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CHOPIN
AND
OTHER MUSICAL ESSAYS
BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
SPAIN AND MOROCCO. 12mo, $1.25.
THE PACIFIC COAST SCENIC TOUR.
Illustrated. 8vo, $2.50.
CHOPIN, AND OTHER MUSICAL ESSAYS.
12mo, $1.50.
WAGNER AND HIS WORKS. With Portraits.
Two Volumes. Crown 8vo, $4.00.
CHOPIN
AND
OTHER MUSICAL ESSAYS
BY
HENRY T. FINCK
AUTHOR OF "ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY"
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1894
COPYRIGHT, 1889, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
TROW'S
PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY,
NEW YORK.
RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED TO
MRS. JEANNETTE M. THURBER
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. CHOPIN, THE GREATEST GENIUS OF THE PIANOFORTE, 1
II. HOW COMPOSERS WORK, 59
III. SCHUMANN, AS MIRRORED IN HIS LETTERS, 111
IV. MUSIC AND MORALS, 141
V. ITALIAN AND GERMAN VOCAL STYLES, 183
VI. GERMAN OPERA IN NEW YORK, 233
I
CHOPIN
THE GREATEST GENIUS OF THE PIANOFORTE
Leipsic, the centre of the world's music trade, exports about one
hundred thousand dollars' worth of music to America every year. I do
not know how much of this sum is to be placed to the account of
Chopin, but a leading music dealer in New York told me that he sold
three times as many of Chopin's compositions as of any other romantic
or classical composer. This seems to indicate that Chopin is popular.
Nevertheless, I believe that what Liszt wrote in 1850, a year after
the death of Chopin--that his fame was not yet as great as it would be
in the future--is as true to-day as it was forty years ago. Chopin's
reputation has been constantly growing, and yet many of his deepest
and most poetic compositions are almost unknown to amateurs, not to
speak of the public at large. A few of his least characteristic pieces
are heard in every parlor, generally in a wofully mutilated condition,
but some of his most inspired later works I have never heard played
either in private or in the concert hall, although I am sure that if
heard there they would be warmly applauded.
There is hardly a composer concerning whom so many erroneous notions
are current as concerning Chopin, and of all the histories of music I
have seen that of Langhans is the only one which devotes to Chopin an
amount of space approximately proportionate to his importance. One of
the most absurd of the misconceptions is that Chopin's genius was born
in full armor, and that it did not pass through several stages of
development, like that of other composers. Chopin did display
remarkable originality at the very beginning, but the apparent
maturity of his first published works is due to the fact that he
destroyed his earliest efforts and disowned those works which are
known as posthumous, and which may have created confusion in some
minds by having received a higher "opus" number than his last works.
Another misconception regarding Chopin is that his latest works are
morbid and unintelligible. The same charge was brought by philistines
against the best works of Beethoven, Schumann, and Wagner. The fact is
that these last works are of an almost matchless harmonic depth and
originality, as superior to his earlier works as Wagner's last music
dramas are to his first operas. I make this comparison with Wagner
advisedly because, although I have the most exalted notions of
Wagner's grandeur and importance, I do not for a moment hesitate to
say that in his own sphere Chopin is quite as original and has been
almost as revolutionary and epoch-making as Wagner. Schumann was the
first to recognize the revolutionary significance of Chopin's style.
"Chopin's works," he says, "are cannons buried in flowers;" and in
another place he declares that he can see in "Chopin's G minor
Nocturne a terrible declaration of war against a whole musical past."
Chopin, himself, modest as he was in his manners, wrote to his teacher
Elsner, in 1831, when he was twenty-two years of age: "Kalkbrenner
will not be able to break my perhaps bold but noble determination to
create a new epoch in art."
Now, why has the world been so slow in recognizing that Chopin stands
in the very front rank of creative musicians? One reason doubtless is
that he was so quiet and retiring in his personal disposition. His
still, small voice was lost in the din of musical warfare. He warmly
defended the principles of the romantic school, if necessary, and had
decided opinions of other musicians, especially of the popular
pianists of his day who vitiated the public taste with their show
pieces; but he generally kept them to himself or confided them only to
his friends, whom he even occasionally implored to keep them secret.
Had he, like Richard Wagner, attacked everybody, right and left, who
stood in the way of the general recognition of his genius, his cause
would have doubtless assumed greater prominence in the eyes of the
public, even though the parlor piano does not afford so much
play-ground for warfare as the operatic stage.
