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Chopin and Other Musical Essays

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Title: Chopin and Other Musical Essays

Author: Henry T. Finck


        
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Language: English

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CHOPIN

AND

OTHER MUSICAL ESSAYS




  BY THE SAME AUTHOR.

  SPAIN AND MOROCCO. 12mo, $1.25.

  THE PACIFIC COAST SCENIC TOUR.
    Illustrated. 8vo, $2.50.

  CHOPIN, AND OTHER MUSICAL ESSAYS.
    12mo, $1.50.

  WAGNER AND HIS WORKS. With Portraits.
    Two Volumes. Crown 8vo, $4.00.




CHOPIN
AND
OTHER MUSICAL ESSAYS




BY
HENRY T. FINCK
AUTHOR OF "ROMANTIC LOVE AND PERSONAL BEAUTY"




NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1894




COPYRIGHT, 1889, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS



TROW'S
PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY,
NEW YORK.




RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED TO

MRS. JEANNETTE M. THURBER




CONTENTS


                                                             PAGE

I. CHOPIN, THE GREATEST GENIUS OF THE PIANOFORTE,               1

II. HOW COMPOSERS WORK,                                        59

III. SCHUMANN, AS MIRRORED IN HIS LETTERS,                    111

IV. MUSIC AND MORALS,                                         141

V. ITALIAN AND GERMAN VOCAL STYLES,                           183

VI. GERMAN OPERA IN NEW YORK,                                 233




I

CHOPIN

THE GREATEST GENIUS OF THE PIANOFORTE


Leipsic, the centre of the world's music trade, exports about one
hundred thousand dollars' worth of music to America every year. I do
not know how much of this sum is to be placed to the account of
Chopin, but a leading music dealer in New York told me that he sold
three times as many of Chopin's compositions as of any other romantic
or classical composer. This seems to indicate that Chopin is popular.
Nevertheless, I believe that what Liszt wrote in 1850, a year after
the death of Chopin--that his fame was not yet as great as it would be
in the future--is as true to-day as it was forty years ago. Chopin's
reputation has been constantly growing, and yet many of his deepest
and most poetic compositions are almost unknown to amateurs, not to
speak of the public at large. A few of his least characteristic pieces
are heard in every parlor, generally in a wofully mutilated condition,
but some of his most inspired later works I have never heard played
either in private or in the concert hall, although I am sure that if
heard there they would be warmly applauded.

There is hardly a composer concerning whom so many erroneous notions
are current as concerning Chopin, and of all the histories of music I
have seen that of Langhans is the only one which devotes to Chopin an
amount of space approximately proportionate to his importance. One of
the most absurd of the misconceptions is that Chopin's genius was born
in full armor, and that it did not pass through several stages of
development, like that of other composers. Chopin did display
remarkable originality at the very beginning, but the apparent
maturity of his first published works is due to the fact that he
destroyed his earliest efforts and disowned those works which are
known as posthumous, and which may have created confusion in some
minds by having received a higher "opus" number than his last works.

Another misconception regarding Chopin is that his latest works are
morbid and unintelligible. The same charge was brought by philistines
against the best works of Beethoven, Schumann, and Wagner. The fact is
that these last works are of an almost matchless harmonic depth and
originality, as superior to his earlier works as Wagner's last music
dramas are to his first operas. I make this comparison with Wagner
advisedly because, although I have the most exalted notions of
Wagner's grandeur and importance, I do not for a moment hesitate to
say that in his own sphere Chopin is quite as original and has been
almost as revolutionary and epoch-making as Wagner. Schumann was the
first to recognize the revolutionary significance of Chopin's style.
"Chopin's works," he says, "are cannons buried in flowers;" and in
another place he declares that he can see in "Chopin's G minor
Nocturne a terrible declaration of war against a whole musical past."
Chopin, himself, modest as he was in his manners, wrote to his teacher
Elsner, in 1831, when he was twenty-two years of age: "Kalkbrenner
will not be able to break my perhaps bold but noble determination to
create a new epoch in art."

Now, why has the world been so slow in recognizing that Chopin stands
in the very front rank of creative musicians? One reason doubtless is
that he was so quiet and retiring in his personal disposition. His
still, small voice was lost in the din of musical warfare. He warmly
defended the principles of the romantic school, if necessary, and had
decided opinions of other musicians, especially of the popular
pianists of his day who vitiated the public taste with their show
pieces; but he generally kept them to himself or confided them only to
his friends, whom he even occasionally implored to keep them secret.
Had he, like Richard Wagner, attacked everybody, right and left, who
stood in the way of the general recognition of his genius, his cause
would have doubtless assumed greater prominence in the eyes of the
public, even though the parlor piano does not afford so much
play-ground for warfare as the operatic stage.

The chief reason, however, why musical authorities have so long
hesitated to acknowledge that Chopin is one of the very greatest
explorers and pioneers in the domain of their art, is to be found in
what, for want of a better term, may be called æsthetic Jumboism. When
the late lamented Jumbo was in New York he attracted so much attention
that his colleagues, although but little inferior in size, had "no
show" whatever. Everybody crowded around Jumbo, stuffing him with
bushels of oranges and apples, while the other elephants were entirely
ignored. As elephants are intelligent animals, is it not probable that
Pilot, the next in size to Jumbo, went mad and had to be shot because
he was jealous of the exclusive attentions bestowed on his rival? In
æsthetics, this Jumboism, this exaggerated desire for mammoth
dimensions, seems to be a trait of the human mind which it is
difficult to eradicate. It is a suggestive fact that the morbid, sham
æstheticism which prevailed in England a few years ago, chose for its
symbol the uncouth sunflower. And many who know that a sunflower is
less beautiful and fragrant than a violet, will nevertheless, on
visiting a picture gallery, give most of their attention to the large
canvases, though the smaller ones may be infinitely more beautiful. It
cannot be said that the critics of art or literature follow the
popular disposition to measure genius with a yard-stick; but in music
there seems to be a general tendency to do this. Liszt remarks,
apropos, in his work on Chopin: "The value of the sketches made by
Chopin's extremely delicate pencil has not yet been acknowledged and
emphasized sufficiently. It has become customary in our days to regard
as great composers only those who have written at least half a dozen
operas, as many oratorios, and several symphonies."

Even Schumann, and Elsner, Chopin's teacher, seem to have been
affected a little by this irrational way of looking at music.
Schumann, in a complimentary notice of Chopin's nocturnes, expresses
his regrets that the composer should confine himself so strictly to
the pianoforte, whereas he might have influenced the development of
music in all its branches. He adds, however, on second thought, that
"to be a poet one need not have written ponderous volumes; one or two
poems suffice to make a reputation, and Chopin has written such."
Elsner who was unusually liberal in his views of art, and who
discovered and valued his pupil's originality long before Schumann
did, nevertheless bowed before the fetish of Jumboism in so far as to
write to Chopin in Paris that he was anxious, before he departed this
Vale of Tears, to hear an opera from his pen, both for his benefit,
and for the glory of his country. Chopin took this admonition to heart
sufficiently to ask a friend to prepare for him a libretto; but that
is as far as the project ever went. Chopin must have felt
instinctively that his individual style of miniature painting would be
as ineffective on the operatic stage, where bold, _al fresco_ painting
is required, as his soft and dreamy playing would have been had he
taken his piano from the parlor and placed it in a meadow.

Besides Chopin's abhorrence of musical warfare and his avoidance of
the larger and more imposing forms of the opera, symphony, and
oratorio, there were other causes which retarded the recognition of
his transcendent genius. The unprecedented originality of his style,
and the distinct national coloring of his compositions, did not meet
with a sympathetic appreciation in Germany and Vienna, when he first
went there to test his musical powers. Some of the papers indeed had a
good word for him, but, as in the case of Liszt and later of
Rubinstein, it was rather for the pianist than for the composer. On
his first visit to Vienna he was greatly petted, and he found it easy
to get influential friends who took care that his concerts should be
a success, because he played for their benefit, asking no pecuniary
recompense. But when, some years later, he repeated his visit, and
tried to play for his own pecuniary benefit, the influential friends
were invisible, and the concert actually resulted in a deficit.

Chopin's letters contain unmistakable evidence of the fact that, with
some exceptions, the Germans did not understand his compositions. At
his first concert in Vienna, he writes, "The first allegro in the F
minor concerto (not intelligible to all) was indeed rewarded with
'Bravo!' but I believe this was rather because the audience wished to
show that they appreciated serious music than because they were able
to follow and appreciate such music." And regarding the fantasia on
Polish airs he says that it completely missed its mark: "There was
indeed some applause by the audience, but obviously only to show the
pianist that they were not bored." The ultra-Germans, he writes in
another letter, did not appear to be quite satisfied; and he relates
that one of these, on being asked, in his presence, how he liked the
concert, at once changed the subject of conversation, obviously in
order not to hurt his feelings. In a third letter, in which he gives
his parents an account of his concert in Breslau, in 1830, he says
that, "With the exception of Schnabel, whose face was beaming with
pleasure, and who patted me on the shoulder every other moment, none
of the other Germans knew exactly what to make of me;" and he adds,
with his delicious irony, that "the connoisseurs could not exactly
make out whether my compositions really were good or only seemed so."

Criticisms culled from contemporary newspaper notices and other
sources emphasize the fact that the Germans were at that time blind to
the transcendent merits of Chopin's genius. The professional critics,
after their usual manner, found fault with the very things which we
to-day admire most in him--the exotic originality of the style, and
the delightful Polish local color in which all his fabrics are "dyed
in the wool," as it were. How numerous these adverse criticisms were,
may best be inferred from the frequency with which Schumann defended
Chopin in his musical paper and sneered at his detractors. "It is
remarkable," he writes, "that in the very droughty years preceding
1830, in which one should have thanked Heaven for every straw of
superior quality, criticism, which it is true, _always lags behind
unless it emanates from creative minds_, persisted in shrugging its
shoulders at Chopin's compositions--nay, that one of them had the
impudence to say that all they were good for was to be torn to
pieces." In another article, after speaking in the most enthusiastic
terms of Chopin's trio, in which "every note is music and life," he
exclaims, "Wretched Berlin critic, who has no understanding for these
things, and never will have--poor fellow!" And seven years later, in
1843, he writes, with fine contempt for his critical colleagues, that
"for the typical reviewers Chopin never did write, anyway." And this,
be it remembered, was only six years before Chopin's death.

Not a few of the composers and composerlings of the period joined the
professional critics in their depreciation of Chopin's works. Field
called his "a talent of the sick chamber." Moscheles, while admitting
Chopin's originality, and the value of his pianistic achievements,
confessed that he disliked his "harsh, inartistic, incomprehensible
modulations," which often appeared "artificial and forced" to
him--these same modulations which to-day transport us into the seventh
heaven of delight! Mendelssohn's attitude toward Chopin was somewhat
vacillating. He defended him in a letter against his sister's
criticisms, and assured her that if she had heard some of Chopin's
compositions "as he himself played them" for him, she too would have
been delighted. He adds that Chopin had just completed "a most
graceful little nocturne," of which he remembered much, and was going
to play it for his brother Paul. Nevertheless, he did not recommend
the pupils at the Leipsic Conservatory to study Chopin's works, and
various utterances of his are on record showing that he had a decided
artistic antipathy for the exotic products of Chopin's pen. To give
only one instance. In one of the letters to Moscheles, first printed
in _Scribner's Magazine_ for February, 1888, he complains that "a book
of mazurkas by Chopin, and a few new pieces of his are so mannered
that they are hard to stand."

I have dwelt so much on the attitude of the Germans toward Chopin,
because I am convinced that in this attitude lies one of the main
reasons why no one has hitherto dared to place him in the front rank
of composers, side by side with Bach, Beethoven, and Wagner. For the
Germans are the _tonangebende_ (the standard-setting) nation in music
to-day, and, as there seems to be a natural antipathy between the
Slavic and the Teutonic mind, the Germans are apt, like Mendelssohn,
to regard as mannerism what is simply the exotic fragrance which
betrays a foreign nationality. The ultro-Teutons still persist in
their depreciation of Chopin. In the latest edition of Brockhaus's
"Conservations-Lexicon" we read, apropos to Chopin's larger works,
that "he was deficient in the profounder musical attainments"(!) Dr.
Hanslick, generally considered the leading German critic of the
period, in a 534-page collection of criticisms, discussing twenty
concert seasons in Vienna, has only about half a dozen and by no
means complimentary references to Chopin. And even the late Louis
Ehlert, in his appreciative essay on Chopin, comes to the conclusion
that Chopin is certainly not to be ranked with such giants as Bach and
Beethoven. This is Teutonism, pure and simple. No doubt Chopin is, in
some respects, inferior to Bach and Beethoven, but in other respects
he is quite as unquestionably superior to them. He wrote no mammoth
symphonies, but there is a marvellous wealth and depth of ideas in his
smaller works--enough to supply half a dozen ordinary symphony and
opera writers with ideas for a lifetime. His works may be compared to
those men of genius in whose under-sized bodies dwelt a gigantic mind.

Schumann appears to have been the only contemporary composer who did
not underrate Chopin. Whether he would have gone so far as to rank him
with the greatest of the German composers, I cannot say, for he avoids
direct comparisons. But if imitation is the sincerest form of
flattery, then Schumann flattered Chopin more than any other master,
for his pianoforte works are much more in the manner of Chopin than of
Bach or Beethoven. I do not mean direct imitation, but that
unconscious adoption of Chopin's numerous innovations in the treatment
of the piano and of musical style, which are better evidence of
influence than the borrowing of an idea or two. He himself testified
to the "intimate artistic relations" between him and Chopin.
Moreover, his praise of Chopin is always pitched in such a high key
that it would seem as if praise could no higher go. It was he who
first proclaimed Chopin's genius authoritatively, and to this fact he
often referred subsequently, with special pride. The very first
article in his volumes of criticisms is devoted to Chopin's variations
on "La Ci Darem'," published as "opus 2." In those days, Schumann used
to give his criticisms a semi-dramatic form. On this occasion he
represents his _alter ego_, Eusebius, as rushing into the room with a
new composition, and the exclamation "Hats off, gentlemen! a genius!"
He then analyzes the variations in glowing poetic language and
rapturously exclaims at the end that "there is genius in every bar."
And this was only one of the _early_ works of Chopin, in which he has
by no means attained his full powers. Of another quite early work, the
second concerto, he writes that it is a composition "which none of us
can approach except it be with the lips to kiss the hem;" and later
on, the Preludes, the most inspired of his works, led Schumann to
exclaim that Chopin "is and remains the boldest and noblest artistic
spirit of the time."

Schumann would have found it difficult to induce any of his countrymen
to endorse his exalted opinion of Chopin, but the Hungarian Liszt
joined hands with him heartily, and pronounced Chopin "an artist of
the first rank." "His best works," he says, "contain numerous
combinations of which it must be said that they did nothing less than
create an epoch in the treatment of musical style. Bold, brilliant,
enchanting, his pieces _conceal their depth behind so much grace,
their erudition behind so much charm_, that it is difficult to
emancipate one's self from their overpowering magic and estimate them
according to their theoretic value. This fact is already recognized by
some competent judges, and it will be more and more generally realized
when the progress made in art during the Chopin epoch is carefully
studied."

That Elsner, Chopin's teacher, detected his pupil's originality, has
already been stated. Fortunately he allowed it a free rein instead of
trying to check and crush it, as teachers are in the habit of doing.
But there are some passages in Chopin's early letters which seem to
indicate that the general public and the professional musicians in his
native Poland were not so very much in advance of the Germans in
recognizing his musical genius. Liszt doubts whether Chopin's national
compositions were as fully appreciated by his countrymen as the work
of native poets; and Chopin writes to a friend, apropos of his second
concert at Warsaw: "The _élite_ of the musical world will be there;
but I have little confidence in their musical judgment--Elsner of
course excepted." Elsewhere he complains of a patriotic admirer who
had written that the Poles would some day be as proud of Chopin as the
Germans were of Mozart. And when in addition to this the editor of a
local paper told him he had in type a sonnet on him, Chopin was
greatly alarmed, and begged him not to print it; for he knew that such
homage would create envy and enemies, and he declared that after that
sonnet was published he would not dare to read any longer what the
papers said about him.

Chopin's want of confidence in the judgment of his countrymen showed
that, after all, the national Polish element in his compositions was
not the main cause why they were not rated at once at their true
value. It was their novelty of form, harmonic depth and freedom of
modulation, that made them for a long time cavïare to the general.
This was again proved when he went to Paris. Chopin was a Pole only on
his mother's side, his father having been a Frenchman, who had
emigrated to Poland. It might have been supposed, therefore, that
there would be a French element in Chopin's genius which would make it
palatable to the Parisians. But this did not prove to be the case. In
the remarkable group of musicians, poets, and artists who were
assembled at that time in Paris, and who mutually inspired one
another--a group which included Liszt, Meyerbeer, Hiller,
Mendelssohn, Berlioz, Heine, George Sand, the Countess D'Agoult,
Delacroix, etc.--there were no doubt not a few who knew what a rare
genius their friend Chopin was. George Sand wrote in her
autobiography: "He has not been understood hitherto, and to the
present day he is underestimated. Great progress will have to be made
in taste and in the appreciation of music before it will be possible
for Chopin's work to become popular." Heine also wrote that his
favorite pianist was Chopin, "who, however," he adds, "is more of a
composer than a virtuoso. When Chopin is at the piano I forget all
about the technical side of playing and become absorbed in the sweet
profundity, the sad loveliness of his creations, which are as deep as
they are elegant. Chopin is the great inspired tone-poet who properly
should be named only in company with Mozart, Beethoven, and Rossini."

But aside from these select spirits and a small circle of aristocratic
admirers, mostly Poles, Chopin was not understood by the Paris public.
At first he could not even make his living there, and was in
consequence on the point of emigrating to America when a friend
dragged him to a _soirée_ at Rothschild's, where his playing was so
much admired that he was at once engaged as a teacher by several
ladies present. In a very short time he became the fashionable teacher
in aristocratic circles, where his refined manners made him
personally liked. As he refused to take any but talented pupils,
teaching was not so irksome to him as it might have been. Nevertheless
one cannot but marvel at the obtuseness of the Parisians who put into
the utilitarian harness an artist who might have enchanted them every
evening with a concert, had their taste been more cultivated. He _did_
play once, when he first arrived, but the receipts did not even meet
the expenses, and the audience received his work so coldly that his
artistic sensibilities were wounded, and he did not again appear in
public for fourteen years. Occasionally he played for the select
aristocratic circles into which he had been introduced; but even here
he did not often meet with the genuine appreciation and sympathy which
the artist craves. "Whoever could read in his face," says Liszt,
"could see how often he felt convinced that among all these handsome,
well-dressed gentlemen, among all the perfumed, elegant ladies, not
one understood him."

As for the French critics they seem to have been as obtuse as their
German colleagues. To give only one instance: M. Fétis, author of the
well-known musical dictionary, states in his article on Chopin, that
this composer is overrated to-day, and his popularity largely due to
the fact that he is fashionable. And in his article on Heller, he
asserts, more pointedly still, that "the time will undoubtedly come
when the world will recognize that Heller, much more than Chopin, is
the modern poet of the pianoforte." In this opinion Fétis probably
stands alone; but many who have not studied Chopin's deepest works
carefully, are still convinced that the pianoforte compositions of
Mozart, Beethoven, and Schumann, are of greater importance than
Chopin's. So far am I from sharing this opinion that if I had to
choose between never again hearing a pianoforte piece by any or all of
those composers, or never again hearing a Chopin composition, I should
decide in favor of Chopin. Some years ago I expressed my conviction,
in _The Nation_, that Chopin is as distinctly superior to all other
piano composers as Wagner is to all other opera composers. A
distinguished Cincinnati musician, Mr. Otto Singer, was horrified at
this statement, and wrote in _The Courier_, of that city, that it
could only have been made by "a patriotically inclined Frenchman or a
consumptive inhabitant of Poland;" adding that "he would readily yield
up possession of quite a number of Chopin's bric-à-brac for Schumann's
single 'Warum.'" I am neither a patriotic Frenchman nor a consumptive
Pole, and I am a most ardent admirer of Schumann; nevertheless I
uphold my former opinion, and my chief object in this essay is to
endeavor to justify it.

