A Popular History of the Art of Music

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The peculiarities of Wagner's operas are many. The plays, from a
poetic side, are in the vein of magic; irresistible causes work
together for irresistible ends. They are somber and primeval, like the
voice of the forest. The music fits the poem exactly, without making
any attempt at being beautiful on its own account. It is extremely
elaborate, and richly scored for orchestra, and full of beautiful
science--not intended to be recognized as such by the average hearer.
From a dramatic point of view the works are very consistent, and the
stage effects are of a remarkable kind. Wagner was fortunate enough to
make the acquaintance of a mechanic able to carry out some of his most
impracticable suggestions.

Wagner left a large number of pamphlets and treatises, which are
likely to remain among the classics of musical literature. The most
important is his "Opera and Drama," written in 1851. This is a full
discussion, in singularly vigorous and clear language, of the entire
nature of opera as poetically conceived and as practically carried out
by the previous masters, and as proposed to be carried out by Wagner
himself. Many of Wagner's writings have now been translated into
English. His opera texts are highly esteemed by his admirers, and
respected by all. As a poet the general opinion seems to be that he
was given to magnificent phraseology rather than to delicacy of fancy
or humor. He is most at home with the grand, the gigantic, the
superhuman; and in nearly all that he writes the primeval undertone of
the minor makes itself felt.

It is entirely uncertain whether opera will continue to follow the
lines he laid down, with the same severity, but there can be no
question that his influence upon the course of art will be very great.
In musical discourse, especially in the harmonic side of it, Wagner
has made very great variations from the practices of his predecessors,
even the most free of the instrumental writers--Schumann. His
modulations are carried into more remote keys, and the tempered scale
is taken as a finality of our tonal system. All the keys are brought
near, as he treats them, and in any key any chord whatever can be
introduced without effecting a modulation, provided it be so managed
that the sense of tonality is not unsettled.

Personally Wagner was rather small, very fastidious in his attire and
surroundings. In 1869 Mme. Cosima, daughter of Liszt, and wife of Von
Buelow, left him and became the wife of Wagner. During the last ten
years of his life they had an elegant residence at Bayreuth, where
Mme. Wagner still has her home. Wagner died in Venice, whither he had
gone for the mild climate. No musician in the entire history of art
has occupied the attention of the whole contemporaneous world to
anything like the same degree as did Richard Wagner, from the
performance of "_Lohengrin_," in 1850, until his death in 1883.

CHAPTER XXXV.

VIRTUOSITY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY; PAGANINI; BERLIOZ; CHOPIN;
LISZT.

I.

Strictly speaking, there was no break in the continuity of art
development represented in the virtuoso appearances recorded in
Chapter XXX, and those with which we have presently to deal. In point
of chronology, many of those recorded in the present chapter were
contemporaneous with some of those in the former. Nevertheless, the
artists with whom we are now concerned represent principles more
decidedly belonging to the romantic, and hence to the nineteenth
century, than did those whose operations have already been discussed
as part of the record of the eighteenth. This is seen in the quality
and the novelty of their playing, and still more in the influence
which they exercised upon the musicians who came after.

[Illustration: [autograph] N. Paganini

Fig. 80.]

Earliest of these in point of time, and most influential in other
departments than his own, was the famous Italian violinist, Nicolo
Paganini (1784-1840), perhaps the most remarkable executant upon the
violin who has ever appeared. His father, a clever amateur, had him
taught music at an early age, and when only nine years of age he
played in a concert at Genoa with triumphant success. He had already
practiced diligently and, with the intuition of genius, had found out
his own ways of accomplishing things, so that when, at the age of
eleven, he was taken to Parma to the teacher Rolla, he was told that
there was nothing to teach him. Returning home, he continued his
practice, applying himself as much as eight or ten hours a day, and
producing a number of compositions so difficult that he alone could
play them. His first European tour took place in 1805, and astonished
the world. The most marvelous stories were told of him. It was
popularly supposed that he could play upon anything, provided only the
catgut and the horsehair were furnished him. His first appearance in
France was in 1831, and in the same year he played in London. The
height of his fame was reached in 1834, at which time Berlioz, the
French composer, presented him with a beautiful symphony, "_Harold en
Italie_." Notwithstanding the fact that Paganini lost money in Paris,
he presented Berlioz with 20,000 francs, in order to enable him to
pursue his career as a composer unhampered by financial distress. This
act was greatly to Paganini's credit, and entirely contrary to the
prevalent opinion concerning him, which was that he was very miserly.
Among the works which Paganini produced was a set of caprices for the
violin which were essentially novelties for the instrument. He
enlarged the resources of the violin in every direction, employing
double stopping, harmonics, and the high positions with a freedom
previously unknown. Notwithstanding Spohr's modest remark that upon a
certain evening when playing for some amateurs he delighted them "with
all the Paganini juggles," it is certain that he did nothing of the
kind.

