recast later without introducing much warmth of feeling, we observe
chiefly the strong influence of Bach, which informs the last movement.
If we look closely, indeed, we shall be often reminded of Bach
in the last works, particularly in the Symphonic Études. Certain
slurred ornamental figures, certain tricks of accompaniment, the
play of dotted and triplet rhythms, the canonic carrying-out of the
theme, left no doubt that Schumann had been trained on Bach, and
that he had strengthened his musical consciousness by the study of
a music in which there is not a superfluous line. The Letters make
this certain. In 1832 he sat over the Wohltemperiertes Klavier, his
Grammar, and occupied himself in analysing the fugues down to their
minutest ramifications. “The use of such a process is great, and has
a morally strengthening influence upon the whole man; for Bach was
a man, through and through; in him there is nothing half-finished,
nothing halting; all is written for eternity.” All this has a special
and peculiar influence on Schumann. The abstract music of a Bach is
mingled with the concrete representative secondary aims of romance,
which find an entrance all the more easily as this absolute art,
free from all words and all that is ephemeral, is by far the most
expressive to the profoundly musical spirit. Bach’s art expresses
every phase of feeling, and the emotions are so wide-embracing that
they never find a boundary in the domain of reality. This art is the
original realm of all transcendental desires. “The profound power of
combination, poetry and humour in the new music,” wrote Schumann in
1846, “has its origin for the most part in Bach. Mendelssohn, Bennett,
Chopin, Hiller, the so-called Romantics, as a whole, stand far nearer
to Bach than to Mozart; for as a whole they know Bach through and
through. I myself daily confess to this high power, to purify myself,
and to strengthen myself through him.”
Along with Bach was mingled in his mind the author Hoffmann. There
was a remarkable elective affinity in the sympathies of his nature.
The “profoundly-combining” Bach took the place of Jean Paul, and the
story-teller Hoffmann took the place of Schubert. The twists and
turns of a writer, whose style might be called “contrapuntal,” found
their continuation in the musician who brought all counterpoint into
a wonderful “incommensurable” harmony; and the popular simplicity of
a musician found its complement in the dreamy lyricism of a genius
who had formed perhaps a more beautiful anticipation of the whole
music of our century than its actual state has realised. This poet,
himself a musician, valued the most romantic of all arts, “one might
almost say, the only genuine romantic art; for its subject-matter is
the eternal: music opens to man an unknown realm which has nothing
in common with the external world of sense, and in which he leaves
behind all defined feelings in order to give himself up to an
inexpressible longing.” And the poet leads us into a realm of magic.
In the “Kreisleriana,” the garden into which the author leads us is
full of tone and song. The stranger comes up to the young squire and
tells him of many distant and unknown lands, and strange men and
animals; and his speech dies away into a wonderful tone, in which he
expresses unknown and mysterious things, intelligibly, yet without
words. But the castle maiden follows his enticements, and they meet
every midnight at the old tree, none venturing to approach too near
the strange melodies that sound therefrom. Then the castle maiden lies
pierced through under the tree, and the lute is broken; but from her
blood grow mosses of wonderful colour over the stone, and the young
Chrysostom hears the nightingale, which since then makes its nest and
sings its song in the tree. At home his father is accompanying his old
songs on the clavicymbal, and songs, mosses, and castle-maiden, are
all fused in his mind into one. In the garden of tone and song all
sorts of internal melodies rise in his heart, and the murmur of the
words gives them their breath. He tries to set them to the clavier,
but they refuse to come forth from their hiding-places. He closes the
instrument, and listens to see whether the songs will not now sound
forth more clearly and brightly; for--“I knew well that the tones must
dwell there as if enchanted.”
Out of a world like this floated all sorts of compositions into
Schumann’s mind, as once from the “Flegeljahre” of Jean Paul. Thence
came the “Scenes of Childhood,” where we listen to tales of foreign
lands and men, and dream by the hearth, and play Blind-Man’s Buff,
and then bend forward to hear, for the Poet is speaking. They are his
miniature painting; of a gentle ineffable grace. Only a “Romantic” can
love children thus. Schumann himself had a particular fondness for
these little pieces, whose smallness was their very essence.
[Illustration: Louis Böhner, the original of Hoffmann’s Kreisler.
Engraved by Freytag.]
From Hoffmann also came the inspiration of the “Kreisleriana,” so
called after Hoffmann’s tale of the eccentric Kapellmeister Kreisler.
