The art of organ playing found its next great exponents in Holland and

Germany, all of them having been pupils of the Venetian master. The

most celebrated of these, considered purely as an organist, was Jean

Pieters Swelinck (1560-1621), who was born at Deventer in Holland, and

died at Amsterdam. He was more celebrated as a performer and

improviser than for the instrumental pieces he published. Among his

pupils was the celebrated Samuel Scheidt (1587-1654), organist at

Halle, who is memorable as the first who made artistic use of the

chorale. Scheidt is also famous as the author of a book upon organ

tabulature, or the notation for organ, which in Germany at this period

was different from that of the piano, and in fact much resembled the

tabulature for the lute, from which it was derived. It consists of a

combination of lines and signs, by the aid of which the organist was

supposed to be capable of deciphering the intentions of the composer.

No especial importance appears to have been attached to the difference

of notation for instruments and voices in this period. And in fact,

until our own times certain instruments, the viola, for example, have

had their own notation, different from the voices, and different from

that of other instruments. Another celebrated German organist of this

period was Johann Hermann Schein, who, with Scheidt and Swelinck,

constituted the three great German musical S's of the sixteenth

century. Schein (1586-1630) was appointed cantor of the Leipsic St.

Thomas school in 1615, and worked there as above. His numberless

compositions are more free in style than the average of the century,

and a number of them are distinctly secular. Nevertheless, in the

development of instrumental music he had but small part, not being one

of the highly gifted original geniuses who impress themselves upon

following generations. The great German master of this period was

Schütz, chapel master at Dresden, whose career forms part of the

story of the oratorio, a form of music which he had so large a share

in shaping into its present form.

[Illustration: Fig. 49.

SAMUEL SCHEIDT.]

II.

In order to come once more into the path of musical empire, we must

return again to Italy, where there was an organist at St. Peter's, who

had in him the elements of greatness and originality. Girolamo

Frescobaldi (1587-1640) was organist of St. Peter's at Rome from

1615. His education had been in part acquired in Italy, and in part in

the Netherlands. As a virtuoso he attained an extraordinary success,

and one of his recitals is reputed to have been attended by as many as

30,000 people. He distinguished himself as composer no less than as

organist, and particularly by his compositions in free style. His

Ricerari, Concertos and Canzones were all protests against the bondage

of instrumental music to the fetters of vocal forms. It was the

compositions of this master, together with those of Froberger, that

Sebastian Bach desired to have, and which, in fact, he stole out of

his brother's book case, and copied in the moonlight nights.

It would take us too far were we to enumerate all the composers who

distinguished themselves in this century, no one of them succeeding in

composing anything satisfactory to this later generation, but all

contributing something toward the liberation of instrumental music,

and all adding something to its too limited resources. Among these

names were those of Johann Kasper Kerl, organist at St. Stephen's

church in Vienna, who, after having served with distinction at Munich,

returned later and died at Vienna in 1690. Another of these German

masters, also one of those whose compositions Bach wished to study,

was Johann Pachelbel, of Nuremberg (1635-1706). In 1674 he was

assistant organist at Vienna, in 1677 organist at Eisenach, and soon

back to Nuremberg a few years later. His multifarious works for organ,

among which we find a variety of forms, were perhaps the chief model

upon which Sebastian Bach formed his style. He especially excelled in

improvising choral variations, and in fanciful and musicianly

treatment of themes proposed by the hearer. Yet another name of this

epoch, that of George Muffat, is now almost forgotten. He studied in

France, and formed his style upon that of the French. A later master,

also very influential in the style of Sebastian Bach, was Dietrich

Buxtehude (1637-1707). For nearly forty years he was organist at the

Church of St. Mary at Lübeck, where he was so celebrated that the

young Sebastian Bach made a journey on foot there in order to hear and

master the principles of his art. Buxtehude wrote a great number of

pieces in free style for the organ, and, while his works have little

value to modern ears, there is no doubt that this master was an

important influence upon the enfranchisement of instrumental music.

Among all these Netherlandish organists few are better known by name

at the present day than Johann Adam Reinken (1623-1722), who was born

at Deventer, Holland, and after the proper elementary and finishing

studies, succeeded his master, Scheidemann, as organist at Hamburg.

Here his fame was so great that the young Bach made two journeys there

on foot, in order to hear him. He was a virtuoso of a high order, and

his style exercised considerable influence over that of Bach.

[Illustration: Fig. 50.

JOHANN ADAM REINKEN.]

III.

Return we now to Italy, where the violin led also to an important

development of instrumental music, having in it the promise of the

best that we have had since. In Fusignano, near Imola, was born in

1653 Archangelo Corelli, who became the first of violin virtuosi, and

the first of composers for the instrument, and for violins in

combination with other members of the same family, and so of our

string quartette. He died in 1713 at Rome. Of his boyhood there is

little known. About 1680 he appears in high favor at the court of

Munich. In 1681 he was again in Rome, where he appears to have found a

friend in Cardinal Ottoboni, in whose palace he died. His period of

creative activity extended from 1683, when he began the publication of

his forty-eight three-voiced sonatas, for two violins, in four numbers

of twelve sonatas each. He also composed many other sonatas for the

violin, for violin and piano, and for other instruments. These

epoch-marking works are held in high esteem at the present time, and

are in constant use for purposes of instruction.

Meanwhile the orchestra had been steadily enriched through the

competition of successive operatic composers, each exerting himself to

produce more effect than the preceding. In this way new combinations

of tone color were contrived, and now and then introduced in a

fortunate manner, and effects of greater sonority were attained

through the greater number of instruments, and the more expert use of

those they had. In the present state of knowledge it would be very

difficult, if not impossible, to trace the successive steps of this

progress, and to give proper credit to each composer for his own

contribution to the general stock. At best, the orchestra at the end

of this century was somewhat meager. The violin and the other members

of its family had taken their places somewhat as we now have them, but

the number of basses and tenors was much less than at present, their

place being filled by the archlute and the harpsichord. The trumpet

was occasionally employed, the flute, the oboe, and very rarely the

trombone. The conductor at the harpsichord, playing from a figured

bass, filled in chords according to his own judgment of the effect

required. Nothing approaching the smoothness and discreet coloration

of the orchestra of the present day, or even of the Haydn orchestra,

existed at this time. The violin players were very cautious about

using the second and third "positions," but played continually with

their hands in the first position. This part of the music, therefore,

wholly lacked the freedom which it now has, and the whole progress of

this century was purely apprentice work in instrumental music, its

value lying in its establishing the principle, first, that

instrumental music might exist independently of vocal, and, second,

that it might enhance the expressiveness of vocal music when

associated with it. The groundwork of the two great forms of the

period next ensuing, the fugue and the sonata, had been laid, and a

certain amount of precedent established in favor of free composition

in dance and fantasia form. Meanwhile the pianoforte of the day, the

_clavicembalo_, as the Italians called it, had been considerably

improved. The present scale of music had been demonstrated by Zarlino,

and the ground prepared for the great geniuses whose coming made the

eighteenth century forever memorable as the blossoming time of musical

art.

Upon the whole, perhaps the most important part of the actual

accomplishment of this century was in musical theory. While musicians

for centuries had been employing the major and minor thirds, and the

triads as we now have them, the fact had remained unacknowledged in

musical theory, and the supposed authority of the Greeks still

remained binding upon all. Zarlino, however, made a new departure. He

not only assigned the true intervals of the major scale, according to

perfect intonation, but argued strongly for equal temperament, and

demonstrated the impossibility of chromatic music upon any other

basis. Purists may still continue to doubt whether this was an

absolute advantage to the art of music, since it carries with it the

necessity of having all harmonic relations something short of

perfection; but the immediate benefit to musical progress was

unquestionable, and according to all appearance the art of music is

irrevocably committed to the tempered scale of twelve tones in the

octave.

[Illustration]

Book Fourth.

THE

Flowering Time of Modern Music.

BACH, HÄNDEL, HAYDN, MOZART, BEETHOVEN. THE FUGUE AND THE SONATA.

CHAPTER XXII.

GENERAL VIEW OF MUSIC IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

It is not easy to characterize simply and clearly the nature of the

musical development which took place during the eighteenth century.

The blossoming of music was so manifold, so diversified, so

irrepressible in every direction, that there was not one single

province of it, wherein new and masterly creations were not brought

out. The central figures of this period were those of the two Colossi,

Bach and Händel; after them Haydn, the master of genial proportion and

taste; Mozart, the melodist of ineffable sweetness, and finally at the

end of the century, the great master, Beethoven. In opera we have the

entire work of that great reformer, the Chevalier Gluck, and a

succession of Italian composers who enlarged the boundaries of the

Italian music-drama in every direction, but especially in the

direction of the impassioned and sensational. Add to these influences,

already sufficiently diversified, that of a succession of brilliant

virtuosi upon the leading instruments, whereby the resources of all

the effective musical apparatuses were more fully explored and

illustrated, with the final result of affording the poetic composer

additional means of bringing his ideas to a more effective

expression--and we have the general features of a period in music so

luxuriant that in it we might easily lose ourselves; nor can we easily

form a clear idea of the entire movement as the expression of a single

underlying spiritual impulse. Yet such in its inner apprehension it

most assuredly was.

Upon the whole, all the improvements of the time arrange themselves

into two categories, namely: The better proportion, contrast, and more

agreeable succession of moments in art works; and, second, the more

ample means for intense expression. In the department of form, indeed,

there was a very important transition made between the first half of

the century and the last. The typical form of the first part of this

division was the fugue, which came to a perfection under the hands of

Bach and Händel, far beyond anything to be found in the form

previously. The fugue was the creation of this epoch, and while based

upon the general idea of canonic imitation, after the Netherlandish

ideal, it differed from their productions in several highly

significant respects. While all of a fugue is contained within the

original subject, and the counter-subject, which accompanies it at

every repetition, it has an element of tonality in it which places it

upon an immensely higher plane of musical art than any form known, or

possible, before the obsolescence of the ecclesiastical modes.

Moreover, the fugue has opportunities for episode, which enable it to

acquire variety to a degree impossible for any form developed earlier;

and which, when these opportunities were fresh, afforded composers a

field for the display of fancy which was practically free. This, one

may still realize by comparing the different fugues in Bach's "Well

Tempered Clavier" with each other, and with those of any other

collection. It is impossible to detect anywhere the point where the

inspiration of the composer felt itself bound by the restrictions of

this form. It was for Bach and Händel practically a free form. And the

few other contemporaneous geniuses of a high order either experienced

the same freedom in it, or found ways of evading its strictness by the

production of various styles of fancy pieces, which, while conforming

to the fugue form in their main features, were nevertheless free

enough to be received by the musical public of that day with

substantially the same satisfaction as a fantasia would have been

received a century later. Roughly speaking, Bach and Händel exhausted

the fugue. While Bach displayed his mental activity in almost every

province of music, and like some one since, of whom it has been much

less truthfully said, "touched nothing which he did not adorn," he was

all his life a writer of fugues. His preludes are not fugues, and

their number almost equals that of the fugues; but the operative

principles were not essentially different--merely the applications of

thematic development were different. Yet strange as it may seem,

within thirty years from his death it became impossible to write

fugues, and at the same time be free. Why was this?

A new element came into music, incompatible with fugue, requiring a

different form of expression, and incapable of combination with fugue.

