Rubinstein and the “Triple Concerto.”
Accordingly, when Mason played the “Triple Concerto” with Rubinstein and Mills, he came to the rehearsal armed with a book by Friedrich Wilhelm Marburg, published in Berlin in 1765, and giving written examples of all the agréments. “I told Rubinstein about my ancient authority,” says Mr. Mason in his entertaining “Memories of a Musical Life,” “adding that we should be spared the tediousness of a discussion as to the manner of playing.
“‘Let me see the old book,’ said Rubinstein. Running over the leaves he came to the illustrations of the mordent. The moment his eyes fell upon them he exclaimed: ‘All wrong; here is the way I play it!’” And that ended the usefulness of “the old book” for that particular occasion, the other two pianists adopting, without comment, Rubinstein’s method, which Mr. Mason intimates was incorrect.
When, at the rehearsal with Essipoff, the mordent came up for discussion she exclaimed: “‘I cannot play these things; show me how they are done.’ After repeated trials, however,” records Mr. Mason, “she failed to get the knack of playing them, as indeed so many pianists do; so at the rehearsal she omitted them and left their performance to Boscovitz and me.”
“The Well-Tempered Clavichord.”
Bach’s monumental work for pianoforte, however, is “The Well-Tempered Clavichord,” consisting of forty-eight preludes and fugues in all keys. I find much prevalent ignorance among amateurs regarding the 74 meaning of “well-tempered” as used in this title. I have heard people explain it by saying that when a pianist had mastered the book he was “tempered” like steel and ready for any difficulties that other music might present! I even have heard a rotund and affable person say that “The Well-Tempered Clavichord” was so entitled because when you listened to its preludes and fugues it smoothed out your temper and made you feel good-natured! In point of fact, the word is difficult to explain in untechnical language. It relates, however, to Bach’s method of tuning his clavichord—another boon which he conferred upon music. In general, the system may be explained by the statement that certain tone intervals, which theoretically are pure, practically result in harmonic discrepancies, which Bach’s “tempered” system corrected. In other words, slight and practically imperceptible inaccuracies are introduced in the tuning in order to counterbalance the greater faults which result when tuning is absolutely correct from a theoretical point of view; just as, in navigating the high northern waters, you are obliged to make allowance for variations of the compass. The system was not actually the invention of Bach, but he did so much to promote its adoption that it is associated with his name. Before it was adopted it was impossible to employ all the major and minor keys on clavichords and harpsichords, and on the pianofortes, just beginning to come into use. It became possible under the tempered system of tuning, and was illustrated by Bach in “The Well-Tempered Clavichord,” each major and minor key being represented by a prelude and fugue.
Besides the system of tuning in “equal temperament,” Bach modernized the technique of fingering by introducing the freer and more frequent employment of the hitherto neglected thumb and little finger. The services of this great man to music, therefore, were threefold. He left us his teeming counterpoint, upon which modern music draws so freely; he promoted the system of tuning in equal temperament; and he laid the foundation of modern pianoforte technique, and so of modern virtuosity.
A King’s Tribute to Bach.
Besides being a great composer, Bach’s traits as a man were most admirable. He was uncompromising in his convictions, sturdy, honest and upright. His fixedness of purpose is shown by an anecdote of his boyhood. In his tenth year he lost his parents and went to live with an elder brother, who was so jealous of his superior talents that he refused him the loan of a manuscript volume of music by composers of the day. Obtaining possession of it without his brother’s knowledge, Bach secretly copied it at night by moonlight, the task covering something like six months. His reward was to have it taken away by his brother, who accidentally discovered him playing from it. Fortunately, this brother died soon afterward, and Bach recovered his treasure.
While it is true that Bach remained unappreciated by the great mass of his contemporaries, there were exceptions, a notable one being the music-loving king, 76 Frederick the Great of Prussia, whose service the composer’s second son, Philipp Emanuel Bach, entered in 1746. At the king’s earnest urging, Philipp Emanuel induced his father to visit Potsdam the following year. The king, who had arranged a concert at the palace, was about to begin playing on the flute, when an officer entered and handed him a list of the strangers who had arrived at Potsdam. Glancing over it, Frederick discovered Bach’s name. “Gentlemen,” he exclaimed, “old Bach is here!” And nothing would do save that the master must be brought immediately into the royal presence, before he even had time to doff his traveling clothes.
The king had purchased several of the pianofortes recently constructed by Gottfried Silbermann and had them distributed throughout the palace. Bach and the assemblage went from room to room, the composer playing and improvising on the different instruments. Finally he asked the king to set him a fugue theme, and on this he extemporized in such masterly fashion that all who heard him, the king included, broke out into rounds of applause. On his return to Leipsic, Bach dedicated to Frederick the Great a work which he entitled “The Musical Sacrifice” (or offering), which he based upon the fugue theme the king had given him.
No other instance of musical heredity is comparable with that afforded by the Bach family. Dr. Theodore Baker, in his “Biographical Dictionary of Musicians,” gives a list of no less than twenty Bachs, all of the same line, whom he deems worthy of mention, and who covered a period ranging from 1604 to 1845, 77 when the great Bach’s grandson and last male descendant, Wilhelm Friedrich Ernst Bach, died in Berlin. Thus for two hundred and forty-one years the Bach family was professionally active in music.
If a pianoforte recital which begins with a Bach fugue continues with a Beethoven sonata, it does not require a very discriminating ear to note the difference between the two. The Beethoven sonata is in a style so entirely distinct from that of the fugue, and sounds so wholly unlike it, that it seems as if Bach had exerted no influence whatsoever upon the greatest master of the period that followed his death. Although Haydn and Mozart were nearer Bach in point of time than Beethoven was, a sonata by either of them, if it chanced to be on the program, would show the same difference in style, the same radical departure from the works of the master of counterpoint, as the Beethoven sonata.
The question naturally suggests itself, did Bach’s influence cease with his death? And the fact that this question calls for an answer and that this answer leads to a general consideration of the interim between Bach and Beethoven, again shows how broad in its scope as an instrument is the pianoforte and how comprehensive in its application to music as a whole is the music of that instrument. Two works on a recital program furnish a legitimate basis for a discussion of two important periods in the development of music! 79 Who would have thought there was so much to a pianoforte recital?
