Ten years have passed away, as many as I formerly devoted to the
publication of this paper--since I have allowed myself to commit my
opinions to this soil so rich in memories. Often in spite of an
overstrained productive activity, I have felt moved to do so; many
new and remarkable talents have made their appearance, and a fresh
musical power seemed about to reveal itself among the many aspiring
artists of the day, even if their compositions were only known to
the few.
I thought to follow with interest the pathways of these elect;
there would--there must--after such a promise, suddenly appear one
who should utter the highest ideal expression of the times, who
should claim the mastership by no gradual development, but burst
upon us fully equipped, as Minerva sprang from the brain of
Jupiter. And he has come, this chosen youth, over whose cradle the
Graces and Heroes seem to have kept watch.
His name is Johannes Brahms; he comes from Hamburg, where he has
been working in quiet obscurity, instructed by an excellent,
enthusiastic teacher in the most difficult principles of his art,
and lately introduced to me by an honored and well-known master.
His mere outward appearance assures us that he is one of the
elect.
Seated at the piano, he disclosed wondrous regions. We were drawn
into an enchanted circle. Then came a moment of inspiration which
transformed the piano into an orchestra of wailing and jubilant
voices. There were sonatas, or rather veiled symphonies, songs
whose poetry revealed itself without the aid of words, while
throughout them all ran a vein of deep song-melody, several pieces
of a half-demoniacal character, but of charming form; then sonatas
for piano and violin, string quartets, and each of these creations
so different from the last that they appeared to flow from so many
different sources. Then, like an impetuous torrent, he seemed to
unite these streams into a foaming waterfall; over the tossing
waves the rainbow presently stretches its peaceful arch, while on
the banks butterflies flit to and fro, and the nightingale warbles
her song.
Whenever he bends his magic wand towards great works, and the
powers of orchestra and chorus lend him their aid, still more
wonderful glimpses of the ideal world will be revealed to us.
May the Highest Genius help him onward! Meanwhile another
genius--that of modesty--seems to dwell within him. His comrades
greet him at his first step in the world, where wounds may,
perhaps, await him, but the bay and the laurel also; we welcome
this valiant warrior!
Robert Schumann had been before the public as essayist, poet, pianist
and composer for twenty years. He had given himself without stint to
almost every musical enterprise of Germany, and his sympathy was ever on
tap for every needy and aspiring genius. You may give your purse--he
who takes it takes trash--but to give your life's blood and then hope
for a renewal of life's lease, is vain.
The public man owes to himself and to his Maker the duty of reserve.
The desert and mountain are very necessary to the individual who gives
himself to the public. That any man should so bestride the narrow world
like a colossus that the multitude must stop to gaze, and thousands feed
upon his words, is an abnormal condition. The only thing that can hold
the balance true is solitude. Relaxation is the first requirement of
strength. Watch the cat, the tiger or the lion asleep. See what complete
absence of intensity--what perfect relaxation! It is all a preparation
for the spring.
Schumann had not sought the mountain, nor abandoned himself to the woods
in old shoes, corduroys and a flannel shirt. Now he was paying the
penalty of publicity. Virtue had gone out of him; and in the article
just quoted, there are signs that he is clutching for something. He
hails this new star and proclaims him, because in some way he feels that
the ruddy, valiant and youthful Brahms is to consummate his work. Brahms
is an extension of himself. It is a part of that longing for
immortality--we perpetuate ourselves in our children and look for them
to accomplish what we have been unable to do.
Johannes Brahms was the spiritual son of Robert Schumann.
In less than a year after Brahms and Schumann first met, there were
ominous signs and evil portents in the air. "Why do you play so fast,
dear Johannes? I beg of you, be moderate!" cried Robert on one occasion.
Brahms turned, and his quick glance caught the ashy face and bloodshot
eyes of a sick man. His reply was a tear and a hand-grasp.
Soon, to Schumann, all music was going at a gallop, and in his ears
forever rang the sound of A. He could hear naught else. Tenderness,
patience, and even love were of no avail. Indeed, love is not exempt
from penalty--the law of compensation never rests. Nature forever
strives for a right adjustment.
The richness and intensity of Schumann's life were bought with a price.
The first year after his marriage he composed one hundred thirty-eight
songs. Sonatas, scherzos, symphonies and ballads followed fast, and in
it all his gifted wife had gloried.
But when, in Eighteen Hundred Fifty-four, Robert had, after sleepless
nights, in a fit of frenzy thrown himself into the Rhine, and had been
rescued, shattered, unable to recognize even his nearest friends--the
loyal and devoted wife saw where she herself had erred.