The chief reason, however, why musical authorities have so long
hesitated to acknowledge that Chopin is one of the very greatest
explorers and pioneers in the domain of their art, is to be found in
what, for want of a better term, may be called æsthetic Jumboism. When
the late lamented Jumbo was in New York he attracted so much attention
that his colleagues, although but little inferior in size, had "no
show" whatever. Everybody crowded around Jumbo, stuffing him with
bushels of oranges and apples, while the other elephants were entirely
ignored. As elephants are intelligent animals, is it not probable that
Pilot, the next in size to Jumbo, went mad and had to be shot because
he was jealous of the exclusive attentions bestowed on his rival? In
æsthetics, this Jumboism, this exaggerated desire for mammoth
dimensions, seems to be a trait of the human mind which it is
difficult to eradicate. It is a suggestive fact that the morbid, sham
æstheticism which prevailed in England a few years ago, chose for its
symbol the uncouth sunflower. And many who know that a sunflower is
less beautiful and fragrant than a violet, will nevertheless, on
visiting a picture gallery, give most of their attention to the large
canvases, though the smaller ones may be infinitely more beautiful. It
cannot be said that the critics of art or literature follow the
popular disposition to measure genius with a yard-stick; but in music
there seems to be a general tendency to do this. Liszt remarks,
apropos, in his work on Chopin: "The value of the sketches made by
Chopin's extremely delicate pencil has not yet been acknowledged and
emphasized sufficiently. It has become customary in our days to regard
as great composers only those who have written at least half a dozen
operas, as many oratorios, and several symphonies."
Even Schumann, and Elsner, Chopin's teacher, seem to have been
affected a little by this irrational way of looking at music.
Schumann, in a complimentary notice of Chopin's nocturnes, expresses
his regrets that the composer should confine himself so strictly to
the pianoforte, whereas he might have influenced the development of
music in all its branches. He adds, however, on second thought, that
"to be a poet one need not have written ponderous volumes; one or two
poems suffice to make a reputation, and Chopin has written such."
Elsner who was unusually liberal in his views of art, and who
discovered and valued his pupil's originality long before Schumann
did, nevertheless bowed before the fetish of Jumboism in so far as to
write to Chopin in Paris that he was anxious, before he departed this
Vale of Tears, to hear an opera from his pen, both for his benefit,
and for the glory of his country. Chopin took this admonition to heart
sufficiently to ask a friend to prepare for him a libretto; but that
is as far as the project ever went. Chopin must have felt
instinctively that his individual style of miniature painting would be
as ineffective on the operatic stage, where bold, _al fresco_ painting
is required, as his soft and dreamy playing would have been had he
taken his piano from the parlor and placed it in a meadow.
Besides Chopin's abhorrence of musical warfare and his avoidance of
the larger and more imposing forms of the opera, symphony, and
oratorio, there were other causes which retarded the recognition of
his transcendent genius. The unprecedented originality of his style,
and the distinct national coloring of his compositions, did not meet
with a sympathetic appreciation in Germany and Vienna, when he first
went there to test his musical powers. Some of the papers indeed had a
good word for him, but, as in the case of Liszt and later of
Rubinstein, it was rather for the pianist than for the composer. On
his first visit to Vienna he was greatly petted, and he found it easy
to get influential friends who took care that his concerts should be
a success, because he played for their benefit, asking no pecuniary
recompense. But when, some years later, he repeated his visit, and
tried to play for his own pecuniary benefit, the influential friends
were invisible, and the concert actually resulted in a deficit.
Chopin's letters contain unmistakable evidence of the fact that, with
some exceptions, the Germans did not understand his compositions. At
his first concert in Vienna, he writes, "The first allegro in the F
minor concerto (not intelligible to all) was indeed rewarded with
'Bravo!' but I believe this was rather because the audience wished to
show that they appreciated serious music than because they were able
to follow and appreciate such music." And regarding the fantasia on
Polish airs he says that it completely missed its mark: "There was
indeed some applause by the audience, but obviously only to show the
pianist that they were not bored." The ultra-Germans, he writes in
another letter, did not appear to be quite satisfied; and he relates
that one of these, on being asked, in his presence, how he liked the
concert, at once changed the subject of conversation, obviously in
order not to hurt his feelings. In a third letter, in which he gives
his parents an account of his concert in Breslau, in 1830, he says
that, "With the exception of Schnabel, whose face was beaming with
pleasure, and who patted me on the shoulder every other moment, none
of the other Germans knew exactly what to make of me;" and he adds,
with his delicious irony, that "the connoisseurs could not exactly
make out whether my compositions really were good or only seemed so."
Criticisms culled from contemporary newspaper notices and other
sources emphasize the fact that the Germans were at that time blind to
the transcendent merits of Chopin's genius. The professional critics,
after their usual manner, found fault with the very things which we
to-day admire most in him--the exotic originality of the style, and
the delightful Polish local color in which all his fabrics are "dyed
in the wool," as it were. How numerous these adverse criticisms were,
may best be inferred from the frequency with which Schumann defended
Chopin in his musical paper and sneered at his detractors. "It is
remarkable," he writes, "that in the very droughty years preceding
1830, in which one should have thanked Heaven for every straw of
superior quality, criticism, which it is true, _always lags behind
unless it emanates from creative minds_, persisted in shrugging its
shoulders at Chopin's compositions--nay, that one of them had the
impudence to say that all they were good for was to be torn to
pieces." In another article, after speaking in the most enthusiastic
terms of Chopin's trio, in which "every note is music and life," he
exclaims, "Wretched Berlin critic, who has no understanding for these
things, and never will have--poor fellow!" And seven years later, in
1843, he writes, with fine contempt for his critical colleagues, that
"for the typical reviewers Chopin never did write, anyway." And this,
be it remembered, was only six years before Chopin's death.
