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Great Musical Composers: German, French, and Italian

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Title: Great Musical Composers: German, French, and Italian

Author: George T. Ferris

Editor: Elizabeth A. Sharp


        
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                Most recently updated: August 12, 2013

Language: English

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The Camelot Series.
Edited by Ernest Rhys.

GREAT MUSICAL COMPOSERS

German, French, and Italian

by

GEORGE T. FERRIS

Edited, with an Introduction by Mrs. William Sharp







London
Walter Scott, 24 Warwick Lane
Paternoster Row
1887




CONTENTS.


                                                        PAGE

    INTRODUCTION                                         vii

    BACH                                                   1

    HANDEL                                                 7

    GLUCK                                                 36

    HAYDN                                                 46

    MOZART                                                59

    BEETHOVEN                                             70

    SCHUBERT AND SCHUMANN                                 87

    CHOPIN                                               103

    WEBER                                                115

    MENDELSSOHN                                          124

    WAGNER                                               131

    PALESTRINA                                           147

    PICCINI, PAISIELLO, AND CIMAROSA                     154

    ROSSINI                                              175

    DONIZETTI AND BELLINI                                200

    VERDI                                                213

    CHERUBINI AND HIS PREDECESSORS                       226

    MÉHUL, SPONTINI, AND HALÉVY                          260

    BOÏELDIEU AND AUBER                                  273

    MEYERBEER                                            281

    GOUNOD                                               297

    BERLIOZ                                              310

    APPENDIX: CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE                        335




[Decoration]

_Introduction._


The following biographical sketches were originally published in
America by Mr. George T. Ferris, in two volumes, separately entitled
_The Great German Composers_ and _The Great Italian and French
Composers_. They have achieved the success they deserved: for while we
have whole libraries of books upon the history and technicalities of
music in general, upon musical theories and schools, and upon the
exponents thereof in their artistic capacity, there has been a
distinct dearth of treatises dealing in a brief and popular fashion
with the lives of eminent composers themselves. Now, when music is
"mastered and murdered" in almost every house throughout the length
and breadth of the land, there can be no doubt that compilations of
this kind must be welcome to a very large number--we will not say of
musical students, but of lovers of music. There are, it would be
needless to attempt to prove, great numbers of the music-loving
public, who practically have no facilities towards making acquaintance
with the leading facts in the lives of those men whose compositions
they have such a genuine delight in rendering: to these mainly is such
a book as _Great Composers_ addressed. But, indeed, to every one
interested in music and musicians the volume can hardly fail to be of
interest. In his preface to _The Great Italian and French Composers_,
Mr. Ferris explained that--as was very manifest--"the task of
compressing into one small volume suitable sketches of the more famous
Italian and French composers was, in view of the extent of field and
the wealth of material, a somewhat embarrassing one, especially as the
purpose was to make the sketches of interest to the general
music-loving public, and not merely to the critic and scholar. The
plan pursued has been to devote the bulk of space to composers of the
higher rank, and to pass over those less known with such brief mention
as sufficed to outline their lives, and fix their place in the history
of music."

To _The Great German Composers_ he prefaces a few words which may be
quoted--"The sketches of composers contained in this volume may seem
arbitrary in the space allotted to them. The special attention given
to certain names has been prompted as much by their association with
great art epochs, as by the consideration of their absolute rank as
composers. The introduction of Chopin, born a Pole, and for a large
part of his life a resident of France, among German composers, may
require an explanatory word. Chopin's whole early training was in the
German school, and he may be looked on as one of the founders of the
latest school of pianoforte composition, whose highest development is
in contemporary Germany. He represents German music by his affinities
and his influences in art, and bears too close a relation to important
changes in musical forms to be omitted from this series."

Various important events have occurred since the publication of these
volumes in America: _inter alia_, the performance of Wagner's last
great work "Parsifal," and the death of the great German musician;
the production of new works by Gounod and Verdi; and so forth. The
editor has endeavoured, as briefly as practicable, to supplement Mr.
Ferris's _causeries_ with the addenda necessary to bring _Great
Composers_ down to date. Mr. Ferris further acknowledges his
obligation to the following authorities for the facts embodied in
these sketches:--Hullah's _History of Modern Music_; Fétis'
_Biographie Universelle des Musiciens_; Clementi's _Biographie des
Musiciens_; Hogarth's _History of the Opera_; Sutherland Edwards'
_History of the Opera_; Schlüter's _History of Music_; Chorley's
_Thirty Years' Musical Reminiscences_; Stendhall's _Vie de Rossini_;
Bellasy's _Memorials of Cherubini_; Grove's _Musical Dictionary_;
Crowestl's _Musical Anecdotes_; Schoelcher's _Life of Handel_;
Liszt's _Life of Chopin_; Elsie Polko's _Reminiscences_; Lampadius'
_Life of Mendelssohn_; Urbino's _Musical Composers_; Franz Hueffer's
_Wagner and the Music of the Future_; Haweis' _Music and Morals_;
and the various articles in the leading cyclopædias.

To this volume the present editor has appended a chronological table
of the musicians referred to in the following sketches.

In reading the lives of these great musical composers, we can trace
the gradual development of music from its earliest days as an art and
as a science. Unlike the other arts which have flourished, decayed,
and had rebirth, music, as we now understand it, sprang into being out
of the ferment of the Renaissance, and therefore is the youngest of
the arts--a modern growth belonging particularly to the later phases
of civilisation. Music in a rude, undeveloped condition has existed
doubtless "since the world began." In all nations, and in the records
of past civilisations, indications of music are to be found; martial
strains for the encouragement of warriors on the march; sacred hymns
and sacrificial chants in religious ceremonials; and song accompanied
by some rude instrument--we find to have been known and practised
among remote tribes as well as among potent races. The bards of divers
peoples and many countries in ancient days played upon the harp not
merely for delight, but for the exorcism of evil spirits, the
dispersion of melancholy, the soothing and cure of mental and physical
disorders. Here we find music as the direct expression of feeling, but
not as a science. The Greeks made further use of music by
incorporating it into their dramas, but it was chiefly declamatory,
and was used solely in the choruses. To modern ears such music would
sound very inefficient, more especially as the antique instruments
were of the crudest--and although musical sounds, to a limited extent,
could be produced from them, all attempts at _expression_ must have
been unsuccessful.

In Europe in the early middle ages there existed two kinds of music:
that of the people, spontaneous, impulsive, the song of the
Troubadour, unwritten and orally transmitted from father to son; that
of the Church, which had been greatly encouraged since the days of
Constantine, and especially owed much to St. Ambrose and St. Gregory.
For a time music became the handmaid of the Church, but it thereby, to
a certain extent, also gave voice to the lyrical feelings of the
people; for the chorister and composer not only embodied popular songs
into the chants, but in many instances interpolated the words
themselves. This incongruity at length necessitated the reform,
brought about by Palestrina--the father of sacred music as we now know
it--whose _Missa Papae Marcelli_, performed in 1565, established a
type which has been more or less adhered to ever since. The services
of the Church gave rise to the oratorio, which, however, chiefly owes
its development to Protestant genius, more especially to Handel. In
1540 San Filippo Neri formed in Milan a Society called "Le
congregazione dei Padri dell' Oratorio" (from _orare_ to pray), and we
are told by Crescembini that "The oratorio, a poetical composition,
formerly a commixture of the dramatic and narrative styles, but now
entirely a musical drama, had its origin from San Filippo Neri, who in
his chapel, after sermons and other devotions, in order to allure
young people to pious offices, and to detain them from earthly
pleasures, had hymns, psalms, and such like prayers sung by one or
more voices." "Among these spiritual songs were dialogues; and these
entertainments, becoming more frequent and improving every year, were
the occasion that, in the seventeenth century, oratorios were
invented, so called from their origin."[A]

Then came the fulness of the Renaissance, quickening dead forms into
new life, laying its vivifying touch on the new-born art, music, and
making it its nursling. At first the change was hardly perceptible. It
was church music out of church, fine, stately, what may with seeming
paradox be called statuesque, which came to bear the name of
_L'Opera_, signifying _The Work_:--but, though born to a heritage of
good aims, possessed of very inadequate means for their fulfilment.
Once liberated from its presumed function of expressing religious
feeling, and thus subjected to other impelling forces, music could not
long remain in the old forms. It began to feel its way into new
channels, and in the form of the opera became a national institution.
Its growth at first was weak and faulty; but finally it developed into
a perfect art. It was as the novice, who, freed from the sanctity of
the convent with its calm lights and shadows, enters at last the
portals of the life of the world--a varied world full of turmoil,
passion, and strife. A greater world, after all, than that quitted,
because composed of so many possibilities in so many directions, and
comprising the sufferings, the joys, the aspirations of such
innumerably differentiated beings; a world wherein the novice learns
to widen her sympathies, to feel with and for the people, and to
express for them the never-ceasing craving for something beyond the
fleeting moment. At first, therefore, the stately art and the musical
needs of the people were dissimilar and apart; but little by little
each gave to and took from the other, till at length, out of the
marriage of these elementaries, a third arose to become the expression
of the life of the people, partaking in likeness of both, having lost
certain qualities, having gained many more, becoming richer, broader,
more eclectic--in short, developing into the more fitting expression
of the manifold aspirations of modern days, when life is varied and
intense, and the mind gropes blindly in every direction.

This development is traceable in all art, and in the sphere of music
it is most manifest in the opera. Like all great movements the opera
began humbly. Towards the end of the sixteenth century a number of
amateurs in Florence, dissatisfied with the polyphonic school of
music, combined "to revive the musical declamation of the Greeks," to
wed poetry and music--so long dissevered--to make the music follow the
inflexion of the voice and the sense of the words. The first opera was
"Il Conte Ugolino," composed by Vicenzio Galileo--father of the famous
astronomer--and it was followed by various others, the titles of which
need not here be recorded. At first, such performances took place in
the palaces of nobles on grand occasions, when frequently both
performers and musicians were of high rank. At length, however, in
1637 a famous theorbo player, Benedetto Farrari, and Francesco
Manetti, the composer, opened in Venice an opera-house at their own
risk, and a little later brought out with great success "Le nozzi di
Peleo e di Telide" by Cavalli, a disciple of Monteverde, and it was
henceforth that the opera became, as we have said, a national
institution. Schools for singing were opened in Rome, Naples, and
Venice--the science of music made rapid strides--instruments for
orchestral purposes naturally likewise improved in quality and in
variety; and the opera developed continuously in breadth of treatment
and form in the hands of Scarlatti, Leo, Jommelli, and Cimarosa.

About the beginning of the eighteenth century a rival to the _serious_
opera sprang up in Naples--the _comic_ opera, the direct offspring of
the people, and of lower artistic standing. But as the serious opera
became more stately, more scientific, more purely formal, less human,
less the expression of direct feeling, cultivated more for art's sake
solely, the comic opera throve on the very qualities that its elder
sister rejected, till at length the greatest musicians of the day,
Pergolesi, Cimarosa, Mozart, wrote their masterpieces for it.
Ultimately the two were fused into one, that is, into the modern
Italian opera. The comic opera, as we now understand it, is of French
origin.

From Italy the opera found its way into other countries with varying
results. In England it took early root, and assimilated itself with
the earlier _masques_ which were played at Whitehall and at Inns of
Court. In the early productions in this country, however, the music
was merely incidental. During the Commonwealth, an opera entitled "The
Siege of Rhodes," composed by Dr. Charles Colman, Captain Henry Cook,
Henry Lawes, and George Hudson, was performed in 1655, under the
express license of Cromwell. Purcell seems, however, to have been the
first to see the possibility of a national English opera;--his music
to Dryden's "King Arthur," and to the "Indian Queen," is considered
very beautiful; "his recitative was as rhetorically perfect as
Lulli's, but infinitely more natural, and frequently impassioned to
the last degree; his airs are not in the Italian form, but breathe
rather the spirit of unfettered natural melody, and stand forth as
models of refinement and freedom." "The Beggar's Opera," set to music
by Dr. Pepusch, and Dr. Arne's "Artaxerxes," a translation from
Metastasia's libretto, adapted to melodious music, were deservedly
popular, and long retained a place on the stage. Nevertheless, when
the Italian opera became an institution in England, the national opera
made no further progress. During the last few years the former seems
to have practically died out in England, and it remains to be seen in
what form the English opera will revive and flourish once more as a
national product. We have good promise in the works of such musicians
as Balfe, Wallace, Sterndale Bennet, Sir G. A. Macfarren, Dr. A. C.
Mackenzie, Sir Arthur Sullivan, Mr. C. V. Stanford, and others.

The end of the sixteenth and end of the seventeenth centuries form
what has been called "the golden age of English music--aye for all
musical Europe--of the madrigal. Nowhere was the cultivation of that
noble form of pure vocal music, whether in composition or in
performance, followed with more zeal or success than in England." The
Hon. Roger North, Attorney-General to James II., in his _Memories of
Musick_, speaks thus of the state of music in the first half of the
seventeenth century--"Afterwards these (Italian _fantazias_) were
imitated by the English, who, working more elaborately, improved upon
their patterne, which gave occasion to an observation, that in vocall
the Italians, and in instrumental music the English excelled." Again
he alludes to "those authors whose performance gained the nation the
credit in excelling the Italians in all but vocall." In instrumental
music, then, in the madrigal, the cantata, and in ecclesiastical
music, England prospered. Among her most important composers were John
Dowland, Ford, Henry Lawes, John Jenkens, Pelham Humphreys, Wise,
Blow, Henry Purcell--great in secular and ecclesiastical works, in
instrumental and in vocal--Croft and Weldon; all were predecessors of
Handel, who, though one of the greatest of German composers, lived
nearly fifty years in England, composed several operas and all his
famous oratorios for England, and is therefore not unjustifiably added
to the list of English composers.

The opera was first introduced into France by Cardinal Mazarin early
in the seventeenth century, but the lyrical drama owes its origin in
that country to Lulli, who also introduced into it the ballet, which
was a favourite pastime of the young king Louis XIV. The ballet has
since become an integral part of the French and also of the later
Italian operas. It was Lulli, again, who extended the "meagre prelude"
of the Italian opera into the overture as we now know it. But as the
rise and progress of the French opera is fully portrayed in the
following musical sketches, it is needless to trace it further here.

Germany--equally with Italy the land of music, but of harmonious in
contra-distinction to melodic music, which belongs most properly to
Italy, well named the land of song--was much later in developing her
musical powers than Italy, but she cultivated them to grander and
nobler proportions; for to Germany we owe the magnificent development
of instrumental music, which culminates in the form of the sonata for
the piano, and in that of the symphony for the orchestra, in the hands
of such masters as Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven. In Germany the
opera took root by means of a translation of Rinaccini's "Dafne," set
to music by Henry Schütz in 1627, with Italian airs and German
recitative. The first German opera or _singspiel_, "Adam und Eva," by
Johann Theil, was performed in 1678, but it became national through
the works of Reinhard Keiser, whose opera "Basilino" was performed in
1693. "His style was purely German, less remarkable for its rhetorical
perfection than that of Lulli, but exhibiting far greater variety of
expression, and more earnest endeavour to attain that spirit of
Dramatic Truth which alone can render such music worthy of its
intended purpose." He was worthily followed by Hasse, Grann, by
Mozart's "Le Nozze di Figaro," "Die Zauberflöte," "Don Giovanni," and
by Beethoven's one opera "Fidelio."

The growth of a national opera in Germany and France, competing with
that of Italy, induced also the rise of party quarrels between the
adherents of the several schools; and the history of music
demonstrates the fact, often seen in the history of politics, that in
such contentions the real point at issue--the _excellence_ of the
subject in question--is lost sight of in the fierce strife of
opponents; the broader issues are obscured in the narrowing
influences of mere partizanship, wherein each side on principle shuts
its eyes equally to the merits of its adversary and to its own faults.
Thus in the following sketches are recorded the quarrels between the
adherents of Lulli and Rameau, Handel and Bonacini, Piccini and Gluck,
Mozart and Salieri, Weber and Rossini, and in the present day between
the advocates of Wagner's "Music of the Future" and those of the
"Music of the Past." "The old order changes, giving place to new," but
only after a long protracted struggle, a struggle that will not be
productive of good as long as the bitterness of partizanship exists,
whose aim is wholly to annihilate its adversary, though thereby much
that is good and fine be lost. This is not, however, the place to
discuss the importance of such strife, nor the comparative advantages
and disadvantages of its existence or non-existence--but it is as well
to draw attention to it in order to point out that in the history of
music the belligerents are usually blind to the important fact that,
inasmuch as nations differ essentially in ways of thought and action,
in character, temperament, and fundamental nature, so also must the
various phases of art differ which are their mediums of expression.

The history of the art of music is divisible into two great
epochs--the first dating from its birth about three centuries ago
under the impelling influences of the Renaissance, to the end of the
eighteenth century, when pseudo-classicism had given all it had to
give; the second dating from the rise of Romanticism in the beginning
of the nineteenth century to the present day. The revival of the
"forgotten world of old romance--that world of wonder and mystery and
spiritual beauty," no longer crippled by lack of science, and fettered
by asceticism, was to music, that youngest of the arts, a novel
influence, which pushed it vigorously in a new direction, towards the
more direct expression of the cravings of humanity--making it more
_human_, more the fitting medium expression of this democratic age.
The true romantic feeling has been described as "the ever present
apprehension of the spiritual world, and of that struggle of the soul
with earthly conditions." This later period gave "new seeing to our
eyes, which were once more opened to the mysteries and the wonder of
the universe, and the romance of man's destiny; it revived, in short,
the romantic spirit enriched by the clarity and sanity that the
renascence was able to lend."

In the opera Gluck was one of the earliest masters who came under the
influence of the new movement, and he anticipated Wagner in many of
his reforms. He decreased the importance of the singer, and increased
that of the orchestra, elaborated the recitative, and made the music
to follow the rhythm of the words, and he also gave importance to the
dramatic expression of the human emotions. In Germany Weber is styled
the Father of the Romantic opera, as in France the most noteworthy
figure is Berlioz, and the new method was further developed in the
instrumental music by Schumann, and demonstrated by other musicians,
dead and living, who, from the limited space of this volume, have not
been specially noticed--Liszt, Franz, Thomas, Brahms, Rubenstein,
Dvorák, Massinet, Bizet, Jensen, Grieg, and others. Gounod, is, of
course, unmistakably under the same influence, and may be considered
as the direct descendant of Gluck, and there is every reason to
suppose that he is the last great composer of the grand opera of
France, as Verdi is undeniably that of the Italian opera. The most
remarkable figure of the movement, he who has carried it to its utmost
limits, is Richard Wagner. At first he refused for his compositions
the name of "Music of the Future," and desired for them the more
comprehensive term of "Work of Art of the Future." It is impossible to
predict to what extent his theories will be followed: it is not
desirable that they should be blindly worked out by musicians of power
inferior to his; but they are in the right direction, and may
ultimately bring about a new art mode in music. The resources of art
are endless, being, as the Abbé Lamennais tells us, to man what
creation is to God; and music may safely be trusted to develop in such
a way as to ever be the most fitting expression of the inarticulate
cravings and aspirations of the human soul. Wagner has attempted to
unite the three arts of Painting, Poetry, and Music: and of his work a
competent judge has written--"The musical drama is undoubtedly the
highest manifestation of which men are capable. All the most refined
arts are called in to contribute to the idea. The author of a musical
drama is no more a musician, or a poet, or a painter; he is the
supreme _artist_, not fettered by the limits of one art, but able to
step over the boundaries of all the different branches of æsthetic
composition, and find the proper means for rendering his thought
wherever he wants it. This was Wagner's aim. His latter works,
'Tristram and Isolde,' the 'Niebelungen Ring,' and 'Parsifal,' are the
actuation of the theory, or at least are works showing what is the way
towards the aim." Another eminent critic, Mr. Walter Pater, writing
upon the fine arts, tells us that "_All art constantly aspires towards
the condition of music_.... It is the art of music which most
completely realises this artistic ideal, this perfect identification
of form and matter. In its ideal consummate moments, the end is not
distinct from the means, the form from the matter, the subject from
the expression; they inhere in and completely saturate each other; and
to it, therefore, to the condition of its perfect moments, all the
arts may be supposed constantly to tend and aspire. Music, then, and
not poetry, as is so often supposed, is the true type or measure of
consummate art. Therefore, although each art has its incommunicable
element, its untranslatable order of impressions, its unique mode of
reaching the 'imaginative reason,' yet the arts may be represented as
continually struggling after the law or principle of music, to a
condition which music alone completely realises."

