Period of the Romantic.

WEBER, PAGANINI, SCHUBERT, BERLIOZ, MEYERBEER,
MENDELSSOHN, SCHUMANN, CHOPIN, LISZT,
WAGNER; THE VIRTUOSI; MUSIC
OF THE FUTURE.

CHAPTER XXXI.

N ordinary speech a distinction is made between the musical productions of the eighteenth century and those of the next following; the former being called Classic, the latter Romantic. The terms are used rather indefinitely. According to Hegel, whose teaching coincided with the last years of Beethoven's life, the classic in art embraces those productions in which the general is aimed at, rather than the particular; the reposeful and completely satisfactory, rather than the forced, or the sensational; and the beautiful rather than the exciting. The philosopher Hegel, who was one of the first to employ this distinction in art criticism, took his departure from the famous group of Laocoön and his sons in the embrace of the destroying serpents. This group, so full of agony and irrepressible horror, belongs, he said, to a totally different concept of art from that of the gods and goddesses of Greece, in the beauty and freshness of their eternal youth. These qualities are those of the general and the eternal; the Laocoön, in its nature painful, was not nor could be permanently satisfactory in and of itself, but only through allowance being made by reason of interest in the story told by it. According to more recent philosophers, the romantic movement in literature and art (for they are parts of the same general movement of the latter part of the eighteenth century) has its essential characteristic in the doctrine that what is to be sought in art is not the pleasing and the satisfactory, so much as the true. Everything, they say, belonging to life and experience, is fit subject of art; to the end that thereby the soul may learn to understand itself, and come to complete self-consciousness. The entire movement of the romantic writers had for its moving principle the maxim, Nihil humanum alienum a me puto ("I will consider nothing human to be foreign to me"). Yet other writers make the romantic element to consist of the striking, the strongly contrasted, the exciting, and so at length the sensational. Whichever construction we may put upon this much used and seldom determined term, its general meaning is that of a distinction from the more moderate writings and compositions of the eighteenth century. Individualism, as opposed to the general, is the key to the romantic, and in music this principle has acquired great dominance throughout the century in which we are still living. Moreover, if the principle of individualism had not been discovered in its application to the other arts, it must necessarily have found its way into music, for music is the most subjective of all the arts; having indeed its general principles of form and proportion, but coming to the composer (if he be a genius) as the immediate expression of his own feelings and moods, or as the interplay of his environment and the inner faculties of musical phantasy.

In this sense there is a difference between the music of Bach and Mozart, on the one hand, and that of Beethoven and Schubert, on the other. Beethoven was essentially a romantic composer, especially after he had passed middle life, and the period of the "Moonlight" sonata. From that time on, his works are more and more free in form, and their moods are more strongly marked and individual. This is true of Beethoven, in spite of his having been born, as we might say, under the star of the classic. He writes freely and fantastically, in spite of his early training. The mood in the man dominated everything, and it is always this which finds its expression in the music.

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 personæ. 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," "Davidsbundlertänze" 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.

CHAPTER XXXII.

HE 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, Méhul, 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 König," "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 Müller, 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 "Schöne Müllerin." 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.

Fig. 67.

FRANZ SCHUBERT.

His place in the history of music, aside from the general fact of his possessing genius of the first order, is that of the creator of the artistic song. While his pianoforte sonatas are extremely beautiful and very difficult, and anticipate many modern effects; his string quartettes, and other chamber music, worthy to be ranked with those of any other master; and his symphonies exquisitely beautiful in their ideas, orchestral coloring and the entire atmosphere which they carry—his habitual attitude was that of the writer of songs. Some of these are of remarkable length and range. One of them extends to sixty-six pages of manuscript. Another occupies forty-five pages of close print. A work of this kind is a cantata, and not merely a song. Many of the others are six or eight pages long, and in all the music freely and spontaneously follows the poem, with a delicate correspondence between the poetic idea and the melody, with its harmony and treatment, such as we look for in vain in any other writer, unless it be Schumann, who, however, did not possess Schubert's instinct of the vocally suitable. For with all the range which these songs cover, their vocal quality is as noticeable as that of Italian cantilenas.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

