Emerson has said that, next to the man who first voices a great truth,
is the one who quotes it.
Truth is in the air; it belongs to all who can appreciate it; and the
difference between the man who gives a truth expression and the listener
who at once comprehends and repeats it, is very slight. If you
understand what I say, it is because you have thought the same thoughts
yourself--I merely express for you that which you already know. And so
you approve and applaud, not stopping to think that you are applauding
your own thought; and your heart beats fast and you say, "Yes, yes, why
didn't I say that myself!"
All conversation is a sort of communion--an echoing back and forth of
thoughts, feelings and emotions. We clarify our thoughts by expressing
them--no idea is quite your own until you tell it to another.
Music is simply one form of expression. Its province is to impart a
sublime emotion. To give himself is the controlling impulse in the heart
of every artist--to impart to others the joy he feels--this is the
dominant motive in his life.
Hence the poet writes, the artist paints, the sculptor models, the
singer sings, the musician plays--all is expression--a giving voice to
the Silence. But it is all done for others. In ministering to others the
artist ministers to himself. In helping others we help ourselves. We
grow strong through exercise, and only the faculties that are
exercised--that is to say, expressed--become strong. Those not in use
atrophy and fall victims to arrested development.
Man is the instrument of Deity--through man does Deity create. And the
artist is one who expresses for others their best thoughts and feelings.
He may arouse in men emotions that were dormant, and so were unguessed;
but under the spell of the artist-spirit, these dormant faculties are
awakened from lethargy--they are exercised, and once the thrill of life
is felt through them, they will probably be exercised again and again.
All art is collaboration between the performer and the partaker--music
is especially a collaboration. It is a oneness of feeling: action and
reaction, an intermittent current of emotion that plays backward and
forward between the player and his audience. The player is the positive
pole, or masculine principle; and the audience the negative pole, or
feminine principle.
In great oratory the same transposition takes place. Almost every one
can recall occasions when there was an absolute fusion of thought,
feeling and emotion between the speaker and the audience--when one mind
dominated all, and every heart beat in unison with his. The great
musician is the one who feels intensely, and is able to express
vividly, and thus impart his emotion to others.
Robert Schumann was such a man. In his youth, when he played at parlor
gatherings he could fuse the listeners into an absolute oneness of
spirit. You can not make others feel unless you yourself feel; you can
not make others see unless you yourself see. Robert Schumann saw. He
beheld the moving pictures, and as they passed before him he expressed
what he saw in harmonious sounds. His many admirers say he gave
"portraits" on the piano, and by sounds would describe certain persons,
so others who knew these persons would recognize them and call their
names.
Sterndale Bennett has told of Schumann's playing Weber's "Invitation to
the Dance," and accompanying it with little verbal explanations of what
he saw, thus: "There," said the player as he struck the opening chords,
"there, he bows, and so does she--he speaks--she speaks, and oh! what a
voice--how liquid! listen--hear the rustle of her gown--he speaks, a
little deeper, you notice--you can not hear the words, only their voices
blending in with the music--now they speak together--they are lovers,
surely--see, they understand--oh! the waltz--see them take those first
steps--they are swaying into time--away!--there they go--look!--you can
not hear their voices now--only see them!"
Schumann studied law, and had he followed that profession he would have
made a master before a jury. He saw so clearly and felt so deeply, and
was so full of generosity and bubbling good-cheer, that he was
irresistible. As we know, he proved so to Clara Wieck, who left father
and mother and home to cleave to this unknown composer.
This splendid young woman was nine years younger than Robert, but she
had already made a name and fortune for herself before they were
married.
In passing it is well enough to call attention to the fact that this is
one of the great loves of history. It ranks with the mating of Robert
Browning and Elizabeth Barrett. How strange that such things are so
exceptional that the world takes note of them!
Yet for quite a number of years after their marriage, Madame Schumann
was at times asked this question: "Is your husband musical?"
