Studies in modern music, second series

there are two separate and distinct sources of our pleasure: first, the pure serenity of the thought; secondly, the liquid perfection of the verse. But when we turn to a melody of Beethoven, we find that here the two aspects are inseparable: that the verse is the thought, that the embodiment is the inspiration, and that it is virtually impossible to formulate any test of the one which is not at the same time a test of the other. The contrast will become still clearer if we take a poem in which the two qualities are not both present. The epilogue in Browning's Asolando, for example, can hardly be regarded as verse at all: but the uncouthness which deprives it of any claim to the title of a classic, is to most readers compensated by the spirit of sturdy courage that animates it throughout. To this compensation there is no parallel in Music. We may sometimes condone a fault in a melody otherwise admirable—the second strain, for instance, in our ballad of 'The Bailiff's Daughter'—but in so doing we set one portion of the form against another; we do not set the form as a whole against some external counterpart. In short, whatever can be said as to the conditions of vitality in other arts, in Music, at least, it is true that a work is great in proportion as its form is perfect.

This perfection of form was Chopin's ostensible ideal. No composer in the whole history of Music has laboured with a more earnest anxiety at accuracy of outline and artistic symmetry of detail. We have here 'no clattering of dishes at a royal banquet,' no casual indolence of accompaniment; no gap filled with unmeaning brilliance or idle commonplace: every effect is studied with deliberate purpose, and wrought to the highest degree of finish that it can bear. Of course, the thoughts were conceived spontaneously; no man could have written the poorest of Chopin's works by rule and measure: but before they were deemed ready for presentation they were tried by every test, and confronted with every alternative which a scrupulous ingenuity could propose. It is no small commendation that workmanship so elaborate should be beyond the reach of any imitator. As a rule, it is the dashing, daring, impetuous pioneer in Art who distances all followers, and finds himself, he hardly knows how, on a height that they can never hope to attain: in this case the climber has planted every footstep with a careful circumspection, he has employed all his prudence, all his foresight, all his certain command of resource, and yet, at the end of the ascent he stands alone. The reason for this is twofold: first, that Chopin's intuition of style was a natural gift which few other composers have possessed in an equal degree: second, that he brought to its cultivation not only an untiring diligence, but a delicacy of taste which is hardly ever at fault. His limitations are plain and unmistakable. For the larger types of the art, for the broad architectonic laws of structure on which they are based, he exhibited an almost total disregard. His works in 'Sonata form,' and in the forms cognate to the Sonata, are, with no exception, the failures of a genius that has altogether overstepped its bounds. Of Choral compositions, of Symphony, of Opera, he has not left us a single example. But when all this has been admitted, it still remains true that he is a great master, great in his exquisite sense of beauty, in his almost unerring skill, and in the deliberate and reasoned audacity with which he has extended the range of musical expression.

Like all modern composers of acknowledged rank, Chopin was strongly influenced by the popular music of his native country. As a child, he had been fond of collecting and studying the folk-songs which he heard at harvest field or market or village festival; they supplied him with his first models, and in some cases with his first themes as well. In later life, their impression deepened rather than faded. He always thought of himself as a national poet: 'I should like,' he told Hiller, 'to be to my people what Uhland is to the Germans.' No doubt the external qualities of his music are entirely his own: the richness of harmony, the complexity of figure, the delicate elaboration of ornament; but the texture which these colour and adorn is essentially of native growth and native substance. In a word, he made precisely the right use of national materials, taking them as a basis, and developing them into fuller beauty by the force and brilliance of his own personal genius.

There are three chief ways in which this national influence affected his work. In the first place, the popular music of Poland, unlike that of Italy or Germany, is almost invariably founded on dance forms and dance rhythms. Its gifts to the art of Europe are the Polonaise, the Krakowiak, and the Mazurka: types which, however widely they may differ in grade of social acceptance, are all essentially Polish in history and character. The very ballads of the country have the same lilt and cadence; they are primitive dances not yet differentiated from the use of words. They move with recurrent figure, with exact balance of melodic phrase, with that precise symmetry which is required by a 'Muse of the many-twinkling feet.' And it is hardly necessary to point out that in this respect Chopin is a true Pole. More than a quarter of his entire composition is devoted ostensibly to dance forms; and throughout the rest of it their effect may be traced in a hundred phrases and episodes. Grant that his treatment of the rhythmic figures is very different from the simple naïvité of his models: we are here discussing not treatment but conception, and in conception his indebtedness to his country is incontestable. His Mazurkas, in short, bear somewhat the same relation to the tunes of the peasantry as the songs of Robert Burns to those of the forerunners whom he superseded.