HE popular instrument of the nineteenth century has been the pianoforte, the result of an evolution having its beginning more than six centuries back. It is impossible in the present state of knowledge to trace all the steps through which this remarkable instrument has reached its present form. In the Assyrian sculptures discovered by Layard, there are instruments apparently composed of metal rods or plates, touched by hammers, upon the same general principle as the toy instrument with glass plates, or the xylophone composed of wooden rods resting upon bands of straw. In these the use of the hammer for producing the tone is obvious. In the Middle Ages there was an instrument called the psaltery, apparently some sort of a four-sided harp strung with metal strings. The evidence upon this point is rather indistinct. Still later there is the Arab santir (p. 114). This was a trapeze-shaped instrument, composed of a solid frame, sounding board and metal wires struck with hammers. This instrument still exists in Germany under the name of Hackbrett, or the dulcimer. As now made, each string consists of three wires tuned in unison. It is played by means of leather hammers held in the hand. The difficulty of adapting this instrument to the keyboard consisted in the fact that if the hammers were connected with the keys, they would be under the strings instead of above them, and this difficulty for a long time proved insurmountable.

Fig. 68.

SPINET.

[Showing the disposition of the strings, bridges, etc. Dresden, 1590.]

Two forms of instruments were at length developed, composed of a wire-strung psaltery, played from a chromatic keyboard like that of the organ. The first of these was the one called in England Spinet, or in Italy Espinnetto, and in Germany the Clavier. The essential characteristic of this instrument was the manner of producing tones. Upon the ends of the keys were brass pieces called "tangents," of a triangular shape, of such form that when the key was pressed, the tangent pushed the wire and so produced the tone. As it remained in contact with the wire as long as the key was held down, there was nothing like what we now call a singing tone. The instruments were very small, in shape like a square piano, but of three or four octaves compass; the wires were of brass, and quite small. In several representations which have come down to us from the seventeenth century, the number of strings shown is smaller than the number of keys, from which some writers have inferred that it might have been possible to obtain more than one tone from the same string, through a process of stopping it with one tangent and striking it with another. This, however, is highly improbable; the discrepancies referred to are undoubtedly due to carelessness of the engraver. The clavier, or spinet, was a better instrument than the lute, which at length it superseded, having more tones and a greater harmonic capacity. Besides which it was a step toward something much better still. In England they made them with pieces of cloth drawn through between the wires, to deaden the already small tone still further. These were sometimes called virginals, and seem to have been used as practice pianos, where the noise of the full tone might have been objectionable. The oldest form of the clavier known to the writer was that shown in Fig. 69, which was so small that it might be carried under the arm, and when used was placed upon the table. They were sometimes ornamented in a very elaborate manner.

Fig. 69.

KEYBOARD AND FRET WORK OF SPINET SHOWN IN FIG. 68.

Fig. 70.

RICHLY ORNAMENTED SPINET.

[Made for the Princess Anna, of Saxony, about 1550.]

Contemporaneously with the spinet, and of almost equal antiquity, was an instrument in the form of a grand piano, called in Italy the clavicembalo, and in England the harpsichord. In Germany it was called the flugel or wing, from its being shaped like the wings of a bird. These also, in the earlier times, were made very small, and were rested upon the table. The essential distinction between the cembalo and the spinet was in the manner of tone production. In the cembalo there was a wooden jack resting upon the end of the keys, and upon this jack a little plectrum made of raven's quill, which had to be frequently renewed. When the key was pressed, the jack rose and the plectrum snapped the wire. The tone was thin and delicate, but as the plectrum did not remain in contact with the string, the vibration continued longer than in the clavier. The cembalo was the favorite instrument in Italy during the seventeenth century, and in England it had a great currency under the name of harpsichord. Many attempts were made at increasing the resources of this instrument, one of the most curious being that of combining two harpsichords in one, having two actions, two sounding boards and sets of strings, and two keyboards related like those of the organ. This form seems to have been exclusively English. The form of the harpsichord is shown in Fig. 71.

Fig. 71.

MOZART'S CONCERT GRAND PIANO.

[Now in the Mozart Museum at Salzburg. Its compass is five octaves.]

Far back in the sixteenth century an attempt was made at a hammer mechanism to strike down upon the strings. For this purpose the strings were placed in a vertical position, the same as in our upright pianos of the present day. Mr. B.J. Lang, of Boston, has an upright spinet of this kind, which he bought in Nuremburg. It is a small and rude affair, having about four octaves compass and a very small scale.