But Robert Schumann, like Robert Browning, was too big a man to be
jealous of his wife. Jealousy is an acknowledgment of weakness and
insecurity. "Robert and Clara," their many dear friends always called
them. They worked together--composed, sang, played, and grew great
together. And as if to refute the carping critics who cry that
domesticity and genius are incompatible, Clara Schumann became the happy
mother of eight children, and not a year passed but she appeared upon
the concert stage, while a nurse held the baby in the wings. Schumann
was very proud of his wife. He was grateful to her for interpreting his
songs in a way he could not. His lavish heart went out to every one who
expressed the happiness and harmony which he felt singing in his soul.
And so he welcomed all players and all singers, and all who felt the
influence of an upward gravitation. Especially was he a friend of the
young and the unknown. His home at Dusseldorf was a Mecca for the
aspiring--worthy and unworthy--and to these he gave his time, money and
influence. "Genius must have recognition--we will discover and bring
forth these beautiful souls; we will liberate and give them to the
world," he used to say. Not only did he himself express great things,
but he quoted others.
Among those who had reverenced the Schumanns from afar, came a young man
of twenty, small and fair-haired, from Hamburg. He was received at the
regular "Thursday Night" with various other strangers. These meetings
were quite informal, and everybody was asked to play or sing. On being
invited to play, our young man declined. But on a second visit he sat
down at the piano and played. It was several minutes before the company
ceased the little buzz of conversation and listened--the fledglings were
never taken seriously except by the host and hostess. The youth leaned
over the keyboard, and seemed to gather confidence from the sympathetic
attitude of the listeners, and especially Clara Schumann, who had come
forward and stood at his elbow.
He played from Schumann's "Carnival," and as he played, freedom came to
him. He surprised himself. When he ceased playing, Robert kissed his
cheek, and the company were vehement in their applause. Next day
Schumann met Albert Dietrich, another disciple who had come from a
distance to bask in the Schumann sunshine, and said with an air of
mystery: "One has come of whom we shall yet hear great things. His name
is Johannes Brahms."
* * * * *
We have at least four separate accounts of Brahms' first appearance and
behavior when he arrived at the city of Dusseldorf. These descriptions
are by Robert and Clara Schumann, Doctor Dieters and Albert Dietrich.
All agree that Johannes Brahms was a most fascinating personality.
Dieters and Dietrich were about the age of Brahms, and were lesser
satellites swinging just outside the Schumann orbit. Very naturally when
a new devotee appeared, they gazed at him askance. Many visitors were
coming and going, and from most of them there was nothing to fear, but
when this short, deep-chested boy with flaxen hair appeared, Dietrich
felt there was danger of losing his place at the right hand of the
Master.
Brahms carried his chin in, and the crown of his head high. He was
infinitely good-natured, met everybody on an equality, without abasement
or condescension. He was modest, never pushed himself to the front, and
was always ready to listen. A talented performer who can listen well, is
sure to be loved. And yet when Brahms went forward to play, there was
just a suggestion of indifference to his hearers in his manner, and a
half-haughty self-confidence that won before he had sounded a note. We
always believe in people who believe in themselves.
Young Brahms brought a letter of introduction from Joachim. But that was
nothing--Joachim was always giving letters to everybody. He was like
the men who sign every petition that is presented; or those other good
men who give certificates of character to people they do not know, and
recommendation letters to those for whom they have no use.
So the letter went for little with Robert Schumann--it was the way
Brahms approached the piano, and settled his hands and great shock-head
over the keyboard, that won.
"He is no beginner," whispered Clara to Robert before Johannes had
touched a key.
It didn't take Brahms long to get acquainted--he mixed well. In a few
days he dropped into that half-affectionate way of calling his host and
hostess by their first names, and they in turn called him "Johannes."
