of romance is, alas, a mistake. He would doubtless have made the
transit had not an early death overtaken him in the midst of the
uprising of genius that began in 1820. But, as it is, his piano
music belongs to the technically rich but spiritually empty style
of the time. If he did not still live as operatic composer and
orchestral poet, his piano-compositions would be forgotten. His
technique, successful as it was, is never so rich as that of the
majority of the virtuosos of his time. It is not hard to perceive
that he recurs again and again to certain motives. The ornamentation
which was earlier called “Anschlag”--the preparatory striking of the
under and over note before the main note, which is seen brilliantly
exemplified in the Rondo in E flat major--the S-curves of the
melody, which are a simple re-arrangement of this “anschlag”--the
“pizzicato” notes over embellishing or broken accompaniments--held
notes over struck chords--broken combinations of three notes, ranging
themselves chain-like after one another--these are his somewhat
limited repertoire. In the Polonaises in E flat major and in E major,
in numerous operatic variations, in Écossaises and popular national
dances, he pays his tribute to the time. But there is no local
colouring in the variations on the Russian “Schöne Minka,” or on a
Gipsy song. Dussek and Hummel were in this point his superiors. The
intellectual themes, like the second of the C major concerto, show
the greatness of Weber as behind a mask. The favourite concerto Op.
79, if judged by a severe standard, is only a fashionable if very
clever and successful mosaic of neat Études with the requisite melody.
The daintiest mosaic piece, the March, is given to orchestra alone,
as if Weber had felt compelled to enter his proper abode. Liszt
perceived this when he played in the concerto, and played the _tutti_
brilliantly with the instruments, and thus exhibited a remarkable
_tour de force_. The four sonatas, often utterly trivial, are in
the main a congeries which perishes by its eclecticism. As with all
his contemporaries, the first movements, those touchstones of the
inner meaning, are the weakest. The subjects are thin, the framework
is that of the drawing-room; and the other movements have a higher
stylistic value. The powerful rhythm of the second movement in the C
major, the excellent minuet-scherzo, the stirring perpetuum mobile as
last movement are admirable single ideas. But the importance rises
only slowly; the fourth sonata has, not inner meaning, but a certain
majesty. Yet what is this romance, this octave-scherzo with its rapid
waltz-trio, this masquerade of elves, to Chopin, to Schumann, or even
to Mendelssohn? Weber’s most popular piece is also his purest--the
Invitation to the Dance. It is a _pot-pourri_, such as the age loved;
and the very title is _à la mode_. But the conception of forming the
introductory adagio as a dialogue, the brilliant advance from the
ravishing waltz to Bacchanalian tumult the pure and not virtuoso-like
colouring, which rests on this happy invention, raise the work far
above all that is merely fashionable.
[Illustration: Moscheles in his youth.]
The true man of the transition is Moscheles--double-souled, with his
concessions to modishness on the one side, and on the other his wealth
of invention and his musical intensity. He was born out of due time.
He ought to have left virtuosity behind him, in order to be able to
give full play to his characteristic, not undramatic, and broad-lined
art. To-day he is almost forgotten; no opera, as in Weber’s case,
preserved his fame to our times. But his works more than repay study;
if our pianists would once again take up his C major concerto, they
would be amazed.
[Illustration: Moscheles, later, 1859.]
In his youth he composed Variations on the Alexander March, with which
he was compelled, much against his will, when a ripe composer, to
dazzle the world. It was one of the most popular of concert pieces.
It is not true that in later years he altered his style and wrote
more soberly. His very sober Melancholy Sonata (Op. 49), written
fairly early, in one movement, with its charming accompaniment figure,
reminds us of the Parsifal tremoli. And on the other hand, a later
work, the Danish, Scotch, and Irish Fantasias (this latter on the Last
Rose of Summer), are _pot-pourris_ in full modish style. What would
the Virginal Book composers of English and Scotch folk-songs have said
to these variations? In order to avoid the fashionable appearance,
several movements are even written in various tempi, as in a sonata.
In his A flat minor Ballade, on the contrary, he has with astonishing
dramatic force struck the legendary tone in a free and genuine manner,
in a sort of romantic rondo.
