Mezzotints in modern music /

I

Many years ago a certain young man of o’erweening ambition, with a good piano hand and a scorn for the beaten path, conceived the Gargantuan idea that by playing all the études written for the piano he could arrive at perfection by a short cut and thus make up for lost time. He was eighteen years old when he began the experiment and at twenty-two he abandoned his task, a crippled, a sadder, a wiser man.

The young man browsed on études by Bach, Czerny, Loeschorn, Berens, Prudent, Ravina, Marmontel, Planté, Jensen, Von Sternberg, Kullak, Jadassohn, Germer, Reinecke, Riemann, Mason, Löw, Schmidt, Duvernoy, Doering, Hünten, Lebert and Stark, A. E. Müller (caprices), Plaidy, Bruno, Zwintscher, Klengel (canons), Raff, Heller, Bendel, Neupert, Eggeling, Ehrlich, Lavallée, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Rheinberger, Alkan, Fétis, Ferd, Ries, Isador Seiss, Arthur Foote, Anton Strelezki, Carl Baermann, Petersilyea, Krauss, D’Abelli, Golinelli, Berger, Kalkbrenner, Saint-Saëns, Brahms, Dreyschock, Moscheles, Doehler, Carl Heyman, Hans Seeling, Clementi, Thalberg, Cramer, Chopin, Sgambati, Liszt, Hiller, Brassin, Paradies (toccata), Hasert, Faelten, Vogt, J. C. Kessler, Moszkowski, Henselt, the Scharwenkas, Rubinstein, Joseffy, Dupont, Herz, Köhler, Speidel, Tausig, Schytte-Rosenthal, Von Schlözer, Schuett, Haberbier, Nicodé, Ketten, Pixis, Litolff, Charles Mayer, Balakireff, MacDowell, Leopold De Meyer, Ernst Pauer, Le Couppey, Vogrich, Deppe, Raif, Leschetizky, Nowakowski, Paderewski, Barth, Zichy, Philipp, Rosenthal and lots of names not to be recalled.

And about the same delightful chronological order as the above was observed in the order of study.

What could have been the result of such a titanic struggle with such wildernesses of notes? What could have been the result upon the cerebral powers of the young man after such a Brobdingnagian warfare against muscles and marks?

Alas, there was no result. How could there have been?

And music, what became of music in all this turmoil of technics? Naturally it went begging, and in after years the young man, observing how many young people, ambitious and talented, were pursuing the same false track, determined to think the thing out, and first went about it by asking well-known authorities, and finally formulated the question this way: What études are absolutely necessary for a mastery of the keyboard?

Since the days of Carl Czerny—God bless his old toccata in C!—instruction books, commonly known as methods, began to appear. How many I do not propose to tell you. You all know Moscheles and Fétis, the Kalkbrenner, the Henri Herz, Lebert and Stark and Richardson (founded on Dreyschock). That they have fallen into disuse is only natural. They were for the most part bulky, contained a large amount of useless material, and did not cover the ground; often being reflections of a one-sided virtuosity. Then up sprang an army of études. Countless hosts of notes, marshalled into the most fantastic figures, hurled themselves at varying velocities and rhythms on the piano studying world. Dire were the results. Schools arose and camps within camps. There were those in the land that developed the left hand at the expense of the right and the other way about. Trill and double-note specialists abounded, and one could study octaves here and ornaments there, stiffness at Stuttgart, flabbiness with Deppe, and yet no man could truthfully swear that his was the rightful, the unique method.

Suddenly in this quagmire of doubt and dumb keyboards arose a still small voice, but the voice of a mighty man. This is what the voice said:

“There is but one god in technic, Bach, and Clementi is his prophet.”

Thus spake Carl Tausig, and left behind him an imperishable edition of Clementi!

It was Tausig’s opinion that Clementi and Chopin alone have provided studies that perfectly fulfil their intention. It was Tausig’s habit to make use of them before all others, in the school for the higher development of piano playing of which he was the head. He also used them himself. Furthermore he asserted that by means of those studies Clementi made known and accessible the entire piano literature from Bach, who requires special study, to Beethoven, just as Chopin and Liszt completed the scale of dazzling virtuosity.

The Gradus was one great barrier—a mighty one, indeed—against the influx of barren, mechanical or nonsensical études for the piano. Just read the incomplete list above, and does not your head wither as a fired scroll at the prospect of studying such a vast array of notes? Then came Von Bülow with his Cramer edition, and another step was taken in the boiling down movement. Moreover the clever Hans took the reins in his hands, and practically said in his preface to the Cramer edition: “Here is my list; take and study it. You will then become a pianist—if you have talent.” Here is his list:

Lebert and Stark—abomination of angular desolation; Aloys Schmitt exercises, with a touch of Heller to give flavor and flesh to the old dry bones; Cramer (Bülow), St. Heller, op. 46 and 47; Czerny daily exercises, and the school of legato and staccato; Tausig’s Clementi; Moscheles, op. 70; Henselt, op. 2 and 5, and as a bridge Haberbier’s Études Poésies; Moscheles, op. 95, characteristic studies; Chopin, ops. 10 and 25, glorious music; Liszt studies, Rubinstein studies, and finally, as a “topper,” C. V. Alkan with Theodor Kullak’s octave studies on the side.

Now this list is not bad, but it is nearly twenty-five years since it was made, and in this quintessentializing age, a quarter of a century means many revolutions in taste and technic. Condense, condense is the cry, and thereupon rose Oscar Raif, who might be called the Richard Wagner of piano pedagogues, for with one wave of his wand he would banish all études, substituting in their stead music, and music only. Pick out the difficulties of a composition for slow practice, said Mr. Raif, and you will save time and wear and tear on the nerves.