Not a few of the composers and composerlings of the period joined the
professional critics in their depreciation of Chopin's works. Field
called his "a talent of the sick chamber." Moscheles, while admitting
Chopin's originality, and the value of his pianistic achievements,
confessed that he disliked his "harsh, inartistic, incomprehensible
modulations," which often appeared "artificial and forced" to
him--these same modulations which to-day transport us into the seventh
heaven of delight! Mendelssohn's attitude toward Chopin was somewhat
vacillating. He defended him in a letter against his sister's
criticisms, and assured her that if she had heard some of Chopin's
compositions "as he himself played them" for him, she too would have
been delighted. He adds that Chopin had just completed "a most
graceful little nocturne," of which he remembered much, and was going
to play it for his brother Paul. Nevertheless, he did not recommend
the pupils at the Leipsic Conservatory to study Chopin's works, and
various utterances of his are on record showing that he had a decided
artistic antipathy for the exotic products of Chopin's pen. To give
only one instance. In one of the letters to Moscheles, first printed
in _Scribner's Magazine_ for February, 1888, he complains that "a book
of mazurkas by Chopin, and a few new pieces of his are so mannered
that they are hard to stand."
I have dwelt so much on the attitude of the Germans toward Chopin,
because I am convinced that in this attitude lies one of the main
reasons why no one has hitherto dared to place him in the front rank
of composers, side by side with Bach, Beethoven, and Wagner. For the
Germans are the _tonangebende_ (the standard-setting) nation in music
to-day, and, as there seems to be a natural antipathy between the
Slavic and the Teutonic mind, the Germans are apt, like Mendelssohn,
to regard as mannerism what is simply the exotic fragrance which
betrays a foreign nationality. The ultro-Teutons still persist in
their depreciation of Chopin. In the latest edition of Brockhaus's
"Conservations-Lexicon" we read, apropos to Chopin's larger works,
that "he was deficient in the profounder musical attainments"(!) Dr.
Hanslick, generally considered the leading German critic of the
period, in a 534-page collection of criticisms, discussing twenty
concert seasons in Vienna, has only about half a dozen and by no
means complimentary references to Chopin. And even the late Louis
Ehlert, in his appreciative essay on Chopin, comes to the conclusion
that Chopin is certainly not to be ranked with such giants as Bach and
Beethoven. This is Teutonism, pure and simple. No doubt Chopin is, in
some respects, inferior to Bach and Beethoven, but in other respects
he is quite as unquestionably superior to them. He wrote no mammoth
symphonies, but there is a marvellous wealth and depth of ideas in his
smaller works--enough to supply half a dozen ordinary symphony and
opera writers with ideas for a lifetime. His works may be compared to
those men of genius in whose under-sized bodies dwelt a gigantic mind.
Schumann appears to have been the only contemporary composer who did
not underrate Chopin. Whether he would have gone so far as to rank him
with the greatest of the German composers, I cannot say, for he avoids
direct comparisons. But if imitation is the sincerest form of
flattery, then Schumann flattered Chopin more than any other master,
for his pianoforte works are much more in the manner of Chopin than of
Bach or Beethoven. I do not mean direct imitation, but that
unconscious adoption of Chopin's numerous innovations in the treatment
of the piano and of musical style, which are better evidence of
influence than the borrowing of an idea or two. He himself testified
to the "intimate artistic relations" between him and Chopin.
Moreover, his praise of Chopin is always pitched in such a high key
that it would seem as if praise could no higher go. It was he who
first proclaimed Chopin's genius authoritatively, and to this fact he
often referred subsequently, with special pride. The very first
article in his volumes of criticisms is devoted to Chopin's variations
on "La Ci Darem'," published as "opus 2." In those days, Schumann used
to give his criticisms a semi-dramatic form. On this occasion he
represents his _alter ego_, Eusebius, as rushing into the room with a
new composition, and the exclamation "Hats off, gentlemen! a genius!"
He then analyzes the variations in glowing poetic language and
rapturously exclaims at the end that "there is genius in every bar."
And this was only one of the _early_ works of Chopin, in which he has
by no means attained his full powers. Of another quite early work, the
second concerto, he writes that it is a composition "which none of us
can approach except it be with the lips to kiss the hem;" and later
on, the Preludes, the most inspired of his works, led Schumann to
exclaim that Chopin "is and remains the boldest and noblest artistic
spirit of the time."