“It would have been an eminently pardonable mistake for any intelligent musician to have fallen into, in the third quarter of the eighteenth century, if he had concluded that Johann Sebastian Bach’s career was a failure, and that his influence upon the progress of his art amounted to the minimum conceivable. Indeed, the whole course of musical history in every branch went straight out of the sphere of his activity for a long while; his work ceased to have any significance to the generation which succeeded him, and his eloquence fell upon deaf ears. A few of his pupils went on writing music of the same type as his in a half-hearted way, and his own most distinguished son, Philipp Emanuel, adopted at least the artistic manner of working up his details and making the internal organization of his works alive with figure and rhythm. But even he, the sincerest composer of the following generation, was infected by the complacent, polite superficiality of his time; and he was forced, in accepting the harmonic principle of working in its Italian phase, to take with it some of the empty formulas and conventional tricks of speech which had become part of its being, and which sometimes seem to belie the genuineness of his utterances and put him somewhat out of touch with his whole-hearted father.”
This passage from one of the most admirably thought-out books on music I know, Sir Hubert Parry’s “Evolution of the Art of Music,” is no exaggeration. 80 For many years after Bach’s death, for nearly a century in fact, his influence was but little felt. And yet so aptly does the development of art adjust itself to human needs and aspirations, the very neglect into which Bach fell turned music into certain channels from which it derived the greater freedom of expression essential to its progress and gave it the tinge of romanticism which is the essence of modern music.
The greatness of Johann Sebastian Bach, on the technical side at least, now is so universally acknowledged, and professional musicians understand so well what their art owes to him, we are apt to think of him as the only musician of his day, whereas his significance was but little appreciated by his contemporaries. There were, in fact, other composers actively working on other lines and turning music in the direction it was destined to follow immediately after Bach’s death—and for its own ultimate good, be it observed. The simple fact is, that pure counterpoint culminated in Bach. What he accomplished was so stupendous that his successors could not keep up with him. They became exhausted before they even were prepared to begin where he left off. And yet the reaction from Bach was, as I have indicated, absolutely necessary to the further progress of music.
The scheme of musical development which the reader should bear in mind if he desires to understand music, and to arrive at that understanding with some kind of system in his progress, was briefly as follows:
Three Periods of Musical Development.
First we have counterpoint, the welding together of several themes each of equal importance. This style of composition culminated in Bach. Its most elaborate form of expression was the fugue; but it also employed the canon and impressed into its service certain minor forms like the allemande, courant, chaçonne, gavotte, saraband, gigue, and minuet.
Next, after Bach music began to develop according to the harmonic system, or, if I may be permitted for the sake of clarity to use an expression which technically is incorrect, according to the melodic system. That is, instead of combining several themes, composers took one theme or melody and supported it with an accompaniment so that the melody stood out in clear relief. This first decided melodic development covers the classical period, the period after Bach to Beethoven, and its highest form of expression was the sonata, which in the orchestra became the symphony.
The romantic period comes after Beethoven. This, to characterize it by the readiest means, by something external, something the eye can see, is the “single piece” period, the period in which the impromptu of Schubert, the song without words of Mendelssohn, the nocturne of Chopin, the novelette of Schumann, takes the place of the sonata, which consists of a group of pieces or movements. Composers begin to find a too exacting insistence upon correctness of form irritating. Expression becomes of more importance than form, which is promptly violated if it interferes with the composer’s trend of thought or feeling. Pieces are 82 written in certain moods, and their melody is developed so as to follow and give full expression to the mood in which it is conceived. New harmonies are fearlessly invoked for the same purpose. Everything centres in the idea that music exists not as an accessory to form, but for the free expression of emotion. In his useful and handy “Dictionary of Musical Terms,” Theodore Baker defines a nocturne as a title for a piano piece “of a dreamily romantic or sentimental character, but lacking a distinctive form.” When we see the title “Sonata” over a composition we think of form. When we see the title “Nocturne” we think of mood, not manner. The title arouses within us, by anticipation, the very feeling, the very mood, the very emotional condition which the composer is seeking to express. The form in which he seeks to express it is wholly a secondary matter. A composition is a sonata because it follows a certain formal development. It is a nocturne because it is “dreamily romantic or sentimental.” In no better way, perhaps, could the difference between the classical period of music and the romantic period which set in after Beethoven be explained. The romanticist is no more hampered by form than the writer of poetry or fiction is by facts. Form dominates feeling in classical music, feeling dominates form in romantic music.
We still are and, happily, ever shall remain in the romantic period. The greatest of all romanticists and, up to the present time, the greatest of all composers is Richard Wagner, whose genius will be appreciated more and more as years go by until, as may be the case, a still greater one will arise; although as dramatic 83 literature culminated in Shakespeare, so music may have found its greatest master for all time in Wagner. Wagner, of course, was not a composer for the pianoforte, but when he reached back and to the fuller harmony inherited from Beethoven added the counterpoint of Bach, thus combining the two great systems of composition, he indicated the only method of progress possible for music of all kinds.
Rise of the Melodic School.
It must not be supposed that the melodic school which came in after Bach and which, so far as the classical form of the sonata is concerned, culminated in Beethoven, was the mushroom growth of a night. So much has been said of Bach that a person unfamiliar with the history of music might draw the erroneous conclusion that Bach was the only composer worth mentioning before the classical period and Germany the only country in which music had flourished. On the contrary, Bach was the climax of a school to which several countries had each contributed its share, partly vocal, partly instrumental. Palestrina’s name naturally comes to mind as representative of the early period of Italian church music; there also was the “Belgian Orpheus,” Orlandus Lassus (or Lasso), the greatest composer of the Flemish school; and England had its Gibbons and other madrigal composers. Their music was vocal and requires to be considered more thoroughly under the head of vocal music, but it also was contrapuntal and played its part in the general development of the art before Bach came upon the scene. Of 84 course, there also was instrumental music in counterpoint before Bach’s day. There is “Queen Elizabeth’s Virginal Book,” a manuscript collection of music made either during her reign or shortly afterward and containing pieces for the virginal by Tallis, Bird, Giles, Dr. John Bull and others, including also the madrigalist, Gibbons. The Englishman, Henry Purcell (1658-1695); the Frenchman, François Couperin (1668-1733), who wrote a harpsichord method; the Germans, Hans Leo von Hasler (1564-1612) and Froberger; and the Italian, Frescobaldi—these were some among many composers of counterpoint more or less noted in their day.