That element was the people's song, with its symmetrical cadences and

its universal intelligibility. Let the reader take any one of the

Mozart sonatas, and play the first melody he finds--he will

immediately see that here is something for which no place could have

been found in a fugue, nor yet in its complement, the prelude of

Bach's days. The same is true of many similar passages in the sonatas

of Haydn. Music had now found the missing half of its dual nature. For

we must know that in the same manner as the thematic or fugal element

in music represents the play of musical fantasy, turning over musical

ideas intellectually or seriously; so there is a spontaneous melody,

into which no thought of developing an idea enters. The melody flows

or soars like the song of a bird, because it is the free expression,

not of musical fantasy, as such (the unconscious play of tonal fancy),

but the flow of _melody_, _song_, the soaring of spirit in some one

particular direction, floating upon buoyant pinions, and in directions

well conceived and sure. The symmetry of the people's song follows as

a natural part of the progress. The spontaneous element of the music

of the northern harpers now found its way into the musical productions

of the highest geniuses. Henceforth the fugue subsides from its

pre-eminence, and remains possible only as a highly specialized

department of the general art of musical composition, useful and

necessary at times, but nevermore the expression of the unfettered

fancy of the musical mind.

The discovery of the secret of musical contrast, in the types of

development, the _thematic_ and the _lyric_, led to the creation of a

new form, in which they mutually contrast with and help each other.

That form was the Sonata, which having been begun earlier, was

developed further by the sons of Bach, but which received its

characteristic touches from the hands of Haydn and Mozart. This was

the crowning glory of the eighteenth century--the sonata. A form had

been created, into which the greatest of masters was even then

beginning to breathe his mighty soul, producing thereby a succession

of master works, which stand without parallel in the realm of music.

CHAPTER XXIII.

JOHN SEBASTIAN BACH.

All things considered, the most remarkable figure of this period was

that of the great John Sebastian Bach, who was born at Eisenach, in

Prussia, in 1685, and died at Leipsic in 1750. It is scarcely too much

to say that this great man has exercised more influence upon the

development of music than any other composer who has ever lived. In

his own day he led a quiet, uneventful life, at first as student, then

as court musician at Weimar, where he played the violin; later as

organist at Arnstadt, a small village near Weimar, and still later as

director of music in the St. Thomas church and school at Leipsic. In

the sixty-five years of his life, Bach produced an enormous number of

compositions, of which about half were in fugue form, a form which was

at its prime at the beginning of this century and which Bach carried

to the farthest point in the direction of freedom and spontaneity

which it ever reached.

[Illustration: Fig. 51.

JOHN SEBASTIAN BACH.]

It is the remarkable glory of Bach to have rendered his compositions

indispensable to thorough mastery in three different provinces of

musical effort. The modern art of violin playing rests upon two works,

the six sonatas of Bach for violin solo, and the Caprices of Paganini.

The former contain everything that belongs to the classical, the

latter everything that belongs to the sensational. In organ playing

the foundation is Bach, and Bach alone. Nine-tenths of organ playing

is comprised in the Bach works. Upon the piano his influence has been

little less. While it is true that at least four works are necessary

for making a pianist of the modern school, viz., the "Well Tempered

Clavier," of Bach; the "_Gradus ad Parnassum_," of Clementi; the

"Studies," of Chopin, and the Rhapsodies, of Liszt, the works of Bach

form, on the whole, considerably more than one-third of this

preparation. Nor has the influence of Bach been confined to the

province of technical instruction alone. On the contrary, all

composers since his time have felt the stimulus of his great tone

poems, and Mendelssohn, Schumann, Chopin and Wagner found him the most

productive of great masters.

The life of Bach need not long detain us. A musician of the tenth

generation, member of a family which occupies a liberal space in

German encyclopedias of music, art and literature, Sebastian Bach led

the life of a teacher, productive artist and virtuoso, mainly within

the limits of the comparatively unimportant provincial city of

Leipsic. His three wives in succession and his twenty-one children

were the domestic incidents which bound him to his home. Here he

trained his choir, taught his pupils, composed those master works

which modern musicians try in vain to equal, and the even tenor of his

life was broken in upon by very few incidents of a sensational kind.

We do not understand that Bach was a virtuoso upon the violin,

although no other master has required more of that greatest of musical

instruments. Upon the piano and organ the case is different. Bach's

piano was the clavier, upon which he was the greatest virtuoso of his

time. His touch was clear and liquid, his technique unbounded, and his

musical fantasy absolutely without limit. Hence in improvisation or in

the performance of previously arranged numbers he never failed to

delight his audience. It was the same upon the organ. The art of

obligato pedal playing he brought to a point which it had never before

reached and scarcely afterward surpassed. He comprehended the full

extent of organ technique, and with the exception of a few tricks of

quasi-orchestral imitation, made possible in modern organs, he covered

the entire ground of organ playing in a manner at once solid and

brilliant. Many stories are told of his capacity in this direction,

but the general characterization already given is sufficient. He was a

master of the first order. The common impression that he played

habitually upon the full organ is undoubtedly erroneous. He made ample

use of registration to the fullest extent practicable on the organs of

his day.

The most remarkable feature of the career of Bach is his productivity

in the line of choral works. As leader of the music in the St. Thomas

church, he had under his control two organs, two choirs, the children

of the school and an orchestra. For these resources he composed a

succession of cantatas, every feast day in the ecclesiastical year

being represented by from one to five separate works. The total number

of these cantatas reaches more than 230. Some of them are short, ten

or fifteen minutes long, but most of them are from thirty to forty

minutes, and some of them reach an hour. Their treasures have been but

imperfectly explored, although most of them are now in print. In the

course of his ministrations at Leipsic he produced five great Passion

oratorios for Good Friday in Holy Week. The greatest of these was the

Passion of St. Matthew, so named from the source of its text. This

work occupies about two hours in performance. It is in two parts, and

the sermon was supposed to intervene. It consists of recitative, arias

and choruses, some of which are extremely elaborate and highly

dramatic. The other Passions are less fortunate. Nevertheless they

contain many beautiful and highly dramatic moments. Bach's oratorios

belong to the category of church works, as distinguished from those

intended for concert purposes. This is seen especially in the

treatment of the chorale, in which he expects the congregation to

co-operate. In one direction Bach was subject to serious limitation.

His knowledge of the voice, and his consideration for its convenience,

were far below the standard of composers of the same time educated in

Italy. In his works, while many passages are very impressive, and

while the melody and harmony are always appropriate to the matter in

hand, the intervals and especially the convenience of the different

registers of the voice are very imperfectly considered, for which

reason his works have not been performed to anything like the extent

to which their musical interest would otherwise have carried them.

This is especially true of the greatest of all, the Passion according

to St. Matthew. It was first performed on Good Friday, 1729, in the

St. Thomas church at Leipsic, and it does not appear to have been

given again until 1829, when Mendelssohn brought it out. Since that

time it has been given almost every year in Leipsic, and more or less

frequently in all the musical centers of the world, but its

elaboration is very great and its vocal treatment unsatisfactory to

solo voices, for which reason it succeeds only under the inspiration

of an artistic and enthusiastic leader. In fact, all the great works

of Bach are more or less in the category of classics, which are well

spoken of and seldom consulted. While, in Beethoven's time, the whole

of the "Well Tempered Clavier" was not thought too much for an

ambitious youngster, at the present time there are few pianists who

play half a dozen of these pieces. The easier inventions for two

parts, some of the suites, several gavottes, modernized from his

violin and chamber music, and a very few of his other pieces for the

clavier, are habitually played.

It would be unjust to close the account of this great artist without

mentioning what we might call the prophetic element in his works. The

great bulk of Bach's compositions are in two forms, the Prelude and

the Fugue. The fugue came to perfection in his hands. It was an

application of the Netherlandish art of canonic imitation, combined

with modern tonality. In a fugue the first voice gives the subject in

the tonic, the second voice answers in the dominant, the third voice

comes again in the tonic, and the fourth voice, if there be one, again

in the dominant. Then ensues a digression into some key upon what

theorists call the dominant side, when one or two voices give out the

subject and answer it again, always in the tonic and dominant of the

new key. Then more or less modulating matter, thematically developed

out of some leading motive of the subject, and again the principal

material of the theme, with one or more answers. The final close is

preceded by a more or less elaborate pedal point upon the dominant of

the principal key, after which the subject comes in. With very few

exceptions the fugues of Bach are in modern tonality, the major key or

the modern minor, with their usual relatives.

The prelude is a less closely organized composition. Sometimes it is

purely harmonic in its interest, like the first of the "Well Tempered

Clavier." At other times it is highly melodic, like the preludes in C

sharp major and minor of the first book of the Clavier, and, as a

rule, the prelude either treats its motives in a somewhat lyric manner

or dispenses with the melodic material altogether. Thus the prelude

and fugue mutually complete each other. But it is a great mistake to

regard Bach as a writer of fugues alone. He was also very free in

fantasies, and one of his pianoforte works, concerning the origin of

which nothing whatever is known, the "Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue,"

is one of the four or five greatest compositions that exist for this

instrument. The remarkable thing about this fantasia is the freedom of

its treatment and the facility with which it lends itself to virtuoso

handling, as distinguished from the rather limited treatment of the

piano usual in Bach's works. The second part of the fantasia is

occupied by a succession of recitatives of an extremely graphic and

poetic character. Melodically and harmonically these recitatives are

thoroughly modern and dramatic, the latter element being very forcibly

represented by the succession of diminished sevenths on which the

phrases of the recitative end. The fugue following is long, highly

diversified and extremely climactic in its interest. In other parts of

his work Bach has left fantasies of a more descriptive character. He

has, for instance, a hunting scene with various incidents of a

realistic character, and in general he shows himself in his piano

works a man of wide range of mind and extremely vigorous musical

fantasy.

In the department of concertos for solo instruments and orchestra, his

works are very rich. There are a large number for piano, quite a

number for organ, several for two and three pianos, with orchestra,

and various other combinations of instruments, such as two violins and

'cellos, and so on. In these each solo player has an equal chance with

the other, and solos and accompaniment work together understandingly

for mutual ends. The most noticeable feature of his elaborate works is

the rhythm, which is vigorous, highly organized and extremely

effective. In the department of harmony, it is believed by almost all

close observers that no combination of tones since made by any writer

is without a precedent in the works of Bach; the strange chords of

Schumann and Wagner find their prototypes in the works of this great

Leipsic master. Melodically considered, Bach was a genius of the

highest order. Not only did he make this impression upon his own time

and upon the great masters of the next two generations, but many of

his airs have attained genuine popularity within the present

generation, and are played with more real satisfaction than most other

works that we have. This is the more remarkable because from the time

of his first residence in Leipsic when he was only twenty-four years

old he went out of that city but a few times, and heard very little

music but his own. He was three times married, and had twenty-one

children, many of whom were musical. Three of his sons became eminent,

and the principal episode of his later life was his visit to Potsdam,

where his son, Carl Phillip Emanuel, was musician to Frederick the

Great. Here he was received with the utmost informality by the king

and made to play and improvise upon all the pianos and organs in the

palace and the adjacent churches. As a reminiscence of this visit he

produced a fugue upon a subject given by Frederick himself, written

for six real parts. This work was called the "Musical Offering," and

was dedicated to Frederick the Great. In his later years Bach became

blind from having over-exerted his eyes in childhood and in later

life. He died on Good Friday in 1750.

CHAPTER XXIV.