Schumann would have found it difficult to induce any of his countrymen
to endorse his exalted opinion of Chopin, but the Hungarian Liszt
joined hands with him heartily, and pronounced Chopin "an artist of
the first rank." "His best works," he says, "contain numerous
combinations of which it must be said that they did nothing less than
create an epoch in the treatment of musical style. Bold, brilliant,
enchanting, his pieces _conceal their depth behind so much grace,
their erudition behind so much charm_, that it is difficult to
emancipate one's self from their overpowering magic and estimate them
according to their theoretic value. This fact is already recognized by
some competent judges, and it will be more and more generally realized
when the progress made in art during the Chopin epoch is carefully
studied."
That Elsner, Chopin's teacher, detected his pupil's originality, has
already been stated. Fortunately he allowed it a free rein instead of
trying to check and crush it, as teachers are in the habit of doing.
But there are some passages in Chopin's early letters which seem to
indicate that the general public and the professional musicians in his
native Poland were not so very much in advance of the Germans in
recognizing his musical genius. Liszt doubts whether Chopin's national
compositions were as fully appreciated by his countrymen as the work
of native poets; and Chopin writes to a friend, apropos of his second
concert at Warsaw: "The _élite_ of the musical world will be there;
but I have little confidence in their musical judgment--Elsner of
course excepted." Elsewhere he complains of a patriotic admirer who
had written that the Poles would some day be as proud of Chopin as the
Germans were of Mozart. And when in addition to this the editor of a
local paper told him he had in type a sonnet on him, Chopin was
greatly alarmed, and begged him not to print it; for he knew that such
homage would create envy and enemies, and he declared that after that
sonnet was published he would not dare to read any longer what the
papers said about him.
Chopin's want of confidence in the judgment of his countrymen showed
that, after all, the national Polish element in his compositions was
not the main cause why they were not rated at once at their true
value. It was their novelty of form, harmonic depth and freedom of
modulation, that made them for a long time cavïare to the general.
This was again proved when he went to Paris. Chopin was a Pole only on
his mother's side, his father having been a Frenchman, who had
emigrated to Poland. It might have been supposed, therefore, that
there would be a French element in Chopin's genius which would make it
palatable to the Parisians. But this did not prove to be the case. In
the remarkable group of musicians, poets, and artists who were
assembled at that time in Paris, and who mutually inspired one
another--a group which included Liszt, Meyerbeer, Hiller,
Mendelssohn, Berlioz, Heine, George Sand, the Countess D'Agoult,
Delacroix, etc.--there were no doubt not a few who knew what a rare
genius their friend Chopin was. George Sand wrote in her
autobiography: "He has not been understood hitherto, and to the
present day he is underestimated. Great progress will have to be made
in taste and in the appreciation of music before it will be possible
for Chopin's work to become popular." Heine also wrote that his
favorite pianist was Chopin, "who, however," he adds, "is more of a
composer than a virtuoso. When Chopin is at the piano I forget all
about the technical side of playing and become absorbed in the sweet
profundity, the sad loveliness of his creations, which are as deep as
they are elegant. Chopin is the great inspired tone-poet who properly
should be named only in company with Mozart, Beethoven, and Rossini."
But aside from these select spirits and a small circle of aristocratic
admirers, mostly Poles, Chopin was not understood by the Paris public.
At first he could not even make his living there, and was in
consequence on the point of emigrating to America when a friend
dragged him to a _soirée_ at Rothschild's, where his playing was so
much admired that he was at once engaged as a teacher by several
ladies present. In a very short time he became the fashionable teacher
in aristocratic circles, where his refined manners made him
personally liked. As he refused to take any but talented pupils,
teaching was not so irksome to him as it might have been. Nevertheless
one cannot but marvel at the obtuseness of the Parisians who put into
the utilitarian harness an artist who might have enchanted them every
evening with a concert, had their taste been more cultivated. He _did_
play once, when he first arrived, but the receipts did not even meet
the expenses, and the audience received his work so coldly that his
artistic sensibilities were wounded, and he did not again appear in
public for fourteen years. Occasionally he played for the select
aristocratic circles into which he had been introduced; but even here
he did not often meet with the genuine appreciation and sympathy which
the artist craves. "Whoever could read in his face," says Liszt,
"could see how often he felt convinced that among all these handsome,
well-dressed gentlemen, among all the perfumed, elegant ladies, not
one understood him."
As for the French critics they seem to have been as obtuse as their
German colleagues. To give only one instance: M. Fétis, author of the
well-known musical dictionary, states in his article on Chopin, that
this composer is overrated to-day, and his popularity largely due to
the fact that he is fashionable. And in his article on Heller, he
asserts, more pointedly still, that "the time will undoubtedly come
when the world will recognize that Heller, much more than Chopin, is
the modern poet of the pianoforte." In this opinion Fétis probably
stands alone; but many who have not studied Chopin's deepest works
carefully, are still convinced that the pianoforte compositions of
Mozart, Beethoven, and Schumann, are of greater importance than
Chopin's. So far am I from sharing this opinion that if I had to
choose between never again hearing a pianoforte piece by any or all of
those composers, or never again hearing a Chopin composition, I should
decide in favor of Chopin. Some years ago I expressed my conviction,
in _The Nation_, that Chopin is as distinctly superior to all other
piano composers as Wagner is to all other opera composers. A
distinguished Cincinnati musician, Mr. Otto Singer, was horrified at
this statement, and wrote in _The Courier_, of that city, that it
could only have been made by "a patriotically inclined Frenchman or a
consumptive inhabitant of Poland;" adding that "he would readily yield
up possession of quite a number of Chopin's bric-à-brac for Schumann's
single 'Warum.'" I am neither a patriotic Frenchman nor a consumptive
Pole, and I am a most ardent admirer of Schumann; nevertheless I
uphold my former opinion, and my chief object in this essay is to
endeavor to justify it.