[Illustration: Fig. 81.

PAGANINI AS HE APPEARED.

(From a drawing by Sir Edwin Landseer. [Grove.])]

It is impossible after this lapse of time to realize the sensation
which Paganini's appearances made. His tall, emaciated figure and
haggard face, his piercing black eyes and the furor of passion which
characterized his playing, made him seem like one possessed, and many
hearers were prepared to assert of their own knowledge that they had
seen him assisted by the Evil Spirit. His caprices remain the sheet
anchor of the would-be virtuoso. The entire art of violin playing
rests upon two works--the Bach sonatas for violin solo, and the great
Paganini caprices. Everything of which the violin is capable, or which
any virtuoso has been able to find in it, is contained in these works.

Upon two composers of this century Paganini's influence was extremely
powerful. Schumann took his departure from the Paganini caprices,
seeking to perform upon the piano the same kind of effect which
Paganini had obtained from the violin, or to discover others
equivalent to them. And Liszt set himself to do upon the piano the
same kind of impossibilities which Paganini had performed upon the
violin. Both these masters accomplished more than they planned for.
Schumann enriched the current of musical discourse by his experiments
having their departure from Paganini, thereby accomplishing something
which Paganini did not; for while the great violinist's works are of
astonishing value for the violin, they are not particularly
significant as tone-poetry. They are pleasing and sensational, and at
times passionate, show pieces for the virtuoso.

II.

Hector Berlioz (1803-1869), for whose genius Paganini had such
admiration, was perhaps the most remarkable French personality in
music during the nineteenth century, and one of the most commanding in
the whole world of music. He was born at Grenoble, in the south of
France. His father, a physician, intended that the son should follow
his own profession, but when the young Berlioz was sent to Paris to
study medicine, at the age of eighteen, music proved too strong for
him, and he entered the Conservatory as a pupil of Lesueur. His
parents were so incensed by this course that the paternal supplies
were cut off, and the young enthusiast was driven to the expedient of
earning a scanty living by singing in the opera chorus at an obscure
theater, _La Gymnase Dramatique_. The daring originality of the young
musician, and his habit of regarding every rule as open to question,
rendered him anything but a favorite with Cherubini, the director of
the Conservatory, and it was only after several trials that he carried
off the prize for composition. The second instance of this kind
occurred in 1830, the piece being a dramatic cantata "_Sardanapole_,"
which gained him the prize of Rome, carrying with it a pension
sufficient to maintain the winner during three years in Italy.

On his return to Paris, he found it extremely difficult to secure a
living by his compositions, their originality and the scale upon which
he carried them out, placing them outside the conventional markets for
new musical works designed for public performance. In this strait he
took to writing for the press, in the _Journal des Debats_, for which
his talent was little, if any, less marked than for musical
production upon the largest scale. As a writer, he was keen,
sarcastic, bright and sympathetic. A man of the world, and at the same
time an artist, he touched everything with the characteristic
lightness and raciness of the born _feuilletonist_. Very soon (in
1834), he produced his symphony "_Harold en Italie_," which Paganini
so much admired that he presented Berlioz with the very liberal, even
princely _douceur_ of 20,000 francs ($4,000). Meanwhile Berlioz was
unable to secure recognition in Paris. His compositions were regarded
as extravagant and fantastic, and Parisians were curiously surprised
at the reception the composer met with in Germany, when he traveled
there in 1842 and 1843, and again in 1852, bringing out his works. The
Germans were by no means unanimous regarding his merits. Mendelssohn,
who found Berlioz most interesting as a man, had no admiration for his
music. To him it appeared crazy and unbeautiful. The sole recognition
which Berlioz had in France was the librarianship of the
_Conservatoire_, with a modest salary, and the Cross of the Legion of
Honor. In spite of the small esteem in which this clever master was
held by his countrymen during his life, he produced a succession of
remarkable works, without which the art of music would have missed
some of its brightest pages. Among these we may mention his dramatic
legend of "The Damnation of Faust," for solos, chorus and orchestra,
which marks one of the highest points reached by program music. This
great work is now generally accepted as one of the best of the
romantic productions, and the orchestral pieces in it have become part
of the standard repertory of orchestras everywhere.