Bach, however, brought the art of counterpoint to perfection, so that, so far as it is concerned, he neither required nor even so much as left room for a successor. It may not be pertinent to the argument, yet it may well be questioned whether, had the classical trio, Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, endeavored to carry on the contrapuntal school, they would not, in spite of their genius, have relegated music to a more primitive state than it occupied when Bach died. It seems a fortunate circumstance to me that Bach’s son appears to have realized his inferiority to his father and that, in consequence, he turned from counterpoint to the development of harmony—the working out of a clearly defined theme or melody supported by accompaniment.
Counterpoint is said to be polyphonic, a term composed of two Greek words signifying many-voiced, the combination in music of several parts or themes. Opposed to it is homophonic, or single-voiced, music, in which one melody or part is supported by an accompaniment. 85 Italy, with its genius for the sensuous and emotional in music, already had developed a school of melodic music, and to this Philipp Emanuel Bach turned for a model. In Italy the pianoforte, through its employment for the freer harmonic support of dramatic solo singing in opera, an art form that is indigenous to Italy, gradually had emancipated itself there from counterpoint and acquired a style of its own. Girolamo Frescobaldi (1583-1644), a famous Italian pianoforte and organ virtuoso, whose first organ recital in St. Peter’s, Rome, is said to have attracted an audience of thirty thousand, and whose mantle fell upon his two most renowned pupils, the German, Johann Jacob Froberger, and the Italian, Bernardo Pasquini, not only experimented with our modern keys, seeking to replace with them the old ecclesiastical modes in which Palestrina wrote, but also simplified the method of notation. For even what seems to us so simple a matter as the five-line staff is the result of slow evolution.
Scarlatti’s Importance as Composer and Virtuoso.
The Italian genius who gave the greatest impulse to the progress of pianoforte music and who, for his day, immensely improved the technique of pianoforte playing, was Domenico Scarlatti (1683-1757), the famous son of a famous father, Alessandro Scarlatti, the leading dramatic composer of his time. Domenico Scarlatti interests us especially because he is the only one of the early Italians whose work retains an appreciable foothold on modern recital programs. Von Bülow edited selections from his works, and I recall from personal 86 experience, because I was at the concert, the delight with which some of these were received the first time Von Bülow played them on his initial visit to this country during the season of 1875-76. Amateurs on the outlook for something new (even though it was very old) took up Scarlatti, and this early Italian’s suddenly acquired popularity was comparable with the “run” on the Rachmaninoff “Prelude” when it was played here by Siloti many years later.
Scarlatti has been called the founder of modern pianoforte technique. Although he composed for the harpsichord, he understood the instrument so thoroughly and what he wrote for it accords so well with its genius, that by unconscious anticipation it also was adapted to the genius of the modern pianoforte. It still is pianistic; more pianistic and more suitable to the modern repertoire than a good deal of music by greater men who lived considerably later. I should say, for example, that Scarlatti’s name is found more frequently on pianoforte recital programs than Mozart’s, although Mozart was incomparably the greater genius. But there is about Scarlatti’s music such a quaint and primitive charm that one always listens to it with the zest of a discoverer, whereas Mozart’s pianoforte music, although more modern, just misses being modern enough. This clever Italian gives us the early beginnings of the sonata form. He merely lisps in sonata accents, it is true, but his lisp is as fascinating as the ingenuous prattle of an attractive child. His best, known work, “The Cat’s Fugue,” the subject of which is said to have been suggested to him by a cat gliding over the keyboard, is indeed contrapuntal. But even 87 this is a movement in a sonata, and the characteristic of his works as a whole is the fact that in most of them he developed and worked out a melody or theme, and that he established the fundamental outlines of the sonata form.
Comparatively few laymen have more than a vague idea of what is meant by sonata form. To them a sonata simply is a composition consisting of several movements, usually four, three of them of considerable length, with a shorter one (a minuet or scherzo) between the first and second or the second and fourth. A sonata, however, must have one of its movements (and generally it will be found to be the first) written in a certain form. Regarding the Scarlatti sonatas, suffice it to say here that with him the form still is in its primitive simplicity. For example, the true sonata movement as we now understand it employs two themes, the second contrasting with the first. As a rule, Scarlatti is content with one theme. It is the peculiar merit of Philipp Emanuel Bach that he introduced a second theme into his sonatas, or suggested it by striking modulations when he employed only one theme, and thus paved the way for its further elaboration by Joseph Haydn. Mozart elaborated the form still further, and then came Beethoven, with whom the classical period reached its climax and whose sonatas for all practical purposes have completely superseded those of his forerunners.
Rise of the Amateur.
Characteristic of the period of transition from Bach to Beethoven, from the fugue to the sonata, was the development of popular interest in music. Scarlatti begins a brief introduction to a collection of thirty of his pianoforte pieces which were published in 1746, by addressing the “amateur or professor, whoever you be.” Significant in this is the inclusion of, in fact the seeming preference given to the amateur. Music of the counterpoint variety had been music for the church, the court and the professional. Now, with the development of the freer harmonic or melodic system, it was growing more in touch with the people. During Philipp Emanuel Bach’s life the increase of popular interest in music was remarkable. The titles that began to appear on compositions show that composers were reaching out for a larger public. Bie quotes some of them: “Cecilia Playing on the Pianoforte and Satisfying the Hearing”; “The Busy Muse Clio”; “Pianoforte Practice for the Delight of Mind and Ear, in Six Easy Galanterie Parties Adapted to Modern Taste, Composed Chiefly for Young Ladies”; “The Contented Ear and the Quickened Soul”; while Philipp Emanuel Bach inscribes some of his pieces as “easy” or “for ladies.” Evidently the “young person” figured as extensively in the calculations of musical composers then as she does now in those of the publishers of fiction. Musical periodicals sprang up like mushrooms—“Musical Miscellany,” “Floral Garnerings for Pianoforte Amateurs,” “New Music Journal for Encouragement and Entertainment in Solitude at the Pianoforte for the 89 Skilled and Unskilled,” such were some of the titles. These periodicals often went the way of most periodical flesh and in the customary brief period, but they show a quickened public interest in music—the “contented ear and the quickened soul,” so to speak.
Changes in Musical Taste.