A second point of resemblance is Chopin's habit of founding a whole paragraph either on a single phrase repeated in similar shapes, or on two phrases in alternation. By itself this practice is primitive almost to barbarism, and its employment in many of the Polish folk-songs is a serious depreciation of their artistic value. But when it is confined to an episodical passage, especially in a composition founded on a striking or important melody, it may serve as a very justifiable point of rest, a background of which the interest is purposely toned down to provide a more striking contrast with the central figure. Of its illegitimate use a noticeable example may be found in the 'Spring Song,' which, it must be remembered, Chopin never intended to publish: its true and right employment will be seen in many of the Mazurkas—such, for instance, as the first (in F sharp minor), the fifth (in B flat), and the thirty-seventh (in A flat), which is, perhaps, the most beautiful of all. In the longer works, which are the more varied in proportion to their greater scale, we should hardly expect to find examples of a mannerism which, by its very nature, stands at the opposite pole from variation: but its influence may be noticed in the short, clear-cut phrases and exact balance of such compositions as the Scherzo in C sharp minor. No doubt much of this exactitude is due to an intense desire for clearness and precision: yet none the less the particular way in which that desire is satisfied may be regarded as characteristic of the national manner. Beethoven does not attain the lucidity of his style by such close parallelism of phraseology.

Thirdly, Chopin was to some extent affected by the tonality of his native music. A large number of the Polish folk-songs are written, not in our modern scale, but in one or other of the ecclesiastical modes: notably the Lydian, which has its fourth note a semitone sharper, and the Dorian, which has its third and seventh notes a semitone flatter than the major scale of Western Europe. Some, again, end on what we should call dominant harmony; a clear survival of the ecclesiastical distinction between plagal and authentic. Of this tonal system, some positive traces may be found in the Mazurkas, the cadences of the thirteenth, seventeenth and twenty-fifth, the frequent use of a sharpened subdominant, and the like; while on the negative side it may perhaps account for Chopin's indifference to the requirements of key-relationship. Not only in his efforts at Sonata form does he show himself usually unable to hold together a complex scheme of keys, but in works of a more loose structure his choice seems to be regulated rather by hazard than by any preconceived plan. Sometimes, as in the end of the F major Ballade, he deliberately strays away from a logical conclusion;[42] sometimes, as in the sixth Nocturne, he forces himself back with a sudden and inartistic violence; more often he allows his modulations to carry him where they will, and is so intent on perfecting each phrase and each melody that he has no regard left to bestow on the general principles of construction. No doubt some of this weakness was due to defective training, some, also, to the prevailing spirit and temper of the Romantic movement. But, in Chopin's case, there was a special reason beyond. As a Pole, he approached our western key system from the outside, and although he learned its language with wonderful skill and facility, he never wholly assimilated himself to the method of thought which it implies.

It is quite possible that, in any case, Chopin would have found himself incapable of dealing with large masses. The want of virility, which has already been noted in his character, appears beyond question in his music; leaving untouched all the grace and tenderness, all the rare and precious qualities of workmanship, but relaxing into an almost inevitable weakness at any crisis which demands sustained force or tenacity. When he is at his strongest, we miss that sense of reserve power, that quiet irresistible force, 'too full for sound or foam,' which characterises the dignity of the noblest art. He can be passionate, vehement, impetuous, but he expends himself in the effort. He can express agitation, challenge, defiance, but he lacks the royal magnanimity that will never stoop to defy. Even his melody is never sublime, never at the highest level. Its more serious mood stands to the great tunes of Beethoven as Leopardi stands to Dante, rising for a moment on a few perfect lines to follow the master's flight, and then sinking back to earth under some load of weariness or impatience.

