English the hammer rests
on a separate bracket from which the key strikes it, while in the
Viennese the hammer rests directly, though loose, on the end of the
key-lever.[99]
Although Germany was so partial to the clavichord with its intimate
intellectuality--a quality which even to-day we can only reproduce
in its fulness by reproducing the clavichord--yet it was the German
pianoforte which for a long time took the lead. It was one of the
first triumphs of German manufacture, and perhaps precisely because so
little manufacture lay in it. In Italy the invention of Cristofori had
vanished without leaving a trace. So utterly indeed was it forgotten,
that when Italy decided, though very tardily, to replace the
Gravicembalo by the pianoforte, instruments of this construction were
preferably brought out there with the notice, “built in the Prussian
manner.” Alongside of the Silbermann pianofortes, those of Friederici
of Gera--which were known as “Fort Bien” and were still built largely
on the clavichord model--and those of Spath of Regensburg, enjoyed
a great renown in the second half of the century. But soon, chiefly
through emigration, the best manufactories were transported to foreign
parts, and it is only in the latest advance of German industry,
especially by the labours of Bechstein and Blüthner, that pianos built
in Germany itself have again achieved a world-wide repute.
The great French, English, American, and Austrian piano-factories can
almost all be traced back to Germans. The three great Parisian houses,
those of Erard, Pleyel, and Pape, were founded by Germans. Steinway
emigrated from Brunswick to build in America those pianos which are
to-day regarded as the best. Johann Zumpe carried the hammer-clavier
to England,[100] where it was played by German executants, and brought
into repute. It was, however, English houses, with that of Broadwood
at their head, that effected the improvements which have resulted
in the appropriation of the name “English” to the mechanism of
Silbermann.
Factories alone, however, would never have brought about the final
victory of the piano if there had been no virtuosos to play them.
Clementi in England, Mozart in Germany and Austria, were the workers
who won the decisive triumph of the piano. Even Philip Emanuel Bach
had much preferred the clavichord to the newer instrument. But
Mozart, the first world-virtuoso, the idol of the concert hall,
thinking solely of sound-effects in the great halls, never hesitated
for a moment between clavicymbal and piano. In 1777, at the age of
twenty-one, he made, at Augsburg, the acquaintance of Silbermann’s
disciple, Stein, the inventor of the Viennese mechanism. This received
the name of “Viennese” when Stein’s children came to Vienna, and
there, along with Streicher, the well-known friend of Schiller,
established the world-renowned business. Here in this family for the
first time appears a new phenomenon in musical society. Round the king
of clavier-builders and his musical wife, young Streicher and Nanette
Stein, there moves a brisk circle of musical spirits. It is a type
which in our time has further gained in importance. With the greater
popularity of the art, the social standing of the piano manufacturer
has risen; and nothing contributed more to the introduction of the
piano into middle-class houses than the reputation of this much-envied
Viennese coterie.
Old Stein and young Streicher are two clearly-marked types. The latter
is a romantic spirit, raves over the just-played “Robbers” of his
school-fellow Schiller, forms the plan of going to Hamburg to perfect
himself in clavier-playing under Philip Emanuel Bach, but never gets
there, since he spends all his time running from town to town with the
restless Schiller. Then he gives music lessons; next he meets Nanette
Stein, marries her, goes to Vienna, becomes manager of the factory,
and makes the invention associated with his name, in which the hammers
strike from above. Finally, he becomes a centre of Viennese musical
life. What a contrast is this modern industrial prince to the old
Stein, working like a mediæval crafts-master there in Augsburg at his
claviers, and giving equal devotion to every single part! He has been
sketched by Mozart in a well-known letter; and I reprint this picture
of the last of the old patriarchal clavier-builders, because it is not
less interesting as showing the type than as showing the condition of
technique at that time.
[Illustration: Streicher’s Pianoforte and Concert Saloon. After the
lithograph of Lahn-Sandmann.]
“I must now,” writes Mozart, “begin at once with Stein’s pianoforte.
Before I saw anything of Stein’s work I liked Spath’s best; but now
I must give the preference to Stein’s, for they damp much better
than the Regensburg instruments. If I strike hard, whether I let the
fingers lie on the keys or lift them up, the sound is over and done
with the very instant I lift my hand. I may come down on the keys
as I like, the tone will always be the same; it never hangs fire;
it doesn’t get weaker, or grow stronger, or stay on; it’s just all
_one_. It’s true you can’t get a pianoforte like that under three
hundred florins, but the trouble and diligence he shows is not to be
repaid. His instruments have this point that makes them better than
others: they are made with an escapement which there isn’t a man in
a thousand knows anything of; and without this it is just impossible
for a pianoforte to help blocking or sounding again. His hammers,
when the piano is played, fall back again the very moment they touch
the strings, whether you hold the key down or let it go. When he has
finished a piano, so he says, he sits down to it and tests all kinds
of passages, runs and leaps, and works and scrapes until the piano’ll
do anything; for he works only for the good of music, and not his own
merely, or he would be done long before. He often says: ‘If I myself
didn’t love music so passionately, or couldn’t do a little on the
piano, I should long ago have lost all patience in my work; but I’m
just a lover of instruments which don’t try the player and will last.’