Berlioz was above all the composer of the grandiose, the magnificent.
This appears in his earliest works. In 1837 he composed his Requiem,
for the funeral obsequies of General Damremont. This work is of
unprecedented proportions. It is scored for chorus, solos and
orchestra, the latter occasionally of extraordinary appointment. In
the "_Tuba Mirum_," for example, he desires full chorus of strings,
and four choirs of wood-wind and brass. The wood-wind consists of
twelve horns, eight oboes, and four clarinets, two piccolos and four
flutes. The brass is disposed in four choirs as follows, each at one
of the corners of the stage; the first consists of four trumpets, four
tenor trombones and two tubas; the second of four trumpets and four
tenor trombones; the third the same; the fourth of four trumpets, four
tenor trombones and four ophicleides. The bewildering answers of these
four choirs of brass give place at the words "Hear the awful trumpet
sounding," to a single bass voice, accompanied by sixteen kettle
drums, tuned to a chord. A movement of similar sonority is the "_Rex
Tremendae Majestatis_." At other times the work is very melodious. It
is indeed singular that a young composer should commence his career
with a piece so daring. But to Berlioz's credit it must be said he
never makes a mistake in his calculations of effect. When he desires
contrast and blending effect of different masses, these results always
follow whenever his work is performed according to his directions.

All the music of Berlioz belongs to the category of "program music,"
that is to say, everywhere there is an attempt at painting a scene or
representing something by means of music, that something being
habitually suggested and explained by the text, if the work be vocal,
or by explanatory notes, if the work be instrumental. This is as true
of his symphonies, "Romeo and Juliet," and "Harold in Italy," as in
the vocal works themselves. The list of these contains an oratorio,
"The Childhood of Christ" (1854), "The Damnation of Faust" (1846), the
operas "_Benvenuto Cellini_," produced at the _Academie_, 1838, "The
Trojans" (1856), "_Beatrice et Benedict_" (1863). The first was
performed under the direction of Liszt at Weimar, about 1850, but with
indifferent success. Berlioz instrumented several pianoforte
compositions for orchestra, the best known of them being Weber's
"Invitation to the Dance," and "Polonaise in E flat." His treatise
upon instrumentation, published in 1864, remained standard until since
the appearance of the elaborate and more systematic work upon this
subject by F.A. Gevaert. The greatest of Berlioz's works is his
splendid "_Te Deum_," written during the years 1854 and 1855, for some
kind of festival performance. He planned this composition as part of a
great trilogy of an epic-dramatic character in honor of Napoleon, the
first consul. At the moment of his return from his Italian campaigns,
he was to have been represented as entering Notre Dame, where this
"_Te Deum_" is sung by an appointment of musical forces consisting of
a double chorus of 200 voices, a third choir of 600 children, an
orchestra of 134, an organ, and solo voices. The entire work was never
completed, and the "_Te Deum_" had its first and only representation
in Berlioz's lifetime at the opening of the Palace of Industry, April
30, 1855. The work is full of splendid conceptions, and is freer from
eccentricities than any other of the author. It is extremely sonorous,
and is destined to be better known as festival occasions upon a larger
scale become more numerous.

The whole effect of Berlioz's activity was that of a virtuoso in the
department of dramatic and descriptive music, and in the art of
wielding large orchestral masses. It is curious that between him and
Wagner the relations should never have been cordial, although the ends
proposed by both were substantially identical, and the genius of both
incontestable. Berlioz had no confidence in Wagner's "endless melody,"
and when he writes about music he does so in the attitude of a humble
follower of the old masters.

III.

