Part 1 (1/2)

Old Fogy

by James Huneker

INTRODUCTION

My friend the publisher has asked y, whose letters aroused much curiosity and comment when they appeared from time to time in the coluly When I attempted to assemble my memories of the eccentric and irascible musician I found that, despite his enorentleman seldom allowed us more than a peep at his personality His was the expansive temperament, or, to employ a modern phrase, the dynaht, he would bewilder you with an excursion into latter-day literature, and like a rift of light in a fogbank you then caught a gleam of an entirely differenta book by the French writer Huys with new art And he confessed to h he despised the sa is made all of a piece; we are, mentally at least, ative the report that I was ever a pupil of Old Fogy To be sure, I did play for him once a paraphrase of _The Maiden's Prayer_ (in double tenths by Dogowsky), but he laughed so heartily that I feared apoplexy, and soon stopped The man really existed There are a score of persons alive in Philadelphia today who still remember hiarian one, with two or three syllables lopped off at the end, and for faed here He assented that he was a fellow-pupil of Liszt's under the beneficent, iron rule of Carl Czerny But he never looked his age

Seely seventy, a very vital threescore-and-ten, by the way, he was as light on his feet as were his fingers on the keyboard A linguist, speaking without a trace of foreign accent three or four tongues, he was equally fluent in all Once launched in an argureeable opponent Torrents and cataracts of words poured from his mouth

He pretended to hatehis opinions, collected for the first time in this volume, he very often contradicts himself He abused Bach, then used the _Well-tempered Clavichord_ as a weapon of offense ith to pound Liszt and the _Lisztianer_ He attacked Wagner and Wagnerism with inappeasable fury, but I suspect that he was secretly much impressed by several of the er_ As for his severe criticism of metropolitan orchestras, that may be set down to provincial narrowness; certainly, he was unfair to the Philharmonic Society

Therefore, I don't set ments of Tchaikovsky, Richard Strauss, and other composers He insisted on the superiority of Chopin's piano music above all others; nevertheless he devoted more time to Huhtly banal compositions of the worthy Dussek It is quite true that he named his little villa on the Wissahickon Creek after Dussek

Nourished by the romantic writers of the past century, especially by Hoffmann and his fantastic _Kreisleriana_, their influence upon the writing of Old Fogy is not difficult to detect He loved the fantastic, the bizarre, the grotesque--for the latter quality he endured the literary work of Berlioz, hating all the while his music And this is a curious crack in his mental make-up; his admiration for the exotic in literature and his abhorrence of the same quality when it y In one evening he would flash out a dozen contradictory opinions Of his sincerity I have no doubt; but he was one of those natures that are sincere only for thestar, and then he would go to the piano and play the first few pages of the glorious A minor concerto most admirably How did he play? Not in an extraordinary manner Solidly schooled, his technical attainments were only of a respectable order; but when excited he revealed traces of a higher virtuosity than was to have been expected I recall his series of twelve historical recitals, in which he practically explored all pianoforte literature froiven in the presence of a few friends Old Fogy played all the concertos, sonatas, studies and minor pieces worth while His touch was dry, his style neat A pianist made, not born, I should say

He was really at his best when he unchained his fancy His rotesques are a survival from the Hoffht upon the artistic tendencies of our time Need I add that he did not care for the vaporous tonal experiments of Debussy and the new school! But then he was an indifferent critic and an enthusiastic advocate

He never played in public to e, nor within the nacious, hardly sagacious

He would sputter with rage if you suggested that he was aged enough to be called ”venerable” How old was he--for he died suddenly last September at his horandson, a ivethat he was an intiy was born in the years 1809 or 1810 No one will ever dispute these dates, as was the case with Chopin, for Old Fogy will be soon forgotten It is due to the pious friendshi+p of the publisher that these opinions are bound between covers They are the record of a stubborn, prejudiced, well-trained musician and well-read man, one as not devoid of irony Indeed, I believe he wrotecompanion, boasted a perverse funny-bone and a profound sense of the iy And this is all I know about the man

James Huneker

I

OLD FOGY IS PESSIMISTIC

Once every twelve months, to be precise, as the year dies and the sap sinks in ic--isn't that the new-fangled way of putting it?--barometer sinks; in syouty, and my prejudices swell like varicose veins

Errors! Yes, errors! The word is not polite, nor am I in a ress of art,” the ”ie of art” distinctly and har I haven't the leisure just now to demonstrate these mistaken propositions, but I shall write a few sentences

How can art i up” into row old, can beco, and finally die and be buried with all the honors due its long, useful life It was Henrik Ibsen who said that the value of a truth lasted about fifteen years; then it rotted into error Now, isn't all this talk of artistic i of the Norwegian draed; Mozart, senile What, instead, is the health of these three corace writing today than Mozart? Is there athe moderns more virile, more passionately earnest or noble than Beethoven?

Bach, of the three, seems the oldest; yet his _C-sharp major Prelude_ belies his years On the contrary, the _Well-teer with time It is the Book of Eternal Wisdom It is the Fountain of Eternal Youth

As a matter of cold, hard fact, it is your er Consider the Greeks and their nave joy in creation! The twentieth-century s forth his works of art in sorrow His music shows it It is sad, complicated, hysterical and morbid I shan't allude to Chopin, as neurotic--another empty medical phrase!--or to Schuner, as a decadent; sufficient for the purposes of ument to mention the names of Liszt, Berlioz, Tchaikovsky and Richard Strauss So by the wall, and ”ways be foul” and ”foul is fair and fair is foul”--pardon this jumble of Shakespeare!--I shall tell you what I think of the blond ends, sublime to I have neither huon of modern criticism, Berlioz is called the father ofin his nificently His orchestration covers a multitude of weaknesses with a flaain; I could have just as easily written ”flahty, poetic, high-sounding labels to his works, and, like Charles La sonorous frame with a picture Your picture is notle-eyes and cocoanut-shaped head sees as in a fluttering -chinned, ox-eyed, classic-browed youth, athe Alps to fall upon him Now, I loathe such otis that it addresses the iination of your own splendid _ego_ in a white vest [we called the an auto Sunday How lofty!

Let us pass to the Hungarian piano-virtuoso who posed as a composer

That he lent money and thener, I do not doubt But, then, beggars hty poor stuff, ner liked far better the solid cash than the notes of hand! Liszt, I think, would have had nothing to say if Berlioz had not preceded him The idea struck him, for he was a -winded, that his symphonies were neither fish nor forive them a dose homeopathic He did, and named his prescription a _Symphonic Poem_ or, rather, _Poe