Moscheles, who was the first master to arrange for piano an orchestral
score by another writer (that of the Fidelio, by commission from
Beethoven), was unable to escape the operatic rechauffées of the
time. His speciality was the putting together of different operatic
airs, which formed the favourite repertoire of a singer. He wrote
such fantasias on the favourite pieces of Pasta, Henriette Sonntag,
Jenny Lind, and Malibran. They are commonplace enough. Yet this same
Malibran, after her sudden death, he honoured in an “Hommage,” which
was one of his finest pieces. There is in it an unearthly power
of invention, a dramatic life, as if drawn from the stage; spirit
breathes in every bar; and the interest is sustained to the final
sorrowfully rising cross-passages, which strangely forebode the
longings of Tristan for the sea.
He wrote many drawing-room pieces, which bore the usual significant
titles--Charmes de Paris, La Tenerezza, Jadis et aujourd’hui, la
Petite Babillarde. Similar titles he superscribed to his Études, such
as his three Allegri di Bravura and his characteristic Studies (Op.
95). Among the former are La Forza and Il Capriccio; among the latter
are Juno, Terpsichore, Moonlight at Sea, Dream, and Anguish. In these
the seeker after mode will be disappointed. They are pieces worthy of
Schumann in power of form; half exercises, half characteristic pieces,
reaching that height of technique where air and étude unite in the
closest bonds. The work which Cramer began has reached the height of
artistic achievement. For here, where meet knowledge, technical sense
of form, and poetic conception, the peculiar musical vein of the age
is found. The fugal “Widerspruch” [contradiction] is an artistic
construction that stands alone; “Anguish” is a penetrating tuneful
picture, which once more reminds us of Wagner; it is a foretaste of
Siegmund’s flight or of the Valkyrie Prologue.
The untitled Études Op. 70, which rank as his best work, stand out
as the forerunners of the Studies Op. 95. There is the same delicate
characteristic sense; they are a gallery of tone pictures, among
which the twelfth Étude in B flat minor is never to be forgotten.
It is a Night-Piece in the style of Schumann. But all is calculated
for human fingers, not for those of Liszt, like Op. 95. And here we
feel patiently after the essential nature of the musical Étude. We
observe the inner relation between mechanical and spiritual motion.
Expression and difficulty grow alongside; the straining of the fingers
is involuntarily the straining of the soul; their smooth gliding is
the gliding of emotion, and the stress of mind is loosened in the
muscles of the fingers as they move over the keys. It is thus that the
irreconcilable at last meet.
[Illustration: Parisian and London Pianists at the beginning of the
19th century.
L. Adam. Kalkbrenner. Cramer.]
[121] Weber conducted the Philharmonic in 1826, in which
year he died.
[122] This sort of thing is by no means without example
in our own time. The difficulty is very commonly solved
in English towns even of the size of Frankfort, by having
pianos sent from London.
[123] But the best bred evening party still (in London
at least) shouts at the top of its voice when it “hears
a master play.” See “Punch,” and Du Maurier, _passim_. A
striking illustration of the vulgarity of modern manners.
[124] The author means “Pearls of the Ocean,” “Fairy
Revels,” “Convent Bells,” and such like.
[125] It is convenient to refer these descriptions to
Chopin’s Studies, though of course they can be paralleled
elsewhere. Cf. Chopin’s Studies in C, in A minor, in F, etc.
[Illustration: Waltz by Schubert. Berlin Royal Bibliothek.]
The Romantics
Where definitions fail, the word appears at the right time. The
word proves the existence of things, even if they cannot be sharply
defined. The word is the artistic form of a transient emotion; it was
made for things which were nameless till its creation; it was girded
with associations which fastened themselves on to this conception.
Such a word is Romance. Romance is not a return to the popular, to
nature, nor to the mediæval, it is no love for the legendary or the
symbolic or the most delicate forms of the most delicate stirrings of
the soul. It was indeed the one of these things to one set of persons
and another for others; but in reality it is none of these and all of
these. If I say it is an _oppositum_ to _synthesis_, or intimateness
from the point of view of all possibilities, I have defined it very
coldly. But its essential point seems to be its reactionary character.