Raif made a step in piano pedagogy, nihilistic though it seemed, and to-day we have those remarkable daily studies of Isidor Phillip, which are a practical demonstration of Raif’s theory.

Then came forward a few reasoning men who said: “Why not skeletonize the whole system of technic, giving it in pure, powerful but small doses to the student?” With this idea Plaidy, Zwintscher, Mason and Mathews, Germer, Louis Koehler and Riemann have published volumes literally epitomizing the technics of the piano. Dr. William Mason in his Touch and Technic further diversifies this bald material by making the pupil attack it with varying touches, rhythms and velocities. Albert R. Parsons, in his valuable Synthetic Method, makes miracles of music commonplaces for the tender, plastic mind of childhood. But all these, while training the mind and muscles, do not fringe upon the problem the young man attempted to solve. That problem related to studies only. His hand was supposed to be placed—in a word—to be posed.

He incidentally found that Heinrich Germer’s Technics or Mason’s Touch and Technic were sufficient to form the fingers, wrist, forearm and upper arm; that on a Virgil clavier every technical problem of the flat keyboard could be satisfactorily worked out, and then arose the question: What studies are absolutely essential to the pianist who wishes to go to the technical boundaries of the flat keyboard?

Technics alone would not do, for you do not get figures that flow nor the sequence of musical ideas, nor musical endurance, not to mention style and phrasing. No one work on technic blends all these requisites. Piano studies cannot be absolutely discarded without a serious loss; one loses the suavity and simplicity of Cramer, a true pendant of Mozart; the indispensable technics and foundational tone and touch of Clementi, a true forerunner of Beethoven, and then what a loss to piano literature would be the destruction of the studies of Chopin, Liszt and Rubinstein!

No; there lurks an element of truth in the claims of all these worthy thinkers, experimenters and seekers after the truth. Our young man, who was somewhat of an experimental psychologist, knew this, and earnestly sought for the keystone of the arch, the arcanum of the system, and after weary years of travail found it in Bach—great, good, glorious, godlike Johann Sebastian Bach, in whose music floats the past, present and future of the tone art. Mighty Bach, who could fashion a tiny prelude for a child’s sweet fingers, a Leonardo da Vinci among composers, as Beethoven is their Michel Angelo, Mozart their Raphael.

With the starting point of the first preludes and exercises of Bach the young groper found that he had his feet, or rather his hands, on terra firma, and proceeded with the two and three part inventions and the suites, English and French, and the great forty-eight preludes and fugues in the Well Tempered Clavichord, not forgetting the beautiful A minor fugue with its few bars of prelude.

Before the Clavichord is reached the pupil’s hand is ready for Cramer, and some of these beautiful music pieces, many poetical in the extreme, may be given. What could follow Cramer more fitly than Clementi, Tausig’s Clementi? A great teacher as well as a great virtuoso, Tausig pinned his faith to these studies, and so does that other great virtuoso. Bach was also Chopin’s daily bread.

In Clementi one may discern all the seeds of modern piano music, and studying him gives a nobility of tone, freedom of style and a surety of finger that may be found in no other collection. Tausig compressed Clementi into twenty-nine examples, which may with discrimination be reduced to fifteen for practical use. The same may be said of Bülow’s Cramer, not much more than half being really necessary.

Bülow’s trinity of Bs—Bach, Beethoven and Brahms—may be paralleled in the literature of piano studies by a trinity of Cs—Cramer, Clementi and Chopin. And that leads to the great question, How is that ugly gap, that break, to be bridged between Clementi and Chopin? Bülow attempts to supply the bridge by a compound of Moscheles, Henselt and Haberbier, which is obviously tedious, and in one case—Henselt—puts the cart before the horse.

I believe the gap can be safely crossed by using the two very valuable Hummel concertos in A and B minor, for between Chopin—the early Chopin—and Hummel there is a certain resemblance. Some of Hummel’s passage work, for example, is singularly like Chopin’s juvenile style, and Chopin, as everyone knows, was extremely fond of the Hummel concertos. Of course the resemblance is an external one; spiritually there is no kinship between the sleek pianist of Weimar and the genius of Warsaw.

Yet pieces and concertos do not quite serve the purpose, and may the Fates and Joseffy pardon me for the blasphemy, but I fear I do not appreciate the much vaunted Moscheles studies. To be sure, they are fat, healthy, indeed, almost buxom, but they lack just a pinch of that Attic salt which conserves Cramer and Clementi. Understand, I do not mean to speak irreverently of Moscheles. I think that his G minor concerto is the greatest conservatory concerto ever written, and his various Hommages for two dry pianists serve the agreeable purpose of driving a man to politics. I wish merely to estimate the op. 70, 95 and 51 from the viewpoint of a utilitarian.

There is nothing in op. 70 that has not been done far better by contemporaries of the composer. For instance, the double note study is weak when compared with that best of all double note studies, Czerny’s toccata in C. En passant, that is one of the most remarkable special studies ever written, and is certainly number one in the famous trio of double-note études, the other two being the Schumann toccata and Chopin’s G sharp minor study. Include by all means the Czerny toccata in your list, and get the Moszkowski edition, which is remarkable for nothing except that it omits the celebrated misprint at the close of the original edition.

There are studies by Kalkbrenner noticeable for their virtuoso character. Ries, too, has done some good work, notably the first of the set in the Peters’ edition. Then there is Edmund Neupert. His hundred daily exercises are really original, and contain new technical, figures, and his études in the Edition Peters are charming. They suggest Grieg, but a more virile, masterful Grieg.

Take the Thalberg studies; how infinitely more “pianistic” and poetic than the respectable Moscheles! I know that it is the fashion of the day to sneer at Thalberg and his machine-made fantaisies, but we should not be blind to the beauties of his Art of Singing on the Piano, his études, op. 26, one of them in C, a tremolo study, being more useful than Gottschalk’s famous Tremolo, not forgetting the op. 45, a very pretty theme in repeated notes.