His pianos _do_ last, too. He guarantees that the sounding-board won’t
warp or break. When he has got a sounding-board ready for a piano, he
puts it in the air, rain, snow, sun, or any beastly thing, to warp it,
and then he glues crossbars in until it is strong and firm. He’s quite
glad when it warps, for you’re about certain nothing more can happen
to it. He often cuts into it himself, and glues it again, and so makes
it strong. He has three of these pianos ready, and I have played
to-day on them for the first time.
“The machine which you move with the knee is also made better by him
than by others. I scarcely touch it, when off it goes; and as soon
as I take my knee the least bit away, you can’t hear the slightest
after-sound.”
[Illustration: George Frederick Handel. Engraved by Thomson.]
We see from this letter of Mozart’s that in 1777 the “escapement,”
which lets the hammers fall back immediately after the strings
are struck, was as yet by no means universal, but that the pedal,
which was pressed at the side by the knee and raised the dampers,
was already a usual feature. What numberless small modifications
and improvements must have been introduced before the developed
mechanism exhibited by the key-levers, the hammers, the dampers, the
escapements, the pedals, the sounding-boards, could have advanced
to the self-evident simplicity which made possible the meteoric
splendours of piano-technique about the middle of this century! Prices
for pianos were still fairly high. The younger Ruckers obtained three
thousand francs for a clavier, but it had painted on it those rich
pictures with which the spinet, when it began to take its place among
household furniture, was so captivatingly adorned. We hear also that
the Parisian pianos with leather-plectrums (jeu de buffle) fetched,
in their finest specimens, as much as three thousand francs. A Wagner
clavicymbal from Dresden, which was a so-called _Deckenclavier_,
in which the tone could be softened or strengthened by fan-shaped
dislocations of the inner lid, fetched six hundred and sixty thalers;
and Frederick the Great actually gave seven hundred thalers to
Silbermann for the first hammer-claviers. If Stein, with his three
hundred florins, seems to fall off from this price, we must remember
the difference in the purchasing power of money. But, to-day, two
thousand marks for a good pianoforte is cheap in comparison with the
prices of those days. It is only through the growth of popularity
that the greater demand and the lower price have become possible.
I turn to the works themselves. Our step falls very heavy, and our
judgment may easily be unduly harsh, when we have just parted with
old Bach. This meeting with genius, which we celebrate in every
bar--this earnest greatness which meets us at every turn, has made
us very exacting in our demands for the higher beauty. In the first
moment the “Galant” School seems to us a school of pigmies, until the
sight has again adjusted itself, and the vision has again become awake
to the miniature beauties of this smaller art. A good transition is
provided by Handel, for, against Handel, Philip Emanuel Bach appears an
astonishing genius.
The tendency of the public, to group celebrities in pairs, has
brought not merely Goethe and Schiller, but Bach and Handel, into
juxtaposition. How little the scholarly hermit had in common with the
grandiose world-musician--who first followed the wise prescription,
glory in Italy, gain in England--would be seen from a comparison of
their clavier-writings, which are a fair average of their general
work. Handel is the negation of the classic. He gets his results
from materials close at hand; brings them into plastic clearness,
and writes from the point of view of the vulgar herd; he is never
troubled by an exacting inward conception, or overwhelmed by his own
imagination, as are all true classic artists.[101]
Handel’s clavier-pieces are written in an extravagantly popular
style. His suites, which moreover embrace not dance-forms only; his
capriccios, variations and fantasias, flow like futile “water-music.”
They are brilliant without being difficult, and entertaining
without being suggestive. There is no colour on the sky of their
landscapes; no tempest lashes their trees. We roll in our coaches
on well-macadamised roads, the melody of the wheels reminding us
meanwhile of this or that well-worn turn in the operas or oratorios.
Seldom is a halt necessary in order to look at the view. Perhaps
we may stop a moment longer than usual at those frequent singing
sarabands in the popular style, at the charming salon-gigues
(especially the long one in G minor), the genuine virtuoso’s
Tarantella, or at the better F sharp minor suite with its short
free prelude, staccato largo, insinuating fugue and dramatic gigue.
Perhaps, also, the fugue with its _three beats_ from the E minor
Prelude may please us; but there is a something which the whole fails
to give us. It is an acquaintance--not a personal intimacy.