All authorities, in the first place, admit that Chopin created an
entirely new style of playing the pianoforte. Many have pointed out
the peculiarities of this style--the use of extended and scattered
chords, the innovations in fingering which facilitate _legato_
playing, the spray of dainty little ornamental notes, the use of the
capricious _tempo rubato_, and so on. But it has not been made
sufficiently clear by any writer how it was that Chopin became the
Wagner of the pianoforte, so to speak, by revealing for the first time
the infinite possibilities of varied and beautiful tone-colors
inherent in that instrument. To understand this point fully, it is
necessary to bear in mind a few facts regarding the history of the
pianoforte.
The name of pianoforte was given about a century and a half ago to an
instrument constructed by the Italian Cristofori, who devised a
mechanism for striking the strings with hammers. In the older
instruments--the clarichords and harpsichords--the strings were either
snapped by means of crow's quills, or pushed with a tangent. The new
hammer action not only brought a better tone out of the string, but
enabled the pianist to play any note loud or soft at pleasure; hence
the name _piano-forte_. But the pianoforte itself required many years
before all its possibilities of tone-production were discovered. The
instruments used by Mozart still had a thin short tone, and there was
no pedal for prolonging it, except a clumsy one worked with the
knee--a circumstance which greatly influenced Mozart's style, and is
largely responsible for the fact that his pianoforte works are hardly
ever played to-day in the concert hall. For, as the tone could not be
sustained, it was customary in Mozart's time to hide its meagre frame
by means of a great profusion of runs and trills, and other ornaments,
with which even the slow movements were disfigured. Under the
circumstances, these ornaments were justifiable to some extent, but
to-day they seem not only in bad taste, but entirely superfluous,
because our improved instruments have a much greater power of
sustaining tones.
Czerny, the famous piano teacher, touched in his autobiography on the
peculiarities of Mozart's style. Beethoven, who gave Czerny some
lessons on the piano, made him pay particular attention to the
_legato_, "of which," says Czerny, "he was so unrivalled a master, but
which at that time--the Mozart period, when the short staccato touch
was in fashion--_all other pianists thought impossible_. Beethoven
told me afterwards," he continues, "that he had often heard Mozart,
whose style from his use of the clavecin, the pianoforte being in his
time in its infancy, was not at all adapted to the newer instrument. I
have known several persons who had received instruction from Mozart,
and their playing corroborated this statement."
In view of these facts, we can understand why Beethoven did not like
Mozart's pianoforte works as well as those of Clementi, in which there
was more _cantabile_, and which required more fulness of tone in the
execution; and we can understand why even so conservative a critic as
Louis Ehlert should exclaim, apropos of Chopin's "entirely new
pianoforte life," "How uninteresting is the style of any previous
master (excepting Beethoven) compared with his! What a litany of
gone-by, dead-alive forms! What a feelingless, prosaic jingle! If
anyone should, without a grimace, assure me sincerely that he can play
pianoforte pieces by Clementi, Dussek, Hummel, and Ries, with real
enjoyment even now, I will esteem him as an excellent man--yes, a very
honest one; but I will not drink wine with him."
Were it not for what I have ventured to call the fetish of Jumboism, I
am convinced that Professor Ehlert would have written Mozart's name in
this last sentence in place of Clementi's. By excepting Beethoven
alone from the list of "uninteresting" composers preceding Chopin, he
_implicitly_ condemns Mozart; but he does not dare to do so
_explicitly_, although such a confession would not have affected
Mozart's greatness in other departments of music, which is undeniable.
Indeed, if Professor Ehlert had been perfectly sincere I am not quite
sure that he would have excepted Beethoven's sonatas. Although they
teem with great and beautiful ideas, these sonatas are not really
adapted to the intrinsic nature of the pianoforte, and hence fail to
arouse the enthusiasm of those whose taste has been formed by the
works of Chopin and Schumann. It was no doubt an instinctive antipathy
to Beethoven's unpianistic style (if the adjective be permissible),
which prevented Chopin from admiring Beethoven as deeply as he did
some other composers, whom he would have admitted to be his inferiors.
And Beethoven himself does not seem to have regarded his pianoforte
works with the same satisfaction as his other compositions. At least,
he wrote the following curious sentence in a corner of one of his
sketch books in 1805; "Heaven knows why my pianoforte music always
makes the worst impression on me, especially when it is played badly."