Thalberg has written music that cannot be passed over by any fair-minded teacher or pupil. Another objection to Moscheles is that he is already old-fashioned. His style is rococo, his ornamentation trite and much of his work stale. Study him if you will; a half dozen of his études will suffice; but do not imagine that he prepares the hand for Henselt or Chopin, as Von Bülow so fondly fancied.

There is one man might be suggested—a composer who is as much forgotten as Steibelt, who wrote a Storm for the piano, and thought that he was as good a man as Beethoven. Have you ever heard of Joseph Christoph Kessler?

It is difficult to discover much about him, except that Chopin dedicated the German edition of his preludes, op. 28, “à Monsieur J. C. Kessler.” This same Kessler was born in Augsburg in 1800; he studied philosophy as well as music at Vienna, and at Lemberg in the house of his patron, Count Potocki, he composed his op. 20, twenty-four studies, dedicated to J. N. Hummel. Kessler was a brilliant pianist, met Chopin at Warsaw, and later dedicated to him his twenty-four preludes, op. 31. He was highly thought of by Kalkbrenner, and Fétis, and Moscheles incorporated some of his études in their Method of Methods. In 1835 Kessler attracted Schumann’s attention, and that great critic said that the pianist had good stuff in him. “Mann von geist und sogar poetischem geist,” he wrote, but somehow his music fell into disuse and is hardly ever heard. Fancy a pianist playing a Kessler étude in concert, yet that is what Franz Liszt did, and though the studies themselves hardly warrant a concert hearing, there is much that is brilliant, effective and eminently solid in many of them.

Kessler died at Vienna, January 13, 1872.

Let us examine more closely these studies. In four books, published by Haslinger, they are too bulky, besides being fingered badly. Out of the twenty-four there are ten well worthy of study. The rest are old-fashioned. Book I., No. 1, is in C and is a melody in broken chords that is peculiarly trying to the fourth finger. The stretches are modern and the study is very useful. No. 2, in A minor, is an excellent approach to all interlocking figures occurring in modern piano music. This, too, is very valuable. No. 3 I can recommend, for it is a melody in chord skips. No. 4 is very useful for the development of the left hand. No. 5 is confusing on account of hand crossing, and it could be dispensed with, while No. 6 serves the same purpose as No. 4. If you can play Nos. 4 and 6 of Kessler you need not fear the C minor or C sharp minor studies of Chopin, wherein the left hand plays such an important part.

Book II. has a study—No. 8—in octaves which might be profitable but I shall not emphasize its importance, for the Kullak octave school should never be absent from your piano rack. No. 10, however—a unisono study—is very good and is a foundation study for effects of this sort. It might be practised before attacking the last movement of the B flat minor sonata of Chopin.

But that about comprises all of value in the volume. Book III. has little to commend—a study, No. 13, same stiff, nasty figures for alternate hands; No. 15, for the wrist, excellent as preparation for Rubinstein’s staccato étude, and No. 18, some Chopin-like figuration for the right hand. Book IV. contains but three studies: No. 20 for left-hand culture. No. 21 for stretches and a facile thumb, and No. 24, a very stiff study, which is bound to strengthen the weaker fingers of the hand. Look at these Kessler studies, or, better still, study a dozen of them, and you will find the bridge between Clementi and Chopin, and a very satisfactory bridge at that; for to the solidity of Clementi, Kessler has added a modern technical spirit. One year’s experience with Kessler would make you drop your goody-goody Moscheles, or at least play him for the historical interest only.

Naturally every pupil cannot be mentally pinioned to the same round of studies. There are many charming studies before Cramer; for instance Heller; try Eggeling and Riemann as preparatory to Bach, Jadassohn’s scholarly preludes and fugues with a canon on every page, and in the C sharp minor prelude and fugue you will find much good, honest music.

Then there are lots of pretty special studies. William Mason’s Étude Romanza is a scale study wherein music and muscle are happily blended; Schuett’s graceful Étude Mignonne, Raff’s La Fileuse, Haberbier’s poetical studies, especially the one in D; Isador Seiss’ very musical preludes, in which the left hand plays an important part; Ludwig Berger’s interesting studies, and a delightful étude of Constantin Von Sternberg in F, which I heartily commend. Ravina, Jensen and many, many others have written études for which a light wrist, facile fingers and agreeable style are a necessity, but could all be easily dispensed with. We must not forget a little volume called Rhythmical Problems, by Heinrich Germer, of great value to teacher and pupil alike, for therein may be found a solution of many criss-cross rhythmic difficulties. Adolph Carpé’s work on Phrasing and Accentuation in Piano Playing, attacks the rhythmical problem in the boldest and most practical fashion.

Works of special character, like Kullak’s Art of Touch and Ehrlich’s Touch and Technic, should be read by the enterprising amateur.

We have now reached the boundaries of the Chopin studies, that delightful region where the technic-worn student discerns from afar the glorious colors, the strangely plumaged birds, the exquisite sparkle of falling waters, the odors so grateful to nostrils forced to inhale Czerny, Clementi and Cramer. O, what an inviting vista! Yet it is not all a paradise of roses; flinty is the road over which the musical pilgrim toils, and while his eye eagerly covets joyous sights, his feet and fingers often bleed. But how easily that pain is endured, for is not the Mount of Parnassus in sight, and does not every turn of the road disclose fresh beauties?

II

Some have expostulated regarding the admission of Henselt into the Pantheon of pianists—as if we were self-constituted keepers of its key—and the assertion was made that Henselt’s day was past, his études—of course with one exception, the Bird Study,—useless for technical purposes, and his music, generally rococo. There is a certain amount of unpalatable truth in all this that jars on one, but nevertheless I refuse to give up my belief in the Henselt études or even in the somewhat artificial and overladen F minor concerto.

