for pianoforte by the composer. Notwithstanding the fact that in its
original form the suite is intended to be played by a large body of
instruments of different tone coloring and that arrangements for
pianoforte of orchestral works usually are so complex that even great
pianists find difficulty in rendering them effectively, the "Peer
Gynt" selections are among the most attractive in the pianolist's
repertory. For, through the instrument on which he plays, he is able
to overcome the most complicated chords and the most difficult and
complex runs, as easily as if they were music of the simplest kind. If
the pianola sometimes is called mechanical, the injustice thus done it
is due to its superhuman capacity of playing with perfect ease things
that are wholly beyond the fingers even of the greatest virtuosos, yet
can be rendered fluently and also expressively by the pianolist who
has genuine feeling for music.
It is this combination of technique and expression that gives to
Liszt's enormously difficult pianoforte transcription of Saint-Saëns'
symphonic poem, "Danse Maccabre," which even for orchestra is an
extremely difficult piece, its place in the pianolist's repertory.
This is one of the most interesting of modern compositions, and most
graphically descriptive of its subject, which is the "Dance of Death,"
"maccabre" being derived from the Arabic "makabir," which signifies a
place of burial. Both in the literature and in the painting of the
Middle Ages in Europe and particularly in church decoration, figures
the legend that once a year on Hallowe'en the dead arose from their
graves for a wild and hideous dance, with King Death himself as master
of ceremonies. Saint-Saëns' symphonic poem realistically describes
these scenes, and, as if to attribute the inspiration for his music to
its precise origin, the composer has placed above his score a poem by
Henri Cazalis. Mr. Edward Baxter Perry has made a free transcription
of this poem, which, at the same time, serves capitally as a
description of the music:
On a sounding stone,
With a blanched thigh-bone,
The bone of a saint, I fear,
Death strikes the hour
Of his wizard power,
And the specters haste to appear.
From their tombs they rise
In sepulchral guise,
Obeying the summons dread,
And gathering round
With obeisance profound,
They salute the King of the Dead.
Then he stands in the middle
And tunes up his fiddle,
And plays them a gruesome strain.
And each gibbering wight
In the moon's pale light
Must dance to that wild refrain.
Now the fiddle tells,
As the music swells,
Of the charnal's ghastly pleasures;
And they clatter their bones
As with hideous groans
They reel to those maddening measures.
The churchyard quakes
And the old abbey shakes
To the tread of that midnight host,
And the sod turns black
On each circling track,
Where a skeleton whirls with a ghost.
The night wind moans
In shuddering tones
Through the gloom of the cypress tree,
While the mad rout raves
Over yawning graves
And the fiddle bow leaps with glee.
So the swift hours fly
Till the reddening sky
Gives warning of daylight near.
Then the first cock crow
Sends them huddling below
To sleep for another year.
The composition opens weirdly with the hollow strokes of the hour.
There is a light, staccato passage suggesting the spectres tiptoeing
from their graves to take their places in the fantastic circle. Then
comes one of the most strikingly realistic passages in the
composition--Death attempting to tune up his fiddle, an effect that is
repeated at intervals throughout the composition. After reading the
poem, the pianolist will not require a detailed description of the
work. He will recognize the details even to the moaning of the night
wind and the crowing of the cock, the scurry of the spectres and their
final wail, as the grave closes upon them for another year.
V. AN "OPEN SESAME" TO CHOPIN
The goal of all pianists is Chopin. As the list of one hundred
favorite compositions for the pianola includes no less than twenty-six
works by this composer, he would seem to be the goal of the pianolist
as well.
Chopin now is recognized universally as one of the great composers.
But during his lifetime he was much criticised, called morbid and
effeminate and a composer of small ideas because he wrote almost
entirely in the smaller forms. As if size had anything to do with the
beauty of a work. In every art the best work of each great man should
be ranked with the best of all other great men. Some geniuses express
themselves on a larger, but not necessarily on a greater scale, than
others. In poetry, for example, Poe's "Raven" is not to be ranked
below Milton's "Paradise Lost" because shorter; nor in music need a
Chopin ballad be placed below a Beethoven symphony because not so
extended as the latter. Every genius, however, must expect to be
condemned until Time silences criticism of his work. For ever since
men began to create rare and beautiful things, there have been other
men who, having failed therein, have found a bitter consolation in
sitting in crabbed and ill-tempered judgment upon their successful
betters.