All authorities, in the first place, admit that Chopin created an
entirely new style of playing the pianoforte. Many have pointed out
the peculiarities of this style--the use of extended and scattered
chords, the innovations in fingering which facilitate _legato_
playing, the spray of dainty little ornamental notes, the use of the
capricious _tempo rubato_, and so on. But it has not been made
sufficiently clear by any writer how it was that Chopin became the
Wagner of the pianoforte, so to speak, by revealing for the first time
the infinite possibilities of varied and beautiful tone-colors
inherent in that instrument. To understand this point fully, it is
necessary to bear in mind a few facts regarding the history of the
pianoforte.

The name of pianoforte was given about a century and a half ago to an
instrument constructed by the Italian Cristofori, who devised a
mechanism for striking the strings with hammers. In the older
instruments--the clarichords and harpsichords--the strings were either
snapped by means of crow's quills, or pushed with a tangent. The new
hammer action not only brought a better tone out of the string, but
enabled the pianist to play any note loud or soft at pleasure; hence
the name _piano-forte_. But the pianoforte itself required many years
before all its possibilities of tone-production were discovered. The
instruments used by Mozart still had a thin short tone, and there was
no pedal for prolonging it, except a clumsy one worked with the
knee--a circumstance which greatly influenced Mozart's style, and is
largely responsible for the fact that his pianoforte works are hardly
ever played to-day in the concert hall. For, as the tone could not be
sustained, it was customary in Mozart's time to hide its meagre frame
by means of a great profusion of runs and trills, and other ornaments,
with which even the slow movements were disfigured. Under the
circumstances, these ornaments were justifiable to some extent, but
to-day they seem not only in bad taste, but entirely superfluous,
because our improved instruments have a much greater power of
sustaining tones.

Czerny, the famous piano teacher, touched in his autobiography on the
peculiarities of Mozart's style. Beethoven, who gave Czerny some
lessons on the piano, made him pay particular attention to the
_legato_, "of which," says Czerny, "he was so unrivalled a master, but
which at that time--the Mozart period, when the short staccato touch
was in fashion--_all other pianists thought impossible_. Beethoven
told me afterwards," he continues, "that he had often heard Mozart,
whose style from his use of the clavecin, the pianoforte being in his
time in its infancy, was not at all adapted to the newer instrument. I
have known several persons who had received instruction from Mozart,
and their playing corroborated this statement."

In view of these facts, we can understand why Beethoven did not like
Mozart's pianoforte works as well as those of Clementi, in which there
was more _cantabile_, and which required more fulness of tone in the
execution; and we can understand why even so conservative a critic as
Louis Ehlert should exclaim, apropos of Chopin's "entirely new
pianoforte life," "How uninteresting is the style of any previous
master (excepting Beethoven) compared with his! What a litany of
gone-by, dead-alive forms! What a feelingless, prosaic jingle! If
anyone should, without a grimace, assure me sincerely that he can play
pianoforte pieces by Clementi, Dussek, Hummel, and Ries, with real
enjoyment even now, I will esteem him as an excellent man--yes, a very
honest one; but I will not drink wine with him."

Were it not for what I have ventured to call the fetish of Jumboism, I
am convinced that Professor Ehlert would have written Mozart's name in
this last sentence in place of Clementi's. By excepting Beethoven
alone from the list of "uninteresting" composers preceding Chopin, he
_implicitly_ condemns Mozart; but he does not dare to do so
_explicitly_, although such a confession would not have affected
Mozart's greatness in other departments of music, which is undeniable.
Indeed, if Professor Ehlert had been perfectly sincere I am not quite
sure that he would have excepted Beethoven's sonatas. Although they
teem with great and beautiful ideas, these sonatas are not really
adapted to the intrinsic nature of the pianoforte, and hence fail to
arouse the enthusiasm of those whose taste has been formed by the
works of Chopin and Schumann. It was no doubt an instinctive antipathy
to Beethoven's unpianistic style (if the adjective be permissible),
which prevented Chopin from admiring Beethoven as deeply as he did
some other composers, whom he would have admitted to be his inferiors.
And Beethoven himself does not seem to have regarded his pianoforte
works with the same satisfaction as his other compositions. At least,
he wrote the following curious sentence in a corner of one of his
sketch books in 1805; "Heaven knows why my pianoforte music always
makes the worst impression on me, especially when it is played badly."
He must have felt that his ideas found a much more appropriate and
adequate expression in the orchestra than on the piano. Not being a
radical innovator he did not, in his treatment of the pianoforte, go
beyond Clementi; and so it remained for Chopin to show the world that
the pianoforte, if properly treated, will yield tones whose exquisite
sensuous beauty can hardly be surpassed by any combination of
orchestral instruments.

The two principal means by which he accomplished these reforms were
the constant employment of the pedal, and the use of extended and
scattered chords, in place of the crowded harmonies and the massive
movements of the older accompaniments.

Very few pianists seem to comprehend the exact function and importance
of the pedal. Many will be surprised to hear that the word "touch,"
which they suppose refers to the way the keys are struck by the
fingers, has quite as much to do with the feet--that is, the use of
the pedal--as with the fingers. No matter how thoroughly a pianist may
have trained his fingers, if he does not use the pedal as it was used
by Chopin and Schumann, he cannot reveal the poetry of their
compositions. In one of his letters Chopin notes that Thalberg played
_forte_ and _piano_ with the pedals, not with his hands, and some
piano bangers do so still; but every pianist who deserves the name
knows that loudness and softness must be regulated by the hands (and
very rarely the left-side pedal). Yet even among this better class of
pianists the notion seems to prevail that the main object of the
right-side pedal is to enable them to prolong a chord or to prevent a
confusion of consecutive harmonies. This is one of the functions of
the pedal, no doubt, but not the most important one. The chief service
of the pedal is _in the interest of tone-color_. Let me explain.

Every student of music knows that if you sing a certain tone into a
piano (after pressing the pedal), or before a guitar, the strings in
these instruments which correspond to the tone you sing will vibrate
responsively and emit a tone. He also knows that when you sound a
single note, say G, on the violin or piano, you seem to hear only a
simple tone, but on listening more closely you will find that it is
really a compound tone or a complete chord, the fundamental tone being
accompanied by faint overtones, which differ in number and relative
loudness in different instruments, and to which these instruments owe
their peculiar tone-color.

Now when you press the pedal of a pianoforte on striking a note you do
not only prolong this note, but its vibrations arouse all the notes
which correspond to its overtones, and the result is a rich deep
tone-color of exquisite sensuous beauty and enchanting variableness.
Hence, whenever the melodic movement and harmonic changes are not too
rapid, a pianist should press the pedal _constantly_, whether he plays
loudly or softly; because it is only when the damper is raised from
the strings that the overtones can enrich and beautify the sound by
causing their corresponding strings to vibrate in sympathy with them.
Those who heard Schumann play say that he used the pedal persistently,
sometimes twice in the same bar to avoid harmonic confusion; and the
same is true of Chopin, concerning whose playing an English amateur
says, after referring to his _legatissimo_ touch: "The wide arpeggios
in the left hand, _maintained in a continuous stream of tone_ by the
strict legato and fine and constant use of the damper pedal, formed an
harmonious substructure for a wonderfully poetic _cantabile_."

I have italicised and emphasized the words _maintained in a continuous
stream of tone_, because it calls attention to one of the numerous
resemblances between the style of Chopin and that of Wagner, who in
his music dramas similarly keeps up an uninterrupted flow of richly
colored harmonies to sustain the vocal part. Schumann relates that he
had the good fortune to hear Chopin play some of his études. "And he
played them very much _à la Chopin_," he says: "Imagine an Æolian harp
provided with all the scales, commingled by an artist's hand into all
manner of fantastic, ornamental combinations, yet in such a way that
you can always distinguish a deeper ground tone and a sweet continuous
melody above--and you have an approximate idea of his playing. No
wonder that I liked best those of the études which he played for me,
and I wish to mention specially the first one, in A flat major, a poem
rather than an étude. It would be a mistake to imagine that he allowed
each of the small notes to be distinctly audible; it was rather a
surging of the A flat major chord, occasionally raised to a new billow
by the pedal; but amid these harmonies a wondrous melody asserted
itself in large tones, and only once, toward the middle of the piece,
a tenor part came out prominently beside the principal melody. After
hearing this étude you feel as you do when you have seen a ravishing
picture in your dreams and, half awake, would fain recall it."

Now it is obvious that such dreamy Æolian-harp-like harmonies could
not have been produced without Chopin's novel and constant use of the
pedal. And this brings out the greatest difference between the new and
the old style of playing. In the pianoforte works of Mozart and
Beethoven, and even in those of Weber, which mark the transition from
the classical to the romantic school, there are few passages that
absolutely require a pedal, and in most cases the pieces sound almost
as well without as with pedal; so that, from his point of view, and in
his days of staccato playing, Hummel was quite right in insisting that
a pianist could not be properly judged until he played without the
pedal. But as regards the romantic school of Chopin, Schumann, Liszt
and their followers, it may be said with equal truth that a pianist's
use of the pedal furnishes the supreme test of his talent. If he has
not the delicacy of ear which is requisite to produce the "continuous
stream of tone" in Chopin's compositions, without the slightest
harmonic confusion, he should leave them alone and devote himself to
less poetic composers.

An amusing anecdote illustrates visibly how helpless Chopin would have
been without his pedal. He was asked one evening at a party in Paris
to play. He was quite willing to do so but discovered to his surprise
that the piano had no pedals. They had been sent away for repairs. In
this dilemma a happy thought occurred to Liszt, who happened to be
present. He crawled under the piano, and, while Chopin was playing,
worked the mechanism to which the pedals ought to have been attached
so cleverly that they were not missed at all! He stooped that his
friend might conquer.

The fact that Chopin in his later works, often omitted the sign for
the pedal on his MSS. must not be held to indicate that he did not
wish it to be constantly used. In his earlier works he carefully
indicated where it should be employed, but subsequently he appears to
have reasoned rightly that a pianist who needs to be told where the
pedal ought, and where it ought not, to be employed, is not
sufficiently advanced in culture to play his works at all, and had
therefore best leave them alone.

Chopin's remarkable genius for divining the mysteries of the
pianoforte enabled him, as it were, to anticipate what is a
comparatively recent invention--the middle pedal which is chiefly used
to sustain single tones in the bass without affecting the rest of the
instrument. The melancholy "F sharp minor Prelude," for example,
cannot be played properly without the use of this middle pedal. In
another prelude, we have an illustration of how the pedal must often
be used in order to help in forming a chord which cannot be stretched.
And this brings us to the second important innovation in the treatment
of Chopin's pianoforte--the constant use of scattered and extended
chords.

Karasovski relates that Chopin, a mere boy, used to amuse himself by
searching on the piano for harmonies of which the constituent notes
were widely scattered on the keyboard, and, as his hands were too
small to grasp them, he devised a mechanism for stretching his hands,
which he wore at night. Fortunately, he did not go so far as Schumann,
who made similar experiments with his hands and thereby disabled one
of them for life. What prompted Chopin to search for these widely
extended chords was his intense appreciation of tonal beauty. To-day
everybody knows how much more beautiful scattered, and widely extended
harmonies are than crowded harmonies; but it was Chopin's genius that
discovered this fact and applied it on a large scale. Indeed, so novel
were his chords, that at first, many of them were deemed unplayable;
but he showed that if his own system of fingering was adopted, they
were not only playable, but eminently suited to the character of the
instrument. The superior beauty of scattered intervals can be
strikingly demonstrated in this way. If you strike four or five
adjacent notes on the piano at once, you produce an intolerable
cacophony. But these same notes can be so arranged by scattering them
that they make an exquisite chord in suspension. Everything depends on
the arrangement and the wideness of the intervals. Chopin's fancy was
inexhaustible in the discovery of new kinds of scattered chords,
combined into harmony by his novel use of the pedal; and in this way
he enriched music with so many new harmonies and modulations that he
must be placed, as a harmonic innovator, on a level with Bach and
Wagner.

These remarks apply especially to Chopin's later compositions; but his
peculiarities are already distinctly traceable in many of his earlier
works; and Elsner, his teacher, was sufficiently clear-sighted and
frank to write the following words: "The achievements of Mozart and
Beethoven as pianists have long been forgotten; and their pianoforte
compositions, although undoubtedly classical works, must give way to
the diversified artistic treatment of that instrument by the modern
school." Mr. Joseph Bennett quotes this sentence in his Biography of
Chopin, and adds an exclamation point in brackets after it, to
express his surprise. Mr. Bennett is considered one of the leading
London critics; yet I must say that I have never seen so much
ignorance in a single exclamation point in brackets. Note the
difference between Elsner and Bennett. Elsner adds to the sentence
just quoted, that the _other_ works of Mozart and Beethoven--their
symphonies, operas, quartets, etc., "will not only continue to live,
but will, perhaps, remain unequalled by anything of the present day."
This is genuine discriminative criticism, which renders unto Cæsar
what is Cæsar's due: whereas, Mr. Bennett is guided by the vicious old
habit of fancying that because Mozart and Beethoven are great masters,
therefore they must be superior to everybody in everything. Is it not
about time to put an end to this absurd Jumboism in music?

The fact is, we are living in an age of division of labor and
specialism; and those who, like Robert Franz and Richard Wagner,
devote themselves to a single branch of music have a better chance of
reaching the summit of Parnassus than those who dissipate their
energies in too many directions. Chopin was the pianoforte genius _par
excellence_, and in his field he stands above the greatest of the
German composers, whatever their names. Mendelssohn once wrote to his
mother that Chopin "produces effects on the piano as novel as those of
Paganini on the violin, and he performs marvels which no one would
have believed to be possible." Mendelssohn benefited to a slight
extent by Chopin's example, but he did not add anything new to the
treatment of the pianoforte. Nor does even Liszt mark an advance on
Chopin from a purely pianistic point of view. Paradoxical as it may
seem, Liszt, the greatest pianist the world has known, was really a
born _orchestral_ composer. He was never satisfied with the piano, but
constantly wanted to convert it into an orchestra. His innovations
were all in the service of these orchestral aspirations, and hence it
is that his rhapsodies, for example, are much more effective in their
orchestral garb than in their original pianoforte version. The same is
true of many of Rubinstein's pianoforte works--the Bal Masqué, for
instance, which always has such an electric effect on Mr. Theodore
Thomas's audiences. Not so with Chopin. Liszt remarks, somewhere, that
Chopin might have easily written for orchestra, because his
compositions can be so readily arranged for it. I venture to differ
from this opinion. Chopin's Funeral March has been repeatedly arranged
for orchestra--first by Reber at Chopin's funeral (when Meyerbeer
regretted that he had not been asked to do this labor of love); and
more recently by Mr. Theodore Thomas. Mr. Thomas's version is very
clever and effective, yet I very _much_ prefer this sublime dirge on
the piano. In a small room the piano has almost as great a capacity
for dynamic shading as the orchestra has in a large hall; and, as I
have just pointed out, one who knows how to use the pedal can secure
an endless (almost orchestral) variety of tone-colors on the piano,
thanks to the hundreds of overtones which can be made to accompany the
tones played. Chopin spoke the language of the piano. His pieces are
so idiomatic that they cannot be translated into orchestral language
any more than Heine's lyrics can be translated into English. Chopin
exhausted the possibilities of the pianoforte, and the piano exhausts
the possibilities of Chopin's compositions.

The innovations of Chopin which I have so far alluded to, have been to
some extent adopted by all modern composers, and the more they have
adopted them the more their works ingratiate themselves in the favor
of amateurs. But there is another epoch-making feature of Chopin's
style, which is less easy, especially to Germans, because it is a
Slavic characteristic; I mean the _tempo rubato_. This is a phrase
much used among musicians, but if pressed for an exact definition, few
would be able to give one. Let us see first what Chopin's
contemporaries have to say of the way in which he himself treats it.
Chopin visited England in 1848, and on June 21 gave a concert in
London. Mr. Chorley, the well-known critic, wrote a criticism on this
occasion for "The Athenæum," in which he says: "The delicacy of M.
Chopin's tone and the elasticity of his passages are delicious to the
ear. He makes a free use of _tempo rubato_, leaning about within his
bars more than any player we recollect, but still subject to a
presiding sentiment of measure, such as presently habituates the ear
to the liberties taken. In music not his own, we happen to know he can
be as staid as a metronome; while his Mazurkas, etc., lose half that
wildness if played without a certain freedom and license--impossible
to imitate, but irresistible if the player at all feels the music.
This we have always fancied while reading Chopin's works:--we are now
sure of it after hearing him perform them."

Moscheles wrote to his wife that Chopin's "_ad libitum_ playing,
which, with the interpreters of his music degenerates into offences
against correct time, is, in his own case, merely a pleasing
originality of style." He compares him to "a singer who, little
concerned with the accompaniment, follows entirely his feelings."
Karasovski says that Chopin "played the bass in quiet, regular time,
while the right hand moved about with perfect freedom, now following
the left hand, now ... going its own independent way. 'The left hand,'
said Chopin, 'must be like an orchestral conductor; not for a moment
must it be uncertain and vacillating.'" Thus his playing, free from
the fetters of _tempo_, acquired a unique charm; thanks to this
_rubato_, his melody was "like a vessel rocked upon the waves of the
sea."

The world suffered a great loss when a band of ignorant soldiers found
the bundles of letters which Chopin had written from Paris to his
parents, and used them to feed the fire which cooked their supper. But
it lost a still greater treasure when Chopin tore up the manuscript of
his pianoforte method, which he began to write in the last years of
his life, but never finished. In it he would no doubt have given many
valuable hints regarding the correct use of the _rubato_. In the
absence of other authentic hints beyond the one just quoted, Liszt
must be depended upon as the best authority on the subject; for it is
well known that Liszt could imitate Chopin so nicely that his most
intimate friends were once deceived in a dark room, imagining that
Chopin was playing when Liszt was at the piano. "Chopin," Liszt
writes, "was the first who introduced into his compositions that
peculiarity which gave such a unique color to his impetuosity, and
which he called _tempo rubato_:--an irregularly interrupted movement,
subtile, broken, and languishing, at the same time flickering like a
flame in the wind, undulating, like the surface of a wheat-field, like
the tree-tops moved by a breeze." All his compositions must be played
in this peculiarly accented, spasmodic, insinuating style, a style
which he succeeded in imparting to his pupils, but which can hardly be
taught without example. As with the pedal, so with the _rubato_,
Chopin often neglected to mark its use in later years, taking it for
granted that those who understood his works would know where to apply
it.

Perhaps the importance of the _rubato_ in Chopin cannot be more
readily realized than by his concession that he could never play a
Viennese waltz properly, and by the fact that sometimes, when he was
in a jocular mood, he would play one of his mazurkas in strict,
metronomic time, to the great amusement of those who had heard him
play them properly.

When Liszt speaks of the _tempo rubato_ as a unique characteristic of
Chopin's style, he must not be understood too literally. As a matter
of fact, the _rubato_ is too important an element of expression not to
have been partially anticipated in the works of some of Chopin's
predecessors, just as Wagner's leading motives had imperfect
prototypes in the works of some preceding composers. As early as 1602,
the Italian, Caccini, describes what he calls the "Stile Nobile, in
which the singer," he says, "emancipates himself from the fetters of
the measure, by prolonging or diminishing the duration of a note by
one-half, according as the sense of the word requires it." But it is
probable that the Italian singers of that period, as to-day, used
this kind of _rubato_ merely to display the beauty of their voice on a
loud high note, and not, like Chopin, for the sake of emphasizing a
pathetic or otherwise expressive note or chord.