We may rest assured--as assured as Emerson or Matthew Arnold
concerning the illimitable possibilities of poetry--that the future
has great riches in store for all lovers of music. Giants, indeed, are
they who are no longer among us, but it is not derogatory to these
great ones to believe and hope that--life being "moving music"
according to the definition of the Syrian Gnostics--the world will yet
be electrified by the genius of successors worthy of such royal
ancestry as Handel and Mozart, Beethoven and Wagner.

                                         ELIZABETH A. SHARP.

FOOTNOTE:

[A] Hawkin's _Musical History_, vol. iii., p. 441.

[Decoration]




[Decoration]

THE GREAT COMPOSERS.

[GERMAN.]




_BACH._


I.

The growth and development of German music are eminently noteworthy
facts in the history of the fine arts. In little more than a century
and a-half it reached its present high and brilliant place, its
progress being so consecutive and regular that the composers who
illustrated its well-defined epochs might fairly have linked hands in
one connected series.

To JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH must be accorded the title of "father of
modern music." All succeeding composers have bowed with reverence
before his name, and acknowledged in him the creative mind which not
only placed music on a deep scientific basis, but perfected the form
from which have been developed the wonderfully rich and varied phases
of orchestral composition. Handel, who was his contemporary, having
been born the same year, spoke of him with sincere admiration, and
called him the giant of music. Haydn wrote--"Whoever understands me
knows that I owe much to Sebastian Bach, that I have studied him
thoroughly and well, and that I acknowledge him only as my model."
Mozart's unceasing research brought to light many of his unpublished
manuscripts, and helped Germany to a full appreciation of this great
master. In like manner have the other luminaries of music placed on
record their sense of obligation to one whose name is obscure to the
general public in comparison with many of his brother composers.

Sebastian Bach was born at Eisenach on the 21st of March 1685, the son
of one of the court musicians. Left in the care of his elder brother,
who was an organist, his brilliant powers displayed themselves at an
early period. He was the descendant of a race of musicians, and even
at that date the wide-spread branches of the family held annual
gatherings of a musical character. Young Bach mastered for himself,
without much assistance, a thorough musical education at Lüneburg,
where he studied in the gymnasium and sang in the cathedral choir; and
at the age of eighteen we find him court musician at Weimar, where a
few years later he became organist and director of concerts. He had in
the meantime studied the organ at Lübeck under the celebrated
Buxtehude, and made himself thoroughly a master of the great Italian
composers of sacred music--Palestrina, Lotti, Vivaldi, and others.

At this period Germany was beginning to experience its musical
_renaissance_. The various German courts felt that throb of life and
enthusiasm which had distinguished the Italian principalities in the
preceding century in the direction of painting and sculpture. Every
little capital was a focus of artistic rays, and there was a general
spirit of rivalry among the princes, who aspired to cultivate the arts
of peace as well as those of war. Bach had become known as a gifted
musician, not only by his wonderful powers as an organist, but by two
of his earlier masterpieces--"Gott ist mein König" and "Ich hatte viel
Bekümmerniss." Under the influence of an atmosphere so artistic,
Bach's ardour for study increased with his success, and his rapid
advancement in musical power met with warm appreciation.

While Bach held the position of director of the chapel of Prince
Leopold of Anhalt-Köthen, which he assumed about the year 1720, he
went to Hamburg on a pilgrimage to see old Reinke, then nearly a
centenarian, whose fame as an organist was national, and had long been
the object of Bach's enthusiasm. The aged man listened while his
youthful rival improvised on the old choral, "Upon the Rivers of
Babylon." He shed tears of joy while he tenderly embraced Bach, and
said--"I did think that this art would die with me; but I see that you
will keep it alive."

Our musician rapidly became known far and wide throughout the musical
centres of Germany as a learned and recondite composer, as a brilliant
improviser, and as an organist beyond rivalry. Yet it was in these
last two capacities that his reputation among his contemporaries was
the most marked. It was left to a succeeding generation to fully
enlighten the world in regard to his creative powers as a musical
thinker.


II.

Though Bach's life was mostly spent at Weimar and Leipsic, he was at
successive periods chapel-master and concert-director at several of
the German courts, which aspired to shape public taste in matters of
musical culture and enthusiasm. But he was by nature singularly
retiring and unobtrusive, and recoiled from several brilliant offers
which would have brought him too much in contact with the gay world of
fashion, apparently dreading any diversion from a severe and exclusive
art-life; for within these limits all his hopes, energies, and wishes
were focalised. Yet he was not without that keen spirit of rivalry,
that love of combat, which seems to be native to spirits of the more
robust and energetic type.

In the days of the old Minnesingers, tournaments of music shared the
public taste with tournaments of arms. In Bach's time these public
competitions were still in vogue. One of these was held by Augustus
II., Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, one of the most munificent
art-patrons of Europe, but best known to fame from his intimate part
in the wars of Charles XII. of Sweden and Peter the Great of Russia.
Here Bach's principal rival was a French _virtuoso_, Marchand, who, an
exile from Paris, had delighted the king by the lightness and
brilliancy of his execution. They were both to improvise on the same
theme. Marchand heard Bach's performance and signalised his own
inferiority by declining to play, and secretly leaving the city of
Dresden. Augustus sent Bach a hundred louis d'or, but this splendid
_douceur_ never reached him, as it was appropriated by one of the
court officials.

In Bach's half-century of a studious musical life there is but little
of stirring incident to record. The significance of his career was
interior, not exterior. Twice married, and the father of twenty
children, his income was always small even for that age. Yet, by
frugality, the simple wants of himself and his family never
overstepped the limit of supply; for he seems to have been happily
mated with wives who sympathised with his exclusive devotion to art,
and united with this the virtues of old-fashioned German thrift.

Three years before his death, Bach, who had a son in the service of
the King of Prussia, yielded to the urgent invitation of that monarch
to go to Berlin. Frederick II., the conqueror of Rossbach, and one of
the greatest of modern soldiers, was a passionate lover of literature
and art, and it was his pride to collect at his court all the leading
lights of European culture. He was not only the patron of Voltaire,
whose connection with the Prussian monarch has furnished such rich
material to the anecdote-history of literature, but of all the
distinguished painters, poets, and musicians whom he could persuade by
his munificent offers (but rarely fulfilled) to suffer the burden of
his eccentricities. Frederick was not content with playing the part of
patron, but must himself also be poet, philosopher, painter, and
composer.

On the night of Bach's arrival Frederick was taking part in a concert
at his palace, and, on hearing that the great musician whose name was
in the mouths of all Germany had come, immediately sent for him
without allowing him to don a court dress, interrupting his concert
with the enthusiastic announcement, "Gentlemen, Bach is here." The
cordial hospitality and admiration of Frederick was gratefully
acknowledged by Bach, who dedicated to him a three-part fugue on a
theme composed by the king, known under the name of "A Musical
Offering." But he could not be persuaded to remain long from his
Leipsic home.

Shortly before Bach's death, he was seized with blindness, brought on
by incessant labour; and his end was supposed to have been hastened by
the severe inflammation consequent on two operations performed by an
English oculist. He departed this life July 30, 1750, and was buried
in St. John's churchyard, universally mourned by musical Germany,
though his real title to exceptional greatness was not to be read
until the next generation.


III.

Sebastian Bach was not only the descendant of a widely-known musical
family, but was himself the direct ancestor of about sixty of the
best-known organists and church composers of Germany. As a master of
organ-playing, tradition tells us that no one has been his equal, with
the possible exception of Handel. He was also an able performer on
various stringed instruments, and his preference for the clavichord[B]
led him to write a method for that instrument, which has been the
basis of all succeeding methods for the piano. Bach's teachings and
influence may be said to have educated a large number of excellent
composers and organ and piano players, among whom were Emanuel Bach,
Cramer, Hummel, and Clementi; and on his school of theory and practice
the best results in music have been built.

That Bach's glory as a composer should be largely posthumous is
probably the result of his exceeding simplicity and diffidence, for
he always shrank from popular applause; therefore we may believe his
compositions were not placed in the proper light during his life. It
was through Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven, that the musical world
learned what a master-spirit had wrought in the person of John
Sebastian Bach. The first time Mozart heard one of Bach's hymns, he
said, "Thank God! I learn something absolutely new."

Bach's great compositions include his "Preludes and Fugues" for the
organ, works so difficult and elaborate as perhaps to be above the
average comprehension, but sources of delight and instruction to all
musicians; the "Matthäus Passion," for two choruses and two
orchestras, one of the masterpieces in music, which was not produced
till a century after it was written; the "Oratorio of the Nativity of
Jesus Christ;" and a very large number of masses, anthems, cantatas,
chorals, hymns, etc. These works, from their largeness and dignity of
form, as also from their depth of musical science, have been to all
succeeding composers an art-armoury, whence they have derived and
furbished their brightest weapons. In the study of Bach's works the
student finds the deepest and highest reaches in the science of music;
for his mind seems to have grasped all its resources, and to have
embodied them with austere purity and precision of form. As Spenser is
called the poet for poets, and Laplace the mathematician for
mathematicians, so Bach is the musician for musicians. While Handel
may be considered a purely independent and parallel growth, it is not
too much to assert that without Sebastian Bach and his matchless
studies for the piano, organ, and orchestra, we could not have had the
varied musical development in sonata and symphony from such masters as
Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. Three of Sebastian Bach's sons became
distinguished musicians, and to Emanuel we owe the artistic
development of the sonata, which in its turn became the foundation of
the symphony.

FOOTNOTE:

[B] An old instrument, which may be called the nearest prototype of
the modern square piano.




_HANDEL._


I.

To the modern Englishman Handel is almost a contemporary. Paintings
and busts of this great minstrel are scattered everywhere throughout
the land. He lies in Westminster Abbey among the great poets,
warriors, and statesmen, a giant memory in his noble art. A few hours
after death the sculptor Roubiliac took a cast of his face, which he
wrought into imperishable marble; "moulded in colossal calm," he
towers above his tomb, and accepts the homage of the world benignly
like a god. Exeter Hall and the Foundling Hospital in London are also
adorned with marble statues of him.

There are more than fifty known pictures of Handel, some of them by
distinguished artists. In the best of these pictures Handel is seated
in the gay costume of the period, with sword, shot-silk breeches, and
coat embroidered with gold. The face is noble in its repose.
Benevolence is seated about the finely-shaped mouth, and the face
wears the mellow dignity of years, without weakness or austerity.
There are few collectors of prints in England and America who have not
a woodcut or a lithograph of him. His face and his music are alike
familiar to the English-speaking world.

Handel came to England in the year 1710, at the age of twenty-five.
Four years before he had met, at Naples, Scarlatti, Porpora, and
Corelli. That year had been the turning-point in his life. With one
stride he reached the front rank, and felt that no musician alive
could teach him anything.

GEORGE FREDERICK HANDEL (or Händel, as the name is written in German)
was born at Halle, Lower Saxony, in the year 1685. Like German
literature, German music is a comparatively recent growth. What little
feeling existed for the musical art employed itself in cultivating the
alien flowers of Italian song. Even eighty years after this Mozart
and Haydn were treated like lackeys and vagabonds, just as great
actors were treated in England at the same period. Handel's father
looked on music as an occupation having very little dignity.

Determined that his young son should become a doctor like himself, and
leave the divine art to Italian fiddlers and French buffoons, he did
not allow him to go to a public school even, for fear he should learn
the gamut. But the boy Handel, passionately fond of sweet sounds, had,
with the connivance of his nurse, hidden in the garret a poor spinet,
and in stolen hours taught himself how to play. At last the senior
Handel had a visit to make to another son in the service of the Duke
of Saxe-Weissenfels, and the young George was taken along to the ducal
palace. The boy strayed into the chapel, and was irresistibly drawn to
the organ. His stolen performance was made known to his father and the
duke, and the former was very much enraged at such a direct evidence
of disobedience. The duke, however, being astonished at the
performance of the youthful genius, interceded for him, and
recommended that his taste should be encouraged and cultivated instead
of repressed.

From this time forward fortune showered upon him a combination of
conditions highly favourable to rapid development. Severe training,
ardent friendship, the society of the first composers, and incessant
practice were vouchsafed him. As the pupil of the great organist
Zachau, he studied the whole existing mass of German and Italian
music, and soon exacted from his master the admission that he had
nothing more to teach him. Thence he went to Berlin to study the
opera-school, where Ariosti and Bononcini were favourite composers.
The first was friendly, but the latter, who with a first-rate head had
a cankered heart, determined to take the conceit out of the Saxon boy.
He challenged him to play at sight an elaborate piece. Handel played
it with perfect precision, and thenceforward Bononcini, though he
hated the youth as a rival, treated him as an equal.

On the death of his father Handel secured an engagement at the
Hamburg opera-house, where he soon made his mark by the ability with
which, on several occasions, he conducted rehearsals.

At the age of nineteen Handel received the offer of the Lübeck organ,
on condition that he would marry the daughter of the retiring
organist. He went down with his friend Mattheson, who it seems had
been offered the same terms. They both returned, however, in single
blessedness to Hamburg.

Though the Lübeck maiden had stirred no bad blood between them,
musical rivalry did. A dispute in the theatre resulted in a duel. The
only thing that saved Handel's life was a great brass button that
shivered his antagonist's point, when they were parted to become firm
friends again.

While at Hamburg Handel's first two operas were composed, "Almira" and
"Nero." Both of these were founded on dark tales of crime and sorrow,
and, in spite of some beautiful airs and clever instrumentation, were
musical failures, as might be expected.

Handel had had enough of manufacturing operas in Germany, and so in
July 1706 he went to Florence. Here he was cordially received; for
Florence was second to no city in Italy in its passion for encouraging
the arts. Its noble specimens of art creations in architecture,
painting, and sculpture produced a powerful impression upon the young
musician. In little more than a week's time he composed an opera,
"Rodrigo," for which he obtained one hundred sequins. His next visit
was to Venice, where he arrived at the height of the carnival.
Whatever effect Venice, with its weird and mysterious beauty, with its
marble palaces, façades, pillars, and domes, its magnificent shrines
and frescoes, produced on Handel, he took Venice by storm. Handel's
power as an organist and a harpsichord player was only second to his
strength as a composer, even when, in the full zenith of his maturity,
he composed the "Messiah" and "Judas Maccabæus."

"Il caro Sassone," the dear Saxon, found a formidable opponent as
well as dear friend in the person of Scarlatti. One night at a masked
ball, given by a nobleman, Handel was present in disguise. He sat at
the harpsichord, and astonished the company with his playing; but no
one could tell who it was that ravished the ears of the assembly.
Presently another masquerader came into the room, walked up to the
instrument, and called out: "It is either the devil or the Saxon!"
This was Scarlatti, who afterwards had with Handel, in Florence and
Rome, friendly contests of skill, in which it seemed difficult to
decide which was victor. To satisfy the Venetian public, Handel
composed the opera "Agrippina," which made a _furore_ among all the
connoisseurs of the city.

So, having seen the summer in Florence and the carnival in Venice, he
must hurry on to be in time for the great Easter celebrations in Rome.
Here he lived under the patronage of Cardinal Ottoboni, one of the
wealthiest and most liberal of the Sacred College. The cardinal was a
modern representative of the ancient patrician. Living himself in
princely luxury, he endowed hospitals and surgeries for the public. He
distributed alms, patronised men of science and art, and entertained
the public with comedies, operas, oratorios, puppet-shows, and
academic disputes. Under the auspices of this patron, Handel composed
three operas and two oratorios. Even at this early period the young
composer was parting company with the strict old musical traditions,
and his works showed an extraordinary variety and strength of
treatment.

From Rome he went to Naples, where he spent his second Italian summer,
and composed the original Italian "Aci e Galatea," which in its
English version, afterwards written for the Duke of Chandos, has
continued a marked favourite with the musical world. Thence, after a
lingering return through the sunny land where he had been so warmly
welcomed, and which had taught him most effectually, in convincing him
that his musical life had nothing in common with the traditions of
Italian musical art, he returned to Germany, settling at the court of
George of Brunswick, Elector of Hanover, and afterwards King of
England. He received commission in the course of a few months from the
elector to visit England, having been warmly invited thither by some
English noblemen. On his return to Hanover, at the end of six months,
he found the dull and pompous little court unspeakably tiresome after
the bustle of London. So it is not to be marvelled at that he took the
earliest opportunity of returning to the land which he afterwards
adopted. At this period he was not yet twenty-five years old, but
already famous as a performer on the organ and harpsichord, and as a
composer of Italian operas.

When Queen Anne died and Handel's old patron became King of England,
Handel was forbidden to appear before him, as he had not forgotten the
musician's escapade; but his peace was at last made by a little ruse.
Handel had a friend at court, Baron Kilmansegge, from whom he learned
that the king was, on a certain day, going to take an excursion on the
Thames. So he set to work to compose music for the occasion, which he
arranged to have performed on a boat which followed the king's barge.
As the king floated down the river he heard the new and delightful
"Water-Music." He knew that only one man could have composed such
music; so he sent for Handel, and sealed his pardon with a pension of
two hundred pounds a-year.


II.

Let us take a glance at the society in which the composer moved in the
heyday of his youth. His greatness was to be perfected in after-years
by bitter rivalries, persecution, alternate oscillations of poverty
and affluence, and a multitude of bitter experiences. But at this time
Handel's life was a serene and delightful one. Rival factions had not
been organised to crush him. Lord Burlington lived much at his
mansion, which was then out of town, although the house is now in the
heart of Piccadilly. The intimate friendship of this nobleman helped
to bring the young musician into contact with many distinguished
people.

It is odd to think of the people Handel met daily without knowing that
their names and his would be in a century famous. The following
picture sketches Handel and his friends in a sprightly fashion:--

"Yonder heavy, ragged-looking youth standing at the corner of Regent
Street, with a slight and rather more refined-looking companion, is
the obscure Samuel Johnson, quite unknown to fame. He is walking with
Richard Savage. As Signor Handel, 'the composer of Italian music,'
passes by, Savage becomes excited, and nudges his friend, who takes
only a languid interest in the foreigner. Johnson did not care for
music; of many noises he considered it the least disagreeable.

"Toward Charing Cross comes, in shovel-hat and cassock, the renowned
ecclesiastic, Dean Swift. He has just nodded patronisingly to
Bononcini in the Strand, and suddenly meets Handel, who cuts him dead.
Nothing disconcerted, the dean moves on, muttering his famous
epigram--

    'Some say that Signor Bononcini,
    Compared to Handel, is a ninny;
    While others vow that to him Handel
    Is hardly fit to hold a candle.
    Strange that such difference should be
    'Twixt tweedledum and tweedledee.'

"As Handel enters the 'Turk's Head' at the corner of Regent Street, a
noble coach and four drives up. It is the Duke of Chandos, who is
inquiring for Mr. Pope. Presently a deformed little man, in an
iron-grey suit, and with a face as keen as a razor, hobbles out, makes
a low bow to the burly Handel, who, helping him into the chariot, gets
in after him, and they drive off together to Cannons, the duke's
mansion at Edgeware. There they meet Mr. Addison, the poet Gay, and
the witty Arbuthnot, who have been asked to luncheon. The last number
of the _Spectator_ is on the table, and a brisk discussion soon arises
between Pope and Addison concerning the merits of the Italian opera,
in which Pope would have the better if he only knew a little more
about music, and could keep his temper. Arbuthnot sides with Pope in
favour of Mr. Handel's operas; the duke endeavours to keep the peace.
Handel probably uses his favourite exclamation, 'Vat te tevil I care!'
and consumes the _recherché_ wines and rare viands with undiminished
gusto.

"The Magnificent, or the Grand Duke, as he was called, had built
himself a palace for £230,000. He had a private chapel, and appointed
Handel organist in the room of the celebrated Dr. Pepusch, who retired
with excellent grace before one manifestly his superior. On week-days
the duke and duchess entertained all the wits and grandees in town,
and on Sundays the Edgeware Road was thronged with the gay equipages
of those who went to worship at the ducal chapel and hear Mr. Handel
play on the organ.

"The Edgeware Road was a pleasant country drive, but parts of it were
so solitary that highwaymen were much to be feared. The duke was
himself attacked on one occasion; and those who could afford it never
travelled so far out of town without armed retainers. Cannons was the
pride of the neighbourhood, and the duke--of whom Pope wrote,

    'Thus gracious Chandos is beloved at sight'--

was as popular as he was wealthy. But his name is made still more
illustrious by the Chandos anthems. They were all written at Cannons
between 1718 and 1720, and number in all eleven overtures, thirty-two
solos, six duets, a trio, quartet, and forty-seven choruses. Some of
the above are real masterpieces; but, with the exception of 'The waves
of the sea rage horribly,' and 'Who is God but the Lord?' few of them
are ever heard now. And yet these anthems were most significant in the
variety of the choruses and in the range of the accompaniments; and it
was then, no doubt, that Handel was feeling his way toward the great
and immortal sphere of his oratorio music. Indeed, his first
oratorio, 'Esther,' was composed at Cannons, as also the English
version of 'Acis and Galatea.'"