Another point raised against Chopin was, that practically he confined
himself to composing for pianoforte. A sufficient answer to this is,
that his music made the pianoforte what it is. For he was the first
composer who appreciated the genius of the instrument, discovered its
latent tone colors and developed its resources to their full capacity
for artistic beauty and expression. Chopin was the first to make the
pianoforte both shimmer and sing. Rubinstein said that the art of
music could go no further than Chopin and called him the pianoforte
bard, rhapsodist, mind and soul. "How he wrote for it I do not know,
but only an entire passing over of one into the other could call such
music into life." George Sand (Mme. Dudevant) the famous French
authoress with whom Chopin had a love affair that was one of the
tragedies of his life, said that "he made the instrument speak the
language of the infinite. He did not need the great material methods
of the orchestra to find expression for his genius. Neither saxophone
nor ophicleide was necessary for him to fill the soul with awe.
Without church organ or human voice he inspired faith and enthusiasm."
Although Chopin figures on almost every pianoforte recital program the
average amateur has comparatively slight knowledge of the range of
his genius. Only the player able to go over his works in person can
acquire such knowledge, and the number of amateurs possessed of
sufficient technique to play Chopin's music is very small. "But
to-day," writes Mr. Ashton Johnson in his "Hand-Book to Chopin's
Works," "owing to the invention of the pianola and the fact that all
Chopin's works, including even the least important of the posthumous
compositions, are now available for that instrument, the whole domain
of his music is, for the first time, open to all. Those who wish may
pass the portal hitherto guarded by the dragon of technique and roam
at will in his entrancing music land."
Chopin was a native of Poland. He was born near Warsaw in 1810. When
the Poles lost their country it was as if their grief and the
melancholy of their exile found expression through Chopin's music. He
became the musical poet of an exiled race. The most significant years
of his life he spent in Paris surrounded by the aristocracy of his own
country, who yet had no country, and by the aristocrats of art. Liszt,
Heine, Meyerbeer, Bellini and other famous men, as well as famous
women, were his personal friends.
The affair with George Sand left on his music the imprint of sorrow,
poignant grief, and a pathos reaching down into the depths of tragedy.
Different in character was his idealization of the beautiful Countess
Delphine Potocka. The episode is fully set forth in my "Loves of the
Great Composers." One of Chopin's favorite musical amusements, when a
guest in the house of intimate friends, was to play on the pianoforte
"musical portraits" of the company. One evening in the salon of
Delphine's mother, he played the portraits of the two daughters of
the house. When it came to Delphine he gently drew her light shawl
from her shoulders, and then played through it, his fingers, with
every tone they produced, coming in touch with the gossamer like
fabric, still warmed and hallowed for him from its contact with her.
It was Delphine who soothed his last hours by singing for him as he
lay upon his death bed.
She was one of the very few people to whom he dedicated more than one
of his works. Both his second concerto (in F minor, Op. 21) and his
most familiar waltz, the Op. 64, No. 1, bear her name. Chopin as a
pianist, showed decided preference for the slow movement of the
concerto, a movement which is of almost ideal perfection, "now radiant
with light and anon full of tender pathos," to quote from Liszt. It is
indeed, an exquisite idyll, beautifully melodious and replete with
delicate ornamentation. Because of its beauty and its association
with Delphine, I would suggest that the pianolist begin with this
larghetto. There is another reason for the suggestion. In its
ornamentation it illustrates to perfection that characteristic of
Chopin's music known as the "tempo rubato." Much of Chopin's music has
in addition to inspired melody, an iridescence as if produced by
cascades of jewels. These are ornamental notes which yet are not
ornamental in the limited meaning of the word; for in spite of all
their light and shade and their play of changeable colors, they form
part of the great undercurrent of melody. There are various technical
definitions of tempo rubato, but Liszt described it poetically and yet
exactly when he said, "You see that tree? Its leaves move to and fro
in the wind and follow the gentlest motion of the air; but its trunk
stands there immovable in its form." Or the effect might be compared
with the myriad shafts from the facets of a jewel, vibrating
brilliance in all directions, while the jewel itself remains
immovable, the center of its own rays. These effects readily are
discoverable in the larghetto of the Potocka concerto.
