A Popular History of the Art of Music

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The romantic, therefore, represents an enlargement of the domain of
music, by the acquisition of provinces outside its boundaries, and
belonging originally to the domains of poetry and painting. And so by
romantic is meant the general idea of representing in music something
outside, of telling a story or painting a picture by means of music.
The principle was already old, being involved in the very conception
of opera, which in the nature of the case is an attempt to make music
do duty as describer of the inner feelings and experiences of the
_dramatis personae_. Nevertheless, while leading continually to
innovations in musical discourse for almost two centuries, it was
prevented from having more than momentary entrances into instrumental
music until the beginning of the nineteenth century, when the general
movement of mind known as the romantic was at its height. In France
the writers of this group carried on war against classic
tradition--the idea that every literary work should be modeled after
one of those of the ancient writers; subjects of tragedy should be
taken from Greek mythology or history; and the characters should think
like the classics, and speak in the formal and stilted phraseology of
the vernacular translations out of the ancient works. These writers,
also, were those who upheld the rights of man, and produced
declarations of independence. In short, it was the principle of
individualism, as opposed to the merely general and conventional, for
we may remember that the conventional had a large place in ancient
art. Plato says (see p. 38) that the Egyptians had patterns of the
good in all forms of art, framed and displayed in their temples. And
new productions were to be judged by comparing them with these, and
when they contained different principles, they were upon that account
to be condemned and prohibited.

In farther evidence of the correspondence between the musical activity
in this direction, and the general movement of mind at this period,
including the shaking up of the dry bones in every part of the social
order, (the French revolution being the most extreme and drastic
illustration), we may observe that the composer through whom this
element entered into the art of music in its first free development
was Franz Schubert, who was born during the years when this
disturbance was at its height, namely, in 1797. Moreover, the manner
in which his inspiration to musical creation was received corresponded
exactly to the definition of the romantic given above; for it was
always through reading a poem or a story that these strange and
beautiful musical combinations occurred to him, many instances of
which are given in the sketch later. It is curious, furthermore, that
the general method of Schubert's musical thought is classical in its
repose, save where directly associated with a text of a
picture-building character, or of decided emotion. Thus, while it is
not possible to separate one part of the works of this composer from
another, and to say of the one that it belongs to an older
dispensation, while the other part represents a different principle
of art (both parts alike having the same general treatment of melody,
and the same refined and poetic atmosphere), it is, nevertheless, true
that if we had only the sonatas, chamber pieces, and the symphonies of
Schubert, no one would think of classing his works differently from
those of Mozart, as to their operative principles. But when we have
the songs, the five or six hundred of them, the operas and other vocal
works, in which music is so lovely in and of itself, yet at the same
time so descriptive, so loyal to the changing moods of the text, we
necessarily interpret the instrumental music in the same light,
especially when we know that there are no distinct periods in the
short life of this composer concerning which different principles can
be predicated.

Almost immediately after Schubert there come composers in whom the new
tendency is more marked. Mendelssohn entered the domain of the
romantic in 1826, with his overture to the "Midsummer Night's Dream,"
and directly after him came Schumann, with a luxuriant succession of
deeply moved, imaginative, _quasi_-descriptive, or at any rate
_representative_, pianoforte pieces. Schumann, indeed, did not need to
read a poem in order to find musical ideas flowing in unaccustomed
channels. The ideas took these forms and channels of their own accord,
as we see in his very first pieces, his "_Papillons_," "_Intermezzi_,"
"_Davidsbundlertaenze_" and the like. So, too, with Chopin. There is
very little of the descriptive and the picture-making element in his
works. Nevertheless, they chimed in so well with the unrest, the
somewhat Byronic sentiment, the vague yearning of the period, that
they found a public without loss of time, and established themselves
in the popular taste without having had to find a propaganda movement
for explaining them as the foretokens of a "music of the future."

This representative work in music has been very much helped by the
astonishing development of virtuosity upon the violin, the pianoforte
and other instruments, which distinguishes this century. Beginning
with Paganini, whose astonishing violin playing was first heard during
the last years of the eighteenth century, we have Thalberg, Chopin,
Liszt, Rubinstein, Joachim, Tausig, Leonard, and a multitude of
others, through whose efforts the general appreciation of instrumental
music has been wonderfully stimulated, and the appetite for overcoming
difficulties and realizing great effects so much increased as to have
permanently elevated the standard of complication in musical
discourse, and the popular average of performance.