In 1834 Ludwig Böhner, the original of Kreisler, met Schumann. Once
“as famous as Beethoven,” he jeered at men till they now jeer at him.
In his Improvisations, here and there, we catch a glimpse of the old
brilliancy; but elsewhere it is all dark and waste. “Had I time,” says
Schumann, “I should like to write _ana_ of Böhner to the papers. He
himself has given me plenty of material. In his life there has been
too much both of joy and of sorrow.” Here was a happy conjuncture for
Schumann’s genius. A suggestive bit of life, and its poetic setting
by Hoffmann, which had first appeared to him as literature, was
transformed into music, and a work was born whose title, as so often,
he borrowed from a fiction with whose contents it had but little
connection, except as suggesting the groundwork. The “Kreisleriana”
was his greatest work. The artist who brings life itself, gently
transfigured by literary art, into musical emotion, never before or
since became so clear a personality. The piano has advanced into the
midst of a life-culture. A thousand threads run from all sides into
this intimate web in which the whole lyrical devotion of a musical
soul is interwoven. The piano is the orchestra of the heart. The joys
and sorrows which are expressed in these pieces were never put into
form with more sovereign power. For the external form Bach gave the
impulse; for the content, Hoffmann. The garlanded roses of the middle
section of No. 1, the shimmering blossoms of the “inverted” passage in
the “Langsamer” of No. 2, the immeasurable depth of the emotions in
the slow pieces (4 and 6), the bass unfettered by accent, in the final
bars of No. 8, leading down to the final whisperings, are all among
the happiest of inspirations.
[Illustration: The last piece in Schumann’s “Kreisleriana,” main
movement. After the autograph in the possession of Baroness Wilhelm
von Rothschild, Frankfort a.M. Differs from the printed edition, being
simpler and more massive.]
The Kreisleriana are dedicated to Chopin; the Fantasia Op. 17 to
Liszt. We are on the height on which the first artists of the piano
are greeting each other; on which breathes the purest atmosphere of
this intimate music; we are on the heights of a culture which has
become the dominating power of the world. The Fantasia is, so to
speak, a confession of this devotion. In its first movement there
is an undefinable romantic feeling as of the words woven round a
legendary theme (he called it first the “Ruin”), with mysterious
passages, answering voice-parts, mystic ghostly calls. In the
second there is the grand triumph, a panegyric on technique and
toil--he called it the “Gate of Victory.” In the third is the
poetic transfiguration (at first called “Star-picture”), with its
ethereal dances and the dying sound of harps, and the sweeping
mist, broken chords with pedal, resolved in rubato, over which
descend the mournful melodies.[130] The first movement is not free
from the variation-technique of the time; the second is a tribute
to virtuosity; the third, a half Schubert. Contrasted with the
Kreisleriana of 1838 we recognise an earlier style of 1836, and we
wonder at the strong power of progressive development in Schumann--a
power, which, strange to say, some would deny to him. But the Fantasia
was so happily _felt_ that it despised time and still to-day stands
in the forefront. As there are Études which seem to hold out a hand
to Romance, so here Romance held out a hand to technique; and the
Fantasia, in its three forms, remained a classic monument of all the
contemporary tendencies. When Schumann published it he cut out the
old inscriptions, its profits being devoted to assisting in erecting
the Beethoven monument at Bonn, and wrote above the first movement
this motto from Schlegel: “Through every tone there passes, to him who
deigns to list, in varied earthly dreaming, a tone of gentleness.”
In the productive year 1838, before the Scenes of Childhood, Schumann
had written three books of “Novellettes,” which were now published for
the first time and dedicated to Henselt. Springing from his happiest
period the music flows as if of its own accord, and its framework
is admirable. They are the most subtle pieces conceivable for the
piano, and the most popular of his compositions, neat and regular
music. Their construction is transparent; the sections arranged
for contrasted effects. In the first piece we have the March, the
Cantabile, and the Canon; in the second the glitter of semiquavers and
the delicate rocking Intermezzo; in the third the humorous Staccato
and the wild B minor section; in the fourth the dance and the song
mingle with the staccatos of the sequences; in the fifth a Polonaise,
in a style approached by few, and Intermezzi in legato, cantabile,
and staccato; in the sixth and seventh the effective contrasts of
scherzo, canon, and cantabile; in the eighth an air in duet alternates
with several trios; all kinds of sections are attached, a voice from
afar, and free repetitions, as if everything left over had been thrown
into it. They are unsurpassed, wonderfully dainty pieces; but the
Kreisleriana were an experience.