He must have felt that his ideas found a much more appropriate and
adequate expression in the orchestra than on the piano. Not being a
radical innovator he did not, in his treatment of the pianoforte, go
beyond Clementi; and so it remained for Chopin to show the world that
the pianoforte, if properly treated, will yield tones whose exquisite
sensuous beauty can hardly be surpassed by any combination of
orchestral instruments.
The two principal means by which he accomplished these reforms were
the constant employment of the pedal, and the use of extended and
scattered chords, in place of the crowded harmonies and the massive
movements of the older accompaniments.
Very few pianists seem to comprehend the exact function and importance
of the pedal. Many will be surprised to hear that the word "touch,"
which they suppose refers to the way the keys are struck by the
fingers, has quite as much to do with the feet--that is, the use of
the pedal--as with the fingers. No matter how thoroughly a pianist may
have trained his fingers, if he does not use the pedal as it was used
by Chopin and Schumann, he cannot reveal the poetry of their
compositions. In one of his letters Chopin notes that Thalberg played
_forte_ and _piano_ with the pedals, not with his hands, and some
piano bangers do so still; but every pianist who deserves the name
knows that loudness and softness must be regulated by the hands (and
very rarely the left-side pedal). Yet even among this better class of
pianists the notion seems to prevail that the main object of the
right-side pedal is to enable them to prolong a chord or to prevent a
confusion of consecutive harmonies. This is one of the functions of
the pedal, no doubt, but not the most important one. The chief service
of the pedal is _in the interest of tone-color_. Let me explain.
Every student of music knows that if you sing a certain tone into a
piano (after pressing the pedal), or before a guitar, the strings in
these instruments which correspond to the tone you sing will vibrate
responsively and emit a tone. He also knows that when you sound a
single note, say G, on the violin or piano, you seem to hear only a
simple tone, but on listening more closely you will find that it is
really a compound tone or a complete chord, the fundamental tone being
accompanied by faint overtones, which differ in number and relative
loudness in different instruments, and to which these instruments owe
their peculiar tone-color.
Now when you press the pedal of a pianoforte on striking a note you do
not only prolong this note, but its vibrations arouse all the notes
which correspond to its overtones, and the result is a rich deep
tone-color of exquisite sensuous beauty and enchanting variableness.
Hence, whenever the melodic movement and harmonic changes are not too
rapid, a pianist should press the pedal _constantly_, whether he plays
loudly or softly; because it is only when the damper is raised from
the strings that the overtones can enrich and beautify the sound by
causing their corresponding strings to vibrate in sympathy with them.
Those who heard Schumann play say that he used the pedal persistently,
sometimes twice in the same bar to avoid harmonic confusion; and the
same is true of Chopin, concerning whose playing an English amateur
says, after referring to his _legatissimo_ touch: "The wide arpeggios
in the left hand, _maintained in a continuous stream of tone_ by the
strict legato and fine and constant use of the damper pedal, formed an
harmonious substructure for a wonderfully poetic _cantabile_."
I have italicised and emphasized the words _maintained in a continuous
stream of tone_, because it calls attention to one of the numerous
resemblances between the style of Chopin and that of Wagner, who in
his music dramas similarly keeps up an uninterrupted flow of richly
colored harmonies to sustain the vocal part. Schumann relates that he
had the good fortune to hear Chopin play some of his études. "And he
played them very much _à la Chopin_," he says: "Imagine an Æolian harp
provided with all the scales, commingled by an artist's hand into all
manner of fantastic, ornamental combinations, yet in such a way that
you can always distinguish a deeper ground tone and a sweet continuous
melody above--and you have an approximate idea of his playing. No
wonder that I liked best those of the études which he played for me,
and I wish to mention specially the first one, in A flat major, a poem
rather than an étude. It would be a mistake to imagine that he allowed
each of the small notes to be distinctly audible; it was rather a
surging of the A flat major chord, occasionally raised to a new billow
by the pedal; but amid these harmonies a wondrous melody asserted
itself in large tones, and only once, toward the middle of the piece,
a tenor part came out prominently beside the principal melody. After
hearing this étude you feel as you do when you have seen a ravishing
picture in your dreams and, half awake, would fain recall it."
Now it is obvious that such dreamy Æolian-harp-like harmonies could
not have been produced without Chopin's novel and constant use of the
pedal. And this brings out the greatest difference between the new and
the old style of playing. In the pianoforte works of Mozart and
Beethoven, and even in those of Weber, which mark the transition from
the classical to the romantic school, there are few passages that
absolutely require a pedal, and in most cases the pieces sound almost
as well without as with pedal; so that, from his point of view, and in
his days of staccato playing, Hummel was quite right in insisting that
a pianist could not be properly judged until he played without the
pedal. But as regards the romantic school of Chopin, Schumann, Liszt
and their followers, it may be said with equal truth that a pianist's
use of the pedal furnishes the supreme test of his talent. If he has
not the delicacy of ear which is requisite to produce the "continuous
stream of tone" in Chopin's compositions, without the slightest
harmonic confusion, he should leave them alone and devote himself to
less poetic composers.
