Part 16 (1/2)

WILLIAM MASON.

The other American pianist born in the year 1829 had a totally different heredity, environment, and education. William Mason also showed his talent at an early age, and was seriously taught the piano under the direction of his father, the late very distinguished and eminent Dr. Lowell Mason, who at that time and for about twenty years later exerted a most commanding influence in Boston and the country at large. Mason's advance was so rapid that by the time he was thirteen or fourteen, or a little later, he appeared in public with orchestra in Boston, playing the Mendelssohn G minor concerto, and I think he had played the Weber ”Concertstuck.” In the season of 1846 and 1847 he played the piano part in the chamber concerts given by the Harvard Musical a.s.sociation. In 1849 he went to Leipsic and became a pupil in theory of the distinguished Moritz Hauptmann. Upon Hauptmann's death he went to Prague for a year with Dreyschock, and then to Liszt at Weimar. This was in 1851, or thereabouts, and here he remained some time. Returning to America in 1854 he removed to New York, and took the commanding position which he has almost ever since occupied as teacher and as concert pianist. While there are traces of American training in the musical compositions of Dr. Mason, these traces are very few, the general character of his work being distinctly German.

His musical talent was strong upon the harmonic side, but upon the melodic side his imagination was not so free. He has produced several volumes of compositions, probably about one hundred in all, almost every one being elegantly written and well made, and many of them of a cla.s.sical elegance of style. His reputation as a composer has suffered from his limiting his work always to the field of the salon, and especially to the piano. I believe he has never composed an original song, although he has arranged several which have been very useful indeed. It is as a composer for the piano that we have to speak of him.

The most sensational of the Mason pieces is his famous ”Silver Spring,”

which was composed shortly after the late Scandinavian pianist, Haberbier, had visited Weimar and had played many brilliant effects of running work upon the piano, in which the hands were used ”inter-locking,” as it is called; that is, the left hand taking now and then one or two notes of the run. This method of dividing up a run has the effect of imparting a certain amount of arm element to the touch, whereby the tone becomes considerably heavier and more brilliant. It was thought at Weimar at that time that piano playing would very likely take this direction in future, and that the day of running work in the fingers of one hand alone had practically pa.s.sed. Accordingly, Mason experimented in these new effects which Haberbier had suggested, and worked out this piece, ”The Silver Spring.” As he told me, he first had to find out an accompaniment figure which pleased him, and then to discover in which chords it would go most easily, because the location of the black keys with reference to the white plays a very important part when the hand has to fall in its place in rapid motion. When he had ascertained these points, he then had to consider what key would afford the greatest number of chords of this character, and so at last he came to the key of A and the chords he has in ”The Silver Spring.”

When he had arrived at this point it was necessary to provide a melody, and, as the melody had to fit the accompaniment, the melody was made last, and in this way he arrived at the seeming ”impromptu” of ”The Silver Spring.” This is his own story to me many years ago, and it may have had a humorous exaggeration in it, not to be taken too seriously.

I mention it because somewhere about the same time when Mason told it to me I had been talking with Dudley Buck one day, and we were speaking of Mason with very great admiration, especially for the elegance of his style as ill.u.s.trated in some of his then recently composed works, such as his ”Cradle Song,” his two impromptus, ”At Evening” and ”In the Morning,” his ”Romance etude” and the like, and Buck said, ”If Mason ever had an inspiration it was in that beautiful melody in 'The Silver Spring.' I have arranged a church tune from it and my choir sings it with never failing delight. It will not do to undervalue Mason's gift for melody when he has produced a piece like that.”

With reference to the trend of piano playing in the direction of this interlocking work, there were several years when it looked as if the Haberbier suggestions would bear no fruit, but latterly in the Tschaikowsky concerto, to some extent, and in the Schytte concerto in C-sharp minor, to a very great extent, the interlocking principle is employed.

One of the first of Mason's pieces which attained anything like persistent popularity was the ”Danse Rustique,” which, by the way, is one of the best finger studies for piano students in the fourth grade of which I have any knowledge. It is one of those pieces which can always be learned even by a pupil who is not very smart, provided he will practise it carefully and earnestly enough. It is a piece which can not be played well without very careful practice, and which, when well played, produces a good effect. Hence it has a remarkable pedagogic value if the teacher knows when to put it in and how to handle it when it is once there. While this piece makes no very important figure in the esthetic world, it is by no means a composition to be treated with disrespect. There is a great deal of energy in it and the second subject is very pleasing indeed, and the modulating work in the middle of the piece, where the elaboration would naturally stand in a serious work, is of considerable range and ingenuity, and thoroughly characteristic of the author.