But Handel had other associates, and we must now visit Thomas Britton,
the musical coal-heaver. "There goes the famous small-coal man, a
lover of learning, a musician, and a companion of gentlemen." So the
folks used to say as Thomas Britton, the coal-heaver of Clerkenwell
Green, paced up and down the neighbouring streets with his sack of
small coal on his back, destined for one of his customers. Britton was
great among the great. He was courted by the most fashionable folk of
his day. He was a cultivated coal-heaver, who, besides his musical
taste and ability, possessed an extensive knowledge of chemistry and
the occult sciences.

Britton did more than this. He gave concerts in Aylesbury Street,
Clerkenwell, where this singular man had formed a dwelling-house, with
a concert-room and a coal-store, out of what was originally a stable.
On the ground-floor was the small-coal repository, and over that the
concert-room--very long and narrow, badly lighted, and with a ceiling
so low that a tall man could scarcely stand upright in it. The stairs
to this room were far from pleasant to ascend, and the following
facetious lines by Ward, the author of the "London Spy," confirm
this:--

    "Upon Thursdays repair
    To my palace, and there
    Hobble up stair by stair,
    But I pray ye take care
    That you break not your shins by a stumble;

    "And without e'er a souse
    Paid to me or my spouse,
    Sit as still as a mouse
    At the top of the house,
    And there you shall hear how we fumble."

Nevertheless, beautiful duchesses and the best society in town flocked
to Britton's on Thursdays--not to order coals, but to sit out his
concerts.

Let us follow the short, stout little man on a concert-day. The
customers are all served, or as many as can be. The coal-shed is made
tidy and swept up, and the coal-heaver awaits his company. There he
stands at the door of his stable, dressed in his blue blouse,
dustman's hat, and maroon kerchief tightly fastened round his neck.
The concert-room is almost full, and, pipe in hand, Britton awaits a
new visitor--the beautiful Duchess of B----. She is somewhat late (the
coachman, possibly, is not quite at home in the neighbourhood).

Here comes a carriage, which stops at the coal-shop; and, laying down
his pipe, the coal-heaver assists her grace to alight, and in the
genteelest manner escorts her to the narrow staircase leading to the
music-room. Forgetting Ward's advice, she trips laughingly and
carelessly up the stairs to the room, from which proceed faint sounds
of music, increasing to quite an _olla podrida_ of sound as the
apartment is reached--for the musicians are tuning up. The beautiful
duchess is soon recognised, and as soon in deep gossip with her
friends. But who is that gentlemanly man leaning over the
chamber-organ? That is Sir Roger L'Estrange, an admirable performer on
the violoncello, and a great lover of music. He is watching the
subtile fingering of Mr. Handel, as his dimpled hands drift leisurely
and marvellously over the keys of the instrument.

There, too, is Mr. Bannister with his fiddle--the first Englishman,
by-the-by, who distinguished himself upon the violin; there is Mr.
Woolaston, the painter, relating to Dr. Pepusch of how he had that
morning thrown up his window upon hearing Britton crying "Small coal!"
near his house in Warwick Lane, and, having beckoned him in, had made
a sketch for a painting of him; there, too, is Mr. John Hughes, author
of the "Siege of Damascus." In the background also are Mr. Philip
Hart, Mr. Henry Symonds, Mr. Obadiah Shuttleworth, Mr. Abiell
Whichello; while in the extreme corner of the room is Robe, a justice
of the peace, letting out to Henry Needler of the Excise Office the
last bit of scandal that has come into his court. And now, just as
the concert has commenced, in creeps "Soliman the Magnificent," also
known as Mr. Charles Jennens, of Great Ormond Street, who wrote many
of Handel's librettos, and arranged the words for the "Messiah."

"Soliman the Magnificent" is evidently resolved to do justice to his
title on this occasion, with his carefully-powdered wig, frills,
maroon-coloured coat, and buckled shoes; and as he makes his progress
up the room, the company draw aside for him to reach his favourite
seat near Handel. A trio of Corelli's is gone through; then Madame
Cuzzoni sings Handel's last new air; Dr. Pepusch takes his turn at the
harpsichord; another trio of Hasse, or a solo on the violin by
Bannister; a selection on the organ from Mr. Handel's new oratorio;
and then the day's programme is over. Dukes, duchesses, wits and
philosophers, poets and musicians, make their way down the satirised
stairs to go, some in carriages, some in chairs, some on foot, to
their own palaces, houses, or lodgings.


III.

We do not now think of Handel in connection with the opera. To the
modern mind he is so linked to the oratorio, of which he was the
father and the consummate master, that his operas are curiosities but
little known except to musical antiquaries. Yet some of the airs from
the Handel operas are still cherished by singers as among the most
beautiful songs known to the concert-stage.

In 1720 Handel was engaged by a party of noblemen, headed by his Grace
of Chandos, to compose operas for the Royal Academy of Music at the
Haymarket. An attempt had been made to put this institution on a firm
foundation by a subscription of £50,000, and it was opened on May 2nd
with a full company of singers engaged by Handel. In the course of
eight years twelve operas were produced in rapid succession:
"Floridante," December 9, 1721; "Ottone," January 12, 1723; "Flavio"
and "Giulio Cesare," 1723; "Tamerlano," 1724; "Rodelinda," 1725;
"Scipione," 1726; "Alessandro," 1726; "Admeto," 1727; "Siroe," 1728;
and "Tolommeo," 1728. They made as great a _furore_ among the musical
public of that day as would an opera from Gounod or Verdi in the
present. The principal airs were sung throughout the land, and
published as harpsichord pieces; for in these halcyon days of our
composers the whole atmosphere of the land was full of the flavour and
colour of Handel. Many of the melodies in these now forgotten operas
have been worked up by modern composers, and so have passed into
modern music unrecognised. It is a notorious fact that the celebrated
song, "Where the Bee sucks," by Dr. Arne, is taken from a movement in
"Rinaldo." Thus the new life of music is ever growing rich with the
dead leaves of the past. The most celebrated of these operas was
entitled "Otto." It was a work composed of one long string of
exquisite gems, like Mozart's "Don Giovanni" and Gounod's "Faust." Dr.
Pepusch, who had never quite forgiven Handel for superseding him as
the best organist in England, remarked of one of the airs, "That great
bear must have been inspired when he wrote that air." The celebrated
Madame Cuzzoni made her _début_ in it. On the second night the tickets
rose to four guineas each, and Cuzzoni received two thousand pounds
for the season.

The composer had already begun to be known for his irascible temper.
It is refreshing to learn that operatic singers of the day, however
whimsical and self-willed, were obliged to bend to the imperious
genius of this man. In a spirit of ill-timed revolt Cuzzoni declined
to sing an air. She had already given him trouble by her insolence and
freaks, which at times were unbearable. Handel at last exploded. He
flew at the wretched woman and shook her like a rat. "Ah! I always
knew you were a fery tevil," he cried, "and I shall now let you know
that I am Beelzebub, the prince of de tevils!" and, dragging her to
the open window, was just on the point of pitching her into the
street, when, in every sense of the word, she recanted. So, when
Carestini, the celebrated tenor, sent back an air, Handel was furious.
Rushing into the trembling Italian's house, he said, in his four- or
five-language style--"You tog! don't I know better as yourself vaat it
pest for you to sing? If you vill not sing all de song vaat I give
you, I vill not pay you ein stiver." Among the anecdotes told of
Handel's passion is one growing out of the composer's peculiar
sensitiveness to discords. The dissonance of the tuning-up period of
an orchestra is disagreeable to the most patient. Handel, being
peculiarly sensitive to this unfortunate necessity, always arranged
that it should take place before the audience assembled, so as to
prevent any sound of scraping or blowing. Unfortunately, on one
occasion, some wag got access to the orchestra where the ready-tuned
instruments were lying, and with diabolical dexterity put every string
and crook out of tune. Handel enters. All the bows are raised
together, and at the given beat all start off _con spirito_. The
effect was startling in the extreme. The unhappy _maestro_ rushes
madly from his place, kicks to pieces the first double-bass he sees,
and, seizing a kettle-drum, throws it violently at the leader of the
band. The effort sends his wig flying, and, rushing bareheaded to the
footlights, he stands a few moments amid the roars of the house,
snorting with rage and choking with passion. Like Burleigh's nod,
Handel's wig seemed to have been a sure guide to his temper. When
things went well, it had a certain complacent vibration; but when he
was out of humour, the wig indicated the fact in a very positive way.
The Princess of Wales was wont to blame her ladies for talking instead
of listening. "Hush, hush!" she would say. "Don't you see Handel's
wig?"

For several years after the subscription of the nobility had been
exhausted, our composer, having invested £10,000 of his own in the
Haymarket, produced operas with remarkable affluence, some of them
_pasticcio_ works, composed of all sorts of airs, in which the singers
could give their _bravura_ songs. These were "Lotario," 1729;
"Partenope," 1730; "Poro," 1731; "Ezio," 1732; "Sosarme," 1732;
"Orlando," 1733; "Ariadne," 1734; and also several minor works.
Handel's operatic career was not so much the outcome of his choice as
dictated to him by the necessity of time and circumstance. As time
went on, his operas lost public interest. The audiences dwindled, and
the overflowing houses of his earlier experience were replaced by
empty benches. This, however, made little difference with Handel's
royal patrons. The king and the Prince of Wales, with their respective
households, made it an express point to show their deep interest in
Handel's success. In illustration of this, an amusing anecdote is told
of the Earl of Chesterfield. During the performance of "Rinaldo" this
nobleman, then an equerry of the king, was met quietly retiring from
the theatre in the middle of the first act. Surprise being expressed
by a gentleman who met the earl, the latter said, "I don't wish to
disturb his Majesty's privacy."

Handel paid his singers in those days what were regarded as enormous
prices. Senisino and Carestini had each twelve hundred pounds, and
Cuzzoni two thousand, for the season. Towards the end of what may be
called the Handel season nearly all the singers and nobles forsook
him, and supported Farinelli, the greatest singer living, at the rival
house in Lincoln's Inn Fields.


IV.

From the year 1729 the career of Handel was to be a protracted battle,
in which he was sometimes victorious, sometimes defeated, but always
undaunted and animated with a lofty sense of his own superior power.
Let us take a view of some of the rival musicians with whom he came in
contact. Of all these Bononcini was the most formidable. He came to
England in 1720 with Ariosti, also a meritorious composer. Factions
soon began to form themselves around Handel and Bononcini, and a
bitter struggle ensued between these old foes. The same drama repeated
itself, with new actors, about thirty years afterwards, in Paris.
Gluck was then the German hero, supported by Marie Antoinette, and
Piccini fought for the Italian opera under the colours of the king's
mistress, Du Barry, while all the _littérateurs_ and nobles ranged
themselves on either side in bitter contest. The battle between Handel
and Bononcini, as the exponents of German and Italian music, was also
repeated in after-years between Mozart and Salieri, Weber and Rossini,
and to-day is seen in the acrimonious disputes going on between Wagner
and the Italian school. Bononcini's career in England came to an end
very suddenly. It was discovered that a madrigal brought out by him
was pirated from another Italian composer; whereupon Bononcini left
England, humiliated to the dust, and finally died obscure and alone,
the victim of a charlatan alchemist, who succeeded in obtaining all
his savings.

Another powerful rival of Handel was Porpora, or, as Handel used to
call him, "Old Borbora." Without Bononcini's fire or Handel's daring
originality, he represented the dry contrapuntal school of Italian
music. He was also a great singing master, famous throughout Europe,
and upon this his reputation had hitherto principally rested. He came
to London in 1733, under the patronage of the Italian faction,
especially to serve as a thorn in the side of Handel. His first opera,
"Ariadne," was a great success; but when he had the audacity to
challenge the great German in the field of oratorio, his defeat was so
overwhelming that he candidly admitted his rival's superiority. But he
believed that no operas in the world were equal to his own, and he
composed fifty of them during his life, extending to the days of
Haydn, whom he had the honour of teaching, while the father of the
symphony, on the other hand, cleaned Porpora's boots and powdered his
wig for him.

Another Italian opponent was Hasse, a man of true genius, who in his
old age instructed some of the most splendid singers in the history of
the lyric stage. He also married one of the most gifted and most
beautiful divas of Europe, Faustina Bordoni. The following anecdote
does equal credit to Hasse's heart and penetration: In after-years,
when he had left England, he was again sent for to take Handel's place
as conductor of opera and oratorio. Hasse inquired, "What! is Handel
dead?" On being told no, he indignantly refused, saying he was not
worthy to tie Handel's shoe-latchets.

There are also Dr. Pepusch, the Anglicised Prussian, and Dr. Greene,
both names well known in English music. Pepusch had had the leading
place, before Handel's arrival, as organist and conductor, and made a
distinct place for himself even after the sun of Handel had obscured
all of his contemporaries. He wrote the music of the "Beggar's Opera,"
which was the great sensation of the times, and which still keeps
possession of the stage. Pepusch was chiefly notable for his skill in
arranging the popular songs of the day, and probably did more than any
other composer to give the English ballad its artistic form.

The name of Dr. Greene is best known in connection with choral
compositions. His relations with Handel and Bononcini are hardly
creditable to him. He seems to have flattered each in turn. He upheld
Bononcini in the great madrigal controversy, and appears to have
wearied Handel by his repeated visits. The great Saxon easily saw
through the flatteries of a man who was in reality an ambitious rival,
and joked about him, not always in the best taste. When he was told
that Greene was giving concerts at the "Devil Tavern," near Temple
Bar, "Ah!" he exclaimed, "mein poor friend, Toctor Greene--so he is
gone to de Tevil!"

From 1732 to 1740 Handel's life presents the suggestive and
often-repeated experience in the lives of men of genius--a soul with a
great creative mission, of which it is half unconscious, partly
yielding to and partly struggling against the tendencies of the age,
yet gradually crystallising into its true form, and getting
consecrated to its true work. In these eight years Handel presented to
the public ten operas and five oratorios. It was in 1731 that the
great significant fact, though unrecognised by himself and others,
occurred, which stamped the true bent of his genius. This was the
production of his first oratorio in England. He was already playing
his operas to empty houses, the subject of incessant scandal and abuse
on the part of his enemies, but holding his way with steady
cheerfulness and courage. Twelve years before this he had composed the
oratorio of "Esther," but it was still in manuscript, uncared for and
neglected. It was finally produced by a society called Philharmonic,
under the direction of Bernard Gates, the royal-chapel master. Its
fame spread wide, and we read these significant words in one of the
old English newspapers--"'Esther,' an English oratorio, was performed
six times, and very full."

Shortly after this Handel himself conducted "Esther" at the Haymarket
by royal command. His success encouraged him to write "Deborah,"
another attempt in the same field, and it met a warm reception from
the public, March 17, 1733.

For about fifteen years Handel had struggled heroically in the
composition of Italian operas. With these he had at first succeeded;
but his popularity waned more and more, and he became finally the
continued target for satire, scorn, and malevolence. In obedience to
the drift of opinion, all the great singers, who had supported him at
the outset, joined the rival ranks or left England. In fact, it may be
almost said that the English public were becoming dissatisfied with
the whole system and method of Italian music. Colley Cibber, the actor
and dramatist, explains why Italian opera could never satisfy the
requirement of Handel, or be anything more than an artificial luxury
in England: "The truth is, this kind of entertainment is entirely
sensational." Still both Handel and his friends and his foes, all the
exponents of musical opinion in England, persevered obstinately in
warming this foreign exotic into a new lease of life.

The quarrel between the great Saxon composer and his opponents raged
incessantly both in public and private. The newspaper and the
drawing-room rang alike with venomous diatribes. Handel was called a
swindler, a drunkard, and a blasphemer, to whom Scripture even was not
sacred. The idea of setting Holy Writ to music scandalised the
Pharisees, who revelled in the licentious operas and love-songs of the
Italian school. All the small wits of the time showered on Handel
epigram and satire unceasingly. The greatest of all the wits, however,
Alexander Pope, was his firm friend and admirer; and in the "Dunciad,"
wherein the wittiest of poets impaled so many of the small fry of the
age with his pungent and vindictive shaft, he also slew some of the
most malevolent of Handel's foes.

Fielding, in _Tom Jones_, has an amusing hit at the taste of the
period--"It was Mr. Western's custom every afternoon, as soon as he
was drunk, to hear his daughter play on the harpsichord; for he was a
great lover of music, and perhaps, had he lived in town, might have
passed as a connoisseur, for he always excepted against the finest
compositions of Mr. Handel."

So much had it become the fashion to criticise Handel's new effects in
vocal and instrumental composition, that some years later Mr. Sheridan
makes one of his characters fire a pistol simply to shock the
audience, and makes him say in a stage whisper to the gallery, "This
hint, gentlemen, I took from Handel."

The composer's Oxford experience was rather amusing and suggestive. We
find it recorded that in July 1733, "one Handell, a foreigner, was
desired to come to Oxford to perform in music." Again the same writer
says--"Handell, with his lousy crew, a great number of foreign
fiddlers, had a performance for his own benefit at the theatre." One
of the dons writes of the performance as follows:--"This is an
innovation; but everyone paid his five shillings to try how a little
fiddling would sit upon him. And, notwithstanding the barbarous and
inhuman combination of such a parcel of unconscionable scamps, he
[Handel] disposed of the most of his tickets."

"Handel and his lousy crew," however, left Oxford with the prestige
of a magnificent victory. His third oratorio, "Athaliah," was received
with vast applause by a great audience. Some of his university
admirers, who appreciated academic honours more than the musician did,
urged him to accept the degree of Doctor of Music, for which he would
have to pay a small fee. The characteristic reply was a Parthian
arrow: "Vat te tevil I trow my money away for dat vich the blockhead
vish? I no vant!"


V.

In 1738 Handel was obliged to close the theatre and suspend payment.
He had made and spent during his operatic career the sum of £10,000
sterling, besides dissipating the sum of £50,000 subscribed by his
noble patrons. The rival house lasted but a few months longer, and the
Duchess of Marlborough and her friends, who ruled the opposition
clique and imported Bononcini, paid £12,000 for the pleasure of
ruining Handel. His failure as an operatic composer is due in part to
the same causes which constituted his success in oratorio and cantata.
It is a little significant to notice that, alike by the progress of
his own genius and by the force of conditions, he was forced out of
the operatic field at the very time when he strove to tighten his grip
on it.

His free introduction of choral and instrumental music, his creation
of new forms and remodelling of old ones, his entire subordination of
the words in the story to a pure musical purpose, offended the singers
and retarded the action of the drama in the eyes of the audience; yet
it was by virtue of these unpopular characteristics that the public
mind was being moulded to understand and love the form of the
oratorio.

From 1734 to 1738 Handel composed and produced a number of operatic
works, the principal ones of which were "Alcina," 1735; "Arminio,"
1737; and "Berenice," 1737. He also during these years wrote the
magnificent music to Dryden's "Alexander's Feast," and the great
funeral anthem on the occasion of Queen Caroline's death in the
latter part of the year 1737.

We can hardly solve the tenacity of purpose with which Handel
persevered in the composition of operatic music after it had ruined
him; but it was still some time before he fully appreciated the true
turn of his genius, which could not be trifled with or ignored. In his
adversity he had some consolation. His creditors were patient,
believing in his integrity. The royal family were his firm friends.

Southey tells us that Handel, having asked the youthful Prince of
Wales, then a child, and afterward George the Third, if he loved
music, answered, when the prince expressed his pleasure, "A good boy,
a good boy! You shall protect my fame when I am dead." Afterwards,
when the half-imbecile George was crazed with family and public
misfortunes, he found his chief solace in the Waverley novels and
Handel's music.

It is also an interesting fact that the poets and thinkers of the age
were Handel's firm admirers. Such men as Gay, Arbuthnot, Hughes,
Colley Cibber, Pope, Fielding, Hogarth, and Smollett, who recognised
the deep, struggling tendencies of the times, measured Handel truly.
They defended him in print, and never failed to attend his
performances, and at his benefit concerts their enthusiastic support
always insured him an overflowing house.

The popular instinct was also true to him. The aristocratic classes
sneered at his oratorios and complained at his innovations. His music
was found to be good bait for the popular gardens and the
holiday-makers of the period. Jonathan Tyers was one of the most
liberal managers of this class. He was proprietor of Vauxhall Gardens,
and Handel (_incognito_) supplied him with nearly all his music. The
composer did much the same sort of thing for Marylebone Gardens,
furbishing up old and writing new strains with an ease that well
became the urgency of the circumstances.