The pianoforte proper was not invented until 1711, when a Florentine mechanic, named Cristofori, invented what he called a Fortepiano, from its capacity of being played loud or soft. The essential feature of the pianoforte mechanism is in the use of the hammer to produce the tone, and the necessary provision for doing this successfully is to secure an instantaneous escapement of the hammer from contact with the wire, as soon as the blow has been delivered, while at the same time the key remains pressed in order to hold the damper away from the strings and allow the tone to go on. These features were all contained in Cristofori's invention. The above diagram, Fig. 72, illustrates the mechanism employed. It is from Cristofori's published account of his invention, dated 1711; but there is in Florence a pianoforte of his manufacture still existing, dated 1726, in which the action is more perfect, as shown in Fig. 73.

The invention of Cristofori was taken up in Germany almost immediately, and a Dresden piano maker, Silbermann, became very celebrated. It was the pianofortes of his manufacture in the palace at Potsdam, which Frederick the Great made Bach try, one after another. The form of these instruments was the same as that of Mozart's piano, shown in Fig. 71. The square-formed piano began to be made about 1750, but the instrument involved no application of new principles, being merely a clavier with pianoforte mechanism. The new form, so much more compact and inexpensive, began to be popular, and was soon the standard form for private families, as that of the clavier had been before, and as the square piano, remained until as late as about 1870, when the inherent mechanical difficulties of the upright were for the first time satisfactorily overcome. Pepys, in his diary, tells of having purchased a virginal which pleased him very much. It cost five guineas—about $26.

The instruments were still small, and strung with small wires; nevertheless, there was a tendency toward increased compass, which, by the beginning of the nineteenth century, led the Broadwoods, of London, to attempt a grand piano with six octaves' compass. But they found that the wrest plank (in which the tuning strings are placed), was so weakened by the extension that the treble would not stand in tune. In order to strengthen the instrument, he introduced the iron tension bar. This, like nearly all of the English improvements of the piano during the first quarter of the nineteenth century, was in the direction of greater solidity, and better resisting power to the pull of the strings.

Upon the artistic side, Sebastian Érard in 1808 patented his grand action, which, with very slight improvements, still remains the model of what a piano action should be. Fig. 74 shows this action and its parts.

Fig. 75.

THE STEINWAY IRON FRAME.

[Showing the disposition of the sounding board, bridges, etc.]

Between 1808, when the Érard action was perfected, and 1832 or 1834, when Thalberg and Liszt began to revolutionize the art of piano playing, the instrument was the subject of a great number of improvements in every direction. The damper mechanism was perfected between 1821 and 1827; the stringing had been made heavier, the hammers proportionately stronger, and the power of tone had become greater. Thus the instrument had become ready for the great pianists—Liszt having made his first appearance in Vienna in 1823, and within seven years after having become generally recognized as a phenomenal appearance in art. Meanwhile, great improvements were continually carried on for the purpose of rendering the instrument impervious to the forcible attacks made upon its stability by these new virtuosi. In the early appearances of Liszt it was necessary to have several pianos in reserve upon the stage, so that when a hammer or string broke, which very often happened, another instrument could be moved forward for the next piece.