Nor has virtuosity been confined to single instruments. There have
been two great virtuosi in orchestration, during this century, who
have exercised as great an influence in this complicated and elaborate
department, as the others mentioned have upon their own solo
instruments. The first of these was Hector Berlioz, the great French
master, whose earlier compositions were produced in 1835, when the
instruments of the orchestra were combined in vast masses, and with
descriptive intention, far beyond anything by previous writers. In his
later works, such as the "Damnation of Faust," and the mighty Requiem,
Berlioz far surpassed these efforts, every one of his effects
afterward proving to have been well calculated. Directly after his
early works came the first of that much discussed genius, Richard
Wagner, who besides being one of the most profound and acute
intelligences ever distinguished in music, and a great master of the
province of opera (in which he accomplished stupendous creations), was
also an orchestral virtuoso, coloring when he chose, with true
instinct, for the mere sake of color; and massing and contrasting
instruments in endless variety and beauty.

The activity in musical production during the nineteenth century has
been so extraordinary in amount and in the number of composers
concerned in it, and so ample in the range of musical effects brought
to realization, as fully to illustrate the truth of the principle
enunciated at the outset of this narrative, namely: That the course of
musical progress has been toward greater complication of tonal effects
in every direction; implying upon the part of composers the possession
of more inclusive principles of tonal unity; and upon the part of the
hearers, to whom these vast works have been addressed, the possession
of corresponding powers of tonal perception, and the persistence of
impressions for a sufficient length of time in each instance for the
underlying unity to be realized.

As an incident in the rapidity of the progress on the part of
composers, we have had what is called "the music of the future";
namely, productions of one generation intelligible to the finer
intelligences of that generation, yet "music of the future" to all the
others; but in the generation following, these compositions have gone
into the common stock, through the progress of the faculties of
hearing and of deeper perceptions of tonal relations. Meanwhile there
has been created another stratum of music of the future, which may be
expected to occupy the attention of the generation next ensuing, to
whom in turn it will become the music of the present.

In the nature of the case, there is not, nor can there be, a stopping
place, unless we conceive the possibility of a return to the
conservatism of Plato and the ancient Egyptians, and the passage of
statute laws permitting the employment of chords and rhythms up to a
certain specified degree of complexity, beyond which their use would
constitute a grave statutory offense. It is possible that the ideal of
art might again be "reformed" in the direction of restriction from the
uncomely, the forced and the sensational, and in favor of the
beautiful, the becoming and the divine. Nevertheless, it is the
inevitable consequence of a prescription of this kind to run into mere
prettiness and tuneful emptiness. Protection is a failure in art. The
spirit must have freedom, or it will never take its grandest flights.
And it is altogether possible that the needed corrective will
presently be discovered of itself, through the progress of spirit into
a clearer vision, a higher aspiration and a nobler sense of beauty.
This we may hope will be one of the distinctions of the coming ages,
which poets have foretold and seers have imagined, when truth and love
will prevail and find their illustration in a civilization conformed
of its own accord to the unrestricted outflowing of these deep,
eternal, divine principles.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XXXII.

SCHUBERT AND THE ROMANTIC.