It aims not at raising structures, but at reading souls, and it finds
a thousand ways of so doing. These thousand ways cannot be crammed
into one definition. We strike only gently the chord of the word, so
symbolic, so harmoniously chiming. It is a feeling whose value is not
to be analysed.
Near the great architect Beethoven lived the first musical Romantic,
the well-beloved Franz Schubert. He felt the burden of existence as
only musicians can feel it. But he had inexhaustible fountains of
consolation, which sang to him melodies almost more profusely than
to Mozart, and he did his utmost to throw the melodies, without too
much pedantry or Titan-pride, into songs, symphonies, quartets,
and impromptus, as the inspiration took him. He had no long life
for working, but he used his time well. It is now many, many years
since his death, and still numbers of his works are unpublished.
His best teacher was the people, and their songs and dances. The
unsophisticated musical feeling, which came to light in this popular
song and national dance--the simple natural phrases, the speaking
soul, the genuine sense for drama--these were the formative principles
of his immortal songs, and these gave the character to his piano music
also. Men have been studying his numerous national dances as in a
Bible of the dance for fifty years. There are still rare and beautiful
flowers to be found among them; others have been picked out by the
virtuosos, and transformed to hothouse plants in many forms, not
always so stylish as Liszt’s Soirées de Vienne. The case has been the
same with his four-hand Marches, whether Caractéristique, Héroique, or
Militaire. If we return to their original forms, a surprising air as
from country meadows meets us.
He lives entirely in music. From the far land of invention float the
melodies, eternally varying, giving colour to the harmonies, and
pouring themselves out to their very last note. The ear cannot have
enough of them, and, full of the holiest delight, pursues them to the
end of their heavenly course. In Paradise there is no time; and these
melodies are a prologue to eternity. Schubert died at thirty-one.
His D minor quartet, one of the loveliest compositions ever written,
leads us to imagine that he would have been the greatest musician
of the century. But he has left us only the works of his youth--a
youth of intellectual intimateness and smiling sunshine. In delicacy
of musical feeling we put no one above him. He stands before us in
the small band of original and delicate minds, whose secret can make
the life of higher emotions happy. Let not him who has not delicate
fingers touch Schubert. To play him means to have a dainty touch. The
keyboard appears unmaterialised: only so much of the mechanism seems
to remain as is necessary to render living the conception of this
beauty. In peaceful hours we enjoy him most, and confess that there is
no tone-poet whom we love so deeply from the heart as Schubert.
In this, those things of their own accord are separated out, in which
Schubert did not follow only his natural impulse to the popular
song. He was in the first place no master or teacher of musical
construction. His scores are simple, and even in his four-handed duets
(he has left behind him duets of surpassing beauty) whole passages
could often be rendered as they stand by a single player.
Schubert never appears a slave to the arrangement he adopts; but the
movement flows so naturally from his pen that there is no want of
harmony between his idea and its realisation. He is just as little a
special artist of the form. He has written many sonatas--four-handed
and two-handed; but he cares little for the form. Where he can subject
his dainty ideas to this mould, as in the first three movements of
the duet in B flat major, he is interesting to us. When he cannot
easily do so, he has recourse to variations in the style of the time
or to all kinds of academic free fantasias. In this case he speedily
becomes antiquated. But we must again remember that he has left us
only youthful works. His latest sonatas, particularly those in A major
and in B flat major; his latest chamber-music and symphonies, the
wonderful Schumann-like F minor fantasia, and the Beethoven-like duet
“Lebensstürme” in rondo form, are more weighty in structure and show
him on the way to throw his great conceptions into more recognised
forms: in this style he would have grown into a great artist.
The “Wanderer” Fantasia stands on the boundary line. The method of
writing a free fantasia on a song-motive--on this occasion one of his
own--by which the ordinary four movements are preserved, was then _à
la mode_. That the last movement should begin with a fugato, which
soon passes over into more general virtuosity, was equally common. In
the more purely virtuoso passages, specially in the quite conventional
coda, Schubert is the very child of the Viennese school. The free
fantasias are rather in Hummel’s than in Beethoven’s style--preserving
a middle path between the two. The form is so free that from the waltz
movement of the scherzo to the weighty fugue, from the song of the
adagio to the conventional conclusion, almost all the styles of piano
music that exist are packed in. But if a song or a waltz rhythm or a
special tone expression appears, then we observe with what alacrity
Schubert sets about his work. He prepares it beforehand with a certain
effort. He caresses the new theme; for example, on the entrance of the
melodic E flat major theme in the first movement, in the dramatic deep
tremolo in the adagio, and in the pianissimo D flat major waltz in the
third movement.