The most important improvement in the solidity of the piano came from the iron frame, which was introduced tentatively, somewhere about 1821, in the form of what is now called a "hitch-pin plate," or half iron frame. About 1825 an American, Alpheus Babcock, of Philadelphia, patented a full iron frame, but it was imperfect, and nothing came of it. Conrad Meyer, of Philadelphia, in 1833, patented an iron frame and manufactured pianos with it, which are still in existence. In 1837, Jonas Chickering, of Boston, perfected the iron frame by including in the single casting the pin bridge and damper socket rail. This improvement still remains at the foundation of the piano making of the world. Previous to this invention some of the American piano makers had constructed their cases upon a solid wooden bottom plank five inches thick. In 1855 the firm of Steinway & Sons exhibited their first overstrung scale, in which the bass strings were spread out and carried over a part of the treble strings, thus affording them more latitude for vibration, without interfering, and bringing the bridges nearer to the center of the sounding board. The idea of overstringing was not new at this time, Lichtenberg, of St. Petersburg, having exhibited a grand piano with overstringing at the London exposition in 1851, and Theodore Boehm, the celebrated improver of the flute, having invented an overstrung system for square pianos as early as 1835. In 1853, also, Jonas Chickering combined an iron frame with an overstrung system in square pianos, the instrument having been completed and exhibited after his death. The Steinway system of overstringing, however, was more extended, and solved the acoustical difficulties of cross-vibrations more successfully by spreading the long strings, and this, therefore, is the system now generally followed. The superiority of this principle was immediately acknowledged, and it has since been applied to grands and uprights, and few makers in the world but follow it in their work. Many minor improvements have been introduced in America by Steinway & Sons and others, whereby the artistic qualities and the durability of the best American pianos are now generally acknowledged throughout the world. The solidity of construction is such that with a compass of seven and one-third octaves the tension of the strings amounts to about 50,000 pounds avoirdupois. The hammers are larger and heavier, the action more responsive, and the singing quality and sustaining power has reached remarkable perfection. Perhaps the most curious and important of all American improvements in this direction is the so-called "duplex scale" of Steinway & Sons, patented in 1872, in which a fraction of the string is made to vibrate sympathetically, thereby strengthening the super-octave harmonic, and imparting to the tone a brightness and sweetness not so well secured in any other way at present known.

If space permitted it would be interesting to follow the course by which the difficulties of the upright piano have at length been surmounted, and the tone of this form of instrument rendered nearly equal to that of the grand. This was first accomplished by Steinway & Sons between 1862 and 1878, by a succession of improvements having for their object, first, the solidity of the instrument, then its prompt action, together with as much of the tone quality of the grand as possible. Many other American builders have taken part in this development, whereby the American pianoforte to-day is the strongest, the fullest-toned and the most expensively constructed of any in the world. Still later, quite a number of more or less successful attempts have been made to increase the stability of the tuning of the pianoforte by a different system of stringing, the tension of the strings being regulated by means of a tuning pin of "set-screw" pattern, working through a collar of steel, instead of being thrust into a wooden wrest-plank, where it holds fast by friction alone, as has been the universal way previous to these inventions.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

ERMAN opera reached an extraordinary development during the nineteenth century, the distinguishing characteristics being an extremely full and dramatically conceived treatment of the orchestra, and a mode of delivering the text partaking of the character of melody and recitative in about equal proportions, the entire object being to present the action to the inner consciousness of the beholder in the most impressive manner possible. In Italian opera, as we have seen, there was a large development of arias and vocal pieces, whose value lay in their beauty as melodies and as concerted effect, the action of the drama being meanwhile delayed sometimes for an entire half hour, while these pieces were going on. In Germany the effort to improve the delivery of the text and to bring it into closer union with the orchestra, and to develop the music from a dramatic standpoint exclusively, led to the vocal form known as arioso, or, to use Wagner's term, "endless melody," in which the successive periods follow each other to the end of the paragraph, or the end of the piece, without a full stop at any point until the end of the sense is reached. The great master of this form of composition was Richard Wagner, who may be regarded as the exponent of the extreme development yet reached by German opera. Wagner's endless melody proposed to itself the same ideal as that of Gluck, but it is only at rare moments that one will find in the music of the later master the symmetrical periods of the Gluck and Mozart epoch. Italian opera, as we have already seen, carried forward the dialogue mostly in recitativo-secco, that is to say, in a recitative following more or less successfully the modulations of speech, and accompanied only by detached chords marking the emphatic moments. This form of vocal delivery has the slightest possible musical interest, and the Germans almost immediately endeavored to improve it, as also did some of the Italian masters, the first result being recitativo-stromentato, or instrumented recitative, viz., recitative in which the text is accompanied by a flowing and more or less descriptive orchestral accompaniment. This differs essentially from the descriptive recitative in the works of the Mozart or Gluck period, or even in those of Haydn's later time. In the "Creation," for example, the descriptive recitative consists of vocal phrases with instrumental phrases interspersed, in dialogue form. The voice announces a certain fact and the orchestra immediately answers with a musical phrase corresponding to it, as, for example, in the recitative describing the creation of the world, where the phrase relating to the horse is immediately answered by an orchestral gallop; that of the tiger by certain slides and leaps in the melody remotely answering it; while the roar of the lion is immediately answered by a vigorous snort of the bass trombone. This is by no means of the same nature as the dramatic arioso of German opera during the nineteenth century. Händel came nearer to this type of musical formation, for example, in the "Messiah," at the recitative describing the appearance of the angels to the shepherds, where, after a phrase of unaccompanied recitative, the appearance of the angels is signified by an accompanied and measured strain, "And lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them."