The pianolist should then take up the valses of Chopin beginning with
Op. 64, No. 1, like the concerto, dedicated to Delphine. This is the
most familiar of all the Chopin waltzes, so familiar that it
frequently is referred to in a derogatory way as hackneyed. Yet, when
properly played, it is one of the most effective of his compositions
in this genre. Of the Chopin waltzes in general, it should first be
said that they are not dance-tunes but expressions, alternately
brilliant, charming and sad, of the intimacy of the ballroom, and that
they possess an innate grace which no other composer has been able to
impart to the form. They have been characterized as salon music of
the noblest kind and were well described by Schumann when he said that
if they were played for dances, half the ladies present should be
countesses--which exactly hits off the distinguished quality of these
valses. To play them is like looking at a dance through a fairy lens;
they seem like improvizations of a musician during a dance and to
reflect the thoughts and feelings that arise as he looks on, playing
the waltz rhythm with the left hand, while the melody and the
ornamental note groups indicate his fancy--love, a jealous plaint,
joy, ecstasy and the tender whisperings of enamored couples as they
glide past.
"Gliding" is the word that has been applied to the smooth brilliance
of the Potocka valse. There runs a story regarding this composition
that George Sand had a little dog that used to chase its own tail
around in a circle, and that one evening, she said to Chopin, "If I
had your talent, I would improvise a valse for that dog," whereupon
the composer promptly seated himself at the pianoforte and dashed off
this fascinating little improvisation. It is Parisian in its grace and
coquetry and ends with a rapid run, the last note of which is like the
rhythmic tap of the foot with which a dainty ballet dancer might
conclude a lightly executed _pas_.
In striking contrast to this is the "Valse," Op. 34, No. 2. This is in
a minor key and instead of representing the abandon of the dance, it
seems rather to depict a melancholy lover allowing his eyes to travel
slowly around the ballroom in a futile search of his heart's desire.
The prevailing tone of the composition rather is that of an elegy--the
burial of fond hopes. Stephen Heller, pianist and composer, tells of
meeting Chopin in the store of a Paris music publisher. Heller had
come in to order all the valses. Thereupon Chopin asked him which he
liked best, and when Heller mentioned this sad one in slow time,
Chopin exclaimed, "I am glad you like that one, for it also is my
favorite," and he invited Heller to have luncheon with him.
Perhaps the most brilliant and extended of the valses is Op. 42. In
this Chopin imposes upon the triple waltz time, a melody that is in
double time--that is, while you count "one, two, three" for the
accompaniment, "one, two" will suffice for the melody above it. The
effect of this device has been described as indicative in this waltz
of the loving, nestling and tender embracing of the dancing couples.
It is followed in the music by sweeping motions free and graceful like
those of birds. The prolonged trill with which the piece begins, seems
to summon the dancers to the ballroom, while the waltz itself, is an
intermingling of coquetry, hesitation and avowal, with a closing
passage that is like an echo of the evening's events.
These three waltzes, if played in the order in which I have mentioned
them, make a capital valse suite, and another could be made by taking
in the following order, the dashing "Posthumous Waltz" in E minor, the
C minor, Op. 64, No. 2, with its veiled, sad beauty; and the brilliant
Op. 34, No. 1.
In his "Nocturnes" those sombre poems of night, Chopin seems weaving
his own shroud. But if, like Robert Louis Stevenson, Chopin loved the
darkness and its melancholy murmuring, and if there was a touch of
morbidness in his nature, yet, like Stevenson, he had in him a strain
of chivalry. Mr. Huneker, therefore, in his book on Chopin, is quite
right when he says of the nocturnes that if they were played with
more vigor, a quickening of the time pulse and a less languishing
touch, they would be rescued from a surplus of lush sentiment.