"My grandfather," says the Rev. J. Fountagne, "as I have been told,
was an enthusiast in music, and cultivated most of all the friendship
of musical men, especially of Handel, who visited him often, and had a
great predilection for his society. This leads me to relate an
anecdote which I have on the best authority. While Marylebone Gardens
were flourishing, the enchanting music of Handel, and probably of
Arne, was often heard from the orchestra there. One evening, as my
grandfather and Handel were walking together and alone, a new piece
was struck up by the band. 'Come, Mr. Fountagne,' said Handel, 'let us
sit down and listen to this piece; I want to know your opinion about
it.' Down they sat, and after some time the old parson, turning to his
companion, said, 'It is not worth listening to; it's very poor stuff.'
'You are right, Mr. Fountagne,' said Handel, 'it is very poor stuff; I
thought so myself when I had finished it.' The old gentleman, being
taken by surprise, was beginning to apologise; but Handel assured him
there was no necessity, that the music was really bad, having been
composed hastily, and his time for the production limited; and that
the opinion given was as correct as it was honest."


VI.

The period of Handel's highest development had now arrived. For seven
years his genius had been slowly but surely maturing, in obedience to
the inner law of his being. He had struggled long in the bonds of
operatic composition, but even here his innovations showed
conclusively how he was reaching out toward the form with which his
name was to be associated through all time. The year 1739 was one of
prodigious activity. The oratorio of "Saul" was produced, of which the
"Dead March" is still recognised as one of the great musical
compositions of all time, being one of the few intensely solemn
symphonies written in a major key. Several works now forgotten were
composed, and the great "Israel in Egypt" was written in the
incredibly short space of twenty-seven days. Of this work a
distinguished writer on music says--"Handel was now fifty-five years
old, and had entered, after many a long and weary contest, upon his
last and greatest creative period. His genius culminates in the
'Israel.' Elsewhere he has produced longer recitatives and more
pathetic arias; nowhere has he written finer tenor songs than 'The
enemy said,' or finer duets than 'The Lord is a man of war;' and there
is not in the history of music an example of choruses piled up like so
many Ossas on Pelions in such majestic strength, and hurled in open
defiance at a public whose ears were itching for Italian love-lays and
English ballads. In these twenty-eight colossal choruses we perceive
at once a reaction against and a triumph over the tastes of the age.
The wonder is, not that the 'Israel' was unpopular, but that it should
have been tolerated; but Handel, while he appears to have been for
years driven by the public, had been, in reality, driving them. His
earliest oratorio, 'Il Trionfo del Tempo' (composed in Italy), had but
two choruses; into his operas more and more were introduced, with
disastrous consequences; but when, at the zenith of his strength, he
produced a work which consisted almost entirely of these unpopular
peculiarities, the public treated him with respect, and actually sat
out three performances in one season!" In addition to these two great
oratorios, our composer produced the beautiful music to Dryden's "St.
Cæcilia Ode," and Milton's "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso." Henceforth
neither praise nor blame could turn Handel from his appointed course.
He was not yet popular with the musical _dilettanti_, but we find no
more catering to an absurd taste, no more writing of silly operatic
froth.

Our composer had always been very fond of the Irish, and, at the
invitation of the lord-lieutenant and prominent Dublin amateurs, he
crossed the channel in 1741. He was received with the greatest
enthusiasm, and his house became the resort of all the musical people
in the city of Dublin. One after another his principal works were
produced before admiring audiences in the new Music Hall in Fishamble
Street. The crush to hear the "Allegro" and "Penseroso" at the
opening performances was so great that the doors had to be closed. The
papers declared there never had been seen such a scene before in
Dublin.

Handel gave twelve performances at very short intervals, comprising
all of his finest works. In these concerts the "Acis and Galatea" and
"Alexander's Feast" were the most admired; but the enthusiasm
culminated in the rendition of the "Messiah," produced for the first
time on 13th April 1742. The performance was a beneficiary one in aid
of poor and distressed prisoners for debt in the Marshalsea in Dublin.
So, by a remarkable coincidence, the first performance of the
"Messiah" literally meant deliverance to the captives. The principal
singers were Mrs. Cibber (daughter-in-law of Colley Cibber, and
afterwards one of the greatest actresses of her time), Mrs. Avoglio,
and Mr. Dubourg. The town was wild with excitement. Critics, poets,
fine ladies, and men of fashion tore rhetoric to tatters in their
admiration. A clergyman so far forgot his Bible in his rapture as to
exclaim to Mrs. Cibber, at the close of one of her airs, "Woman, for
this be all thy sins forgiven thee." The penny-a-liners wrote that
"words were wanting to express the exquisite delight," etc.
And--supreme compliment of all, for Handel was a cynical bachelor--the
fine ladies consented to leave their hoops at home for the second
performance, that a couple of hundred or so extra listeners might be
accommodated. This event was the grand triumph of Handel's life. Years
of misconception, neglect, and rivalry were swept out of mind in the
intoxicating delight of that night's success.


VII.

Handel returned to London, and composed a new oratorio, "Samson," for
the following Lenten season. This, together with the "Messiah," heard
for the first time in London, made the stock of twelve performances.
The fashionable world ignored him altogether; the newspapers kept a
contemptuous silence; comic singers were hired to parody his noblest
airs at the great houses; and impudent Horace Walpole had the audacity
to say that he "had hired all the goddesses from farces and singers of
roast-beef, from between the acts of both theatres, with a man with
one note in his voice, and a girl with never a one; and so they sang
and made brave hallelujahs."

The new field into which Handel had entered inspired his genius to its
greatest energy. His new works for the season of 1744 were the
"Dettingen Te Deum," "Semele," and "Joseph and his Brethren;" for the
next year (he had again rented the Haymarket Theatre), "Hercules,"
"Belshazzar," and a revival of "Deborah." All these works were
produced in a style of then uncommon completeness; and the great
expense he incurred, combined with the active hostility of the
fashionable world, forced him to close his doors and suspend payment.
From this time forward Handel gave concerts whenever he chose, and
depended on the people, who so supported him by their gradually
growing appreciation, that in two years he had paid off all his debts,
and in ten years had accumulated a fortune of £10,000. The works
produced during these latter years were "Judas Maccabæus," 1747;
"Alexander," 1748; "Joshua," 1748; "Susannah," 1749; "Solomon," 1749;
"Theodora," 1750; "Choice of Hercules," 1751; "Jephthah," 1752,
closing with this a stupendous series of dramatic oratorios. While at
work on the last, his eyes suffered an attack which finally resulted
in blindness.

Like Milton in the case of "Paradise Lost," Handel preferred one of
his least popular oratorios, "Theodora." It was a great favourite with
him, and he used to say that the chorus, "He saw the lovely youth,"
was finer than anything in the "Messiah." The public were not of this
opinion, and he was glad to give away tickets to any professors who
applied for them. When the "Messiah" was again produced, two of these
gentlemen who had neglected "Theodora" applied for admission. "Oh!
your sarvant, meine Herren!" exclaimed the indignant composer. "You
are tamnable dainty! You would not go to 'Theodora'--dere was room
enough to dance dere when dat was perform." When Handel heard that an
enthusiast had offered to make himself responsible for all the boxes
the next time the despised oratorio should be given--"He is a fool,"
said he; "the Jews will not come to it as to 'Judas Maccabæus,'
because it is a Christian story; and the ladies will not come, because
it is a virtuous one."

Handel's triumph was now about to culminate in a serene and
acknowledged pre-eminence. The people had recognised his greatness,
and the reaction at last conquered all classes. Publishers vied with
each other in producing his works, and their performance was greeted
with great audiences and enthusiastic applause. His last ten years
were a peaceful and beautiful ending of a stormy career.


VIII.

Thought lingers pleasantly over this sunset period. Handel throughout
life was so wedded to his art, that he cared nothing for the delights
of woman's love. His recreations were simple--rowing, walking,
visiting his friends, and playing on the organ. He would sometimes try
to play the people out of St. Paul's Cathedral, and hold them
indefinitely. He would resort at night to his favourite tavern, the
Queen's Head, where he would smoke and drink beer with his chosen
friends. Here he would indulge in roaring conviviality and fun, and
delight his friends with sparkling satire and pungent humour, of which
he was a great master, helped by his amusing compound of English,
Italian, and German. Often he would visit the picture galleries, of
which he was passionately fond. His clumsy but noble figure could be
seen almost any morning rolling through Charing Cross; and everyone
who met old Father Handel treated him with the deepest reverence.

The following graphic narrative, taken from the _Somerset House
Gazette_, offers a vivid portraiture. Schoelcher, in his _Life of
Handel_, says that "its author had a relative, Zachary Hardcastle, a
retired merchant, who was intimately acquainted with all the most
distinguished men of his time, artists, poets, musicians, and
physicians." This old gentleman, who lived at Paper Buildings, was
accustomed to take his morning walk in the garden of Somerset House,
where he happened to meet with another old man, Colley Cibber, and
proposed to him to go and hear a competition which was to take place
at midday for the post of organist to the Temple, and he invited him
to breakfast, telling him at the same time that Dr. Pepusch and Dr.
Arne were to be with him at nine o'clock. They go in; Pepusch arrives
punctually at the stroke of nine; presently there is a knock, the door
is opened, and Handel unexpectedly presents himself. Then follows the
scene:--

"Handel: 'Vat! mein dear friend Hardgasdle--vat! you are merry py
dimes! Vat! and Misder Golley Cibbers, too! aye, and Togder Peepbush
as vell! Vell, dat is gomigal. Vell, mein friendts, andt how vags the
vorldt wid you, mein tdears? Bray, bray, do let me sit town a momend.'

"Pepusch took the great man's hat, Colley Cibber took his stick, and
my great-uncle wheeled round his reading-chair, which was somewhat
about the dimensions of that in which our kings and queens are
crowned; and then the great man sat him down.

"'Vell, I thank you, gentlemen; now I am at mein ease vonce more. Upon
mein vord, dat is a picture of a ham. It is very pold of me to gome to
preak my fastd wid you uninvided; and I have brought along wid me a
nodable abbetite; for the wader of old Fader Dems is it not a fine
pracer of the stomach?'

"'You do me great honour, Mr. Handel,' said my great-uncle. 'I take
this early visit as a great kindness.'

"'A delightful morning for the water,' said Colley Cibber.

"'Pray, did you come with oars or scullers, Mr. Handel?' said Pepusch.

"'Now, how gan you demand of me dat zilly question, you who are a
musician and a man of science, Togder Peepbush? Vat gan it concern you
whether I have one votdermans or two votdermans--whether I bull out
mine burce for to pay von shilling or two? Diavolo! I gannot go here,
or I gannot go dere, but some one shall send it to some newsbaber, as
how Misder Chorge Vrederick Handel did go somedimes last week in a
votderman's wherry, to preak his fastd wid Misder Zac. Hardgasdle; but
it shall be all the fault wid himeself, if it shall be but in print,
whether I was rowed by one votdermans or by two votdermans. So, Togder
Peepbush, you will blease to excuse me from dat.'

"Poor Dr. Pepusch was for a moment disconcerted, but it was soon
forgotten in the first dish of coffee.

"'Well, gentlemen,' said my great-uncle Zachary, looking at his
tompion, 'it is ten minutes past nine. Shall we wait more for Dr.
Arne?'

"'Let us give him another five minutes' chance, Master Hardcastle,'
said Colley Cibber; 'he is too great a genius to keep time.'

"'Let us put it to the vote,' said Dr. Pepusch, smiling. 'Who holds up
hands?'

"'I will segond your motion wid all mine heardt,' said Handel. 'I will
hold up mine feeble hands for mine oldt friendt Custos (Arne's name
was Augustine), for I know not who I wouldt waidt for, over andt above
mine oldt rival, Master Dom (meaning Pepusch). Only by your
bermission, I vill dake a snag of your ham, andt a slice of French
roll, or a modicum of chicken; for to dell you the honest fagd, I am
all pote famished, for I laid me down on mine billow in bed the lastd
nightd widout mine supper, at the instance of mine physician, for
which I am not altogeddere inglined to extend mine fastd no longer.'
Then, laughing: 'Berhaps, Mister Golley Cibbers, you may like to pote
this to the vote? But I shall not segond the motion, nor shall I holdt
up mine hand, as I will, by bermission, embloy it some dime in a
better office. So, if you please, do me the kindness for to gut me a
small slice of ham.'

"At this instant a hasty footstep was heard on the stairs, accompanied
by the humming of an air, all as gay as the morning, which was
beautiful and bright. It was the month of May.

"'Bresto! be quick,' said Handel; he knew it was Arne; 'fifteen
minutes of dime is butty well for an _ad libitum_.'

"'Mr. Arne,' said my great-uncle's man.

"A chair was placed, and the social party commenced their _déjeuner_.

"'Well, and how do you find yourself, my dear sir?' inquired Arne,
with friendly warmth.

"'Why, by the mercy of Heaven, andt the waders of Aix-la-Chapelle,
andt the addentions of mine togders andt physicians, and oggulists, of
lade years, under Providence, I am surbrizingly pedder--thank you
kindly, Misder Custos. Andt you have also been doing well of lade, as
I am bleased to hear. You see, sir,' pointing to his plate, 'you see,
sir, dat I am in the way for to regruit mine flesh wid the good viands
of Misder Zachary Hardgasdle.'

"'So, sir, I presume you are come to witness the trial of skill at the
old round church? I understand the amateurs expect a pretty sharp
contest,' said Arne.

"'Gondest,' echoed Handel, laying down his knife and fork. 'Yes, no
doubt; your amadeurs have a bassion for gondest. Not vot it vos in our
remembrance. Hey, mine friendt? Ha, ha, ha!'

"'No, sir, I am happy to say those days of envy and bickering, and
party feeling, are gone and past. To be sure we had enough of such
disgraceful warfare: it lasted too long.'

"'Why, yes; it tid last too long, it bereft me of mine poor limbs: it
tid bereave of that vot is the most blessed gift of Him vot made us,
andt not wee ourselves. And for vot? Vy, for noding in the vorldt pode
the bleasure and bastime of them who, having no widt, nor no want, set
at loggerheads such men as live by their widts, to worry and destroy
one andt anodere as wild beasts in the Golloseum in the dimes of the
Romans.'

"Poor Dr. Pepusch during this conversation, as my great-uncle
observed, was sitting on thorns; he was in the confederacy
professionally only.

"'I hope, sir,' observed the doctor, 'you do not include me among
those who did injustice to your talents?'

"'Nod at all, nod at all; God forbid! I am a great admirer of the airs
of the "Peggar's Obera," andt every professional gendtleman must do
his best for to live.'

"This mild return, couched under an apparent compliment, was well
received; but Handel, who had a talent for sarcastic drolling, added--

"'Pute why blay the Peggar yourself, Togder, andt adapt oldt pallad
humsdrum, ven, as a man of science, you could gombose original airs of
your own? Here is mine friendt, Custos Arne, who has made a road for
himself, for to drive along his own genius to the demple of fame.'
Then, turning to our illustrious Arne, he continued, 'Min friendt
Custos, you and I must meed togeder somedimes before it is long, and
hold a _têde-à-têde_ of old days vat is gone; ha, ha! Oh! it is
gomigal now dat id is all gone by. Custos, to nod you remember as it
was almost only of yesterday dat she-devil Guzzoni, andt dat other
brecious taughter of iniquity, Pelzebub's spoiled child, the
bretty-faced Faustina? Oh! the mad rage vot I have to answer for, vot
with one and the oder of these fine latdies' airs andt graces. Again,
to you nod remember dat ubstardt buppy Senesino, and the goxgomb
Farinelli? Next, again, mine somedimes nodtable rival Bononcini, and
old Borbora? Ha, ha, ha! all at war wid me, andt all at war wid
themselves. Such a gonfusion of rivalshibs, andt double-facedness,
andt hybocrisy, and malice, vot would make a gomigal subject for a
boem in rhymes, or a biece for the stage, as I hopes to be saved.'"


IX.

We now turn from the man to his music. In his daily life with the
world we get a spectacle of a quick, passionate temper, incased in a
great burly frame, and raging into whirlwinds of excitement at small
provocation; a gourmand devoted to the pleasure of the table,
sometimes indeed gratifying his appetite in no seemly fashion,
resembling his friend Dr. Samuel Johnson in many notable ways. Handel
as a man was of the earth, earthly, in the extreme, and marked by many
whimsical and disagreeable faults. But in his art we recognise a
genius so colossal, massive, and self-poised as to raise admiration to
its superlative of awe. When Handel had disencumbered himself of
tradition, convention, the trappings of time and circumstances, he
attained a place in musical creation, solitary and unique. His genius
found expression in forms large and austere, disdaining the luxuriant
and trivial. He embodied the spirit of Protestantism in music; and a
recognition of this fact is probably the key of the admiration felt
for him by the Anglo-Saxon races.

Handel possessed an inexhaustible fund of melody of the noblest order;
an almost unequalled command of musical expression; perfect power over
all the resources of his science; the faculty of wielding huge masses
of tone with perfect ease and felicity; and he was without rival in
the sublimity of ideas. The problem which he so successfully solved in
the oratorio was that of giving such dramatic force to the music, in
which he clothed the sacred texts, as to be able to dispense with all
scenic and stage effects. One of the finest operatic composers of the
time, the rival of Bach as an instrumental composer, and performer on
the harpsichord or organ, the unanimous verdict of the musical world
is that no one has ever equalled him in completeness, range of effect,
elevation and variety of conception, and sublimity in the treatment of
sacred music. We can readily appreciate Handel's own words when
describing his own sensations in writing the "Messiah"--"I did think I
did see all heaven before me, and the great God himself."

The great man died on Good Friday night, 1759, aged seventy-five
years. He had often wished "he might breathe his last on Good Friday,
in hope," he said, "of meeting his good God, his sweet Lord and
Saviour, on the day of his resurrection." The old blind musician had
his wish.




_GLUCK._


I.

Gluck is a noble and striking figure in musical history, alike in the
services he rendered to his art and the dignity and strength of his
personal character. As the predecessor of Wagner and Meyerbeer, who
among the composers of this century have given opera its largest and
noblest expression, he anticipated their important reforms, and in his
musical creations we see all that is best in what is called the new
school.

The man, the Ritter CHRISTOPH WILIBALD VON GLUCK, is almost as
interesting to us as the musician. He moved in the society of princes
with a calm and haughty dignity, their conscious peer, and never
prostituted his art to gain personal advancement or to curry favour
with the great ones of the earth. He possessed a majesty of nature
which was the combined effect of personal pride, a certain lofty
self-reliance, and a deep conviction that he was the apostle of an
important musical mission.

Gluck's whole life was illumined by an indomitable sense of his own
strength, and lifted by it into an atmosphere high above that of his
rivals, whom the world has now almost forgotten, except as they were
immortalised by being his enemies. Like Milton and Bacon, who put on
record their knowledge that they had written for all time, Gluck had a
magnificent consciousness of himself. "I have written," he says, "the
music of my 'Armida' in such a manner as to prevent its soon growing
old." This is a sublime vanity inseparable from the great aggressive
geniuses of the world, the wind of the speed which measures their
force of impact.

Duplessis's portrait of Gluck almost takes the man out of paint to put
him in flesh and blood. He looks down with wide-open eyes, swelling
nostrils, firm mouth, and massive chin. The noble brow, dome-like and
expanded, relieves the massiveness of his face; and the whole
countenance and figure express the repose of a powerful and passionate
nature schooled into balance and symmetry: altogether the presentment
of a great man, who felt that he could move the world and had found
the _pou sto_. Of a large and robust type of physical beauty, Nature
seems to have endowed him on every hand with splendid gifts. Such a
man as this could say with calm simplicity to Marie Antoinette, who
inquired one night about his new opera of "Armida," then nearly
finished--"_Madame, il est bientôt fini, et vraiment ce sera
superbe._"

One night Handel listened to a new opera from a young and unknown
composer, the "Caduta de' Giganti," one of Gluck's very earliest
works, written when he was yet corrupted with all the vices of the
Italian method. "Mein Gott! he is an idiot," said Handel; "he knows no
more of counterpoint then mein cook." Handel did not see with
prophetic eyes. He never met Gluck afterwards, and we do not know his
later opinion of the composer of "Orpheus and Eurydice" and "Iphigenia
in Tauris." But Gluck had ever the profoundest admiration for the
author of the "Messiah." There was something in these two strikingly
similar, as their music was alike characterised by massive simplicity
and strength, not rough-hewn, but shaped into austere beauty.

