Part 4 (1/2)
Rise of the Amateur.
Characteristic of the period of transition from Bach to Beethoven, from the fugue to the sonata, was the development of popular interest in music. Scarlatti begins a brief introduction to a collection of thirty of his pianoforte pieces which were published in 1746, by addressing the ”amateur or professor, whoever you be.” Significant in this is the inclusion of, in fact the seeming preference given to the amateur. Music of the counterpoint variety had been music for the church, the court and the professional. Now, with the development of the freer harmonic or melodic system, it was growing more in touch with the people. During Philipp Emanuel Bach's life the increase of popular interest in music was remarkable. The t.i.tles that began to appear on compositions show that composers were reaching out for a larger public. Bie quotes some of them: ”Cecilia Playing on the Pianoforte and Satisfying the Hearing”; ”The Busy Muse Clio”; ”Pianoforte Practice for the Delight of Mind and Ear, in Six Easy _Galanterie Parties_ Adapted to Modern Taste, Composed Chiefly for Young Ladies”; ”The Contented Ear and the Quickened Soul”; while Philipp Emanuel Bach inscribes some of his pieces as ”easy” or ”for ladies.” Evidently the ”young person” figured as extensively in the calculations of musical composers then as she does now in those of the publishers of fiction. Musical periodicals sprang up like mushrooms--”Musical Miscellany,” ”Floral Garnerings for Pianoforte Amateurs,” ”New Music Journal for Encouragement and Entertainment in Solitude at the Pianoforte for the Skilled and Unskilled,” such were some of the t.i.tles. These periodicals often went the way of most periodical flesh and in the customary brief period, but they show a quickened public interest in music--the ”contented ear and the quickened soul,” so to speak.
Changes in Musical Taste.
If I dismiss Philipp Emanuel Bach rather curtly and, in this portion of the book at least, do the same with Haydn and Mozart, this is not because I fail to appreciate their importance in musical history, but because they have failed to retain their hold on the modern pianoforte repertoire. The simple fact is that the pianoforte as an instrument has outgrown their music. We can get more out of it than they gave it.
If we bear in mind that the pianoforte, as well as music itself, has developed, it will aid us in understanding why so much music, once considered far in advance of its time and even revolutionary, has so soon become antiquated. Why ignore facts? Some examples of primitive music still survive because they charm us with their quaintness. But the cla.s.sical period is retiring more and more into the shadow of history. Whatever importance Haydn and Mozart may possess for the student, their pianoforte music, so far as practical program-making is concerned, is to-day a negligible quant.i.ty. I remember the time when, as a pupil, I pored with breathless interest over the pages of Mozart's ”Sonata in A Minor” and his ”Fantasy and Sonata in C Minor.”
But to-day, when I read in a book published about twenty-five years ago that Mozart indulged in harmonies, chord progressions and modulations, ”sometimes considered of doubtful propriety even now” and ”quite as harshly censured as are to-day the similar licenses of free-thinking composers”--I wonder where they are. For his own day, nevertheless, Mozart was an innovator, as every genius is; for it is through those daring deviations of genius from established rule and tradition, which contemporaries regard as unjustifiable license, that art progresses. This should be borne in mind by those who were intolerant toward the opponents of Wagner, yet now are guilty of a similar solecism in proclaiming Richard Strauss a charlatan.
a.s.suming that the modern pianoforte pupil is but indifferently nourished on the Mozart pabulum, let me add that this composer also was a virtuoso, and by his choice of the pianoforte over the clavichord did much toward making the modern instrument more popular.
He also developed the sonata form so that Beethoven found it ready moulded for his genius. In fact the sonata form as we know it is so much a Mozart creation that Mr. Hanchett, in his ”Art of the Musician,” suggests calling the sonata movement proper a mozarta--a suggestion which I presume will never be adopted.
Beethoven and the Epoch of the Sonata.
In the history of music there are three figures that easily tower above the rest. Each represents an era. They are Bach, who stands for counterpoint, the epoch of the fugue; Beethoven, who represents the epoch of the sonata; Wagner, who represents the epoch of the music-drama. The first two summed up in themselves certain art forms which others had originated. Bach's root goes back to Palestrina, Beethoven's to Scarlatti. Wagner presents the phenomenon of being both the germ and the full fruition of the art form for which he stands. It is conceivable that the work of these men will at some time fall into desuetude, for in art all things are possible, and the cla.s.sical period seems to be losing its grip on music more and more every day and we ourselves may live to see the sonata movement become obsolete.
It certainly is having less and less vogue, and a composer who now writes a sonata with undeviating allegiance to its cla.s.sical outlines, deliberately invites neglect, because the listener no longer cares to have his faculties of appreciation restricted by too rigid insistence upon form, preferring that genius should have the utmost lat.i.tude and be absolutely untrammeled in giving expression to what it has to say.
Nevertheless, music always will bear the impress of these three master minds, just as our language, although we do not speak in blank verse, always will bear the impress of Shakespeare. ”I don't think much of that play,” exclaimed the countryman, after hearing ”Hamlet” for the first time. ”It's all made up of quotations!” Equally familiar, not to say colloquial, are certain musical phrases, certain modulations, which have come down to us from the masters.