Take, for instance, the B flat minor Sonata, in which Chopin most nearly approximates to the 'grand manner' of composition. The first movement, regarded by itself, is a masterpiece; its exposition clear and concise, its subjects well contrasted, one for thematic treatment and one for melody, its free fantasia an admirable example of an established type, and its recapitulation, though a little too short for perfect balance, a firm and lucid statement which sums up its results without a bar of vagueness or uncertainty. Not less complete is the Scherzo, which develops the simple forms of Mozart and Beethoven without obscuring their outline, and, despite all its rush and vigour, never allows its themes to get out of hand or to pass beyond the legitimate bounds of control. But from this point the value of the Sonata steadily declines. Schumann undoubtedly hits the blot when he declares that the great Funeral March ought never to have formed part of the work at all. As a separate piece it is of incomparable beauty; as the adagio of this particular Sonata it is wholly out of place. Its key is ill selected in relation to the rest of the composition; its contrasts of theme bear too much resemblance to those of the first movement; worst of all, its form is precisely the same as that of the Scherzo; and these objections, not one of which affects the movement in itself, are no less than fatal to it in its present context. The Finale, again, has neither the breadth nor the dignity requisite for its position. Its structure, though perfectly clear, is too simple and primitive to justify it as the fitting conclusion of an important work; and its persistent rhythmic figure gives it somewhat the air of an impromptu. If we had found it in the Volume of Preludes, we should have felt for it nothing but admiration; here, its inadequacy is so obvious that the greater part of critical attention has been distracted from its undeniable merits. In short, the first half of the Sonata gives promise of a Classic such as, with one exception, the world had not seen since the death of Beethoven; the second half, though almost every bar contains something that is beautiful, is a disappointment and a failure. Icarus has flown too near the sun, and the borrowed wings have no longer the strength to support him.

This want of manliness, moral and intellectual, marks the one great limitation of Chopin's province. It is, of course, wholly unreasonable to make it a subject of complaint; we might as well complain of Keats for not being Milton; or depreciate Carpaccio because the genius of Titian has the wider expanse. The lines of Endymion are not less musical because the poem, as a whole, falls below the epic level, and if they were, we have 'La Belle Dame sans Merci,' and the Sonnets and the five Odes. The Saint Ursula pictures are not less sweet and gracious because they lack the majesty of the 'Assumption;' and if they were, we could solace ourselves with the 'St George' and the 'St Jerome.' And similarly, if we accept from Chopin what he has to give, we shall be in no mind to bear malice for what he is forced to withhold. His passion is so keen and vital, his melody so winning, his love of beauty so single-hearted, that to demand the sterner qualities is almost an act of ingratitude. He knows the full secret of that mysterious power—so easy to feel, so impossible to define—through which music fulfils its function of suggesting and typifying emotion. He can appeal to our sensuous nature with a mastery which is almost irresistible, and he never degrades the appeal into vulgarity or sensationalism. Under his spell even the display of technical difficulty acquires life and significance. His Studies, avowedly classed as exercises of dexterity, stand to those of other writers as pictures to freehand drawing. His 'virtuoso passages' differ from those of Herz, and Hunten, and even Thalberg, as a pianoforte differs from a barrel-organ. In his lightest moment he is a poet: graceful in fancy, felicitous in expression, and instinct with the living spirit of romance.

There is hardly need to select examples of a gift which he exhibits on almost every page, yet a few typical instances may serve to concentrate our attention for a moment on the characteristic features of his melody, and to show the particular way in which he fulfilled the first requisite of a composer. Apart from works already considered, some special study may be given to the two Nocturnes, Op. 37, to the Ballade in A flat, to the second and third Impromptus, to the wonderful Étude in F minor, written for Moscheles, and to the fourth, eighth, fifteenth, nineteenth and twenty-third of the Preludes. These compositions are chosen, not because they are more tuneful than the rest—that is a question upon which every hearer must consult his own judgment—but because their elements of tunefulness seem to be in an eminent degree central and representative. No doubt many favourites will be found missing from the catalogue, the Prelude in C minor, the Nocturne in D flat, the more famous of the Waltzes and Polonaises; they have been purposely omitted, because, with all their beauty, they only contain tendencies of thought and manner which the list already exemplifies. As a rule, except for an occasional appoggiatura, Chopin keeps his melody within the strict limits of the diatonic scale, or of some equally diatonic ecclesiastical mode, and uses his chromatic effects sometimes for the accompaniment figure, sometimes for the subsequent thematic treatment. His tunes, for the most part, are as simple in outline as folk-songs, and the moods which they imply, whether melancholy, tender, playful or passionate, are an outcome of the more direct personal emotions. Sometimes his thought is as transparent as that of a child, and appeals to our sympathy with all a child's unquestioning and irresistible confidence. Sometimes he strikes a deeper note with a no less frank, outspoken freedom of disclosure. And always, whether severe or vehement, whether gay or dejected, he offers for our admiration the same perfection of curve, the same delicate balance of rhythm, and the same plasticity of melodic stanza.