The charming smoothness of the Novellettes was no longer alien to
Schumann’s feelings. The older he grew the more he strove to attain
a “dry light,” which might easily prove dangerous to his romantic
temperament. He began to despise the exuberance of his youthful works.
We cannot, in reading the last piano works of Schumann, restrain a
certain feeling of pain. Where once the stream bubbled and sparkled,
it now flowed too evenly; where before the music was _felt_, it
is now constructed. A new ideal comes slowly into the circle of
Schumann’s sympathies, and that was Mendelssohn. He not only admired
Mendelssohn’s greatness, placing him perhaps even above Chopin, but,
as his works show, he envied his constraining plastic art, which
possibly he mistook for monumental calm.
In piano-literature Mendelssohn is the composer for young girls, the
elegant romancist of the drawing-room. From the sphere of polite
literature, where passion must be trimmed and neat, and where there is
no sentence passed without amiability, and a smiling _laissez-faire_
rules the day, there penetrates into glowing romance the limitation
of this neatness, and a formality well adapted to the drawing-room.
The old Volkslieder, the simple Ritornells, the tones of aspiration in
forgotten old airs, the dances of elves, the moonlight love-scenes,
are all brought on to a parquet for the delectation of comfortable
people. It is a gilt-edged lyricism, without any unbefitting
exhibition of unseemly feeling; a mere art of perfumery compared
with Bach and Schubert. The development of the pieces shall exhibit
nothing to shock; it shall run on in the most intelligible manner. A
dainty accompaniment-figure is formed, which plays some bars alone;
then follows the melodious and soothing theme, which moves in certain
sequences and delights to rock itself to and fro on related degrees
of the scale. The strophic divisions are clearly defined; small
cadenzas mark the main sections; and at the conclusion there appears
a miniature canon or a vigorous episode, which leaves behind a good
impression on the mind of the satisfied listener.
At the head of this enormous branch of piano-literature stands
Mendelssohn. His “Songs without words,” of which six books appeared
in his life and two more after his death, gave the decisive form to
this class of Short Story in music. All the technical devices of the
time, the wide stretches, the broken accompaniments, the multiplicity
of rhythms, are here adapted to the drawing-room. The Volkslieder are
put, as it were, into evening dress. That in A minor is surrounded
towards the conclusion with octaves, which are merely technical, and
without emotional significance. The Funeral March, compared with that
of a Beethoven, is as if it were written for a set of marionettes. The
Spring Song is, so to speak, set on wires. And all is so beautiful, so
objectionably beautiful! It tells us all through that it is beautiful,
and the composer moves his head to and fro with the music, and says,
“How beautiful it is!” Until at last, when we have grown to man’s
estate, we can endure it all no longer; or at most we take up once
again from time to time this or that song, preferably one in quick
time--perhaps the Spinning-Song, the best of all.[131]
From these drawing-room romances of Mendelssohn one piece is to be
taken apart, as equally pleasing both to young and to old. This
is the Elf-music. Such music, with its gay dancing of gnomes,
intermingled with a slightly sentimental air, was wonderfully suited
to Mendelssohn’s genius. He never surpassed his overture to the
Midsummer-Night’s Dream, written at seventeen. There are four of
these “Elf” or “Kobold” pieces for the piano. The first, in the
Character-Pieces, Op. 7, begins in E major, shoots rapidly past,
and ends very daintily in the minor. The second, Op. 16, 2, begins
on the contrary in E minor, and concludes in a very spirited fashion
in the major--a very poetical little Battle of the Mice, with tiny
fanfares and dances, all kinds of squeaks, and runnings to and fro
of a captivating grace. The third is the Rondo Capriccioso (Op. 14),
for which all piano-players have a deadly hatred, but which is much
prettier than we are inclined to think to-day, when it is worn out.
Finally we have the F sharp minor Scherzo, which was written for the
“Album des Pianistes,” with dotted, staccato, and singing themes, and
stands out among his pieces.
[Illustration: Head of Mendelssohn, after Hildebrand.]
Mendelssohn was one of the few great musicians, whose whole life,
from cradle to the grave, was lived in sunshine and happiness. From
his joyous youth to his European renown as head of the Leipzig
Conservatorium his life was a round of serenity, and at its zenith he
might well die. Sunshine and happiness are in his works; storm never
breaks in, no sigh moves to tears. His storms and sighings never
forget their artistic calm. His pieces cast friendly glances on all
sides, and are quite conscious of the friendly glances they receive in
return. As beautifully as their author played--he played rarely but
willingly in concerts--they present their technique, so popular, so
charming; sounding more difficult to play than they are. The technical
content is chiefly rapid staccato, whether of single notes or chords;
the ornamentation of melodies in arpeggio; brilliant repetitions
obtained by rapid alternation of the two hands; free obligato use of
the pedal; and a showy use of a facile right hand.