Before we relate the great episode of our composer's life, let us take
a backward glance at his youth. He was the son of a forester in the
service of Prince Lobkowitz, born at Weidenwang in the Upper
Palatinate, 2nd July 1714. Gluck was devoted to music from early
childhood, but received, in connection with the musical art, an
excellent education at the Jesuit College of Kommotau. Here he learned
singing, the organ, the violin and harpsichord, and had a mind to get
his living by devoting his musical talents to the Church. The Prague
public recognised in him a musician of fair talent, but he found but
little encouragement to stay at the Bohemian capital. So he decided to
finish his musical education at Vienna, where more distinguished
masters could be had. Prince Lobkowitz, who remembered his
gamekeeper's son, introduced the young man to the Italian Prince
Melzi, who induced him to accompany him to Milan. As the pupil of the
Italian organist and composer, Sammartini, he made rapid progress in
operatic composition. He was successful in pleasing Italian audiences,
and in four years produced eight operas, for which the world has
forgiven him in forgetting them. Then Gluck must go to London to see
what impression he could make on English critics; for London then, as
now, was one of the great musical centres, where every successful
composer or singer must get his brevet.

Gluck's failure to please in London was, perhaps, an important epoch
in his career. With a mind singularly sensitive to new impressions,
and already struggling with fresh ideas in the laws of operatic
composition, Handel's great music must have had a powerful effect in
stimulating his unconscious progress. His last production in England,
"Pyramus and Thisbe," was a _pasticcio_ opera, in which he embodied
the best bits out of his previous works. The experiment was a glaring
failure, as it ought to have been; for it illustrated the Italian
method, which was designed for mere vocal display, carried to its
logical absurdity.


II.

In 1748 Gluck settled in Vienna, where almost immediately his opera of
"Semiramide" was produced. Here he conceived a passion for Marianne,
the daughter of Joseph Pergin, a rich banker; but on account of the
father's distaste for a musical son-in-law, the marriage did not occur
till 1750. "Telemacco" and "Clemenza di Tito" were composed about this
time, and performed in Vienna, Rome, and Naples. In 1755 our composer
received the order of the Golden Spur from the Roman pontiff in
recognition of the merits of two operas performed at Rome, called "Il
Trionfo di Camillo" and "Antigono." Seven years were now actively
employed in producing operas for Vienna and Italian cities, which,
without possessing great value, show the change which had begun to
take place in this composer's theories of dramatic music. In Paris he
had been struck with the operas of Rameau, in which the declamatory
form was strongly marked. His early Italian training had fixed in his
mind the importance of pure melody. From Germany he obtained his
appreciation of harmony, and had made a deep study of the uses of the
orchestra. So we see this great reformer struggling on with many
faltering steps towards that result which he afterwards summed up in
the following concise description--"My purpose was to restrict music
to its true office, that of ministering to the expression of poetry,
without interrupting the action."

In Calzabigi Gluck had met an author who fully appreciated his ideas,
and had the talent of writing a libretto in accordance with them. This
coadjutor wrote all the librettos that belonged to Gluck's greatest
period. He had produced his "Orpheus and Eurydice" and "Alceste" in
Vienna with a fair amount of success; but his tastes drew him strongly
to the French stage, where the art of acting and declamation was
cultivated then, as it is now, to a height unknown in other parts of
Europe. So we find him gladly accepting an offer from the managers of
the French Opera to migrate to the great city, in which were
fermenting with much noisy fervour those new ideas in art, literature,
politics, and society, which were turning the eyes of all Europe to
the French capital.

The world's history has hardly a more picturesque and striking
spectacle, a period more fraught with the working of powerful forces,
than that exhibited by French society in the latter part of Louis
XV.'s reign. We see a court rotten to the core with indulgence in
every form of sensuality and vice, yet glittering with the veneer of a
social polish which made it the admiration of the world. A dissolute
king was ruled by a succession of mistresses, and all the courtiers
vied in emulating the vice and extravagance of their master. Yet in
this foul compost-heap art and literature flourished with a tropical
luxuriance. Voltaire was at the height of his splendid career, the
most brilliant wit and philosopher of his age. The lightnings of his
mockery attacked with an incessant play the social, political, and
religious shams of the period. People of all classes, under the
influence of his unsparing satire, were learning to see with clear
eyes what an utterly artificial and polluted age they lived in, and
the cement which bound society in a compact whole was fast melting
under this powerful solvent.

Rousseau, with his romantic philosophy and eloquence, had planted his
new ideas deep in the hearts of his contemporaries, weary with the
artifice and the corruption of a time which had exhausted itself and
had nothing to promise under the old social _régime_. The ideals
uplifted in the _Nouvelle Héloïse_ and the _Confessions_ awakened
men's minds with a great rebound to the charms of Nature, simplicity,
and a social order untrammelled by rules or conventions. The eloquence
with which these theories were propounded carried the French people by
storm, and Rousseau was a demigod at whose shrine worshipped alike
duchess and peasant. The Encyclopædists stimulated the ferment by
their literary enthusiasm, and the heartiness with which they
co-operated with the whole current of revolutionary thought.

The very atmosphere was reeking with the prophecy of imminent change.
Versailles itself did not escape the contagion. Courtiers and
aristocrats, in worshipping the beautiful ideals set up by the new
school, which were as far removed as possible from their own effete
civilisation, did not realise that they were playing with the fire
which was to burn out the whole social edifice of France with such a
terrible conflagration; for, back and beneath all this, there was a
people groaning under long centuries of accumulated wrong, in whose
imbruted hearts the theories applauded by their oppressors with a sort
of _doctrinaire_ delight were working with a fatal fever.


III.

In this strange condition of affairs Gluck found his new sphere of
labour--Gluck, himself overflowing with the revolutionary spirit, full
of the enthusiasm of reform. At first he carried everything before
him. Protected by royalty, he produced, on the basis of an admirable
libretto by Du Rollet, one of the great wits of the time, "Iphigenia
in Aulis." It was enthusiastically received. The critics, delighted to
establish the reputation of one especially favoured by the Dauphiness
Marie Antoinette, exhausted superlatives on the new opera. The Abbé
Arnaud, one of the leading _dilettanti_, exclaimed--"With such music
one might found a new religion!" To be sure, the connoisseurs could
not understand the complexities of the music; but, following the rule
of all connoisseurs before or since, they considered it all the more
learned and profound. So led, the general public clapped their hands,
and agreed to consider Gluck as a great composer. He was called the
Hercules of music; the opera-house was crammed night after night; his
footsteps were dogged in the streets by admiring enthusiasts; the wits
and poets occupied themselves with composing sonnets in his praise;
brilliant courtiers and fine ladies showered valuable gifts on the new
musical oracle; he was hailed as the exponent of Rousseauism in music.
We read that it was considered to be a priceless privilege to be
admitted to the rehearsal of a new opera, to see Gluck conduct in
nightcap and dressing-gown.

Fresh adaptations of "Orpheus and Eurydice" and of "Alceste" were
produced. The first, brought out in 1784, was received with an
enthusiasm which could be contented only with forty-nine consecutive
performances. The second act of this work has been called one of the
most astonishing productions of the human mind. The public began to
show signs of fickleness, however, on the production of the "Alceste."
On the first night a murmur arose among the spectators--"The piece has
fallen." Abbé Arnaud, Gluck's devoted defender, arose in his box and
replied, "Yes! fallen from heaven." While Mademoiselle Levasseur was
singing one of the great airs, a voice was heard to say, "Ah! you tear
out my ears;" to which the caustic rejoinder was, "How fortunate, if
it is to give you others!"

Gluck himself was badly bitten, in spite of his hatred of shams and
shallowness, with the pretences of the time, which professed to dote
on nature and simplicity. In a letter to his old pupil, Marie
Antoinette, wherein he disclaims any pretension of teaching the French
a new school of music, he says--"I see with satisfaction that the
language of Nature is the universal language."

So, here on the crumbling crust of a volcano, where the volatile
French court danced and fiddled and sang, unreckoning of what was soon
to come, our composer and his admirers patted each other on the back
with infinite complacency.

But after this high tide of prosperity there was to come a reverse. A
powerful faction, that for a time had been crushed by Gluck's triumph,
after a while raised their heads and organised an attack. There were
second-rate composers whose scores had been laid on the shelf in the
rage for the new favourite; musicians who were shocked and enraged at
the difficulties of his instrumentation; wits who, having praised
Gluck for a while, thought they could now find a readier field for
their quills in satire; and a large section of the public who changed
for no earthly reason but that they got tired of doing one thing.

Therefore, the Italian Piccini was imported to be pitted against the
reigning deity. The French court was broken up into hostile ranks.
Marie Antoinette was Gluck's patron, but Madame Du Barry, the king's
mistress, declared for Piccini. Abbé Arnaud fought for Gluck; but the
witty Marmontel was the advocate of his rival. The keen-witted Du
Rollet was Gluckist; but La Harpe, the eloquent, was Piccinist. So
this battle-royal in art commenced and raged with virulence. The
green-room was made unmusical with contentions carried out in polite
Billingsgate. Gluck tore up his unfinished score in rage when he
learned that his rival was to compose an opera on the same libretto.
La Harpe said--"The famous Gluck may puff his own compositions, but he
can't prevent them from boring us to death." Thus the wags of Paris
laughed and wrangled over the musical rivals. Berton, the new
director, fancied he could soften the dispute and make the two
composers friends; so at a dinner-party, when they were all in their
cups, he proposed that they should compose an opera jointly. This was
demurred to; but it was finally arranged that they should compose an
opera on the same subject.

"Iphigenia in Tauris," Gluck's second "Iphigenia," produced in 1779,
was such a masterpiece that his rival shut his own score in his
portfolio, and kept it two years. All Paris was enraptured with this
great work, and Gluck's detractors were silenced in the wave of
enthusiasm which swept the public. Abbé Arnaud's opinion was the echo
of the general mind--"There was but one beautiful part, and that was
the whole of it." This opera may be regarded as the most perfect
example of Gluck's school in making the music the full reflex of the
dramatic action. While Orestes sings in the opera, "My heart is calm,"
the orchestra continues to paint the agitation of his thoughts. During
the rehearsal the musician failed to understand the exigency and
ceased playing. The composer cried out, in a rage, "Don't you see he
is lying? Go on, go on; he has just killed his mother."

On one occasion, when he was praising Rameau's chorus of "Castor and
Pollux," an admirer of his flattered him with the remark, "But what a
difference between this chorus and that of your 'Iphigenia!'" "Yet it
is very well done," said Gluck; "one is only a religious ceremony, the
other is a real funeral." He was wont to say that in composing he
always tried to forget he was a musician.

Gluck, however, a few months subsequent to this, was so much
humiliated at the non-success of "Echo and Narcissus," that he left
Paris in bitter irritation, in spite of Marie Antoinette's pleadings
that he should remain at the French capital.

The composer was now advanced in years, and had become impatient and
fretful. He left Paris for Vienna in 1780, having amassed considerable
property. There, as an old, broken-down man, he listened to the young
Mozart's new symphonies and operas, and applauded them with great
zeal: for Gluck, though fiery and haughty in the extreme, was
singularly generous in recognising the merits of others.

This was exhibited in Paris in his treatment of Méhul, the Belgian
composer, then a youth of sixteen, who had just arrived in the gay
city. It was on the eve of the first representation of "Iphigenia in
Tauris," when the operatic battle was agitating the public. With all
the ardour of a novice and a devotee, the young musical student
immediately threw himself into the affray, and by the aid of a friend
he succeeded in gaining admittance to the theatre for the final
rehearsal of Gluck's opera. This so enchanted him that he resolved to
be present at the public performance. But, unluckily for the resolve,
he had no money, and no prospect of obtaining any; so, with a
determination and a love for art which deserve to be remembered, he
decided to hide himself in one of the boxes and there to wait for the
time of representation.

"At the end of the rehearsal," writes George Hogarth in his _Memoirs
of the Drama_, "he was discovered in his place of concealment by the
servants of the theatre, who proceeded to turn him out very roughly.
Gluck, who had not left the house, heard the noise, came to the spot,
and found the young man, whose spirit was roused, resisting the
indignity with which he was treated. Méhul, finding in whose presence
he was, was ready to sink with confusion; but, in answer to Gluck's
questions, he told him that he was a young musical student from the
country, whose anxiety to be present at the performance of the opera
had led him into the commission of an impropriety. Gluck, as may be
supposed, was delighted with a piece of enthusiasm so flattering to
himself, and not only gave his young admirer a ticket of admission,
but desired his acquaintance." From this artistic _contretemps_, then,
arose a friendship alike creditable to the goodness and generosity of
Gluck, as it was to the sincerity and high order of Méhul's musical
talent.

Gluck's death, in 1787, was caused by over-indulgence in wine at a
dinner which he gave to some of his friends. The love of stimulants
had grown upon him in his old age, and had become almost a passion. An
enforced abstinence of some months was succeeded by a debauch, in
which he drank an immense quantity of brandy. The effects brought on a
fit of apoplexy, of which he died, aged seventy-three.

Gluck's place in musical history is peculiar and well marked. He
entered the field of operatic composition when it was hampered with a
great variety of dry forms, and utterly without soul and poetic
spirit. The object of composers seemed to be to show mere contrapuntal
learning, or to furnish singers opportunity to display vocal agility.
The opera, as a large and symmetrical expression of human emotions,
suggested in the collisions of a dramatic story, was utterly an
unknown quantity in art. Gluck's attention was early called to this
radical inconsistency; and, though he did not learn for many years to
develop his musical ideas according to a theory, and never carried
that theory to the logical results insisted on by his great
after-type, Wagner, he accomplished much in the way of sweeping
reform. He elaborated the recitative or declamatory element in opera
with great care, and insisted that his singers should make this the
object of their most careful efforts. The arias, duos, quartets, etc.,
as well as the choruses and orchestral parts, were made consistent
with the dramatic motive and situations. In a word, Gluck aimed with a
single-hearted purpose to make music the expression of poetry and
sentiment.

The principles of Gluck's school of operatic writing may be briefly
summarised as follows:--That dramatic music can only reach its highest
power and beauty when joined to a simple and poetic text, expressing
passions true to Nature; that music can be made the language of all
the varied emotions of the heart; that the music of an opera must
exactly follow the rhythm and melody of the words; that the orchestra
must be only used to strengthen and intensify the feeling embodied in
the vocal parts, as demanded by the text or dramatic situation. We get
some further light on these principles from Gluck's letter of
dedication to the Grand-Duke of Tuscany on the publication of
"Alceste." He writes:--"I am of opinion that music must be to poetry
what liveliness of colour and a happy mixture of light and shade are
for a faultless and well-arranged drawing, which serve to add life to
the figures without injuring the outlines; ... that the overture
should prepare the auditors for the character of the action which is
to be presented, and hint at the progress of the same; that the
instruments must be employed according to the degree of interest and
passion; that the composer should avoid too marked a disparity in the
dialogue between the air and recitative, in order not to break the
sense of a period, or interrupt the energy of the action.... Finally,
I have even felt compelled to sacrifice rules to the improvement of
the effect."

We find in this composer's music, therefore, a largeness and dignity
of treatment which have never been surpassed. His command of melody is
quite remarkable, but his use of it is under severe artistic
restraint; for it is always characterised by breadth, simplicity, and
directness. He aimed at and attained the symmetrical balance of an old
Greek play.




_HAYDN._


I.

"Papa Haydn!" Thus did Mozart ever speak of his foster-father in
music, and the title, transmitted to posterity, admirably expressed
the sweet, placid, gentle nature, whose possessor was personally
beloved no less than he was admired. His life flowed, broad and
unruffled, like some great river, unvexed for the most part by the
rivalries, jealousies, and sufferings, oftentimes self-inflicted,
which have harassed the careers of other great musicians. He remained
to the last the favourite of the imperial court of Vienna, and princes
followed his remains to their last resting-place.

JOSEPH HAYDN was the eldest of the twenty children of Matthias Haydn,
a wheelwright at Rohrau, Lower Austria, where he was born in 1732. At
the age of twelve years he was engaged to sing in Vienna. He became a
chorister in St. Stephen's Church, but offended the choir-master by
the revolt on the part of himself and parents from submitting to the
usual means then taken to perpetuate a fine soprano in boys. So Haydn,
who had surreptitiously picked up a good deal of musical knowledge
apart from the art of singing, was at the age of sixteen turned out on
the world. A compassionate barber, however, took him in, and Haydn
dressed and powdered wigs downstairs, while he worked away at a little
worm-eaten harpsichord at night in his room. Unfortunate boy! he
managed to get himself engaged to the barber's daughter, Anne Keller,
who was for a good while the Xantippe of his gentle life, and he paid
dearly for his father-in-law's early hospitality.

The young musician soon began to be known, as he played the violin in
one church, the organ in another, and got some pupils. His first rise
was his acquaintance with Metastasio, the poet-laureate of the court.
Through him Haydn got introduced to the mistress of the Venetian
ambassador, a great musical enthusiast, and in her circle he met
Porpora, the best music-master in the world, but a crusty, snarling old
man. Porpora held at Vienna the position of musical dictator and censor,
and he exercised the tyrannical privileges of his post mercilessly.
Haydn was a small, dark-complexioned, insignificant-looking youth, and
Porpora, of course, snubbed him most contemptuously. But Haydn wanted
instruction, and no one in the world could give it so well as the savage
old _maestro_. So he performed all sorts of menial services for him,
cleaned his shoes, powdered his wig, and ran all his errands. The
result was that Porpora softened and consented to give his young admirer
lessons--no great hardship, for young Haydn proved a most apt and gifted
pupil. And it was not long either before the young musician's
compositions attracted public attention and found a sale. The very
curious relations between Haydn and Porpora are brilliantly sketched in
George Sand's _Consuelo_.

At night Haydn, accompanied by his friends, was wont to wander about
Vienna by moonlight, and serenade his patrons with trios and quartets
of his own composition. He happened one night to stop under the window
of Bernardone Kurz, a director of a theatre and the leading clown of
Vienna. Down rushed Kurz very excitedly. "Who are you?" he shrieked.
"Joseph Haydn." "Whose music is it?" "Mine." "The deuce it is! And at
your age, too!" "Why, I must begin with something." "Come along
upstairs."

The enthusiastic director collared his prize, and was soon deep in
explaining a wonderful libretto, entitled "The Devil on Two Sticks."
To write music for this was no easy matter; for it was to represent
all sorts of absurd things, among others a tempest. The tempest made
Haydn despair, and he sat at the piano, banging away in a reckless
fashion, while the director stood behind him, raving in a disconnected
way as to his meaning. At last the distracted pianist brought his
fists simultaneously down upon the key-board, and made a rapid sweep
of all the notes.

"Bravo! bravo! that is the tempest!" cried Kurz.

The buffoon also laid himself on a chair, and had it carried about the
room, during which he threw out his limbs in imitation of the act of
swimming. Haydn supplied an accompaniment so suitable that Kurz soon
landed on _terra firma_, and congratulated the composer, assuring him
that he was the man to compose the opera. By this stroke of good luck
our young musician received one hundred and thirty florins.


II.

At the age of twenty-eight Haydn composed his first symphony. Soon
after this he attracted the attention of the old Prince Esterhazy, all
the members of whose family have become known in the history of music
as generous Mæcenases of the art.

"What! you don't mean to say that little blackamoor" (alluding to
Haydn's brown complexion and small stature) "composed that symphony?"

"Surely, prince," replied the director Friedburg, beckoning to Joseph
Haydn, who advanced towards the orchestra.

"Little Moor," says the old gentleman, "you shall enter my service. I
am Prince Esterhazy. What's your name?"

"Haydn."

"Ah! I've heard of you. Get along and dress yourself like a
_Kapellmeister_. Clap on a new coat, and mind your wig is curled.
You're too short. You shall have red heels; but they shall be high,
that your stature may correspond with your merit."

So he went to live at Eisenstadt in the Esterhazy household, and
received a salary of four hundred florins, which was afterwards raised
to one thousand by Prince Nicholas Esterhazy. Haydn continued the
intimate friend and associate of Prince Nicholas for thirty years, and
death only dissolved the bond between them. In the Esterhazy household
the life of Haydn was a very quiet one, a life of incessant and happy
industry; for he poured out an incredible number of works, among them
not a few of his most famous ones. So he spent a happy life in hard
labour, alternated with delightful recreations at the Esterhazy
country-seat, mountain rambles, hunting and fishing, open-air
concerts, musical evenings, etc.

A French traveller who visited Esterhazy about 1782 says--"The château
stands quite solitary, and the prince sees nobody but his officials
and servants, and strangers who come hither from curiosity. He has a
puppet-theatre, which is certainly unique in character. Here the
grandest operas are produced. One knows not whether to be amazed or
to laugh at seeing 'Alceste,' 'Alcides,' etc., put on the stage with
all due solemnity and played by puppets. His orchestra is one of the
best I ever heard, and the great Haydn is his court and theatre
composer. He employs a poet for his singular theatre, whose humour and
skill in suiting the grandest subjects for the stage, and in parodying
the gravest effects, are often exceedingly happy. He often engages a
troupe of wandering players for months at a time, and he himself and
his retinue form the entire audience. They are allowed to come on the
stage uncombed, drunk, their parts not half learned, and half dressed.
The prince is not for the serious and tragic, and he enjoys it when
the players, like Sancho Panza, give loose reins to their humour."