The progress in piano playing, in the course of the nineteenth century
has been most extraordinary. The music of Beethoven and Schubert,
composed during the first quarter of this century, and the influence
of the virtuosi prominent during that time, whose activity has been
told in connection with those of the century previous (the operative
principles of which were the ones mainly influencing them); and the
continual strife of the piano makers to increase the resonance,
singing quality and artistic susceptibility of the tone and the
strength and elasticity of the action, as recounted in the
chapter devoted to the history of this, the greatest of modern
instruments--were concentrating influences having the effect of
calling attention to the new instrument in a very remarkable manner.
Add to these causes the meteor-like appearance of Paganini, with his
stupendous execution upon the violin, and its novel possibilities. All
these together seem to have led four gifted geniuses at about the same
time to make independent investigations into the tonal possibilities
of the piano, and the mode of producing effects upon it, in the hope
of creating a new art, and of rivaling the weird successes of the
highly gifted Italian, who apparently had exhausted the possibilities
of the violin. The artists thus occupied in developing the art of
piano playing were Chopin, Liszt, Thalberg and Schumann, and it is far
from easy to determine exactly which one it was who first brought his
influence to bear upon the public; or which one it was who first
arrived at the successful application of the principles of the new
technique, whose essential divergences from the old consisted in a
more flexible use of the fingers, hand and arm, and the co-operation
of the foot for the promotion of blending, and of bringing into
simultaneous use the tonal resources from all parts of the instrument.
In this case, as in so many others of remarkable invention, the
improvements seem to have been made by several independent
investigators acting simultaneously, each one ignorant of the work of
the others. The impulse in the direction of greater freedom had
already found expression in the pianoforte pieces of the great master,
Von Weber, whose sonatas and caprices had been published between 1810
and 1820. (See pp. 410 and 411.) These contain several novelties,
which I have found it more convenient to discuss in connection with
the personal history of the composer. Liszt has generally been held as
a little the earliest of the four in point of time, his arrangement of
Berlioz's "Harold" symphony having been published, according to the
dates in Weitzmann's history, in 1827, but according to more accurate
information, in 1835, while he had published his arrangement of the
Paganini caprices in 1832, one year after hearing Paganini. In these
works Liszt makes demands upon the hands which were not recognized as
among the possibilities of the old technique. But for all this, it is
apparently certain that the honor of having developed a style
distinctly original, and with peculiarities easily recognizable by
the average listener, belongs to the great virtuoso Thalberg.
Sigismund Thalberg (1812-1871) was the illegitimate son of Prince
Dietrichstein, a diplomat then living at Geneva. His mother was the
Baroness von Wetzlar. Thalberg was carefully educated, and accustomed
to high-bred society from childhood. His father intended him for a
diplomatic career, but the boy's talent for the piano was
irresistible, and, so well had his education been advanced by his
teacher, the first bassoonist of the Vienna opera, that by the time he
was fifteen he made a brilliant success at a concert in Vienna. His
first composition in the style which he afterward made so famous was
the fantasia on themes from "_Euryanthe_," which was published in
1828. Later, in 1835, he entered upon his public career as virtuoso
with concert tours to all parts of the world, everywhere greeted with
admiration and astonishment. He appeared in Paris late in 1834 or
early in 1835, finding Liszt there in the plenitude of his powers.
Then there was a rivalry between them, and opposing camps were
instituted of their respective admirers. The dispute as to their
relative excellence ran high, and, as usually happens in personal
questions of this sort, victory did not belong entirely to either
party. Nevertheless, at this distance it is not easy to see why the
question should have been raised, since in the light of modern piano
playing Liszt's art had in it the promise of everything which has come
since; while Thalberg's had in it only one side of the modern art.
Thalberg had a wonderful technique, in which scales of marvelous
fluency, lightness, clearness and equality, intervened between chord
passages of great breadth and sonority, so that all the resources of
the piano were open to him. But his specialty was that of carrying a
melody in the middle of the piano, playing it by means of the two
thumbs alternately, the other hand being occupied in runs and passages
covering the whole compass of the piano, crossing the melody from
below, or descending upon it from the highest regions of the treble,
and continuing down the keyboard with perfect equality and lightness,
without in the slightest degree disturbing the singing of the melody.
This, of its own accord, went on in the most artistic manner, as if
the pianist had nothing at all else to do than to _sing_ it. The
perfection of Thalberg's melody playing was something wonderful, as
well it might be; for in order to master the art of it, he studied
singing for five years with one of the best teachers of the Italian
school, the eminent Garcia. This, however, was later, after he had
located in Paris.