The first two great figures of the nineteenth century were those of
Carl Maria von Weber, whose work will be considered later, and the
great song writer, Franz Peter Schubert (1797-1828). This remarkable
man was born of poor parents in Vienna, or near it, his father being a
schoolmaster, earning the proverbially meager stipend of the
profession in Germany at that time, amounting to no more than $100 or
$200 a year. The family was musical, and the Sundays were devoted to
quartette playing and other forms of music. The boy Franz early showed
a fine ear. He was soon put to the study of the violin and the
piano--while still a mere child being furnished with a small violin,
upon which he went through the motions of his father's part. He had a
fine voice, and this attracted the attention of the director of the
choir in the great Cathedral of St. Stephen's, as it had in Haydn's
case, and he was presently enrolled as chorister and a member of what
was called the "Convict," a school connected with the church, where
the boys had schooling as well as musical instruction. Early he began
to write, among his first works being certain pieces for the piano and
violin, composed when he was a little more than eleven. In the
"Convict" school there was an orchestra where they practiced
symphonies and overtures of Haydn, Mozart, Kotzeluch, Cherubini,
Mehul, Krommer, and occasionally Beethoven. Here his playing
immediately put him on a level with the older boys. One of them turned
around one day to see who it was playing so cleverly, and found it "a
little boy in spectacles," named Franz Schubert. The two boys became
intimate, and one day the little fellow, blushing deeply, admitted to
the older one that he had composed much, and would do so still more if
he could get the music paper. Spaun saw the state of affairs, and took
care thereafter that the music paper should be forthcoming. In time
Franz became first violin, and when the conductor was absent, took his
place. The orchestral music delighted him greatly, and of the Mozart
adagio, in the G minor symphony, he said that "you could hear the
angels singing." Among other works which particularly delighted him
were the overtures to the "Magic Flute" and "Figaro." The particular
object of his reverence was Beethoven, who was then at the height of
his fame, but he never met the great master more than once or twice.
Once when a few boyish songs had been sung to words by Klopstock,
Schubert asked his friend whether _he_ could ever do anything after
Beethoven. His friend answered, perhaps he could do a great deal. To
which the boy responded: "Perhaps; I sometimes have dreams of that
sort; but who can do anything after Beethoven?" The boy made but small
reputation for scholarship in the school, after the thirst for
composition had taken possession of him, which it did when he had been
there but one year. One of his earliest compositions was a fantasia
for four hands, having about thirteen movements of different
character, occupying about thirty-two pages of fine writing. His
brother remarks that not one ends in the key in which it began. He
seems to have had a passion for uncanny subjects, for the next work of
his is a "Lament of Hagar," of thirteen movements in different keys,
unconnected. After this again, a "Corpse Fantasia" to words of
Schiller. This has seventeen movements, and is positively erratic in
its changes of key. It is full of reminiscences of Haydn's "Creation"
and other works. The musical stimulation of this boy was meager
indeed. Not until he was thirteen years of age did he hear an opera;
and not until he was fifteen a really first-class work, Spontini's
"Vestal," in 1812. Three years later he probably heard Gluck's
"_Iphigenie en Tauride_," a work which in his estimation eclipsed them
all. During the same year there were the sixth and seventh symphonies,
the choral fantasia and portions of the mass in C, and the overture to
"Coriolanus," of Beethoven. He was a great admirer of Mozart, and in
his diary, under date of June 13, 1816, he speaks of a quintette:
"Gently, as if out of a distance, did the magic tones of Mozart's
music strike my ears. With what inconceivable alternate force and
tenderness did Schlesinger's magic playing impress it deep into my
heart! Such lovely impressions remain on my soul, there to work for
good, past all power of time and circumstance. In the darkness of this
life they reveal a bright, beautiful prospect, inspiring confidence
and hope. Oh Mozart, Mozart, what countless consolatory images of a
bright, better world hast thou stamped on our souls!"

Presently Schubert entered his father's school, in order to avoid the
rigorous conscription, and remained a teacher of the elementary
branches for three years. His first important composition was a mass,
which was produced honorably October 16, 1814, and many good judges
pronounced it equal to any similar work of the kind, excepting
possibly Beethoven's mass in C. By 1815 the rage of composition had
fully taken possession of the soul of Schubert, and thenceforth poured
out from this receptacle of inspiration a steady succession of works
of all dimensions and characters, very few of which were performed in
his lifetime. Among these works in the year 1815, there are 137 songs,
of which only sixty-seven are printed as yet. And in August alone
twenty-nine, of which eight are dated the 15th, and seven the 19th.
Among these 137 songs some are of such enormous length that this
feature alone would have prevented their publication. Of those
published, "_Die Burgschaft_" fills twenty-two pages of the Litolff
edition. It was the length of these compositions which caused
Beethoven's exclamation upon his death bed: "Such long poems, many of
them containing ten others." And this mass of music was produced in
the interim of school drudgery. Among these songs of his boyhood years
are "_Gretchen am Spinnrade_," "_Der Erl Koenig_," "Hedge Roses,"
"Restless Love," the "_Schaefer's Klaglied_," the "Ossian" songs, and
many others, all falling within the production of this year. It is
said that when the "Erl King" was tried in the evening, the listeners
at the convict thought it of questionable success. The music of the
boy at the words "My father, my father" seemed to be inexcusable, for
overwhelmed with fright, he sings a half a tone sharp of the
accompaniment.