This is an eminently realistic period in piano literature. The brutal directness of the epoch is mirrored in contemporary music, and with the introduction of national color the art is losing much of its old, well-bred grace, elegance and aristocratic repose. Norwegian, Russian, Bohemian, Finnish, Danish peasant themes have all the vitality of peasants and all their clumsiness, too. When I listen to this sort of music I see two stout apple-cheeked Bauern facing each other and furiously, after the manner of tillers of the soil. Such company seems odd and out of place when introduced into the drawing room. But with the Henselt, how different! how much at home in palaces he is! His refined, polished speech is never conventional, nor does he tear passion to tatters, after the approved modern manner. A high-bred man of the world, raffiné a bit, blasé, but true to the core—a poet and a musician. No, Henselt must not go, for who may replace him? His gentle, elegiac nature, his chivalry, his devotion to the loved one are distinctively individual. His nights are moonlit, his nightingales sing, but not in the morbid, sultry-fashion of Chopin; even his despair in the Verlorne Heimath is subdued. It is the despair of a man who eats truffles and drinks Chateau Yquem while his heart is breaking. But there is a note of genuineness that is lacking, say, in Mendelssohn, who played Ariel behind many musical masks. Henselt is never the hypocrite; he is franker than the Hebraic Felix, whose scherzino nature peeps forth in solemn oratorio, mocking its owner’s efforts at conventional worship. Henselt is a dreamer with one eye open; he never quite forsakes the real for the ideal.

But what charming études are in op. 2 and op. 5! What a wealth of technical figures, what an imperative legato is demanded! and then, above all else, touch, euphony! To play Henselt with a hard, dry touch would be Hamlet with the melancholy Dane not in it. I remember reading in the preface to a book by Ehrlich (some études of his) that in the modern sense a beautiful touch was a drawback, for while it might be ever grateful to the ear, yet if it were not colored and modified to suit the exigencies of modern music it would simply be a hindrance. The writer quoted Thalberg as an example of a pianist with a beautiful touch, but invariably the same style of a singing touch. Liszt was instanced as a man whose singing touch lacked the fat, juicy cantabile quality, but whose tonal gamut was all comprehensive, and who could be tender, dramatic, poetic and classic at will; of course this is the modern ideal of piano playing—although the color business is a bit overdone, variety in tinting at the expense of good, solid brush work—yet we cannot dream of Henselt being played with a bad touch. Fancy mangling that delicious Bird Study by a “modern” dramatic touch! Fancy stroking rudely the plumage of this beautiful bird, and have it pant its little life away in your brutal grasp! I have heard pianists play this étude as if the bird were a roc, and they were throttling it Sindbad fashion for its fabulous egg. Ah, Vladimir Pachmann, how that little bird did sing under your coaxing touch! and how tenderly you put it away into its silvery cage when it had trilled its sweet pipe! You triple locked the cage, too, black bearded Pashaw that you were, by playing three chords in F sharp, mounting an octave at a time!

The Henselt studies should not precede those of Chopin; in fact, some of the Chopin studies could be sandwiched in with Clementi, Moscheles, if you study him, and Kessler. Chopin used the Moscheles prelude. But don’t fail to study Henselt. He will give you freedom, a capacity for stretching, a sweetness of style that no other writer possesses. Don’t believe that all the horde of peasants, clumsily footing their tunes, have come to stay. Form will prevail in the end, and Buffon said, the style is the man. Much later piano literature is rank, vulgar, uncultivated, and is altogether inferior to compositions of the grand classic school. It is all right to put the cart before the horse when you are backing, but there is no progress in the whole school of composerlings who trade only in the volks tunes of their native land. Grieg has been called the Northern Chopin. What a far fetched simile! The Grieg piano music was once delightfully fresh, and it still has a quaint ring, but what a small, restricted genre! He said all he had to say in his sonatas op. 7 and 8, for piano and piano and violin. To attempt to pad his Scotch-Scandinavian shoulders so as to fit the cloak of the great Pole is a silly sartorial scheme.

And a superb maker of style is Chopin! Grieg lacks style, lacks distinction—that is, a fine style—and while I love his concerto with its mosaic of melodies, yet I tire of the eternal yodel, the Scandinavian triolen that bobs up like a trade mark. His ballade in G minor shows more technical invention than the concerto.

What may one not say about the Chopin studies and preludes, the vade mecum of all good pianists who after they die go to heaven to study with Frederic, Bach fugues and his études! Burn every note of all other piano literature and a mine of wealth would still remain.

If you have a bad left hand with intractable fingers always remember that Bach will individualize those fingers, and that old Carl Czerny has written a set of studies for the development of the left hand (op. 399), which, if taken in moderation just after rising in the morning, will lead to limberness and legato. This is only a suggestive aside, however. Albert Venino has written an excellent Pedal School. Many improvements have been made in pedaling, and Mr. Venino has thoroughly handled his subject. Someone has called the pedal “the breath of the piano,” “its soul,” which is apposite.

For a light hand play some of Mendelssohn scherzos, but remember that, after all, not velocity but tonal discrimination is to be sought for. Read Kullak’s remarks appended to the F major étude of Chopin, op. 10. In the Chopin preludes, op. 28, one may discover many rich technical nuggets. If you long for variety while at this epoch you may dig out Theodore Doehler’s fearfully and wonderfully made concert studies and get a glimpse of the technic that delighted our fathers. Interlocked chords, trills, tremendous scale passages and vapid harmonies distinguish this style.

Great difficulties were imposed on the left hand at times, followed by mere accompaniment figures, while the right hand flashed all over the keyboard. This is found in the Gottschalk technic, which is but a combination of the fulminating brilliancies of the French school. Single studies about this time might prove interesting.