This trick of treating the melody was not new with Thalberg. It had
previously been done upon the harp by the great Welsh virtuoso, Parish
Alvars (1808-1849), whose European reputation had been acquired by a
succession of great concert tours, and who at length closed his days
in Vienna, where Thalberg lived. There was also an Italian master,
Giuseppe Francesco Pollini (1763-1846), who in 1809 became professor
of the piano in the Conservatory of Milan. Pollini had been a pupil of
Mozart, and dedicated to that great master his first work. Early after
being appointed professor he published a great school for the
pianoforte (1811), in which the art is fully discussed in all its
bearings, and minute directions given for touch and all the rest
appertaining to a concert treatment of the instrument. He was the
first to write piano pieces upon three staves, the middle one being
devoted to the melody; a proceeding afterward followed in some cases
by Liszt and Thalberg. Pollini surrounded his melodies, thus placed in
the middle of the instrument, where at that time the sonority and
singing quality of the pianoforte exclusively lay, with runs and
passages of a brilliant and highly ingenious kind. This was done in
his "_Una de 32 Esercizi in Forma di Toccata_," but he had already, in
1801, published several brilliant pieces in Paris, in which novelties
occur. I have never seen a copy of these works of Pollini, nor any
other account of them than those in Riemann's dictionary and in
Weitzmann's history of the pianoforte, but it is altogether likely
that when they are examined we shall find in this case, as in many
others of progressive development, that the final result was reached
by a succession of steps, each one short, and apparently not so very
important. The chain of technical development for the piano extended
from Bach in unbroken progress, and the discovery of Pollini, who was
less known in western lands than others of the great names in the
list, enables us to fill in between Moscheles and Thalberg. Pollini's
work anticipates the Clementi _Gradus_ by about six years.

To return to Thalberg.--In 1856 he visited America, where his success
was the same as in all other parts of the world. Having accumulated a
fortune, he retired from active life, and bought an estate near
Naples, where he spent the remainder of his life. There were reasons
of a purely external and conventional kind why the playing of Thalberg
should have attracted more attention, or at least been more admired,
than that of Liszt, in Paris and in aristocratic circles everywhere.
His manner was the perfection of quiet. Whatever the difficulty of the
passages upon which he was engaged, he remained perfectly quiet,
sitting upright, modestly, without a single unnecessary motion.
Moreover, the general character of his passages, which progressed
fluently upward or downward by degrees, instead of taking violent
leaps from one part of the keyboard to another, permitted him to
maintain this elegant quiet with less restriction than would have been
possible in such works, for instance, as the great concert fantasias
of Liszt. It is to be noticed, further, that the peculiar sonority of
Thalberg's playing depended upon the improvements in the pianoforte,
made just before his appearance and during his career. His method of
playing the melody, moreover, while perhaps not distinctly so
recognized by him, employed a noticeable element of the arm touch,
while his passage work was a ringer movement of the lightest and most
facile description. His chords, also, were often struck with a finger
touch, and he was perhaps the originator of the peculiar effect
produced by touching a chord with the fingers only, but rebounding
from the keys with the whole arm to the elbow. A chord thus played has
the delicacy peculiar to finger work, but in the removal from the keys
the muscles of the arm are called into action in such a way that the
finger stroke is intensified to a degree somewhat depending upon the
height to which the rebound is carried.

IV.

Francois Frederic Chopin (1809-1849) was one of the most remarkable
composers of this epoch, and in some respects one of the most
precocious musical geniuses of whom we have any record. He was born at
Zela-Zowa Wola, a village six miles from Warsaw, in Poland, the son of
a French merchant living there, who had married a Polish lady. Later,
in consequence of financial reverses, his father became a teacher in
the university. The boy, Francois, was brought up amid refined and
pleasant surroundings, and his education was carefully looked to.
Although rather delicate in appearance, he was healthy and full of
spirits. His precocity upon the piano was such that at the age of nine
he played a concerto in public with great success, from which time
forward he made many appearances in his native city. He early began to
compose, and by the time he was thirteen or fourteen, had undertaken a
number of works of considerable magnitude. After having received the
best instruction which his native city afforded, he started out, at
the age of nineteen, for a visit to Vienna, where he appeared in two
concerts, and to his own surprise was pronounced one of the greatest
virtuosi of the day. This, however, is not the point of his precocity.
When he started upon his tour to Vienna, he had with him certain
manuscripts, which he had composed. His Opus 2 consisted of variations
upon Mozart's air, "_La ci Darem la Mano_," of which later Schumann
wrote such a glowing account in his paper at Leipsic. These variations
were enormously difficult, and in a wholly novel style. There were
several mazurkas, the three nocturnes, Opus 9, of which the extremely
popular one in E flat stands second; the twelve studies, Opus 10,
dedicated to Franz Liszt, and a concerto in F minor, and all or nearly
all of that in E minor. These were the work of a boy then only
nineteen, the pupil of a comparatively unknown provincial teacher.
When we examine these works more minutely, our astonishment increases,
for they represent an entirely new school of piano playing. New
effects, new management of the hands, new passages, beautiful melody,
exquisitely modulated harmonies--in short, a new world in piano
playing was here opened. So difficult and so strange were these works,
that for nearly a generation the more difficult ones of them were a
sealed book to amateur pianists, and even virtuosi like Moscheles
declare that they could never get their fingers reliably through them.

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