One who wishes to know Mason should study some of the lighter aspects of his productions; and first of these, since it is more nearly related to what I have just now been mentioning, is the ”Romance etude” in G minor. This is a pretty melody, often in thirds, in G minor, lying in the convenient soprano range of the piano. Long runs cross this melody, in Thalbergian manner, from one end of the keyboard to the other, and at times the scale business gives place to charming arpeggios, figures which transfer themselves from one hand to the other. The scale is a curious minor scale with a sharp fourth, and is therefore anything but inviting to the fingers at first. The effect of the whole, when well played, is very charming, although it is more the effect of a study than of a poem.

Still lighter in their characteristics are his charming and half-jocose variations on the old French air, ”Ah vous dirais-je maman,” better known in school circles of my time as ”Haste thee, winter, haste away.”

There is a very playful effect in these variations, and in the t.i.tle Mason calls them ”Variations Grotesques”; but when he sent a copy to Liszt, that amiable critic replied that the word ”grotesque” had no place in piano playing--that they should properly be called jocose, or something of that sort.

Thoroughly interesting in every way is the remarkable series of duets for teacher and pupil. Here are eight little nursery melodies which at the time these variations were composed were among the best known in this field, and the pupil, supposed to be a small child, plays them generally with one hand alone, or with both hands in octaves, very rarely in parts. The teacher, meanwhile, adds the harmonies, and wonderfully interesting and highly diversified harmonies they are. And in the same line with these are two other pieces which were originally written for the Mason and Hoadley Method for beginners: a march in which the pupil plays under the five fingers entirely, while the teacher adds the most strange and diversified harmonies, and a waltz in which the pupil still has nothing more than five-finger positions to deal with. I consider these pieces superior to anything of this kind that I have ever seen in point of cleverness and harmonic wit.

It would be a mistake, however, to dismiss the work of Dr. Mason with these half-jocose ill.u.s.trations of his genius. He has a very elegantly written ”Berceuse” which if very well done produces a lovely effect. A trifle more flexibility in the melody would have been an advantage, but it is a beautifully made piece and well worthy attention. He has also a ballad of very considerable dramatic force, and I have always been fond of his ”Reverie Poetique,” which is very much in the style of Henselt. A melody without a great range, but running in two parts upon rather diversified harmonies, const.i.tutes the first part of this piece, and it is afterward developed or varied in double notes, which are princ.i.p.ally sixths, in a very lovely manner. The only drawback, aside from the difficulty of playing it well, is the length to which it is spun out. Undoubtedly it is a little monotonous, owing to the same motive coming over so many times. On the other hand, however, it pretends at the start to be nothing more than a poetic ”reverie,” and it has the character of a reverie--something which dwells and muses and perhaps never arrives. I mentioned, before, two reveries called ”In the Morning” and ”At Evening.” The first of these is a very clever study, and both are well worth studying.

The works of both these composers have a distinct and p.r.o.nounced pedagogic value, but in wholly different directions, and both appeal princ.i.p.ally to American pianists. The Gottschalk pieces now are mainly used in the earlier stages of instruction for forming good melody habits. They appeal to the poetic sensibility of the players who as yet are hardly ready for Chopin or any of the more elaborate composers.

Dr. Mason's works, especially those I have here mentioned, appeal upon the opposite side to the harmonic sense, and to the sense of working out a theme with good consistency and persistency. While the Gottschalk pieces improve the style of melody and the sparkle of the playing, the Mason pieces conduce to system and regularity in study and to a serious and careful treatment of the left-hand part as well as the right, and they have in them some of that quality which belongs to nearly all the works of Bach, when undertaken by students: they promote seriousness and musical feeling.

Hence I propose the following program as on the whole affording a good idea of the works of these composers:

PROGRAM.

Gottschalk-Weber: Overture to ”Oberon.” Four hands.

Mason: Amitie pour Amitie. (Available for four hands if preferred.) Air and Variations Grotesques. ”Ah Vous Dirais-je Maman.”

Spring Dawn Mazurka.

Reverie Poetique.

Gottschalk: Marche de Nuit.

The Banjo. (Negro Sketch.) Song, ”Slumber On.”

Mason: Eight Duets for Teacher and Pupil. (Ditson Co.) Four hands.

March and Waltz for Teacher and Pupil. Four hands.

Gottschalk: Aeolian Murmurs.

The Last Hope.

Mason: The Tocctina.

Reverie, ”Au Matin.”

”The Silver Spring.”

Gottschalk-Rossini: The Overture to ”William Tell.” Four hands.

CHAPTER VII.

MACDOWELL.