Undoubtedly, the most popular of the nocturnes is the one in E flat,
Op. 9, No. 2. In fact it is so popular that when any one is asked to
play "Chopin's Nocturne," this one is meant. Because it is popular, it
is sneered at by some critics, but it possesses a lyric beauty quite
its own and "sometimes surprises even the weary teacher with a waft of
unexpected freshness, like the fleeting odor from an old and much used
school book in which violets have been pressed." A sustained love
song, it ends with a cadence that should be played with a rippling
delicacy suggestive of moonlight on a lake in the garden of an old
chateau.
There are nocturnes of Chopin's composed on a larger scale than the
Opus 37, No. 2, but to my taste there is none more beautiful. It
bears a striking resemblance to a passage in George Sand's diary
describing a voyage with Chopin to the island of Majorca. "The night
was warm and dark, illumined only by an extraordinary phosphorescence
in the wake of the ship; everybody was asleep on board except the
steersman, who, in order to keep himself awake, sang all night, but in
a voice so soft and so subdued that one might have thought he feared
to arouse the men of the watch. We did not weary of listening to him,
for his singing was of the strangest kind. He observed a rhythm and
modulation totally different from those we are accustomed to, and
seemed to allow his voice to go at random, like the smoke of the
vessel carried away and swayed by the breeze. It was a reverie rather
than a song, a kind of careless floating of the voice, with which the
mind had little to do, but which kept time with the swaying of the
ship and the faint lapping of the dark water, and resembled a vague
improvization restrained, nevertheless, by sweet and monotonous
forms."
How suggestive this is of the nocturne! The undulating accompaniment,
the scintillation of the treble, suggests the gliding, gently rocking
motion of the vessel and the phosphorescence in its wake; while the
second theme of the nocturne would, even without any suggestion from
the passage in George Sand's diary, be taken for a barcarolle, a
reverie sung at night, now rising, now dying away, but with the pulse
of a musical poet throbbing through every note--the most beautiful
melody, I think, Chopin ever wrote.
And speaking of this melody as an improvization, reminds me of those
other improvizations by Chopin, the "Impromptus," in which he has
displayed his genius as convincingly as in any of his other works.
They are fresh and untrammeled in their development, and as full of
sunlight as the nocturnes are of darkness. The one in A flat major was
dedicated to the Countess de Loban as a wedding present, and was a
farewell to her as a pupil. Brilliant, joyous and iridescent in its
opening and closing sections, that in the middle voices vague and
tender regret. The composition sometimes is spoken of as the "Trilby"
impromptu. It is the one Du Maurier made Trilby sing under the
hypnotic influence of Svengali.
Had Chopin's directions for the destruction of certain of his
manuscripts after his death been carried out, the world would be the
poorer by the loss of his "Fantaisie Impromptu," published as Op. 66.
It is difficult to understand why he should have wanted this work
destroyed, since it produces a sinuous, interwoven, flowing effect,
interrupted by a middle melody of much sentiment and beauty. It has
been very well described by Mr. Perry in a brief poem entitled "The
Fantaisie Impromptu":
The sigh of June through the swaying trees,
The scent of the rose, new blown, on the breeze,
The sound of waves on a distant strand,
The shadows falling on sea and land;
All these are found
In this stream of sound,
This murmuring, mystical, minor strain.
And stars that glimmer in misty skies,
Like tears that shimmer in sorrowing eyes,
And the throb of a heart that beats in tune
With tender regrets of a happier June,
When life was new
And love was true,
And the soul was a stranger to sorrow and pain.
A reading of this poem conveys to the player the correct mood in which
to interpret the impromptu.
By way of contrast I follow these careless raptures--careless only in
their effect of spontaneity--with the famous "Marche Funèbre," the
funeral march which forms the third movement of Chopin's sonata in B
flat minor, Op. 35. This has been called the best funeral march ever
written for the pianoforte. At Chopin's own funeral it was played
scored for orchestra. In my opinion it is not only "the best funeral
march ever written for the pianoforte," but the most intrinsically
beautiful and sad funeral march ever composed. Its opening suggests
the solemn tolling of great bells, the heavy march rhythm gives the
effect of the slow procession of mourners; and the dirgelike music,
soft and muffled at first, grows in power like the measured,
inflexible rhythm of fate. Then it seems as if the mourners had
arrived at the open grave, for the music voices a weeping melody, pure
and tender and sweet; then the march rhythm makes itself heard again
and the procession leaves the grave, the music dying away in the
distance. This is the funeral march of a nation, of Chopin's own
beloved Poland.
