The Project Gutenberg eBook of How to Appreciate Music
Title: How to Appreciate Music
Author: Gustav Kobbé
Release date: December 9, 2010 [eBook #34610]
Language: English
Credits: Produced by Mark C. Orton, Linda McKeown, monkeyclogs, Dan
Horwood and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
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HOW TO APPRECIATE MUSIC
BY
GUSTAV KOBBÉ
Author of “Wagner’s Music-Dramas Analyzed,” etc.
New York
MOFFAT, YARD & COMPANY
1912
Copyright, 1906, by
MOFFAT, YARD & COMPANY
New York
Published, October, 1906
Reprinted, February, 1908
Reprinted, September, 1908
Reprinted, May, 1912
THE PREMIER PRESS
NEW YORK
To the Memory of My Brother
PHILIP FERDINAND KOBBÉ
HOW TO APPRECIATE A PIANOFORTE RECITAL |
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| I | The Pianoforte | 29 |
| II | Bach’s Service to Music | 48 |
| III | From Fugue to Sonata | 78 |
| IV | Dawn of the Romantic Period | 100 |
| V | Chopin, the Poet of the Pianoforte | 116 |
| VI | Schumann, the “Intimate” | 134 |
| VII | Liszt, the Giant among Virtuosos | 142 |
| VIII | With Paderewski—A Modern Pianist on Tour | 155 |
HOW TO APPRECIATE AN ORCHESTRAL CONCERT |
||
| IX | Development of the Orchestra | 167 |
| X | Instruments of the Orchestra | 179 |
| XI | Concerning Symphonies | 197 |
| XII | Richard Strauss and His Music | 207 |
| XIII | A Note on Chamber Music | 224 |
HOW TO APPRECIATE VOCAL MUSIC |
||
| XIV | Songs and Song Composers | 231 |
| XV | Oratorio | 248 |
| XVI | Opera and Music-Drama | 260 |
HOW TO APPRECIATE A PIANOFORTE RECITAL
CHAPTER PAGE
I.—THE PIANOFORTE
Why the king of musical instruments—Music under one’s fingers—Can render anything in music—Liszt played the whole orchestra on the pianoforte—Fingers of a great virtuoso the ambassadors of his soul—Melody and accompaniment on one instrument—No intermediaries to mar effect—Paderewski’s playing of “Hark, Hark, the Lark”—Music’s debt to the pianoforte—Developed sonata form and gave it to orchestra—Richard Strauss on Beethoven’s pianistic orchestration—A boon to many famous composers, even to Wagner—Its lowly origin—Nine centuries to develop pianoforte from monochord—The monochord described—Joined to a keyboard—Poet’s amusing advice to his musical daughter—Clavichord developed from monochord—Its lack of power—Bebung, or balancement—The harpsichord—Originated in the cembalo of the Hungarian gypsy orchestra—Spinet and virginal—Pianoforte invented 10 by Cristofori, 1711—Exploited by Silbermann—Strings of twenty tons’ tension—Dampers and pedals—Paderewski’s use of both pedals—Mechanical pianofortes—Senseless decoration 29
II.—BACH’S SERVICE TO MUSIC
Pianoforte so universal in character can give, through it, a general survey of the art of music—Bach illustrates an epoch—A Bach fugue more elaborate than a music-drama or tone poem—Bach more modern than Haydn or Mozart—His influence on modern music—Wagner unites the harmony of Beethoven with the polyphony of Bach—Melody, harmony and counterpoint defined and differentiated—Illustrated from the “Moonlight Sonata”—What a fugue is—The fugue and the virtuoso—Not “grateful” music for public performance—Daniel Gregory Mason’s tribute and reservation—What counterpoint lacks—Fails to give the player as much scope as modern music—Barrier to individuality of expression—The virtuoso’s mission—Creative as well as interpretive—Mr. Hanchett’s dictum—Music both a science and an art—Science versus feeling—Person may be very musical without being musical at all—The great composer bends science to art—That “ear for music”—Bach and the Weather Bureau—The 11 Bacon, not the Shakespeare, of music—What Wagner learned from Bach—Illustration from “Die Walküre”—W. J. Henderson’s anecdote—Wagner’s counterpoint emotional—Bach’s the language of an epoch; Wagner’s the language of liberated music—Bach in the recital hall—Rubinstein and Bach’s “Triple Concerto”—“The Well-Tempered Clavichord”—Meaning of “well-tempered”—A king’s tribute to Bach—Two hundred and forty-one years of Bachs 48