There are two characteristics in Chopin's music which deserve some detailed consideration,—first, his sense of harmony; second, his use of accompaniment figures. No doubt, as standpoints for general criticism, they are not of parallel importance; the one implies a habit of mind as a whole, the other denotes a degree of technical skill and technical efficiency. But in both respects Chopin occupies a position so far apart from that of other composers—in both his manner is so original, so unique, so far removed from common or customary ways—that in his work they assume an almost equal value and interest. Again, in estimating their worth, we are dealing with a more definite and concrete material than when we endeavour to outline with words the impalpable spirit of melody. The tunes of a musician, though they constitute the chief part of his gift, constitute also that part which least admits of any profitable discussion; and the very qualities, through which alone they are susceptible of analysis, can be more easily noted and appraised in the secondary functions of treatment and elaboration. We cannot gauge the success of an effort unless we have already ascertained its intention; and the intention, though not always obscure in melody, is undoubtedly clearer to trace in the polyphonic scheme by which melody is supported and sustained.

Now, when we examine Chopin's harmony, we are at once struck with an apparent contradiction. We feel that, in its broader aspects, it is wonderfully pure and lucid, flowing along an established course, deviating but little from the simpler and more ordinary progressions. Yet every now and again we come across passages, the sight of which is enough to make orthodox professors of music 'stare and gasp;'—passages which seem to break with resolute and unflinching defiance the elementary rules that stand at the beginning of our text-books. Worst of all, these apparent solecisms, the commission of which by any other hand would be wholly intolerable, offer themselves to our notice as though they were the most natural and regular forms of expression. They are not obvious slips, like the 'misprint' in the Ninth Symphony; they are not importations from some alien musical language, like the occasional extravagances of Grieg or Dvořák; on the contrary, they take our recognised system of harmonic laws, and literally honour it more in the breach than the observance. Are consecutive fifths and octaves forbidden? There is, in one of the Études, a delightful passage, which consists exclusively of the prohibited intervals.[43] Are consecutive major thirds justly regarded as harsh and dissonant? Chopin, at his dreamiest and most contemplative, can employ them with unfailing effect.[44] Is the dominant seventh a chord which, to all well-regulated ears, demands instant resolution? The twenty-first Mazurka rejects the claim, and sends one floating down four bars of chromatic scale with no hope of rest until it reaches the bottom. And the manner of composition which these instances exemplify can be traced in plenty of other phrases, less extreme, perhaps, but not less audacious. In parts of the fourth and sixth Nocturnes we can find harmonic schemes which it is probable no other musician would have ever dared to devise, schemes which set at naught our established distinctions of concord and discord, which display in unbroken series artifices that are usually kept for single isolated points of excitement, and which, nevertheless, are as undoubtedly intentional as they are undeniably successful in their aim.

There is no shirking the difficulty. Here is a composer who is brought up on Bach, and whose general sense of harmony is as pure and sincere as that of his great master. Here are passages, written by him with obvious care and deliberation, the acceptance of which would seem impossible without throwing discredit on the harmonic code. And, as climax of bewilderment, the code is right and the passages are beautiful. It may certainly appear for the moment as though there were no solution in view unless we take a despairing refuge in some Hegelian identification of opposites.

Now, the impression which harmony produces is that of a third dimension in Music. It is the element of solidity and substance on which the melody rests. In a Chorale, for instance, the tune describes a sort of pattern on the superficies of the work, and the chords sustain and support it from underneath. And just as certain tunes can give us the effect of breadth, that is, of wide sweep over their superficial area, so certain harmonisations give us the effect of massiveness, that is, of strength and bulk in its substratum. It is not, of course, pretended that the artistic value of a composition can be summed up in so crude a metaphor: nothing more is attempted than to represent the one factor in the case, which is germane to the present purpose. Further, all the harmonic rules have been devised with a view to making the solid body of the Music as firm and compact as possible. They deal with the substratum, not with the superficies; with the perpendicular aspect, not with the horizontal. The law of consecutives is not held to be broken if in an orchestral piece a violin phrase is doubled by the violoncello or the bassoon: such a device gives us the lines of the pattern in duplicate, and lies altogether outside the material on which the pattern is superimposed. So in these disputed passages of Chopin. They are not really harmonic at all, they lie in the same plane as the melody, and, for their support, imply a separate and distinct scheme of chords, which the ear can always understand for itself.