Yet Haydn was not perfectly contented. He would have been had it not
been for his terrible wife, the hair-dresser's daughter, who had a
dismal, mischievous, sullen nature, a venomous tongue, and a savage
temper. She kept Haydn in hot water continually, till at last he broke
loose from this plague by separating from her. Scandal says that
Haydn, who had a very affectionate and sympathetic nature, found ample
consolation for marital infelicity in the charms and society of the
lovely Boselli, a great singer. He had her picture painted, and
humoured all her whims and caprices, to the sore depletion of his
pocket.

In after-years again he was mixed up in a little affair with the great
Mrs. Billington, whose beautiful person was no less marked than her
fine voice. Sir Joshua Reynolds was painting her portrait for him, and
had represented her as St. Cecilia listening to celestial music. Haydn
paid her a charming compliment at one of the sittings.

"What do you think of the charming Billington's picture?" said Sir
Joshua.

"Yes," said Haydn, "it is indeed a beautiful picture. It is just like
her, but there's a strange mistake."

"What is that?"

"Why, you have painted her listening to the angels, when you ought to
have painted the angels listening to her."

At one time, during Haydn's connection with Prince Esterhazy, the
latter, from motives of economy, determined to dismiss his celebrated
orchestra, which he supported at great expense. Haydn was the leader,
and his patron's purpose caused him sore pain, as indeed it did all
the players, among whom were many distinguished instrumentalists.
Still, there was nothing to be done but for all concerned to make
themselves as cheerful as possible under the circumstances; so, with
that fund of wit and humour which seems to have been concealed under
the immaculate coat and formal wig of the strait-laced Haydn, he set
about composing a work for the last performance of the royal band, a
work which has ever since borne the appropriate title of the "Farewell
Symphony."

On the night appointed for the last performance a brilliant company,
including the prince, had assembled. The music of the new symphony
began gaily enough--it was even merry. As it went on, however, it
became soft and dreamy. The strains were sad and "long drawn out." At
length a sorrowful wailing began. One instrument after another left
off, and each musician, as his task ended, blew out his lamp and
departed with his music rolled up under his arm.

Haydn was the last to finish, save one, and this was the prince's
favourite violinist, who said all that he had to say in a brilliant
violin cadenza, when, behold! he made off.

The prince was astonished. "What is the meaning of all this?" cried
he.

"It is our sorrowful farewell," answered Haydn.

This was too much. The prince was overcome, and, with a good laugh,
said: "Well, I think I must reconsider my decision. At any rate we
will not say 'good-bye' now."


III.

During the thirty years of Haydn's quiet life with the Esterhazys he
had been gradually acquiring an immense reputation in France, England
and Spain, of which he himself was unconscious. His great symphonies
had stamped him world-wide as a composer of remarkable creative
genius. Haydn's modesty prevented him from recognising his own
celebrity. Therefore, we can fancy his astonishment when, shortly
after the death of Prince Nicholas Esterhazy, a stranger called on him
and said, "I am Salomon, from London, and must strike a bargain with
you for that city immediately."

Haydn was dazed with the suddenness of the proposition, but the old
ties were broken up, and his grief needed recreation and change.
Still, he had many beloved friends, whose society it was hard to
leave. Chief among these was Mozart. "Oh, papa," said Mozart, "you
have had no training for the wide world, and you speak so few
languages." "Oh, my language is understood all over the world," said
Papa Haydn, with a smile. When he departed for England, December 15,
1790, Mozart could with difficulty tear himself away, and said, with
pathetic tears, "We shall doubtless now take our last farewell."

Haydn and Mozart were perfectly in accord, and each thought and did
well towards the other. Mozart, we know, was born when Haydn had just
reached manhood, so that when Mozart became old enough to study
composition the earlier works of Haydn's chamber music had been
written; and these undoubtedly formed the studies of the boy Mozart,
and greatly influenced his style; so that Haydn was the model, and, in
a sense, the instructor of Mozart. Strange is it then to find, in
after-years, the master borrowing (perhaps with interest!) from the
pupil. Such, however, was the fact, as every amateur knows. At this we
can hardly wonder, for Haydn possessed unbounded admiration not only
for Mozart, but also for his music, which the following shows. Being
asked by a friend at Prague to send him an opera, he replied:--

"With all my heart, if you desire to have it for yourself alone, but
if you wish to perform it in public, I must be excused; for, being
written specially for my company at the Esterhazy Palace, it would not
produce the proper effect elsewhere. I would do a new score for your
theatre, but what a hazardous step it would be to stand in comparison
with Mozart! Oh, Mozart! If I could instil into the soul of every
lover of music the admiration I have for his matchless works, all
countries would seek to be possessed of so great a treasure. Let
Prague keep him, ah! and well reward him, for without that the history
of geniuses is bad; alas! we see so many noble minds crushed beneath
adversity. Mozart is incomparable, and I am annoyed that he is unable
to obtain any court appointment. Forgive me if I get excited when
speaking of him, I am so fond of him."

Mozart's admiration for Haydn's music, too, was very marked. He and
Herr Kozeluch were one day listening to a composition of Haydn's which
contained some bold modulations. Kozeluch thought them strange, and
asked Mozart whether he would have written them. "I think not,"
smartly replied Mozart, "and for this reason: because they would not
have occurred either to you or me!"

On another occasion we find Mozart taking to task a Viennese professor
of some celebrity, who used to experience great delight in turning to
Haydn's compositions to find therein any evidence of the master's want
of sound theoretical training--a quest in which the pedant
occasionally succeeded. One day he came to Mozart with a great crime
to unfold. Mozart as usual endeavoured to turn the conversation, but
the learned professor still went chattering on, till at last Mozart
shut his mouth with the following pill--"Sir, if you and I were both
melted down together, we should not furnish materials for one Haydn."

It was one of the most beautiful friendships in the history of art,
full of tender offices, and utterly free from the least taint of envy
or selfishness.


IV.

Haydn landed in England after a voyage which delighted him in spite of
his terror of the sea--a feeling which seems to be usual among people
of very high musical sensibilities. In his diary we find
recorded--"By four o'clock we had come twenty miles. The large vessel
stood out to sea five hours longer, till the tide carried it into the
harbour. I remained on deck the whole passage, in order to gaze my
fill at that huge monster--the ocean."

The novelty of Haydn's concerts--of which he was to give twenty at
fifty pounds apiece--consisted of their being his own symphonies,
conducted by himself in person. Haydn's name, during his serene,
uneventful years with the Esterhazys, had become world-famous. His
reception was most brilliant. Dinner parties, receptions, invitations
without end, attested the enthusiasm of the sober English; and his
appearance at concerts and public meetings was the signal for stormy
applause. How, in the press of all this pleasure in which he was
plunged, he continued to compose the great number of works produced at
this time, is a marvel. He must have been little less than a Briareus.
It was in England that he wrote the celebrated Salomon symphonies--the
"twelve grand," as they are called. They may well be regarded as the
crowning-point of Haydn's efforts in that form of writing. He took
infinite pains with them, as, indeed, is well proved by an examination
of the scores. More elaborate, more beautiful, and scored for a fuller
orchestra than any others of the one hundred and twenty or thereabouts
which he composed, the Salomon set also bears marks of the devout and
pious spirit in which Haydn ever laboured.

It is interesting to see how, in many of the great works which have
won the world's admiration, the religion of the author has gone
hand-in-hand with his energy and his genius; and we find Haydn not
ashamed to indorse his score with his prayer and praise, or to offer
the fruits of his talents to the Giver of all. Thus, the symphony in D
(No. 6) bears on the first page of the score the inscription, "_In
nomine Domini: di me Giuseppe Haydn, maia 1791, in London_;" and on
the last page, "_Fine, Laus Deo, 238_."

That genius may sometimes be trusted to judge of its own work may be
gathered from Haydn's own estimate of these great symphonies.

"Sir," said the well-satisfied Salomon, after a successful performance
of one of them, "I am strongly of opinion that you will never surpass
these symphonies."

"No!" replied Haydn; "I never mean to try."

The public, as we have said, was enthusiastic; but such a full banquet
of severe orchestral music was a severe trial to many, and not a few
heads would keep time to the music by steady nods during the slow
movements. Haydn, therefore, composed what is known as the "Surprise"
symphony. The slow movement is of the most lulling and soothing
character, and about the time the audience should be falling into its
first snooze, the instruments having all died away into the softest
_pianissimo_, the full orchestra breaks out with a frightful BANG. It
is a question whether the most vigorous performance of this symphony
would startle an audience nowadays, accustomed to the strident effects
of Wagner and Liszt. A wag in a recent London journal tells us,
indeed, that at the most critical part in the work a gentleman opened
one eye sleepily and said, "Come in."

Simple-hearted Haydn was delighted at the attention lavished on him in
London. He tells us how he enjoyed his various entertainments and
feastings by such dignitaries as William Pitt, the Lord Chancellor,
and the Duke of Lids (Leeds). The gentlemen drank freely the whole
night, and the songs, the crazy uproar, and smashing of glasses were
very great. He went down to stay with the Prince of Wales (George
IV.), who played on the violoncello, and charmed the composer by his
kindness. "He is the handsomest man on God's earth. He has an
extraordinary love of music, and a great deal of feeling, but very
little money."

To stem the tide of Haydn's popularity, the Italian faction had
recourse to Giardini; and they even imported a pet pupil of Haydn,
Pleyel, to conduct the rival concerts. Our composer kept his temper,
and wrote, "He [Pleyel] behaves himself with great modesty." Later we
read, "Pleyel's presumption is a public laughing-stock;" but he adds,
"I go to all his concerts and applaud him."

Far different were the amenities that passed between Haydn and
Giardini. "I won't know the German hound," says the latter. Haydn
wrote, "I attended his concert at Ranelagh, and he played the fiddle
like a hog."

Among the pleasant surprises Haydn had in England was his visit to
Herschel, the great astronomer, in whom he recognised one of his old
oboe-players. The big telescope amazed him, and so did the patient
star-gazer, who often sat out-of-doors in the most intense cold for
five or six hours at a time.

Our composer returned to Vienna in May 1795, with the little fortune
of 12,000 florins in his pocket.


V.

In his charming little cottage near Vienna Haydn was the centre of a
brilliant society. Princes and nobles were proud to do honour to him;
and painters, poets, scholars, and musicians made a delightful
coterie, which was not even disturbed by the political convulsions of
the time. The baleful star of Napoleon shot its disturbing influences
throughout Europe, and the roar of his cannon shook the established
order of things with the echoes of what was to come. Haydn was
passionately attached to his country and his emperor, and regarded
anxiously the rumblings and quakings of the period; but he did not
intermit his labour, or allow his consecration to his divine art to be
in the least shaken. Like Archimedes of old, he toiled serenely at his
appointed work, while the political order of things was crumbling
before the genius and energy of the Corsican adventurer.

In 1798 he completed his great oratorio of "The Creation," on which he
had spent three years of toil, and which embodied his brightest
genius. Haydn was usually a very rapid composer, but he seems to have
laboured at the "Creation" with a sort of reverential humility, which
never permitted him to think his work worthy or complete. It soon went
the round of Germany, and passed to England and France, everywhere
awakening enthusiasm by its great symmetry and beauty. Without the
sublimity of Handel's "Messiah," it is marked by a richness of melody,
a serene elevation, a matchless variety in treatment, which make it
the most characteristic of Haydn's works. Napoleon, the first consul,
was hastening to the opera-house to hear this, 24th January 1801, when
he was stopped by an attempt at assassination.

Two years after "The Creation" appeared "The Seasons," founded on
Thomson's poem, also a great work, and one of his last; for the grand
old man was beginning to think of rest, and he only composed two or
three quartets after this. He was now seventy years old, and went but
little from his own home. His chief pleasure was to sit in his shady
garden, and see his friends, who loved to solace the musical patriarch
with cheerful talk and music. Haydn often fell into deep melancholy,
and he tells us that God revived him; for no more sweet, devout nature
ever lived. His art was ever a religion. A touching incident of his
old age occurred at a grand performance of "The Creation" in 1808.
Haydn was present, but he was so old and feeble that he had to be
wheeled in a chair into the theatre, where a princess of the house of
Esterhazy took her seat by his side. This was the last time that Haydn
appeared in public, and a very impressive sight it must have been to
see the aged father of music listening to "The Creation" of his
younger days, but too old to take any active share in the performance.
The presence of the old man roused intense enthusiasm among the
audience, which could no longer be suppressed as the chorus and
orchestra burst in full power upon the superb passage, "And there was
light."

Amid the tumult of the enraptured audience the old composer was seen
striving to raise himself. Once on his feet, he mustered up all his
strength, and, in reply to the applause of the audience, he cried out
as loud as he was able--"No, no! not from me, but," pointing to
heaven, "from thence--from heaven above--comes all!" saying which, he
fell back in his chair, faint and exhausted, and had to be carried out
of the room.

One year after this Vienna was bombarded by the French, and a shot
fell in Haydn's garden. He requested to be led to his piano, and
played the "Hymn to the Emperor" three times over with passionate
eloquence and pathos. This was his last performance. He died five days
afterwards, aged seventy-seven, and lies buried in the cemetery of
Gumpfenzdorf, in his own beloved Vienna.


VI.

The serene, genial face of Haydn, as seen in his portraits, measures
accurately the character of his music. In both we see healthfulness,
good-humour, vivacity, devotional feeling, and warm affections; a mind
contented, but yet attaching high importance to only one thing in
life, the composing of music. Haydn pursued this with a calm,
insatiable industry, without haste, without rest. His works number
eight hundred, comprising cantatas, symphonies, oratorios, masses,
concertos, trios, sonatas, quartets, minuets, etc., and also
twenty-two operas, eight German and fourteen Italian.

As a creative mind in music, Haydn was the father of the quartet and
symphony. Adopting the sonata form as scientifically illustrated by
Emanuel Bach, he introduced it into compositions for the orchestra and
the chamber. He developed these into a completeness and full-orbed
symmetry, which have never been improved. Mozart is richer, Beethoven
more sublime, Schubert more luxuriant, Mendelssohn more orchestral and
passionate; but Haydn has never been surpassed in his keen perception
of the capacities of instruments, his subtile distribution of parts,
his variety in treating his themes, and his charmingly legitimate
effects. He fills a large space in musical history, not merely from
the number, originality, and beauty of his compositions, but as one
who represents an era in art-development.

In Haydn genius and industry were happily united. With a marvellously
rich flow of musical ideas, he clearly knew what he meant to do, and
never neglected the just elaboration of each one. He would labour on a
theme till it had shaped itself into perfect beauty.

Haydn is illustrious in the history of art as a complete artistic
life, which worked out all of its contents as did the great Goethe. In
the words of a charming writer: "His life was a rounded whole. There
was no broken light about it; it orbed slowly, with a mild, unclouded
lustre, into a perfect star. Time was gentle with him, and Death was
kind, for both waited upon his genius until all was won. Mozart was
taken away at an age when new and dazzling effects had not ceased to
flash through his brain: at the very moment when his harmonies began
to have a prophetic ring of the nineteenth century, it was decreed
that he should not see its dawn. Beethoven himself had but just
entered upon an unknown 'sea whose margin seemed to fade forever and
forever as he moved;' but good old Haydn had come into port over a
calm sea and after a prosperous voyage. The laurel wreath was this
time woven about silver locks; the gathered-in harvest was ripe and
golden."




_MOZART._


I.

The life of WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART, one of the immortal names in
music, contradicts the rule that extraordinary youthful talent is apt
to be followed by a sluggish and commonplace maturity. His father
entered the room one day with a friend, and found the child bending
over a music score. The little Mozart, not yet five years old, told
his father he was writing a concerto for the piano. The latter
examined it, and tears of joy and astonishment rolled down his face on
perceiving its accuracy.

"It is good, but too difficult for general use," said the friend.

"Oh," said Wolfgang, "it must be practised till it is learned. This is
the way it goes." So saying, he played it with perfect correctness.

About the same time he offered to take the violin at a performance of
some chamber music. His father refused, saying, "How can you? You have
never learned the violin."

"One needs not study for that," said this musical prodigy; and taking
the instrument, he played second violin with ease and accuracy. Such
precocity seems almost incredible, and only in the history of music
does it find any parallel.

Born in Salzburg, 27th January 1756, he was carefully trained by his
father, who resigned his place as court musician to devote himself
more exclusively to his family. From the earliest age he showed an
extraordinary passion for music and mathematics, scrawling notes and
diagrams in every place accessible to his insatiate pencil.

Taken to Vienna, the six-year-old virtuoso astonished the court by his
brilliant talents. The future Queen of France, Marie Antoinette, was
particularly delighted with him, and the little Mozart naïvely said he
would like to marry her, for she was so good to him. His father
devoted several years to an artistic tour, with him and his little
less talented sister, through the German cities, and it was also
extended to Paris and London. Everywhere the greatest enthusiasm was
evinced in this charming bud of promise. The father writes home--"We
have swords, laces, mantillas, snuff-boxes, gold cases, sufficient to
furnish a shop; but as for money, it is a scarce article, and I am
positively poor."

At Paris they were warmly received at the court, and the boy is said
to have expressed his surprise when Mdme. Pompadour refused to kiss
him, saying, "Who is she, that she will not kiss me? Have I not been
kissed by the queen?" In London his improvisations and piano sonatas
excited the greatest admiration. Here he also published his third
work. These journeys were an uninterrupted chain of triumphs for the
child-virtuoso on the piano, organ, violin, and in singing. He was
made honorary member of the Academies of Bologna and Verona, decorated
with orders, and received at the age of thirteen an order to write the
opera of "Mithridates," which was successfully produced at Milan in
1770. Several other fine minor compositions were also written to order
at this time for his Italian admirers. At Rome Mozart attended the
Sistine Chapel and wrote the score of Allegri's great mass, forbidden
by the Pope to be copied, from the memory of a single performance.

The record of Mozart's youthful triumphs might be extended at great
length; but aside from the proof they furnish of his extraordinary
precocity, they have lent little vital significance in the great
problem of his career, except so far as they stimulated the marvellous
boy to lay a deep foundation for his greater future, which, short as
it was, was fruitful in undying results.


II.

Mozart's life in Paris, where he lived with his mother in 1778 and
1779, was a disappointment, for he despised the French nation. His
deep, simple, German nature revolted from Parisian frivolity, in which
he found only sensuality and coarseness, disguised under a thin
veneering of social grace. He abhorred French music in these bitter
terms--"The French are and always will be downright donkeys. They
cannot sing, they scream." It was just at this time that Gluck and
Piccini were having their great art-duel. We get a glimpse of the
pious tendency of the young composer in his characterisation of
Voltaire--"The ungodly arch-villain, Voltaire, has just died like a
dog." Again he writes--"Friends who have no religion cannot long be my
friends.... I have such a sense of religion that I shall never do
anything that I would not do before the whole world."

With Mozart's return to Germany in 1779, being then twenty-three years
of age, comes the dawn of his classical period as a composer. The
greater number of his masses had already been written, and now he
settled himself in serious earnest to the cultivation of a true German
operatic school. This found its dawn in the production of "Idomeneo,"
his first really great work for the lyric stage.

The young composer had hard struggles with poverty in these days. His
letters to his father are full of revelations of his friction with the
little worries of life. Lack of money pinched him close, yet his
cheerful spirit was ever buoyant. "I have only one small room; it is
quite crammed with a piano, a table, a bed, and a chest of drawers,"
he writes.

Yet he would marry; for he was willing to face poverty in the
companionship of a loving woman who dared to face it with him. At
Mannheim he had met a beautiful young singer, Aloysia Weber, and he
went to Munich to offer her marriage. She, however, saw nothing
attractive in the thin, pale young man, with his long nose, great
eyes, and little head; for he was anything but prepossessing. A
younger sister, Constance, however, secretly loved Mozart, and he soon
transferred his repelled affections to this charming woman, whom he
married in 1782 at the house of Baroness Waldstetten. His _naïve_
reasons for marrying show Mozart's ingenuous nature. He had no one to
take care of his linen, he would not live dissolutely like other young
men, and he loved Constance Weber. His answer to his father, who
objected on account of his poverty, is worth quoting:--

"Constance is a well-conducted, good girl, of respectable parentage,
and I am in a position to earn at least _daily bread_ for her. We love
each other, and are resolved to marry. All that you have written or
may possibly write on the subject can be nothing but well-meant
advice, which, however good and sensible, can no longer apply to a man
who has gone so far with a girl."