This development of opera in the nineteenth century has been carried forward by the successive efforts of a considerable number of masters, among whom the three most important are Weber, Meyerbeer and Wagner, each of whom created a type of opera peculiar to himself, and left something as an addition to the permanent stock of musical dramatic ideas.

Fig. 76.

CARL MARIA VON WEBER.

II.

Carl Maria von Weber (1786-1826) was the son of a very musical family. He was born at Eutin, and fulfilled his father's desire, which had always been to have a child who should correspond to the youthful promise of Mozart. The father was an actor, and the director of a traveling troupe, largely composed of his own children by a former marriage. This mode of life continued for a number of years, while the future master was quite small. In 1794 Carl Maria's mother was engaged as a singer at the theater at Weimar, under Goethe's direction. Presently, however, the boy became a pupil of Heuschkel, an eminent oboeist, a solid pianist and organist, and a good composer. Under his careful direction Weber developed a technique which very soon passed far beyond anything that had previously been seen. Still later he became a pupil of Michael Haydn, a brother of Joseph. As early as 1800 the boy gave concerts in Leipsic and other towns in central Germany. At this time an opera book was given him, "Das Wald Mädchen," and the opera was composed and produced in November. Five years later it was highly appreciated at Vienna, and was performed also at Prague and St. Petersburg. Young Weber was of a most active mind, and interested himself in all questions of art. In 1803 he made the acquaintance of the famous Abbé Vogler, and became his pupil. Vogler commissioned him to prepare the piano score of a new opera of his. He still continued his practice as pianist, but when he lacked some months of being eighteen years of age he was made director of the music of the theater at Breslau. This was his first acquaintance with practical life as a musician. He showed great talent for direction and organization, and here he composed his first serious opera "Rubezahl" (1806). His next position was at Stuttgart, where he became musical director in 1807. After composing several short pieces, he led a somewhat irregular life for several years, concerting as a pianist, writing articles for the papers, at which he was very talented, beginning a musical novel, and at length, in 1810, producing his opera "Abou Hassan." Then followed about three years of roving life as a concert player and occasionally as composer, until 1813, when he was appointed musical director at Prague. The opera here was in very bad condition, and the company incapable, but Weber engaged new singers in Vienna, and entirely reorganized the affair, and conducted himself so prudently that he gained the good will of nearly every one. As an example of his quickness it may be mentioned that upon discovering that certain musicians in the orchestra, who were not disposed to yield to his strict ideas of discipline, were conversing with each other in Bohemian, while the music was going on, he learned the language himself sufficiently to rebuke them in their own tongue. His next position was at Dresden in 1816, and here he remained nine years until his death. His position at first was somewhat ambiguous. There were two troupes of singers in the opera—an Italian and the German. The grand operas were given in Italian by the Italian company, and the light operas in German by the German company. It was Weber's task to change this, by producing new works of a distinctly higher character than the foreign works of the Italian company. The second year he was able to produce a few good operas of other schools in German versions, but it was not until 1821, when his "Preciosa" was produced at Berlin, and 1822, when "Der Freischütz" was produced in the same theater, that the reputation of the young master was established beyond question. It is impossible at the present time to describe the enthusiasm which the latter work created. It was a new departure in opera. It united two strains very dear to the German heart—the simple peasant life and the people's song are represented in the choruses, and in the arias of the less important people. Agatha, the heroine, has a prayer of exquisite beauty, which still is often heard as a church tune. And in contrast with these elements was the weird and uncanny music of Zamiel, the Satanic spirit of the wood, and the strange incantation scene in the Wolf's Glen at midnight, where the magic balls are cast. The story was thoroughly German, and the music not only German and well suited to the story, but distinctly original and charming of itself. In this work, perhaps first of any opera, Weber made use of what has since been known as "leading motives"—characteristic melodic phrases appropriate to Zamiel and Agatha. The instrumentation was very graphic, and as Weber had been brought up upon the stage, there were many novelties of a scenic kind. In fact, the work marked as distinct an epoch as Wagner's "Nibelungen Ring," and what is more to the point, it was one of the operative influences affecting the young Wagner, as he tells with considerable care in his autobiography. His next effort was a comic opera, the "Three Pintos," which was never finished. Then came "Euryanthe" performed at Vienna in 1823 with the most extraordinary success. This work is said to have been the model upon which Wagner created his "Lohengrin." When it was produced in Berlin in 1825, the enthusiasm was yet greater and more remarkable than in Vienna. In 1825 he composed "Oberon," the first of the operas in which the fairy principle has prominent exemplification. This was produced in London early in 1826. But by this time Weber's health had become completely broken, and he died there of overwork and fatigue. He was laid to his rest, to the music of Mozart's Requiem, in the chapel at Moorsfields in London.