If I dismiss Philipp Emanuel Bach rather curtly and, in this portion of the book at least, do the same with Haydn and Mozart, this is not because I fail to appreciate their importance in musical history, but because they have failed to retain their hold on the modern pianoforte repertoire. The simple fact is that the pianoforte as an instrument has outgrown their music. We can get more out of it than they gave it. If we bear in mind that the pianoforte, as well as music itself, has developed, it will aid us in understanding why so much music, once considered far in advance of its time and even revolutionary, has so soon become antiquated. Why ignore facts? Some examples of primitive music still survive because they charm us with their quaintness. But the classical period is retiring more and more into the shadow of history. Whatever importance Haydn and Mozart may possess for the student, their pianoforte music, so far as practical program-making is concerned, is to-day a negligible quantity. I remember the time when, as a pupil, I pored with breathless interest over the pages of Mozart’s “Sonata in A Minor” and his “Fantasy and Sonata in C Minor.” But to-day, when I read in a book published about twenty-five years ago that Mozart indulged in harmonies, 90 chord progressions and modulations, “sometimes considered of doubtful propriety even now” and “quite as harshly censured as are to-day the similar licenses of free-thinking composers”—I wonder where they are. For his own day, nevertheless, Mozart was an innovator, as every genius is; for it is through those daring deviations of genius from established rule and tradition, which contemporaries regard as unjustifiable license, that art progresses. This should be borne in mind by those who were intolerant toward the opponents of Wagner, yet now are guilty of a similar solecism in proclaiming Richard Strauss a charlatan.
Assuming that the modern pianoforte pupil is but indifferently nourished on the Mozart pabulum, let me add that this composer also was a virtuoso, and by his choice of the pianoforte over the clavichord did much toward making the modern instrument more popular. He also developed the sonata form so that Beethoven found it ready moulded for his genius. In fact the sonata form as we know it is so much a Mozart creation that Mr. Hanchett, in his “Art of the Musician,” suggests calling the sonata movement proper a mozarta—a suggestion which I presume will never be adopted.
Beethoven and the Epoch of the Sonata.
In the history of music there are three figures that easily tower above the rest. Each represents an era. They are Bach, who stands for counterpoint, the epoch of the fugue; Beethoven, who represents the epoch of the sonata; Wagner, who represents the epoch of the 91 music-drama. The first two summed up in themselves certain art forms which others had originated. Bach’s root goes back to Palestrina, Beethoven’s to Scarlatti. Wagner presents the phenomenon of being both the germ and the full fruition of the art form for which he stands. It is conceivable that the work of these men will at some time fall into desuetude, for in art all things are possible, and the classical period seems to be losing its grip on music more and more every day and we ourselves may live to see the sonata movement become obsolete. It certainly is having less and less vogue, and a composer who now writes a sonata with undeviating allegiance to its classical outlines, deliberately invites neglect, because the listener no longer cares to have his faculties of appreciation restricted by too rigid insistence upon form, preferring that genius should have the utmost latitude and be absolutely untrammeled in giving expression to what it has to say. Nevertheless, music always will bear the impress of these three master minds, just as our language, although we do not speak in blank verse, always will bear the impress of Shakespeare. “I don’t think much of that play,” exclaimed the countryman, after hearing “Hamlet” for the first time. “It’s all made up of quotations!” Equally familiar, not to say colloquial, are certain musical phrases, certain modulations, which have come down to us from the masters.
Although Beethoven no longer is the all-dominant figure in the musical world that he was fifty years ago, and it requires a performance of the “Ninth Symphony” given under specially significant circumstances (such as the conducting of a Felix Weingartner) to attract 92 as many to a concert hall as would be drawn by an ordinary Wagner program, I trust I shall know how to appreciate his importance to the development of musical art and approach him with the reverence that is his due. Like all great men who sum up an epoch, he found certain things ready to hand. The Frenchman, Jean Philippe Rameau (1683-1764), “the creator of the modern system of harmony,” had published his “Nouveau Système de Musique Théorique”; the sonata movement from its tentative beginnings under Scarlatti had been developed through Philipp Emanuel Bach, Haydn and Mozart into a definite art form awaiting the final test of a great genius—which Beethoven proved to be.
Beethoven’s Slow Development.
I already have pointed out that while pianoforte and orchestra have developed side by side, the general belief that the pianoforte merely has been the handmaiden of the orchestra is a mistaken one. On the contrary, until the end of the classical period, at least, the pianoforte was the pioneer. It has blazed the way for the orchestra and led it, instead of bringing up the rear. Thus the sonata form was developed by the pianoforte and then was handed over by that instrument to the orchestra under the name of symphony, which, the reader should bear in mind, simply is a sonata written for orchestra instead of for the pianoforte. Even Beethoven, before he composed his first symphony, which is his Opus 21, tested his mastery of the form and his ideas regarding certain further developments in it, by 93 first composing thirteen pianoforte sonatas, including the familiar “Pathétique,” which used to be to concert programs what Liszt’s “Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2” is now—the cheval de battaille, on which pianists pranced up and down before the ranks of their astonished audiences and unfortunate amateurs sought to retain their equilibrium.
This experimentation, this comparatively slow development, was characteristic of Beethoven; is, in fact, characteristic of every genius who works from the soul outward. “Like most artists whose spur is more in themselves than in natural artistic facilities, he was very slow to come to any artistic achievement,” writes Sir Hubert Parry. “It is almost a law of things that men whose artistic personality is very strong, and who touch the world by the greatness and the power of their expression, come to maturity comparatively late, and sometimes grow greater all through their lives—so it was with Bach, Gluck, Beethoven and Wagner—while men whose aims are more purely artistic and whose main spur is facility of diction, come to the point of production early and do not grow much afterward. Such composers as Mozart and Mendelssohn succeeded in expressing themselves brilliantly at a very early age; but their technical facility was out of proportion to their individuality and their force of human nature, and therefore there is no such surprising difference between the work of their later years and the work of their childhood as there is in the case of Beethoven and Wagner.”
In writing sonatas Haydn and Mozart had been satisfied with grace of outward form and a smooth and 94 pretty flow of melody within that form. Beethoven was a man of intellectual force as well as of musical genius. He applied his intellect to enlarging the sonata form, his musical genius to supplying it with contents worthy of the greater opportunities he himself had created for it. There is a wonderful union of mind and heart in Beethoven’s work. The sonata form, as perfected by him, is a monument to his genius. It remains to this day the flower of the classical period.
The Passing of the Sonata.