These find their most popular expression in the conclusion of the
Serenade, in the first movement of the D minor Concerto, and in the E
minor Prelude. Popular even ad nauseam are the Concert-pieces, the B
minor capriccio (the favourite fantasia with march-conclusion), and
the two piano concertos, all of which are practically in one movement,
with partial repeats. In technique these appear to owe an obligation
to Weber, for whom Mendelssohn had a heartfelt admiration.
The third group of Mendelssohn’s piano works, along with the “Short
Stories” and the concertos, are the “Bachiana,” or, more properly,
“Handeliana.” An æsthetic historic sense is a rooted characteristic
of the romantic spirit. Mendelssohn’s studies in Bach and Handel had
a great influence on his development, and are plainly shown in some
of the “Seven Character-Pieces,” with their soft, gentle, old-world
conduct of the melodies, and the clever fugal movement which seems
to set an ancient counterpoint on to Mendelssohnian harmonies. Here
belongs the Fantasia, Op. 28, with its three contrapuntal movements;
also the famous E minor fugue and its companions in Op. 35, with the
appended chorale and the pompously smooth partwriting, fall into
this place. It is constructed entirely differently from the fugue
of Bach, which grows up from within; it is a grafting of a fugato on
the trunk of a drawing-room piece. Finally, we recall the “Variations
sérieuses,” composed in 1841, the purest, most solid, most massive
work that Mendelssohn ever wrote for the piano, without a suspicion of
triviality, filled full with intellectual outlines and harmonies, a
splendid erection, but--throughout dependent on Schumann.
We have thus returned to Schumann, whom Mendelssohn so nobly repaid
for his admiration. This elegant composer, who, whether as poet, as
concertist, or as a follower of Bach, was always equally clear and
plastic, might well appear to Schumann the fulfilment of his own aims.
He had not wavered as to whether he was called to be a musician,
though he had perhaps regarded business as the easier course. At his
pieces he had toiled as Heine toiled at one of those smooth-flowing
poems of his. The doubt may well have often recurred to him whether
the flow was checked. But from this Mendelssohn the music flowed so
easily from the fingers, and stood so clear and transparent before
him. At one time he believes that the stream is clear, and he rejoices
over the speed with which he finishes twelve sheets in a week. This
work was the “Humoreske,” which entirely puts aside the earlier
fragmentary romance, and throws all, joy and sorrow, into the same
crucible. Thus we gain a piece bearing all the marks of decadent
imitation of Bach’s traditions, and even of those of Schumann himself,
in spite of isolated, delicate, lyrical traits, which occur specially
in the G minor section (Einfach und Zart). We are now in March 1839.
Schumann writes to Clara, asking her why she chooses the Carnival to
introduce him to people who do not know him. Why not rather choose the
Fantasie Stücke, in which one does not nullify the other, and in which
there is a comfortable breadth? “You like best storm and lightning
at once, and always something new that has never been.” Then also
he put his “Arabesque” and his “Blumen-stück” together, which has
nothing but the title in common with Jean Paul. As a matter of fact,
nothing was new, and everything had been. It had become a question
whether the limits of the possibilities of the piano had not already
been overpassed. As Op. 22 he brought out the Sonata in G minor,
which he had composed earlier; a piece, compared with the F sharp
minor, rounded and of satisfying content. The final pithy movement
he replaced by one of neater and smoother character. It is sad to
hear him, in his letters, speaking with great _empressement_ of the
Nacht-stücke (Op. 23) and then to find that there is nothing special
in them. As Op. 26 appeared the “Carnival Jest” (Faschings-schwank)
which brought back his old style of the “short story,” but forced
into a sort of sonata-arrangement. The vigorous “Reveillé” in F
sharp major, the fine painting of the restless bustle, the beautiful
Romance, the delicate simplicity of the Scherzino, with its canonic
conclusion, the singing Intermezzo, which in breadth and value on
the whole surpassed Mendelssohn--all these have ill prepared us for
the great falling off in the Finale. This piece was Schumann’s last
great utterance on the “subjective” piano. In the meanwhile the Song
had taken him captive, and dominated his whole nature. In Schumann
development proceeded almost according to classes. After the Song came
chamber-music, then chorus, then the symphony.