Although Beethoven no longer is the all-dominant figure in the musical world that he was fifty years ago, and it requires a performance of the ”Ninth Symphony” given under specially significant circ.u.mstances (such as the conducting of a Felix Weingartner) to attract as many to a concert hall as would be drawn by an ordinary Wagner program, I trust I shall know how to appreciate his importance to the development of musical art and approach him with the reverence that is his due.
Like all great men who sum up an epoch, he found certain things ready to hand. The Frenchman, Jean Philippe Rameau (1683-1764), ”the creator of the modern system of harmony,” had published his ”Nouveau Systeme de Musique Theorique”; the sonata movement from its tentative beginnings under Scarlatti had been developed through Philipp Emanuel Bach, Haydn and Mozart into a definite art form awaiting the final test of a great genius--which Beethoven proved to be.
Beethoven's Slow Development.
I already have pointed out that while pianoforte and orchestra have developed side by side, the general belief that the pianoforte merely has been the handmaiden of the orchestra is a mistaken one. On the contrary, until the end of the cla.s.sical period, at least, the pianoforte was the pioneer. It has blazed the way for the orchestra and led it, instead of bringing up the rear. Thus the sonata form was developed by the pianoforte and then was handed over by that instrument to the orchestra under the name of symphony, which, the reader should bear in mind, simply is a sonata written for orchestra instead of for the pianoforte. Even Beethoven, before he composed his first symphony, which is his Opus 21, tested his mastery of the form and his ideas regarding certain further developments in it, by first composing thirteen pianoforte sonatas, including the familiar ”Pathetique,” which used to be to concert programs what Liszt's ”Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2” is now--the _cheval de battaille_, on which pianists pranced up and down before the ranks of their astonished audiences and unfortunate amateurs sought to retain their equilibrium.
This experimentation, this comparatively slow development, was characteristic of Beethoven; is, in fact, characteristic of every genius who works from the soul outward. ”Like most artists whose spur is more in themselves than in natural artistic facilities, he was very slow to come to any artistic achievement,” writes Sir Hubert Parry.
”It is almost a law of things that men whose artistic personality is very strong, and who touch the world by the greatness and the power of their expression, come to maturity comparatively late, and sometimes grow greater all through their lives--so it was with Bach, Gluck, Beethoven and Wagner--while men whose aims are more purely artistic and whose main spur is facility of diction, come to the point of production early and do not grow much afterward. Such composers as Mozart and Mendelssohn succeeded in expressing themselves brilliantly at a very early age; but their technical facility was out of proportion to their individuality and their force of human nature, and therefore there is no such surprising difference between the work of their later years and the work of their childhood as there is in the case of Beethoven and Wagner.”
In writing sonatas Haydn and Mozart had been satisfied with grace of outward form and a smooth and pretty flow of melody within that form.
Beethoven was a man of intellectual force as well as of musical genius. He applied his intellect to enlarging the sonata form, his musical genius to supplying it with contents worthy of the greater opportunities he himself had created for it. There is a wonderful union of mind and heart in Beethoven's work. The sonata form, as perfected by him, is a monument to his genius. It remains to this day the flower of the cla.s.sical period.
The Pa.s.sing of the Sonata.
Nevertheless, the Beethoven sonatas no longer retain the place of pre-eminence once accorded them on pianoforte recital programs. When Von Bulow was in this country during the season of 1875-76 he frequently gave concerts at which he played only Beethoven sonatas.
I doubt if any of the great pianists of to-day could now awaken as much public interest by such programs as Von Bulow did. I remember the concert at which, among others of the Beethoven sonatas, this virtuoso played Opus 106 (”Grosse Sonata fur das Hammerklavier”).
After he had played through part of the first movement he became restless, and from time to time peered over the keyboard and into the instrument as if something were wrong with it. Finally he broke off in the middle of the movement, rose from his seat and walked off the stage. When he reappeared, he had with him an attendant from the firm of manufacturers whose pianofortes he used, and together they fussed over the instrument for a while, before the attendant made his exit and the irate little pianist began the sonata all over again. We considered the mishap that gave us opportunity to hear him play so much of the work twice, a piece of great good luck for us.
Would we so consider it now?
Von Bulow has pa.s.sed into musical history as a great Beethoven player, and such he undoubtedly was. I doubt, however, if he was a greater Beethoven player than several living pianists. Some seasons ago Eugene d'Albert played a Beethoven program. His performance did not evoke the enthusiasm he antic.i.p.ated. In fact there were intimations in the comments on his performance that he was not as great a Beethoven player as he thought he was. Personally, and having a very clear recollection of Von Bulow's Beethoven recitals, because I attended every one he gave in New York, and in my mind's eye can see him sitting at the pianoforte, bending away over, with his ear almost to the keyboard, I think d'Albert played his Beethoven program quite as well. What had happened, however, was this: A little matter of thirty years had pa.s.sed and with it the cla.s.sical period and its efflorescence, the sonata form, had faded by just so much, and by just so much no longer was considered by the public the crucial test of a pianist's musicians.h.i.+p. Incidentally it is worth noting that the public usually is far ahead of the profession and of the majority of critics in appreciating new tendencies in music and in realizing what is pa.s.sing away; and the same thing probably prevails in other arts.
Orchestral Instead of Pianistic.