Part 7 (1/2)
Full of varied characteristics are the ”Fantasie Pieces.” Among these is the familiar ”Warum,” which one has but to hear to recognize at once that it is no ordinary Why, but a question upon the answer to which depends the happiness of a lifetime; ”At Evening” (_Abends_), with its sense of perfect peace; the buoyant ”Soaring” (_Aufschwung_); ”Whims” (_Grillen_); ”Night Scene,” an echo of the legend of Hero and Leander; the fable, ”Dream-Whirls” (_Traumeswirren_) and the ”End of the Song,” with its mingling of humor and sadness. These ”Fantasie Pieces” and the aptly named ”Novelettes” seem destined always to retain their popularity. And then there are the ”Scenes from Childhood,” to which belongs the ”Traumerei”; the ”Forest Scenes,” the ”Sonatas;” the heroic technical studies, based on the Paganini ”Capriccios,” and the ”etudes Symphoniques,” and the ”Fantasie,” above the first movement of which he placed these lines from Schlegel:
”Through every tone there pa.s.ses, To him who deigns to list, In varied earthly dreaming, A tone of gentleness.”
Clara was the ”tone,” as he told her. It was largely through Madame Schumann's public playing of her husband's works that they won their way. Even so, owing to their lack of brilliancy and their introspection, they were long in coming to their own. But the best of them, including, of course, the admirable ”A Minor Concerto,” long will retain their hold on the modern pianist's repertoire. William Mason went to Leipzig in 1849. ”Only a few years before I arrived at Leipzig,” he says in his ”Memories,” ”Schumann's genius was so little appreciated that when he entered the store of Breitkopf & Hartel with a new ma.n.u.script under his arm, the clerks would nudge one another and laugh. One of them told me that they regarded him as a crank and a failure because his pieces remained on the shelf and were in the way. * * * Shortly after my return from Germany (to New York) I went to Breusing's, then one of the princ.i.p.al music stores in the city,--the Schirmers are his successors,--and asking for certain compositions by Schumann, I was informed that they had his music in stock, but as there was no demand for it, it was packed away in a bundle, and kept in the bas.e.m.e.nt.” What a contrast now!
VII
LISZT, THE GIANT AMONG VIRTUOSOS
It is possible, but not likely, that some pianist willing, for the moment at least, to sacrifice outward success to inward satisfaction, will, after he has played the Schumann selections on his program, essay one of Brahms's shorter pianoforte compositions. These are even more introspective than Schumann's works and combine a wealth of learning with great depth of musical feeling. It is almost necessary, however, that one should know them thoroughly in order to appreciate them, and audiences have been so slow to welcome them that they appear but infrequently on recital programs. Those of my readers, however, who are pianists yet still unacquainted with these rare and beautiful compositions, will soon find themselves under the spell of their intimate personal expression if they will get them and start to learn them. The Brahms Variations on a theme by Handel make a stupendous work, and the rare occasions on which it is played by any one capable of mastering it should be regarded as ”events.”
Grieg, with his clear, fascinating Norwegian clang-tints, which also play through his fascinating ”Concerta” in A minor; Dvorak, the Bohemian; Tschaikowsky, whose first ”Concerto” in B flat minor is among the finest modern works of its kind; or some of the neo-Russians, are composers who may figure on the program of a modern pianoforte recital. But it is more likely that the virtuoso will here elect to bring his recital to a close with some work by the grandest figure in the history of pianoforte playing and one of the greatest in the history of composition--Franz Liszt.
Kissed by Beethoven.
Liszt was born at Raiding, near Odenburg in Hungary, in October, 1811, and he died in Bayreuth in July, 1886. From early boyhood, when he was a pianoforte prodigy, almost until his death, he occupied a unique position in the musical world. He was the Paganini of the pianoforte, the greatest pianist that ever lived, and he was a great composer; and although, as a virtuoso, he retired from public performances long before he died, his fame as a player and his still greater fame as a composer have not diminished and his influence still is potent.