Weber was the first of the romantic composers—the first, at least, to gain the ear of the public. These operas, with their beautifully descriptive music, in which voices and orchestra co-operate with the action and scene as one, were composed at the same time that the young Franz Schubert was improvising his beautiful songs in Vienna. From one end of Germany to the other, and in all Europe, these operas made their way. "Der Freischütz" has lasted fifty years, and is still presented with success. More than that, as already noticed, Weber furnished the model, or point of departure, for a multitude of smaller composers, who developed the opera in various side directions; and last, but not least, for Richard Wagner himself.

Moreover, in the department of piano playing Weber was no less epoch-marking than in that of opera. In 1812 his sonata in C, Opus 24, was produced, a work which is distinctly in advance of those of Clementi or any other writer before that time. The finale of this work is the well known rondo "Perpetual Motion," which, indeed, contains no new principle of piano playing, but is an elegant example of melodiousness and real musicianly qualities displayed at the highest possible speed. His next sonata, Opus 39, in A flat (1816), is still more remarkable. The piano playing here is of an extremely brilliant and picturesque description. Here also, in the Andante we have the tricks which he afterward made so effective in the Concertstück, of the legato melody accompanied by chords pizzicati. Equally significant in this way is the sonata in D minor, Opus 49, published in the same year as the preceding. Here we have very strong contrast and an enormous fire and vigor. The romantic impulse, however, had been displayed yet earlier in his "Momento Capriccioso," Opus 12, in B flat (1808). This extremely rapid piece of changing chords pianissimo is like a reminiscence from fairy land, and the second subject contrasts with it to a degree which would have satisfied Schumann. It is a choral-like movement with intervening interludes in the bass, upon which Rubinstein must have modeled his "Kamennoi Ostrow," No. 22. But the most decided token of the romantic movement is seen in the "Invitation to the Dance," and the "Polacca Brilliant," both of which were published in 1819. Two years later came the concert piece, which for seventy years has remained a standard selection for brilliant pianists, and for fifteen years was Liszt's great concert solo. It marks a transition from Moscheles, Dussek and Clementi to Thalberg and Liszt. The "Invitation to the Dance," moreover, was the first salon piece idealized from a popular dance form.

III.

Yet another distinguished name might well have been enrolled among those of the great virtuosi of the first part of the nineteenth century. Jacob Liebmann Beer, better known as Giacomo Meyerbeer (1791-1864), was born at Berlin, the son of a rich Jewish banker. The name Meyer was prefixed to his own later, as a condition of inheriting certain property from a distant relative. As the boy showed talent for music at a very early age, he was put to the study of the pianoforte, and it was his ambition to distinguish himself as a virtuoso, which his talent undoubtedly permitted, if he had not been diverted from it by the success of his early attempts at opera. He was taught by a pupil of Clementi, and for a while by Clementi himself, as well as by other distinguished teachers, and if reports are to be believed concerning his playing, he must have become by the time he was twenty years old one of the very first virtuosi in Europe. His studies in theory were carried on under Abbé Vogler, at Darmstadt, where he was a schoolmate with C.M. von Weber and Gansbacher, and later with Salieri at Vienna. At Darmstadt he wrote an oratorio "God and Nature," which was performed by the Singakademie, of Berlin, in 1811; and an opera, "Alimelek" ("The Two Caliphs"), which also was successfully given at Munich in the Grand Opera House in the same year, 1811. Both works were anonymous. The opera made considerable reputation, and was played in several other cities. Upon Salieri's direction he went to Venice, where he arrived in 1815, to find Rossini's star in the ascendant, and all Venice, and Italy as well, wild over the bewitching melodies of "Tancredi." Meyerbeer, having that vein of cleverness and adaptability so characteristic of his race, immediately became a composer of Italian operas, and produced in Venice, "Romilda e Constanza" (Padua, 1815), "Semiramide Riconosciuta" (Turin, 1819), "Emma di Resburgo" (Venice, 1820), the latter also making a certain amount of reputation in Germany as "Emma von Leicester." Then followed "Margherita d'Anjou" (Milan, La Scala, 1820), "L'Esule di Granata" (Milan, 1822) and "Il Crociato in Egitto" (Venice, 1824). All of these were Italian operas, with melody in quite the Rossini vein, with the same attention as Rossini to the light, the pleasing and the vocal, but with a certain added element of German cleverness of harmony and thematic treatment.

