Part 12 (1/2)
[Sidenote: _Clementi._]
[Sidenote: _Beethoven as a pianist._]
The period of C.P.E. Bach, Haydn, and Mozart is that in which the pianoforte gradually replaced its predecessors, and the first real pianist was Mozart's contemporary and rival, Muzio Clementi. His chief significance lies in his influence as a technician, for he opened the way to the modern style of play with its greater sonority and capacity for expression. Under him pa.s.sage playing became an entirely new thing; deftness, lightness, and fluency were replaced by stupendous virtuosos.h.i.+p, which rested, nevertheless, on a full and solid tone. He is said to have been able to trill in octaves with one hand. He was necessary for the adequate interpretation of Beethoven, whose music is likely to be best understood by those who know that he, too, was a superb pianoforte player, fully up to the requirements which his last sonatas make upon technical skill as well as intellectual and emotional gifts.
[Sidenote: _Beethoven's technique._]
[Sidenote: _Expression supreme._]
Czerny, who was a pupil of Beethoven, has preserved a fuller account of that great composer's art as a player than we have of any of his predecessors. He describes his technique as tremendous, better than that of any virtuoso of his day. He was remarkably deft in connecting the full chords, in which he delighted, without the use of the pedal.
His manner at the instrument was composed and quiet. He sat erect, without movement of the upper body, and only when his deafness compelled him to do so, in order to hear his own music, did he contract a habit of leaning forward. With an evident appreciation of the necessities of old-time music he had a great admiration for clean fingering, especially in fugue playing, and he objected to the use of Cramer's studies in the instruction of his nephew by Czerny because they led to what he called a ”sticky” style of play, and failed to bring out crisp staccatos and a light touch. But it was upon expression that he insisted most of all when he taught.
[Sidenote: _Music and emotion._]
More than anyone else it was Beethoven who brought music back to the purpose which it had in its first rude state, when it sprang unvolitionally from the heart and lips of primitive man. It became again a vehicle for the feelings. As such it was accepted by the romantic composers to whom he belongs as father, seer, and prophet, quite as intimately as he belongs to the cla.s.sicists by reason of his adherence to form as an essential in music. To his contemporaries he appears as an image-breaker, but to the clearer vision of to-day he stands an unshakable barrier to lawless iconoclasm. Says Sir George Grove, quoting Mr. Edward Dannreuther, in the pa.s.sages within the inverted commas:
[Sidenote: _Beethoven a Romanticist._]
”That he was no wild radical altering for the mere pleasure of alteration, or in the mere search for originality, is evident from the length of time during which he abstained from publis.h.i.+ng, or even composing works of pretension, and from the likeness which his early works possess to those of his predecessors. He began naturally with the forms which were in use in his days, and his alteration of them grew very gradually with the necessities of his expression. The form of the sonata is 'the transparent veil through which Beethoven seems to have looked at all music.' And the good points of that form he retained to the last--the 'triune symmetry of exposition, ill.u.s.tration, and repet.i.tion,' which that admirable method allowed and enforced--but he permitted himself a much greater liberty than his predecessors had done in the relations.h.i.+p of the keys of the different movements, and parts of movements, and in the proportion of the clauses and sections with which he built them up. In other words, he was less bound by the forms and musical rules, and more swayed by the thought which he had to express, and the directions which that thought took in his mind.”
[Sidenote: _Schumann and Chopin._]
It is scarcely to be wondered at that when men like Schumann and Chopin felt the full force of the new evangel which Beethoven had preached, they proceeded to carry the formal side of poetic expression, its vehicle, into regions unthought of before their time.
The few old forms had now to give way to a large variety. In their work they proceeded from points that were far apart--Schumann's was literary, Chopin's political. In one respect the lists of their pieces which appear most frequently on recital programmes seem to hark back to the suites of two centuries ago--they are sets of short compositions grouped, either by the composer (as is the case with Schumann) or by the performer (as is the case with Chopin in the hands of Mr. Paderewski). Such fantastic musical miniatures as Schumann's ”Carnaval” and ”Papillons” are eminently characteristic of the composer's intellectual and emotional nature, which in his university days had fallen under the spell of literary romanticism.
[Sidenote: _Jean Paul's influence._]
[Sidenote: _Schumann's inspirations._]
While ostensibly studying jurisprudence at Heidelberg, Schumann devoted seven hours a day to the pianoforte and several to Jean Paul.
It was this writer who moulded not only Schumann's literary style in his early years, but also gave the bent which his creative activity in music took at the outset. To say little, but vaguely hint at much, was the rule which he adopted; to remain sententious in expression, but give the freest and most daring flight to his imagination, and spurn the conventional limitations set by rule and custom, his ambition.
Such fanciful and symbolical t.i.tles as ”Flower, Fruit, and Thorn Pieces,” ”t.i.tan,” etc., which Jean Paul adopted for his singular mixtures of tale, rhapsody, philosophy, and satire, were bound to find an imitator in so ardent an apostle as young Schumann, and, therefore, we have such compositions as ”Papillons,” ”Carnaval,” ”Kreisleriana,”
”Phantasiestucke,” and the rest. Almost always, it may be said, the pieces which make them up were composed under the poetical and emotional impulses derived from literature, then grouped and named. To understand their poetic contents this must be known.
[Sidenote: _Chopin's music._]
[Sidenote: _Preludes._]
Chopin's fancy, on the other hand, found stimulation in the charm which, for him, lay in the tone of the pianoforte itself (to which he added a new loveliness by his manner of writing), as well as in the rhythms of the popular dances of his country. These dances he not only beautified as the old suite writers beautified their forms, but he utilized them as vessels which he filled with feeling, not all of which need be accepted as healthy, though much of it is. As to his t.i.tles, ”Preludes” is purely an arbitrary designation for compositions which are equally indefinite in form and character; Niecks compares them very aptly to a portfolio full of drawings ”in all stages of advancement--finished and unfinished, complete and incomplete compositions, sketches and mere memoranda, all mixed indiscriminately together.” So, too, they appeared to Schumann: ”They are sketches, commencements of studies, or, if you will, ruins, single eagle-wings, all strangely mixed together.” Nevertheless some of them are marvellous soul-pictures.
[Sidenote: _etudes._]
[Sidenote: _Nocturnes._]
The ”etudes” are studies intended to develop the technique of the pianoforte in the line of the composer's discoveries, his method of playing extended arpeggios, contrasted rhythms, progressions in thirds and octaves, etc., but still they breathe poetry and sometimes pa.s.sion. Nocturne is an arbitrary, but expressive, t.i.tle for a short composition of a dreamy, contemplative, or even elegiac, character. In many of his nocturnes Chopin is the adored sentimentalist of boarding-school misses. There is poppy in them and seductive poison for which Niecks sensibly prescribes Bach and Beethoven as antidotes.
The term ballad has been greatly abused in literature, and in music is intrinsically unmeaning. Chopin's four Ballades have one feature in common--they are written in triple time; and they are among his finest inspirations.
[Sidenote: _The Polonaise._]