Nevertheless, the Beethoven sonatas no longer retain the place of pre-eminence once accorded them on pianoforte recital programs. When Von Bülow was in this country during the season of 1875-76 he frequently gave concerts at which he played only Beethoven sonatas. I doubt if any of the great pianists of to-day could now awaken as much public interest by such programs as Von Bülow did. I remember the concert at which, among others of the Beethoven sonatas, this virtuoso played Opus 106 (“Grosse Sonata für das Hammerklavier”). After he had played through part of the first movement he became restless, and from time to time peered over the keyboard and into the instrument as if something were wrong with it. Finally he broke off in the middle of the movement, rose from his seat and walked off the stage. When he reappeared, he had with him an attendant from the firm of manufacturers whose pianofortes he used, and together they fussed over the instrument for a while, before the attendant made his exit and the irate little pianist began 95 the sonata all over again. We considered the mishap that gave us opportunity to hear him play so much of the work twice, a piece of great good luck for us. Would we so consider it now?
Von Bülow has passed into musical history as a great Beethoven player, and such he undoubtedly was. I doubt, however, if he was a greater Beethoven player than several living pianists. Some seasons ago Eugène d’Albert played a Beethoven program. His performance did not evoke the enthusiasm he anticipated. In fact there were intimations in the comments on his performance that he was not as great a Beethoven player as he thought he was. Personally, and having a very clear recollection of Von Bülow’s Beethoven recitals, because I attended every one he gave in New York, and in my mind’s eye can see him sitting at the pianoforte, bending away over, with his ear almost to the keyboard, I think d’Albert played his Beethoven program quite as well. What had happened, however, was this: A little matter of thirty years had passed and with it the classical period and its efflorescence, the sonata form, had faded by just so much, and by just so much no longer was considered by the public the crucial test of a pianist’s musicianship. Incidentally it is worth noting that the public usually is far ahead of the profession and of the majority of critics in appreciating new tendencies in music and in realizing what is passing away; and the same thing probably prevails in other arts.
Orchestral Instead of Pianistic.
I am aware that Beethoven was a pianist of the first rank and that within the limitations of the sonata form he developed the capacity of the pianoforte. I also have read Richard Strauss’s opinion, in his edition of Berlioz’s work on instrumentation, that Beethoven treated the orchestra pianistically. Nevertheless, from the modern viewpoint the essential fault of the sonata, Beethoven’s sonatas included, seems to me to be that it is too orchestral and not sufficiently claviermässig (pianistic) in character; not sufficiently adapted to the genius of the pianoforte as we know it to-day. It is possible that for the times in which they were composed, the sonatas of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven were most pianistic. But as music has become more and more an intimate phase of life, and as our most intimate instrument, the instrument of the household, is the pianoforte, we understand its capacity for the intimate expression of moods and fancies, the lights and shadows of life, as it never was understood before. The modern lover of music, if I may judge his standpoint from my own, feels that while the sonatas of the masters I have named were written for the pianoforte, they were thought out for orchestra, and that even a Beethoven sonata is an engraving for pianoforte of a symphony for orchestra. He composed nine symphonies and thirty-two sonatas. If he had written his nine symphonies for pianoforte, we would have had nine more sonatas. If he had composed his sonatas for orchestra, we would have had thirty-two more symphonies.
This orchestral (as opposed to pianistic) character of the Beethoven sonatas accounts for passages in them so awkwardly written for the instrument that they are difficult to master, and yet, when mastered, are not effective in proportion to their difficulty. Between enlarging the capacity of an instrument through the problems you give the player to solve and writing passages that are awkwardly conceived for it, and hence ineffectual after they have been mastered, there is a great difference. Chopin, Liszt and others pile Pelion on Ossa in their technical requirements of the pianist; but when he has surmounted them, he has climbed a mountain, and from its peak may watch the world at his feet. I think the orchestral character of much that Beethoven wrote for the pianoforte partly accounts for the fact that his sonatas no longer attract the great virtuosos as they formerly did and that the public no longer regards them as the final test of a pianist’s rank.
I speak so unreservedly because I have lived through the change of taste myself. By way of personal explanation I may be permitted to say, that while I am not a professional musician, music was so much a part of my life that I studied the pianoforte almost as assiduously as if I had intended becoming a public player, and that I was proficient enough to meet once a week with the first violinist and the first violoncellist of the New York Philharmonic Society for the practice of chamber music. If there is any one who should worship at the shrine of the sonata form, and especially at that of the Beethoven sonatas, it should be myself, for I was brought up on the form and those sonatas were my daily bread. When I went to the 98 Von Bülow Beethoven recitals it was with book in hand, to follow what he played note for note for purposes of study and assimilation. Those were years when, in the hours during which one seeks communion with one’s other self, the Beethoven sonatas were the medium of communication. But now—give me the men who emancipated themselves from a form that fettered the individuality of the pianoforte, Chopin, Liszt, Schumann, and the pianoforte scores of the Wagner music-dramas, which actually sound more pianistic than the sonatas of the classical period and in which it is a delight to plunge oneself and be borne along on a flood of free, exultant melody.
Nevertheless, the sonata has had a great part to play in the history and development of music and has played it nobly, and we must no more forget this than we should allow present-day hero worship to supplant the memory of the heroes who went before. The sonata is the firm and solid bridge over which music passed from the contrapuntal period to the romantic, and doubtless there still are some who prefer to linger on the bridge rather than cross it to the promised land to which it leads. Always there are conservatives who stand still and look back; and that these still should let their eyes rest longingly on the great master of the classical epoch, Beethoven, is, to say the least, comprehensible. One would have to be unresponsive indeed not to be thrilled by the story of his life—his force of character, his rugged personality, his determination in spite of one of the greatest misfortunes that could befall a musician, deafness; and the intellectual power which he displayed in bending a seemingly rigid art form to 99 his will and making it the receptacle of his inspiration.
Well may these considerations be borne in mind whenever a Beethoven sonata is on a pianoforte recital program. If it does not move us as profoundly as music more modern does, that is not because its composer was less deeply concerned with the problems of life than those who have come after him. For his time he was wonderfully “subjective,” drawing his inspiration from the heart, yet always preserving a sane mental poise. If to-day the sonatas of this great genius and splendid man seem to us less dramatic and emotional than they once did to audiences, it is because of the progress of music toward greater plasticity of expression and our conviction that such should be its mission.
All art begins with a groping after form, then attains form, and then emancipates itself from too great insistence upon rigidity of form without, however, reverting to its early formless condition. It was absolutely necessary to the establishment of music as an art that at some period or periods in its development it should “pull itself together” and focus itself in certain forms, and adhere to them somewhat rigidly and somewhat tenaciously until they had been perfected.