And to me this is very beautiful, for, at the last, souls are all of one
age. More and more we are realizing that getting old is only a bad
habit. The only man who is old is the one who thinks he is. Of course
these remarks about age do not exactly apply just here, for no member of
the trinity we are discussing was advanced in years. Robert was
forty-three, Clara was thirty-four, and Johannes was twenty.
Johannes Brahms was thrice well blest in being well born. His parents
were middle-class people, fairly well-to-do. They proved themselves
certainly more than middle-class in intellect, when they adopted the
plan of being the companions and comrades of their children. Johannes
grew up with no slavish fear of "old folks." He had worked with his
father, studied with him; learned lessons from books with his mother,
and played "four hands" with her at the piano, by the hour, just for
fun.
Then when Remenyi came that way with his violin, and wanted a pianist,
he took young Brahms. When their lines crossed the line of Liszt, they
played for him at his inn; and then Liszt played for them.
This Remenyi was our own "Ol' Man Remenyi," who passed over only a year
or so ago. I wonder if he was Ol' Man Remenyi then! He never really was
an old man, and that appellation was more a mark of esteem than anything
else--a sort of diminutive of good-will. I met Remenyi at Chautauqua,
where he spent a month or more in Eighteen Hundred Ninety-three. He gave
me my first introduction to the music of Brahms, of whom he never tired
of talking. He considered Brahms without a rival--the culminating flower
of modern music; and if the Ol' Man slightly exaggerated his own
influence in bringing Brahms out and presenting him to the world, I am
not the one to charge it up against his memory.
In explaining Brahms and his music, Remenyi used to grow animated, and
when words failed he would say, "Here, it was just like this"--and then
he would seize his violin, the bow would wave through the air, and the
notes would tell you how Brahms transposed Beethoven's "Kreutzer
Sonata" from A to B flat--a feat he never could have performed if
Remenyi had not told him how. It was Remenyi who introduced Brahms to
Joachim, and it was Joachim who introduced Brahms to Schumann, and it
was Schumann's article, "New Paths," in the "Neue Zeitschrift fur
Musik," that placed Brahms on a pedestal before the world. Brahms was
not the great man that Schumann painted, Remenyi thought, but the
idealization caused him to put forth a heroic effort to be what Clara
and Robert considered him. So it was really these two who compelled him
to push on: otherwise he might have relaxed into a mere concert
performer or a leader of some subsidized band.
Remenyi always seemed to me like a choice antique mosaic, a trifle
weather-worn, set into the present. He used to quote Liszt as if he
lived around the corner, and would criticize Wagner, and tell of
Moescheles, Haertel, the Mendelssohns and the Schumanns, as if they
might all gather tomorrow and play for us at the Hall in the Grove.
Recently I met dear old Herr Kappes, eighty years young, who knew the
Mendelssohns, and admired Brahms, loved Clara Schumann, and liked
Remenyi--sometimes. They were too much alike, I fear, to like each other
all the time. But the harmony is still in the heart of Herr Kappes. He
gives music-lessons, and lectures, and will explain to you just how and
where Brahms differs from Schumann, and where Schubert separates from
both.
Herr Kappes can speak five languages, but even with them all he finds
difficulty in making his meaning clear, and at times adopts the Remenyi
plan, and will just turn to the piano and cry, "It's like this, see!
Schumann wrote it in this way"--and then the strong hands will chase the
keys down and back and over and up. "But Brahms took the motif and set
it like this"--and Herr Kappes will strike the bass a thunderous
stroke--pause, look at you, glide back and down, up and over, and you
are carried away in a swirl of sweet sounds, and see a pink face framed
in its beautiful aureole of white hair. You listen but you do not "see"
the fine distinctions, because you do not care--Herr Kappes is all there
is of it, so animated, so gentle, so true, so lovable--because he used
to pay court to Fanny Mendelssohn and then transferred his affections to
Clara Schumann, and now just loves his art, and everybody.
* * * * *
Schumann's article, "New Paths," at once determined Brahms' career. He
must either live up to the mark that had been set for him--or else run
away.