III.—FROM FUGUE TO SONATA
Break in Bach’s influence—Mr. Parry on this hiatus in the evolution of music—Three periods of musical development—Rise of the harmonic, or “melodic,” school—Began with Domenico Scarlatti—The founder of modern pianoforte technique—Beginnings of the sonata form—Philipp Emanuel Bach and the sonata—Rise of the amateur—“The Contented Ear and Quickened Soul,” and other quaint titles—Changes in musical taste—Pianoforte has outgrown the music of Haydn and Mozart—Bach, Beethoven and Wagner the three great epoch-making figures in music—Beethoven and the epoch of the sonata—His slow development—Union of mind and heart in his work—His sonatas, however, no longer all-dominant in pianoforte music—Von 12 Bülow and D’Albert as Beethoven players—Incident at a Von Bülow Beethoven recital—Changes of taste in thirty years—The Beethoven sonatas too orchestric—The passing of the sonata 78
IV.—DAWN OF THE ROMANTIC PERIOD
What a sonata is—How Beethoven enlarged the form—Illustrated in his Opus 2, No. 3, and in the “Moonlight Sonata”—The three Beethoven periods—In his last sonatas seems chafing under restraint of form—The sonata form reached its climax with Beethoven—Hampers modern composers—Lawrence Gilman on MacDowell’s “Keltic Sonata”—The first romantic composers—Weber—Schubert’s inexhaustible genius—Mendelssohn smooth, polished and harmless 100
V.—CHOPIN, THE POET OF THE PIANOFORTE
An incomparable composer—Liszt’s definition of tempo rubato—The Wagner of the pianoforte—Clear melody and weird, entrancing harmonies—Racial traits—Friends in Paris—Liszt the first to recognize him—The Études—Vigor, passion, impetus—Von Bülow on the great C minor Étude—The Préludes—Schumann’s opinion of them—Rubinstein’s 13 playing of the Seventh Prélude—The Nocturnes—Chopin and Poe—The Waltzes—Liszt on the Mazurkas—The Polonaises—Chopin’s battle hymns—Other works—“A noble from head to foot”—Huneker on Chopin 115
VI.—SCHUMANN, THE “INTIMATE”
A composer with an academic education—Pupil in pianoforte of Frederick Wieck—Strains a finger and abandons career as a virtuoso—Marries Clara Wieck—Afflicted with insanity—Attempts suicide—Dies in asylum—His music introspective and brooding—Poet, bourgeois and philosopher—Contributions to program music—“Carnaval” and “Kreisleriana”—Latter title explained—Really Schumanniana—Thoughts of his Clara—“Fantasie Pieces”—His compositions at first neglected 134
VII.—LISZT, THE GIANT AMONG VIRTUOSOS
A youthful phenomenon—Refused at the Paris Conservatory—“Le petit Litz”—Inspired by Paganini—Episode with Countess D’Agoult—Court conductor at Weimar—Makes Weimar the musical Mecca of Germany—Produces “Lohengrin”—His “six Lives”—His pianoforte compositions—The 14 “Don Juan Fantasie”—“Hexameron”—“Années de Pèlerinage”—Progressive edition of the Études—Giant strides in virtuosity—History of the famous “Rhapsodies Hongroises”—Characterisation of his pianoforte music—A great composer, not a charlatan—Liszt as a virtuoso—His tribute to the pianoforte—A long and influential career—Played for Beethoven and died at “Parsifal” 142
VIII.—WITH PADEREWSKI—A MODERN PIANIST ON TOUR
The most successful virtuoso ever heard here—$171,981.89 for one season—His opinion of the pianoforte—Perfect save for greater sustaining power of tone—Has four pianofortes on his tours—Duties of the “piano doctor”—How the instruments are cared for—Thawing out a pianoforte—Paderewski’s humor 155
HOW TO APPRECIATE AN ORCHESTRAL CONCERT
IX.—DEVELOPMENT OF THE ORCHESTRA