Nothing is more distinctive of Schubert than the development of the
Fantasia Sonata Op. 78. The first movement hardly hangs together.
A wonderful theme, depending on delicate touch, is mingled with
empty technical intermediate passages. The Andante is a Volkslied,
arranged as in sonatas; as a whole treated somewhat feebly, but with
sudden small intermezzos, at first in F sharp major (bar 47), where
suspensions in Schubert’s true style sound in softest pianissimo in
the middle voices. In the third movement a ravishing minuet meets
us, running in cheerful rhythms, with a waltz-like conclusion which
anticipates one side of Schumann, and with a dainty trio in B major,
in bell-like tones and magical retardations such as Schubert himself
hardly surpassed. Thus a G sharp[126] in the chord of the dominant
seventh, with which the melodic chain is ornamentally interwoven, was
a discovery rich in wonders. And the last movement with its original
popular dance, which he overheard directly from the heart of the
people where the basses rumble below and the fiddle-bows spring on
the strings; with the two laughing trios, in which Johann Strauss
is entirely anticipated; national dances with a dainty melody,
which conclude so lingeringly in the spiritual chorale-tone (in C
major)--pictures like these music had not hitherto known. All kinds
of foreign national airs had, of course, been dealt with in artistic
style; and Schubert himself, in his brilliant Hungarian Divertissement
for four hands, has painted a gipsy picture with all his dexterity
in rhythm; but the German national airs had received but scanty
attention. Here, at last, we find the German folk-music, which found
in the Viennese dance-composers its popular embellishment, and in
Schumann its artistic treatment.
With his Impromptus and Moments Musicals, those small impressionist
forms, Schubert placed piano-literature upon a new basis. Here is
found that form of chamber music which is most peculiar to the piano
as a solo instrument with full harmony. It is not a sonata, which is
founded by the great laws of universal tonic art; nor a concerto,
which drags the piano before a many-headed multitude which delights in
distraction; nor an operatic fantasia or variation on an air, which
forbids the charm of free improvisation; no technical elaborated
étude, nor a scientifically constructed fugato;--but a piece which
brings single selected musical thoughts into a short artistic form,
no longer in extent than the tone-colour of the instrument permits;
yet, with all infelt genuineness, informed with the best effects of
the piano, which the player, as he composes in solitude, feels in
full intensity. Almost all Schubert’s pieces retain something of the
spirit of the time. Some are a kind of variations; others études, a
third class dances; but they are constantly more than mere echoes
of the time; they are founded on an inner genuineness, and much too
full in expression to permit of being included under any category
of the external. In Beethoven’s life we witnessed the way in which
a world-embracing genius gradually threw off the traditional form;
in Schubert we see how an intimate spirit gradually rises above the
style of the time. This development is included between the Sonatas
and the Wanderer Fantasia on the one hand, and the Moments Musicals
on the other. At the same period in which the technical musicians
accomplished the outward emancipation of the clavier, these short
pieces (Kurze Geschichten) made it inwardly free.
[Illustration: Lithograph of 1846, by J. Kriehuber (1801-1876).]
As Impromptus the two groups, Op. 90 and Op. 142, were published.
Those of the first group have all penetrated deeply into our musical
consciousness. All roads lead us back again to the first Impromptu
with its simple popular melody in two sections, which is varied in
so many extraordinary ways; and with that melodious middle-movement,
more joyous and ethereal, than any that had ever been heard before on
the pianoforte. Who can forget the second with the light étude-like
triplet-swinging in E flat major and the mighty B minor middle
section; or the third with its wonderful G flat major melody, its
divine modulations and its captivatingly simple conclusion, revealing
unexpected melodic wonders in a broken chord of the seventh; or the
fourth, a light floating figure with its short Volkslied intermezzi
and the long drawn out melody of the trio in C♯ minor--Schumann all
over!