A few examples may help to make this clearer. In the twelfth bar of the well-known Nocturne in E flat (Op. 9, No. 2), there is a connecting passage which, when we see it on paper, seems to consist of a rapid series of remote and recondite modulations. When we hear it played in the manner which Chopin intended, we feel that there is only one real modulation, and that the rest of the passage is an iridescent play of colour, an effect of superficies, not an effect of substance. Precisely the same impression is produced in the middle section of the sixth Nocturne, and in the return to the opening theme at the end of the fifteenth. So it is with these apparent consecutives. They are not ungrammatical, because, like the Emperor Sigismund, they are 'supra grammaticam:' they do not defy harmonic laws because they belong to a different jurisdiction: in a word, they are to be treated not as harmonisations of their theme, but rather as new forms of melodic extension. Their real harmony is implied, not expressed: a construction to be understood from the general context and tenour of the passage: and it is because the general tenour is unmistakable that these 'sense constructions' are fully justified. Chopin's harmonic system, in short, is like a river—its surface windswept into a thousand variable crests and eddies, its current moving onward, full, steadfast and inevitable, bearing the whole volume of its waters by sheer force of depth and impetus.

Hence it is that of all musicians he is most at the mercy of his interpreters. Beethoven's Adelaide is 'so beautiful' that not even Mr du Maurier's tenor 'can make it ridiculous:' but there are few of us who have not seen Chopin crushed out of recognition in the grasp of some conscientious and heavy-handed pianist. These surface-effects lose all their charm if they are played with stress and insistance, if they are forced down into a third dimension, which they were never intended to fill. There is much of Chopin's music in which solidity of execution is as fatal as strictness of time; in which the phrases are essentially light, wayward, aerial, demanding for their interpretation not only the most flexible sympathy of feeling, but the daintiest delicacy of touch. Even Moscheles, great musician as he was, found himself baffled by the new style. 'Chopin has just been playing to me,' he writes, 'and now for the first time I understand his music. The rubato, which, with his other interpreters, degenerates into disregard of time, is with him only a charming originality of manner: the harsh modulations which strike me disagreeably when I am playing his compositions no longer shock me, because he glides over them in a fairy-like way with his delicate fingers. His piano is so soft that he does not need any strong forte to produce his contrasts: and for this reason one does not miss the orchestral effects which the German school requires from a pianoforte player, but allows oneself to be carried away as by a singer who, little concerned about the accompaniment, entirely follows his emotion.' We of the present day may express ourselves with more warmth of approbation; but if we wish to understand Chopin, this is the standpoint from which we must regard him.

The second point for consideration is the almost incomparable power which Chopin displays in his use of accessory figures. By figure, in this sense, is meant a certain group of notes, having a clearly defined curve and rhythm, and maintained, with such changes as the harmony necessitates, through a phrase, or a paragraph, or even a complete work. In the use of this device there are two difficulties against which a composer has to contend. On the one hand, the group, if it is to command any part of the hearer's attention, must exhibit a distinct character, almost a distinct melody of its own; on the other hand, it will fail of its purpose unless it is sufficiently plastic to be adapted to different context and different requirements. Now, it is obvious that the more allegiance is claimed by the first of these conditions, the more skill is needed in order to satisfy the second. A figure which consists merely of simple arpeggios or of plain repeated chords can suffer any degree of harmonic alteration without loss of continuity; but as its intrinsic interest is heightened, either by elaboration of curve or by peculiarity of rhythm, so it becomes more individual, and therefore, under a change of circumstance, more difficult to adjust. Thus it not infrequently happens that a composer is forced to remodel his scheme because the group of notes which he has devised to support the first strain of his melody proves unsuitable to the next; or because a curve, that can adequately fill a bar of uniform harmony, may lose all fitness when applied to a bar in which the harmony changes. In Schumann's Widmung, for instance, the beautiful accompaniment figure wavers in the third bar, and breaks down altogether in the fourth; not because the composer wishes to put forward a new pattern, for he retains the rhythm of the old, but because nothing short of a total alteration of curve will satisfy the harmonic conditions of the tune.