Writing to Brahms she says: "I encouraged him in his work, and this
fired his ambition to do and to become. Oh! why did I not restrain that
intensity and send him away into the solitude to be a boy; to do nothing
but frolic and play and bathe in the sunshine, and eat and sleep? The
life of an artist is death. Kill ambition, my Brother!"
Activity and rest--both are needed. The idea of the "retreat" in the
Catholic Church is founded on stern, hygienic science. Wagner's forced
exile was not without its advantages, and the "retreats" of Paganini and
the "retirements" of Liszt were very useful factors in the devolution of
their art.
* * * * *
For the malady that beset Robert Schumann, there was no cure save death;
his only rest, the grave. When his spirit passed away in Eighteen
Hundred Fifty-six, his devoted wife and the loyal Brahms attended him.
Owing to the insidious creeping of the disease, Schumann's affairs had
got into bad shape; and it was now left to Brahms, more than all others,
to smooth the way of life for the stricken wife and her fatherless
brood.
The versatility and sturdy commonsense of Brahms were now in evidence.
In business affairs he was ready, decisive and systematic. And the
delicacy, tact and charming good-nature he ever showed, reveal the man
as a most extraordinary figure. Great talent is often bought at a
price--how well we know this, especially with musicians! But Brahms was
sane on all subjects. He could take care of his own affairs, lend a
needed hand with others, but never meddle--smile with that half-sardonic
grimace at all foolish little things, weep with the stricken when
calamity came; yet above it all the little man towered, carrying himself
like the giant that he was. And yet he never made the mistake of taking
himself too seriously. "I am trying to run opposition to Michelangelo's
'Moses,'" he once called to Dietrich, as he leaned out of the window in
the sunshine, and stroked his flowing beard. In his later years many
have testified to this Jovelike quality that Brahms diffused by his
presence. No one could come into his aura and fail to feel his sense of
power. Around such souls is a sacred circle--if you are allowed to come
within this boundary, it is only by sufferance; within this space only
the pure in heart can dwell.
* * * * *
Tolstoy in "Anna Karenina" speaks of that quiet and constant light to be
seen on the faces of those who are successful--those who know that their
success is acknowledged by the world.
Brahms was a successful man by temperament, for success (like East
Aurora) is a condition of mind. There is no tragedy for those who do not
accept tragedy; and the treatment we receive from others is only our own
reflected thought.
Brahms thought well of everybody, if he thought of any one at all. He
reveled in the sunshine, and everywhere made friends of children. "We
saw Brahms on the hotel veranda at Domodossola," wrote a young woman to
me in Eighteen Hundred Ninety-five, "and what do you think?--he was on
all fours, with three children on his back, riding him for a horse!"
For many years Brahms used to make an annual pilgrimage to Italy, and
often on these tours at fairs he would fall in with Gipsy bands. At such
times he would always stop and listen, and would lustily applaud the
performance. On one such occasion, Dietrich tells, the leader recognized
Brahms, and instantly rapped for silence. He was seen to pass the
whispered word along, and then the band struck up one of Brahms' pieces,
greatly to the delight of the composer.
He was a man of the people, and I am glad to know that he hated a table
d'hote, smiled a smile of derision at all dress-coats, had small
sympathy with pink teas, loved his friends, doted on babies, and was
never so happy as when in the country walking along grass-grown lanes in
the early summer morning, when the dew was on and the air was melodious
with the song of birds. He had a habit of going bareheaded, carrying his
hat in his hand; and on these country walks, always with bared head, he
would sing or whistle, and unconsciously in his mind the music would be
taking shape that was to be written out later in the quiet of his study.
Brahms knew the world--not simply one little part of it--he knew it as
thoroughly as any man can, and was interested in it all. He knew the
world of workers--the toilers and bearers of burdens. He knew the weak
and the vicious, and his heart went out to them in sympathy; for he knew
his own heart and realized the narrow margin that separates the
so-called "good" from the alleged "bad." He knew that sin is only a
wrong expression of life, and reacts to the terrible disadvantage of the
sinner.
He was interested in mechanics--bookbinding, printing, iron-working,
carpentry, and was well acquainted with all new inventions and
labor-saving devices. He knew the methods of farming, the different
breeds of cattle; he knew what soil would produce best a certain crop,
and understood "rotation." He could call the wild birds by name and
imitate their notes, and studied long their haunts and habits. That
excellent man and talented, George Herschel, in a letter to a friend
speaks of walking with Johannes Brahms along the highway, and Brahms
suddenly calling in alarm, "Look out! look out! you may kill it!"