GEO. FREDERICK HÄNDEL.

The companion figure to Bach, in this epoch, was that of George

Frederick Händel, who was born at the little town of Halle in the same

year as Bach, 1685, and died in London in 1759. Händel's father was a

physician, and although the boy showed considerable aptitude for music

his father did not think favorably of his pursuing it as a vocation;

but the fates were too strong for him. When George Frederick was about

eight years old, he managed to go with his father to the court of the

duke of Saxe Weissenfels, some distance away, where an older brother

was in service. Here he obtained access to the organ in the chapel,

and was overheard by the duke, who recognized the boy's talent, and,

with the authority inherent in princely rank, admonished the father

that on no account was he to thwart so gifted an inclination.

Accordingly the youngster had lessons in music upon the clavier, the

organ and the violin, the three standard instruments of the time. The

older Händel died, and before he was nineteen George Frederick made

his way to Hamburg, which was then one of the musical centers of

Germany. Here he obtained an engagement in the theater orchestra as

_ripieno_ violin, a sort of fifth wheel in the orchestral chariot,

its duty being that of filling in missing parts. The boy was then

rather more than six feet high, heavy and awkward. He was an

indifferent violinist, and the other players were disposed to make a

butt of him, although he was known to be an accomplished

harpsichordist. It happened presently, however, that the leader of the

orchestra, who presided at the harpsichord, fell sick, and Händel,

being at the same time the best harpsichordist and the poorest

violinist of all, was placed at the head. He carried the rehearsals

and the performances through with such spirit that it resulted in his

being made assistant director, and two works of his were presently

performed--"Almira" and "Nero." The first made a great hit and was

retained in performance for several weeks. The Italian ambassador

immediately recognized the talent of the young man, and offered to

take him to Italy in his suite, but Händel declined, preferring to go

with his own money, which, after the production of "Nero," and its

successful run of several weeks, he was able to do.

[Illustration: Fig. 52.

GEORGE FREDERICK HÄNDEL.

1685-1759.]

Accordingly we find him in Italy, in 1710, first at Naples, where he

made the acquaintance of the greatest harpsichord player of that time,

Domenico Scarlatti. The style of the young German was so charming, and

so different from that of the great Italian player, that he

immediately became a favorite, and was called _Il Caro Sassone_ ("The

dear Saxon"). He produced an opera in Naples with good success.

Afterward he produced others at Rome and Venice. In a few years he was

back at Hanover, where he was made musical director to the Elector

George, who afterward became George I of England. Here, presently, he

took a vacation in order to visit London, where he found things so

much to his liking that he remained, having good employment under

Queen Anne, and a public anxious to hear his Italian operas. Presently

Queen Anne died and George the First came over to reign as king. This

was altogether a different matter, for Händel had his unsettled

account with the elector of Hanover, upon whom he had so cavalierly

turned his back. The peace was finally made, however, by a set of

compositions very celebrated in England under the name of "The Water

Music." When King George was going from Whitehall to Westminster in

his barge, Händel followed with a company of musicians, playing a

succession of pieces, which the king knew well enough for a production

of his truant capellmeister. Accordingly he received him once more

into favor, and Händel went on with his work.

For upwards of twenty years, Händel pursued his course in London as a

composer of Italian operas, of which the number reached about forty.

During the greater part of his time he had his own theater, and

employed the singers from Italy and elsewhere, producing his works in

the best manner of his time. His operas were somewhat conventional in

their treatment, but every one of them contained good points. Here and

there a chorus, occasionally a recitative, now and then an

aria--always something to repay a careful hearing, and occasionally a

master effect, such as only genius of the first order could produce.

His education during this period was exactly opposite to that of Bach.

Bach lived in Leipsic all his life, and, being in a position from

which only a decided fault of his own could discharge him, he

consulted no one's taste but his own, writing his music from within,

and adapting it to his forces in hand, or not adapting it, as it

pleased him. Händel, on the other hand, had always the public. He

commenced as an operatic composer. As an operatic composer he

succeeded in Hamburg, and as an operatic composer he succeeded in

Italy. The same career held him in London. There was always an

audience to be moved, to be affected, to be pleased, and there were

always singers of high talents to carry out his conceptions. Hence his

whole training was in the direction of smoothness, facility, pleasing

quality. Nevertheless, there came an end to the popularity of Händel.

A most shabby _pasticcio_ called the "Beggar's Opera," was the

immediate cause of his downfall. This queer compilation was made up of

old ballad tunes, with hastily improvised words, and the merest thread

of a story, and included some tunes of Händel's own. This being

produced at an opposition house, took the town. The result was that

Händel was bankrupted for the second time, owing more than £75,000.

Some time before this he had held the position of private musical

director to the earl of Chandos, who had a chapel in connection with

his palace, a short distance out of London, as it then was. In this

place Händel had already produced a number of elaborate anthems and

one oratorio--"Esther." In the stress of his present circumstances,

after a few weeks, he remembered the oratorio of "Esther," and

immediately brought it out in an enlarged form. The effect was

enormous. Whatever the English taste might be for opera, for oratorio

their recognition was irrepressible. "Esther" brought him a great deal

of money, and he presently wrote other oratorios with such good effect

that in a very few years he had completely paid up the enormous

indebtedness of his operatic ventures. At length, in 1741, he composed

his master work--the "Messiah." This epoch-marking composition was

improvised in less than a fortnight, a rate of speed calling for about

three numbers per day. The work was produced in Dublin for charitable

purposes. It had the advantage of a text containing the most beautiful

and impressive passages of Scripture relating to the Messiah, a

circumstance which no doubt inspired the beauty of the music, and

added to the early popularity of the work. In later times it is

perhaps not too much to say that the music has been equally useful to

the text, in keeping its place in the consciousness of successive

generations of Christians. In this beautiful master work we have the

result of the whole of Händel's training. The work is very cleverly

arranged in a succession of recitatives, arias and choruses, following

each other in a highly dramatic and effective manner. There are

certain passages in the "Messiah" which have never been surpassed for

tender and poetic expression. Among these are the "Behold and See if

There Be Any Sorrow Like His Sorrow," "Come unto Him," and "He was

Despised." In the direction of sublimity nothing grander can be found

than the "Hallelujah," "Worthy is the Lamb," "Lift up Your Heads," nor

anything more dramatically impressive than the splendid burst at the

words, "Wonderful," "Counsellor." The work, as a whole, while

containing mannerisms in the roulades of such choruses as "He shall

Purify," and "For unto Us," marks the highest point reached in the

direction of oratorio; for, while Händel himself surpassed its

sublimity in "Israel in Egypt," and Bach its dramatic qualities in the

thunder and lightning chorus in the St. Matthew Passion; and

Mendelssohn its melodiousness in his "Elijah"; for a balance of good

qualities, and for even and sustained inspiration throughout, the

"Messiah" is justly entitled to the rank which, by common consent, it

holds as the most complete master work which oratorio can show.

In the "Israel in Egypt" Händel illustrates a different phase of his

talent. This curious work is composed almost entirely of choruses, the

most of which are for two choirs, very elaborately treated. Among them

all, the two which perhaps stand out pre-eminent are "The Horse and

His Rider" and the "Hailstone," two colossal works, as dramatic as

they are imposing. The masterly effect of the Händelian chorus rests

upon the combination of good qualities such as no other master has

accomplished to the same extent. They are extremely well written for

the voice, with an accurate appreciation of the effect of different

registers and masses, the melodic ideas are smooth and vigorous, and

the harmonic treatment as forcible as possible, without ever

controlling the composer further than it suited his artistic purpose

to go. Bach very often commences a fugue which he feels obliged to

finish, losing thereby the opportunity of a dramatic effect. Händel

perfects his fugue only when the dramatic effect will be improved by

so doing, and in this respect he makes a distinct gain over his great

contemporary at Leipsic. The total list of the Händel works comprises

the following: Two Italian oratorios; nineteen English oratorios; five

Te Deums; six psalms; twenty anthems; three German operas; one English

opera; thirty-nine Italian operas; two Italian serenatas, two English

serenatas; one Italian intermezzo, "Terpsichore"; four odes;

twenty-four chamber duets; ninety-four cantatas; seven French songs;

thirty-three concertos; nineteen English songs; sixteen Italian airs;

twenty-four sonatas.

Händel was never married; nor, so far as we know, ever in love. He had

among his friends some of the most eminent writers of his day, such as

Addison, Pope, Dean Swift and others. His later years were so

successful that when he died his fortune of above £50,000 was left for

charitable purposes. This was after he had paid all of the

indebtedness incurred in his earlier bankruptcy. It would be a mistake

to dismiss this great master without some notice of his harpsichord

and organ playing. As a teacher of the princesses of the royal family,

he produced many suites and lessons for the harpsichord, in one of

which, as an unnoticed incident, occur the air and variations since so

universally popular under the name of "The Harmonious Blacksmith." It

is not known to whom the composer was indebted for the name generally

applied to this extremely broad air, and clever variations. Very

likely some music publisher was the unknown poet. As an organist

Händel was both great and popular. In the middle of his oratorios he

used to play an organ concerto with orchestra. Of these compositions

he wrote a very large number. They are always fresh and hearty in

style, well written for organ, and with a very flowing pedal part.

Händel appears to have played the pedals upon a somewhat different

plan from that of Bach. Bach is generally supposed to have used his

toes for the most part, employing the heel only for an occasional note

where the toes were insufficient. Händel seems to have used toe and

heel habitually in almost equal proportion.

It is a curious feature of the later part of Händel's career that he

brought out his oratorios in costume. Several of the original bills

are extant, in which an oratorio is promised "with new cloathes."

"Esther" is said to have been given with complete stage appointment at

Chandos, like an opera; but the Lord Chamberlain prohibited future

representations of the kind on account of the supposed sacredness of

the subject. Afterward the characters were costumed, and the stage

set, but there was no action. While Händel was German by birth, his

long residence in England and his habitual writing for the last ten or

fifteen years of his life oratorios in the English language, made

him, to all intents and purposes, an English composer. For nearly a

century he stood to the English school as a model of everything that

was good and great, to such an extent that very little of original

value was accomplished in that country, and when, by lapse of time and

a deeper self-consciousness on the part of English musicians, this

influence had begun to wane, a new German composer came in the person

of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, who, in turn, became a popular idol,

and for many years a barrier to original effort.

The influence of Händel upon the later course of music is by no means

so marked as that of Bach. Nevertheless, he was one of the great tone

poets of all times, and his works form an indispensable part of the

literature of music. It was his good fortune to embody certain types

of melody and harmony with a clearness and effectiveness that no other

composer has equaled. The oratorio, in particular, not only fulfilled

itself in Händel, but we might almost say _completed_ itself there,

for very little of decided originality has been produced in this

department since. The Händelian operas have been mostly forgotten for

many years, but they contain gems of melody in the solo and chorus

parts which have still a future. His first opera, "Almira," was

revived at Hamburg a few years ago with remarkable effect, and it is

not at all unlikely that extracts from many of the other works will

eventually find their way into the current repertory of the singer, as

many of the arias already have.

CHAPTER XXV.

EMANUEL BACH; HAYDN; THE SONATA.

I.