But, so far as concerns this particular exhibition of skill, we never feel that Chopin is at the mercy of his materials. His simplest figures are interesting, his most elaborate are moulded to his use with an entire and unhesitating mastery. Under his hand the stubborn edges grow smooth, the obdurate lines become pliant and tractable, the recurrent shape preserves its unity without appearing wearisome or monotonous. The Prelude in F sharp minor (No. 8) is perhaps the most astonishing instance in music of this particular form of decorative effect; and hardly less remarkable are the Étude in E flat minor (Op. 10, No. 6), the Prelude in G major (No. 3), and the Prelude in F sharp major (No. 13). Indeed, Chopin's method of ornament is altogether his own; sensuous it may be in origin, evoked, at any rate in part, by an imperious craving for the pleasure of beautiful sound, but yet raised to the true artistic level by its refinement of taste and its finished accuracy of detail. It is no small matter that a type of art which appeals so frequently to sense and emotion should never be either vulgar or trivial or commonplace; that there should be nothing meretricious in its sentiment, nothing indolent in its expression; that with every incentive to a lax and careless Hedonism it should yet maintain an ideal of unswerving labour.

So far Chopin's music has been treated from the creative side. It now remains to add a few words on the peculiar tact and intelligence with which he employs his medium. In pictorial art this quality is of acknowledged importance: oil, water, pastel, have their own conditions and their own limitations, to overstep which is to invite failure; and it is recognised as an adverse criticism if we can say of an example in any one process that its effects could have been equally well produced by another.

The same law is valid in musical art. The orchestra, the string quartett, the organ, the pianoforte, are so diverse in tone and so disparate in character, that they admit no community of treatment, and hardly even a close community of idea. An arrangement may sometimes be condoned as a tour de force, it may sometimes be allowed as a preparation or a means of study, but to regard it as possessing any absolute value is to convict the original work of a serious imperfection. It is, therefore, a high testimony to the exactitude of Chopin's writing that it has almost entirely escaped the sacrilegious hand of the transcriber. Some of the Mazurkas are occasionally adapted for the voice, one or two of the Nocturnes misused to the service of the violin or the violoncello: but by far the greater number of Chopin's compositions are too obviously suited to the piano for any other medium to be regarded as possible. His very narrowness gave him concentration: his want of sympathy with all other instruments enabled him to devote his whole attention to the one that he understood. And, as a result, he gives us Pianoforte Music which, considered as a pure expression of technical intelligence, is almost without rival in the history of the art. No other composer has ever surpassed the unerring judgment to which we owe these wide-spread arpeggios, these wonderful liquid ripples of chromatic scale, these showers of sparkling notes which fall, as Liszt said, 'like dew drops' on some bend of phrase or turn of cadence. Beethoven, of course, understood the piano as fully as he understood everything else: but since Beethoven's time musicians, and especially romantic musicians, have a little tended to blur and obliterate these necessary distinctions, and to merge a due recognition of piano technique into their overmastering desire for emotional significance. Hence the fatal error of trying to extract orchestral effects from the keyboard, an error into which Schumann falls occasionally, and Liszt habitually, but from which Chopin may be regarded as entirely free. In a word, he appreciates both the capacities and the limitations of his material, and, while he draws from it every tone that it can legitimately produce, he never strains it beyond the due and fitting bounds of its proper individuality. It may be noted that Mendelssohn had something of the same gift, but in pianoforte music, Mendelssohn's thought is shallower than that of Chopin, and, therefore, more easily kept within its range. Indeed, since 1827, there has been no composer who could unite such poignancy of feeling with so exact an estimate of the means at his disposal.

To sum up, Chopin can claim no place among the few greatest masters of the world. He lacks the dignity, the breadth, the high seriousness of Palestrina and Bach and Beethoven: he no more ranks beside them than Shelley beside Shakespear, or Andrea beside Michael Angelo. But to say this is not to disparage the value of the work that he has done. If he be not of the 'di majorum gentium,' he is none the less of the Immortals, filled with a supreme sense of beauty, animated by an emotional impulse as keen as it was varied, and upholding an ideal of technical perfection at a time when it was in danger of being lost by the poets or degraded by the virtuosi. In certain definite directions he has enlarged the possibilities of the art, and though he has, fortunately, founded no school—for the charm of his music is wholly personal—yet in a thousand indirect ways he has influenced the work of his successors. At the same time, it is not as a pioneer that he elicits our fullest admiration. We hardly think of him as marking a stage in the general course and progress of artistic History, but, rather, as standing aside from it, unconscious of his relation to the world, preoccupied with the fairyland of his own creations. The elements of myth and legend that have already gathered round his name may almost be said to find their counterparts in his music; it is etherial, unearthly, enchanted, an echo from the melodies of Kubla Khan. It is for this reason that he can only make his complete appeal to certain moods and certain temperaments. The strength of the hero is as little his as the vulgarity of the demagogue: he possesses an intermediate kingdom of dreams, an isle of fantasy, where the air is drowsy with perfume, and the woods are bright with butterflies, and the long gorges run down to meet the sea. If his music is sometimes visionary, at least it is all beautiful; offering, it may be, no response to the deeper questions of our life, careless if we approach it with problems which it is in no mind to resolve, but fascinating in its magic if we are content to submit our imagination to the spell. And precisely the same distinction may be made on the formal side of his work. In structure he is a child, playing with a few simple types, and almost helpless as soon as he advances beyond them; in phraseology he is a master whose felicitous perfection of style is one of the abiding treasures of the art. There have been higher ideals in Music, but not one that has been more clearly seen or more consistently followed. There have been nobler messages, but none delivered with a sweeter or more persuasive eloquence.