Among his later piano-pieces we find all sorts in various
styles--partly interesting as showing an advance upon himself,
partly, alas, mere decadent imitations of himself. The fulness of
ideas and of titles is quite astonishing in his “Jugendalbum,” in his
“Albumblätter” containing the dainty Slumber Song, and in the “Bunte
Blätter” containing the Geschwind-marsch. The most delicate aftermath
of Romance proper was the “Waldscenen” in which the “Eintritt” and the
“Verrufene Stelle” are worthy of a musical Hoffmann. The Hunting Song
is in the style of Mendelssohn. As late fruits of the intimate piano
lyric appear the sweet variations for two pianos, which we cannot
choose but love, the four-handed Eastern Pictures (Bilder aus dem
Osten), in which Chopin plays a part, and the Songs of Early Morning,
and to Bettina, which show a beautiful touch of a later style, often
reaching the borders of motives from Parsifal. But most important
were certain concertos. Of these the limpid A minor, dedicated to
Hiller--the first movement of which was composed earlier--in its
freedom and colouring recalling Beethoven, and finally showing traces
of Chopin’s influence, is a perfect work. Finally, we must not omit
the Concert Allegro (Op. 134) dedicated to Brahms, a brilliant
creation, often recalling Bach, with a theme very much in the style
of Brahms, and many interesting repetitions of earlier figures of
Schumann’s own. Why has it been almost forgotten?
Like Schubert throughout his music, so has Schumann in his
chamber-music left us his youth. He broke off the regular practice
of it at about the same time of life as that at which Schubert
died. During the next fourteen years a slow decline in the artistic
freshness of his works made itself noticeable; and finally, alas, his
genius deserted him.
* * * * *
At this time some one wrote: “Thalberg is a king, Liszt a prophet,
Chopin a poet, Herz a lawyer, Kalkbrenner a troubadour, Madame Pleyel
a sibyl, Döhler a pianist.” The reader will observe that Schumann
is not even mentioned in this list. In Paris, as yet, he did not
count. There was an utter absence of the frivolous in his music, and
it had none of the qualities which were likely to conquer the great
world. Chopin scarcely ever required his pupils to play the works of
Schumann, and would seem to have had very little taste for them. On
the other hand, it was Schumann who gave an impulse to the popularity
of Chopin’s works in his magazine, as early as the appearance of the
Variations on the theme “Reich’ mir die Hand” (Op. 2). Indeed, the
rapid and enduring fame in Germany of Schumann’s only true rival was
due to Schumann himself.
“Chopin a poet.” It has become a very bad habit to place this poet
in the hands of our youth. The concertos and polonaises being put
aside, no one lends himself worse to youthful instruction than
Chopin. Because his delicate touches inevitably seem perverse to the
youthful mind, he has gained the name of a morbid genius. The grown
man who understands how to play Chopin, whose music begins where
that of another leaves off, whose tones show the supremest mastery
in the tongue of music,--such a man will discover nothing morbid in
him. Chopin, a Pole, strikes sorrowful chords, which do not occur
frequently to healthy normal persons. But why is a Pole to receive
less justice than a German? We know that the extreme of culture is
closely allied to decay; for perfect ripeness is but the foreboding of
corruption. Children, of course, do not know this. And Chopin himself
would have been much too noble ever to lay bare his mental sickness to
the world. And his greatness lies precisely in this, that he preserves
the mean between immaturity and decay.
His greatness is his aristocracy. He stands among musicians in his
faultless vesture, a noble from head to foot. The sublimest emotions,
towards whose refinement whole generations had tended, the last things
in our soul, whose foreboding is interwoven with the mystery of the
Judgment Day, have in his music found their form. At this Judgment
Day appears to be expressed what man kept dark within himself, and
shuddering sought to hide from the light. Now it has become free
without becoming plebeian; it has been uttered without becoming
trivial. This miracle is sung by geniuses, who are not cold as marble,
nor of such unreal beauty that we, to our horror, are constrained to
believe that there is an anti-human classicism. No; the angels bear
those delicate features as they weave nobility and joy into one.
These are Polish piquancies, tender and shining eyes of inner fire,
with happy heavy lids, and gently curved outlines, in which pride and
spirit blend together; speaking lips, which have something sweet to
say, and gentle, melting contours.
[Illustration: Chopin. Anonymous Lithograph, after portrait by Ary
Scheffer (1795-1858).]