None of the sons of Bach inherited the commanding genius of their

father, although four of them showed talent above the average of

musicians of their day, and one of them distinguished himself and

exercised an important influence upon the subsequent course of

pianoforte music. The most gifted of Bach's sons was Wilhelm

Friedmann, the eldest (1710-1784), who was especially educated by his

father for a musician. He turned out badly, however, his enormous

talents not being able to save him from the natural consequences of a

dissolute life. He died in Berlin in the greatest degradation and

want. This Bach wrote comparatively few compositions, owing to his

invincible repugnance to the labor of putting them upon paper; he was

famous as an improviser, and certain pieces of his in the Berlin

library are considered to manifest musical gifts of a high order.

Johann Christian (1735-1782), the eleventh son, known as the Milanese

or London Bach, devoted himself to the lighter forms of music, and

after having served some years as organist of the cathedral at Milan,

and having distinguished himself by certain operas successfully

produced in Italy, he removed to London, where he led an easy and

enjoyable life. He was an elegant and fluent writer for the

pianoforte. The one son of Bach who is commonly regarded as having

left a mark upon the later course of music was Carl Philip Emanuel

(1714-1788), the third son, commonly known as the Berlin or Hamburg

Bach. His father intended him for a philosopher, and had him educated

accordingly in the Leipsic and Frankfort universities, but his love

for music and the thorough grounding in it he had at home eventually

determined him in this direction. While in the Frankfort University he

conducted a singing society, which naturally led to his exercising

himself in composition. Presently he gave up law for music, and going

to Berlin he obtained an appointment as "Kammer-musiker" to Frederick

the Great, his especial business being that of accompanying the king

in his flute concertos. The seven years' war having put an end to

these duties, he migrated to Hamburg, where he held honorable

appointments as organist and conductor until his death. He wrote in a

tasteful and free, but somewhat superficial, style; and while his

compositions bear favorable comparison with those of other musicians

of his time, they are by no means of a commanding nature like those of

his father. There were, however, two reasons for this, wholly aside

from the question of less ability in the younger composer. One of

these is to be found in the free form which Emanuel Bach began to

develop. Sebastian Bach had the advantage of writing his greatest

works in a form which had been prepared for him, without having been

exhausted. The technique of fugue had been created before his time,

but its possibilities in the direction of freedom and spontaneity had

never been illustrated. Bach proceeded to do this for the fugue form,

and, it may be added, did it with such amplitude that no composer has

been able to write a free and original fugue since. The son

recognizing both that the fugue had been exhausted as a free art-form,

and feeling no doubt that something more intuitively intelligible than

fugue was possible, addressed himself to composition in the free

style, in which the means of producing effects had not yet been

mastered. The thematic use of material had been acquired, or was

easily inferable from the fugue, but the proper manner of contrasting

that material with other, calculated to relieve the attention and at

the same time intensify the interest, remained for later explorers.

The missing contrast was the lyric element, but it was not until the

next generation of composers that it came into pianoforte music in

satisfactory form. Accordingly the sonatas of Emanuel Bach sound dry

and superficial, and while they are interesting as the remote models

upon which Beethoven occasionally built, they do not repay study for

the purposes of public performance. There is little heart in them. As

a literary musician Bach deserves to be remembered for his work upon

"The True Art of Playing the Piano." This was the first systematic

instruction book for the instrument of which we have a record, and it

still is the main dependence for information concerning the method of

Bach's playing, and the way in which he intended the embellishments in

his works to be performed.

II.

In the little village of Rohrau, in Austria, was born to a master

wheelwright's wife, in 1732, a little son, dark-skinned, not large of

frame, nor handsome, but gifted with that most imperishable of

endowments, a genius for melody and tonal symmetry. The baby was named

Francis Joseph, and he grew to the age of about six in the family of

his parents, in a little house which although twice somewhat rebuilt,

still stands in its original form. Hither people come from many lands

in order to see the birthplace of the great composer Haydn, the

indefatigable and simple-hearted tone poet of many symphonies,

sonatas, and the two favorite cantatas or oratorios, the "Creation"

and the "Seasons." In his earliest childhood the boy showed a talent

for music, which, as his parents both sang and played a little, he had

often an opportunity of hearing. Before he was quite six years old he

was able to stand up in the choir of the village church and lead in

solos, with his sweet and true, if not strong, voice. This was his

delight. At length George Reutter, the director of the music in the

cathedral of St. Stephen at Vienna, heard him, and offered the boy a

place in his choir. Now indeed his fortune seemed made, and he

embraced the offer with gratitude. As a choir boy he ought to have

been taught music in a thorough manner, but as Reutter was rather a

careless man this did not happen in Haydn's case, but the boy grew up

in his own devices. He composed constantly, without having had the

slightest regular training. One day Reutter saw one of his pieces, a

mass movement for twelve parts. He offered the passing advice, that

the composer would have done better to have taken two voices, and that

the best exercise for him would be to write "divisions" (variations)

upon the airs he sang in the service--but no instruction. At length

the boy's voice began to break, and at the age of fourteen or fifteen,

he was turned out to shift for himself. He found an asylum in the

house of a wig maker, Keller, with whom he lived for several years,

earning small sums by lessons, playing the organ at one of the

churches, the violin at another, singing at another and so on, in all

managing to place himself upon the road to fortune--that of industry

and sobriety. This part of his career lasted from 1748, when he left

the choir of the cathedral, to 1752, when he became accompanist to the

Italian master, Porpora, who was then living in Vienna in the house of

an Italian lady, whose daughter's education he was superintending.

With Porpora he learned the art of singing, and the proper manner of

accompanying the voice. He also got many hints in regard to the

correct manner of composing. He had already produced a number of works

in various styles. In 1759 he was appointed conductor of the music at

the palace of Count Morzin, where he had a small number of musicians

under his direction, only sixteen in all. Here he began his life work.

Two years later he was invited to assume the assistant directorship of

the private orchestra and choir of Prince Esterhazy, who lived in

magnificent style, and for many years had maintained a private musical

chapel. Very soon the old prince died, and his son reigned in his

place. The new master was the one named "The Magnificent," and greatly

enlarged the musical appointment of his predecessor. He built a great

palace at Esterhaz, where there was a theater, in which opera was

given, and a smaller one where there was a marionette company, the

machinery of which had been brought to great perfection. There were

frequent concerts. The prince was a great amateur of the peculiar viol

called the barytone, and it was one of Haydn's duties to provide new

compositions for this instrument. Here for thirty years he continued

in service, with few interruptions, and always on the very best of

terms with his prince, and with the men under him. The players called

Haydn "Papa."

[Illustration: Fig. 53.]

Owing to its situation, remote from town, and to the prince's

constantly increasing aversion to living in Vienna, Haydn scarcely

left the vicinity for years together. Here, wholly from within his own

resources, he evolved a succession of works in every style, and for

almost every possible combination of instruments, from operas for the

large theater, to marionette music for the small place, orchestral

compositions, among which the 175 symphonies form a not inconsiderable

portion; there are also concertos for many kinds of instruments, and

songs, masses, _divertissements_ and the like. In short, there is

scarcely any form of music which Haydn did not have to make at some

time or other in his long service in the Esterhazy establishment.

Being his own orchestral director, he had the opportunity of trying

and experimenting and of realizing what would be effective and what

would not. The motive mainly operative in his work, necessarily, was

that of pleasing and amusing. Nobler intentions were not wanting, but

the pleasing element had to be considered in most that he did. Thus

he developed a style of his own, original, becoming, with a certain

taste and symmetry, and with a melodious element which never loses its

charm. Withal he became very clever in his treatment of themes. It was

a saying of his that the "idea" did not matter at all; "treatment is

everything." From this standpoint it is impossible to deny Haydn the

credit of having accomplished his ideal.

He commenced his musical career as a violinist and a singer. His

orchestral symphonies were for violins (for strings), with occasional

seasoning from the brass and wood wind. The constant study of the

violin led to modifications in his style, and evolved first, the

string quartette in the form which has always remained standard. The

symphonies are only larger string quartettes, for, in the order of the

themes, the general manner of treating them and the principles of

contrast or relief which actuated them, the quartettes are sonatas, as

also are the symphonies. Haydn gave the sonata form its present shape.

The insertion of a second theme in the first movement, and the

principle of contrasting this second theme with the first in such a

way that the second theme is generally lyric in style, or at least

tending in that direction, was Haydn's. He also developed the middle

part of the sonata into what is known as the "elaboration,"

"_Durchführungssatz_". The cantabile slow movement, modeled somewhat

after the Italian cantilena, was his. Mozart and Beethoven did wonders

with it later, but the suggestion was Haydn's. The endless

productivity, the constant succession of new pieces demanded, led to a

somewhat systematic proceeding in their production, and so the form

and the method of the sonata became stereotyped. All the instrumental

movements of this time, whenever there was any serious intention,

assumed the form of sonatas; _i.e._, of the instrumental sonatas--the

symphony and the quartette.

At length Haydn's master died, and he accepted an invitation from

Salamon, the publisher, to London, where he produced several new

symphonies, conducted many concerts and returned to Vienna richer by

about $6,000 than when he had left his home a few months before. He

had become a great master, known all over the world, without himself

knowing it. If any man ever woke up and found himself famous, Haydn

was that man, although he had been in the way of having his

compositions played and sung before most of the important personages

in Europe for years, Prince Esterhazy being a royal entertainer. It

was for Madrid that Haydn composed his first Passion oratorio, "The

Last Seven Words." This work, by a curious chance, he made over into

an instrumental piece for his London concerts, the prejudice against

"popery" preventing its being given there in its original form. In

1794 he was again in London. Upon the first visit to London he took

the journey down the Rhine, and at Bonn, in going or coming, the young

Beethoven showed him a new cantata. In 1794 he was again in London,

where the same success attended him as before. He produced many new

works, and was royally entertained. Again he went home richer by many

thousands of dollars than when he set out. With his savings he

purchased a house in the suburbs of Vienna, where he lived the

remainder of his life, dying in 1809. It was during these last years

that he wrote his two oratorios already mentioned. That by which he is

best known is the "Creation," which is a master work indeed, if only

we do not look in it for too much of the distinctly religious or

sublime. It belongs to the pleasing in art, and certain of its numbers

are worthy of Italian opera, so sweetly melodious are they, yet ever

refined and beautiful. Of this kind are the solo arias, "On Mighty

Pens," the famous "With Verdure Clad," the lovely trio, "Most

Beautiful Appear." Several choruses in this work are really splendid.

At the head of the list I would place the two choruses, "Achieved Is

the Glorious Work," with the beautiful trio between, "On Thee Each

Living Soul Awaits." The development of the fugue in the second chorus

is masterly and effective indeed. Everybody knows "The Heavens are

Telling," which, however, has rather more reputation than it deserves.

The English have made much of Haydn's descriptive music in the

accompanied recitatives. This part of his work, however, was but

clever when first written, and now, through the enormous development

which this part of musical composition has since reached, is little

more than childish. Withal, the "Creation" is not difficult. It can be

rendered effectively with moderate resources. This fact, added to its

many charming and engaging qualities, has insured its popularity in

all parts of the musical world. It bids fair to remain for amateur

societies for many years yet.

As a tone poet Haydn belonged by no means to the first rank--at least

in so far as the inherent weight and range of his ideas is concerned.