An amusing anecdote illustrates visibly how helpless Chopin would have
been without his pedal. He was asked one evening at a party in Paris
to play. He was quite willing to do so but discovered to his surprise
that the piano had no pedals. They had been sent away for repairs. In
this dilemma a happy thought occurred to Liszt, who happened to be
present. He crawled under the piano, and, while Chopin was playing,
worked the mechanism to which the pedals ought to have been attached
so cleverly that they were not missed at all! He stooped that his
friend might conquer.
The fact that Chopin in his later works, often omitted the sign for
the pedal on his MSS. must not be held to indicate that he did not
wish it to be constantly used. In his earlier works he carefully
indicated where it should be employed, but subsequently he appears to
have reasoned rightly that a pianist who needs to be told where the
pedal ought, and where it ought not, to be employed, is not
sufficiently advanced in culture to play his works at all, and had
therefore best leave them alone.
Chopin's remarkable genius for divining the mysteries of the
pianoforte enabled him, as it were, to anticipate what is a
comparatively recent invention--the middle pedal which is chiefly used
to sustain single tones in the bass without affecting the rest of the
instrument. The melancholy "F sharp minor Prelude," for example,
cannot be played properly without the use of this middle pedal. In
another prelude, we have an illustration of how the pedal must often
be used in order to help in forming a chord which cannot be stretched.
And this brings us to the second important innovation in the treatment
of Chopin's pianoforte--the constant use of scattered and extended
chords.
Karasovski relates that Chopin, a mere boy, used to amuse himself by
searching on the piano for harmonies of which the constituent notes
were widely scattered on the keyboard, and, as his hands were too
small to grasp them, he devised a mechanism for stretching his hands,
which he wore at night. Fortunately, he did not go so far as Schumann,
who made similar experiments with his hands and thereby disabled one
of them for life. What prompted Chopin to search for these widely
extended chords was his intense appreciation of tonal beauty. To-day
everybody knows how much more beautiful scattered, and widely extended
harmonies are than crowded harmonies; but it was Chopin's genius that
discovered this fact and applied it on a large scale. Indeed, so novel
were his chords, that at first, many of them were deemed unplayable;
but he showed that if his own system of fingering was adopted, they
were not only playable, but eminently suited to the character of the
instrument. The superior beauty of scattered intervals can be
strikingly demonstrated in this way. If you strike four or five
adjacent notes on the piano at once, you produce an intolerable
cacophony. But these same notes can be so arranged by scattering them
that they make an exquisite chord in suspension. Everything depends on
the arrangement and the wideness of the intervals. Chopin's fancy was
inexhaustible in the discovery of new kinds of scattered chords,
combined into harmony by his novel use of the pedal; and in this way
he enriched music with so many new harmonies and modulations that he
must be placed, as a harmonic innovator, on a level with Bach and
Wagner.
These remarks apply especially to Chopin's later compositions; but his
peculiarities are already distinctly traceable in many of his earlier
works; and Elsner, his teacher, was sufficiently clear-sighted and
frank to write the following words: "The achievements of Mozart and
Beethoven as pianists have long been forgotten; and their pianoforte
compositions, although undoubtedly classical works, must give way to
the diversified artistic treatment of that instrument by the modern
school." Mr. Joseph Bennett quotes this sentence in his Biography of
Chopin, and adds an exclamation point in brackets after it, to
express his surprise. Mr. Bennett is considered one of the leading
London critics; yet I must say that I have never seen so much
ignorance in a single exclamation point in brackets. Note the
difference between Elsner and Bennett. Elsner adds to the sentence
just quoted, that the _other_ works of Mozart and Beethoven--their
symphonies, operas, quartets, etc., "will not only continue to live,
but will, perhaps, remain unequalled by anything of the present day."
This is genuine discriminative criticism, which renders unto Cæsar
what is Cæsar's due: whereas, Mr. Bennett is guided by the vicious old
habit of fancying that because Mozart and Beethoven are great masters,
therefore they must be superior to everybody in everything. Is it not
about time to put an end to this absurd Jumboism in music?