Quite other is the impression produced by the “galant” music of Philip
Emanuel Bach. While his elder brother Friedemann stands somewhat
nearer to Sebastian in kind, and actually wrote pieces, like the C
minor fugue, of which the old man need not have been ashamed, Philip
Emanuel, with greater decision and also with greater significance,
pursued a different path. It is as if fate had marked out this
difference. Sebastian Bach held Friedemann as the cleverer musician;
but he frittered his life away. Philip was first set to study
jurisprudence, and out of the painstaking lawyer grew the sober and
energetic composer. The life of Philip was as simple as his father’s.
In 1740, at the age of twenty-six, he went to the court of Frederick
the Great, where he worked as royal cembalist and accompanist. In 1767
he went to Hamburg, and died there in 1788. He does not seem to have
been able to agree with the King; and it is likely enough that he felt
and worked more freely in Hamburg. Berlin was always having trouble
with its people. Had Philip Emanuel stayed there, Berlin would have
been the greatest centre of piano-playing in Germany, and its walls
would have been associated with lasting memories of the ancestors of
modern musical forms. Had Mozart, in later years, accepted the offer
of Frederick William II. of a position as chief Kapellmeister with the
extraordinary salary of three thousand thalers, Berlin would have been
enabled to absorb a little of the musical life of Vienna. Or, later
still, if the Academy of Singing had been given to Mendelssohn (who
was a candidate), rather than to Rungenhagen, the intoxicating glory
of Leipzig, which lasted for a time, would have been transferred to
the banks of the Spree. But the spirit of Zelter remained over Berlin.
In 1753 Philip Emanuel published at his own expense his “Essay on the
true Method of playing the Clavier.” This was the most copious work on
clavier technique that had yet appeared. It was at the same time the
sufficient apology for the technique of the thumb, which has become
the ground-work of our fingering. When the extreme importance of the
thumb had at last been recognised, it was not hard to investigate
systematically the places of its application. The main rules were
necessarily that, in ascending, the thumb of the right hand is put
_after_ one or more black keys, and the thumb of the left hand in
descending, and _vice versa_. The setting of the thumb on the black
keys themselves must be avoided, and the passing over of one finger by
another, which earlier had been the main feature in scale passages,
was now abandoned. The whole art was built on the thumb, which passed
under in the right place. This work of Philip Emanuel, which gives
special attention to the legato, may be called a panegyric on the
thumb. In this clear insight, as well as in the arrangement of his
exercises, which begin with scales and chords, preferring the unison
practice of the two hands, and advancing slowly to easy pieces, his
work is still one of our most modern exercise-books. We might guess
that in this diligent application of his thumb-technique to scales
and broken chords, Philip Emanuel places in the forefront of his
exercises certain scale figures which to-day could not correspond to
the most pressing necessities of the piano-player. We should expect
them to be a mere training of the hand, and no preparation for the
real difficulties which appear in actual literature. A glance at the
works of any great master will show us, however, that such is not the
case. These very scales, chain-passages, and broken chords, which are
the material of teaching, are also the figures of free composition.
Some fashionable composers may have employed them extravagantly,
because they were at the fingers’ ends of the players, but the most
independent writers must use them, because they are, from the very
nature of the clavier, the most fruitful in effect and most harmonious
in sound. The old disruption of musical material into short passages
of four or five notes was now antiquated. Performers practised the
whole scale and the chord. And since Philip Emanuel carried through
this natural training with methodical clearness, his teaching has been
fruitful, and has not run merely _alongside_ of the literature. In
his book we can clearly see how the clavier has contributed not least
to the formation of modern secular musical perception. In this its
equal temperament, which was so urgently necessary, and its complete
presentation of the tone-material, which so to speak we have only to
read off, have largely aided.
The case is dissimilar with his treatment of the “manieren.”[102]
On their employment he writes as follows: “No man, assuredly, hath
doubted concerning the necessity of ‘manieren.’ We can observe
it herefrom, that we meet them everywhere in great abundance.
Everywhere are they indispensable, if one considers their use.
They hang the notes together, and give them life; they give them,
if it be necessary, a particular energy and weight; they make them
pleasing and therefore awaken a peculiar attention; they assist to
make clear what is their meaning, which may be sorrowful or glad or
otherwise disposed, as it pleaseth, yet do they contribute of their
own thereto; they give a notable part of opportunity and material to
the true execution; a moderate composition can by them be aided, as
without them the best air is empty and monotonous, and the plainest
meaning must appear throughout obscure.” This is a judgment which
surprises us in a man so intelligent and advanced as Philip Emanuel.