His one claim to musical fame rests upon his graceful manner of

treating a musical idea, and upon the readiness of his invention in

contrasting his themes, to which may be added the sweet and genial

flavor of his music, which in every line shows a pure and childlike

spirit, simple, unaffected, yet deep and true. It was his good fortune

to stand to Mozart and Beethoven in the rôle of master. Both were in

many ways his superiors, yet both revered him, the one until his own

life went out in the freshness of his youth; the other until when an

old man, having stood upon the very Pisgah tops of the tone world,

full of honors, he spoke of the old master, Haydn, with affection, in

his very last days. Higher testimony than this it would be impossible

to quote. For, in the nature of the case, the composer, Haydn, can

never be judged again by musicians and poets who know so well his aims

and the value of what he accomplished as the two Vienna masters,

Mozart and Beethoven, who were younger than he, yet not too young to

understand the condition of the musical world into which Haydn had

been born, and the musical world as it had become from his living in

it.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XXVI.

MOZART AND HIS GENIUS.

One of the most engaging personalities, and at the same time one of

the most highly gifted, versatile and richly endowed geniuses who ever

adorned the art of music, was that of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

(1756-1791). He was a son of the violin player and musician, Leopold

Mozart, living at Salzburg. At an extremely early age he showed his

love for music by listening to the lessons of his sister. By the time

he was four, his father commenced to give him lessons, and when he was

less than five years old he was discovered one day making marks upon

music paper, which he stoutly maintained belonged to a concerto. The

statement was received with incredulity, but upon carefully examining

the manuscript it was found correctly written, and sensible; but so

difficult as to be impossible to play. Upon the boy's attention being

called to this, he replied, "I call it a concerto because it _is_ so

difficult; they should practice it until they _can_ play it." In

childhood, and indeed all through life, his ear was very sensitive. He

could not bear to hear the sound of a trumpet, and upon his father

seeking to overcome his nervousness by having a trumpet blown in the

room, it threw him into convulsions. The boy was of a most active

mind, interested in everything that went on about him, and eager to

learn in every direction. Nothing came amiss, arithmetic, grammar and

language--he was immediately at home in any subject which he took up.

Music was intuitive to him. So remarkable was his progress, that when

he was yet but six years old his father began to travel with him.

Their first journey was to Munich, where the elector received them

kindly. The programmes consisted of improvisations by the youthful

Mozart upon themes assigned by the audience; pieces for violin and

piano, the father taking the violin part, and the sister in turn

played piano pieces. The father was a good violinist and the author of

an excellent school for that instrument. He also composed many

ambitious works, which rise above the capellmeister average. Highly

gratified with their reception at Munich, they went on to Vienna,

where again they were cordially received, the emperor especially being

highly delighted with the "little magician," as he called the

promising boy. Even at this early age Mozart had a distinct idea of

his own authority in music, although no one could be freer than he

from the charge of self-conceit. In Vienna, he asked expressly for

Wagenseil, the court composer, that he might be sure of having a real

connoisseur among his hearers. "I am playing a concerto of yours," he

said, "you must turn over for me." The ladies of the aristocracy went

wild over the fascinating young fellow, but presently he had an attack

of scarlet fever, which brought the tour to an end. After the return

to Salzburg, the practice went on every day, and regular lessons in

books, as they had during the journey; and, when he was still less

than nine years of age, the family undertook a longer tour to Paris,

playing at all the important towns on the way. In several of the

cities, Wolfgang played the violin, and also the organ in the

churches. At Paris they had a remarkable success, playing before the

court at Versailles, and in many of the houses of the nobility. Here

the father had four of the boy's sonatas for piano and violin engraved

and published. The stay at Paris lasted five months, until November

10, 1764, when they departed for London. Here they met a favorable

reception at court, the king, George III, taking a great interest in

the wonderful young master. He put before him pieces of Bach,

Wagenseil and Händel, which he played at sight. On the fifth of June

they gave a concert in Spring Gardens, where their receipts were as

much as 100 guineas. His next appearance was as an organist for the

benefit of a charity. The father having taken cold, was ill for some

time, during which time, as the boy was unable to play on the piano,

he wrote his first symphony, and the year following three others.

Before leaving London they visited the British Museum, and in memory

of his visit Wolfgang composed a four-part quartette, and presented

the autograph to the museum.

[Illustration: Fig. 54.

CONCERT BY THE MOZART FAMILY. THE LITTLE WOLFGANG AT THE PIANO.

(From a painting by Carmontil, 1763.)]

Without pausing to trace the concert career of the young virtuoso it

must suffice to say, that by the time he was twelve years old, he had

become favorably known in every court of southern Europe. His talent

had been illustrated in many different ways, and tested by the most

severe masters. One of the most celebrated cases of this kind happened

at Bologna, where the Philharmonic Academy received him as a member,

after his passing the usual severe test, over which the famous master,

Padre Martini, presided. The conditions of membership required the

candidate to write an elaborate motette in six parts, founded upon a

melody assigned from the Roman Antiphonarium, the work to conform to

the strictest rules, with double counterpoint and fugue. In

consequence of the nervous feeling due to the limit of time allowed,

candidates very often failed. Mozart, however, took his paper in the

cheerful frame of mind which everywhere distinguished him, and was

duly locked up. In less than three-quarters of an hour he rapped at

his door and asked to be let out. The authorities sent him word not

to be discouraged, but to keep on trying, as he had yet three hours,

and might accomplish it. They were greatly astonished on finding that

he had already finished, having produced a complete master work,

abundantly up to all requirements, the whole written in his peculiarly

neat and accurate manner.

His compositions had already reached the number of eighty, including a

number of symphonies. It was now late in the year 1771, and at Milan

Wolfgang set seriously to work upon his opera, which was produced

December 26 and repeated to full houses twenty times, the author

himself conducting it. This was "_Mitridate, Re di Ponto_." The year

following he composed two other operas for Italy, and several

symphonies, so that when his new opera of "_Lucio Silla_" was

performed in Milan October 24, 1772, the number of his works had

reached 135. From 1773 to 1777 Mozart remained at Salzburg, with

occasional journeys to Vienna and other cities, always pursuing a life

of unflagging industry. The number of his works had increased by the

end of this period to upwards of 250, including an immense variety of

pieces of chamber music, symphonies, two or three operas, a number of

masses, and the like. He was now twenty-one years old, and since the

age of fourteen he had been assistant conductor at Salzburg in the

service of the prince archbishop, who was a small-souled man, wholly

unworthy the service which Mozart rendered him. There is at least a

small satisfaction in remembering that the archbishop himself had a

distinct impression of the dis-esteem in which he was held by his

talented young musical conductor.

With the attainment of his majority the second period in the life of

this great genius began. Unable to obtain permission from the shabby

prelate for father and son to go together upon an artistic tour, the

father at length decided to send the young man out with his mother,

and in September, 1777, the two started for Paris, traveling in their

own carriage with post horses. Their plan was to give a concert at

every promising town, taking whatever time might be necessary for

working it up in due form. In this way their journey was considerably

prolonged by delays at Munich, Mannheim and Augsburg. At Mannheim,

especially, the incidents of the tour were varied by Mozart's falling

in love with the charming daughter of the theatrical prompter and

copyist, a promising singer, who afterward married happily in quite a

different quarter. At Paris things did not turn out quite so favorably

as the father had anticipated. Most afflicting of all, the mother fell

sick there, and died, so that the son left Paris in September for home

with a far heavier heart than when he entered it. During the most of

1779 and 1780 he remained at Salzburg, fulfilling his duties as

assistant conductor. Then came his first opera in Germany, "_Idomeneo,

Re di Creta_," produced at Munich January 29, 1781. The success of

this work was so decided that it determined Mozart's career as an

operatic composer. A few months later he quarreled with the

archbishop, and the unpleasant connection came to an end. His second

opera, "_Die Entführung aus dem Serail_" ("The Elopement from the

Seraglio"), was produced at Vienna July 16, 1782. This was his first

opera in German. In August of this year he was married to Constance

Weber, younger sister of her who had first enchanted him. The marriage

was congenial in many ways, but as the wife was incapable in money

matters and administration, and Mozart himself careless as a business

man, and in receipt of a small and irregular income, they soon found

themselves in a sea of little troubles, from which the struggling

artist was nevermore free. Only at the last moment, when indeed his

life was all but extinct, did the clouds disappear, and a prospect

open before him, which if he had lived to enjoy it, would have placed

his remaining days in easy circumstances. In 1785 the father visited

his son in Vienna, and upon one of the first days of his stay, there

was a little dinner party at Mozart's house, with Haydn and the two

Barons Todi. In his letter home, Leopold Mozart says that Haydn said

to him: "I declare to you, before God, as a man of honor, that your

son is the greatest composer that I know, either personally or by

reputation; he has taste, and beyond that the most consummate

knowledge of composition." In return for this compliment Mozart

dedicated to Haydn six string quartettes, with a laudatory preface, in

which he says that it was "but his due, for from Haydn I first learned

to compose a quartette." Mozart was an enthusiastic Freemason, and

through his influence his father, who had always previously opposed

the order, became a member, during this visit at Vienna. Soon

afterward the father died. For the lodge Mozart wrote much music, both

of a liturgical character and for concerts, and special

entertainments, and in the "Magic Flute" there are many reminiscences

of the order.

A year later he made the acquaintance of the celebrated librettist,

Lorenzo da Ponte, who proposed to adapt Beaumarchais' comedy, "The

Marriage of Figaro," which after some difficulty in obtaining the

consent of the emperor, on account of the objectionable character of

the story, was done, and the work produced at Vienna, May 1, 1786. The

theater was crowded, and many airs were repeated, until at later

performances the emperor prohibited encores. A pleasing scene took

place at the last dress rehearsal. Kelly, who took the parts of Don

Basilio and of Don Curzio, writes: "Never was anything more complete

than the triumph of Mozart and his 'Marriage of Figaro,' to which

numerous overflowing audiences bore witness. Even at the first full

band rehearsal, all present were roused to enthusiasm, and when

Benucci came to the fine passage '_Cherubino Alla Vittoria, Alla

Gloria Militar_,' which he gave with stentorian lungs, the effect was

electric, for the whole of the performers on the stage, and those in

the orchestra, as if actuated by one feeling of delight, vociferated

'_Bravo, Bravo, Maestro. Viva, Viva, grande Mozart_.' Those in the

orchestra I thought would never have ceased applauding, by beating the

bows of their violins against their music desks. And Mozart, I never

shall forget his little animated countenance. When lighted up with the

glowing rays of genius, it is as impossible to describe it as it would

be to paint sunbeams." Yet the success did not improve his position in

money affairs. Soon afterward, however, he was invited to Prague, to

see the success his beautiful work was making there. He was

entertained handsomely, and found the town wild with delight, at the

novelty, the spontaneity and charming quality of his music. He also

gave two concerts there, which were brilliantly successful, and having

been many times recalled he sat down at the piano and improvised for

half an hour, the audience resisting every effort he made to stop.

After returning to Vienna he obtained another libretto from Da Ponte,

that of "_Don Giovanni_," which was produced at Prague, October 29,

1787. It is told, as a characteristic incident of Mozart's method of

working, that the overture of this opera had not been written until

the night before the performance. At every suggestion Mozart answered,

tapping his forehead, "I have it all here." But not a line had been

written. Late at night he set about writing it. His wife made him some

punch, of which he was very fond, and sat with him telling him fairy

stories, in order to keep him awake. Early in the morning the overture

was finished, and after being copied it was played _prima vista_ at

night, with grand success. In response to repeated appeals for court

recognition, Mozart was made chamber composer, with a salary of about

$400, which he pronounced, "Too much for what I produce; too little

for what I might produce." "_Don Giovanni_" was not given in Vienna

until May, 1788.