Joseffy’s crystalline étude, At the Spring, is delightful in color and replete with exquisite touches. To play it pianissimo and prestissimo in a liquid, cool, caressing manner is a triumph of technic.

Ill-fated Carl Heyman has in his Elfenspiel given us a glimpse of his wondrous technic. Vogrich’s Staccato Étude is very effective. Ferdinand Hiller’s rhythmic studies are excellent, and Carl Baermann’s studies are solid, satisfying and sincerely musical. Golinelli, a Milan pianist, has left twelve studies which are practically obsolete, though the octave study is occasionally heard. In the set is one in C sharp minor with a glorious rolling bass, which is very effective.

Speidel has written an octave study, and speaking of rolling basses reminds us of that perennial favorite Die Loreley, by Hans Seeling, a talented young Bohemian pianist who died young (1828-62). His set of twelve studies contain some good things such as the Gnomentanz.

I don’t know much about Dreyschock’s études, except his Campanella, and somehow or other I don’t care to. You remember Heine’s remark about the “hellish spectacle” his performances presented?

Quite delightful individualities are the Scharwenkas and Moszkowski. Xaver Scharwenka’s preludes and studies are among the best things he has done, the concertos not excepted. The staccato étude is deservedly popular, and the E flat minor prelude and F sharp minor étude are models of their kind. The last named is evidently suggested by a figure in Chopin’s E minor concerto, first movement, and is well worked out. Philipp Scharwenka has also done good work. Moszkowski’s group of three studies is quite difficult; particularly the one in G flat. This latter smacks of artificiality. Nicode’s two studies are well made, and Dupont’s toccata in B is a very brilliant and grateful concert piece. Sgambati, the Italian pianist, has written some studies which are interesting for people who like Sgambati. They lack originality. Saint-Saëns’ six études are very valuable and incidentally very difficult, the rhythm study in particular.

In all this hurly-burly don’t forget your Kullak octave school, and if you really wish to disencumber your mind of all these extra studies I have been talking about, just throw overboard everybody but Bach, Cramer, Clementi, Chopin and Henselt. If you wish velocity coupled with lightness and suppleness of wrist, take up old Scarlatti.

III

After Wagner, Brahms. After Chopin? Bülow once confessed that Brahms cured him of Wagner mania. To alter Browning—“Brahms is our music maker now.” Brahms, whose music was at one time as an undecipherable cryptogram!—Brahms now appeals to our finest culture. Without the melancholy tenderness of Chopin he has not altogether escaped the Weltschmerz, but his sadness is masculine, and he seldom if ever gives way to the hysterical complainings of the more feminine Pole. Brahms is a man, a dignified, mentally robust man, who feels deeply, who developed wonderful powers of self-control, and who drives the musical nail deeply when he hits it, as he sometimes does.

Could any styles be more at variance than Brahms’ and Chopin’s? Moscheles declared much of Chopin’s music unplayable, and it is a commonplace of the day to dismiss Brahms’ piano music as “unpianistic.” Brahms’ affinity to Schumann is marked; perhaps when the latter pronounced such favorable judgment of Brahms’ op. 1 he only acknowledged blood relationship. Brahms tells us different things, however; but as I intend dealing more with externals I will pass by any question of musical content. To the student of the somewhat florid Liszt, Chopin, Thalberg and Henselt school, the Schumann-Brahms technic must offer few attractions. Possibilities for personal display are rare—display of the glittering passage sort. Extensive scale work is seldom found in either composer, and old-fashioned ornamentation gladdens by its absence. Musically, the gain is immense; “pianistically” there is some loss. No more of those delicate, zephyr-like figures—no more sonorous and billowy arpeggio sweeps over the keyboard!

In a word, the finger virtuoso’s occupation is gone, and a mental virtuosity is needed. Heavy chordal work, arabesques that might have been moulded by a Michel Angelo, a cantilena that is polyphonic, not monophonic; ten voices instead of one—all this, is it not eminently modern, and yet Bachian? Schumann came from Bach, and Schumann is foster father to Brahms; but Bach and Beethoven blood also runs warmly in Johannes’ musical veins. Under which king will you serve? for you cannot serve two. Will you embrace the Scarlatti, Emanuel Bach, Mozart, Cramer, Chopin, Liszt school, or will you serve under the standards of Bach, Clementi, Beethoven, Schumann and Brahms? Better let nature decide for you, and decide she does with such marked preferences that often I have attended piano recitals and wept silently because the “piano reciter” fondly believed he was versatile and attempted everything from Alkan to Zarembski. What a waste of vital force, what a waste of time!

I have, and value them as a curiosity, a copy of Liszt’s études, op. 1. The edition is rare and the plates have been destroyed. Written when Liszt was fresh from the tutelage of Carl Czerny, they show traces of his schooling. They are not difficult for fingers inured to modern methods. When I first bought them I knew not the Études d’Exécution Transcendentale, and when I encountered the latter I exclaimed at Liszt’s cleverness. Never prolific in thematic invention, the great Hungarian has taken his op. 1 and dressed it up in the most bewildering technical fashion. He gave these studies appropriate names, and even to-day they require a tremendous technic to do them justice. The most remarkable of the set—the one in F minor (No. 10)—Liszt left nameless, and like a mighty peak it rears its head skyward, while about it cluster its more graceful fellows, Ricordanza, Feux-Follets, Harmonies du Soir, Chasse Neige, and Paysage. What a superb contribution to piano étude literature is Liszt’s! These twelve incomparable studies, the three very effective Études de Concert, the Paganini Studies, the Waldesrauschen, the Gnomenreigen, the Ab-Irato, the graceful Au Lac de Wallenstadt and Au Bord d’une Source, have they not developed tremendously the technical resources of the instrument? And to play them one must have fingers of steel, a brain on fire, a heart bubbling with chivalric grace and force. What a comet-like pianist he was, this Magyar, who swept Europe with fire and sword, who transformed the still, small voice of Chopin into a veritable hurricane! But we can’t imagine a Liszt without a Chopin preceding him.