He has not yet perceived that ornamentations were in his time only
the relics of an earlier style. An appoggiatura, which takes away
half or two-thirds of its note, and thus becomes a mere melodious
retardation, or a double-shake which completely disintegrates its
note, and requires to be expressed by an antiquated stenographic mark,
is already a mere fossil in a period which gives such independence to
the melody. It is not the notes which then appear which are fossil,
but their arrangement as decorations. What had originally been truly
decoration, in the heyday of figuration, had, in the course of the
eighteenth century, long become an emancipated melodic phrase. The
idea of the retardation, which earlier veiled itself under the name
of appoggiatura with suspended main-note, was not allowed to step
in openly; and the doppelschlag[103] or the trill could say plainly
what they were, without masquerading as modest satellites of some
main-note or other. Had Philip Emanuel but had the courage to discard
the old signs, and to hear the customary ornamentations as independent
music, he would have been able to spare himself much dead weight, to
avoid much confusion, and to get rid of the trammels of many dead
traditions, which have come down even to our day. He has in his book
exhibited a stirring knowledge and an individual treatment of the
“manners”; yet he was forced to maintain an arbitrary distinction
between the “manners” and the other figurations, although between
the turn and any other melodious line-curve there is no longer any
essential difference whatever. He has not been able to introduce any
system into the relation of the appoggiatura with its note; and,
because he saw that the effect of the appoggiatura could be produced
equally well without the little note, he has been obliged to take
refuge in the sentence: “The appoggiaturas are partly written like
other notes and thrown into the bar, and partly specially indicated
by small notes; while the larger ones keep their full value to the
eye, although in practice they lose something of it.” At this point he
should have been able to see that a system of “manieren” as such was
no longer possible.
From indications given by Philip Emanuel, it would seem that in
these matters he was deliberately behind his time. He bemoans that
the well-known marks in clavier-pieces were already beginning to be
strange, and points to the careful way in which the French had always
put in their marks. He delights as a rule in setting up the French as
the masters of the clavier-exercise, and is vexed that people had an
“evil prejudice” against their pieces, “which yet,” he says, “have
always been a good school for clavier-players, forasmuch as this
nation, by the smoothness and neatness of its playing, hath marked
itself off specially from others.” Philip Emanuel’s love for the
French is a very important point to keep in mind in appraising his
works. Not only did he find in them the only great precedents for his
“galant” style; he has also expressly continued the method of Couperin
and Rameau by transcriptions, in the French manner and the French
language. Nay, his endeavour, in his sonatas and rondos, to construct
stiffer forms with _reprises_, appears as a mere continuation of the
French rondo; and, however Italian the musical form may be, in more
than one of his pieces, we inevitably think of the “Cyclopes” of
Rameau. Possibly his whole book was suggested by Couperin’s “L’Art
de toucher le clavecin,” and respect for this French tradition has
hindered him from revolutionising the “manieren,” which still had
their justification in France, so thoroughly as he did revolutionise
the finger-exercise. It is thus very amusing to see how he himself
challenges comparison with Couperin. He calls him “a teacher formerly
so profound,” referring of course to the “manieren.” The “formerly,”
of course, implies that Couperin had not yet learnt the thumb method,
and had been too fond of changing the fingers on one note. In point
of ornamentation it was _he_ that was conventional; and in point of
fingering--why, old Sebastian, lately dead, stood between him and
Couperin.
“Fantasia-making without strict tempo,” says Philip Emanuel in one
place of the Essay, “seems in the main to be specially adapted for the
expression of the emotions, because every kind of barring brings with
it a certain constraint.” In this verdict and in its application lies
for us to-day, viewed externally, the greatest surprise which Philip
Emanuel offers us. He has, as a matter of fact, written many fantasias
which are almost designed without bars, and thus very logically give
expression to the character of improvisation which they bear. They are
great recitatives full of reflective melodies, of linked staccati, of
sounding broken chords, which the player, when moved, knows how to
unfold. They were the last free specimens of the unfettered forms of
the older time.
Not only in these fantasias, but as a rule in his whole creative
energy, especially in the Hamburg period, Philip Emanuel exhibits
that extempore humour and freedom, which has at all times given to
clavier-pieces their greatest charm. He has sufficient invention to
be rarely at a loss; and the pieces from his earlier “Württemberger
Sonaten,” which are still more contrapuntal than the later, or from
the later six volumes “Für Kenner und Liebhaber,”[104] have all that
variety and multiplicity in unity which was also a feature of the
collections of John Sebastian. But the desire for caprice works in
him more strongly than the fulness of invention. He is untiring in
pulling a melody humorously to pieces, in surprises of pause or in
remarkable transitions. Occasionally his language positively dances,
and it is hard to be certain whether it is intentional distortion--a
cloak for poverty--or the genuine caprice of the moment which leads
him after the charms of eccentricity. In any case he belongs to those
rare and subtle natures which in a moment give us the genuine artistic
touch of brotherhood.