The second group of Impromptus (Op. 142) stands below the first
in importance. It was with Schubert as with Mozart; good and bad
inspirations came to him alike, and he could not discriminate them.
Yet they contain the dainty A flat major piece, which demands nothing
but a gentle touch; and in the variations of the third Impromptu
(which is therefore no impromptu) the likeness to Schumann is once
more astonishing. It is a peculiar pleasure to detect Schumann in
Schubert, and it is a piece of historic justice which has often been
neglected.
More successful, indeed Schubert’s greatest achievement, was the
“Moments Musicals,” which appeared in 1828, the year of his death.
The first of these is a naturalistic free musical expatiation; the
second a gentle movement in A flat major; the third the well-known F
minor dance--in which a dance became a penetrating and sorrow-laden
tongue--the fourth the Bach-like C sharp minor moderato, with its
placid middle section in D flat major; the fifth a fantastic march
with a sharply cut rhythm; and the sixth, perhaps Schubert’s most
profound piano-piece, that reverie in still chords, which only once
are more violently shaken in order to lull us to sleep with its
pensive and dainty sorrow, its delicate connections, its singing
imitations, its magic enharmonics, and its sweet melodies rising
like flowers from the soft ground. The conclusion of the trio, in
the style of a popular chorale, with its harmonisation in thirds, is
(like many of his harmonic passages in octaves or sixths) exceedingly
characteristic of the popular nature of Schubert’s music.
We have been turning over the leaves of a book from which Schumann
and Chopin might have found matter to fill years of their lives. In
form and colour, melody and movement, the model was before them. This
modest man, who in his Vienna solitude wrote such things as these
for himself, loved a few good friends, but publicity he hated. A
composer who never appeared in public--was the like ever seen before?
In the aged Beethoven the world understood it; but in this young man
it could only reward it with indifference. He remained willingly
unknown, like so many of his companions in sorrow who wished to be
artists in themselves without relation to others, and without the
encumbrance of patronage. The times were altering in music as in
painting. The patronage of the State or of the Prince is disappearing;
the commissions the artist receives become fewer and more distasteful;
he becomes more intimate and is constrained to offer his works to the
public, and to supply what it will purchase. Supply and demand rule
art as well as anything else: but nowhere is the severance so painful.
Pensions are irksome, and official posts are not to be had otherwise
than indirectly. The struggle after the ideal which is the life of the
artist is purer than it ever was. The type which Feuerbach and Böcklin
represent in painting, that new type of artist who can be happy
without commissions and without honorarium, is first clearly exhibited
by Schubert in the musical world. Publicity, to which Beethoven at
first had recourse, and which he would have carried further had fate
not opposed, was impossible to Schubert. He had to live on a pension,
his applications for posts were rejected, publishers were timid, and
very slowly indeed did his songs win their way to favour. Goethe
never answered him on receiving his songs; and Beethoven, to whom he
shyly dedicated his Variations (Op. 10) as “admirer and worshipper,”
only learnt to know him in the last days. As he began, so he died. The
publishers had still to work through the whole century in order to
bring out his works, which they dedicated in very stylish manner to
Liszt, Mendelssohn, or Schumann: as Schubert closed his eyes he knew
as little as the world that his simple integrity had won a new realm
for art.
Some years after Schubert’s death, in November 1831, a certain Robert
Schumann published as his first work some Variations, whose theme
was formed on the name Abegg (A B E G G). It was easy to see that
the Countess Abegg, to whom they were dedicated, was a pseudonym for
a good lady, whom the author had once admired as a beauty without
otherwise troubling himself much about her. The theme was worked out
a little too painfully, and the Variations moved in eclectic style
among influences derived from Beethoven, Weber, and the contemporary
virtuosos; but their originality was nevertheless unmistakable. It
was not the worn-out contemporary style of variations; and many sound
traces of that naive dilettantism, which always stands at the cradle
of the new, were easily to be detected. Sudden pianissimo effects,
single selected technical motives, an original melodic gift for
singing with contrapuntal voice-parts and new forms of accompaniment,
rapid harmonic changes by the chord of the seventh, legendary romance
in the finale alla fantasia, the successive release of the notes of
a chord, from the lowest to the highest--all this led men to wait
eagerly for Schumann’s next work.