Modern music at first vocal, and without instrumental accompaniment—Awkward instrumentation of the contrapuntists—Primitive 15 orchestration in Italy—The orchestra of Monteverde—Haydn the father of modern orchestral music—The Mozart symphonies—Beethoven establishes the modern orchestra—But few instruments added since—Greater richness due to subtler technique—Beethoven’s development of the orchestra traced in his symphonies—Greater technical demands on the players—Beethoven and Wagner—“Meistersinger” score has only three more instruments than the Fifth Symphony—Berlioz an orchestral juggler—Architectural music—Wagner, greatest of orchestral composers—Employs large orchestra not for noise, but for variety of expression—Richard Strauss’s tribute to Wagner—Wonderfully reserved in the use of his forces—Wagner’s scores the only advance worth mentioning since Berlioz 167
X.—INSTRUMENTS OF THE ORCHESTRA
The orchestra an aggregation of instruments that should play as one—Wagner’s employment of orchestral groups illustrated by the Love motive in “Die Walküre” and the Walhalla motive—Division of the orchestra—The violin—Its varied capacity—The musical stage whisper of a hundred violins—The violins in the “Lohengrin” prelude—Modern 16 orchestral virtuosity—The sordine and its use—A pizzicato movement by Tschaikowski—The viola, violoncello and double bass—Dividing the string band—Examples from the scores of Wagner—Anecdote regarding the harp in “Rheingold”—The woodwind—The flute—The oboe in Schubert’s C major symphony—The English horn in “Tristan”—Beethoven’s use of the bassoon in the Fifth and Ninth symphonies—The clarinets in “Tannhäuser,” “Lohengrin,” and “Götterdämmerung”—Brass instruments and various illustrations of their employment—The trumpet in “Fidelio” and “Carmen”—The trombone group in “The Ring of the Nibelung”—The trombones in “The Magic Flute,” in Schubert’s C major symphony, and in the introduction to the third act of “Lohengrin”—The tubas in the Funeral March in “Götterdämmerung”—Richard Strauss’s apotheosis of the horn, and its importance in the Wagner scores—Tympani and cymbals—Mozart’s G minor symphony on twenty-two clarinets—Richard Strauss, on the future development of the orchestra 179
XI.—CONCERNING SYMPHONIES
The classical period of music dominated by the symphony—Its esthetic purpose defined—A symphonic witticism—Some comment 17 on form in music—Divisions of the symphony established by Haydn—Artless grace and beauty of Mozart’s symphonies—Beethoven to the fore—Climaxes and rests—The Ninth Symphony—Schubert’s genius—Mendelssohn and Schumann—Liszt’s symphonies and symphonic poems—Other symphonists—Wagner not supposed to have been a purely orchestral composer, yet the greatest of all 197
XII.—RICHARD STRAUSS AND HIS MUSIC
One of the most original and individual of composers—A student, not a copyist, of Wagner—Independent intellectual basis for his art—Originator of the tone poem—Unhampered by even the word “symphonic”—Means much to the musically elect—Not a juggler with the orchestra—A modern of moderns—Technical difficulties, but not impossibilities in his works—“Thus Spake Zarathustra” and other scores—Life and truth, not mere beauty, the burden of modern music—Huneker’s “Piper of Dreams”—“Zarathustra” and “A Hero’s Life” described—An intellectual force in music—“A Hero’s Life” Strauss’s “Meistersinger”—Tribute to Wagner in “Feuersnot”—Performances of Richard Strauss’s scores in America—His symphony in F minor (1883) had its first 18 performance anywhere, under Theodore Thomas—Straussiana—Boyhood anecdotes—Scribbled scores on schoolbook covers—Still at school when first symphony was played in public—Studied with Von Bülow—Married his Freihild—Ideals of the highest 207
XIII.—A NOTE ON CHAMBER MUSIC 224
HOW TO APPRECIATE VOCAL MUSIC
XIV.—SONGS AND SONG COMPOSERS