ANTONIN DVOŘÁK.

I
DAYS OF PREPARATION

It is one of the quietest of places: hardly a sound, hardly an animal, hardly a sign of life. There are a few geese meditating undisturbed in the roadway, there is a knot of children busy with some inexplicable game in a corner of waste ground; now and again a couple of gossips come to fill their shapely wooden cans at the village well, or a slow, patient ox-cart bears down its fragrant load from the hay-field. For the rest, everything is fast asleep, secure in a bounteous land that asks but little labour for the satisfaction of daily needs, and secure, too, under the government of Prince Lobkowitz, who owns the castle and the village and half the country-side, and who, though he never comes to live among his own people, has always administered his territory with justice and beneficence.

At the bottom of the street a lane turns across toward the church, passing on its way a homestead which could take rank with an English farm-house of moderate pretension. An arched gateway gives access to a long, narrow court-yard, flanked on the one side by a solid, two-storey building, white-walled and red-roofed like its neighbours; on the other by a lower range of offices and storehouses; while at the back, behind the stable, runs a rough wall, surmounted by a statue of St Florian; and, carrying the eye upward, through a strip of coarse paddock, to the hedgerows and cornfields of the higher slope. A sign over the entrance announces that the place is still the village inn, as it was half a century ago, when Pán František Dvořák held it in tenancy and served his customers in the little taproom by the door.

Among the villagers Pàn Dvořák was a person of some consequence. For one thing, he belonged to a family old and respected—a peasant stock that had grown and flourished from the earliest times that memory could record; for another, he had married the daughter of one of the Prince's bailiffs, and so caught a faint reflection from the remote and inaccessible glories of the castle. Again, he was butcher as well as innkeeper, and so represented the centre of village trade, as well as the focus of village conviviality; and, to crown all, he was personally popular—a handsome, active youngster of eight-and-twenty, vigorous, alert, clean-limbed; and a good musician, too, who of an evening would bring his zither under the great walnut tree and delight his guests with 'Hej Slované' or 'Sedlák Sedlák,' or the new national anthem that was going to rouse Bohemia against Austrian oppression. It is only natural that he should figure large in the public gaze, and that there should be great rejoicings when, on September 8, 1841, the villagers assembled to drink the health of his firstborn.

The child grew up into a sturdy, broad-shouldered boy, with brown eyes, dark complexion, and a tangle of black hair—keen and adventurous in character, ready to join in any sports that were afoot, and, as tradition still attests, well able to hold his own in conflict. From the first he was passionately fond of music—listening in eager enjoyment when his father played to him, or when, on some lucky day, a band of wandering musicians would come from Kralup or Prague or even Pressnitz, and earn itself a welcome at the inn door. Better still were the times of village holiday, when the street was gay with stalls, and the dancers wore down the evening sun—Lenka in snowy hood and bright kirtle, Hanik in jaunty hat, long coat and drab knee-breeches, threading the mazes of Polka and Furiant until the fiddlers gave in for very weariness. It was a childhood of simple pleasures and healthy out-door life, full of colour, full of melody, the first preparation for a brilliant and honourable artistic career.