Liszt lost, the piano would lose its most dashing cavalier, and his freedom, fantasy and fire are admirable correctives for the stilted platitudes of the Hummel, Czerny, Mendelssohn school. You can’t—as much as you may wish to—ignore Liszt’s technic. He got out of the piano an orchestral quality. He advanced by great wing strokes toward perfection, and not to include Liszt were to exclude color, sonority, richness of tinting and powerful dynamic contrasts.

Liszt has had a great following; you can see how much he affected modern technic. Tausig felt his influence, and even Schumann, whose setting, however, of the Paganini études is far removed from Liszt’s. But Schumann certainly struck out a very original course when he composed his Études Symphoniques. Here a Liszt style is a bar to faithful interpretation. Music, music, music is wanted, with strong singing fingers and a wrist of iron—malleable iron. The toccata in C is an admirable example of not only Schumann’s but also of latter day technic.

As in Brahms’ polyphonic fingers, great discrimination of tone in chord passages is required here, and powers of stretching that tax most hands to their utmost.

Brahms has reared upon this Schumann technic a glorious structure, whose foundations—Bach-Schumann—are certainly not builded on sand. You may get a fair notion of the Brahms piano technic by playing the figure he gave Tausig for that great master’s Daily Studies, and also in his later fifty-one studies. Look at his wonderful variations—true studies; read the Paganini variations; are they not heaven storming? Brains, brains and Bach. His studies on studies are not too entertaining.

One is the rondo by Weber in his C major sonata, the so-called “mouvement perpétuel.” This has Brahms transcribed for the left hand, lifting the bass part into the treble. Anything more dispiriting I cannot imagine. It makes one feel as if the clock struck nineteen in the watches of the night. The étude in sixths on Chopin’s beautiful F minor étude in op. 25 is an attempt to dress an exquisite violet with a baggy suit of pepper-and-salt clothes. It is a gauche affair altogether, and I fancy the perpetrator was ashamed of himself, for, unlike Joseffy’s astounding transcription of Chopin’s G flat étude, Brahms’ study upon a study is utterly unklaviermassig.

Constantin von Sternberg tells a story about this F minor étude of Brahms-Chopin. When it first appeared Moszkowski was trying it over in the presence of the Scharwenkas and Von Sternberg. Not content with playing the right hand triplets in double-sixths, as Brahms had done, he transposed them to the left hand, went to work rather hesitatingly, saying, naturally enough: “Why not do it this way?”

It out-Heroded Herod, and Xaver Scharwenka could stand it no longer; when Moszkowski stuck for a moment he strode up to the pianist, seized his nose and chin, opened his mouth, gazed in it, and then said in a slightly irritated voice: “That is the worst of these machines; they will get out of order sometimes.”

Bendel’s étude in double-sixths is a good study, evidently modelled after Chopin’s G sharp minor study. Zarembski has written a finger-breaker in B flat minor, and the two Von Schloezer studies are by no means easy studies, but there are technical heights yet to be explored. Charles V. Alkan, the Parisian pianist, has concocted, contrived and manufactured about twenty-seven studies, which almost reach the topmost technical notch, and are, to confess the truth, unmusical. They are the extreme outcome of the Liszt technic and consequently have only historical value. Don’t play them, for you can’t, which remark is both Celtic and convenient.

Rubinstein’s op. 23—his six études—cannot be lightly passed over. The first in F and the well-known staccato étude in C should be studied. He has also written two studies, both in the key of C, one of which is called Study on False Notes, and sometimes the Handball. They are all very “pianistic.” Strelezski’s five concert studies are very modern and require a cyclopean grip. Nos. 4 and 5 are the most musical. The same composer’s étude, The Wind, is an excellent study in unison. The valse étude is artificial.

You can play Balakireff’s Islamey, a fantasy Orientale, if you wish some muscle twisting.

No need of telling you of Tausig’s Daily Studies. No pianist should be without them. The Rosenthal-Schytte studies are rich in ideas, and Schytte has written some Vortrag studies that are excellent.

Among modern artistic studies Saint-Saëns’, and MacDowell’s are the best and most brilliant, and Godowsky has made some striking paraphrases of Chopin studies. A novelty are the Exercises Journalières preceded by a preface from the pen of Camille Saint-Saëns. Tausig thought of such a comprehensive scheme as this, and Kullak, in the third book of his octave school, puts it partially into execution. But it remains for Isidor Philipp to work the formula out to its utmost, and the result is a volume unique in the annals of piano literature and of surpassing value to pianist, teacher and pupil.

This volume, I have no hesitation in saying, is the most significant since the posthumous publication of Tausig’s Daily Studies. All pianists have felt the need of such a work, and in his dumb-thumb way Oscar Raif taught his pupils that the manner to master difficulties was to walk chromatically about the passages in question. At a blow Philipp demolishes thousands of technical studies.

Philipp’s scheme is this: his collection is only for pianists who have a sound ordinary technic, say a technic which enables one to play the Beethoven sonatas of the first and second period, Clementi, Cramer, and of course Bach.

Philipp begins with extensive exercises, for extended harmonies are the keynote of modern piano music. Then follow studies for independence of the fingers, for the left hand alone, for scales, arpeggios, double notes, trills, octaves and chord playing, rhythmic studies and sundry studies that cannot be classified. These are all original, and are the result of the most independent researches. Conciseness is aimed at. They are reinforced by examples from Alkan to Willmers—the latter being the hero of the trill in the annals of piano playing.