Poor as Mozart was, he possessed such integrity and independence that
he refused a most liberal offer from the King of Prussia to become his
chapel-master, for some unexplained reason which involved his sense of
right and wrong. The first year of his marriage he wrote "Il
Seraglio," and made the acquaintance of the aged Gluck, who took a
deep interest in him and warmly praised his genius. Haydn, too,
recognised his brilliant powers. "I tell you, on the word of an honest
man," said the author of the "Creation" to Leopold Mozart, the father,
who asked his opinion, "that I consider your son the greatest composer
I have ever heard. He writes with taste, and possesses a thorough
knowledge of composition."

Poverty and increasing expense pricked Mozart into intense, restless
energy. His life had no lull in its creative industry. His splendid
genius, insatiable and tireless, broke down his body, like a sword
wearing out its scabbard. He poured out symphonies, operas, and
sonatas with such prodigality as to astonish us, even when
recollecting how fecund the musical mind has often been. Alike as
artist and composer, he never ceased his labours. Day after day and
night after night he hardly snatched an hour's rest. We can almost
fancy he foreboded how short his brilliant life was to be, and was
impelled to crowd into its brief compass its largest measure of
results.

Yet he was always pursued by the spectre of want. Oftentimes his sick
wife could not obtain needed medicines. He made more money than most
musicians, yet was always impoverished. But it was his glory that he
was never impoverished by sensual indulgence, extravagance, and
riotous living, but by his lavish generosity to those who in many
instances needed help less than himself. Like many other men of genius
and sensibility, he could not say "no" to even the pretence of
distress and suffering.


III.

The culminating point of Mozart's artistic development was in 1786.
The "Marriage of Figaro" was the first of a series of masterpieces
which cannot be surpassed alike for musical greatness and their hold
on the lyric stage. The next year "Don Giovanni" saw the light, and
was produced at Prague. The overture of this opera was composed and
scored in less than six hours. The inhabitants of Prague greeted the
work with the wildest enthusiasm, for they seemed to understand Mozart
better than the Viennese.

During this period he made frequent concert tours to recruit his
fortunes, but with little financial success. Presents of watches,
snuff-boxes, and rings were common, but the returns were so small that
Mozart was frequently obliged to pawn his gifts to purchase a dinner
and lodging. What a comment on the period which adored genius, but
allowed it to starve! His audiences could be enthusiastic enough to
carry him to his hotel on their shoulders, but probably never thought
that the wherewithal of a hearty supper was a more seasonable homage.
So our musician struggled on through the closing years of his life
with the wolf constantly at his door, and an invalid wife whom he
passionately loved, yet must needs see suffer from the want of common
necessaries. In these modern days, when distinguished artists make
princely fortunes by the exercise of their musical gifts, it is not
easy to believe that Mozart, recognised as the greatest pianoforte
player and composer of his time by all of musical Germany, could
suffer such dire extremes of want as to be obliged more than once to
beg for a dinner.

In 1791 he composed the score of the "Magic Flute" at the request of
Schikaneder, a Viennese manager, who had written the text from a fairy
tale, the fantastic elements of which are peculiarly German in their
humour. Mozart put great earnestness into the work, and made it the
first German opera of commanding merit, which embodied the essential
intellectual sentiment and kindly warmth of popular German life. The
manager paid the composer but a trifle for a work whose transcendent
success enabled him to build a new opera-house, and laid the
foundation of a large fortune. We are told, too, that at the time of
Mozart's death in extreme want, when his sick wife, half-maddened with
grief, could not buy a coffin for the dead composer, this hard-hearted
wretch, who owed his all to the genius of the great departed, rushed
about through Vienna bewailing the loss to music with sentimental
tears, but did not give the heart-broken widow one kreutzer to pay the
expense of a decent burial.

In 1791 Mozart's health was breaking down with great rapidity, though
he himself would never recognise his own swiftly advancing fate. He
experienced, however, a deep melancholy which nothing could remove.
For the first time his habitual cheerfulness deserted him. His wife
had been enabled through the kindness of her friends to visit the
healing waters of Baden, and was absent.

An incident now occurred which impressed Mozart with an ominous chill.
One night there came a stranger, singularly dressed in grey, with an
order for a requiem to be composed without fail within a month. The
visitor, without revealing his name, departed in mysterious gloom, as
he came. Again the stranger called, and solemnly reminded Mozart of
his promise. The composer easily persuaded himself that this was a
visitor from the other world, and that the requiem would be his own;
for he was exhausted with labour and sickness, and easily became the
prey of superstitious fancies. When his wife returned, she found him
with a fatal pallor on his face, silent and melancholy, labouring with
intense absorption on the funereal mass. He would sit brooding over
the score till he swooned away in his chair, and only come to
consciousness to bend his waning energies again to their ghastly work.
The mysterious visitor, whom Mozart believed to be the precursor of
his death, we now know to have been Count Walseck, who had recently
lost his wife, and wished a musical memorial.

His final sickness attacked the composer while labouring at the
requiem. The musical world was ringing with the fame of his last
opera. To the dying man was brought the offer of the rich appointment
of organist of St. Stephen's Cathedral. Most flattering propositions
were made him by eager managers, who had become thoroughly awake to
his genius when it was too late. The great Mozart was dying in the
very prime of his youth and his powers, when success was in his grasp
and the world opening wide its arms to welcome his glorious gifts with
substantial recognition; but all too late, for he was doomed to die in
his spring-tide, though "a spring mellow with all the fruits of
autumn."

The unfinished requiem lay on the bed, and his last efforts were to
imitate some peculiar instrumental effects, as he breathed out his
life in the arms of his wife and his friend, Süssmaier.

The epilogue to this life-drama is one of the saddest in the history
of art: a pauper funeral for one of the world's greatest geniuses. "It
was late one winter afternoon," says an old record, "before the coffin
was deposited on the side aisles on the south side of St. Stephen's.
Van Swieten, Salieri, Süssmaier, and two unknown musicians were the
only persons present besides the officiating priest and the
pall-bearers. It was a terribly inclement day; rain and sleet came
down fast; and an eye-witness describes how the little band of
mourners stood shivering in the blast, with their umbrellas up, round
the hearse, as it left the door of the church. It was then far on in
the dark, cold December afternoon, and the evening was fast closing in
before the solitary hearse had passed the Stubenthor, and reached the
distant graveyard of St. Marx, in which, among the 'third class,' the
great composer of the 'G minor Symphony' and the 'Requiem' found his
resting-place. By this time the weather had proved too much for all
the mourners; they had dropped off one by one, and Mozart's body was
accompanied only by the driver of the carriage. There had been already
two pauper funerals that day--one of them a midwife--and Mozart was
to be the third in the grave and the uppermost.

"When the hearse drew up in the slush and sleet at the gate of the
graveyard, it was welcomed by a strange pair--Franz Harruschka, the
assistant grave-digger, and his mother, Katharina, known as 'Frau
Katha,' who filled the quaint office of official mendicant to the
place.

"The old woman was the first to speak: 'Any coaches or mourners
coming?'

"A shrug from the driver of the hearse was the only response.

"'Whom have you got there, then?' continued she.

"'A bandmaster,' replied the other.

"'A musician? they're a poor lot; then I've no more money to look for
to-day. It is to be hoped we shall have better luck in the morning.'

"To which the driver said, with a laugh, 'I'm devilish thirsty,
too--not a kreutzer of drink-money have I had.'

"After this curious colloquy the coffin was dismounted and shoved into
the top of the grave already occupied by the two paupers of the
morning; and such was Mozart's last appearance on earth."

To-day no stone marks the spot where were deposited the last remains
of one of the brightest of musical spirits; indeed, the very grave is
unknown, for it was the grave of a pauper.


IV.

Mozart's charming letters reveal to us such a gentle, sparkling,
affectionate nature, as to inspire as much love for the man as
admiration for his genius. Sunny humour and tenderness bubble in
almost every sentence. A clever writer says that "opening these is
like opening a painted tomb.... The colours are all fresh, the figures
are all distinct."

No better illustration of the man Mozart can be had than in a few
extracts from his correspondence. He writes to his sister from Rome
while yet a mere lad:--

    "I am, thank God! except my miserable pen, well, and send
    you and mamma a thousand kisses. I wish you were in Rome; I
    am sure it would please you. Papa says I am a little fool,
    but that is nothing new. Here we have but one bed; it is
    easy to understand that I can't rest comfortably with papa.
    I shall be glad when we get into new quarters. I have just
    finished drawing the Holy Peter with his keys, the Holy Paul
    with his sword, and the Holy Luke with my sister. I have had
    the honour of kissing St. Peter's foot; and because I am so
    small as to be unable to reach it, they had to lift me up. I
    am the same old

                                                 "Wolfgang."

Mozart was very fond of this sister Nannerl, and he used to write to
her in a playful mosaic of French, German, and Italian. Just after his
wedding he writes:--

    "My darling is now a hundred times more joyful at the idea
    of going to Salzburg, and I am willing to stake--ay, my very
    life, that you will rejoice still more in my happiness when
    you know her; if, indeed, in your estimation, as in mine, a
    high-principled, honest, virtuous, and pleasing wife ought
    to make a man happy."

Late in his short life he writes the following characteristic note to
a friend, whose life does not appear to have been one of the most
regular:--

    "Now tell me, my dear friend, how you are. I hope you are
    all as well as we are. You cannot fail to be happy, for you
    possess everything that you can wish for at your age and in
    your position, especially as you now seem to have entirely
    given up your former mode of life. Do you not every day
    become more convinced of the truth of the little lectures I
    used to inflict on you? Are not the pleasures of a
    transient, capricious passion widely different from the
    happiness produced by rational and true love? I feel sure
    that you often in your heart thank me for my admonitions. I
    shall feel quite proud if you do. But, jesting apart, you
    do really owe me some little gratitude if you are become
    worthy of Fräulein N----, for I certainly played no
    insignificant part in your improvement or reform.

    "My great-grandfather used to say to his wife, my
    great-grandmother, who in turn told it to her daughter, my
    grandmother, who again repeated it to her daughter, my
    mother, who repeated it to her daughter, my own sister, that
    it was a very great art to talk eloquently and well, but an
    equally great one to know the right moment to stop. I
    therefore shall follow the advice of my sister, thanks to
    our mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother, and thus
    end, not only my moral ebullition, but my letter."

His playful tenderness lavished itself on his wife in a thousand
quaint ways. He would, for example, rise long before her to take his
horseback exercise, and always kiss her sleeping face and leave a
little note like the following resting on her forehead--"Good-morning,
dear little wife! I hope you have had a good sleep and pleasant
dreams. I shall be back in two hours. Behave yourself like a good
little girl, and don't run away from your husband."

Speaking of an infant child, our composer would say merrily, "That boy
will be a true Mozart, for he always cries in the very key in which I
am playing."

Mozart's musical greatness, shown in the symmetry of his art as well
as in the richness of his inspirations, has been unanimously
acknowledged by his brother composers. Meyerbeer could not restrain
his tears when speaking of him. Weber, Mendelssohn, Rossini, and
Wagner always praise him in terms of enthusiastic admiration. Haydn
called him the greatest of composers. In fertility of invention,
beauty of form, and exactness of method, he has never been surpassed,
and has but one or two rivals. The composer of three of the greatest
operas in musical history, besides many of much more than ordinary
excellence; of symphonies that rival Haydn's for symmetry and melodic
affluence; of a great number of quartets, quintets, etc.; and of
pianoforte sonatas which rank high among the best; of many masses that
are standard in the service of the Catholic Church; of a great variety
of beautiful songs--there is hardly any form of music which he did not
richly adorn with the treasures of his genius. We may well say, in the
words of one of the most competent critics:--

"Mozart was a king and a slave--king in his own beautiful realm of
music; slave of the circumstances and the conditions of this world.
Once over the boundaries of his own kingdom, and he was supreme; but
the powers of the earth acknowledged not his sovereignty."




_BEETHOVEN._


I.

The name and memory of this composer awaken, in the heart of the lover
of music, sentiments of the deepest reverence and admiration. His life
was so marked with affliction and so isolated as to make him, in his
environment of conditions as a composer, an unique figure.

The principal fact which made the exterior life of Beethoven so bare
of the ordinary pleasures that brighten and sweeten existence, his
total deafness, greatly enriched his spiritual life. Music finally
became to him a purely intellectual conception, for he was without any
sensual enjoyment of its effects. To this Samson of music, for whom
the ear was like the eye to other men, Milton's lines may indeed well
apply:--

    "Oh! dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon!
    Irrecoverably dark--total eclipse,
    Without all hope of day!
    Oh first created Beam, and thou, great Word,
    'Let there be light,' and light was over all,
    Why am I thus bereaved thy prime decree?
    The sun to me is dark."

To his severe affliction we owe alike many of the defects of his
character and the splendours of his genius. All his powers,
concentrated into a spiritual focus, wrought such things as lift him
into a solitary greatness. The world has agreed to measure this man as
it measures Homer, Dante, and Shakespeare. We do not compare him with
others.

Beethoven had the reputation among his contemporaries of being harsh,
bitter, suspicious, and unamiable. There is much to justify this in
the circumstances of his life; yet our readers will discover much to
show, on the other hand, how deep, strong, and tender was the heart
which was so wrung and tortured, and wounded to the quick by--

    "The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune."

Weber gives a picture of Beethoven--"The square Cyclopean figure
attired in a shabby coat with torn sleeves." Everybody will remember
his noble, austere face, as seen in the numerous prints: the square,
massive head, with the forest of rough hair; the strong features, so
furrowed with the marks of passion and sadness; the eyes, with their
look of introspection and insight; the whole expression of the
countenance as of an ancient prophet. Such was the impression made by
Beethoven on all who saw him, except in his moods of fierce wrath,
which towards the last were not uncommon, though short-lived. A sorely
tried, sublimely gifted man, he met his fate stubbornly, and worked
out his great mission with all his might and main, through long years
of weariness and trouble. Posterity has rewarded him by enthroning him
on the highest peaks of musical fame.


II.

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN was born at Bonn in 1770. It is a singular fact
that at an early age he showed the deepest distaste for music, unlike
the other great composers, who evinced their bent from their earliest
years. His father was obliged to whip him severely before he would
consent to sit down at the harpsichord; and it was not till he was
past ten that his genuine interest in music showed itself. His first
compositions displayed his genius. Mozart heard him play them, and
said, "Mind, you will hear that boy talked of." Haydn, too, met
Beethoven for the first and only time when the former was on his way
to England, and recognised his remarkable powers. He gave him a few
lessons in composition, and was after that anxious to claim the young
Titan as a pupil.

"Yes," growled Beethoven, who for some queer reason never liked Haydn,
"I had some lessons of him, indeed, but I was not his disciple. I
never learned anything from him."

Beethoven made a profound impression even as a youth on all who knew
him. Aside from the palpable marks of his power, there was an
indomitable _hauteur_, a mysterious, self-wrapped air as of one
constantly communing with the invisible, an unconscious assertion of
mastery about him, which strongly impressed the imagination.

At the very outset of his career, when life promised all fair and
bright things to him, two comrades linked themselves to him, and ever
after that refused to give him up--grim poverty and still grimmer
disease. About the same time that he lost a fixed salary through the
death of his friend, the Elector of Cologne, he began to grow deaf.
Early in 1800, walking one day in the woods with his devoted friend
and pupil, Ferdinand Ries, he disclosed the sad secret to him that the
whole joyous world of sound was being gradually closed up to him; the
charm of the human voice, the notes of the woodland birds, the sweet
babblings of Nature, jargon to others, but intelligible to genius, the
full-born splendours of _heard_ music--all, all were fast receding
from his grasp.

Beethoven was extraordinarily sensitive to the influences of Nature.
Before his disease became serious he writes--"I wander about here with
music-paper among the hills, and dales, and valleys, and scribble a
good deal. No man on earth can love the country as I do." But one of
Nature's most delightful modes of speech to man was soon to be utterly
lost to him. At last he became so deaf that the most stunning crash of
thunder or the _fortissimo_ of the full orchestra were to him as if
they were not. His bitter, heart-rending cry of agony, when he became
convinced that the misfortune was irremediable, is full of eloquent
despair--"As autumn leaves wither and fall, so are my hopes blighted.
Almost as I came, I depart. Even the lofty courage, which so often
animated me in the lovely days of summer, is gone forever. O
Providence! vouchsafe me one day of pure felicity! How long have I
been estranged from the glad echo of true joy! When, O my God! when
shall I feel it again in the temple of Nature and man? Never!"

And the small-souled, mole-eyed gossips and critics called him hard,
churlish, and cynical--him, for whom the richest thing in Nature's
splendid dower had been obliterated, except a soul, which never in its
deepest sufferings lost its noble faith in God and man, or allowed its
indomitable courage to be one whit weakened. That there were periods
of utterly rayless despair and gloom we may guess; but not for long
did Beethoven's great nature cower before its evil genius.


III.

Within three years, from 1805 to 1808, Beethoven composed some of his
greatest works--the oratorio of "The Mount of Olives," the opera of
"Fidelio," and the two noble symphonies, "Pastorale" and "Eroica,"
besides a large number of concertos, sonatas, songs, and other
occasional pieces. However gloomy the externals of his life, his
creative activities knew no cessation.

The "Sinfonia Eroica," the "Choral" only excepted, is the longest of
the immortal nine, and is one of the greatest examples of musical
portraiture extant. All the great composers from Handel to Wagner have
attempted, what is called descriptive music with more or less success,
but never have musical genius and skill achieved a result so
admirable in its relation to its purpose and by such strictly
legitimate means as in this work.

"The 'Eroica,'" says a great writer, "is an attempt to draw a musical
portrait of an historical character--a great statesman, a great
general, a noble individual; to represent in music--Beethoven's own
language--what M. Thiers has given in words, and Paul Delaroche in
painting." Of Beethoven's success another writer has said--"It wants
no title to tell its meaning, for throughout the symphony the hero is
visibly portrayed."

It is anything but difficult to realise why Beethoven should have
admired the first Napoleon. Both the soldier and musician were made
of that sturdy stuff which would and did defy the world; and it is
not strange that Beethoven should have desired in some way--and he
knew of no better course than through his art--to honour one so
characteristically akin to himself, and who at that time was the most
prominent man in Europe. Beethoven began the work in 1802, and in 1804
it was completed, and bore the following title:--

       Sinfonia grand
    "Napoleon Bonaparte"
       1804 in August
          del Sigr
    Louis van Beethoven
        Sinfonia 3.
          Op. 55.

This was copied and the original score despatched to the ambassador for
presentation, while Beethoven retained the copy. Before the composition
was laid before Napoleon, however, the great general had accepted the
title of Emperor. No sooner did Beethoven hear of this from his pupil
Ries than he started up in a rage, and exclaimed--"After all, then,
he's nothing but an ordinary mortal! He will trample the rights of men
under his feet!" saying which, he rushed to his table, seized the copy
of the score, and tore the title-page completely off. From this time
Beethoven hated Napoleon, and never again spoke of him in connection
with the symphony until he heard of his death in St. Helena, when he
observed, "I have already composed music for this calamity," evidently
referring to the "Funeral March" in this symphony.

The opera of "Fidelio," which he composed about the same time, may be
considered, in the severe sense of a great and symmetrical musical
work, the finest lyric drama ever written, with the possible exception
of Gluck's "Orpheus and Eurydice" and "Iphigenia in Tauris." It is
rarely performed, because its broad, massive, and noble effects are
beyond the capacity of most singers, and belong to the domain of pure
music, demanding but little alliance with the artistic clap-trap of
startling scenery and histrionic extravagance. Yet our composer's
conscience shows its completeness in his obedience to the law of
opera; for the music he has written to express the situations cannot
be surpassed for beauty, pathos, and passion. Beethoven, like
Mendelssohn, revolted from the idea of lyric drama as an
art-inconsistency, but he wrote "Fidelio" to show his possibilities in
a direction with which he had but little sympathy. He composed four
overtures for this opera at different periods, on account of the
critical caprices of the Viennese public--a concession to public taste
which his stern independence rarely made.


IV.

Beethoven's relations with women were peculiar and characteristic, as
were all the phases of a nature singularly self-poised and robust.
Like all men of powerful imagination and keen (though perhaps not
delicate) sensibility, he was strongly attracted towards the softer
sex. But a certain austerity of morals, and that purity of feeling
which is the inseparable shadow of one's devotion to lofty aims,
always kept him within the bounds of Platonic affection. Yet there is
enough in Beethoven's letters, as scanty as their indications are in
this direction, to show what ardour and glow of feeling he possessed.