Strophic and “composed through”—Schubert the first song composer to require consideration; also the greatest—Early struggles—Too poor to buy music paper—Becomes a school-teacher—Impatient under drudgery—Publishers hold aloof—Fortune for a song, but not for him—History of “The Erlking”—How it was composed—Written down as fast as pen could travel—Tried over the same evening—The famous dissonances—As sung by Lilli Lehmann—Schubert only eighteen years old when he composed “The Erlking”—His marvelous fecundity—Died at thirty-one, yet wrote six hundred songs and many other works—Schumann’s individuality—Distinguished from Schubert—Not the same 19 proportion of great songs—The best composed during his wooing of Clara—Phases of Franz’s genius—Traces of his knowledge and admiration of Bach—Choice of keys—Objected to transpositions—Pitiable physical disabilities—Brahms a profound thinker in music—Jensen, Rubinstein, Grieg, Chopin, Wagner—Liszt one of the greatest of song composers—Richard Strauss, Hugo Wolf and others 231
XV.—ORATORIO
An incongruous art form—Originated in Italy with San Filippo Neri—Scenery, action and even ballet in the early oratorio—The influence of German composers—Bach’s “Passion” music—Dramatic expression in Händel—Rockstro’s characterisation of—First performance of “The Messiah”—Haydn’s “Creation” and “Seasons”—Mendelssohn’s “Elijah” next to “The Messiah” in popularity—Dramatic episodes in the work—Gounod, Elgar and others 248
XVI.—OPERA AND MUSIC-DRAMA
Origin of opera—Peri and the Florentines—Monteverde—Cavalli introduces vocal melody to relieve the monotony of recitative—Aria developed by Alessandro Scarlatti—Characteristics 20 of Italian opera from Scarlatti to Verdi—Gluck’s reforms—German and French opera—“Les Huguenots,” “Faust,” and “Carmen”—Comparative popularity of certain operas here—Far-reaching effects of Wagner’s theories—Their influence on the later Verdi and contemporary Italian composers—Wagner’s music-dramas—A music-drama not an opera—Form wholly original with Wagner—Gave impetus to folk-lore movement—Krehbiel’s “Studies in the Wagnerian Drama”—Wagner and anti-Wagner—Finck’s “Wagner and His Works”—Wagner a melodist—Examples—Unity a distinguishing trait of the music-drama—Wagner’s method illustrated by musical examples—The Curse Motive—The Siegfried, Nibelung, and Tarnhelm motives—Leading motives not mere labels—Their plasticity musically illustrated—The Siegfried horn call developed into the motive of Siegfried, the hero, and into the climax of the “Götterdämmerung” Funeral March—An illustration from “Tristan”—Wagner as a composer of absolute music—His scores the greatest achievement musical history, up to the present time, has to show 260
| PAGES | |
Beethoven's “Moonlight Sonata” |
52, 53 |
| “Two-Part Invention,” by Bach | 54 |
| Love Motive from “Die Walküre” | 180 |
| Opening of the “Lohengrin” Prelude | 183 |
| Walhalla Motive | 192 |
| Curse Motive | 269 |
| Siegfried Motive | 270 |
| Nibelung Smithy Motive | 270 |
| Tarnhelm Motive | 271 |
| Siegfried Horn Call | 272 |
| Develops into Motive of Siegfried, the Hero | 272 |
| And into Climax of the “Götterdämmerung” Funeral March | 272 |
Examples from “Tristan und Isolde” |
273, 274 |
“Are you musical?”
“No; I neither play nor sing.”
Your answer shows a complete misunderstanding of the case. Because you neither play nor sing, it by no means follows that you are unmusical. If you love music and appreciate it, you may be more musical than many pianists or singers; and certainly you may become so.
This book is planned for the lover of music, for those who throng the concert and recital halls and the opera—those who have not followed music as a profession, and yet love it as an art; who may not play or sing, and yet are musical. Among these is an ever-growing number that “wants to know,” that no longer is satisfied simply with allowing music to play upon the senses and the emotions, but wants to understand why it does so.
To satisfy this natural desire which, with many, amounts to a craving or even a passion, and to do so in wholly untechnical language and in a manner that shall be intelligible to the average reader, is the purpose of this book. In carrying it out I have not neglected the personal side of music, but have endeavored to keep clearly before the eyes of the reader, and in 24 their proper sequence, the great names in musical history.