Fig. 77.

GIACOMO MEYERBEER.

He now returned to Berlin, but his opera, "Das Brandenburger Thor," which he had written for Berlin, was not performed, owing to opposing intrigues. Nevertheless, for about six years Meyerbeer remained in his native city, married, and presently lost two infant children. In 1830 he took up his abode in Paris, where already his "Il Crociato" had been performed, in 1826, and in that city, as the leading composer for grand opera, he lived six years, and finally died there. For the Paris stage he produced a succession of large and sensational operas, following to some extent the footsteps of Spontini, in respect to the heroic, the spectacular and the theatrical. Up to the time of his going to Paris, Meyerbeer had figured as an Italian composer in grace of melody, German in his harmony, and now he became a French composer in refinements of rhythm. His first work in Paris was "Robert le Diable," 1831, and it made his reputation, and at the same time made an epoch in operatic construction. It was followed by "Les Huguenots," 1838, which when played in Berlin, in 1842, so pleased the king, Friedrich Wilhelm IV, that he created Meyerbeer "General Musical Director" for Prussia, and Meyerbeer came to Berlin to reside. Here in 1842 he wrote his "Das Feldlager in Schlesien" in which Jenny Lind made a great success. Later, however, he made over a great part of this music for his opera of "L'Étoile du Nord," 1854, for the Opéra Comique in Paris. His remaining works were "L'Africaine," performed after his death, in 1865; "Le Prophète," 1843, and "Dinorah," 1859. He died in Paris while superintending the production of his "L'Africaine." In his will he left a fund of 10,000 thalers, the interest of which to be used as a prize for the support of a young German composer during eighteen months' study in Italy, Germany and France, six months in each. Besides the operas above mentioned Meyerbeer wrote a quantity of other music for orchestra, cantatas, and occasional pieces for festival purposes, of which the "Schiller March" is an example.

The music of Meyerbeer is extremely sensational. His instrumentation is rich, at times bizarre, and strongly contrasted. His knowledge of stage effect, such that he knew by intuition what would do, and what not. He was to some extent created by circumstances, a striking instance of which is told in connection with the opera of the "Huguenots," where the parting with Valentine at the end of the fourth act was originally without important music. But the tenor declined to take the part unless suitable music could be furnished him at this point. Whereupon Meyerbeer wrote the impassioned duet, since so celebrated, and which in fact is generally recognized as one of the most suitable, not to say most effective, incidents of the whole opera. Meyerbeer's operas follow the lead of Spontini in their fondness for military glory and spectacle. They partake of the virtuoso spirit of the other great geniuses mentioned in a later chapter—all of whom wrote for the sake of an effect to be arrived at, rather than from any inner necessity of carrying out their tone-poems in such and such a way. Meyerbeer's influence, about 1830 to 1840, was supreme upon the stage. It was to consult him that young Wagner undertook his journey to Paris, bringing with him his splendid spectacular opera "Rienzi," quite in the Meyerbeer vein. This feature in the work, most likely, was the one chiefly concerned in preventing its acceptance at Paris under Meyerbeer's direction. Wagner was very much influenced by Meyerbeer in all his earlier works, particularly in the matter of splendid appointments for the stage. With all the splendid brilliancy of Meyerbeer's music, there is something insincere about it. It rarely touches the deeper springs of feeling. This is true of the greatest of his pieces, no less than of the smaller numbers.