Of the Germans it may be said that, as a rule, they had, until
recently, no special liking for the _tempo rubato_. Dr. Hanslick, the
eminent Viennese critic, referred to it thirty years ago, as "a morbid
unsteadiness of _tempo_." Mendelssohn, who always liked a "nice, swift
_tempo_," repeatedly expressed his aversion to Chopin's _rubato_.
Nevertheless, traces of it may be found in the rhythms of the
classical school. Although Mozart's _tempo_ in general was as strict
and uniform as that of a waltz in the ball-room, in playing an adagio
he appears to have allowed his left hand some freedom of movement for
the sake of expression (see Jahn I., 134). Beethoven, according to
Seyfried, "was very particular at rehearsals about the frequent
passages in _tempo rubato_;" and there are other remarks by
contemporaries of Beethoven which indicate that although he wrote in
the classical style, in his playing and conducting he often introduced
a romantic _rubato_. Still, in the majority of his compositions, there
is no room for the _rubato_, which cannot be said to have found a home
in German music till it was assimilated by the Schumann school, under
the influence of Chopin. Since then, it has leavened the spirit of
modern music in a manner which has never been sufficiently emphasized.
I am convinced that even Richard Wagner was, unconsciously, influenced
by it through Liszt; for one of the chief peculiarities of his style
is a sort of dramatic _rubato_ which emancipates his music from the
tyranny of the strict dance measure. In his essay on the proper
interpretation of Tannhäuser, Wagner declares that the division of
music into regular measures, or bars, is merely a mechanical means for
enabling the composer to convey his ideas to the singer. As soon as
the singer has grasped the idea, he says, the bar should be thrown
aside as a useless incumbrance, and the singer, ignoring strict time,
should be guided by his feelings alone, while the conductor should
follow and preserve harmony between him and the orchestra.

It might be said that this dramatic _rubato_ is something different
from Chopin's _rubato_. _Rubato_ literally means "robbed," and it is
generally supposed that the peculiarity of Chopin's style consisted
simply in this, that he prolonged certain notes in a bar at the
expense of the others--robbing from one what he gave to his neighbor.
But this is a very inadequate conception of the term. Chopin's
_rubato_ means much more than this. It includes, to a large extent,
the frequent unexpected changes of time and rhythm, together with the
_ritardandos_ and _accelerandos_. It includes, secondly, those unique
passages, first conceived by Chopin, where the right hand has to play
irregular groups of small notes--say twenty-two, while the left hand
plays only twelve; or nineteen, while the left plays four--passages in
which Chopin indicated as clearly as Wagner did in the words just
quoted that the musical bar is a mere mechanical measure which does
not sufficiently indicate the phrasing of the romantic or dramatic
ideas that lie beyond the walls of a dance-hall.

There is a third peculiarity of Chopin's style which may be included
under the name of _rubato_, namely, his habit of "robbing" the note,
not of its duration, but its _accent_. Every student of music knows
that the symphony and sonata are called "idealized dance forms,"
because they are direct outgrowths of the dances that were cultivated
originally in Italy, France, and Germany. Now, one peculiarity of
these dances is the fact that the accent always falls on the first
beat of each bar. This is very appropriate and convenient for dancing,
but from an artistic point of view, it is decidedly monotonous. Hence,
Chopin conferred a vast benefit on modern art by introducing the
spirit of Slavic music, in which the accent often falls on other beats
beside the first. These regular accents produce the effect of the
variable _tempo rubato_, and it is to them that Chopin's works largely
owe their exotic, poetic color. As they open up new possibilities of
emotional expression, they have been eagerly appropriated by other
composers and have leavened all modern music. To Chopin, therefore,
chiefly belongs the honor of having emancipated music from the
monotony of the Western European dance-beat by means of the _tempo
rubato_ in its varied aspects.

But, it was not merely in the accent of the dance forms, that he
introduced an agreeable innovation; he was one of the giants who helped
to create a new epoch in art, by breaking these old forms altogether,
and substituting new ones better suited to modern tastes. And here we
come across one of the most ludicrous misconceptions which have been
fostered concerning Chopin by shallow critics, and which brings us back
again for a moment to the question of Jumboism. I do not know whether
he was a German or a French critic who first wrote that Chopin,
although great in short pieces, was not great enough to master the
sonata form. Once in print, this silly opinion was repeated parrot-like
by scores of other critics. _How_ silly it is may be inferred from the
fact that such third-rate composerlings as Herz and Hummel were able to
write sonatas of the most approved pattern--and that, in fact, _any_
person with the least musical talent can learn in a few years to write
sonatas that are absolutely correct as regards form. And yet we are
asked to believe that Chopin, one of the most profound and original
musical thinkers the world has ever seen, could not write a correct
sonata! _Risum teneatis amici_! Chopin not able to master the sonata
form? The fact is, _the sonata form could not master him_. He felt
instinctively that it was too artificial to serve as a vehicle for the
expression of poetic thought; and his thoroughly original genius
therefore created the more plastic and malleable shorter forms which
have since been adopted by composers the world over. The few sonatas
which Chopin wrote do not deviate essentially from the orthodox
structure, but one feels constantly that he was hampered in his
movements by the artificial structure. Though they are full of genius,
like everything he composed, he did not write them _con amore_.
Concentration is one of Chopin's principal characteristics, and the
sonata favors diffuseness. Too much thematic beating out is the bane of
the sonata. A few bars of gold are worth more than many square yards of
gold leaf; and Chopin's bars are solid gold. Moreover, there is no
organic unity between the different parts of the sonata, whatever may
have been said to the contrary. The essentially artificial character of
the sonata is neatly illustrated by a simile used by Dr. Hanslick in
speaking of Chopin. "This composer," he said, "although highly and
peculiarly gifted, was never able to unite the fragrant flowers which
he scattered by handfuls, into beautiful wreaths." Dr. Hanslick intends
this as censure. I regard it as the greatest compliment he could have
paid him. A wreath may be very pretty in its way, but it is artificial.
The flowers are crushed and their fragrance does not blend. How much
lovelier is a single violet or orchid in the fields, unhampered by
strings and wires, and connected solely with its stalk and the
surrounding green leaves. Many of Chopin's compositions are so short
that they can hardly be likened unto flowers, but only to buds. Yet is
not a rosebud a thousand times more beautiful than a full-blown rose?

One more consideration. The psychology of the sonata form is false.
Men and women do not feel happy for ten minutes as in the opening
allegro of a sonata, then melancholy for another ten minutes, as in
the following adagio, then frisky, as in the scherzo, and finally,
fiery and impetuous for ten minutes as in the finale. The movements of
our minds are seldom so systematic as this. Sad and happy thoughts and
moods chase one another incessantly and irregularly, as they do in the
compositions of Chopin, which, therefore, are much truer echoes of our
modern romantic feelings than the stiff and formal classical sonatas.
And thus it is, that Chopin's habitual neglect of the sonata form,
instead of being a defect, reveals his rare artistic subtlety and
grandeur. It was natural that a Pole should vindicate for music this
emotional freedom of movement, for the Slavic mind is especially prone
to constant changes of mood. Nevertheless, as soon as Chopin had shown
the way, other composers followed eagerly in the new path, and in the
present day the sonata may be regarded as obsolete. Few contemporary
composers have written more than one or two--merely in order to show
that they can do so if they want to; and even Brahms, the high priest
of the conservatives, has, in his later period, devoted himself more
and more exclusively to shorter modern forms in his pianoforte music.

Strictly speaking, Chopin was not the first who tried to get away from
the sonata. Beethoven, though he remained faithful to it, felt its
fetters, as is shown by his numerous poetic licenses. Schubert wrote
"Moments Musicals," Mendelssohn, "Songs without Words," Weber,
Polonaises, and Field, Nocturnes. But these were merely straws which
indicated in which direction Chopin's genius would sweep the field and
clear the musical atmosphere. His polonaises and nocturnes are vastly
superior to those of Weber and Field; and his poetic preludes, his
romantic ballads, his lovely berçeuse, his amorous mazurkas, are new
types in art which have often been imitated but never equalled. Only
in one field did Chopin have a dangerous rival among his predecessors,
namely, in the Waltz. Weber's "Invitation to the Dance" is the source
of the modern idealized waltz, because it was not written for the feet
alone, but also for the heart and the imagination. Like Chopin's
waltzes, it contains chivalrous passages, amorous episodes, and subtle
changes of movement. And it seems as if the fact that there was less
room for formal and emotional innovations in the waltz than in the
other forms, had somewhat affected Chopin's imagination. For, although
the most popular of his works, his waltzes are, with a few exceptions
in which the _rubato_ prevails, less characteristic than his other
pieces. Nevertheless, they are charming, every one of them. But they
are fairy dances--mortals are too clumsy to keep time to them.

Next to the waltzes in popularity come the polonaises; and they fully
deserve their popularity. Liszt has given us a charming description of
the polonaise as it was formerly danced in Chopin's native country. It
was less a dance than a promenade in which courtly pomps and
aristocratic splendor were on exhibition. It was a chivalrous but not
an amorous dance, precedence being given to age and rank, before youth
and beauty. And whereas, in other dances, the place of honor is
always given to the fair sex, in the polonaise the men are in the
foreground. In a word, the polonaise represents, both in its subject
and the style of music, the masculine side of Chopin's genius.

The feminine side is chiefly embodied in the mazurkas and the
nocturnes. It has been said that the highest genius must combine
masculine with feminine traits, and it is a remarkable fact that the
works of two of the most spontaneous composers--Chopin and
Schubert--are often characterized by an exquisite feminine tenderness
and grace; as if, seeing that women have not done their duty as
composers, they had tried to introduce the feminine spirit in music.
Yet it is unfair to place too much emphasis on this side of their
genius. In their bolder moments, Chopin and Schubert are thoroughly
masculine.

It seems strange at first sight that the mazurkas, these exquisite
love poems, should be so much less popular than the waltzes, for they
are quite as melodious and much easier--although here, as elsewhere,
Chopin often introduces a few very difficult bars in an otherwise easy
composition, as if to keep away bunglers. Perhaps the cause of their
comparative neglect is, that they are so thoroughly Polish in spirit;
unless they are played with an exotic _rubato_, their fragrance
vanishes. There is more local color in the mazurkas than in any of
his other works. The Mazurs are musically a highly gifted nation, and
Chopin was impressed early in life with the quaint originality of
their melodies. No doubt some of his mazurkas are merely artistic
settings of these old love songs, but they are the settings of an
inspired jeweller. If we can judge by the number of pieces of each
class that he wrote, the mazurka was Chopin's favorite form. Even on
his death-bed he wrote one. It was his last effort, and he was too
weak to try it over on the piano. It is of heart-rending sadness, and
exquisite pathos. Perhaps it was a patriotic rather than an æsthetic
feeling which led him thus to favor the mazurka. His love for his
country was exceeded only by his devotion to his art. "Oh, how sad it
must be to die in a foreign country," he wrote to a friend in 1830;
and when, soon afterward, he left home he took along a handful of
Polish soil which he kept for nineteen years. Shortly before his death
he expressed a wish that it should be strewn in his coffin--a wish
which was fulfilled; so that his body rested on Polish soil even in
Paris.

A countless number of exquisite melodic rhythmic and harmonic details
in the mazurkas might be dwelt upon in this place, but I will only
call attention to the inexhaustible variety of ideas which makes each
of them so unique, notwithstanding their strong family likeness. They
are like fantastic orchids, or like the countless varieties of humming
birds, those "winged poems of the air," of which no two are alike
while all resemble each other.

The nocturnes represent the dreamy side of Chopin's genius. They are
sufficiently popular, yet few amateurs have any idea of their
unfathomable depth, and few know how to use the pedal in such a way as
to produce the rich uninterrupted flow of tone on which the melody
should float. Most pianists play them too fast. Mozart and Schumann
protested against the tendency to take their slow pieces too fast, and
Chopin suffers still more from this pernicious habit. Mendelssohn in
"A Midsummer Night's Dream," and Weber in "Oberon," have given us
glimpses of dreamland, but Chopin's nocturnes take us there bodily,
and plunge us into reveries more delicious than the visions of an
opium eater. They should be played in the twilight and in solitude,
for the slightest foreign sound breaks the spell. But just as dreams
are sometimes agitated and dramatic, so some of these nocturnes are
complete little dramas with stormy, tragic episodes, and the one in C
sharp minor, _e.g._, embodies a greater variety of emotion and more
genuine dramatic spirit on four pages than many popular operas on four
hundred.

One of Chopin's enchanting innovations, which he introduced
frequently in the nocturnes, consists in those unique and exquisite
_fioriture_, or dainty little notes which suddenly descend on the
melody like a spray of dew drops glistening in all the colors of the
rainbow. No less unique and original are the exquisite modulations
into foreign keys which abound in the nocturnes, as, indeed, in all
his works. Schucht calls attention to the fact that in his very opus 1
Chopin permits himself a freedom of modulation which Beethoven rarely
indulged in. But this is a mere trifle compared with the works of his
last period. Here we find a striking originality and boldness of
modulation that has no parallel in music, except in Wagner's last
music-dramas. Now we have seen that Moscheles, and other
contemporaries of Chopin, found his modulations harsh and
disagreeable; and doubtless there are amateurs to-day who regard them
in the same way. It seems, indeed, as if musical people must be
divided into two classes--those who find their chief delight in melody
pure and simple, and those who think that rich and varied harmony is
the soul of music. Chopin fortunately wrote for both classes. Italy
has produced no melodist equal to him, and Germany only one--Franz
Schubert. No one has written melodies more soulful than those of the
nocturne, opus 37, No. 2, the second ballad, the études, opus 10, No.
3; opus 25, No. 7, etc. I distinctly remember the thrill with which I
heard each of these melodies for the first time; but it was a deeper
emotion still which I felt when I played for the first time the
sublimest of his nocturnes--the last but one he wrote--and came across
that wonderful modulation from five sharps to four flats, and, later
on, the delicious series of modulations in the fourth and fifth bars
after the Tempo Primo. I realized then that modulation is a deeper
source of emotional expression than melody.

In speaking of Chopin's melancholy character, the nocturnes are often
referred to as illustrations of it. They do, indeed, breathe a spirit
of sadness, but the majority represent, as I have said, the dreamy
side of his genius. The real anguish of his heart is not expressed in
the nocturnes but in the preludes and études, strange as these names
may seem for such pathetic effusions of his heart. The étude, opus 10,
No. 6, seems as if it were in a sort of double minor; as much sadder
than ordinary minor, as ordinary minor is sadder than major. Chopin
had abundant cause to be melancholy. He inherited that national
melancholy of the Poles which causes them even to dance to tunes in
minor keys, and which is commonly attributed to the long-continued
political oppression under which they have suffered. But, apart from
this national trait, Chopin had sufficient personal reasons for
writing the greater part of his mazurkas and his other pieces in
minor keys. Like other men of genius, he keenly felt the anguish of
not being fully appreciated by his contemporaries. Moreover, although
he was greatly admired by the French and Polish women in Paris, and
was even conceded a lady-killer, he was, in his genuine affairs of the
heart, thrice disappointed. His first love, who wore his engagement
ring when he left Warsaw, proved faithless to the absent lover, and
married another man. The second love deceived him in the same way,
preferring a Count to a genius. And his third love, George Sand, after
apparently reciprocating his attachment, for a few years, not only
discarded him, but tried to justify her conduct to the world, by
giving an exaggerated portraiture of his weaknesses, in her novel
"Lucrezia Floriani."

Nevertheless, it was in one respect fortunate for the world that
George Sand was Chopin's friend so long, for we owe to her facile pen
many interesting accounts of Chopin's habits and the origin of some of
his compositions. The winter which he spent with her on the Island of
Majorca was one of the most important in his life, for it was here
that he composed some of those masterpieces, his preludes--a word
which might be paraphrased as Introductions to a new world of musical
emotion. There is a strange discrepancy in the accounts which Liszt
and George Sand give of the Majorca episode in Chopin's life. Liszt
describes it as a period of calm enjoyment, George Sand as one of
discomfort and distress. As she was an eye-witness, her testimony
appears the more trustworthy, especially as it is borne out by the
character of the preludes which he composed there. There are among
Chopin's preludes a few which breathe the spirit of contentment and
grace, or of religious grandeur, but most of them are outbreaks of the
wildest anguish and heart-rending pathos. If tears could be heard,
they would sound like these preludes. Two of the saddest--those in B
minor and E minor--were played by the famous organist Lefebure Wely,
at Chopin's funeral services. But it is useless to specify. They are
all jewels of the first water.

Some years ago I wrote in "The Nation" that if all pianoforte music in
the world were to be destroyed, excepting one collection, my vote
should be cast for Chopin's preludes. If anything could induce me to
modify that opinion to-day, it would be the thought of Chopin's
études. I would never consent to their loss. Louis Ehlert, speaking of
Chopin's F Major ballad, says he has seen even children stop in their
play and listen to it enraptured. But, in the études I mentioned a
moment ago, there are melodies which, I should think, would tempt even
angels to leave their happy home and indulge, for a moment, in the
luxury of idealized human sorrow. There is in these twenty-seven
études, as in the twenty-five preludes, an inexhaustible wealth of
melody, modulation, poetry and passion. One can play them every day
and never tire of them. Of most of them one might say what Schumann
said of one--that they are "poems rather than studies;" and much
surprise has been expressed that Chopin should have chosen such a
modest and apparently inappropriate name for them as "studies." Now, I
have a theory on this subject: I believe it was partly an ironic
intention which induced Chopin to call some of his most inspired
pieces "studies." Pianists have always been too much in the habit of
looking at their art from purely technical or mechanical points of
view. They looked for mere five-finger exercises in Chopin's études,
and finding at the same time an abundance of musical ideas, they were
surprised. It did not occur to them that Chopin might have intended
them also as studies in musical composition--studies in melody,
harmony, rhythm and emotional expression. I believe he did so intend
them; and finding that his contemporaries did not take his idea, he
probably laughed in his sleeve, and exclaimed, "_O tempora!_"

This conjecture seems the more plausible, from the fact that there was
a pronounced ironic and comic vein in Chopin's character. The accounts
of his melancholy, in fact, like those of his ill-health, have been
too much exaggerated. He was often in a cheerful mood. Sometimes he
would amuse himself for a whole evening playing blind-man's buff with
the children. As a mere child he had formed the habit of mimicking and
caricaturing pianists and other distinguished men. Liszt often
suffered from this mischievous habit, but he did not complain, and
even seemed to enjoy it. Of Chopin's wit, two specimens may be cited.
A rich Parisian one day invited him to dinner, with the intention of
getting him to entertain the guests afterward. In this case, however,
the host had reckoned without the guest, for, when asked to play,
Chopin exclaimed, "But, my dear sir, I have eaten so little." The
other instance occurs in one of his letters, where he says of the
pianist Aloys Schmitt, that he was forty years old, and his
compositions eighty--a _bon mot_ worthy of Heine.

There was much, indeed, in common between Chopin and Heine. Nothing is
more characteristic of Heine than the way in which he works up our
sentimental feelings only to knock us on the head with a comic or
grotesque line at the end. Similarly, Chopin, after improvising for
his friends for an hour or two, would suddenly rouse them from their
reveries by a _glissando_--sliding his fingers from one end of the
key-board to the other. In almost all of Chopin's or Heine's poems
there is this peculiar mixture of the sad and the comic veins--even
in the scherzos, which represent the gay and cheerful moods of
Chopin's muse.

Another point between these two poets is their elegance of style, and
their ironic abhorrence of tawdry sentimentality and commonplace.
Heine is the most elegant and graceful writer of his country, and
Chopin the most elegant and graceful of all composers. Not a redundant
note or a meaningless bar in all his compositions. Heine owed his
formal finish to French influences, but Chopin did not need them, for
the Poles are as noted as the French for elegance and grace. He
avoided not only the modulatory monotony of the classical school, but,
especially, the commonplace endings which marred so many classical
compositions. "All's well that ends well," is a rule that was
generally ignored by composers till Chopin taught them its value and
effect. Chopin's pen always stopped when his thoughts stopped, and he
never appends a meaningless end formula as if to warn the audience
that they may now put on their hats. On the contrary, some of his
later compositions, especially of the last period, end with exquisite
miniature poems, connected in spirit with the preceding music and yet
distinct--separate inspirations. I refer, especially, to the endings
of his last two nocturnes and to the final bars of the mazurka, opus
59, No. 3.