At length, after about three years, Schubert's services as a
schoolmaster becoming less and less valuable, an opening was made for
him by Schober, who proposed that Schubert should live with him. He
was now free to devote himself to composition, and so thoroughly did
he do this that in the year following, 1816, he experienced the
novelty of having composed for money, a cantata of his having not only
been performed upon the occasion of Salieri's fiftieth anniversary of
life in Vienna, but money was sent him for it, 100 florins, Vienna
money, about $20 American. He was already composing operas, and in
1816 there was one, "_Die Burgschaft_," in three acts. In the same
year there were two symphonies, the fourth in C minor, called "The
Tragic," and the fifth for small orchestra. The songs of this year,
however, were of more value. Among them were the "Wanderer's Night
Song," the "Fisher," the "Wanderer" and many others now known wherever
melody and dramatic quality are appreciated.

The rapidity with which he composed songs was incredible. October,
1815, he finds the poems of Rosegarten, and between the 15th and 19th
sets seven of them. "Everything that he touched," says Schumann,
"turned into music." At a later date, calling upon one of his friends,
he found certain poems by Wilhelm Mueller, and carried them off with
him. A few days later, his friend desiring the book, called on
Schubert for it, and found that he had already set a number of them to
music. They were the songs of the "_Schoene Muellerin_." A year or so
after, returning from a day in the country, they stopped at a tavern,
where he found a friend with a volume of Shakespeare open before him.
Schubert took up the volume, turned a few pages, became interested in
one of the pieces, took up some waste paper, and scribbling the lines
proceeded to write a melody. This was the so-called "Shakespeare
Serenade," "Hark, Hark, the Lark." The "Serenade," in D minor, is said
to have been conceived in a similarly impromptu manner. In 1816 the
great tenor, Vogl, made Schubert's acquaintance, having been brought
by one of Schubert's admirers. At first the songs did not make much
impression upon him; later they grew upon him, and he introduced them
among the best circles of the Vienna aristocracy. Vogl appreciated the
value of these songs. "Nothing," said he, "so shows the want of a good
school of singing as Schubert's songs. Otherwise, what an enormous and
universal effect must have been produced throughout the world,
wherever the German language is understood, by these truly divine
inspirations, these utterances of musical clairvoyance. How many would
have comprehended for the first time the meaning of such terms as
speech and poetry in music; words in harmony, ideas clothed in music,
and would have learned that the finest poems of our greatest poets may
be enhanced and even transcended when translated into musical
language. Numberless examples might be named, but I will only mention
the 'Erl King,' 'Gretchen,' '_Schwager Kronos_,' 'The Mignon's and
Harper's Songs,' 'Schiller's Pilgrim,' the '_Burgschaft_' and the
'_Sehnsucht_.'"