[Illustration: Fig. 55.

MOZART, AT THE AGE OF THIRTY-THREE.

(From a drawing by Dora Stock, a friend of Schiller, 1789. [Grove.])]

His pecuniary circumstances continued desperate but there were

certain incidents of an artistic kind which afforded the struggling

genius a meager consolation. One Van Swieten, director of the royal

library, who was a great amateur of classical chamber music, held

meetings every Sunday for the rehearsal of works of this class. Mozart

sat at the piano. For these occasions he arranged several of the

fugues of Bach's "Well Tempered Clavier," for string quartette. The

year following the practices took on larger proportions, a

subscription having been made to provide for giving oratorios with

chorus and orchestra. Mozart conducted, and Weigl took the pianoforte.

It was for performances of this club, that Mozart added the wind parts

to certain works of Händel. They gave "Acis and Galatea" (November,

1778), the "Messiah" (March, 1779), "Ode to St. Cæcilia's Day" and

"Alexander's Feast" (July, 1790). Space forbids our following his

later career beyond mentioning the chief incidents in a life where

sadness had larger and larger place, when nevertheless the great

master was pouring out his most noble and beautiful strains of melody

and tonal delight. A visit to Berlin resulted in receptions at court,

at Potsdam, where the truthful composer replied to the king's

question, how he liked his band, that: "It contains great virtuosi,

but if the gentlemen would play together they would make a better

effect"--a remark which has been appropriate to many later orchestras.

The king apparently laid the remark to heart, and offered Mozart the

post of director, with a salary of 3,000 thalers, almost equal to the

same number of our dollars. It would have been well for Mozart if he

had accepted this liberal offer; but his answer was, "How can I

abandon my good emperor?"--certainly an affection most misplaced.

[Illustration: Fig. 56.

MOZART.

(From the Lange painting.)]

The list of the Mozart operas was closed with the "Magic Flute,"

produced September 30, 1783, which at first was not so successful as

most of his previous works, but which continued to improve upon

hearing, until at length it reached the estimation which it has ever

since held, as one of the most characteristic and interesting of all

his works. He had already begun upon his "Requiem," which had been

mysteriously ordered of him by a messenger, who declined to state the

object for which the work was intended. It is now ascertained that the

unknown patron was a Count Walsegg, an amateur desirous of being

thought a great composer. It was his intention to have performed the

work as his own. Mozart was now in low spirits, worn out with work,

late hours and financial worry. The mystery of the "Requiem" preyed

on his imagination none the less that he felt that in it he was

writing some of his noblest and best thoughts. He said: "I am sure

that this will be my own requiem." Nothing could dissuade him from the

idea. It returned again and again. At length he fell ill, poisoned, as

he thought, by some envious rival. No one knows whether there was

anything in the notion that actual poison had been administered,

although there were rivals who had been heard to wish that he were out

of the way. Without having quite finished the "Requiem" he breathed

his last December 5, 1791. His premonition proved correct. The

"Requiem" was given at his own funeral.

This account of the life of Mozart has hardly the merit of an outline,

for within the short thirty-five years of his earthly existence this

great master produced a variety of works in every province of music,

greater than that produced by any other of the great masters, scarcely

excepting the indefatigable and long-lived Händel.

It is extremely difficult to assign Mozart a definite place in the

musical Pantheon without praising him too highly on the one hand, or

going to the other extreme and belittling his genius by pointing out

the evident fact that noble, beautiful, sprightly, sweet and charming

as were his compositions, he has not left so large an influence upon

the later course of music as quite a number of artists apparently his

inferiors. His influence in music was largely temporary, but none the

less indispensable to musical progress. To the neat and symmetrical

periods of the Haydn symphony and sonata, with their fresh, thematic

treatment, Mozart added a tender grace and sweetness like the

conceptions of a Raphael in painting. He was the apostle of melody. If

he had never written, the art of music would have remained something

quite different from what we know it. And wherever there are lovers

of refined, noble melody, there will the music of Mozart be loved.

Moreover, in his best symphonies, such as the one in G minor, and the

"Jupiter" in C, there is a boldness and freedom of flight which

Beethoven scarcely surpassed. He was at his best as a composer of

operas. He was one of the fathers of the artistic song, with music for

every stanza differing according to the sentiment of the words; and

while the dramatic coloration is not forgotten in his operas, they are

a constant flow of charming, inexhaustible melody, which sings most

divinely. In short, taking his works through and through, Mozart was

what, in the words of Mr. Matthew Arnold, we might call the composer

of "sweetness and light." His music glows with the radiance of

immortal beauty.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XXVII.

BEETHOVEN AND HIS WORKS.

The labors of Haydn and Mozart in the rich field of instrumental music

were followed immediately by those of Ludwig van Beethoven, who was

born at the little town of Bonn, on the Rhine, about twenty miles

above Cologne, in 1770. He died at Vienna, 1827. The years between

these dates were filled with labor and inspiration, beyond those of

any other master. Beethoven's place in music is at the head. Whether

he or Bach ought to be reckoned the very greatest of all the great

geniuses who have appeared in music, is a question which might be

discussed eternally without ever being settled. Considered merely as

an artist capable of transforming musical material in an endless

variety of ways, he would perhaps be placed somewhat lower than Bach;

but considered as a tone poet gifted with the faculty of making

hearers feel as he felt, and see as he saw (with the inner eyes of

tonal sense), no master ought to be placed above him. This is the

general opinion now, of all the world. Taine, the French critic, in

his work on art, names four great souls belonging to the highest order

of genius--Dante, Shakespeare, Michael Angelo and Beethoven. The

company is a good one, and Beethoven rightfully belongs in it. His

early life was wholly different from that of the gifted Mozart. He was

the son of a dissipated tenor singer, and his mother was rather an

incapable person. When the boy was about eleven years old he began to

play the viola in the orchestra. He was already a good pianist, and it

was said of him that he was able to play nearly the whole of the "Well

Tempered Clavier" by heart, and at the age of eleven and a half he was

left in charge during Neefe's absence, as deputy organist. His

improvisations had already attracted attention, and when he was a

little past twelve he was made assistant musical conductor

(cembalist), having to prepare the operas, adapt them to the orchestra

and the players of the theater, and sometimes to train the whole

company for several months together, while Neefe, the director, was

away. All this without salary. In this practical school of adversity

the boy grew up, arranging continually, training the orchestra,

adapting music and composing--for he began this very soon; in fact, we

have certain sonatinas of his, composed while he was but ten years

old.

He was direct in his speech, almost to rudeness, not, like Mozart,

attractive in his personal appearance, and rather awkward in society,

where he was continually breaking things, upsetting the water, the

ink, or whatever liquid was in his way. Nevertheless, there must have

been something attractive about this young man of independent manners,

for very early in life, and all the way through it, he made friends

with the aristocracy. Count Waldstein, a few years his senior, to whom

he afterward dedicated the so-called "Waldstein" sonata, Opus 53, in

C, early became interested in him, hired a piano for him and sent it

to his room, that he might have opportunity to practice. There was a

family of Von Breunings in Bonn, consisting of the mother, three boys

and a daughter, where the young Beethoven often stayed for several

days together. This was one of the most refined families in town, and

it was here that the unfortunate young Beethoven got his first

glimpses of a true home life, and his first realization of the

refining influence of woman's society. He learned English in order

that he might be able to read Shakespeare in the original. He also

learned a little Italian and French. In short, the boy appears at good

advantage from every point of view, except from that of mere

appearance. This life of labor and responsibility was broken in upon

when he was about seventeen (in 1787). He was sent to Vienna, and

there is a tradition that he played there before Mozart, who is

reported to have prophesied favorably concerning him. There is very

little left us concerning his first visit to the great Austrian

capital, then, as ever since, the home of music. He was soon back

again in Bonn, and there for yet another year and a half he went on

with his work. His mother dying, he had no longer any responsibility

to retain him there, so when he was about twenty-one he set out again

for Vienna, where all the remainder of his life was spent. At Vienna

he immediately began to give concerts, in which his piano playing was

the main feature, and his improvising upon themes presented by the

audience. This art always remained one of his great distinctions--the

surest proof of genius, the possession of musical fantasy, in which

every thought immediately suggests something else. He devoted himself

to serious study of counterpoint and composition under the instruction

of Haydn at first, but later with Albrechtsberger. His two great

elements of power at this period were his playing and his improvising.

Czerny says: "His improvisation was most brilliant and striking; in

whatever company he might chance to be, he knew how to produce such

an effect upon every hearer that frequently not an eye remained dry,

while many would break out into loud sobs; for there was something

wonderful about his expression, in addition to the beauty and

originality of his ideas, and his spirited manner of rendering them."

The limits of the present work do not admit of following the career of

this great master in the detail which would otherwise be desirable. It

must suffice to mention the more salient features. Contrary to the

precedent established by Mozart, Beethoven was in no hurry to appear

as a composer of ambitious pieces. After the early practical

experiences above described, and the further advantage of studies in

Vienna under the best teachers at that time living, it was not until

1795 that he appeared as composer of his first concerto for pianoforte

and orchestra, a Mozart-like work, but with an _Adagio_ of true

Beethovenish flavor. A year later he published his first three sonatas

for pianoforte, dedicated to Haydn. These three works are in styles

totally unlike each other, and there is little or no doubt that each

one of them was modeled after some existing work, which at that time

was highly esteemed in Vienna. The first in F minor, is plainly after

one by Emanuel Bach in the same key. The _Adagio_ of this is

especially interesting, not only because it shows a freedom and a pure

lyric quality totally foreign to Emanuel Bach, and beyond Mozart even,

but because it was taken out of a quartette which he had written when

he was fifteen years old. This shows that even at that early age

Beethoven had arrived at the conception of his peculiar style of slow

movements, which differed from those of Mozart in having a more

song-like quality, and a deeper and more serious expression. The

impression of a deep soul is very marked in the _Largo_ of the first

concerto, and there are few of his later works which carry it more

plainly. In all, some sixty works precede this Opus 2, which is the

modest mark affixed to these three sonatas. The third, in C, is still

different from the other two, and was fashioned apparently after some

composition of Clementi or Dussek. The _Adagio_ takes a direction

which must have been regarded as not entirely successful, for nowhere

else does the composer follow it out. Then followed a succession of

pieces of every sort, not rapidly, like Mozart's compositions, as if

they represented the overflowing of an inexhaustible spring, but

deliberately, as if the world were not ready for them too rapidly, one

after another, each in succession carrying the treatment of the

pianoforte to a finer point, and each different from its predecessor,

whether of contemporaneous publication or of a former year, until by

the end of the century he had reached the "_Sonata Pathetique_," a

work which marked a prodigious advance in expression and boldness over

anything that can be shown from any other master of the period.

Mention having been made of the slow movements in these works, in

which point they were perhaps more strikingly differentiated from

those of the composers previous--the _Largo_ of the sonata in D major,

Opus 10, may be mentioned as an example of a peculiarly broad and

dramatic, almost _speaking_ rhapsody, or reverie, for piano, which not

only calls for true feeling in the interpreter, but also for technical

qualities of touch and breadth of tone, such as must have been

distinctly in advance of the instruments of the day. Meanwhile a

variety of chamber pieces had been composed, many of them of decided

merit. This was a great period of activity with the young composer.