George Sand has given us a vivid sketch of Chopin's conscientiousness
as a composer. "He shut himself up in his room for entire days," she
says, "weeping, walking about, breaking his pen, repeating and
changing a bar a hundred times, and beginning again next day with
minute and desperate perseverance. He spent six weeks over a single
page, only to go back and write that which he had traced at the first
essay." As regards his creativeness, George Sand says that "it
descended upon his piano suddenly, completely, sublimely, or it sang
itself in his head during his walks, and he made haste to hear it by
rushing to the instrument." I have already mentioned the fact that
when he wrote his last mazurka he was too weak to try it on the piano.
In one of his letters he speaks of a polonaise being ready in his
head. These facts indicate that he composed mentally, although, no
doubt, during the improvisations, many themes occurred to him which he
remembered and utilized. When he improvised he did not watch the
key-board, but generally looked at the ceiling. Already as a youth he
used to be so absorbed that he forgot his meals; and, in the street,
he was often so absent-minded that he very narrowly escaped being run
over by a wagon. Visions of female loveliness and patriotic
reminiscences inspired many of his best works. Sometimes the pictures
in his mind became so vivid as to form real hallucinations. Thus it
is related that one evening when he was alone in the dark, trying over
the A major polonaise which he had just completed, he saw the door
open and in marched a procession of Polish knights and ladies in
mediæval costumes--the same, no doubt, that his imagination had
pictured while he was composing. He was so alarmed at this vision that
he fled through the opposite door and did not venture to return.
Another illustration of the relations between genius and insanity.

The foregoing remarks on Chopin's compositions suffice, I think, to
show how absurd is the prevalent notion that he is the composer for
the drawing-room, and that his pieces reflect the spirit of
fashionable Parisian society. They do, perhaps, in their elegant form,
but certainly not in their spirit. The frivolous aristocratic circles
that heard Chopin could never have comprehended the depth of his
emotional life. The pianists for them, the real drawing-room composers
were Kalkbrenner, and Field, and Thalberg, with their operatic
fantasias. Chopin is the composer for the few, and he is the composer
_par excellence_ for musicians. From him they can get more ideas, and
learn more as regards form, than from anyone else, except Bach and
Wagner. In comparing his last works with his first, and noting their
progress, the mind tries in vain to conceive where he would have led
the world had he lived eighty instead of forty years. One thing is
certain: he would have probably written more for other instruments.
His pianoforte concertos belong to his early period, and betray a lack
of experience in the treatment of the orchestra. But he wrote two
pieces of chamber music which have never been excelled--a 'cello
sonata and a trio. The 'cello sonata was the last of his larger works,
and in my opinion it is superior to any of the 'cello sonatas of
Mendelssohn, Brahms, and even Beethoven and Rubinstein. The trio,
though an earlier work, is, like the 'cello sonata, admirably adapted
to the instruments for which it is written. I once belonged to an
amateur trio club. Our tastes naturally differed on many points, but
in one thing we all agreed: we always closed our entertainment with
this Chopin trio. It was the climax of the evening's enjoyment. Yet,
only a few years ago, the leader of one of the principal chamber music
organizations in New York admitted to me that he had never heard of
this trio!--an incident which vividly illustrates the truth of my
assertion that Chopin's genius is still far from being esteemed at its
full value.




II

HOW COMPOSERS WORK


Forty years ago Robert Schumann complained that the musical critics
had so much to say about singers and players, while the composer was
almost entirely ignored. To-day this reproach could hardly be made,
for although vocalists still receive perhaps a disproportionate share
of attention, compositions, new and old, are also discussed at great
length in the press. Nevertheless, I believe that the vast majority of
those who attend an operatic performance in New York, and are
delighted with "Siegfried" or "Faust," have but vague and shadowy
notions as to the way in which such an opera is composed. My object
here is to illustrate the way composers work, and to prove that the
creating of an opera is perhaps the most difficult and marvellous
achievement of the human intellect.

Professor Langhans notes, in his history of music, that in the Middle
Ages, as late as Luther's time, it took two men to compose the
simplest piece of music: one who conceived the melody, and the other
who added the harmonic accompaniment. The theoretical writer,
Glareanus, deliberately expressed his opinion, in 1547, that it might
be _possible_ to unite these two functions in one person, but that one
would rarely find the inventor of a melody able to work it out
artistically. We have made much progress in music within these three
hundred years, and to-day every composer is not only expected to
invent his own harmonies and accompaniments to his melodies, but,
since Wagner set the example, composers are beginning to consider it
incumbent on them to write their own librettos; and, what is more
remarkable, if we examine biographies of musicians carefully we find
that, even _before_ Wagner, not a few composers assisted in the
preparation of their operatic texts; and this remark applies even to
some of the Italian composers, who were proverbially careless
regarding their librettos. Rossini was, perhaps, too indolent to
devote much attention to his texts, and he was apt to postpone even
the _musical_ work to the last moment, so that he sometimes had to be
locked up in his room by his friends, to enable him to finish his
score by the date named in his contract. Yet it is worthy of note that
during the composition of what Rossini's admirers commonly regard as
his best and most characteristic work--the "Barber of Seville"--he
lived in the same house with his librettist. "The admirable unity of
the 'Barber,' in which a person without previous information on the
subject could scarcely say whether the words were written for the
music or the music for the words, may doubtless," as Mr. Sutherland
Edwards suggests, "in a great measure be accounted for by the fact
that poet and musician were always together during the composition of
the opera; ready mutually to suggest and to profit by suggestions."

"Donizetti," the same writer informs us, while at the Bologna Lyceum,
"occupied himself not only with music, but also with drawing,
architecture, and even poetry; and that he could turn out fair enough
verses for musical purposes was shown when, many years afterward, he
wrote--so rapidly that the word 'improvise' might here be used--for
the benefit of a manager in distress, both words and music of a little
one-act opera, called 'Il Campanello' founded on the 'Sonnette de
Nuit' of Scribe. Donizetti also arranged the librettos of 'Betty' and
'The Daughter of the Regiment,' and of the last act of 'Lucia' he not
only wrote the words but designed the scenes."

Concerning Verdi, Arthur Pougin says: "It is not generally known that,
virtually, Verdi is himself the author of all his poems. That is to
say, not only does he always choose the subject of his operas, but, in
addition to that, he draws out the sketch of the libretti, indicates
all the situations, constructs them almost entirely as far as regards
the general plan, brings his personages and his characters on the
stage in such a way that his _collaborateur_ has simply to follow his
indications to bring the whole together, and to write the verses."

One of Verdi's poetic assistants was Francesco Piave, who supplied the
verses for "La Traviata," "Ernani" and several other of his operas. He
was, Pougin informs us, "a tolerably bad poet, quite wanting in
invention," but he had the most important quality (from Verdi's point
of view) "of effacing himself completely, of putting aside every kind
of personal vanity and of following entirely the indications and the
desires of the composer, cutting out this, paring down that,
shortening or expanding at the will of the latter--giving himself up,
in short, to all his exigencies, whatever they might be."

A question having arisen some years ago, as to the origin of the
libretto of "Aida," the author of it, M. du Locle, wrote to a Roman
paper that the first idea of the poem belongs to the celebrated
Egyptologist, Mariette Bey. He adds: "I wrote the libretto, scene by
scene, phrase by phrase, in French prose, at Busseto, under the eye of
the maestro, who took a large share in the work. The idea of the
finale of the last act, with its two stages, one above the other,
belongs especially to him."

The libretto for Verdi's last work, "Otello," was prepared by Boïto,
who had previously assisted him in rearranging his "Simon Boccanegra,"
and who also wrote the poem of "La Gioconda" for Ponchielli. Boïto is
a thorough believer in Wagner's doctrine that every composer should
write his own opera books, and he followed this rule in his
interesting opera "Mefistofele."

Mozart was altogether too careless in accepting librettos unworthy of
his genius. Yet occasionally he took the liberty to improve the stuff
that was submitted to him. As the learned librarian, Herr Pohl,
remarks, "In the 'Entführung' it is interesting to observe the
alterations in Bretzner's libretto which Mozart's practical
acquaintance with the stage has dictated, to the author's great
disgust. Indeed, _Osmin_, one of the most original characters, is
entirely his own creation, at Fischer's suggestion."

Weber resembled Wagner, among other things, in the habit of carrying
plans for operas in his head for many years. Thus we read that while
on the look out for a subject for an opera he and Dusch hit upon "Der
Freischütz," a story by Apel, then just published. At the time,
however, it did not get beyond the beginning; and not till seven years
later did Weber begin the work which made his reputation, a work which
in Dresden, where it was first produced, has had already more than a
thousand performances, and which even in London was at one time
played simultaneously at three theatres. When he finally did begin his
work on the "Freischütz" the libretto he used was by another author,
Herr Kind, a man of considerable dramatic ability, but who--perhaps
for that very reason--was subsequently so mortified by the fact that
Weber's superior genius caused his music to receive the lion's share
of the public's attention, that he refused to write another libretto
for him. This was unfortunate, for, as ill luck would have it, Weber
fell into the hands of a Leipsic blue stocking, Wilhelmine von Chezy,
whose literary gifts were not of the most brilliant order. She
submitted several subjects to him, from which he selected "Euryanthe;"
but her sketch proved so unsatisfactory that he altered it entirely
and compelled her to work it over nine times before he was
sufficiently satisfied with it to set it to music. The libretto for
his last opera, "Oberon," was prepared for him in London, but the
subject, as usual, was his own choice and was based on Wieland's
famous poem of that name. Weber's rare artistic conscientiousness is
indicated by the fact that at this time, although he felt that his end
was approaching, he set to work to learn the English language in order
to avoid mistakes in adapting his melodies to the accent of the words
and the spirit of the text.

Having now caught a glimpse of the manner in which the great
composers find subjects for their operas, and elaborate them, with or
without the assistance of poets, we may go on to consider the sources
of the musical inspiration which provides appropriate melodies and
harmonies for these texts. Experience shows conclusively that the most
powerful stimulant of the composer's brain is _the possession of a
really poetic and dramatic text_. To take only one instance--it surely
cannot be a mere coincidence that the best works of four great
composers--Spohr, Berlioz, Gounod, and Schumann, are based on the
story of "Faust." And Schumann, in one of his private letters,
indicates very clearly why his "Faust" is such an inspired
composition. Speaking of a performance of this work he says: "It
appeared to make a good impression--better than my 'Paradise and
Peri'--no doubt in consequence of the superior grandeur of the poem
which aroused _my_ powers also to a greater effort."

More significant still are the words which Weber wrote to Fran von
Chezy when she was writing the libretto for "Euryanthe;" which he
intended to make better than all his previous works. "When you begin
to elaborate the text," he wrote; "I entreat you by all that is sacred
to task me with the most difficult kinds of metre, unexpected rhythms,
etc., which will force my thoughts into new paths and draw them out of
their hiding-places."

In one of his theoretical essays, Wagner emphasizes the value of a
good poem in kindling the spark of inspiration in a composer's mind by
exclaiming: "Oh, how I adore and honor Mozart because he found it
impossible to compose for his 'Titus' as good music as for his 'Don
Juan,' or for his 'Così fan Tutte' as good music as for 'Figaro.'"
Mozart, he adds, always wrote music, but _good_ music he could only
write when he was inspired, and when this inspiration was supplied by
a subject worthy of being wedded to his muse.

No doubt Wagner was right in maintaining that Mozart's operas contain
his best music. Where among all his purely instrumental works is
anything to be found as inspired as the music in the scenes where the
ghostly statue nods at _Don Juan_, and subsequently where it enters
his room and clutches his hand in its marble grasp? I venture to add
that even Beethoven, although he is not generally regarded as an
operatic composer _par excellence_, and although his fame chiefly
rests on his symphonies and other instrumental works, nevertheless
composed his most inspired music in connection with his one opera
"Fidelio." I refer to the third "Leonora" overture, and to the music
in the prison scene, where the digging of the grave is depicted in the
orchestra with a realism worthy of Wagner, and where the music when
_Leonora_ levels her pistol at the villain reaches a climax as
thrilling as is to be found in any dramatic work, musical or literary.
Obviously, it was the intensely dramatic situation which here inspired
Beethoven to the grandest effort of his genius.

It has often been asserted that the best numbers in "Fidelio" were
directly inspired in Beethoven by the emotional exaltation resulting
from one of his unhappy love affairs. Mr. Thayer doubts this story,
because he could not find anything in Beethoven's sketch-books
corroborating it; but even if it should be a myth, there are many well
authenticated facts which show that Beethoven, like other composers,
owed many of his best ideas to the magic influence of love in
stimulating his mental powers. He dedicated thirty-nine compositions
to thirty-six different women, and it is well known that he was
constantly falling in love, had made up his mind several times to
marry, and was twice refused. Female beauty always made a deep
impression on him, and Marx relates that "even in his later years he
was fond of looking at pretty faces, and used to stand still in the
street and gaze after them with his eyeglasses till they were out of
sight; if anyone noticed this he smiled and looked confused, but not
annoyed. His little Werther romance he had lived at an early age in
Bonn. In Vienna, he is said to have had more than one love affair and
to have made an occasional conquest which would have been difficult
if not impossible to many an Adonis."

Weber's "Freischütz" doubtless owes much of its beauty to the fact
that it was written but a few months before the composer's marriage.
In one of his letters to his betrothed he writes, "Yesterday I
composed all the forenoon and thought of you _very often_, for I was
at work on a scene of _Agatha_, in which I still cannot attain all the
fire, longing, and passion that vaguely float before me." And his son
testifies that Weber's love influenced all his work at the time. "It
was the reason," he says, "that Weber took to heart, above everything
else, the part of _Aennchen_, in which he saw an embodiment of his
bride's special talent and characteristics, and it was under the
fostering stimulus of this warm feeling that he allowed those parts of
the opera in which _Aennchen_ appears to ripen first. The first note
which he wrote down for the 'Freischütz' belongs in the duo between
_Aennchen_ and _Agatha_." He adds that his father, while composing,
actually saw his bride in his mind's eye, and heard her sing his
melodies, and accordingly as this imaginary vocalist nodded approval
or shook her head, he was led to retain or reject certain musical
ideas.

Schumann's letters contain a superabundance of evidence showing how
love suggested to him immortal musical thoughts. "I have discovered,"
he writes to his bride, "that nothing transports the imagination so
readily as expectation and longing for something, as was again the
case during the last few days, when I was awaiting a letter from you,
and meanwhile composed whole volumes--strange, curious, solemn
things--how you will open your eyes when you play them. Indeed, I am
at present so full of musical ideas that I often feel as if I should
explode." This was in 1838, two years before his marriage. "Schumann
himself admits," as Professor Spitta remarks, "that his compositions
for the piano written during the period of his courtship reveal much
of his personal experiences and feelings, and his creative work of
1840 is of a very striking character. In this single year he wrote
over a hundred songs, the best he ever gave to the world, and," as
Professor Spitta continues, "when we look through the words of his
songs, it is clear that here, more than anywhere, love was the
prompter--love that had endured so long a struggle, and at last
attained the goal of its desires. This is confirmed by the 'Myrthen,'
which he dedicated to the lady of his choice, and the twelve songs
from Rückert's 'Springtime of Love'--which were written conjointly by
the two lovers."

The gay and genial Haydn appears to have been as great a favorite of
women as Beethoven, and he doubtless owed some of his inspirations to
their influence upon his susceptible heart. "He always considered
himself an ugly man," Herr Pohl writes, "and could not understand how
so many handsome women fell in love with him; 'at any rate,' he used
to say, 'they were not tempted by my beauty,' though he admitted that
he liked looking at a pretty woman, and was never at a loss for a
compliment."

Everybody has heard of the marvellous effect produced on Berlioz's
ardent imagination by the _Juliet_ of Miss Smithson. He relates in his
memoirs that an English critic said that after seeing Miss Smithson in
_Juliet_ he had cried out, "I will marry that woman, and write my
grandest symphony on this play." "I did both things," he adds, "but I
never said anything of the sort." It is in "Lelio" that the story of
his love is embodied; and other compositions of his might be mentioned
which were simply the overflow of his passions.

Poor Schubert, who enjoyed little of the fame and less of the fortune
that were due him during his brief life, and who was as unattractive
in personal appearance as Haydn and Beethoven, does not seem to have
cared as much for women as most other composers. Nevertheless he fell
deeply in love with a countess, who, however, was too young to
reciprocate his feelings. But one day she asked him why he never
dedicated any of his compositions to her, whereupon he replied, "Why
should I? Are not all my compositions dedicated to you?" This was as
neat a compliment as Beethoven once made Frau von Arnim--an incident
which also gives us a glimpse of his manner of composing. One evening
at a party Beethoven repeatedly took his note-book from his pocket and
wrote a few lines in it. Subsequently, when he was alone with Frau von
Arnim, he looked over what he had written and sang it; whereupon he
exclaimed: "There, how does that sound? It is yours if you like it; I
made it for you, you inspired me with it; _I saw it written in your
eyes_."

Many similar cases might be cited, showing that although women may
have done little for music from a creative point of view, they are
indirectly responsible for many of the most inspired products of the
great composers. And the moral of the story is that a young musician,
as soon as he has secured a good poetic subject for a song or an
opera, should hasten to fall in love, in order to tune his
heart-strings and devotions to concert pitch. And a patriotic wag
might, perhaps, be allowed to maintain that, as America has more
pretty girls than any other country in the world, it is easier to fall
in love here than elsewhere, and that there is, therefore, no excuse
whatever for American composers if they do not soon lead the world in
musical inspiration.

Feminine beauty, however, is not the only kind of beauty that arouses
dormant musical ideas and brings them to light. The beauty of nature
appeals as strongly to musicians as to poets, and is responsible for
many of their inspirations. When Mendelssohn visited Fingal's Cave, he
wrote a letter on one of the Hebrides, inclosing twenty bars of music
"to show how extraordinarily the place affected me," to use his own
words. "These twenty bars," says Sir George Grove, "an actual
inspiration, are virtually identical with the opening of the wonderful
overture which bears the name of 'Hebrides' or 'Fingal's Cave.'" And
an English admirer of Mendelssohn, who had the honor of entertaining
him in the country, notes how deeply he entered into the beauty of the
hills and the woods. "His way of representing them," he says, "was not
with the pencil; but in the evenings his improvised music would show
what he had observed or felt in the past day. The piece which he
called 'The Rivulet,' which he wrote at that time, for my sister
Susan, will show what I mean; it was a recollection of a real, actual
rivulet.

"We observed" he continues, "how natural objects seemed to suggest
music to him. There was in my sister Honora's garden a pretty creeping
plant, new at that time, covered with little trumpet-like flowers. He
was struck with it, and played for her the music which (he said) the
fairies might play on those trumpets. When he wrote out the piece he
drew a little branch of that flower all up the margin of the paper."
In another piece, inspired by the sight of carnations, they found that
Mendelssohn intended certain arpeggio passages "as a reminder of the
sweet scent of the flower rising up."

Mozart, as many witnesses have testified, was especially attuned to
composition by the sight of beautiful scenery. Rochlitz relates that
when he travelled with his wife through picturesque regions he gazed
attentively and in silence at the surrounding sights; his features,
which usually had a reserved and gloomy, rather than a cheerful
expression, gradually brightened, and then he began to sing, or rather
to hum, till suddenly he exclaimed: "If I only had that theme on
paper." He always preferred to live in the country, and wrote the
greater part of his two best operas, "Don Juan," and "The Magic
Flute," in one of those picturesque little garden houses which are so
often seen in Austria and Germany. In one of these airy structures, he
confessed, he could write more in ten days than he could in his
apartments in two months.

Berlioz relates somewhere that the musical ideas for his "Faust" came
to him unbidden during his rambles among Italian hills. Weber's
melodies are so much like fragrant forest flowers that one feels sure
before being told that he came across them in the woods and fields.
His famous pupil, Sir Julius Benedict, relates that Weber took as
great delight in taking his friends to see his favorite bits of
landscape, as he did in composing a fine piece of music; and he adds
that "this love of nature, and principally of forest life, may explain
his predilection, in the majority of his operas, for hunting choruses
and romantic scenery."

Richard Wagner conceived most of his vigorous and eloquent leading
melodies during his rambles among the picturesque environs of
Bayreuth, or the sublime snowpeaks of Switzerland. How he elaborated
them we shall see later on. Of Beethoven's devotion to nature many
curious anecdotes are told by his contemporaries. A harp manufacturer
named Stumpff met him in 1823 and wrote an account of his visit in
"The Harmonicon," a London journal, in which occurs this passage:
"Beethoven is a capital walker and delights in rambling for hours
through wild, romantic scenery. I am told, indeed, that he has
sometimes been out whole nights on such excursions, and is often
absent from home for several days. On the way to the valley [the
Hellenenthal, near the Austrian Baden] he often stopped to point out
the prettiest views, or to remark on the defects of the new buildings.
Then he would go back again to his own thoughts and hum to himself in
an incomprehensible fashion; which, I heard, was his fashion of
composing."