I am somewhat of a radical in my musical opinions, one of those persons of advanced views who does not lift his eyes reverentially heavenward every time the words “symphony” and “sonata” are mentioned. In fact, I am most in sympathy with the liberating tendencies of modern music, which lays more stress upon the expression of life and truth than upon the exact form in which these are sought to be expressed. Nevertheless, I am quite aware that only through the gradual development and expansion of forms that now may be growing obsolete has music achieved its emancipation from the tyranny of form. Therefore, while I would rather listen to a Wagner music-drama than to a Mozart opera, or might go to more trouble to hear a Richard Strauss tone poem than a Beethoven symphony, I am not such an unconscionable heretic as to be unaware of the great, the very great part played by the Mozart opera and the Beethoven symphony in the evolution of music, or their importance in the orderly and systematic study of the art. Indeed, I was brought up on “Don Giovanni,” the Fifth Symphony and the Sonatas before I brought myself up on Chopin, Liszt (for whom I have far greater admiration than most critics), and Wagner. Therefore, an ample portion of this book will be found devoted to the classical epoch and its great masters, especially its greatest master, Beethoven, and to the forms in which they worked. Nor do I think that these pages will be found written unsympathetically. But something is due the great body of music-lovers who, being told that they 25 must admire this, that and the other classical composer, because he is classical, find themselves at a loss and think themselves to blame because modern music makes a more vivid and deeper impression upon them. If they only knew it—they are in the right! But they have needed some one to tell them so.
“Advanced,” this book is. But plenty will be found in it regarding the sonata and the symphony, and, through the latter, the development of the orchestra; and orchestral instruments, their tone quality, scope and purpose are described and explained.
More, perhaps, than in any work with the same purpose, the great part played by the pianoforte in the evolution of music is here recognized, and I have availed myself of the opportunity to tell much of the story of that evolution in connection with this, the most popular of musical instruments, and its great masters. Why the greater freedom of technique and expression made possible by the modern instrument has caused the classical sonata to be superseded by the more romantic works of Chopin and others whose compositions are typically pianistic, and how these works differ in form and substance from those of the classicists, are among the many points made clear in these chapters.
The same care has been bestowed upon that portion of the book relating to vocal music—to songs, opera, music-drama and oratorio. In fact, the aim has been to equip the lover of music—that is, of good music of all kinds—with the knowledge which will enable him to enjoy far more than before either an orchestral concert, a piano or song recital, an opera or a music-drama—anything, 26 in fact, in music from Bach to Richard Strauss; to place everything before him from the standpoint of a writer who is himself a lover of music and who, although thoroughly in sympathy with the more advanced schools of the art, also appreciates the great masters of the past and is behind none in acknowledging what they contributed to make music what it is.
“Are you musical?”
“No; I neither play nor sing.”
But, if you can read and listen, there is no reason why you should not be more musical—a more genuine lover of music—than many of those whose musicianship lies merely in their fingers or vocal cords. Try!
Gustav Kobbé.
There must be practically on the part of every one who attends a pianoforte recital some degree of curiosity regarding the instrument itself. Therefore, it seems to me pertinent to institute at the very outset an inquiry into what the pianoforte is and how it became what it is—the most practical, most expressive and most universal of musical instruments, the instrument of the concert hall and of the intimate home circle. Knowledge of such things surely will enhance the enjoyment of a pianoforte recital—should be, in fact, a prerequisite to it.
The pianoforte is the most used and, for that very reason, perhaps, the most abused of musical instruments. Even its real name generally is denied it. Most people call it a piano, although piano is a musical term denoting a degree of sound, soft, gentle, low—the opposite of forte, which means strong and loud. The combination of the two terms in one word, pianoforte, signifies that the instrument is capable of being played both softly and loudly—both piano and forte. It was this capacity that distinguished it from its immediate precursors, the old-time harpsichords and clavichords. One of the first requirements in learning how to understand music is to learn to call things musical by their 30 right names. To speak of a pianoforte as a piano is one of our unjustifiable modern shortcuts of speech, a characteristic specimen of linguistic laziness and evidence of utter ignorance concerning the origin and character of the instrument.