The fact is, we are living in an age of division of labor and
specialism; and those who, like Robert Franz and Richard Wagner,
devote themselves to a single branch of music have a better chance of
reaching the summit of Parnassus than those who dissipate their
energies in too many directions. Chopin was the pianoforte genius _par
excellence_, and in his field he stands above the greatest of the
German composers, whatever their names. Mendelssohn once wrote to his
mother that Chopin "produces effects on the piano as novel as those of
Paganini on the violin, and he performs marvels which no one would
have believed to be possible." Mendelssohn benefited to a slight
extent by Chopin's example, but he did not add anything new to the
treatment of the pianoforte. Nor does even Liszt mark an advance on
Chopin from a purely pianistic point of view. Paradoxical as it may
seem, Liszt, the greatest pianist the world has known, was really a
born _orchestral_ composer. He was never satisfied with the piano, but
constantly wanted to convert it into an orchestra. His innovations
were all in the service of these orchestral aspirations, and hence it
is that his rhapsodies, for example, are much more effective in their
orchestral garb than in their original pianoforte version. The same is
true of many of Rubinstein's pianoforte works--the Bal Masqué, for
instance, which always has such an electric effect on Mr. Theodore
Thomas's audiences. Not so with Chopin. Liszt remarks, somewhere, that
Chopin might have easily written for orchestra, because his
compositions can be so readily arranged for it. I venture to differ
from this opinion. Chopin's Funeral March has been repeatedly arranged
for orchestra--first by Reber at Chopin's funeral (when Meyerbeer
regretted that he had not been asked to do this labor of love); and
more recently by Mr. Theodore Thomas. Mr. Thomas's version is very
clever and effective, yet I very _much_ prefer this sublime dirge on
the piano. In a small room the piano has almost as great a capacity
for dynamic shading as the orchestra has in a large hall; and, as I
have just pointed out, one who knows how to use the pedal can secure
an endless (almost orchestral) variety of tone-colors on the piano,
thanks to the hundreds of overtones which can be made to accompany the
tones played. Chopin spoke the language of the piano. His pieces are
so idiomatic that they cannot be translated into orchestral language
any more than Heine's lyrics can be translated into English. Chopin
exhausted the possibilities of the pianoforte, and the piano exhausts
the possibilities of Chopin's compositions.
The innovations of Chopin which I have so far alluded to, have been to
some extent adopted by all modern composers, and the more they have
adopted them the more their works ingratiate themselves in the favor
of amateurs. But there is another epoch-making feature of Chopin's
style, which is less easy, especially to Germans, because it is a
Slavic characteristic; I mean the _tempo rubato_. This is a phrase
much used among musicians, but if pressed for an exact definition, few
would be able to give one. Let us see first what Chopin's
contemporaries have to say of the way in which he himself treats it.
Chopin visited England in 1848, and on June 21 gave a concert in
London. Mr. Chorley, the well-known critic, wrote a criticism on this
occasion for "The Athenæum," in which he says: "The delicacy of M.
Chopin's tone and the elasticity of his passages are delicious to the
ear. He makes a free use of _tempo rubato_, leaning about within his
bars more than any player we recollect, but still subject to a
presiding sentiment of measure, such as presently habituates the ear
to the liberties taken. In music not his own, we happen to know he can
be as staid as a metronome; while his Mazurkas, etc., lose half that
wildness if played without a certain freedom and license--impossible
to imitate, but irresistible if the player at all feels the music.
This we have always fancied while reading Chopin's works:--we are now
sure of it after hearing him perform them."
Moscheles wrote to his wife that Chopin's "_ad libitum_ playing,
which, with the interpreters of his music degenerates into offences
against correct time, is, in his own case, merely a pleasing
originality of style." He compares him to "a singer who, little
concerned with the accompaniment, follows entirely his feelings."
Karasovski says that Chopin "played the bass in quiet, regular time,
while the right hand moved about with perfect freedom, now following
the left hand, now ... going its own independent way. 'The left hand,'
said Chopin, 'must be like an orchestral conductor; not for a moment
must it be uncertain and vacillating.'" Thus his playing, free from
the fetters of _tempo_, acquired a unique charm; thanks to this
_rubato_, his melody was "like a vessel rocked upon the waves of the
sea."
The world suffered a great loss when a band of ignorant soldiers found
the bundles of letters which Chopin had written from Paris to his
parents, and used them to feed the fire which cooked their supper. But
it lost a still greater treasure when Chopin tore up the manuscript of
his pianoforte method, which he began to write in the last years of
his life, but never finished. In it he would no doubt have given many
valuable hints regarding the correct use of the _rubato_. In the
absence of other authentic hints beyond the one just quoted, Liszt
must be depended upon as the best authority on the subject; for it is
well known that Liszt could imitate Chopin so nicely that his most
intimate friends were once deceived in a dark room, imagining that
Chopin was playing when Liszt was at the piano. "Chopin," Liszt
writes, "was the first who introduced into his compositions that
peculiarity which gave such a unique color to his impetuosity, and
which he called _tempo rubato_:--an irregularly interrupted movement,
subtile, broken, and languishing, at the same time flickering like a
flame in the wind, undulating, like the surface of a wheat-field, like
the tree-tops moved by a breeze." All his compositions must be played
in this peculiarly accented, spasmodic, insinuating style, a style
which he succeeded in imparting to his pupils, but which can hardly be
taught without example. As with the pedal, so with the _rubato_,
Chopin often neglected to mark its use in later years, taking it for
granted that those who understood his works would know where to apply
it.
Perhaps the importance of the _rubato_ in Chopin cannot be more
readily realized than by his concession that he could never play a
Viennese waltz properly, and by the fact that sometimes, when he was
in a jocular mood, he would play one of his mazurkas in strict,
metronomic time, to the great amusement of those who had heard him
play them properly.