Professor Klöber, a well-known artist of that period, who painted
Beethoven's portrait, relates that he often met Beethoven during his
walks near Vienna. "It was most interesting to watch him," he writes;
"how he would stand still as if listening, with a piece of music paper
in his hands, look up and down and then write something. Dont had told
me when I met him thus not to speak or take any notice, as he would be
very much embarrassed or very disagreeable. I saw him once, when I was
taking a party to the woods, clambering up to an opposite height from
the ravine which separated us, with his broad-brimmed felt hat tucked
under his arm; arrived at the top, he threw himself down full length
and gazed long into the sky."

Another contemporary of Beethoven, G.F. Treitschke, gives us an
interesting glimpse of Beethoven's manner of creating and improvising.
Treitschke had been asked to write the text for a new aria that was to
be introduced in "Fidelio" when that opera was revived at Vienna in
1814. Beethoven called at seven o'clock in the evening and asked how
the text of the aria was getting on. Treitschke had just finished it,
and handed it to him. Beethoven read it over, he continues, "walked up
and down the room, humming as usual, instead of singing--and opened
the piano. My wife had often asked him in vain to play; but now,
putting the text before him, he began a wonderful improvisation,
which, unfortunately, there were no magic means of recording. From
this fantasy he seemed to conjure the theme of the aria. Hours passed
but Beethoven continued to improvise. Supper, which he intended to
share with us, was served, but he would not be disturbed. Late in the
evening he embraced me and, without having eaten anything, hurried
home. The following day the piece was ready in all its beauty."

This anecdote appears to indicate that Beethoven sometimes composed at
the piano. Meyerbeer, it is said, always composed at his instrument,
and there is a story that he used to jot down the ideas of other
composers at the opera and concerts, and, by thinking and playing
these over, gradually evolve his own themes. It is rather more
surprising to hear, from Herr Pohl, that Haydn sketched all his
compositions at the piano. The condition of the instrument, he adds,
had its effect upon him, beauty of tone being favorable to
inspiration. Thus he wrote to Artaria in 1788: "I was obliged to buy a
new forte-piano, that I might compose your clavier sonatas
particularly well." "When an idea struck him he sketched it out in a
few notes and figures; this would be his morning's work; in the
afternoon he would enlarge this sketch, elaborating it according to
rule, but taking pains to preserve the unity of the idea."

Weber's son relates that it was his father's habit to sit at the
window on summer evenings and jot down the ideas that had come to him,
during his solitary walks, on small pieces of music paper, of which a
large number were usually lying on his table. "No piano," he adds,
"was touched on these occasions, for his ears spontaneously heard a
full orchestra, played by good spirits, while he wrote down his neat
little notes." And Weber himself remarks in one of his essays that,
"the tone poet who gets his ideas at the piano is almost always born
poor, or in a fair way of delivering his faculties into the hands of
the common and commonplace. For these very hands, which, thanks to
constant practice and training, finally acquire a sort of independence
and will of their own, are unconscious tyrants and masters over the
creative power. How very differently does _he_ create whose _inner_
ear is judge of the ideas which he simultaneously conceives and
criticises. This mental ear grasps and holds fast the musical visions,
and is a divine secret belonging to music alone, incomprehensible to
the layman."

Mozart had already learned to compose without a piano when he was only
six years old; and, as Mr. E. Holmes remarks, "having commenced
composition without recourse to the clavier, his powers in mental
music constantly increased, and he soon imagined effects of which the
original types existed only in his brain."

Schumann wrote to a young musician in 1848: "Above all things, persist
in composing mentally, without the aid of the instrument. Turn over
your melodic idea in your head until you can say to yourself: 'It is
well done.'" Elsewhere he says: "If you can pick out little melodies
at the piano, you will be pleased; but if they come to you
spontaneously, away from the piano, you will have more reason to be
delighted, for then the inner tone-sense is aroused to activity. The
fingers must do what the head wishes, and not _vice versa_." And again
he says: "If you set out to compose, invent everything in your head.
If the music has emanated from your soul, if you have felt it, others
will feel it too."

Schumann had discovered the superiority of the mental method of
composing from experience. In a letter dated 1838 he writes concerning
his "Davidstänze:" "If I ever was happy at the piano it was when I
composed these pieces;" and it was well known that up to 1839 "he used
to compose sitting at the instrument." We have also just seen how
Beethoven practically composed one of his "Fidelio" arias at the
piano. Nor was this by any means an isolated instance. To cite only
one more case: Ries relates that one afternoon he took a walk with
Beethoven, returning at eight o'clock. "While we were walking," he
continues, "Beethoven had constantly hummed, or almost howled, up and
down the scale, without singing definite notes. When I asked him what
it was, he replied that a theme for the last allegro of the sonata had
come into his head. As soon as we entered the room, he ran to the
piano, without taking off his hat. I sat down in a corner, and he had
soon forgotten me. For at least an hour he now improvised impetuously
on the new and beautiful finale of the sonata [opus 57]." Another of
Beethoven's contemporaries, J. Russell, has left us a vivid
description of Beethoven when thus composing at the piano, or
improvising: "At first he only struck a few short detached chords, as
if he were afraid of being caught doing something foolish; but he soon
forgot his surroundings, and for about half an hour lost himself in an
improvisation, the style of which was exceedingly varied, and
especially distinguished by sudden transitions. The amateurs were
transported, and to the uninitiated it was interesting to observe how
his inspirations were reflected in his countenance. He revelled rather
in bold, stormy moods than in soft and gentle ones. The muscles of his
face swelled, his veins were distended, his eyes rolled wildly, his
mouth trembled convulsively, and he had the appearance of an enchanter
mastered by the spirit he had himself conjured."

Russell was probably one of the witnesses of whom Richard Wagner
remarked, in his essay on Beethoven, that they have testified to the
incomparable impression which Beethoven made by his improvisations at
the piano. And Wagner adds the following suggestive words: "The
regrets that there was no way of writing down and preserving these
instantaneous creations cannot be regarded as unreasonable, even in
comparing these improvisations with the master's greatest works, if we
bear in mind the fact, taught by experience, that even _less_ gifted
musicians, whose written compositions are not free from stiffness and
inelegance, sometimes positively amaze us by the quite unexpected and
fertile inventiveness which they display while improvising."

A similar remark was made by De Quincey, in pointing out the
spontaneous origin of some of his essays: "Performers on the organ,"
he says, "so far from finding their own _impromptu_ displays to fall
below the more careful and premeditated efforts, on the contrary have
oftentimes deep reason to mourn over the escape of inspirations and
ideas born from the momentary fervors of inspiration, but fugitive and
irrevocable as the pulses in their own flying fingers."

By way of illustrating this thesis a few more cases may be cited.
Mozart used to sit up late at night, improvising for hours at the
piano, and, according to one witness, "these were the true hours of
creation of his divine melodies," a statement which, however, we shall
presently see reason to modify somewhat. Schubert never improvised in
public like Mozart, but only "in the intervals of throwing on his
clothes, or at other times when the music within was too strong to be
resisted," as Mr. Grove remarks. What an inestimable privilege it must
have been to witness the spontaneous overflow of so rich a genius as
Schubert! And once more, Max Maria von Weber writes that his father's
improvisations on the piano were like delightful dreams. "All who had
the good fortune to hear him," he says, "testify that the impression
of his playing was like an Elysian frenzy, which elevates a man above
his sphere and makes him marvel at the glories of his own soul."

In reading such enthusiastic descriptions--and musical biographies are
full of them--we cannot but echo De Quincey and Wagner in regretting
that there has been no shorthand method of taking down and preserving
these wonderful improvisations of the great masters. Future
generations will be more favored, if Mr. Edison's improved phonograph
fulfils the promises made of it. For by simply placing one of these
instruments near the piano it will be possible hereafter to preserve
every note and every accent and shade of expression, and reproduce it
subsequently at will. And not only will momentary inspirations be thus
preserved, but musicians will no longer be compelled to do all the
manual labor of writing down their compositions, but will be able to
follow the example of those German professors, who when they wish to
write a book, simply engage a stenographer to take down their
lectures, which they then revise and forward to the publisher. True,
the orchestration will always have to be done by the master's own
hands, but in other respects musicians of the future will be as
greatly benefited as men of letters by the new phonograph which, it is
predicted, will create as great a revolution in social affairs as the
telegraph and railroad did when first introduced.

The charm of improvisation lies, of course, in this, that we hear a
composer creating and playing at the same time. This very fact,
however, ought to make us cautious not to overestimate the value of
such improvisations. For we all know how a great genius can invest
even a commonplace idea with charm by his manner of expressing or
rendering it. It is probable, therefore, that in most cases these
improvisations, if noted down and played by _others_, would not make
as deep an impression as the regularly written compositions of the
great masters. It is with music as with literature. Schopenhauer says
that there are three classes of writers: The first class, which is
very numerous, never think at all, but simply reproduce echoes of what
they have read in books. The second class, somewhat less numerous,
think only while they are writing. But the third class, which is very
small, only write _after_ thinking and because their thoughts clamor
for utterance.

If we apply this classification to music we see at once that
improvising comes under the second head: improvising is thinking or
composing while playing. But the greatest musical ideas are those
which are conceived entirely in the mind, which needs no pen or piano
mechanically to stimulate its creative power. Of this there can be no
question, whatever. With an almost absolute unanimity we find that the
greatest composers conceived their immortal ideas in the open air,
where there was no possibility of coaxing them out of an instrument.
And not only is the bare outline thus composed mentally, but the whole
composition with all its involved harmonies and varied orchestral
colors is present in the composer's mind before he puts it down on
paper. The composition of "Der Freischütz" affords a remarkable
confirmation of this statement. Weber began to compose this opera
mentally on February 23, but did not write down a single note before
the second of July. That is, he kept the full score of this wonderful
work in his brain for more than four months, and, as his son remarks,
"there is not a number in it which he did not work over ten times in
his mind, until it sounded satisfactory and he could say to himself
'That's it,' and then he wrote it down rapidly without hesitation and
almost without altering a note."

This power of elaborating a musical score in the mind, and hearing it
inwardly, is a gift which unmusical people find it difficult to
comprehend, and which even puzzles many musical people. Yet it is a
power which all students of music ought to possess; and, like other
capacities, it can be easily cultivated and strengthened.

A comparison with two other senses will throw some light on the
matter. Most of us can, by thinking fixedly of some appetizing dish,
recall its flavor sufficiently to start a nerve current and stimulate
the salivary glands. The image of the flavor, so to speak, makes the
mouth water. What do we do when we go to a restaurant and look over
the bill of fare? We simply, on reading the list, recall a faint
gastronomic image, as it were, of each dish, and the one which is most
vivid, owing to the peculiar direction of the appetite, decides our
choice.

The sense of sight presents many curious analogies. Mr. Galton, in his
"Inquiries into Human Faculty," gives the results of a series of
investigations which show that there are great differences among
persons of distinction in various kinds of intellectual work in the
power of recalling to the mind's eye clear and distinct images of what
they have seen. Some, for instance, in thinking of the breakfast
table, could see all the objects--knives, plates, dishes, etc., in the
mental picture as bright as in the actual scene, and in the
appropriate colors; others could recall only very dim or blurred
images of the scene, or none at all; and all stages, from the highest
to the lowest visualizing power, were represented in the letters he
received on the subject.

Sometimes these mental images are as vivid as the actual images, or
even more vivid. Everybody has heard the story of Blake, who, when he
was painting a portrait, only required one sitting, because
subsequently he could see the model as distinctly as if he were
actually sitting in the chair. Mrs. Haweis wrote to Mr. Galton that
all her life she has had at times a waking vision of "a flight of pink
roses floating in a mass from right to left," and that before her
ninth year they were so large and brilliant that she often tried to
touch them; and their scent, she adds, was overpowering.

Much has been written regarding the remarkable feats of Zuckertort and
Blackburn who can play as many as sixteen to twenty games of chess at
once, and blindfolded. Of course the only way they can do this is by
having in the mind a clear picture of each chess-board, with all the
figures arranged in proper order.

Mr. Galton says he has among his notes "many cases of persons mentally
reading off scores when playing the pianoforte, or manuscripts when
they are making speeches;" and he knows a lady, the daughter of an
eminent musician, who often imagines she hears her father's playing.
"The day she told me of it," he says, "the incident had again
occurred. She was sitting in her room with her maid, and she asked the
maid to open the door that she might hear the music better. The moment
the maid got up the music disappeared."

It is obvious that this case, like that of the eminent painter just
referred to, borders closely on the hallucinations of the insane, and
Blake _did_ become insane subsequently. But usually there is nothing
abnormal or pathologic in the power of mentally recalling sights or
sounds, and it would be well if everybody cultivated this power. Mr.
Galton mentions an electrical engineer who was able to recall forms
with great precision, but not color. But after some exercise of his
color memory he became quite an adept in that, too, and declared that
the newly-acquired power was a source of much pleasure to him.

In music most of us have the power of recalling a simple melody; and
who has not been tormented at times by an unbidden melody persistently
haunting his ears until he was almost ready to commit suicide? But to
recall a melody at will _with any particular tone-color_, _i.e._, to
imagine it as being played by a flute, or a violin, or a horn, is much
less easy; and still more difficult is it to hear two or more notes
_at once_ in the mind, that is to recall harmonies. It is for this
reason that people of primitive musical taste care only for operas
which are full of "tunes." These they can whistle in the street and be
happy, while the harmonies and orchestral colors elude their
comprehension and memory. Consequently they call these works "heavy,"
"scientific," or "intellectual;" whereas if they took pains to educate
their musical imaginations, they would soon revel in the magic
harmonies of modern operas, with their infinite variety of gorgeous
orchestral colors.

Every student of music should carefully heed Schumann's advice.
"Exercise your imagination," he says, "so that you may acquire the
power of remembering not only the melody of a composition, but also
the harmonies which accompany it." And again he says, "You must not
rest until you are able to understand music on paper." I remember
that, as a small boy, I used to wonder at my father, who often sat in
a corner all the evening looking over the score of an opera or
symphony. And I was very much surprised at the time when he informed
me that this simple reading of the score gave him almost as vivid a
pleasure as if he heard it with full orchestra. This power of hearing
music with the eyes, as it were, is common to all thorough musicians,
and is, of course, most highly developed in the great composers.
Schumann even alludes to the opinion, which some one had expressed,
that a thorough musician ought to be able, on listening for the first
time to a complicated orchestral piece, to _see_ it bodily as a score
before his eyes. He adds, however, that this is the greatest feat that
could be imagined; and I, for my part, doubt whether even the
marvellously comprehensive mind of a musical genius would be able to
accomplish it.

These facts illustrate the manner in which composers, being virtuosi
of the musical imagination, are able to elaborate mentally, and keep
in the memory, a complete operatic or symphonic score, just as, for
example, Alexander Dumas, when he wished to write a new novel, used to
hire a yacht and sail on Southern waters for several days, lying on
his back--which, by the way, is an excellent method of starting a
train of thought--and thus arranging all the details of the plot in
his mind.

The exact way in which _original_ ideas come into the mind is, of
course, a mystery in music as in literature. Every genius passes
through a period of apprenticeship, in which he _assimilates_ the
discoveries of his predecessors, reminiscences of which make up the
bulk of his early works. Everybody knows how Mozartish, _e.g._,
Beethoven's first symphony is, and how much in turn Mozart's early
works smack of Haydn. Gradually, as courage comes with years, the
gifted composer sets out for unexplored forests and mountain ranges,
attempting to scale summits which none of his predecessors had trod. I
say, as courage comes, for in music, strange to say, it requires much
courage to give the world an entirely new thought. An original
composer needs not only the courage that is common to all explorers,
but he must invariably come back prepared to face the accusation that
his new territory is nothing but a howling wilderness of discords.
This has been the case quite recently with Wagner, as it was formerly
with Schumann, Beethoven, Mozart, the early Italian composers, and
many others, including even Rossini, who certainly did not deviate
very far from the beaten paths. Seyfried relates that when Beethoven
came across articles in which he was criticised for violating
established rules of composition, he used to rub his hands gleefully
and burst out laughing. "Yes, yes!" he exclaimed, "that amazes them,
and makes them put their heads together, because they have not seen it
in any of their text-books."

Fortunately for their own peace of mind, the majority of the minor
composers never get beyond a mere rearrangement of remembered melodies
and modulations. Their minds are mere galleries of echoes. They write
for money or temporary notoriety, and not because their brains teem
with ideas that clamor for utterance. The pianist Hummel was one of
this class of composers. But whatever his short-comings, he had at
least, as Wagner admits, the virtue of frankness. For when he was
asked one day what thoughts or images he had in his mind when he
composed a certain concerto, he replied that he had been thinking of
the eighty ducats which his publisher had promised him!

Yet even the greatest composers cannot always command new thoughts at
will, and it is therefore of interest to note what devices some of
them resorted to rouse their dormant faculties. Weber's only pupil,
Sir Julius Benedict, relates that Weber spent many mornings in
"learning by heart the words of 'Euryanthe,' which he studied until he
made them a portion of himself, his own creation, as it were. His
genius would sometimes lie dormant during his frequent repetitions of
the words, and then the idea of a whole musical piece would flash
upon his mind, like the bursting of light into darkness."

I have already referred to the manner in which Weber, while composing
certain parts of the "Freischütz," got his imagination into the proper
state of creative frenzy by picturing to himself his bride as if she
were singing new arias for him. Now, in one of Wagner's essays there
is a curious passage which seems to indicate that Wagner habitually
conjured his characters before his mental vision and made them sing to
him, as it were, his original melodies. He advises a young composer
who wishes to follow his example never to select a dramatic character
for whom he does not entertain a warm interest. "He should divest him
of all theatrical apparel," he continues, "and then imagine him in a
dim light, where he can only see the expression of his eyes. If these
speak to him, the figure itself is liable presently to make a
movement, which will perhaps alarm him--but to which he must submit;
at last the phantom's lips tremble, it opens its mouth, and a
supernatural voice tells him something that is entirely real, entirely
tangible, but at the same time so extraordinary (similar, for
instance, to what the ghostly statue, or the page _Cherubin_ told
Mozart) that it arouses him from his dream. The vision has
disappeared; but his inner ear continues to hear; an idea has
occurred to him, and this idea is a so-called musical _motive_."

As this passage implies, and as he has elsewhere explained at length,
Wagner looked on the mental process of composing as something
analogous to dreaming--as a sort of clairvoyance, which enables a
musician to dive down into the bottomless mysteries of the universe,
as it were, thence to bring up his priceless pearls of harmony.
According to the Kant-Schopenhauer philosophy, of which Wagner was a
disciple, objects or things in themselves do not exist in space and
time, which are mere forms under which the human mind beholds them. We
cannot conceive anything except as existing either in space or in
time. But there is one exception, according to Wagner, and that is
harmony. Harmony exists not in time, for the time-element in music is
melody; nor does it exist in space, for the simultaneousness of tones
is not one of extension or space. Hence our harmonic sense is not
hampered by the forms of the mind, but gives us a glimpse of things as
they are in themselves--a glimpse of the world as a superior spirit
would behold it. And hence the mysterious superterrestrial character
of such new harmonies as we find in the works of Wagner and
Chopin--which are unintelligible to ordinary mortals, while to the
initiated they come as revelations of a new world.

Without feeling the necessity of accepting all the consequences of
Wagner's mystical doctrine, which I have thus freely paraphrased, no
one can deny that the attitude of a composer in the moment of
inspiration is closely analogous to that known as clairvoyance. The
celebrated vocalist, Vogel, tells an anecdote of Schubert which shows
strikingly how completely this composer used to be transported to
another world, and become oblivious of self, when creating. On one
occasion Vogel received from Schubert some new songs, but being
otherwise occupied could not try them over at the moment. When he was
able to do so, he was particularly pleased with one of them, but as it
was too high for his voice, he had it copied in a lower key. About a
fortnight afterwards they were again making music together, and Vogel
placed the transposed song before Schubert on the desk of the piano.
Schubert tried it through, liked it, and said, in his Vienna dialect,
"I say, the song's not so bad; _whose is it?_" so completely, in a
fortnight, had it vanished from his mind. Grove recalls the fact that
Sir Walter Scott once similarly attributed a song of his own to Byron;
"but this was in 1828, after his mind had begun to fail."