He had found his voice. Within two years from the "_Sonata

Pathetique_," he had composed all the sonatas up to the two numbered

Opus 27, in which the so-called "Moonlight" stands second, and between

these a variety of variations, and several important chamber pieces,

not forgetting the oratorio, "Christ on the Mount of Olives"--a work

which although not fully successful, nevertheless contained many

beautiful ideas, and one chorus which must be ranked among the best

which the repertory of oratorio can show--"Hallelujah to the Father."

The year 1800 also saw the first performance of the beautiful and

romantic third concerto for pianoforte and orchestra. The first

symphony had been performed in 1800, and by 1804 we have the great

heroic symphony, the "_Kreutzer Sonata_," and the "_Appassionata_"

with all that lie between. Never did tone poet give out great

inspirations like these so freely. Each is an advance upon the

previous, distancing all works of similar composers, and each one

surpassing his own previous efforts. This activity continued with

little or no interruption until 1812, after which there is quite a

break, Beethoven occupying himself with pot-boilers for the English

market, in the way of arrangements of songs for instrumental

accompaniment. Of these there are many, Scotch and other, besides

masses, canons for voices and the like. In 1814 we have the lovely

sonata in E minor for piano, Opus 90, and in 1818 the great sonata for

hammer klavier, Opus 106. Then in 1821 and 1822 the last of the

sonatas, which carry this form of pianoforte writing to a point which

it had never previously reached, if since; and then the "_Messe

Solennelle_," and the ninth symphony, the latter having been composed

in 1822-1823. After this came the last quartettes for strings,

compositions which have been much written about, but which time has

shown to be among the most beautiful and understandable of all that

great master produced.

[Illustration: Fig. 57.

BEETHOVEN.]

Meanwhile, as a man Beethoven had been subject to his vicissitudes,

but upon the whole, while no longer the popular composer of the day

(his seriousness prevented that) he was in comfortable circumstances,

but annoyed by the care of a nephew of irregular habits and

reprehensible character. For many years now Beethoven had been getting

deaf, and for the past ten or twelve he had been unable to hear

ordinary conversation, so that communication had to be carried on with

him by writing. Superficial observers inferred from this fact that

the inability to hear his compositions must have reacted unfavorably

upon them, and probably accounted for many passages which were unlike

his early works, and unintelligible or unlovely to the critics

aforesaid. It is true that between the early and the latest

compositions of Beethoven there is a greater difference in

intelligibility than between the early and the late compositions of

any other master. But the difference is not one of judgment on his

part, but purely one of different conception, different melodic

structure and deeper effect. The ninth symphony, which the first

players called impossible, has lived to be counted not simply the

greatest of all of Beethoven's works, but the greatest of _all_

instrumental music. It has been named as an impassable barrier beyond

which no later composer might pass and compose an instrumental

symphony. Nothing could be more unjust or mistaken. Every composition

of Beethoven is a fantasia, which in his earlier work indeed has the

form of the sonata, the accepted serious form of the day; but in the

works of the middle period, the limits of the sonata form were crossed

in many directions, and in the latest the sonata is forsaken entirely.

But this is not to say that Beethoven had gone beyond the sonata form.

Beethoven was an improviser in music, quite as surely as his wildest

successor, Schumann, and he wrote as he felt at the time. He lost

nothing in being deaf. His inner tonal sense was as acute as ever, and

had been trained as the tonal sense of few composers ever was. In

point of fact the compositions of the later period are as sweet as

those of any former period whatever. The last sonata for the

pianoforte is one of the most advanced compositions that exist for the

instrument. It is a tone poem which will outlast most other things

that Beethoven wrote for this instrument. In fact, the accuracy with

which the capacity of the instrument is gauged is one of the most

striking peculiarities of the last sonatas and other late works of

this master. Meanwhile, piano technique has advanced to a point where

these great works no longer present the insurmountable difficulties

that they did when first composed. Their general acceptance has been

delayed by the foolish notion that there was about them something

sacred and secluded from the apprehension of ordinary readers. This is

not the case. They are within reach, and repay study.

Beethoven's last days were not pleasant. He lived the life of a

bachelor, and his nephew was a source of trouble. It is thought by

many that the neglect of his nephew to order a physician in time, when

requested to do so by his uncle, was the immediate occasion of the

death of the great man. Beethoven died March 27, 1827, after a serious

illness, in which dropsical symptoms were among the most troublesome.

There was a grand funeral, in which impressive exercises were held,

and the body was deposited in consecrated ground in the cemetery at

Wahring, near Vienna.

The allusions to the compositions of this composer in the preceding

pages are very fragmentary, and, in fact, are expected merely to

direct attention to those mentioned. There are many others almost

equally worthy of attention. But upon the whole, the reputation of

Beethoven as a tone poet must rest first upon the nine symphonies;

then upon the string quartettes and other chamber music; next upon the

concertos, of which the third and fourth for pleasing beauty, and the

fifth for deep poetical meaning, have never been equaled by those of

any other composer. There remain the sonatas for pianoforte and for

piano and violin, three large volumes, containing a multitude of

exquisite strains, which the world would be poor indeed to lose.

[Illustration: Fig. 58.

BEETHOVEN AS HE APPEARED ON THE STREETS OF VIENNA.

(From a sketch by Lyser, to the accuracy of which Breuning testifies,

excepting that the hat should be straight on the head, and not

inclined to one side.)]

In personal appearance Beethoven was rugged rather than pleasing. He

was rather short, five feet five inches, but very wide across the

shoulders, and strong. His ruddy face had high cheek bones, and was

crowned by very thick hair, which originally was brown, but in later

life perfectly white. His eyes were black and rather small, but very

bright and piercing. His natural expression was grave, almost severe,

but his smile was extremely winning, and he was jovial in humor. He

was very fond of the country, walking in the fields, where under a

tree he would lie for a half day together, humming the melodies which

occurred to him, and making notes in the bits of blank paper which he

always carried. These pocket note books have been preserved, and we

find in them themes in crude form which he used for some important

movement or other, often several years later. Among the works produced

while this habit was strongest were the sixth and seventh symphonies,

than which no works in music are more charming.

[Illustration: [autograph] Louis Van Beethoven]

CHAPTER XXVIII.

HAYDN, MOZART AND BEETHOVEN COMPARED.

The three masters, Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, in relation to the

symphony stand upon a plane of substantial equality, whether we

estimate their merits according to the absolute worth of the

compositions they produced in this form, or in the value of the

additions which each in turn made to the ideal of his predecessor.

Naturally, as the latest of the three, though so far contemporaneous

with them as to form part of a single moment in the progress of art,

the symphonies of Beethoven are greater in certain respects, and, as

also was to have been expected from his general depth of mind and

seriousness of purpose, they are perhaps somewhat more severe--or

elevated--in style and sentiment. Nevertheless, the ideal of the three

writers was but slightly different. All alike sought to weave tones

into a succession of agreeable and beautiful combinations, related as

representing a continued flight of spirit--a reverie of the beautiful.

Haydn has the honor of having created the form. His fortunate

innovation upon the traditions of his predecessors, by adding the

second and contrasting theme, and his happy faculty of working out the

middle part of the first movement thematically in a style of free

fantasy based upon the various devices of counterpoint and canonic

imitation, not only suggested to the later composers a way in which

an endless variety of pleasing tone pictures might be created--but

established, and demonstrated by the clearness with which he did it,

and the ever fresh variety and charm of his works, that this was _the

way_ in which symphonic material must be put together. For further

particulars relating to the sonata form, as such, the student is

referred to my "Primer of Musical Forms" (Arthur P. Schmidt, Boston,

1891).

The form thus established by Haydn, Mozart accepted, and followed in

all his symphonies, with few and unimportant variations. His additions

to the general ideal of orchestral effect were in the direction of a

sweeter _cantilena_, a vocal and song-like quality, which pervades

every movement, and which in the slow movement rises to a height of

refined and exquisite song never surpassed by any composer. Beethoven

is often more impassioned; at times more forcible. But it is never

possible to say of the pure spirit of Mozart, that this refined and

gentle soul might not have broken mountains and shaken the hills if he

had chosen to do so. His refinement is like that of a seraph, as we

see it illustrated in the feminine-looking faces of the Greek Apollos,

and the St. Michaels and archangels of Guido Reni and Raphael. It is

free from passion and toil; but no man dares set a limit to the

strength therein concealed. In the slow movements of the pianoforte

sonatas of Mozart we do not find this quality so plainly manifested.

The instrument was still too imperfect, and did not invite it.

Moreover, the greater portion of these compositions bear the

appearance of having been written for the use of amateurs. But in the

string quartette and the symphonies it is different. Here the spirit

of Mozart has free course, and he goes from one beauty to another,

with the sure instinct of a master before whom all tonal kingdoms are

wide open. This can be seen even in the pianoforte arrangements of the

greater symphonies. The melodies, apparently so simple and diatonic,

are susceptible of being sung with heartfelt fervor under the fingers

of the violinist, or by the voice of the great singer, and when so

sung they become transfigured with beauty--luminous from within, like

lovely angel faces, glowing with radiance from the higher realms of

bliss. Without this idea of singing, and more than this, of a pure

spirit singing, the Mozart adagios are open to the charge often made

against them in these later days by the unthinking, who find in them

only the external peculiarities of simplicity and diatonic quality,

with the unsensationalism which technical reserve implies.

[Illustration: Fig. 59.

REDUCED FACSIMILE OF THE TITLE PAGE OF BEETHOVEN'S SONATA, OPUS 26,

CONTAINING THE CELEBRATED FUNERAL MARCH.]

Nor is it true that Beethoven is incapable of this elevated soaring in

the higher realms of the merely beautiful in song. There is generally

an undercurrent of deeper pathos in all his sustained slow movements,

but in the earlier symphonies, especially in the second, there is a

long slow movement of heavenly depth and quality. Indeed, without

pausing to individualize we may say once for all that the slow

movements of Beethoven are nearly as sweet and as forgetful, as

rapturous, as those of Mozart. Even when he takes the lower key of the

minor, with its implication of suffering and pain, there is still a

sweetness, which once heard can never be forgotten. Think of the

lovely _allegretto_ of the seventh symphony, with its persistent

motive of a quarter and two-eighths. Even in an arrangement for the

pianoforte this is still impressive; upon the organ yet more so; but

how much more so when given by the orchestra, with the lovely changing

colors of Beethoven's instrumentation! The progress from Haydn's slow

movement to that of Beethoven is in the direction of depth,

self-forgetfulness, and elevated reverie, having in it a quality

distinctly church-like, devotional, worshipful and reposeful in the

heavenly sense. The finest example of this is in the slow movement of

the ninth symphony of Beethoven, where the composer has one of those

lofty moods, which even in his younger times Mrs. Von Breuning used to

call his "_raptus_"--rapture of song.

In a technical point of view the handling of the themes becomes more

masterly in Beethoven than even in Mozart--mainly perhaps because the

symphonies of Beethoven represent a more mature point in his mental

and artistic career than do those of Mozart. The third symphony of

Beethoven was written in 1803, the composer being thirty-three years

old; the fourth waited until he was thirty-five or six. Mozart died at

the age of thirty-five, and whatever we have from his lofty pen came

to the young Mozart, not yet having reached middle life. Observe also

the rapidity with which these great works followed one another from

the pen of Beethoven, when once he had found his voice. The fifth

symphony was written in 1808. In the same year he wrote also the

sixth; four years later, in 1812, the next two symphonies, the seventh

and eight. Then a long pause, filled up with other works, and at

length when the composer was fifty-three years of age, in 1823, the

mighty ninth. If Mozart's life had been spared to enter into the more

comfortable and dignified openings which his death prevented, what

might we not have had from him!