Without saying so in as many words, I have sought, in speaking of the sonata, to let the modern lover of music know that if he does not like sonatas he need not be ashamed of that fact. A few minutes ago and before writing this sentence, I left my desk and going to the pianoforte, played through Beethoven’s “Sonata Pathétique.” It used to be a thrilling experience to play it or to hear it played. To-day the Grave which introduces the first movement still seemed portentous, the individual themes throughout the work had lost none of their beauty. And yet the effect produced in earlier years by this sonata as a whole was lacking. I shall not say that it sounded pedantic, for I dislike to apply that word to anything that sprang from the heart 101 and brain of a genius like Beethoven’s, but there was a feeling of restraint about it—the restraint of set form, the restraint of pathos patterned to measure, which is incompatible with our modern notions of absolute freedom of expression in music. Moreover, there is ample evidence that Beethoven himself chafed under the restraint of the sonata form and constantly strove to make it more elastic and more yielding to his inspiration.
What a Sonata Is.
The sonata form (that is to say, the movement from which the sonata derives its name) consists of three main divisions and can easily be studied by securing the Bülow and Lebert edition of the Beethoven sonatas in Schirmer’s library, in which the various divisions and subdivisions are indicated as they occur in the music. The first division (sometimes with a slow introduction like the Grave of the “Sonata Pathétique”) may be called the exposition. It consists of the main theme in the key of the piece, a connecting episode, a second theme in a related key and contrasting with the first, and a concluding passage. As a rule the exposition is repeated—an extremely artificial proceeding, since there is no esthetic or psychological reason for it.
After the exposition comes the second division, the development or “working out,” a treatment of both themes with much figuration and imitation, generally called the “free fantasia” and consisting “chiefly of a free development of motives taken from the first part” (Baker). This leads into the third division, which is 102 a restatement of the first, excepting that the second theme, instead of being in a related key, is, like the main theme, in the tonic.
How Beethoven Enlarged the Form.
This is the form of the sonata movement which was handed down to Beethoven by Haydn and Mozart. It very soon became apparent that the greatest genius of the classical period found it too limited for his inspiration. In his third sonata (Opus 2, No. 3) he makes several innovations that, for their day, are most daring. Following the first episode after the main theme, he introduces a second episode with which he leads into the second theme. Then using a variant of the first episode as a connection he leads over to a third, a closing theme. In fact, the material of the second episode is so thematic that I see no reason why he should not be said to use four themes in the exposition instead of the customary two. In the free fantasia he insistently reiterates the main theme, practically ignoring the others, thus familiarizing the listener with it and making it as welcome as an old friend when the third division ushers it in again.
Instead of closing the movement at the end of the usual third division, as his predecessors, Haydn and Mozart, did, Beethoven introduces what is one of the most important innovations grafted by him upon the sonata form—a coda with a cadenza. I can imagine that this movement made his contemporaries look dubious and shake their heads. It must have seemed to them originality strained to the point of eccentricity 103 and more bizarre than effective. As we look back upon it, after this long lapse of time, it must be reckoned a most brilliant achievement in the direction of freer form, and from this point of view—please bear in mind the reservation—its creator not only never surpassed it, but frequently fell behind it.
One of the movements of this sonata is a scherzo. Beethoven is the creator of this style of movement. It is much less formal than the minuet which Haydn introduced into the sonata. This especial scherzo has a trio which in the broad sweep of its arpeggios is as modern sounding as anything Beethoven wrote for the pianoforte.
His “Moonlight Sonata.”
There are other sonatas by Beethoven that indicate efforts on his part to be less trammeled by considerations of form. Regard as an example the “Sonata Quasi Una Fantasia,” Opus 27, No. 2, generally, and by no means inaptly, called the “Moonlight Sonata.” This begins with the broad and beautiful slow movement, with its sustained melody, a poem of profound pathos in musical accents. It is followed by an Allegretto, “une fleur entre deux abîmes” (a flower ’twixt two abysses) Liszt called it; and then comes the concluding movement, a Presto agitato, which is one of Beethoven’s most impassioned creations. There are only three movements, and the usual sequence is inverted, for the last of the three is the Sonata movement. At the end of the Adagio sostenuto and at the end of the Allegretto as well, is the direction “attacca subito il sequente,” indicating 104 that the following movement is to be attacked at once and denoting an inner relationship, a psychological connection between the three movements. Throughout the work the themes are of extraordinary beauty and expressiveness even for a Beethoven and the whole is a genuine drama of human life and experience. This impression is produced not only by the very evident psychological connection between the movements, but by the manner in which the composer holds on to his themes, developing them through bar after bar as if he himself appreciated their beauty and were reluctant to let go of them and introduce new material. The entire first movement, practically a song without words of the most exquisite poignancy, is built on a single motive with a brief episode which is more like an improvisation than a set part of a movement; while the last movement consists of four eloquent themes with only the merest suggestion of connecting episodes. The working out in the last movement is almost wholly a persistent iteration of the second theme. This persistent dwelling upon theme and the psychological relation between the different movements make this “Moonlight Sonata” to me the most modern sounding of Beethoven’s pianoforte works, although when mere structural greatness is considered, most critics will incline to rank it lower than the “Sonata Appassionata” and the four last sonatas, Op. 106 and 109-11. Undoubtedly, however, it is the most “temperamental” of his sonatas—and herein again the most modern. My one quarrel with Von Bülow is that he made it so popular by his frequent playing of it and his exceptionally poetic interpretation 105 of it, that the great virtuosos shun it, very much as they shun the sixth Chopin waltz (Mme. Dudevant’s dog chasing its own tail), because it is played by every pianoforte pupil of every girls’ boarding school everywhere.
Striving for Freedom.
In addition to what I have said of this sonata, it was an immense gain for greater freedom of form, and it is to be regretted that it is a more or less isolated instance and that Beethoven did not adopt it as a standard in shaping his remaining sonatas. Its most valuable attribute from the modern point of view is a characteristic to which I already have called attention several times—the fact that its several movements stand in psychological relation to one another; that there is such real soul or temperamental connection between them, that it would be doing actual violence to the work as a whole if any one movement were to be played without the others or if their sequence were to be inverted.
But, you may ask, is there not in all sonatas this psychological inter-relationship of the several movements? Have we not been told again and again that there is?