About the time that he was suffering keenly with the knowledge of his
fast-growing infirmity, he was bound by a strong tie of affection to
Countess Giulietta Guicciardi, his "immortal beloved," "his angel,"
"his all," "his life," as he called her in a variety of passionate
utterances. It was to her that he dedicated his song "Adelaida,"
which, as an expression of lofty passion, is world-famous. Beethoven
was very much dissatisfied with the work even in the glow of
composition. Before the notes were dry on the music paper, the
composer's old friend Barth was announced. "Here," said Beethoven,
putting a roll of score paper in Barth's hands, "look at that. I have
just finished it, and don't like it. There is hardly fire enough in
the stove to burn it, but I will try." Barth glanced through the
composition, then sang it, and soon grew into such enthusiasm as to
draw from Beethoven the expression, "No? then we will not burn it, old
fellow." Whether it was the reaction of disgust, which so often comes
to genius after the tension of work, or whether his ideal of its
lovely theme was so high as to make all effort seem inadequate, the
world came very near losing what it could not afford to have missed.

The charming countess, however, preferred rank, wealth, and unruffled
ease to being linked even with a great genius, if, indeed, the affair
ever looked in the direction of marriage. She married another, and
Beethoven does not seem to have been seriously disturbed. It may be
that, like Goethe, he valued the love of woman not for itself or its
direct results, but as an art-stimulus which should enrich and
fructify his own intellectual life.

We get glimpses of successors to the fair countess. The beautiful
Marie Pachler was for some time the object of his adoration. The
affair is a somewhat mysterious one, and the lady seems to have
suffered from the fire through which her powerful companion passed
unscathed. Again, quaintest and oddest of all, is the fancy kindled by
that "mysterious sprite of genius," as one of her contemporaries calls
her, Bettina Brentano, the gifted child-woman, who fascinated all who
came within her reach, from Goethe and Beethoven down to princes and
nobles. Goethe's correspondence with this strange being has embalmed
her life in classic literature.

Our composer's intercourse with women--for he was always alive to the
charms of female society--was for the most part homely and practical
in the extreme, after his deafness destroyed the zest of the more
romantic phases of the divine passion. He accepted adoration, as did
Dean Swift, as a right. He permitted his female admirers to knit him
stockings and comforters, and make him dainty puddings and other
delicacies, which he devoured with huge gusto. He condescended, in
return, to go to sleep on their sofas, after picking his teeth with
the candle-snuffers (so says scandal), while they thrummed away at his
sonatas, the artistic slaughter of which Beethoven was mercifully
unable to hear.


V.

The friendship of the Archduke Rudolph relieved Beethoven of the
immediate pressure of poverty; for in 1809 he settled a small
life-pension upon him. The next ten years were passed by him in
comparative ease and comfort, and in this time he gave to the world
five of his immortal symphonies, and a large number of his finest
sonatas and masses. His general health improved very much; and in his
love for his nephew Karl, whom Beethoven had adopted, the lonely man
found an outlet for his strong affections, which was medicine for his
soul, though the object was worthless and ungrateful.

We get curious and amusing insights into the daily tenor of
Beethoven's life during this period--things sometimes almost
grotesque, were they not so sad. The composer lived a solitary life,
and was very much at the mercy of his servants on account of his
self-absorption and deafness. He was much worried by these prosaic
cares. One story of a slatternly servant is as follows:--The master
was working at the mass in D, the great work which he commenced in
1819 for the celebration of the appointment of the Archduke Rudolph as
Archbishop of Olmütz, and which should have been completed by the
following year. Beethoven, however, became so engrossed with his work,
and increased its proportions so much, that it was not finished until
some two years after the event which it was intended to celebrate.
While Beethoven was engaged upon this score, he one day woke up to the
fact that some of his pages were missing. "Where on earth could they
be?" he asked himself, and the servant too; but the problem remained
unsolved. Beethoven, beside himself, spent hours and hours in
searching, and so did the servant, but it was all in vain. At last
they gave up the task as a useless one, and Beethoven, mad with
despair, and pouring the very opposite to blessings upon the head of
her who, he believed, was the author of the mischief, sat down with
the conclusion that he must rewrite the missing part. He had no sooner
commenced a new Kyrie--for this was the movement which was not to be
found--than some loose sheets of score paper were discovered in the
kitchen! Upon examination they proved to be the identical pages that
Beethoven so much desired, and which the woman, in her anxiety to be
"tidy" and to "keep things straight," had appropriated at some time or
other for wrapping up, not only old boots and clothes, but also some
superannuated pots and pans that were greasy and black!

Thus he was continually fretted by the carelessness or the rascality
of the servants in whom he was obliged to trust. He writes in his
diary--"Nancy is too uneducated for a housekeeper--indeed, quite a
beast." "My precious servants were occupied from seven o'clock till
ten trying to kindle a fire." "The cook's off again." "I shied
half-a-dozen books at her head." They made his dinner so nasty he
couldn't eat it. "No soup to-day, no beef, no eggs. Got something from
the inn at last."

His temper and peculiarities, too, made it difficult for him to live
in peace with landlords and fellow-lodgers. As his deafness increased,
he struck and thumped harder at the keys of his piano, the sound of
which he could scarcely hear. Nor was this all. The music that filled
his brain gave him no rest. He became an inspired madman. For hours he
would pace the room "howling and roaring" (as his pupil Ries puts it);
or he would stand beating time with hand and foot to the music which
was so vividly present to his mind. This soon put him into a feverish
excitement, when, to cool himself, he would take his water-jug, and,
thoughtless of everything, pour its contents over his hands, after
which he could sit down to his piano. With all this it can easily be
imagined that Beethoven was frequently remonstrated with. The landlord
complained of a damaged ceiling, and the fellow-lodgers declared that
either they or the madman must leave the house, for they could get no
rest where he was. So Beethoven never for long had a resting-place.
Impatient at being interfered with, he immediately packed up and went
off to some other vacant lodging. From this cause he was at one time
paying the rent of four lodgings at once. At times he would get tired
of this changing from one place to another--from the suburbs to the
town--and then he would fall back upon the hospitable home of a
patron, once again taking possession of an apartment which he had
vacated, probably without the least explanation or cause. One admirer
of his genius, who always reserved him a chamber in his establishment,
used to say to his servants--"Leave it empty; Beethoven is sure to
come back again."

The instant that Beethoven entered the house he began to write and
cipher on the walls, the blinds, the table, everything, in the most
abstracted manner. He frequently composed on slips of paper, which he
afterwards misplaced, so that he had great difficulty in finding them.
At one time, indeed, he forgot his own name and the date of his birth.

It is said that he once went into a Viennese restaurant, and, instead
of giving an order, began to write a score on the back of the
bill-of-fare, absorbed and unconscious of time and place. At last he
asked how much he owed. "You owe nothing, sir," said the waiter.
"What! do you think I have not dined?" "Most assuredly." "Very well,
then, give me something." "What do you wish?" "Anything."

These infirmities do not belittle the man of genius, but set off his
greatness as with a foil. They illustrate the thought of Goethe: "It
is all the same whether one is great or small, he has to pay the
reckoning of humanity."


VI.

Yet beneath these eccentricities what wealth of tenderness, sympathy,
and kindliness existed! His affection for his graceless nephew Karl is
a touching picture. With the rest of his family he had never been on
very cordial terms. His feeling of contempt for snobbery and pretence
is very happily illustrated in his relations with his brother Johann.
The latter had acquired property, and he sent Ludwig his card,
inscribed "Johann von Beethoven, land-owner." The caustic reply was a
card, on which was written, "Ludwig von Beethoven, brain-owner." But
on Karl all the warmest feelings of a nature which had been starving
to love and be loved poured themselves out. He gave the scapegrace
every luxury and indulgence, and, self-absorbed as he was in an ideal
sphere, felt the deepest interest in all the most trivial things that
concerned him. Much to the uncle's sorrow, Karl cared nothing for
music; but, worst of all, he was an idle, selfish, heartless fellow,
who sneered at his benefactor, and valued him only for what he could
get from him. At last Beethoven became fully aware of the lying
ingratitude of his nephew, and he exclaims--"I know now you have no
pleasure in coming to see me, which is only natural, for my atmosphere
is too pure for you. God has never yet forsaken me, and no doubt some
one will be found to close my eyes." Yet the generous old man forgave
him, for he says in the codicil of his will, "I appoint my nephew Karl
my sole heir."

Frequently, glimpses of the true vein showed themselves in such little
episodes as that which occurred when Moscheles, accompanied by his
brother, visited the great musician for the first time.

"Arrived at the door of the house," writes Moscheles, "I had some
misgivings, knowing Beethoven's strong aversion to strangers. I
therefore told my brother to wait below. After greeting Beethoven, I
said, 'Will you permit me to introduce my brother to you?'

"'Where is he?' he suddenly replied.

"'Below.'

"'What, downstairs?' and Beethoven immediately rushed off, seized hold
of my brother, saying, 'Am I such a savage that you are afraid to come
near me?'

"After this he showed great kindness to us."

While referring to the relations of Moscheles and Beethoven, the
following anecdote related by Mdme. Moscheles will be found
suggestive. The pianist had been arranging some numbers of "Fidelio,"
which he took to the composer. He, _à la_ Haydn, had inscribed the
score with the words, "By God's help." Beethoven did not fail to
perceive this, and he wrote underneath this phylactory the
characteristic advice--"O man, help thyself."

The genial and sympathetic nature of Beethoven is illustrated in this
quaint incident:--

It was in the summer of 1811 that Ludwig Löwe, the actor, first met
Beethoven in the dining-room of the Blue Star at Töplitz. Löwe was
paying his addresses to the landlord's daughter; and conversation
being impossible at the hour he dined there, the charming creature one
day whispered to him, "Come at a later hour, when the customers are
gone and only Beethoven is here. He cannot hear, and will therefore
not be in the way." This answered for a time; but the stern parents,
observing the acquaintanceship, ordered the actor to leave the house
and not to return. "How great was our despair!" relates Löwe. "We both
desired to correspond, but through whom? Would the solitary man at the
opposite table assist us? Despite his serious reserve and seeming
churlishness, I believe he is not unfriendly. I have often caught a
kind smile across his bold, defiant face." Löwe determined to try.
Knowing Beethoven's custom, he contrived to meet the master when he
was walking in the gardens. Beethoven instantly recognised him, and
asked the reason why he no longer dined at the Blue Star. A full
confession was made, and then Löwe timidly asked if he would take
charge of a letter to give to the girl.

"Why not?" pleasantly observed the rough-looking musician. "You mean
what is right." So pocketing the note, he was making his way onward
when Löwe again interfered.

"I beg your pardon, Herr von Beethoven, that is not all."

"So, so," said the master.

"You must also bring back the answer," Löwe went on to say.

"Meet me here at this time to-morrow," said Beethoven.

Löwe did so, and there found Beethoven awaiting him, with the coveted
reply from his lady-love. In this manner Beethoven carried the letters
backward and forward for some five or six weeks--in short, as long as
he remained in the town.

His friendship with Ferdinand Ries commenced in a way which testified
how grateful he was for kindness. When his mother lay ill at Bonn, he
hurried home from Vienna just in time to witness her death. After the
funeral he suffered greatly from poverty, and was relieved by Ries,
the violinist. Years afterwards young Ries waited on Beethoven with a
letter of introduction from his father. The composer received him with
cordial warmth, and said, "Tell your father I have not forgotten the
death of my mother." Ever afterwards he was a helpful and devoted
friend to young Ries, and was of inestimable value in forwarding his
musical career.

Beethoven in his poverty never forgot to be generous. At a concert
given in aid of wounded soldiers, where he conducted, he indignantly
refused payment with the words, "Say Beethoven never accepts anything
where humanity is concerned." To an Ursuline convent he gave an
entirely new symphony to be performed at their benefit concert.
Friend or enemy never applied to him for help that he did not freely
give, even to the pinching of his own comfort.


VII.

Rossini could write best when he was under the influence of Italian
wine and sparkling champagne. Paisiello liked the warm bed in which to
jot down his musical notions, and we are told that "it was between the
sheets that he planned the 'Barber of Seville,' the 'Molinara,' and so
many other _chefs-d'oeuvre_ of ease and gracefulness." Mozart could
chat and play at billiards or bowls at the same time that he composed
the most beautiful music. Sacchini found it impossible to write
anything of any beauty unless a pretty woman was by his side, and he
was surrounded by his cats, whose graceful antics stimulated and
affected him in a marked fashion. "Gluck," Bombet says, "in order to
warm his imagination and to transport himself to Aulis or Sparta, was
accustomed to place himself in the middle of a beautiful meadow. In
this situation, with his piano before him, and a bottle of champagne
on each side, he wrote in the open air his two 'Iphigenias,' his
'Orpheus,' and some other works." The agencies which stimulated
Beethoven's grandest thoughts are eminently characteristic of the man.
He loved to let the winds and storms beat on his bare head, and see
the dazzling play of the lightning. Or, failing the sublimer moods of
Nature, it was his delight to walk in the woods and fields, and take
in at every pore the influences which she so lavishly bestows on her
favourites. His true life was his ideal life in art. To him it was a
mission and an inspiration, the end and object of all things; for
these had value only as they fed the divine craving within.

"Nothing can be more sublime," he writes, "than to draw nearer to the
Godhead than other men, and to diffuse here on earth these Godlike
rays among mortals." Again: "What is all this compared to the grandest
of all Masters of Harmony--above, above?"

    "All experience seemed an arch, wherethrough
    Gleamed that untravelled world, whose margin fades
    Forever and forever as we move."

The last four years of our composer's life were passed amid great
distress from poverty and feebleness. He could compose but little;
and, though his friends solaced his latter days with attention and
kindness, his sturdy independence would not accept more. It is a
touching fact that Beethoven voluntarily suffered want and privation
in his last years, that he might leave the more to his selfish and
ungrateful nephew. He died in 1827, in his fifty-seventh year, and is
buried in the Wahring Cemetery near Vienna. Let these extracts from a
testamentary paper addressed to his brothers in 1802, in expectation
of death, speak more eloquently of the hidden life of a heroic soul
than any other words could:--

    "O ye, who consider or declare me to be hostile, obstinate,
    or misanthropic, what injustice ye do me! Ye know not the
    secret causes of that which to you wears such an appearance.
    My heart and my mind were from childhood prone to the tender
    feelings of affection. Nay, I was always disposed even to
    perform great actions. But, only consider that, for the last
    six years, I have been attacked by an incurable complaint,
    aggravated by the unskilful treatment of medical men,
    disappointed from year to year in the hope of relief, and at
    last obliged to submit to the endurance of an evil the cure
    of which may last perhaps for years, if it is practicable at
    all. Born with a lively, ardent disposition, susceptible to
    the diversions of society, I was forced at an early age to
    renounce them, and to pass my life in seclusion. If I strove
    at any time to set myself above all this, oh how cruelly was
    I driven back by the doubly painful experience of my
    defective hearing! and yet it was not possible for me to say
    to people, 'Speak louder--bawl--for I am deaf!' Ah! how
    could I proclaim the defect of a sense that I once possessed
    in the highest perfection--in a perfection in which few of
    my colleagues possess or ever did possess it? Indeed, I
    cannot! Forgive me, then, if ye see me draw back when I
    would gladly mingle among you. Doubly mortifying is my
    misfortune to me, as it must tend to cause me to be
    misconceived. From recreation in the society of my
    fellow-creatures, from the pleasures of conversation, from
    the effusions of friendship, I am cut off. Almost alone in
    the world, I dare not venture into society more than
    absolute necessity requires. I am obliged to live as an
    exile. If I go into company, a painful anxiety comes over
    me, since I am apprehensive of being exposed to the danger
    of betraying my situation. Such has been my state, too,
    during this half year that I have spent in the country.
    Enjoined by my intelligent physician to spare my hearing as
    much as possible, I have been almost encouraged by him in my
    present natural disposition, though, hurried away by my
    fondness for society, I sometimes suffered myself to be
    enticed into it. But what a humiliation when any one
    standing beside me could hear at a distance a flute that I
    could not hear, or any one heard the shepherd singing, and I
    could not distinguish a sound! Such circumstances brought me
    to the brink of despair, and had well-nigh made me put an
    end to my life--nothing but my art held my hand. Ah! it
    seemed to me impossible to quit the world before I had
    produced all that I felt myself called to accomplish. And so
    I endured this wretched life--so truly wretched, that a
    somewhat speedy change is capable of transporting me from
    the best into the worst condition. Patience--so I am told--I
    must choose for my guide. Steadfast, I hope, will be my
    resolution to persevere, till it shall please the inexorable
    Fates to cut the thread.

    "Perhaps there may be an amendment--perhaps not; I am
    prepared for the worst--I, who so early as my twenty-eighth
    year was forced to become a philosopher--it is not easy--for
    the artist more difficult than for any other. O God! thou
    lookest down upon my misery; thou knowest that it is
    accompanied with love of my fellow-creatures, and a
    disposition to do good! O men! when ye shall read this,
    think that ye have wronged me; and let the child of
    affliction take comfort on finding one like himself, who, in
    spite of all the impediments of Nature, yet did all that lay
    in his power to obtain admittance into the rank of worthy
    artists and men.... I go to meet Death with joy. If he comes
    before I have had occasion to develop all my professional
    abilities, he will come too soon for me, in spite of my hard
    fate, and I should wish that he had delayed his arrival. But
    even then I am content, for he will release me from a state
    of endless suffering. Come when thou wilt, I shall meet thee
    with firmness. Farewell, and do not quite forget me after I
    am dead; I have deserved that you should think of me, for in
    my lifetime I have often thought of you to make you happy.
    May you ever be so!"


VIII.

The music of Beethoven has left a profound impress on art. In speaking
of his genius it is difficult to keep expression within the limits of
good taste. For who has so passed into the very inner _penetralia_ of
his great art, and revealed to the world such heights and depths of
beauty and power in sound?

Beethoven composed nine symphonies, which, by one voice, are ranked as
the greatest ever written, reaching in the last, known as the
"Choral," the full perfection of his power and experience. Other
musicians have composed symphonic works remarkable for varied
excellences, but in Beethoven this form of writing seems to have
attained its highest possibilities, and to have been illustrated by
the greatest variety of effects, from the sublime to such as are
simply beautiful and melodious. His hand swept the whole range of
expression with unfaltering mastery. Some passages may seem obscure,
some too elaborately wrought, some startling and abrupt, but on all is
stamped the die of his great genius.

Beethoven's compositions for the piano, the sonatas, are no less
notable for range and power of expression, their adaptation to meet
all the varied moods of passion and sentiment. Other pianoforte
composers have given us more warm and vivid colour, richer sensual
effects of tone, more wild and bizarre combination, perhaps even
greater sweetness in melody; but we look in vain elsewhere for the
spiritual passion and poetry, the aspiration and longing, the lofty
humanity, which make the Beethoven sonatas the _suspiria de profundis_
of the composer's inner life. In addition to his symphonies and
sonatas, he wrote the great opera of "Fidelio," and in the field of
oratorio asserted his equality with Handel and Haydn by composing "The
Mount of Olives." A great variety of chamber music, masses, and songs
bear the same imprint of power. He may be called the most original and
conscientious of all the composers. Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Schubert,
and Mendelssohn were inveterate thieves, and pilfered the choicest
gems from old and forgotten writers without scruple. Beethoven seems
to have been so fecund in great conceptions, so lifted on the wings of
his tireless genius, so austere in artistic morality, that he stands
for the most part above the reproach deservedly borne by his brother
composers.

Beethoven's principal title to fame is in his superlative place as a
symphonic composer. In the symphony music finds its highest
intellectual dignity; in Beethoven the symphony has found its loftiest
master.




_SCHUBERT AND SCHUMANN._


I.

Heinrich Heine, in his preface to a translation of _Don Quixote_,
discusses the creative powers of different peoples. To the Spaniard
Cervantes is awarded the first place in novel-writing, and to our own
Shakespeare, of course, the transcendent rank in drama.

"And the Germans," he goes on to say, "what palm is due to them? Well,
we are the best writers of songs in the world. No people possesses
such beautiful _Lieder_ as the Germans. Just at present the nations
have too much political business on hand; but, after that has once
been settled, we Germans, English, Spaniards, Frenchmen, and Italians
will all go to the green forest and sing, and the nightingale shall be
umpire. I feel sure that in this contest the song of Wolfgang Goethe
will gain the prize."

There are few, if any, who will be disposed to dispute the verdict of
the German poet, himself no mean rival, in depth and variety of lyric
inspiration, even of the great Goethe. But a greater poet than either
one of this great pair bears the suggestive and impersonal name of
"The People." It is to the countless wealth of the German race in
folk-songs, an affluence which can be traced back to the very dawn of
civilisation among them, that the possibility of such lyric poets as
Goethe, Heine, Rückert, and Uhland is due. From the days of the
"Nibelungenlied," that great epic which, like the Homeric poems, can
hardly be credited to any one author, every hamlet has rung wit

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