We are told that within the next two or three years Schubert made a
number of friends, and the circle of his admirers was considerably
extended. The same remarkable productivity continued. In the summer of
1818 he went to the country seat of Count Esterhazy, where he remained
several months. This was in Hungary, and the Hungarian pieces are
supposed to date from his residence there. It was not until 1819 that
the first song of Schubert was sung in public. This was the
"Shepherd's Lament," of which the Leipsic correspondent of the
_Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung_ says: "The touching and feeling
composition of this talented young man was sung by Herr Jaeger in a
similar spirit." The following year, among other compositions, was the
oratorio of "Lazarus," which was composed in three parts--first, the
sickness and death, then the burial and elegy, and, finally, the
resurrection. The last part, unfortunately, if ever written, has been
lost. He made attempts at operatic composition, producing a vast
amount of beautiful music, but always to indifferent librettos, so
that none of his music was publicly performed. It was not until 1827
and 1828 that his continual practice in orchestral writing resulted in
the production of real master works. In this year the unfinished
symphony in B minor was produced, in which the two movements that we
have are among the most beautiful and poetic that the treasury of
orchestral music possesses. The other was the great symphony in C,
which was first performed in Leipsic ten years after Schubert's death,
through the intervention of Schumann. During all these years since
leaving his father's school, Schubert had been living in a very modest
manner, with an income which must have been very small and irregular.
He was very industrious, usually rising soon after five in the
morning, and, after a light breakfast of coffee and rolls, writing
steadily about seven hours. The amount of work which he got through in
this way was something incredible. Whole acts of operas were composed
and beautifully written out in score within a few days. Upon the same
morning from three to six songs might be written, if the poems chanced
to attract him. He scarcely ever altered or erased, and rarely
curtailed. All his music has the character of improvisation. The
melody, harmony, the thematic treatment, and the accompaniment with
the instrumental coloring, all seem to have occurred to him at the
same time. It is only a question of writing it down. Very little of
his music was performed during his lifetime--of the songs, first and
last, many of them in private circles, and the last two or three years
of his life, perhaps twenty or twenty-five in public. A few of his
smaller orchestral numbers were played by amateur players, where he
may have heard them himself, but his larger works he never heard. All
that schooling of ear which Beethoven had, as an orchestral director
in youth, Schubert lacked. His studies in counterpoint had never been
pursued beyond the rudiments, and the last engagement he made before
his death was for lessons with Sechter, the contrapuntal authority in
Vienna at that time.

In spontaneity of genius Schubert resembles Mozart more than any other
master who ever lived. His early education and training were different
from those of Mozart, and musical ideas take different form with him.
While Mozart was distinctly a melodist, counterpoint and fugue were at
his fingers' ends, and his thematic treatment had all the freedom
which comes from a thorough training in the use of musical material.
Schubert had not this kind of training. He never wrote a good fugue,
and his counterpoint was indifferent; but on the other hand he had
several qualities which Mozart had not, and in particular a very
curious and interesting mental phenomenon, which we might call
psychical resonance or clairvoyance. Whatever poem or story he read
immediately called up musical images in his mind. Under the excitement
of the sentiment of a poem, or of dramatic incidents narrated, strange
harmonies spontaneously suggested themselves, and melodies exquisitely
appropriate to the sentiment he desired to convey. He was a musical
painter, whose colors were not imitated from something without
himself, but were inspired from within.

Schubert was a great admirer of Beethoven, and upon one occasion
called upon him with a set of works which he had dedicated to the
great master. Beethoven had been prepared for the visit by some
admirer of Schubert's, and received him very kindly, but when he began
to compliment the works the bashful Schubert rushed out of doors. Upon
another occasion during his last illness Beethoven desired something
to read, and a selection of about sixty of Schubert's songs, partly in
print and partly in manuscript, were put in his hands. His
astonishment was extreme, especially when he heard that there existed
about 500 of the same kind. He pored over them for days, and asked to
see Schubert's operas and piano pieces, but the illness returned, and
it was too late. He said "Truly Schubert has the divine fire in him."
Schubert was one of the torch bearers at Beethoven's funeral. In March
1828, he gave an evening concert of his own works in the hall of the
Musikverein. The hall was crowded, the concert very successful, and
the receipts more than $150, which was a very large sum for Schubert
in those days. For several months before his death Schubert's health
was delicate. Poverty and hard work, a certain want of encouragement
and ease had done their office for him. He died November 19, 1828. He
left no will. His personal property was sold at auction, the whole
amounting to about $12. Among the assets was a lot of old music valued
at ten florins. It is uncertain whether this included the unpublished
manuscript or not. In personal appearance Schubert was somewhat
insignificant. He was about five feet one inch high, his figure stout
and clumsy, with a round back and shoulders, perhaps due to incessant
writing, fleshy arms, thick, short fingers. His cheeks were full, his
eyebrows bushy and his nose insignificant. His hair was black, and
remarkably thick and vigorous, and his eyes were so bright that even
through the spectacles, which he constantly wore, they at once
attracted attention. His glasses were inseparable from his face. In
the convict he was the "little boy in spectacles." He habitually slept
in them. He was very simple in his tastes, timid and never really at
ease but in the society of his intimates and people of his own
station. His attitude toward the aristocracy was entirely different
from the domineering, self-assertive pose of Beethoven, but he was
very amiable, and dearly beloved.

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