In one sense there is a distinct difference between the symphonies of

Mozart and those of Beethoven. The passionate ideal, the picture of a

deep soul, tossed yet triumphant, is nearer to the latter. Whatever

Mozart may have experienced in the way of "contradiction of sinners"

(as St. Paul calls it), he never allows the fact to find entrance into

his music, and especially into his symphonies. Whether he felt that

these moments did not belong to a high ideal of orchestral pieces, or

whether he was glad to find in the tone world forgetfulness of sorrows

and troubles, we do not know. But Beethoven came nearer to the great

time of the romantic. The inherent interest of whatever belongs to the

human soul was an idea of his time, and unconsciously to himself,

perhaps, it entered into and colored his work. The ninth symphony

belongs to the period when Hegel was delivering his lectures upon the

deepest questions of philosophy, and laying it down as a fundamental

principle that it is the place of art to represent everything

whatever, which sinks or swells in the human spirit; not alone all the

noble and the lovely, but also the ignoble, the vicious, the unworthy,

and particularly the tragic--to the end that the soul may learn to

know itself, and awaken to a deeper and better self-consciousness.

Beethoven felt the mental movement of his day. While his acquaintance

with other prominent literary men of his time made little headway,

owing in part to his deafness, and in part to his very strong

self-consciousness, he read and thought, and felt himself akin with

the whole human race. He was a socialist and a republican by instinct.

"Man stands upon that which he really is," was a form of

self-assertiveness, which, if not actually enunciated by him, at least

represents his attitude toward the conventionalities and

superficialities of the courts, the social orders, and the general

movement of mind into which he entered. Moreover this was the time

when the romantic poets of Germany had already set the world thinking

their new ideas. Close by the great composer, in the same city in

fact, worked a young man, worshiping almost the very ground upon which

Beethoven walked, but for the most part unknown to him--Franz

Schubert, who in the symphony was classic to the very highest degree,

and a tone poet gifted lyrically not less than Mozart himself, a

composer whose ideas have equal refinement and grace with those of

Mozart, together with a certain charm peculiarly their own, and an

instinct for musical coloration, which has never found its superior.

This obscure young man, whose lofty genius was recognized only after

his soul had taken its flight from earth, was the founder of the

modern romantic school of music--the musical commentator upon the

productions of all the best of German poets; a composer of such

inexhaustible fertility and melodic inspiration that Schumann said of

him, that if he had lived he would have set to music the whole German

literature. Thus by the combined efforts of all these composers, of

Schubert no less than of the three great masters of whom we are more

particularly speaking, the symphony came to its full expression.

In their relation to the sonata, these three great masters do not

stand in the same position of _quasi_-equality. Haydn is here the

first, as already in the symphony. But in his sonatas he is always

rather hampered, and never attains the flow of his slow melodies for

the violin. Mozart, also, while a beautiful player upon the pianoforte

of his day, did not possess the prescience of Beethoven, who was able

to see over the pianoforte of his time and write as if he felt the

assurance of the nobler and yet nobler instruments of these later

times. Here he stands with Bach, who in his great Chromatic Fantasia

and Fugue requires and confidently expects the breadth of tone and the

power of the modern piano. It was Beethoven's fortune to live during

the early days of the modern instrument. Just after his death the era

of virtuoso piano playing began, the first appearances of Thalberg

having been made as early as about 1830. He was himself a great

pianist, as we see in the concertos which he wrote, always intending

to play them at some concert or other in near prospect. Occasionally

indeed he overshot his mark, as notably in the fifth, which, being

finished just before his concert in 1809, he found too difficult for

his fingers, whereupon he was obliged to fall back on the third.

Moreover, the pianists Hummel and Dussek were already before the

public, and Clementi had made his concert tours, and established the

lines of the classical technique upon its brilliant side. All these

influences find their illustration in the music of Beethoven, and

especially find illustration in the last and greatest of his

pianoforte sonatas. These beautiful tone poems were long regarded as

impossible. But the genius of Schumann and Liszt came to their rescue

by introducing a new style of touch and technique, which, when once

found, proved to be the link missing for the proper interpretation of

these till then obscure works.

Moreover, Beethoven occupied a different attitude toward the sonata

form from that which he held to the symphony. He deviated from the

sonata form in every direction, and this not alone in his later works,

when we might suppose he had become wearied with the repetition of his

ideas in the same order, but in his works of middle life, when as yet

he might apparently have gone on writing sonatas indefinitely, so

fresh, so novel and so varied were the tone pictures which he gave the

world under this name. He seems to have regarded music as an

improvisation, not to be held to some one fixed type of expression,

but free to go wherever the fancy of the poet took him, to the end

that the entire heavens of the tone world might in time be visited. He

expects of his readers an element of the devotee. It is not for

amateurs that he writes, still less for the votaries of fashionable

society, with its emptiness and repeated insincerities. There is a

suggestion of entering into the closet, and of shutting the door, as a

prerequisite to the full enjoyment of these ineffable pictures and

images which come from his revelation.

In the present full-grown faith in the doctrine of the capacity of man

for a development continually progressive, it would be presumptuous to

say that the three composers, Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, have

reached the limit of art, so far as instrumental music goes. In the

nature of the case, there is not, nor can there be an _Ultima Thule_

in art. Whatever the splendor of color, the nobility of conception, or

the sincerity and loyalty of purpose, and however resplendent the

works created by these exceptional talents, there is reason to hope

that better works still may yet be in store. Stronger and yet stronger

imaginations, more perfect technique of expression and finer

inspiration, may yet be the lot of fortunate individuals of the

twentieth century, inheriting the richly diversified musical

experiences of the present time. But in one direction there is little

doubt that these three great masters _did_ carry the art of

instrumental music to a pinnacle beyond which no one as yet has been

able to soar. They represent the climax of classical art. In the

nature of the case, the term classical itself is subject to an element

of uncertainty. According to the philosopher Hegel, the classical is

that art in which the _form_ is beautiful and wholly satisfactory in

symmetry, while the _content_ exactly matches it in fullness and

beauty. Or, in ordinary usage, the classical is the first-class, the

superior, the highly finished, the standard. And since music is a

matter of sense perception, and the impressions resulting from it are

in some degree dependent upon the ability of the hearer to find the

principles of unity (in other words, "the sense of it"), every

generation extends the list of the classical, and includes much which

the preceding one found imperfect and strained. So far as our

knowledge and experience have yet gone, however, there is a sense in

which the productions of these great masters are likely to remain long

unmatched in beauty and worth.

Nothing has been done since that surpasses the sustained beauty of the

Beethoven adagios, of which we find the most beautiful specimens

naturally among the orchestral pieces and in the chamber music, where

he could depend upon the long phrases and sustained tones of the

violins. But in the sonatas for pianoforte he is equally at home. He

seems to have foreseen the possibilities of the modern piano. In his

latest sonatas there are passages which foresee the modern technique,

and suggest effects which only the pianoforte of the past thirty years

has been capable of attaining. This is the prophetic element in the

writings of this great master.

The same difference in the sweep of mind shows itself in the lighter

movements. In the minuets Haydn is playful, Mozart is occasionally

tender and arch; Beethoven alone is vigorous and humoristic in the

modern sense. And, in the finales of the sonatas there is a movement

in those of Beethoven which we look for in vain in those of the older

composers. It was not in Haydn, nor yet in Mozart, to play with tones

in this masterly spirit.

Hence the true relation of these great masters might be summed up

without intending to be disrespectful to either, as the following:

Haydn provided the form, the order of keys and the general character

of the contrasts between the two subjects. Mozart invented a myriad of

tender _nuances_ which illustrated the fine points of music, and

imparted to the works a sweetness and pleasing quality which everybody

recognized as irresistible. Beethoven added to these ingredients of

popular music a depth, a soulful quality, an earnestness and a

universal intelligibility to spirits of the necessary depth, which

have stood to all the world ever since as models. Such, in general,

are the points of relation and of contrast.

It is not to be overlooked, however, that the tendency of musical

taste is to leave the works of Mozart behind. Haydn is gaining ground,

relatively, through the admiration of musicians for the cleverness

with which he treats themes. Beethoven holds his own by reason of his

vigorous personality, which is to be felt in every page of his music.

Mozart, however, appeals less to the taste of the present time, and

his pianoforte works are now cultivated chiefly for technical

purposes, in the earlier stages of study.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XXIX.

OPERA IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

I.

Upon the musical side, and in one instance upon the dramatic side as

well, there were three great forces in opera during this century. The

first of these in order of time was Karl Heinrich Graun (1701-1759). A

native of Dresden, he was educated there, and having early a beautiful

voice became treble singer to the town council--a curious name for a

position in the leading church. He profited by the instruction of the

official directors of the choir and the church, Petzold and Schmidt,

and very early he was an enthusiastic student of the compositions of

the Hamburg director, Keiser, whose style influenced his own in his

later work. Lotti, the Italian composer, who conducted a series of

performances in Dresden with a picked company of Italian singers, was

another force operative in his development. He early commenced to

write cantatas and motettes for the seminary, of which he was a

member, all of which show traces of the Italian influences. In

particular his biographer speaks of a Passion cantata, in which an

opening chorus, "_Lasset uns aufsehen auf Jesum_," is singularly

forcible for the work of a boy of fifteen. His first entrance upon

operatic work was as tenor, when he was scarcely twenty-four years of

age. Being dissatisfied with the music of his part (written by one

Schurmann, a local director), he substituted other airs of his own

composition, which were so popular that he was commissioned to write

an opera, and was appointed assistant director. His first opera,

"_Polliodoro_," was successful, and he was commissioned to write five

others, some in Italian, some in German. Besides these he composed

several cantatas for church use, and several instrumental pieces. In

1735 he was invited to the residence of the crown prince of Prussia,

afterward Frederick the Great. This powerful potentate remained

Graun's friend and patron until his death. Here, among other works, he

composed fifty Italian cantatas, usually consisting of two airs with

recitative. In 1740 Frederick came to the throne, and gave Graun the

post of musical director, with a salary of $2,000. Selecting his

singers in Italy, where his singing was very highly appreciated, he

returned to Berlin and assumed the duties of his position. Here he

composed no less than twenty-seven operas, the last being in 1756, all

in the Italian style, in so far as a German might master it, and all

making the singer the prime person of consideration, and the listener

next. The poet took whatever of opportunity these two might not have

needed. His best talent both as singer and as composer lay in his

power of expressing emotion in _adagios_. In this respect he had, no

doubt, more influence upon the development of the lyric slow movement

than he has generally been credited with. Later in his life he turned

once more to church music, and in his cantatas, and especially in his

oratorio, "_Der Tod Jesu_" ("The Death of Jesus"), a Passion oratorio,

he made a distinct impression upon the practices of his successors. In

Germany this work is held in nearly the same affection as the

"Messiah," of Händel, in England. Graun's influence upon the later

course of opera, besides the adagio aria already mentioned, lay

principally in his accompaniments, which were often strong and highly

dramatic.

[Illustration: Fig. 60.]