If I were asked to express in a single phrase the importance of this instrument in the musical life of to-day I would say that the pianoforte is the orchestra of the home. Indeed, the title of the familiar song “What Is Home Without a Mother?” might, without any undue stretch of imagination, be changed to “What Is Home Without a Pianoforte?”—although, if you are working hard at your music and practicing scales and finger exercises several hours a day, it might be wiser not to ask your neighbor’s opinion on this point.
The King of Instruments.
“In households where there is no pianoforte we seem to breathe a foreign atmosphere,” says Oscar Bie, in his history of the instrument and its players; and he adds with perfect truth that it has become an essential part of our life, giving its form to our whole musical culture and stamping its characteristics upon our whole conception of music. Surely out of every ten musical persons, layman or professional, at least nine almost invariably have received their first introduction to music through the pianoforte and have derived the greater part of their musical knowledge from it. Even composers like Wagner and Meyerbeer, whose work is wholly associated with opera, had their first lessons in music on the pianoforte, and Meyerbeer achieved 31 brilliant triumphs as a concert pianist before he turned his attention to the operatic stage.
Of all musical instruments the pianoforte is the most intimate and at the same time the most public—“the favorite of the lonely mourner and of the solitary soul whose joy seeks expression” and the tie that unites the circle of family and friends. Yet it also thrills the great audience of the concert hall and rouses it to the highest pitch of enthusiasm. It is the king of instruments, and the reason for its supremacy is not far to seek. Weitzmann, the author of the first comprehensive account of the pianoforte and its literature, speaks of its ability “to lend living expression to all phases of emotion for which language lacks words”; its full, resonant tone; its volume vying with that of the orchestra; its command of every shade of sound from the gentlest pianissimo to the most powerful forte; and its mechanism, which permits of the most rapid runs and passages, and at the same time of sustained singing notes and phrases.
Music Under One’s Fingers.
But this is not all. There is an overture by Weber entitled “The Ruler of the Spirits.” Well, he who commands the row of white and black keys is ruler of the spirits of music. He has music, all that music can give, within the grasp of his two hands, under his ten fingers. The pianoforte can render anything in music. Besides music of its own, it can reproduce the orchestra or the voice with even greater fidelity than the finest engraving renders a painting; for only to the eyes 32 of one familiar with the painting does the engraving suggest the color scheme of the original, whereas, through certain nuances of technique that are more easily felt than described, the pianoforte virtuoso who is playing an arrangement of an orchestra composition can make his audience hear certain instruments of the orchestra—even such characteristic effects as the far-carrying pizzicato, or the rumbling of the double basses or their low growl; the hollow, reverberating percussions of the tympani; sustained notes on the horns; the majestic accents of trombones; the sharp shrill of piccolos; while some of the most effective pianoforte pieces are arrangements of songs.
Moreover, there are pianoforte compositions like the Hungarian rhapsodies of Liszt which, while conceived and carried out in the true spirit of the instrument (“pianistic,” as they say), yet suggest the tone colors of the orchestra without permitting these to obtrude themselves too much. This is one of the many services of Liszt, the giant of virtuosos and a giant among composers, to his art. It has been said that Liszt played the whole orchestra on the pianoforte. He did even more. He developed the technique of the instrument to such a point that the suggestion of many of the clang tints of the orchestra has become part of its heritage. This dual capacity of the pianoforte, the fact that it has a tone quality wholly peculiar to itself, so that when, for example, we are playing Chopin we never think of the orchestra, while at the same time it can take up into itself and reproduce, or at least suggest, the tone colors of other instruments, is one of its most remarkable characteristics.