His father was an amateur, and began giving him instruction when he was six years old. The boy's talent was so p.r.o.nounced that even without professional instruction he was able, when he was nine years old, to appear in public and play a difficult concerto by Ries. So great was his success that his father arranged for other concerts at Pressburg. After the second of these, several Hungarian n.o.blemen agreed to provide an annual stipend of 600 florins for six years for Franz's further musical education. The family then removed to Vienna, where, for about a year and a half, the boy took pianoforte lessons from Czerny and theory with Salieri. Beethoven heard of him, and asked to see him, and at their meeting, after Franz had played, without notes and without the other instruments, Beethoven's pianoforte trio, Op. 97 (the large one in B flat major), the great master embraced and kissed him. In 1823 he was taken to Paris with a view to being placed in the Conservatoire. But although he pa.s.sed his examination without difficulty, Cherubini, at that time the director of the inst.i.tution and prejudiced against infant phenomena, revived a rule excluding foreigners and admission was denied him.
His success as a pianist, however, was enormous and there was the greatest demand in salons and musical circles for ”le pet.i.t Litz.” (As some writer, whose name I cannot recall, has said, ”the nearest Paris came to appreciating Liszt was to call him 'Litz.'”) He was the friend of Chopin, of other musicians, and of painters and literary men, and the doors of the most exclusive drawing-rooms of the French capital were open to him. Paganini played in Paris in 1831, and his wonderful feats of technique inspired Liszt to efforts to develop the technique of the pianoforte with as much daring as Paganini had shown in developing the capacity of the violin. This was the beginning of those wonderful feats of virtuosity as well as of the remarkable technical demands made in his compositions, both of which combined have done so much to make the pianoforte what it is, and to bring out its full potentiality as regards execution and expression.
Episode with Countess D'Agoult.
For a time Liszt left Paris with the Countess d'Agoult, who wrote under the nom-de-plume of Daniel Stern, and who was the mother of his three children, of whom Cosima became the wife, first of Von Bulow and then of Wagner. His four years with the Countess he pa.s.sed in Geneva.
Twice, however, he came forth from this retirement to cross the sword of virtuosity with and vanquish his only serious rival in pianoforte playing, Sigismund Thalberg, a brilliant player and a man, like Liszt himself, of fascinating personality, but lacking the Hungarian's intellectual capacity. In 1829, he and Countess d'Agoult having separated, he began his triumphal progress through Europe, and for the following ten years the world rang with his fame. He then settled down as Court Conductor at Weimar, which became the headquarters of the new romantic movement in Germany. Hardly a person of distinction in music or any of the other arts pa.s.sed through the town without a visit to the Altenburg, to pay his respects to Liszt. At Weimar, ”Lohengrin”
had its first performance; here Berlioz's works found a hearing; here everything new in music that also was meritorious was made welcome.
Liszt's activity at Weimar continued until 1859, when he left there on account of the hostility displayed to the production of Cornelius's opera, ”The Barber of Bagdad,” and its resultant failure. He remained away from Weimar for eleven years, living for the most part in Rome, until 1870, when he was invited to conduct the Beethoven festival and re-established cordial relations with the Court. Thereafter he divided his year between Rome, Buda-Pest, where he had been made President of the new Hungarian Academy of Music, and Weimar.
”Liszt, the artist and the man,” says Baker, in his ”Biographical Dictionary of Musicians,” ”is one of the grand figures in the history of music. Generous, kindly and liberal-minded, whole-souled in his devotion to art, superbly equipped as an interpreter of cla.s.sic and romantic works alike, a composer of original conceptions and daring execution, a conductor of marvellous insight, wors.h.i.+pped as teacher and friend by a host of disciples, reverenced and admired by his fellow-musicians, honored by inst.i.tutions of learning and by potentates as no artist before or since, his influence, spread by those whom he personally taught and swayed, will probably increase rather than diminish as time goes on.”
It has been said that Liszt pa.s.sed through six lives in the course of his existence--only three less than a cat. As ”pet.i.t Litz” he was the precocious child adored of Paris; as a youth, he plunged into the early romanticism which united the devotees of various branches of art in the French capital: next came the episode with the Countess d'Agoult; then his triumphal tours through Europe; settling at Weimar, he became the centre of the modern musical movement in Europe; finally, he revolved in a cycle through Rome, Buda-Pest and Weimar, followed from place to place by a band of devotees.