Now, suppose you have each day an hour for technical study. You sit down before your keyboard; play one study for finger extension. Here is one on the first page—a terror, but a salutary one. Then take the example—it is from the F sharp minor prelude of Chopin. If you do not care for that there is the peroration of the E minor concerto of Chopin, the trill on B natural in the left hand. Alkan; Henselt (an example from the first study in op. 5 in C)—you can take your choice.

Now for independence of the fingers. Only two examples are given. If you master them you will have ten perfectly autonomous fingers. One is from a study by Alkan and the other from Saint-Saëns, op. 52. This latter is the famous study in A minor. It is invaluable.

Studies for the left hand: one example from the last movement of the Appassionata, you remember the figure in F minor. Others by Beethoven from concerto and variations. Chopin is represented by studies and extracts from the concertos, and a page is devoted to the G sharp minor section of the Revolutionary study, the Tristan and Isolde episode. Liszt, Georges Mathias, Brahms are all quoted with judgment.

Scales: Copious quotations from Chopin, Hummel, the A minor study of the former has a variant which gives the left hand employment. Liszt, Henselt, Rubinstein, the odd little chromatic episode in the last movement of the D minor concerto, and a finger-breaker by Henri Fissot, in which the thumb is treated to convict labor, as it deserves.

We have now reached the arpeggio section. After a lot of figures from which you may select your pattern for the day—notably the arpeggio of the dominant seventh, the most difficult and therefore the most valuable—you may indulge in examples from Beethoven, Chopin, Thalberg—the master of arpeggios—Delaborde, Rubinstein and Saint-Saëns.

Do not forget that these examples are selected from representative works, works that are played and are selected with rare skill and appreciation.

The double note chapter is admirable, although I notice M. Philipp clings to the Chopin fingering in chromatic double notes, the minor third, etcetera. The examples are from Beethoven, Hummel, Weber, Cramer, Chopin (the first chromatic scale in op. 25, No. 6); Schumann, Litolff, Saint-Saëns, Liszt, Rubinstein, Delaborde, Alphonse Duvernoy, a valuable and ingenious study; Marmontel, and last, but by no means least, Philipp himself. One example of his is from a Bach fugue in D in double sixths!

The trill department—this sounds like the Bon Marché—contains examples from Beethoven, Chopin, Willmers, Doehler, Liszt, Brahms, a monstrous octave trill from the F sharp minor sonata, Duvernoy, Czerny and Liszt. It is as complete as possible.

The octave section contains more modern examples than Kullak. Saint-Saëns, Diémer, Rimski-Korsakoff and Tschaïkowsky are some of the moderns quoted.

Then follow rhythmical examples, skips, tremolo, a good example is from Thalberg’s beautiful and sadly neglected theme and variations in A minor, op. 45 and a lot of tangled tricks from the works of Lalo, D’Indy, Bernard, Pierné and other modern Frenchmen. I wish M. Philipp had quoted Thalberg’s famous tremolo study in C. It is the best of its class. But to be hypercritical before this ingenious catalogue would be impertinence, even ingratitude. From the maddening mass of classical and latter-day piano literature the editor has selected and fingered a most representative series of the difficulties of piano music. A few bars, at most a page, are given, and we do not wonder that Saint-Saëns called the work a vade mecum for pianists.

Not content with his gigantic task this astonishing Philipp has made another collection of studies for the left hand alone.

His compilation is so complete that I must speak of it in detail. Indeed I could write much on this topic. I know so many students, so many able pianists who have gone through the valley of technical death in search of a path to Parnassus, that I hail these short cuts with joy. Remember I am of a band of admirable lunatics that played all the studies in the world when I was a young fellow! What ignorance, depraved and colossal, was it not?

Czerny, who is old fashioned in most of his studies, has nevertheless written some of the best studies for the left hand solo. He wrote them because no one else would. He looks in his pictures as if he might be that sort of a man.

Philipp the indefatigable has sifted Czerny, and the left hand is treated, not with arpeggiated contempt—most composers write as if this hand was only for accompanying purposes—but as if it were the companion and co-sharer of the throne of digital independence. All sorts—but not too many—of preparatory exercises are there, thanks to the ingenuity of the editor, who must be a teacher of the first magnitude. In addition to Czerny we get passages from Weber, right hand passages transposed, from Mendelssohn, Hummel, Schumann, the first page of the great Toccata in C, transpositions from Bach and Chopin, a big Kessler study, the first study in C of Chopin, the first study in A minor for the left hand—a pet idea of Joseffy’s—a transposition from the B flat minor prelude, a capital notion for velocity playing, another transposition of the A minor study in op. 25, hideously difficult. The same with the G sharp minor study, Godowsky has a version for concert performance, but this is for one hand only; the double sixth study in D flat, a Kreutzer violin caprice in octaves in E, a Kreutzer étude in octaves, and the F minor study of Chopin, op. 25, No. 2 in octaves.

The volume ends with a formidable version in octaves for left hand of the last movement of Chopin’s B flat minor sonata. This is truly a tour de force.

This clever Parisian has also written six new concert studies. The first is a double note arrangement of the D flat valse. Tausig, Rosenthal and Joseffy have done the same thing. But Philipp has written the trio in three clefs so as to render clear the contrapuntal figure over the melody, which figure is the first theme. His second study is the same valse written for the left hand, the accompaniment being transposed to the right. The third study is the F minor study in triplets of Chopin, most ingeniously transcribed for left hand. Brahms turned this study into forbidding thistles of double sixths. The fourth study is devoted to the G flat étude of Chopin, the one on the black keys. It is in double notes, fourths, sixths and octaves. Joseffy ten years ago anticipated Philipp.