It was only a tumblebug, but he shrank from putting foot on any living
thing. Brahms reverenced all life, and felt in his heart that he was
brother to that bug in the dust, to the birds that chirruped in the
hedgerows, and to the trees that lifted their outstretching branches to
the sun.
He was deeply religious--although he never knew it. All music is a hymn
of praise, a song of thanksgiving, a chant of faith. Music is a making
manifest to our dull ears the divine harmony of the universe, and thus
all music is sacred music, and all true musicians are priests, for by
their ministrations we are made to realize our Oneness with the Whole.
Through music we read the Universal.
Music is the only one of the arts that can not be prostituted to a base
use. We hear of bad books, of the "Index Expurgatorius," and in every
State there are laws against the publication of immoral books and
indecent pictures. We also hear of orders issued by the courts requiring
certain statues to be removed or veiled, but no indictment can be
brought against music. It is the only one of the arts that is always
pure.
Brahms realized this and felt the dignity of his office, holding high
the standard; and yet he knew that the toilers in the fields were doing
a service to humanity, just as necessary as his own. And possibly this
is why he uncovered, walking with bared head. All is holy, all is
good--it is all God's world, and all the men and women in it are His
children.
* * * * *
For forty-two years Brahms was the devoted friend of Clara Schumann. She
was thirteen years his senior, yet their spirits were as children
together. From the first he was to her, "Johannes," and she was "Clara"
to him. A few of their letters have been published in the "Revue des
deux Mondes," and this woman, who was a great-grandmother, and had sixty
years before captured a world, then in her seventy-fifth year, wrote to
her "Dear Johannes" with all the gentle fervor of a girl of twenty,
congratulating him on some recent success. In reply he writes back to
his "Dear Clara" in gracious banter; mentions rheumatism in his legs as
an excuse for bad penmanship; hopes she is keeping up her practise;
tells of a "Steinway Grand" that some one has sent him, and regrets that
she does not come to try it "four hands," as he has failed utterly to
get out of it alone the melody that he knows is there.
Brahms never married--the bond between himself and Clara was too sacred
to allow another to sever or share it. And yet the relationship was so
high, so frank, so openly avowed, that no breath of scandal has ever
smirched it.
The purity and excellence of it all has been its own apology, as love
ever should be its own excuse for being.
For about three months every year these two friends dwelt near each
other. Together they worked, composed, sang, read, wrote and roamed the
woods. "None of Madame Schumann's children is as young as she is,"
wrote Doctor Hanslick, when Clara was sixty and Johannes was
forty-seven. "With the hope of passing for her father, Brahms is
cultivating a patriarchal beard," continues Hanslick.
In his essay on "Friendship," Emerson speaks of the folly of forcing our
personal presence on the friend we love best, and of the faith that
ideality brings. Something of this thought is shown in the letters of
Madame Schumann to Brahms, and in his to her.
Often for six months they would not meet, he doing his work in his own
way, she doing hers, but each ever conscious of the life and love of the
other--feeding on the ideal--writing or not writing, but glorying in
each other's triumphs--lives linked first by the love of a third person,
cemented by dire calamity, and then fused by a oneness of hope and
aspiration.
Brahms' nature was too decidedly masculine, that is to say, one-sided,
to exist without the love of woman; Clara Schumann, gentle, generous,
motherly, plastic, needed Johannes no less than he needed her.
When Clara's spirit passed away, in May, Eighteen Hundred Ninety-six,
Brahms attended her funeral at Frankfort. Hero that he was in body and
spirit, the shock unnerved him. No rebound came--every bodily faculty
seemed to have lost its buoyancy. The doctors tried to cheer him by
telling him that he had no organic ailment, and that twenty years of
life and work were before him. He knew better, and told them so. Men do
not live any longer than they wish to. "Shall I live to see the
anniversary of her death?" asked Brahms of the doctor in March, Eighteen
Hundred Ninety-seven. "Oh, undoubtedly--you can live many years if you
only will to," was the answer. Three weeks later--on April Third--Max
Kalbrech telegraphed to Widmann, this message, "Brahms fell asleep early
this morning."
SO HERE ENDETH "LITTLE JOURNEYS TO THE HOMES OF GREAT MUSICIANS,"
BEING VOLUME FOURTEEN OF THE SERIES, AS WRITTEN BY ELBERT HUBBARD:
EDITED AND ARRANGED BY FRED BANN; BORDERS AND INITIALS BY ROYCROFT
ARTISTS, AND PRODUCED BY THE ROYCROFTERS, AT THEIR SHOPS, WHICH ARE
IN EAST AURORA, ERIE COUNTY, NEW YORK, MCMXXII
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|Transcriber's note: The index covers the complete set of "Little |
|Journeys" books. |
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