Liszt's compositions for the pianoforte may be cla.s.sified as follows: ”Fantasies Dramatiques”; ”Annees de Pelerinage”; ”Harmonies Poetiques et Religieuses”; the Sonata, Concertos, etudes, and miscellaneous works; ”Rhapsodies Hongroises”; arrangements and transcriptions from Berlioz, Beethoven, Weber, Paganini, Schubert and others.
The Don Juan Fantasie.
Among the ”Fantasies Dramatiques,” which are variations on themes from operas, not mere potpourris or transcriptions, but genuine fantasies, and usually based on one or two themes only, the best known is the ”Don Juan Fantasie.” It is founded upon the duet, ”La ci darem la mano.” Liszt utilizes a pa.s.sage from the overture as an introduction, then gives the entire duet, varying it, however, not in set form, but with the effect of a brilliant fantasia, and then winds up the whole with a presto on the ”Champagne Song.” It is true it no longer is Mozart--but Mozart might be glad if it were. It is even possible that the time will come when ”Don Giovanni” will have vanished from the operatic stage, yet be remembered by this brilliant fantasia of Liszt's. It is one of the great _tours de force_ of pianoforte music, and it is good music as well. Another of the better known ”Fantasies Dramatiques” is the one Liszt made from ”Norma,” in which occurs a long sustained trill and a melody for the right hand, while the left plays another melody and the accompaniment to the whole. In other words, there is in this pa.s.sage a trill sustained throughout, two melodies and the accompaniment, all going on at the same time, yet written with such perfect knowledge of pianoforte technique that any virtuoso worthy of the name as used in a modern sense, can compa.s.s it.
A work called the ”Hexameron” is included in catalogues of Liszt's compositions, although he only contributed part of it. It is the march from Bellini's ”Puritani” with six variations, written by six pianists and originally played by them on six pianofortes, five of them full grands, while Chopin, whose variation was not of the bravura, kind, sat at a two-stringed semi-grand. Liszt contributed the introduction, the connecting links and the finale of the ”Hexameron.”
The ”Annees de Pelerinage” were published in three divisions, extending in point of time from 1835 to 1883. They are a series of musical impressions, as the t.i.tles indicate--”Au lac de Wallenstadt, Pastoral,” ”Au bord d'une source, Sposalizio” (after Raphael's picture in the Brera), ”Il Penseroso” (after Michael Angelo). Many of these are adroit and elegant in the treatment of the pianoforte, and at the same time beautiful as music. The ”Harmonies” are partly transcriptions of his own vocal pieces, partly musical ill.u.s.trations to poems. Among them is the familiar ”Cantique d'Amour,” and the ”Benediction de Dieu dans la solitude,” of which he himself was very fond. William Mason says that at the Altenburg a copy of it always was lying on the pianoforte, ”which Liszt had used so many times when playing for his guests that it became a.s.sociated with memories of Berlioz, Rubinstein, Vieuxtemps, Wieniawski, Joachim.” When Mr. Mason left Weimar he took this copy with him as a souvenir, still has it, and treasures it all the more for the marks of usage which it bears. The ”Consolations,” which, as Edward Dannreuther says, may be taken as corollaries to the ”Harmonies,” are tenderly expressive pianoforte pieces.
Giant Strides in Virtuosity.
The etudes bear the dates 1827, 1839 and 1852, and as they are in the main progressive editions of the same pieces, they represent the history of pianoforte technique as it developed under Liszt's own fingers. In their earliest shape when issued in 1827, they were but little different from the cla.s.sical etudes of Czerny and Cramer. In their latest shape they form the extreme of virtuosity. Indeed, these three editions are three giant strides in the development of pianoforte technique. Von Bulow's coupling of the etude called ”Feux Follets” with the A flat study (No. 10) of Chopin already has been quoted under that composer. He considered it even more difficult.