Quite as remarkable and as interesting and important is the circumstance that these tone tints are wholly dependent upon the player. There is nothing peculiar to the make of the strings, the sounding-board, the hammers, that tends to produce these effects. They are due wholly to the player’s subtle manipulation of the keys, so that we get the added thrill of the virtuoso’s personal magnetism. The pianoforte owes much of its popularity, much of its supremacy, to the fact that a player’s interpretation of a composition cannot be marred by any one but himself. It rests in his hands alone, whereas the conductor of an orchestra is dependent upon a hundred players, some of whom may have no more soul than so many wooden Indians. Even supposing a conductor to be gifted with a highly poetic and musically sensitive nature, it is impossible that so many men of varying degrees of temperament as go to make up an orchestra, and none of them probably a virtuoso of the highest rank, will be as sympathetically responsive to his baton as a pianoforte is to the fingers of a musical poet like Paderewski; for the fingers of a great virtuoso are the ambassadors of his soul.
Melody and Accompaniment on One Instrument.
This personal, one-man control of the instrument has been of inestimable value to the pianoforte in establishing itself in its present unassailable position. Moreover, in controlling it the pianist commands all the resources of music. With his two thumbs alone he can accomplish what no player upon any other instrument 34 in common use is capable of doing with all ten fingers. He can sound together the lowest and the highest notes in music, for all the notes of music as we know it simply await the pressure of the fingers upon the keys of the pianoforte. It is the one instrument capable of power as well as of sweetness and grace which places the whole range of harmony and counterpoint at the disposal of one player. A vocalist can sing an air, but can you imagine a vocalist singing through an entire programme without accompaniment? After half a dozen unaccompanied songs the singing even of the greatest prima donna would become monotonous for lack of harmony. The violin and violoncello, next to the pianoforte the most frequently heard instruments in the concert hall, labor under the same disadvantage as the singer. They are dependent upon the accompaniment of others.
The pianist, on the other hand, has the inestimable advantage of being able to play melody and accompaniment on one instrument at the same time—all in one. While singing with some of his fingers the tender melodic phrase of a Chopin nocturne, he completes with the others the exquisite weave of harmony, and reveals the musical fabric to us in all its beauty. Moreover, it is the pianist himself who does this, not some one else at his signal, which the intermediary possibly may not wholly understand. When Paderewski is at the pianoforte we hear Paderewski—not some one else of a less sensitive temperament whom he is directing with a baton. A poet is at the instrument and we hear the poet. A poet may be at the conductor’s desk—but in the orchestra that is required for the interpretation 35 of his musical conceptions poets usually are conspicuous by their absence. Even great singers suffer because their accompaniments are apt not to be as sensitive of temperament as they are; and it is a fact that the grace and beauty of Schubert’s “Hark, Hark, the Lark” never have been so fully revealed to me by a singer as by Paderewski’s playing of Liszt’s arrangement of the song, because the pianist is able to shade the accompaniment to the most delicate nuances of the melody. How delightful, too, it is to go through the pianoforte score of a Wagner music-drama and, as you play the wonderful music—all placed within the grasp of your ten fingers—watch the scenic pictures and the action pass in imagination before your eyes in your own music room without the defects inseparable from every public performance, because the success of a performance depends upon the co-operation of so many who do not co-operate. Yes, the pianoforte is the king of instruments because it is the most independent of instruments and because it makes him who plays upon it independent.
Music’s Debt to the Pianoforte.
It would be difficult to overestimate the debt that music owes to the pianoforte. Including for the present under this one name the various keyboard instruments from which it was developed, the sonata form had its first tentative beginnings upon it and was wrought out to perfection through it by a process of gradual evolution extending from Domenico Scarlatti through Bach’s son, Philipp Emanuel Bach, to Beethoven. As a symphony simply is a sonata for orchestra, 36 it follows that through the sonata and thus through the pianoforte the form in which the classical composers cast their greatest works was established. Richard Strauss, in his revision of Berlioz’s book on orchestration, even goes so far as to assert that Beethoven, and after him Schumann and Brahms, treated the orchestra pianistically; but the discussion of this point is better deferred until we take up the orchestra and orchestral music.
Here, however, it may be observed that in addition to its constant use as an instrument for the concert hall and the home, and for the delight of great audiences and the joy of the amateur player and his familiar circle, many of the great composers, even when writing orchestral works, have used the pianoforte for their first sketches, testing their harmonies on it, and often, no doubt, while groping over the keys in search of the psychical note, hit upon accidental improvements and new harmonies. Even Wagner, who understood the orchestra as none other ever has, employed the pianoforte in sketching out his ideas. “I went to my Erard and wrote out the passage as rapidly as if I had it by heart,” he writes from Venice to Mathilde Wesendonck, in relating to her the genesis of the great love duet in “Tristan und Isolde,” and I could quote other passages from my “Wagner and his Isolde,” which is based on the romantic passages in the lives of the composer and the woman who inspired his great music-drama, to show the frequency with which he made similar use of the universal musical instrument.
