(Liszt at the upper window)]
It may be assumed that the sex which can boast among its members such
names as Jane Austen, George Sand, George Eliot, novelists; Vigee
Lebrun, Mary Cassatt, Cecilia Beaux, and Berthe Morisot, painters;
Sonia Kovalevsky, mathematician; Madame Curie, science; Elizabeth
Barrett Browning and Christina Rossetti, poetry, would not fail in the
reproductive art of pianoforte playing. Clara Schumann was an unexcelled
interpreter of her husband's music; Sofie Menter the most masculine of
Liszt's feminine choir; Essipoff unparalleled as a Chopin player;
Carreno has a man's head, man's fingers, and woman's heart; Fannie
Bloomfield Zeisler, an artist of singular intensity and strong
personality--these women have admirably contributed to the history of
their art and need not fear comparisons on the score of sex.
How far will the pursuit of technic go, and what will be the effect upon
the mechanical future of the instrument? It is both a thankless and a
dangerous task to prophesy; but it seems that technic _qua_ technic has
ventured as far as it dare. Witness the astounding arrangements made by
the ingenious Godowsky, the grafting of two Chopin studies, both hands
autonomous, racing at full speed! The thing is monstrous--yet effective;
but that way musical madness lies. The Janko keyboard, a sort of ivory
toboggan-slide, permitted the performance of incredible difficulties;
glissandi in chromatic tenths! But who in the name of Apollo cares to
hear chromatic tenths sliding pell-mell down-hill! Music is music, and a
man or woman must make it, not alone an instrument. The tendency now is
toward the fabrication of a more sensitive, vibrating sounding-board.
Quality, not brutal quantity, is the desideratum. This, with the more
responsive and elastic keyboard action of the day, which permits all
manner of finger nuance, will tell upon the future of the pianoforte.
Machine music has usurped our virtuosity; but it can never reign in the
stead of the human artist. And therefore we now demand more of the
spiritual and less of the technical from our pianists. Music is the
gainer thereby, and the old-time cacophonous concerto for pianoforte and
orchestra will, we hope, be relegated to the limbo of things inutile.
The pianoforte was originally an _intimate_ instrument, and it will
surely go back, though glorified by experience, to its first, dignified
estate.
I have written more fully of the pianists that I have had the good
fortune to hear with my own ears. This is what is called impressionistic
criticism. Academic criticism may be loosely defined as the expression
of another's opinion. It has decided historic interest. In a word, the
former tells how much _you_ enjoyed a work of art, whether creative or
interpretive; the latter what some other fellow liked. So, accept
these sketches as a mingling of the two methods, with perhaps a
disproportionate stress laid upon the personal element--the most
important factor, after all, in criticism.