Chopin wrote two sets of twelve "Etudes." They gave an entirely new
significance to the term. For the Chopin etudes not only are supreme
as studies. They are supreme as music as well. Before they were
published the usual musical study was something very dry and set. How
different these superb compositions are from studies such as are
comprised in Czerny's "School of Velocity," which make you feel like
employing the "velocity" you have acquired to run away as quickly as
possible from the "school," whereas the Chopin etudes are so full of
melody and of the rarest and the most beautiful musical effects, that
to play any one of them suffices to whet the appetite for the others.
The pianolist might well go through the entire two sets of twelve. It
would open up a new musical world to him. Here I can only point out
three. Opus 10, No. 5, is the "Black Key" etude, so called because all
the notes of the right hand are on black keys. This is a brilliant
study with a very charming ending. Opus 25, No. 9, is the so called
"Butterfly Wings" etude, a designation which expresses its general
characteristic of lightness and grace, but fails to make allowance for
the accent of passion in the rising and descending passage that occurs
about the middle and which should be brought out when it is correctly
interpreted--which usually it is not. The greatest of all the etudes
is the "Revolutionary," Op. 10, No. 12. It was written by Chopin in
1831, when he heard the news that Warsaw had been taken by the
Russians, and it expresses the tornado of emotion that swept over him
when he realized that Poland was about to sink beneath the triple
onslaught of Russia, Austria and Germany. This composition which, mind
you, goes by the simple name of "study," is one of the most tremendous
outbursts of wrath in music--a storm of the soul without even such
lyric episodes as those which form islands of calm in the torrential
last movement of Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata." Well may Mr. Huneker
say that the end "rings out like the crack of creation. It is
elemental."
This etude, certain of the "Polonaises," the "Scherzos," the
"Ballades" and the "Fantaisie" in F minor, reveal a fire, passion and
virile power that will surprise those who have formed their estimate
of Chopin from the mournful nocturnes and brilliant waltzes. The
so-called "Military Polonaise," Op. 40, No. 1, is so replete with the
spirit of war that in the middle portion it is easy to hear the roll
of drums and the clash of battle. It was of this polonaise Chopin
said, "If I had the strength to play it as it should be played I would
break all the strings of the pianoforte."
The most effective of the polonaises, his opus 53, also breathes forth
martial ardor and defiance. It begins with a stirring call to arms,
followed by the swinging measure of the polonaise proper with a melody
that suggests soldiery on prancing steeds and with flashing sabres,
defiling in review before battle. This is followed by a "trio" in
which a rapid octave figure in the bass, beginning softly and growing
louder and louder until it reaches a crashing climax, with strains
like a bugle call ringing out above it, depicts a cavalry charge
coming from the distance, drawing nearer and nearer and sweeping past
with a mighty roar. There is a story that while Chopin was composing
this polonaise, he was so affected when playing over the nearly
completed work, that, seized by a peculiar hallucination, he saw the
walls of the room open and, approaching from the outer night, a band
of medieval Polish knights mounted and in armor, as if they had risen
from their ancient graves and ridden on the clouds to appear in
response to the summons of his music. The somewhat vague passage which
follows the climax of the cavalry charge and leads back to the main
subject possibly may be accounted for by this strange experience.
Unfortunately there is no opportunity here to take up the "Scherzos,"
so unlike the coquettish, bantering pieces of the same name by other
composers, Chopin seemingly representing tragedy mocking itself, as
any one playing the B flat minor "Scherzo," Op. 31, may hear for
himself; the "Ballades," so eloquently narrative of love and
adventure, the A flat major and the G minor being especially popular
in the pianolist's repertory; and the "Fantaisie," in F minor, one of
the greatest compositions for pianoforte. As for the "Mazurkas" and
"Preludes," pieces that are among their composer's happiest creations,
I can do no more than call the pianolist's attention to their
existence and advise him not to neglect them.
VI. NOTES ON SOME OTHER MASTERS