There is no reason for doubting Vogel's story when we bear in mind the
enormous fertility of Schubert. He was unquestionably the most
spontaneous musical genius that ever lived. Vogel, who knew him
intimately, used the very word _clairvoyance_ in referring to his
divine inspirations, and Sir George Grove justly remarks that, "In
hearing Schubert's compositions, it is often as if one were brought
more immediately and closely into contact with music itself, than is
the case in the works of others; as if in his pieces the stream from
the great heavenly reservoir were dashing over us, or flowing through
us, more directly, with less admixture of any medium or channel, than
it does in those of any other writer--even of Beethoven himself. And
this immediate communication with the origin of music really seems to
have happened to him. No sketches, no delay, no anxious period of
preparation, no revision appear to have been necessary. He had but to
read the poem, to surrender himself to the torrent, and to put down
what was given him to say, as it rushed through his mind."

Schubert was the most omnivorous song composer that ever lived. He
could hardly see a poem--good, bad, or indifferent, without being at
once seized by a passionate desire to set it to music. He sometimes
wrote half a dozen or more songs in one day, and some of them
originated under the most peculiar circumstances. The serenade, "Hark,
hark, the lark," for instance, was written in a beer garden. Schubert
had picked up a volume of Shakespeare accidentally lying on the
table. Presently he exclaimed, "Such a lovely melody has come into my
head, if I only had some paper." One of his friends drew a few staves
on the back of a bill of fare, and on this Schubert wrote his
entrancing song. "The Wanderer," so full of original details, was
written in one evening, and when he composed his "Rastlose Liebe,"
"the paroxysm of inspiration," as Grove remarks, "was so fierce that
Schubert never forgot it, but, reticent as he often was, talked of it
years afterward."

These stories remind one of an incident related by Goethe, who one day
suddenly found a poem spontaneously evolved in his mind, and so
complete that he ran to the desk and wrote it diagonally on a piece of
paper, fearing it might escape him if he took time to arrange the
paper.

In a word, Schubert _improvised with the pen_, and he seems to have
been an exception to Schopenhauer's rule, that the greatest writers
are those whose thoughts come to them before writing, and not while
writing. Nevertheless, it must be admitted that much of the music
which Schubert composed in this rapid manner is poor stuff; and
although his short songs are generally perfect in their way, his
longer compositions would have gained very much had he taken the
trouble to think them out beforehand, or to revise and condense them
afterward, which he very rarely did.

With a strange perversity and persistency, musical students and the
public have been led to believe that the surest sign of supreme
musical inspiration is the power to dash off melodies as fast as the
pen can travel. Weber relates in his autobiographic sketch that he
wrote the second act of one of his early operas in ten days, and adds,
significantly, that this was "one of the many unfortunate results of
the wonderful anecdotes about great masters, which make a deep
impression on youthful minds, and incite them to imitation."

Mozart has always been pointed to by preference to show how a really
great master shakes his melodies from his sleeves, as it were. Yet, on
reading Jahn's elaborate account of Mozart's life and works, nothing
strikes one more than the emphasis he places on the amount of
preliminary labor which Mozart expended on his compositions, before he
wrote them down. It appears to be a well-authenticated fact that
Mozart postponed writing the overture to "Don Giovanni," until the
midnight preceding the evening when the opera was to be performed in
public; and that at seven o'clock in the morning, the score was ready
for the copyist, although he had been drinking punch and was so sleepy
that his wife had to allow him to doze for two hours, and kept him
awake the rest of the time by telling him funny stories. But this
incident loses much of its marvellous character, when we bear in mind
that Mozart, according to his usual custom, must have had every bar of
the overture worked out in his head, before he sat down to commit it
to paper. This last labor was almost purely mechanical, and for this
reason, whenever he was engaged in writing down his scores, he not
only worked with amazing rapidity, but did not object to conversation,
and even seemed to like it; and on one occasion when at work on an
opera, he wrote as fast as his hands could travel, although in one
adjoining room there was a singing teacher, in another a violinist,
and opposite an oboeist, all in full blast!

Mozart himself tried to correct the notion, prevalent even in his day,
that he composed without effort--that melodies flowed from his mind as
water from a fountain. During one of the rehearsals of "Don Giovanni,"
at Prague, he remarked to the leader of the orchestra: "I have spared
neither pains nor labor in order to produce something excellent for
Prague. People are indeed mistaken in imagining that art has been an
easy matter to me. I assure you, my dear friend, no one has expended
so much labor on the study of composition as I have. There is hardly a
famous master whose works I have not studied thoroughly and
repeatedly."

Jahn surmises, doubtless correctly, that the reason why Mozart
habitually delayed putting down his pieces on paper, was because this
process, being a mere matter of copying, did not interest him so much
as the composing and creating, which were all done before he took up
the pen. "You know," he writes to his father, "that I am immersed in
music, as it were, that I am occupied with it all day long, that I
like to study, speculate, reflect." He was often absent-minded and
even followed his thoughts while playing billiards or nine pins, or
riding. Like Beethoven, he walked up and down the room, absorbed in
thought, even while washing his hands; and his hair-dresser used to
complain that Mozart would never sit still, but would jump up every
now and then and walk across the room to jot down something, or touch
the piano, while _he_ had to run after him holding on to his pigtail.

Allusion has been made to the fact that it was almost always in the
open air that new ideas sprouted in Mozart's mind, especially when he
was travelling. Whenever a new theme occurred to him he would jot it
down on a slip of paper, and he always had a special leather bag for
preserving these sketches, which he carefully guarded. These sketches
differ somewhat in appearance, but generally they contained the melody
or vocal part, together with the bass, and brief indications of the
middle parts, and here and there mention of a special instrument.
This was sufficient subsequently to recall the whole composition to
his memory. In elaborating his scores he hardly ever made any
deviations from the original conception, not even in the
instrumentation; which seems the more remarkable when we reflect that
he was the originator of many new orchestral combinations, the beauty
of which presented itself to his imagination before his ears had ever
heard them in actuality. These new tone-colors, as Jahn remarks,
existed intrinsically in the orchestra as a statue does in the marble;
but it remained for the artist to bring them out; and that Mozart was
bound to have them is shown by the anecdote of a musician who
complained to him of the difficulty of a certain passage, and begged
him to alter it. "Is it possible to play those tones on your
instrument?" Mozart asked; and when he was told it was, he replied,
"Then it is your affair to bring them out."

Beethoven's way of mental composing appears at first sight to differ
widely from Mozart's. But if we had as many specimens of Mozart's
preliminary sketches as we have of Beethoven's, the difference would
perhaps appear less pronounced, and would to a large extent resolve
itself into the fact that Beethoven did not trust his memory so much
as Mozart did, and therefore put more of his _tentative_, or rough
sketches, on paper. He always carried in his pockets a few loose
sheets of music paper, or a number of sheets bound together in a
note-book. If his supply gave out accidentally, he would seize upon
any loose sheet of paper, or even a bill of fare, to note down his
thoughts. In a corner of his room lay a large pile of note-books, into
which he had copied in ink his first rough pencil-sketches. Many of
these sketch-books have been fortunately preserved, and they are among
the most remarkable relics we have of any man of genius. They prove
above all things that rapidity of work is not a test of musical
inspiration, and that Carlyle was not entirely wrong when he defined
genius as "an immense capacity for taking trouble." In the "Fidelio"
sketch-book, for example, sixteen pages are almost entirely filled
with sketches for a scene which takes up less than three pages of the
vocal score. Of the aria, "O Hoffnung," there are as many as eighteen
different versions, and of the final chorus, ten; and these are not
exceptional cases by any means. As Thayer remarks: "To follow a
recitative or aria through all its guises is an extremely fatiguing
task, and the almost countless studies for a duet or terzet are enough
to make one frantic." Thayer quotes Jahn's testimony that these
afterthoughts are invariably superior to the first conception, and
adds that "some of his first ideas for pieces which are now among the
jewels of the opera are so extremely trivial and commonplace, that one
would hardly dare to attribute them to Beethoven, were they not in
his own handwriting."

On the other hand these sketch-books bear witness to the extreme
fertility of Beethoven's genius. Thayer estimates that the number of
distinct ideas noted in them, which remained unused, is as large as
the number which he used; and he refers to this as a commentary on the
remark which Beethoven made toward the close of his life: "It seems to
me as if I were only just beginning to compose." And Nottebohm, who
has studied these sketch-books more thoroughly than any one else,
thinks that if Beethoven had elaborated all the symphonies which he
began in these books we should have at least fifty instead of nine.

The sketch-books show that Beethoven was in the habit of working at
several compositions at the same time; and the ideas for these are so
jumbled up in his books that he himself apparently needed a guide to
find them. At least, when ideas belonging together are widely
separated he used to connect them by writing the letters VI over the
first passage and DE over the second. He also used to write the word
"better" in French on some pages, or else the figures 100, 500, 1,000,
etc., probably, as Schindler thinks, to indicate the relative value of
certain ideas.

When his mind was in a creative mood, Beethoven was as completely
absorbed (or "absent-minded," as we generally say) as Mozart. This is
illustrated by an amusing trait described by his biographers.
"Beethoven was extremely fond of washing. He would pour water
backwards and forwards over his hands for a long time together, and if
at such times a musical thought struck him and he became absorbed, he
would go on until the whole floor was swimming, and the water had
found its way through the ceiling into the room beneath" (Grove).
Consequently, as may be imagined, he not infrequently had trouble with
his landlord. He was constantly changing his lodgings, and always
spent the summer in the country, where he did his best work. "In the
winter," he once remarked to Rellstab, "I do but little; I only write
out and score what I have composed in the summer. But that takes a
long time. When I get into the country I am fit for anything."

On account of his deafness, Beethoven affords a striking instance of
the power musicians have of imagining novel sound effects which they
never could have heard with their ears. In literature we blame a
writer who, as the expression goes, "evolves his facts from his inner
consciousness;" but in music this proceeding is evidence of the
highest genius, because music has only a few elementary "facts" or
prototypes, in nature. Beethoven was deaf at thirty-two. He never
heard his "Fidelio," and for twenty-five years he could hear music
only with the inner ear. But musicians are in one respect more
fortunate than painters. If Titian had lost his eyesight, he could
never have painted another picture; whereas Beethoven after losing his
principal sense still continued to compose, better than ever. Mr.
Thayer even thinks that from a purely artistic point of view
Beethoven's deafness may have been an advantage to him; for it
compelled him to concentrate all his thoughts on the symphonies in his
head, undisturbed by the harsh noises of the external world. And that
he did not forego the _delights_ of music is obvious from the fact
that the pleasure of creating is more intense than the pleasure of
hearing; and is, moreover illustrated by the great delight he felt in
his later years when he read the compositions of Schubert (for he
could not hear them) and found in them the evidence of genius, which
he did not hesitate to proclaim.

In considering Beethoven's deafness, it is well to bear in mind the
words of Schopenhauer: "Genius is its own reward," he says. "If we
look up to a great man of the past we do not think, How fortunate he
is to be still admired by all of us; but, How happy he must have been
in the immediate enjoyment of a mind the traces of which refresh
generations of men." Schumann, Weber, and others, repeatedly testify
in their letters to the great delight they felt in creating; and at
the time when he was arranging his "Freischütz" for the piano, Weber
wrote, more forcibly than elegantly, that he was enjoying himself like
the devil.

I have already stated that Weber, like Beethoven, generally got his
new ideas during his walks in the country; and riding in an open
carriage seems to have especially stimulated his brain, as it did
Mozart's. The weird and original music to the dismal Wolf's-Glen scene
in the "Freischütz" was conceived one morning when he was on his way
to Pillnitz, and the wagon was occasionally shrouded in dense clouds.

A curious story is told by a member of Weber's orchestra, showing how
a musical theme may be sometimes suggested by incongruous and
grotesque objects. He was one day taking a walk with Weber in the
suburbs of Dresden. It began to rain and they entered a beer garden
which had just been deserted by the guests in consequence of the rain.
The waiters had piled the chairs on the tables, pell mell. At sight of
these confused groups of chairs and tables Weber suddenly exclaimed,
"Look here, Roth, doesn't that look like a great triumphal march?
Thunder! hear those trumpet blasts! I can use that--I can use that!"
In the evening he wrote down what his imagination had heard, and it
subsequently became the great march in "Oberon."

Some psychological interest also attaches to the remark with which
Weber's son prefaces this story--namely that Weber was constantly
transmuting forms and colors into sounds; and that lines and forms
seemed to stimulate his melodic inventiveness pre-eminently, whereas
sounds affected his harmonic sense.

My subject is by no means exhausted, but for fear of fatiguing the
reader with an excess of details I will close with a few facts
regarding Richard Wagner's method of composing. I am indebted for
these facts to the kindness of Herr Seidl, of the Metropolitan Opera
House in New York, who was Wagner's secretary for several years, and
helped him prepare "Götterdämmerung" and "Parsifal" for the press.

Like his famous predecessors, Wagner always carried some sheets of
music paper in his pocket, on which he jotted down with a pencil such
ideas as came to him on solitary walks, or at other times. These he
gave to his wife, who inked them over and arranged them in piles. In
these sketches the vocal part was always written out in full, while
the orchestral part was roughly indicated in two or more additional
staves. Frau Cosima has preserved most of these sketches, and they
will doubtless some day be reproduced in fac-simile, like some of
Beethoven's.

Whenever Wagner was in the mood for composing he would say to Herr
Seidl, "Bring me my sketches." Then he would retire to his composing
room, to which no one was ever admitted, not even his wife and
children. At lunch-time, the servant would bring something to the
ante-room, without being allowed to see the master in his sanctum. How
Wagner conducted himself there is not known, except that strange vocal
sounds, and a few passionate chords on the piano would occasionally
reach the ears of neighbors. Wagner appears to have used his piano
just as Beethoven did his, even after he had become deaf:--as a sort
of lightning-rod for his fervent emotions.

Much nonsense has been written concerning the fact that Wagner used to
wear gaudy costumes of silk and satin while he was composing, and that
he had colored glass in his windows, which gave every object a
mysterious aspect. He was called an imitator of the eccentric King of
Bavaria, and some went so far as to declare him insane. But in truth,
Wagner was simply endeavoring to put himself into an atmosphere most
favorable for dramatic creation. We all know how much clothes help to
make a man, in more than one sense; and any one who has ever taken
part in private theatricals will remember how much the costume helped
him to get into the proper frame of mind for interpreting his rôle.
This was all that Wagner aimed at in wearing his mediæval costumes;
and the wonderful realism and vividness of his dramatic conceptions
certainly more than justify the unusual methods he pursued to attain
them.

After elaborating the melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic details of his
scores, Wagner considered his main task done, and the orchestration
was completed down-stairs in his music room. In his earliest operas
Wagner did not write his scenes in their regular order, but took those
first which specially proffered themselves. Of the "Flying Dutchman,"
for instance, he wrote the spinning chorus first, and he was delighted
to find on this occasion, as he himself says, that he could still
compose after a long interruption. He used a piano but rather to
stimulate and correct than to invent. In his later works the piano is
absolutely out of the question. He wrote the music, scene after scene,
following the text; and the conception of the whole score is so
absolutely orchestral that the piano cannot even give as faint a
notion of it as a photograph can give of the splendors of a Titian.
Wagner, as he himself tells us, was unable to play his scores on the
piano, but always tried to get Liszt to do that for him.

It is possible that some of my readers have never seen a full
orchestral score of "Siegfried" or "Tristan." If so, I advise them to
go to a music store and look at one as a matter of curiosity. They
will find a large quarto volume, every page of which represents only
one line of music. There are separate staves for the violins, violas,
cellos, double basses, flutes, bassoons, clarinets, horns, tubas,
trombones, kettle-drums, etc., each family forming a quartette in
itself, and each having its own peculiar emotional quality. In
conducting an opera the Kapellmeister has to keep his eye and ear at
the same time on each of these groups, as well as on the vocal parts
and scenic effects. If this requires a talent rarely found among
musicians, how very much greater must be the mind which created this
complicated operatic score! No one who tries to realize what this
implies, and remembers that Wagner wrote several of his best music
dramas among the mountains of Switzerland, years before he could dream
of ever hearing the countless new harmonies and orchestral tone-colors
which he had discovered, can deny, I think, that I was right in
maintaining that the composing of an opera is the most wonderful
achievement of human genius.




III

SCHUMANN

AS MIRRORED IN HIS LETTERS


Clara Schumann, the most gifted woman that has ever chosen music as a
profession, and who, at the age of sixty-nine, still continues to be
among the most fascinating of pianists, placed the musical world under
additional obligations when she issued three years ago the collection
of private letters, written by Schumann between the ages of eighteen
and thirty (1827-40), partly to her, partly to his mother, and other
relatives, friends, and business associates. She was prompted to this
act not only by the consciousness that there are many literary gems in
the correspondence which should not be lost to the world, but by the
thought that more is generally known of Schumann's eccentricities than
of his real traits of character. Inasmuch as a wretched script was one
of the most conspicuous of these eccentricities, it is fortunate that
his wife lived to edit his letters; but even she, though familiar with
his handwriting during many years of courtship and marriage, was not
infrequently obliged to interpolate a conjectural word. Schumann had
a genuine vein of humor, which he reveals in his correspondence as in
his compositions and criticisms. He was aware that his manuscript was
not a model of caligraphy, but, on being remonstrated with, he
passionately declared he could not do any better, promising, however,
sarcastically that, as a predestined diplomat, he would keep an
amanuensis in future. And on page 245 begins a long letter to Clara
which presents a curious appearance. Every twentieth word or so is
placed between two vertical lines, regarding which the reader is kept
in the dark until he comes to this postscript: "In great haste, owing
to business affairs, I add a sort of lexicon of indistinctly written
words, which I have placed within brackets. This will probably make
the letter appear very picturesque and piquant. The idea is not so
bad. Adio, clarissima Cara, cara Clarissima." Then follows the
"lexicon" of twenty words, including his own signature.

Although, in a semi-humorous vein, Schumann repeatedly alludes in
these letters to the "foregone conclusion" that they will some day be
printed, there is hardly any indication that such a thought was ever
in his mind while writing them. They are, in fact, full of confidences
and confessions, some of which he could not have been very ambitious
to see in print; such as his frequent appeals for "more ducats,"
during his student days, and his sophistically ingenious excuses for
needing so much money, placed side by side with his frank admission
that he had no talent for economy, and was very fond of cigars, wine,
and especially travelling. In one of the most amusing of the letters,
he advances twelve reasons why his mother should send him about $200
to enable him to see Switzerland and Italy. As a last, convincing
argument, he gently hints that it is very easy for a student in
Heidelberg to borrow money at 10 per cent. interest. He got the money
and enjoyed his Swiss tour, mostly on foot and alone; but in Italy
various misfortunes overtook him--he fell ill, his money ran out, and
he was only too glad to return to Heidelberg in the same condition as
when he had first arrived there, on which occasion the state of his
purse compelled him to make the last part of the journey from Leipsic
on foot.

On this trip he enjoyed that unique emotional thrill of the German,
the first sight of the Rhine, with which he was so enchanted that he
went to the extreme forward end of the deck, smoking a good cigar
given him by an Englishman: "Thus I sat alone all the afternoon,
revelling in the wild storm which ploughed through my hair, and
composing a poem of praise to the Northeast wind"--for Schumann often
indulged in poetic efforts, especially when inspired to flights of
fancy by his favorite author, Jean Paul.

At Heidelberg, which he called "ein ganzes Paradies von Natur," he
spent one of the happiest years of his life. Student life at this town
he thus compares with Leipsic:

"In and near Heidelberg the student is the most prominent and
respected individual, since it is he who supports the town, so that
the citizens and Philistines are naturally excessively courteous. I
consider it a disadvantage for a young man, especially for a student,
to live in a town where the student only and solely rules and
flourishes. Repression alone favors the free development of a youth,
and the everlasting loafing with students greatly limits
many-sidedness of thought, and consequently exerts a bad influence on
practical life. This is one great advantage Leipsic has over
Heidelberg--which, in fact, a large city always has over a small
one.... On the other hand, Heidelberg has this advantage, that the
grandeur and beauty of the natural scenery prevent the students from
spending so much of their time in drinking; for which reason the
students here are ten times more sober than in Leipsic."