For his fifth concert study I congratulate M. Philipp. He has taken Chopin’s first A minor study in op. 10 and turned it into a bombarding chord study, something after the manner of the sombre and powerful B minor octave study. The blind octave is the technical foundation of this transcription. It is very effective. The book closes with a magnificent paraphrase of Weber’s perpetual movement from the sonata in C. Brahms and others have transcribed this for the left hand. It is aptly dedicated to the master, a veritable master, Camille Saint-Saëns. I wish I could enlarge on the “pianistic” qualities of this piece. Oddly enough it suggests in a distant fashion Rubinstein’s C major study, he one d’Albert plays so masterfully. Philipp has made the changes in the most musicianly manner.

M. Philipp has credited to Theodore Ritter, now dead, the octave version of the rondo of Chopin’s E minor concerto. To Tausig belongs the honor. I wonder why he failed to quote the stunning étude in B flat minor by Franz Bendel? After Chopin’s it is the most valuable of all the studies for the playing of double sixths.

Not satisfied with making a unique volume of daily studies, he has out-Tausiged Tausig in the new Études d’Octaves. The studies are after Bach, Clementi, Cramer and Chopin, with original preludes by Dubois, Delaborde, Émile Bernard, Duvernoy, Gabriel Fauré, Matthias, Philipp, Pugno and Widor. I advise you to play Kullak upside down before you touch these new studies on studies—these towering Pelions piled on metacarpal Ossias.

Philipp begins with the E flat study of Clementi, the one in broken octaves; this he transforms to a repeated note exercise. The first two studies in the Gradus he makes octaves. So far nothing remarkable nor difficult. Then follows the B flat invention of Bach—in two voices—in octaves; the study in E by Cramer treated as a study in sustained tones, like the second section of Chopin’s great octave study in B minor. We begin to grow warm over Cramer’s first famous study in C, all bedeviled into chords and taken at the interesting metronomic tempo of 116 to the quarter notes. It sounds like a gale from Rubinstein.

As all flesh is grass, so all difficult piano studies become food for the virtuoso. Brahms in a moment of heavy jocundity made night and Chopin hideous with the study in F minor by forcing the sweet, coy, maidenly triplets to immature coquetting with rude and crackling double sixths. Philipp is too polite, too Gallic to attempt such sport, so he gives the étude in unison octaves. It is a good study, but one prefers the original.

Cramer’s left hand study in D minor is treated to octaves, and so the A minor study of Chopin in op. 10 is worked up magnificently and is really worth the while to play as well as to practice—a distinction you will observe. But more momentous matter follows. I expected that I should see the day when Weber’s so-called Perpetual Motion—the rondo in C—would be played in octaves by children, but I little dreamed of the daring of the latter-day pianist. The tenth study in this book is in interlocked octaves, after the manner of Tausig, and is in the key of B flat minor. Can you guess on what it is built? No less a theme than the last movement of the B flat minor sonata of Chopin, and it is a presto. Tausig is reported to have said that the movement reminded him of the wind sighing over the grave of the beloved, and Joseffy told me that Tausig could play it in octaves.

Like all legends of the sort, you treasure it and grow reverend, but when you see these octaves on the printed page you shudder. Where will technic end? It is worse than Brahms in his stupendous Paganini studies. In a study by Paderewski, The Desert, may be found just such toying with the gigantic, the ineffable. Philipp, with his precise, practical mind, pins his miracles to the paper, and while we curiously study the huge wings of this phenomenal bird we are not attracted. The study is written for a dozen living pianists at the utmost.

Henselt has written some studies which he calls Master Studies for Piano. They are really studies for virtuosi, and should be severely left alone by any but finished pianists. Carlyle Petersilyea once made a sort of technical variante on Chopin’s study in sixths in op. 25. Henselt goes upon the principle that pianists grow weary of playing a piece in the same manner; that the fingers become indolent from the fatal facility which follows upon many performances of a composition. So he takes up the familiar difficulty and views it from another rhythmical point of view. He distorts, perverts, alters, and almost roots up from the harmonic and rhythmic soil, the figuration, and believes that with a new aspect, a fresh difficulty, that you will return refreshed in finger and mentally invigorated to the normal version. And the great pianist and pedagogue has accomplished his task with a vengeance.

There are 167 examples; some make you shudder, some cause a smile, all command respect for the agility of the paraphrase, the downright cleverness of the changes. When you have thoroughly mastered the Philipp Daily Studies—which will be never—I commend these Henselt perversions. But may God preserve you from dallying too long in these curious and repulsive pastures, for can you imagine anything more horrible than a pianist assailed in the full glare of a public performance by a Henselt version and unable to resist the temptation!

Some of the perversions are worthy of the consideration of a musical Lombroso. There is the G flat study of Chopin, The Butterfly; Henselt has lots of fun with the piece, and his humor peeps out at the close, for instead of the epigrammatic ending—alas! so seldom adhered to by foolish pianists—he makes an elaborate run and delays the end, a delicate and satiric commentary on the ambitious pounder who will insist on bowling all over the keyboard before he lets go the key.

Chopin is liberally paraphrased, and the version of the E minor valse is fit for concert performance, so brilliant and effective is it. There are examples from Beethoven, Henselt—he has mocked his own Bird Study—Hummel, Mendelssohn, Weber, Cramer, Liszt, Raff, Schumann and Moscheles. Yet one coyly suggests these studies. They are apt to hoist the pianist with his own petard.

I once asked Rosenthal what finger exercises or studies he employed to build up that extraordinary mechanism of his. He startled me by replying “none.” Then he explained that he picked out the difficulties of a composition and made new combinations of them. Every rope has its weak spot and in every composition there is the one difficulty that will not down. Master it and you are technically master of all you survey. The whole question may be summed up this way: study a few Cramer, a few Clementi études for elegance and endurance, avoid daily studies except those few that by experience you discover limber up your wrist and fingers. Play the Chopin études, daily, also the preludes, for the rest trust to God and Bach. Bach is the bread of the pianist’s life; always play him that your musical days may be long in the land.