The pianoforte has in many other ways been a boon to some of the most famous composers. Many of them 37 were pianists, and by public performances of their own works materially accelerated the appreciation of their music. Mozart was a youthful prodigy, and later a virtuoso of the highest rank. Beethoven, before he was overtaken by deafness, introduced his own pianoforte compositions to the public and was the musical lion of the Viennese drawing-rooms. Mendelssohn was a pianist of the same smooth, affable, gentlemanly type as his music. Chopin was not a miscellaneous concert player—his nature was too shrinking; but at the Salon Pleyel in Paris he gave recitals to the musical élite, who in turn conveyed his ideas to the greater public. Schumann began his musical career as a virtuoso, but strained the fourth finger of his right hand in using a mechanical apparatus which he had devised for facilitating the practice of finger exercises. His wife, Clara Wieck, however, who was the most famous woman pianist of her time, substituted her fingers for his. Liszt literally hewed out the way for his works on the keyboard. Brahms was a pianist of solid, scholarly attainments. In fact, dig where you will in musical soil, you strike the roots of the pianoforte.
Its Lowly Origin.
It must not be supposed, however, that the instrument as we know it attained to its present supremacy except through a long process of evolution. One of the immediate precursors of the modern pianoforte was the harpsichord, a name suggesting that the instrument was a harp with a keyboard attachment, and such, in a general way, the pianoforte is. But the harp is 38 a very fully developed affair compared with the mean little apparatus in which lay and was discovered many centuries ago the first germ of the king among instruments. This was the monochord, and it has required about nine centuries for the evolution of an instrument consisting of a single string set in vibration by means of a keyboard attachment into the modern pianoforte. But do not be alarmed. I am not about to give a nine hundred years’ history of the pianoforte. Such detailed consideration would belong to a technical work on the manufacture of the instrument and would be out of place here. Something of its history should, however, be known to every one who wants to understand music, but I shall endeavor to be as brief and at the same time as clear as possible.
The monochord originally was used much as we use a tuning fork, to determine true musical pitch. If you take a short piece of string, tie one end of it fast, draw it taut and pluck it, its vibrations will sound a note. If you grasp the string and draw it taut from nearer to the point where it is tied, you shorten what is called the “node,” increase the number of vibrations and produce a higher note. The monochord in its simplest form consisted of a string drawn taut over an oblong box and tuned to a given pitch by means of a peg. Under the string and in contact with it was a bridge or fret that could be moved by hand along a graduated scale marked on the bottom of the box. By moving the bridge the node of the string could be shortened and the notes marked at corresponding points on the graduated scale produced. After a while, and in order to facilitate the study of the harmonious relationship between 39 different notes, three strings were added, each with its bridge and graduated scale.
It was more or less of a nuisance, however, to continually shift four bridges to as many different points under the four strings. As an improvement upon this awkward arrangement some clever person conceived about the beginning of the tenth century, the idea of borrowing the keyboard from the organ and attaching it to the monochord. To the rear end of each key was attached an upright piece called a tangent. When the finger pressed upon a key the tangent struck one of the strings, set it in vibration, and at the same time, by contact, created a node which lasted as long as the key was kept down and the tangent remained pressed against the string. To increase the utility of the instrument by adding more strings and more keys was the next obvious step, and gradually the monochord ceased to be a mere technical apparatus for the determining of pitch and became an instrument on which professionals and amateurs could play with pleasure to themselves and others.
A Poet’s Advice to His Musical Daughter.
There has been preserved to us from about the year 1529 a reply made by the poet Pietro Bembo to his daughter Elena, who had written to him from the convent where she was being educated asking if she could have lessons upon the monochord, which seems to have been as popular in its day as its fully developed successor, the modern pianoforte, is now.