Schumann himself, as we have said, was fond of a glass of good wine.
On his first journey, at Prague, he tells us, the Tokay made him
happy. And in another place he exclaims, "Every day I should like to
drink champagne to excite myself." But, though of a solitary
disposition, he did not care to drink alone, for "only in the intimate
circle of sympathetic hearts does the vine's blood become transfused
into our own and warm it to enthusiasm." Schumann's special vice was
the constant smoking of very strong cigars; nor does he appear to have
devoted to gastronomic matters the attention necessary to nourish such
an abnormally active brain as his. At one time he lived on potatoes
alone for several weeks; at another he saved on his meals to get money
for French lessons; and although he took enough interest in a good
_menu_ to copy it in a letter, he repeatedly laments the time which is
uselessly wasted in eating. Such tenets, combined with his smoking
habit, doubtless helped to shatter his powers, leading finally to the
lunatic asylum and a comparatively early death.

His frequent fits of melancholy may also perhaps be traced in part to
these early habits. Though probably unacquainted with Burton, he held
that "there is in melancholy sentiments something extremely attractive
and even invigorating to the imagination." Attempts were frequently
made by his friends to teach him more sociable habits. Thus, at
Leipsic, "Dr. Carus's family are anxious to introduce me to
innumerable families--'it would be good for my prospects,' they
think, and so do I, and yet I don't get there, and in fact seldom go
out at all. Indeed, I am often very leathery, dry, disagreeable, and
laugh much inwardly." That his apparent coldness and indifference to
his neighbors and friends were due chiefly to his absorption in his
world of ideas, and his consequent want of sympathy with the
artificial usages of society, becomes apparent from this confession,
written to Clara in 1838:

"I should like to confide to you many other things regarding my
character--how people often wonder that I meet the warmest expressions
of love with coldness and reserve, and often offend and humiliate
precisely those who are most sincerely devoted to me. Often have I
queried and reproached myself for this, for inwardly I acknowledge
even the most trifling favor, understand every wink, every subtle
trait in the heart of another, and yet I so often blunder in what I
say and do."

In these melancholy moods nature was his refuge and consolation.
He objected to Leipsic because there were no delights of
nature--"everything artificially transformed; no valley, no mountain,
where I might revel in my thoughts; no place where I can be alone,
except in the bolted room, with the eternal noise and turmoil below."
Although he had but a few intimate friends, he was liked by all the
students, and even enjoyed the name of "a favorite of the Heidelberg
public." One of his intimate friends was Flechsig, but even of him he
paradoxically complains that he is too sympathetic: "He never cheers
me up; if I am occasionally in a melancholy mood, he ought not to be
the same, and he ought to have sufficient humanity to stir me up.
That I often need cheering up, I know very well." Yet he was as often
in a state of extreme happiness and enjoyment of life and his
talents. He even, on occasion, indulged in students' pranks. On his
journey to Heidelberg he induced the postilion to let him take the
reins: "Thunder! how the horses ran, and how extravagantly happy I
was, and how we stopped at every tavern to get fodder, and how I
entertained the whole company, and how sorry they all were when I
parted from them at Wiesbaden!!" At Frankfort, one morning, he
writes: "I felt an extraordinary longing to play on a piano. So I
calmly went to the nearest dealer, told him I was the tutor of a
young English lord who wished to buy a grand piano, and then I
played, to the wonder and delight of the bystanders, for three hours.
I promised to return in two days and inform them if the lord wanted
the instrument; but on that date I was at Rüdesheim, drinking
Rüdesheimer." In another place he gives an account of "a scene
worthy of Van Dyck, and a most genial evening" he spent with some
students at a tavern filled with peasants. They had some grog, and at
the request of the peasants one of the students declaimed, and
Schumann played. Then a dance was arranged. "The peasants beat time
with their feet. We were in high spirits, and danced dizzily among
the peasant feet, and finally took a touching farewell of the company
by giving all the peasant girls, Minchen, etc., smacking kisses on
the lips."

Were women, like men, afflicted with retrospective jealousy,
Schumann's widow, in editing these letters, would have received a pang
from many other passages revealing Schumann's fondness for the fair
sex. He allowed no good-looking woman to pass him on the street
without taking the opportunity to cultivate his sense of beauty. After
his engagement to Clara he gives her fair warning that he has the
"very mischievous habit" of being a great admirer of beautiful women
and girls. "They make me positively smirk, and I swim in panegyrics on
your sex. Consequently, if at some future time we walk along the
streets of Vienna and meet a beauty, and I exclaim, 'Oh, Clara! see
this heavenly vision,' or something of the sort, you must not be
alarmed nor scold me." He had a number of transient passions before he
discovered that Clara was his only true love. There was Nanni, his
"guardian angel," who saved him from the perils of the world and
hovered before his vision like a saint. "I feel like kneeling before
her and adoring her like a Madonna." But Nanni had a dangerous rival
in Liddy. Not long, however, for he found Liddy silly, cold as marble,
and--fatal defect--she could not sympathize with him regarding Jean
Paul. "The exalted image of my ideal disappears when I think of the
remarks she made about Jean Paul. Let the dead rest in peace."

Several of his flames are not alluded to in this correspondence. On
his travels he appears to have had the habit of noting down in his
diary the prevalence and peculiarities of feminine beauty. He
complains that from Mainz to Heidelberg he "did not see a single
pretty face." Yet, as a whole, the Rhine maidens seem to have won his
admiration:

"What characteristic faces among the lowest classes! On the west shore
of the Rhine the girls have very delicate features, indicating
amiability rather than intelligence; the noses are mostly Greek, the
face very oval and artistically symmetrical, the hair brown; I did not
see a single blonde. The complexion is soft, delicate, with more white
than red; melancholy rather than sanguine. The Frankfort girls, on the
other hand, have in common a sisterly trait--the character of German,
manly, sad earnestness which we often find in our quondam free
cities, and which toward the east gradually merges into a gentle
softness. Characteristic are the faces of all the Frankfort girls:
intellectual or beautiful few of them; the noses mostly Greek, often
snub-noses; the dialect I did not like."

The English type of beauty appears to have especially won his
approval. "When she spoke it sounded like the whispering of angels,"
he says of an Englishwoman, "as pretty as a picture," whom he met.
Elsewhere he says, laconically: "On the 24th I arrived at Mainz with
the steamer, in company with twenty to thirty English men and women.
Next day the number of English increased to fifty. If I ever marry, it
must be an English woman." Some years later, however, with the
fickleness of genius, he writes about Ernestine, the daughter of a
rich Bohemian Baron, "a delightfully innocent, childish soul, tender
and pensive, attached to me and to everything artistic by the most
sincere love, extremely musical--in short, just the kind of a girl I
could wish to marry." He did become engaged to her, but the following
year the engagement was dissolved; and soon after this he discovered
that his artistic admiration for Clara Wieck had assumed the form of
love. Although her father opposed their union several years, on
account of Schumann's poverty, the young couple often met, and not
only in the music-room. In 1833 he writes to his mother regarding
Clara: "The other day, when we went to Connewitz (we take a two or
three hours' walk almost daily), I heard her say to herself, 'How
happy I am! how happy!' Who would not like to hear that! On this road
there are a number of very useless stones in the midst of the
footpath. Now, as it happens in conversation that I more frequently
look up than down, she always walks behind me and gently pulls my coat
at every stone, lest I may fall."

It was most fortunate for Schumann that his bride and wife was one of
the greatest living pianists. For, owing to the accident to his hand,
though he could still improvise, he could not appear in public to
interpret his own compositions, which depended so much for their
success on a sympathetic performance, since they differed so greatly
from the prevalent style of Hummel and the classical masters, that
even so gifted a musician as Mendelssohn failed to understand them.
But Clara made it the task of her life to secure him recognition, and
this was an additional bond that united their souls. "When you are
mine," he writes, "you will occasionally hear something new from me; I
believe you will often inspire me, and the mere fact that I shall then
frequently hear my own compositions will cheer me up;" and: "Your
Romance showed me once more that we must become man and wife. Every
one of your thoughts comes from my soul, even as I owe all my music
to you." To Dorn he writes that many of his compositions, including
the Noveletten, the Kreisleriana, and the Kinderscenen, were inspired
by Clara; and it is well known that his love became the incentive to
the composition, in one year, of over a hundred wonderful songs--his
previous compositions, up to 1840, having all been for the piano
alone. In the last letter of this collection he says: "Sometimes it
appears to me as if I were treading entirely new paths in music;" and
there are many other passages showing that he realized well that the
very things which his contemporaries criticised and decried as
eccentric and obscure (Hummel, _e.g._, objects to his frequent changes
of harmony and his originality!), were really his most inspired
efforts. Though he never allowed the desire for popularity to
influence his work, yet he occasionally craves appreciation. "I am
willing to confess that I should be greatly pleased if I could succeed
in composing something which would impel the public, after hearing you
play it, to run against the walls in their delight; for vain we
composers are, even though we have no reason to be so." It must have
given him a strange shock when an amateur asked him, at one of his
wife's concerts in Vienna, if he also was musical!

In her efforts to win appreciation for her husband, Clara was nobly
assisted by Liszt. Just like Wagner, Schumann was not at first very
favorably impressed with Liszt, owing to the sensational flavor of his
early performances. But he soon changed his mind, especially when
Liszt played some of his (Schumann's) compositions. "Many things were
different from my conception of them, but always '_genial_,' and
marked by a tenderness and boldness of expression which even he
presumably has not at his command every day. Becker was the only other
person present, and he had tears in his eyes." And two days later:
"But I must tell you that Liszt appears to me grander every day. This
morning he again played at Raimund Härtel's, in a way to make us all
tremble and rejoice, some études of Chopin, a number of the Rossini
soirées, and other things." Of other contemporary pianists Hummel,
"ten years behind the time," and Thalberg, whom he liked better as
pianist than as composer, are alluded to. Yet he writes in 1830 that
he intends going to Weimar, "for the sly reason of being able to _call
myself_ a pupil of Hummel." Wieck, his father-in-law, he esteemed
greatly as teacher and adviser, but it offended him deeply that Wieck
should have followed the common error of estimating genius with a
yard-stick, and asked where were his "Don Juan" and his "Freischütz?"
His enthusiasm for Schubert, Chopin, and especially for Bach, finds
frequent expression. Bach's "Well-Tempered Clavichord" he declares is
his "grammar, and the best of all grammars. The fugues I have
analyzed successively to the minutest details; the advantage resulting
from this is great, and has a morally bracing effect on the whole
system, for Bach was a man through and through; in him there is
nothing done by halves, nothing morbid, but all is written for time
eternal." Six years later: "Bach is my daily bread; from him I derive
gratification and get new ideas--'compared with him we are all
children,' Beethoven has said, I believe." One day a caller remarked
that Bach was old and wrote in old-fashioned manner: "But I told him
he was neither old nor new, but much more than that, namely, eternal.
I came near losing my temper." Concerning the unappreciative
Mendelssohn, he writes to Clara:

"I am told that he is not well disposed toward me. I should feel sorry
if that were true, since I am conscious of having preserved noble
sentiments toward him. If you know anything let me hear it on
occasion; that will at least make me cautious, and I do not wish to
squander anything where I am ill-spoken of. Concerning my relations
toward him as a musician [1838], I am quite aware that I could learn
of him for years; but he, too, some things of me. Brought up under
similar circumstances, destined for music from childhood, I would
surpass you all--that I feel from the energy of my inventive powers."

Concerning this energy he says, some time after this, when he had
just finished a dozen songs: "Again I have composed so much that I am
sometimes visited by a mysterious feeling. Alas! I cannot help it. I
could wish to sing myself to death, like a nightingale."

One of the most interesting bits of information contained in this
correspondence is that, when quite a young man, Schumann commenced a
treatise on musical æsthetics. In view of the many epoch-making
thoughts contained in his two volumes of collected criticisms, it is
very much to be regretted that this plan was not carried out. On one
question of musical psychology light is thrown by several of these
letters. Like many other composers, it seems that Schumann often, if
not generally, had some pictorial image or event in his mind in
composing. "When I composed my first songs," he writes to Clara, "I
was entirely within you. Without such a bride one cannot write such
music." "I am affected by everything that goes on in the
world--politics, literature, mankind. In my own manner I meditate on
everything, which then seeks utterance in music. That is why many of
my compositions are so difficult to understand, because they relate to
remote affairs; and often significant, because all that's remarkable
in our time affects me, and I have to give it expression in musical
language." One of the letters to Clara begins: "Tell me what the first
part of the Fantasia suggests to you. Does it not bring many pictures
before your mind?" Concerning the "Phantasiestücke" he writes: "When
they were finished I was delighted to find the story of Hero and
Leander in them.... Tell me if you, too, find this picture fitting the
music." "The Papillons," he says once more, are intended to be a
musical translation of the final scene in Jean Paul's "Flegeljahre."

Believers in telepathy will be interested in the following additional
instance of composing with a visual object in mind: "I wrote to you
concerning a presentiment; it occurred to me on the days from March
24th to 27th, when I was at work on my new composition. There is a
place in it to which I constantly recurred; it is as if some one
sighed, 'Ach, Gott!' from the bottom of his heart. While composing, I
constantly saw funeral processions, coffins, unhappy people in
despair; and when I had finished, and long searched for a title, the
word 'corpse-fantasia' continually obtruded itself. Is not that
remarkable? During the composition, moreover, I was often so deeply
affected that tears came to my eyes, and yet I knew not why and had no
reason--till Theresa's letter arrived, which made everything clear."
His brother was on his death-bed.

       *       *       *       *       *

The collection of Schumann's letters so far under consideration met
with such a favorable reception that a second edition was soon called
for, and this circumstance no doubt promoted the publication of a
second series, extending to 1854, two years before Schumann's sad
death in the lunatic asylum near Bonn. This second volume includes a
considerable number of business letters to his several publishers. In
one of these he confides to Dr. Härtel his plan of collecting and
revising his musical criticisms, and publishing them in two volumes.
But as this letter was, a few months later, followed by a similar one
addressed to the publisher Wigand, who subsequently printed the
essays, it is to be inferred that Breitkopf & Härtel, though assured
of the future of Schumann's compositions, doubted the financial value
of his musical essays--an attitude pardonable at a time when there was
still a ludicrous popular prejudice against literary utterances by a
musician. In 1883, however, after Wigand had issued a third edition of
the "Collected Writings on Music and Musicians" (which have also been
translated into English by Mrs. Ritter), Breitkopf & Härtel atoned for
their error by purchasing the copyright.

Schumann's letters to his publishers show that he used to suggest his
own terms, which were commonly acceded to without protest. For his
famous quintet he asked twenty louis d'or, or about $100; for
"Paradise and the Peri," $500; the piano concerto, $125; Liederalbum,
op. 79, $200; "Manfred," $250. He frequently emphasizes his desire to
have his compositions printed in an attractive style, and in 1839
writes to Härtel that he cannot describe his pleasure on receiving the
"Scenes of Childhood." "It is the most charming specimen of musical
typography I have ever seen." The few misprints he discovers in it he
frankly attributes to his MS. In a letter to his friend Rosen he
writes that "it must be a deucedly comic pleasure to read my
Sanskrit." But his musical handwriting appears to have been nearer to
Sanskrit than his epistolary, if we may judge by the specimen
fac-similes printed in Naumann's "History of Music."

The promptness with which all the leading music publishers of Germany
issued complete editions of Schumann's vocal and pianoforte
compositions, as soon as the copyright had expired, shows how
profitable they must be. But during his lifetime it was quite
otherwise, and in a letter to Kossmaly he adduces the following four
reasons for this state of affairs: "(1) inherent difficulties of form
and contents; (2) because, not being a virtuoso, I cannot perform them
in public; (3) because I am the editor of my musical paper, in which I
could not allude to them; (4) because Fink is editor of the other
paper, and would not allude to them." Elsewhere he remarks, concerning
this rival editor: "It is really most contemptible on Fink's part not
to have mentioned a single one of my pianoforte compositions in nine
[seven] years, although they are always of such a character that it is
impossible to overlook them. It is not for my name's sake that I am
annoyed, but because I know what the future course of music is to be."
It was in behalf of this tendency that he toiled on his paper, which
at first barely paid its expenses, having only 500 subscribers several
years after its foundation. And he not only avoided puffing his own
compositions, but even inserted a contribution by his friend Kossmaly
in which he was placed in the second rank of vocal composers! Yet,
though he printed the article, he complains about it in a private
letter: "In your article on the Lied, I was a little grieved that you
placed me in the _second_ class. I do not lay claim to the first, but
I think I have a claim to a place of _my own_, and least of all do I
wish to see myself associated with Reissiger, Curschmann, etc. I know
that my aims, my resources, are far beyond theirs, and I hope you will
concede this and not accuse me of vanity, which is far from me."

Many of the letters in the present collection are concerned with the
affairs of Schumann's paper, the _Neue Zeitschrift für Musik_,
detailing his plans for removing it to a larger city than Leipsic, and
the atrocious red-tape difficulties and delays he was subjected to
when he finally did transfer it to Vienna. Although the paper was
exclusively devoted to music, the _Censur_ apparently took three or
four months to make up its mind whether the state was in danger or not
from the immigration of a new musical periodical. The editor confesses
that he did not find as much sympathy as he had expected in Vienna;
yet the city--as he writes some years later at Düsseldorf--"continues
to attract one, as if the spirits of the departed great masters were
still visible, and as if it were the real musical home of Germany."
"Eating and drinking here are incomparable. You would be delighted
with the Opera. Such singers and such an _ensemble_ we do not have."
"The admirable Opera is a great treat for me, especially the chorus
and orchestra. Of such things we have _no conception_ in Leipsic. The
ballet would also amuse you." "A more encouraging public it would be
difficult to find anywhere; it is really too encouraging--in the
theatre one hears more applause than music. It is very merry, but it
annoys me occasionally." "But I assure you confidentially that long
and alone I should not care to live here; serious men and affairs are
here in little demand and little appreciated. A compensation for this
is found in the beautiful surroundings. Yesterday I was in the
cemetery where Beethoven and Schubert are buried. Just think what I
found on Beethoven's grave: _a pen_, and, what is more, a steel pen.
It was a happy omen for me and I shall preserve it religiously." On
Schubert's grave he found nothing, but in the city he found Schubert's
brother, a poor man with eight children and no possessions but a
number of his brother's manuscripts, including "a few operas, four
great masses, four or five symphonies, and many other things." He
immediately wrote to Breitkopf & Härtel to make arrangements for their
publication.

It is anything but complimentary to the discernment of Viennese
publishers and musicians of that period that, eleven years after
Schubert's death, another composer had to come from Leipsic and give
to the world the works of a colleague who not only had genius of the
purest water, but the gift of giving utterance to his musical ideas in
a clear style, intelligible to the public. Schubert died in 1828, and
in 1842 Schumann could still write to one of his contributors: "It is
time, it seems to me, that some one should write something weighty in
behalf of Schubert; doesn't this tempt you? True, his larger works are
not yet in print. But his vocal and pianoforte compositions suffice
for an approximate portrait. Consider the matter. Do you know his
symphony in C? A delightful composition, somewhat long, but
extraordinarily animated, in character entirely new." To a Belgian
friend who intended to write an article on the new tendencies in
pianoforte music, he wrote: "Of older composers who have influenced
modern music I must name above all Franz Schubert.... Schubert's songs
are well known, but his pianoforte compositions (especially those for
four hands) I rate at least equally high."