Undoubtedly you, and others who have been misinformed by enthusiasts who are unable to hear music in anything that has been composed since Beethoven, have been told so. But the sonata, with a few exceptions like the “Moonlight,” simply is a group usually of four movements, three long-ones with a shorter one between, and, save for their being in related keys, there is no temperamental relationship between the movements 106 whatsoever, and to talk of there being such a thing is nonsense. I believe the time will come when virtuosos will not hesitate to lift single movements out of the Beethoven sonatas and place them on their programs and that there will be a sigh of relief from the public because it can hear a movement that still sounds fresh and modern without being obliged to listen to two or three others that do not. Heresy? Maybe. Galileo was accounted a heretic—yet the world moves and the musical world with it.
The Beethoven Periods.
Beethoven was an intellectual as well as a musical giant. He thought before he wrought. The division of his activity into three periods, in each of which he is supposed to have progressed further along the road of originality and greatness, is generally accepted. Nevertheless, it is an arbitrary one, especially as regards the pianoforte sonatas, since it has been seen that the first movement of one of his earliest works, the third sonata (Opus 2, No. 3), is one of his most original contributions to music, and one of the most strikingly developed movements in sonata form that he has given us. The period division which assigns this sonata as well as the “Sonata Pathétique” to the first period is absurd. The fact is, that the works of the so-called first and second periods overlap; but there is a decided change in his style when we come to his third period which, in the pianoforte sonatas, begins with Opus 109. (The beginning of this period usually is assigned to the sonata 107 Opus 101, which seems to me too early.) Because here a restless spirit seems to be brooding over his work, it is thought by some that his mind and heart were warped by his misfortunes—his deafness, the ingratitude of a worthless nephew to whom he had been as a father, and other family and material troubles. To me, however, Beethoven seems in these sonatas to be chafing more and more under the restraint of form and to be struggling to free himself from it, bending all his intellect to the task. Frankly, I do not think that in these last sonatas he achieved his purpose. He had outgrown the form he himself had perfected, and the thoughts which toward the last he endeavored to mould in it called for absolutely free and untrammeled development. He had become too great for it and, as a result, it cramped and hampered him in his latest utterances. It is my firm belief that had Beethoven come upon the scene fifty years later, he would not have composed a single sonata, but have revived the suite in modern style, as Schumann practically did in his “Carnaval,” “Kreisleriana,” and “Faschingschwank aus Wien,” or have created for the pianoforte something corresponding to the freely developed tone poems of Richard Strauss.
Because, however, Beethoven wrote thirty-two pianoforte sonatas and because he was for many years the all-dominating figure in the musical world, every great composer who came after him and composed for the pianoforte experimented with the sonata form, and always, be it noted, with less success and less importance to the real progress of music toward freedom of expression than when he followed his own inner impulse 108 and wrote the mood pieces, the “music of intention,” the subjective expressions of indicated thoughts and feelings, that were more consonant with the tendencies of the romantic period which followed Beethoven and for which he may be said to have paved the way. For just as Bach brought the contrapuntal form to such perfection that those who came after him could not even begin where he left off, let alone surpass him, so Beethoven brought the sonata form to such perfection that no further advance in it was possible. No wonder therefore that the pianoforte sonatas of the romanticists are comparatively few in number and the least satisfactory of their works. These composers seem to have written sonatas simply to show that they could write them and under a mistaken idea that length is a measure of greatness and that shorter pieces are minor achievements, whereas as much genius can be displayed in a nocturne as in a sonata.
Sonatas Now Old-fashioned.
Lawrence Gilman, one of our younger American critics, in his “Phases of Modern Music,” a collection of essays, brief but containing a wealth of suggestion and breathing throughout the spirit of modernity, sums up the matter in speaking of Edward MacDowell’s “Keltic Sonata”: “I cannot help wishing that he might contrive some expedient for doing away, so far as he himself is concerned, with the sonata form which he occasionally uses, rather inconsistently, as a vehicle for the expression of that vision and emotion that are in him; for, generally speaking, and in spite of 109 the triumphant success of the ‘Keltic,’ Mr. MacDowell is less fortunate in his sonatas than in those freer and more elastically wrought tone poems in which he voices a mood or an experience with epigrammatic concision and directness. The ‘Keltic’ succeeds in spite of its form, ... though even here, and notwithstanding the freedom of manipulation, one feels that he would have worked to still finer ends in a more flexible and fluent form. He is never so compelling, so persuasively eloquent, as in those impressionistically conceived pieces in which he moulds his inspiration upon the events of an interior emotional program, rather than upon a musical formula necessarily arbitrary and anomalous.” This applies to pianoforte music in general since Beethoven. Such I believe to be the consensus of opinion among the younger generation of critics, to whom, after all, the future belongs, as well as the opinion of those older critics who refuse to allow themselves to be pitchforked by their years into the ranks of the old fogies and who still hold themselves ever receptive to every new manifestation in music that is based on a union of mind and heart.
Unless otherwise specifically mentioned I have, in speaking of the sonata form, referred to it in connection with the pianoforte. But it also is the form employed for the symphony (which simply is a sonata for orchestra); for pianoforte trios, quartets and quintets; for string quartets and other branches of chamber music (which are sonatas written for the combination of instruments mentioned and such others as are employed in chamber music), and for concertos (which are sonatas for the combination of a 110 solo instrument like the pianoforte, violin or violoncello, with orchestra). In these branches the sonata form has held its own more successfully than on the pianoforte, and for several extraneous reasons. In the symphony it is due largely to the greater variety that can be achieved through orchestral coloring; in chamber music largely to the somewhat super-refined and timorous taste of its devotees which would regard any startling innovation as highly indecorous; and in the concerto to the fact that a soloist who appears at an orchestral concert is supposed to play a concerto simply because the orchestra is there to play it with him, although he, as well as the audience, probably would find a group of solos far more effective. In fact I think that much of the applause which usually follows a great pianist’s playing of a concerto is due not so much to the audience’s enthusiasm over it as to the hope that he may be induced to come out and play something alone. So far as the symphony is concerned, it is liberating itself more and more from the sonata form and taking the direction indicated by Liszt in his symphonic poems and by Richard Strauss in his tone poems, the freest form of orchestral composition yet conceived.
The First Romantic Composers.