Of the numerous criticisms of well-known composers contained in this
correspondence, a few more may be cited. They are mostly favorable in
tone, but concerning the "Prophète" he writes: "The music appears to me
very poor; I cannot find words to express my aversion to it."
"Lortzing's operas meet with success--to me almost incomprehensible."
To Carl Reinecke he writes that he is "no friend of song-transcriptions
(for piano), and of Liszt's some are a real abomination to me." He
commends Reinecke's efforts in this direction because they are free
from pepper and sauce _à la_ Liszt. Nevertheless, those of Liszt's
song-transcriptions in which he did not indulge in too much bravura
ornamentation are models of musical translation, and the collection of
forty-two songs published by Breitkopf & Härtel should be in every
pianist's library. "Of Chopin," he writes in 1836, "I have a new ballad
[G minor]. It seems to me to be his most enchanting (though not most
_genial_) work; I told him, too, that I liked it best of all his
compositions. After a long pause and reflection he said: 'I am glad you
think so, it is also my favorite.' He also played for me a number of
new études, nocturnes, mazurkas--everything in an incomparable style.
It is touching to see him at the piano. You would be very fond of him.
Yet Clara is more of a _virtuoso_, and gives almost more significance
to his compositions than he does himself."

Brendel having sent him some of Palestrina's music, he writes that "it
really sounds sometimes like music of the spheres--and what art at the
same time! I am convinced he is the greatest musical genius Italy has
produced." Nineteen years previous to this he had written from
Brescia: "Were not the Italian language itself a kind of eternal music
(the Count aptly called it a long-drawn-out A-minor chord), I should
not hear anything rational. Of the ardor with which they play, you can
form no more conception than of their slovenliness and lack of
elegance and precision." Handel appears to be mentioned only once in
all of Schumann's correspondence ("I consider 'Israel in Egypt' the
ideal of a choral work"), but Bach is always on his tongue. The
following is one of the profoundest criticisms ever written: "Mozart
and Haydn knew of Bach only a few pages and passages, and the effect
which Bach, if they had known him in all his greatness, would have had
on them, is incalculable. The harmonic depth, the poetic and humorous
qualities of modern music have their source chiefly in Bach:
Mendelssohn, Bennett, Chopin, Hiller, all the so-called Romanticists
(I mean those of the German school) _approximate in their music much
closer to Bach than to Mozart_."

To Wagner there are several references, betraying a most remarkable
struggle between critical honesty and professional jealousy. Thus, in
1845, Schumann writes to Mendelssohn of "Tannhäuser:"

"Wagner has just finished a new opera--no doubt a clever fellow, full
of eccentric notions, and bold beyond measure. The aristocracy is
still in raptures over him on account of his 'Rienzi,' but in reality
he cannot conceive or write four consecutive bars of good or even
correct music. What all these composers lack is the art of writing
pure harmonies and four-part choruses. The music is not a straw better
than that of 'Rienzi,' rather weaker, more artificial! But if I should
write this I should be accused of envy, hence I say it only to you, as
I am aware that you have known all this a long time."

But in another letter to Mendelssohn, written three weeks later, he
recants: "I must take back much of what I wrote regarding
'Tannhäuser,' after reading the score; on the stage the effect is
quite different. I was deeply moved by many parts." And to Heinrich
Dorn he writes, a few weeks after this: "I wish you could see Wagner's
'Tannhäuser.' It contains profound and original ideas, and is a
hundred times better than his previous operas, though some of the
music is trivial. In a word, he may become of great importance to the
stage, and, so far as I know him, he has the requisite courage. The
technical part, the instrumentation, I find excellent, incomparably
more masterly than formerly."

Nevertheless, seven years later still, he once more returns to the
attack, and declares that Wagner's music, "apart from the performance,
is simply amateurish, void of contents, and disagreeable; and it is a
sad proof of corrupt taste that, in the face of the many dramatic
master-works which Germany has produced, some persons have the
presumption to belittle these in favor of Wagner's. Yet enough of
this. The future will pronounce judgment in this matter, too." Poor
Schumann! His own opera, "Genoveva," was a failure, while "Tannhäuser"
and "Lohengrin" were everywhere received with enthusiasm. This was a
quarter of a century ago; and the future _has_ judged, "Tannhäuser"
and "Lohengrin" being now the most popular of all works in the
operatic repertory.

What caused the failure of Schumann's only opera was not a lack of
dramatic genius, but of theatrical instinct. He believed that in
"Genoveva" "every bar is thoroughly dramatic;" and so it is, as might
have been expected of the composer of such an intensely emotional and
passionate song as "Ich grolle nicht" and many others. But Schubert,
too, could write such thrilling five-minute dramas as the "Erlking"
and the "Doppelgänger," without being able to compose a successful
opera. Like Schumann, he could not paint _al fresco_, could not
command that bolder and broader sweep which is required of an operatic
composer. It is characteristic of Schumann that he did not write an
opera till late in life, whereas born operatic composers have commonly
begun their career with their specialty. Indeed, it was only ten years
before he composed his opera that Schumann wrote to a friend: "You
ought to write more for the voice. Or are you, perhaps, like myself,
who have all my life placed vocal music below instrumental, and never
considered it a great art? But don't speak to anyone about this."
Oddly enough, less than a year after this he writes to another friend:
"At present I write only vocal pieces.... I can hardly tell you what a
delight it is to write for the voice as compared with instruments, and
how it throbs and rages within me when I am at work. Entirely new
things have been revealed to me, and I am thinking of writing an
opera, which, however, will not be possible until I have entirely
freed myself from editorial work."

Like other vocal composers, Schumann suffered much from the lack of
suitable texts. In one letter he suggests that Lenau might perhaps be
induced to write a few poems for composers, to be printed in "The
Zeitschrift:" "the composers are thirsting for texts." In several
other letters we become familiar with some of his plans which were
never executed, owing, apparently, to the shortcomings of the
librettists. One of these was R. Pohl, who in all earnestness sent
Schumann a serious text in which the moon was introduced as one of the
vocalists! Schumann mildly remonstrated that "to conceive of the moon
as a person, especially as singing, would be too risky." So the
project of "Ritter Mond" was abandoned, and it is to be regretted that
Schumann did not reject his "Genoveva" libretto, which was largely
responsible for the failure of the opera.

One project of Schumann's is mentioned which it is to be very much
regretted he never carried out. "I am at present [1840] preparing an
essay on Shakspere's relations to music, his utterances and views, the
manner in which he introduces music in his dramas, etc., etc.--an
exceedingly fertile and attractive theme, the execution of which
would, it is true, require some time, as I should have to read the
whole of Shakspere's works for this purpose." His object was to send
this to Jena as a dissertation for a Doctor's degree, with which he
hoped to soften the heart of the obdurate Wieck, who opposed his
marriage with Clara, and at the same time to make an impression on the
public. Schumann had had painful experience of the fact that for
genius itself there is little recognition in Germany unless it has a
handle to its name--a "von" or a "Herr Doctor." Clara, however, loved
him for his genius, and for the impassioned pieces and songs he wrote
to express his admiration of her and of woman in general; and, like
other German men of genius, he had his reward--after death. "No tone
poet," says Naumann, "has been more enthusiastic in the praise of
woman than Robert Schumann; he was a second Frauenlob. This was
acknowledged by the maidens of Bonn, who, at his interment, filled the
cemetery, and crowned his tomb with innumerable garlands."




IV

MUSIC AND MORALS


Although music in the complex harmonic form known to us is only a few
centuries old, simple rhythmic melodies were sung, or played on
various instruments, by all the ancient civilized nations, and are
sung or played to-day by African and Australian savages who have never
come into contact with civilization. And what is more, the remarkable
influence which music has in arousing human emotions has been
appreciated at all times.

Tourists relate that in some of the inland countries of Africa,
scarcely any work is done by the natives except to the sound of music;
and Cruikshank, speaking of the coast negroes, says it is laughable to
observe the effect of their rude music on all classes, old and young,
men, women, and children. "However employed, whether passing quietly
through the street, carrying water from the pond, or assisting in some
grave procession, no sooner do they hear the rapid beats of a distant
drum, than they begin to caper and dance spontaneously. The bricklayer
will throw down his trowel for a minute, the carpenter leave his
bench, the corn grinder her milling stone, and the porter his load, to
keep time to the inspiriting sound."

Dr. Tschudi, in his fascinating work on Peru, describes two of the
musical instruments used by the Indians, and their emotional function.
One is the Pututo, "a large conch on which they perform mournful
music, as the accompaniment of their funeral dances." The other is
called Jaina, and is a rude kind of clarionet made from a reed. "Its
tone," says Tschudi, "is indescribable in its melancholy, and it
produces an extraordinary impression on the natives. If a group of
Indians are rioting and drinking, or engaged in furious conflicts with
each other, and the sound of the Jaina is suddenly heard, the tumult
ceases, as if by a stroke of magic. A dead stillness prevails, and all
listen devoutly to the magic tones of the simple reed; tones which
frequently draw tears from the eyes of the apathetic Indians."

If the untutored primitive man can be thus overpowered by the charm of
such simple music, we can hardly wonder at the extravagant power
ascribed to this art by the ancient civilized nations. The fairy tale
of Orpheus, who tamed wild animals and moved rocks and trees with his
singing and playing, and the story of the dolphin that was attracted
by Arion's song and carried him safely across the sea, are quite as
significant as if they were true stories, for they show that the
Greeks were so deeply moved by music that they could readily imagine
it to have a similar effect on animals, and even on inanimate objects.
Almost three thousand years ago, Homer represented Achilles as
"comforting his heart with the sound of the lyre," after losing his
sweet Briseis; "stimulating his courage and singing the deeds of the
heroes." And, as Emil Naumann fancies, there is a moral underlying the
myth of the siren; "for, as Homer elsewhere suggests, noble and manly
music invigorates the spirit, strengthens wavering man, and incites
him to great and worthy deeds, whereas false and sensuous music
excites and confuses, robs man of his self-control, till his passions
overcome him as the waves overwhelmed the bewitched sailor who
listened to the voice of the charmer."

At a later period in Greek history, the philosophers, including Plato
and Aristotle, continued to attribute to music power so great, that we
can only understand them if we bear in mind that with the Greeks the
word music was a comprehensive term for all the arts presided over by
the Muses, and that, even when music in our sense is alluded to by
them, the reference is at the same time to the poetry which was almost
always associated with music, and made its meaning and expression more
definite. Thus, we can realize how Terpander could, by the power of
his song, reconcile the political factions in Sparta, and how Plato
could write, in the "Republic," that "any musical innovation is full
of danger to the state and ought to be prevented." He looked upon
music as a tonic which does for the mind what gymnastics do for the
body; and taught that only such music ought to be tolerated by the
state as had a moral purpose, while enervating forms should be
suppressed by the law makers.

Yet, after making due allowance for the fact that the word music was
used in this comprehensive sense, enough remains to show that the
power of music proper, the power of rhythmic melody, was profoundly
appreciated by the Greeks. If they had not felt how greatly music
intensifies and quickens the emotions, they would not have wedded all
their poetry to it, nor have resorted to it on all solemn and festive
occasions; nor would the Pythagoreans have found anyone willing to
believe in their doctrine that music has power to control the
passions. "They firmly believed," says Naumann, "that sweet harmony
and flowing melody alone were capable of restoring the even balance of
the disturbed mind, and of renewing its harmonious relations with the
world. Playing on the lyre, therefore, formed part of the daily
exercises of the disciples of the renowned philosopher, and none dared
seek his nightly couch without having first refreshed his soul at the
fount of music, nor return to the duties of the day without having
braced his energies with jubilant strains. Pythagoras is said to have
recommended the use of special melodies as antidotal to special
passions, and indeed, it is related of him that on a certain occasion
he, by a solemn air, brought back to reason a youth who, maddened by
love and jealousy, was about setting fire to the house of his
mistress."

Similar marvellous powers were ascribed to music by the other nations.
The Chinese have an old saying that "Music has the power to make
Heaven descend upon earth." This art was constantly kept under rigid
supervision by the government, and 354 years before Christ, one of the
Emperors issued a special edict against weak, effeminate music; to
which, therefore, a demoralizing influence was obviously attributed.
The Japanese, we read, likewise "revere music and connect it with
their idol worship," and in olden times it seems to have had even a
political function, for it is said that "formerly an ambassador, in
addressing a foreign court to which he was accredited, did not speak,
but sang his mission." The Hindoos, again, attributed supernatural
power to music. Some melodies had the power, as they believed, to
bring down rain, others to move men and animals, as well as lifeless
objects. The fact that they traced the origin of music to the gods
shows in what esteem they held it; and their quaint story of the
16,000 nymphs and shepherdesses, each of whom invented a new key and
melody in her emulous eagerness to move the heart and win the love of
the handsome young god Krishna, shows that the amorous power of music
was already understood in those days.

Once more, the exalted notions which the ancient Hebrews had of the
dignity and importance of music, is indicated by the fact that,
according to Josephus, the treasures of Solomon's Temple (which was
also a great school of music) included 40,000 harps and psalteries of
pure copper, and 200,000 silver trumpets. In the schools of the
prophets, musical practice was an essential item. During the period of
captivity the Israelites at first gave way to despondency, exclaiming,
"How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?" "But by and by
they would take down their harps again from the willow bows and seek
solace for the sorrows of the long exile in recalling the loved melody
of their native land, and the sacred psalmody of their desolated
temple" (McClintock and Strong). There was hardly an occasion arising
above the commonplace events of everyday life, when the ancient
Hebrews did not resort to music. Trumpets were used at the royal
proclamations and at the dedication of the Temple. There were doleful
chants for funeral processions; joyous melodies for bridal
processions and banquets; stirring martial strains to incite courage
in battle and to celebrate victories, religious songs, and domestic
music for private recreation and pleasure; and even "the grape
gatherers sang as they gathered in the vintage, and the wine-presses
were trodden with the shout of a song; the women sang as they toiled
at the mill, and on every occasion the land of the Hebrews, during
their national prosperity, was a land of music and melody." And
finally, the therapeutic value of music and its power to stimulate the
creative faculties were recognized. The prophets composed their songs
and uttered their prophecies to the sound of musical instruments, and
David drove out the evil spirit from Saul, as we read in the Bible:
"And it came to pass when the spirit from God was upon Saul, that
David took a harp and played with his hands. So Saul was refreshed,
and was well, and the evil spirit departed from him."

The preceding facts sufficiently illustrate the effects of music on
the emotions and morals of ancient and primitive nations. Now, within
the Christian era music has made enormous strides in its evolution as
an art, and it seems therefore reasonable to infer that its emotional
and moral power has also increased. Yet, strange to say, a tendency
has manifested itself of late, in many quarters, to flatly deny the
emotional and moral potency of music. The late Richard Grant White,
for instance, in a series of articles on the Influence of Music, in
"The Atlantic Monthly," comes to the conclusion that "a fine
appreciation of even the noblest music is not an indication of mental
elevation, or of moral purity, or of delicacy of feeling, or even
(except in music) of refinement of taste." "The greatest, keenest
pleasure of my life," he adds, "is one that may be shared equally with
me by a dunce, a vulgarian, or a villain;" and he ends by asserting,
dogmatically, that a taste for music has no more to do with our minds
or morals than with our complexions or stature. Dr. Hanslick, the
eminent critic and professor of musical history in the University of
Vienna, goes even farther. "There can be no doubt," he says, "that
music had a much more direct effect on the ancient nations than it has
on us." To-day, "the feelings of the layman are affected most, those
of an educated artist least, by music." "The moral influence of tones
increases in proportion as the culture of mind and character
decreases. The smaller the resistance offered by culture, the more
does this power strike home. It is well known that _it is on savages
that music exerts its greatest influence_."

Let us briefly test these sceptical paradoxes in the light of mediæval
history and modern biography. Is it only among the ancient and
primitive people, and among the musically uneducated, that the divine
art exerts an emotional influence? St. Jerome evidently did not think
so. He believed, at any rate, that music can exert a _demoralizing_
influence, and he taught that Christian maidens should know nothing of
the lyre and the flute. The eminent divine was guided in this matter
by the same process of illogical reasoning of which, later, the
Puritans were guilty when they banished music from the churches. In
view of the fact that music was used to heighten the charms of wanton
Roman festivities or Pagan rites, St. Jerome condemned the art itself,
ignorant of the fact that music can never be immoral in itself, but
only through evil associations. St. Augustine took a different view of
music from St. Jerome. When he first heard the Christian chant at
Milan he exclaimed: "Oh, my God! When the sweet voice of the
congregation broke upon mine ear, how I wept over Thy hymns of praise.
The sound poured into mine ears and Thy truth entered my heart. Then
glowed within me the spirit of devotion; tears poured forth, and I
rejoiced." Here we have an illustration of how music intensifies and
exalts the emotions of educated men. St. Augustine's devotion "glowed
within him" when he heard the music. It is for this power that the
church has always employed music as a hand-maid; and those
ecclesiastics who would to-day banish it arbitrarily from the church,
know not what a valuable ally they are blindly repulsing in these
days of religious scepticism. As Mr. Gladstone very recently remarked:
"Ever since the time of St. Augustine, I might perhaps say of St.
Paul, the power of music in assisting Christian devotion has been upon
record, and great schools of Christian musicians have attested and
confirmed the union of the art with worship."

But the greatest musical enthusiast in the ranks of mediæval churchmen
was Martin Luther. To judge by the extraordinary influence which music
had on him, Luther must doubtless be classed among the lowest of
savages, if Dr. Hanslick is right in saying that it is on savages that
music exerts its greatest influence. He wrote a special treatise on
music, in which he placed it next to theology. "Besides theology," he
wrote in a letter to the musician Senfel, "music is the only art
capable of affording peace and joy of the heart like that induced by
the study of the science of divinity. The proof of this is that the
devil, the originator of sorrowful anxieties and restless troubles,
flees before the sound of music almost as much as he does before the
Word of God. This is why the prophets preferred music before all the
other arts ... proclaiming the Word in psalms and hymns.... My heart,
which is full to overflowing, has often been solaced and refreshed by
music when sick and weary."

Luther had a good voice and a knowledge of musical composition. He
played the flute and the lute, and in church he introduced
congregational singing, in which the people took an active part in
worship by means of the chorales. It is related that, as a child, he
used to sing with other boys in the street in winter, for his daily
bread, and that on one occasion, Frau Cotta frantically rushed from
her house on hearing his pleading tones, took him in, and gave him a
warm meal. Later in life, when he was an Augustine monk, he often
chased away his melancholy and temptations by playing on his lute, and
the story goes that "one day, after a self-inflicted chastisement, he
was found in a fainting condition in his cell, and that his cloistered
brethren recalled him to consciousness by soft music, well knowing
that music was the balsam for all wounds of the troubled mind of their
'dear Martinus.'"

Coming to more recent times, we find that some of the greatest
composers and other men of genius were "savages," judged by Dr.
Hanslick's standard.

When Congreve wrote that "music hath charms to soothe the savage
breast," did he not mean to imply that educated people are not
affected by it? Take the case, for instance, of that old barbarian,
Joseph Haydn, and note how he was affected by the "Creation" when he
heard it sung. "One moment," he said to Griesinger, "I was as cold as
ice, and the next I seemed on fire, and more than once I feared I
should have a stroke." Another "savage," Cherubini, when he heard a
Haydn symphony for the first time, was so greatly excited by it that
it forcibly moved him from his seat. "He trembled all over, his eyes
grew dim, and this condition continued long after the symphony was
ended. Then came the reaction. His eyes filled with tears, and from
that instant the direction of his work was decided." (Nohl.)

Similar incidents might be quoted from the biographies of almost all
the great composers. Berlioz, in his essay on Music, after referring
to the story of Alexander the Great, who fell into a delirium at the
accents of Timotheus, and the story of the Danish King Eric, "whom
certain songs made so furious that he killed some of his best
servants," dwells on the inconsistency of Rousseau, who, while
ridiculing the accounts of the wonders worked by ancient music,
nevertheless, "seems in other places to give them enough credence to
place that ancient art, which we hardly know at all, and which he
himself knew no better than the rest of us, far above the art of our
own day." For himself, Berlioz believed that the power of modern music
is of at least equal value with the doubtful anecdotes of ancient
historians. "How often," he says, "have we not seen hearers agitated
by terrible spasms, weep and laugh at once, and manifest all the
symptoms of delirium and fever, while listening to the masterpieces of
our great masters." He relates the case of a young Provençal musician,
who blew out his brains at the door of the Opéra after a second
hearing of Spontini's "Vestale," having previously explained in a
letter, that after this ecstatic enjoyment, he did not care to remain
in this prosaic world; and the case of the famous singer Malibran,
who, on hearing Beethoven's Fif

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