In music, as in other arts, periods overlap. We have seen that during Bach’s life Scarlatti in Italy was laying the foundations of the harmonic system and shaping the outlines of the sonata form which was to develop through Philipp Emanuel Bach, Haydn and Mozart and find its greatest master in Beethoven. Likewise, 111 even while Beethoven was creating those works which are the glory of the classical period, two of his contemporaries, Carl Maria von Weber, who died one year before him, and Franz Schubert, who survived him by only a year, were writing music which was destined to turn the art into new channels. Weber (1786-1826) is indeed regarded as the founder of the romantic school through his opera “Der Freischütz.” It seems to me, however, that Schubert (1797-1828) contributed quite as much to the new movement through his songs, while the contributions of both to the pianoforte are important. Weber was a finished pianist, had an enormous reach (he could stretch a twelfth), and besides utilizing the facility thus afforded him to add to the brilliancy of pianoforte technique (as in his well-known “Concert Piece for Piano and Orchestra”), he deliberately, in some of his compositions, ignored the sonata form and wrote a “Momento Capriccioso,” a “Polonaise,” a “Rondo Brilliant,” a “Polacca Brilliant” and the fascinating “Invitation to the Dance.” The last, even in its original form and without the elaborations in Tausig’s version of it, and the “Concert Piece” still are brilliant and effective numbers in the modern pianoforte repertoire. Considering the age in which they were composed, their freedom from pedantry is little short of marvelous.
Schubert’s Pianoforte Music.
Schubert was not a virtuoso and passed his life almost in obscurity, but we now recognize that, although he lived but thirty-one years, few composers wrought 112 more lastingly than he. Of course, the proper place for an estimate of his genius is in the chapter on song, but as a pianoforte composer he is, even to this day, making his influence more and more felt. Living in Vienna, Beethoven’s city, and a fervent admirer of that genius, it was natural that he should have composed sonatas, and there is a whole volume of them among his pianoforte works. Nevertheless, so original was his genius and so fertile, that, in addition to his numerous other works, he composed eight impromptus, among them the highly poetic one in G flat major (Opus 42, No. 2), usually called “The Elegy”; another in B flat major (Opus 142, No. 3), which is a theme with variations, some of them brilliant, others profoundly expressive; and the beautifully melodious one in A flat major; six dainty “Moments Musicals”; the exquisite little waltz melodies from which Liszt fashioned the “Soirées de Vienne”; the “Fantasia in G,” from which the popular minuet is taken; and the broadly dramatic “Fantasia” on a theme from his song, “The Wanderer,” for which Liszt wrote an orchestral obbligato, thus converting it into a highly effective and thoroughly modern fantasy for pianoforte and orchestra. These detached compositions are as eloquent in their appeal to-day as if they had been written during the last ten years instead of during the first quarter of the last century. They are melodious with the sustained melody that delights the modern ear. There is not, as in the sonata form or, for that matter, in all the classical music that Schubert heard around him, the brief giving out of a theme, then an episode, then another brief theme and so on, all couched in the formulas in which the classicists delighted, 113 but instead of these postulates of formality, melody fully developed and wrought out by one who reveled in it and was willing that his hearers should revel in it as well. To distinguish between the classicists and this early romantic composer, whose work survives in all its freshness and beauty to this day, it may be said that their music was thematic—based on the kind of themes that lent themselves to formal working out as prescribed by the sonata formula; whereas these detached pieces of Schubert are based on melodies—long-drawn-out melodies, if you wish, and be grateful that they are—that conjure up mood pictures and through their exquisite harmonization exhale the very fragrance of romanticism.
Naturally, the sonatas from his pen are more set. Nevertheless, so long as it seems that we must have sonatas on our recital programs, the neglect of those by Schubert is shameful. I am willing to stake his sonata No. 5, in A minor, against any sonata ever written, and from several of the sonatas single movements can be detached which I should think any pianist would be glad to add to his repertoire. Among these is the lithesome scherzo from the sonata No. 10, in B flat major, and the beautiful slow movement (Andante sostenuto) from the same work.
Schubert also wrote many valuable pianoforte duets, among them several sets of marches and polonaises and an elaborate and stirring “Divertissement à l’Hongroise,” which last seems to foreshadow the “Hungarian Rhapsodies” of Liszt. In these and the detached pianoforte solo pieces a special value lies in that they do not appear to have been 114 composed as a protest against the sonata form, but spontaneously and without a thought on Schubert’s part that he was doing anything in any way remarkable. They are expressions of musical feeling in the manner that appealed to him as most natural. The “Moments Musicals” especially are little mood pieces and impressionistic sketches with here and there a bit of realism. Who, for example, is apt to forget Essipoff’s playing of the third “Moment” in Hungarian style, with a long crescendo and diminuendo (the same effect used by Rubinstein, when he played his arrangement of the “Turkish March” from Beethoven’s “Ruins of Athens”), so that it seemed as if a band of gypsies approached from afar, danced by, and vanished in the distance? Thoroughly modern is Schubert, a most modern of the moderns, whether we listen to his original pianoforte compositions, or to the Schubert-Liszt waltzes, or “Hark, Hark, the Lark,” “To Be Sung on the Water” (barcarolle) and other songs of his which have been arranged for the pianoforte by Liszt.
Mendelssohn’s “Songs Without Words.”
Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, the musical idol of his day and now correspondingly neglected, contributed to the romantic movement his “Songs Without Words,” short pieces for the pianoforte and aptly named because their sustained melody clearly defined against a purposely subordinated accompaniment gives them the character of songs, in the popular meaning of the word. Mendelssohn was a fluent, gentlemanly composer, whose music was readily understood and therefore attained 115 immediate popularity. But the very qualities that made it popular—its smoothness and polish and its rather commonplace harmlessness—have caused it to lose caste. The “Songs Without Words,” however, still occupy a place in the music master’s curriculum, forming a graceful and easily crossed bridge from classical to romantic music. I can remember still, when, as a lad, I received from my music teacher my first Mendelssohn “Song Without Words,” the G minor barcarolle, how it seemed to open up a new world of music to me. Many of these compositions, which are unique in their way, still will be found to possess much merit. That they are polished little pieces and poetic in feeling almost goes without saying. The “Spring Song” may be one of the most hackneyed of pianoforte pieces and the same may be true of the “Spinning Song,” but it is equally true that the former is as graceful and charming as the latter is brilliant and showy. A tender and expressive little lyric is the one in F major (No. 22), which Joseffy frequently used as an encore and played with exquisite effect. A group of Mendelssohn’s “Songs Without Words” is never out of place on a pianist’s program. At least half a dozen of them, I think, are apt to survive the vicissitudes of many years to come. Mendelssohn wrote three sonatas, a “Sonata Ecossaies” (Scotch), several capriccios and other pieces for the pianoforte, besides two pianoforte concertos, of which the one in G minor is the stock selection of conservatory pupils at their graduation exercises and later at their début. With it they shoot the musical chutes.