Meantime the more serious part of Dvořák's education was entrusted to an amiable pedagogue called Josef Spitz, who kept the village school at the street corner, and who not only taught his new scholar the rudiments of letters, but, what was more important, gave him his first lessons in singing and the violin. When he was twelve years old, the boy was sent to live with an uncle at Zlonic, in the coal country, where there was a better school and a wider opportunity of study. He had already made some advance in his two branches of music—enough, at any rate, for him to have taken the solos in the church choir at home, and to have borne an efficient part in the local orchestra: now, under the tuition of Liehmann, the Zlonic organist, he ventured out into new fields, and learned something not only of organ and piano but of the elements of musical theory. No doubt the instruction was very imperfect and very narrow of range, but within its limits it was gratefully accepted; and the old kapellmeister deserves some honourable mention as having been the first to discover evidences of unusual capacity in his shy, simple-hearted pupil. In 1855 came another transference; this time to Böhmisch-Kamnitz, where Dvořák learned German, and continued his musical studies with the organist Hancke; and then appeared an obstacle which seemed likely to block progress altogether. His father had recently removed to Zlonic in order to open a new shop on a larger scale; another hand was wanted to carry on the trade; and Antonin, at the age of fifteen, was told to regard his education as finished, and to return at once to the real business of his life.

It is easy enough to emphasise the incongruity of the situation: to recall Burns the gauger and Keats the apothecary's drudge: to condole with an artist who, like Fortuny, has to seek inspiration from the shambles. It is still easier to be wise after the event, and condemn, as tyrannous and unreasonable, a decision which time has signally refuted. But there are here two considerations which may serve, in some degree, to modify judgment. In the first place, the condition of music in Bohemia was, at this time, entirely different from that in France or Germany: its outlook far more desperate, its prizes far more unattainable. Nearly all the posts were held by Germans, and native talent, unless it could afford the price of expatriation, might readily find itself reduced to gathering pence by the wayside, or at most, would earn its reward in some village organistship—scanty, obscure and ill-paid, with little opportunity in the present and with no hope of further advance. No one could have foreseen that, within six years, a national art would spring into sudden and unexpected existence—bringing with it a means of expression which, in 1856, lay outside the reach of the most sanguine hope. It may be true that the darkest hour is that which precedes the dawn; but, for all this, it takes a robust faith to infer the dawn from the darkness. And, in the second place, the boy had as yet neither the education nor the material to offer his father any convincing proofs of genius. So far as we know, he had never written a note of music, and, though he could play skilfully on two or three instruments, there was no very great likelihood of his making his name as a virtuoso. His credentials were the reports of three village schoolmasters: his attainment was but a promise which the subsequent career might have failed to ratify. In a word, the capacity was uncertain, the chances of a career were almost non-existent: surely it was not unnatural that a plain man, who had no gift of prophecy, should balance present alternatives and sum them up in favour of competence and comfort.

At any rate, whether justified or not, the order was irrevocable. Pleas and entreaties proved equally unavailing, Hancke's protests fell upon deaf ears, and at last Dvořák reluctantly prepared to leave Kamnitz and to sacrifice all prospects of an artistic profession. But before yielding, he determined to make one more bid for freedom. Hitherto his father had known him only as an executant: perhaps the case would be altered if he could present himself as a composer. There were plenty of people in the country-side who could sing and play; it was little wonder if, amid that undistinguished crowd, his abilities were unnoticed; but to write music brings a man to the forefront, and shows a gift which it may be profitable to stimulate and encourage. He therefore prepared his last appeal in the shape of an original polka; copied the band parts, distributed them secretly among the Zlonic musicians, and, after a few days of breathless anticipation, launched his coup de théâtre for the conversion of an unexpectant household. It is better to draw a veil over the performance. The composer did not know that the trumpet is a transposing instrument: strings and wind contended strenuously in different keys; there was an agonised moment of jagged and excruciating discord; and it is not surprising that the family remained unconvinced. There is some little irony in the disaster, if it be remembered that among all Dvořák's gifts the instinct of orchestration is perhaps the most conspicuous. He is the greatest living exponent of the art; and he was once in danger of forfeiting his career through ignorance of its most elementary principle.

After so inopportune a failure, there was nothing left but submission, and for little short of a year Dvořák set himself with a good grace to accept the inevitable. But by the spring of 1857 he began to feel that the position was impossible, and once more assailed his father with urgent entreaties. There were his brothers—František, Josef, Adolf, Karel—growing up to take his place in the shop; there was no pressing need that he should remain any longer at work which he found wholly uncongenial; he was sure that he could succeed as a musician, and whether he succeeded or not, his whole heart was set upon the attempt. At last, after some months of anxious discussion, he carried his point, and in October set out for Prague—full of hope, full of ambition, eager to explore a realm of which hitherto he could hardly be said to have passed the frontier.

At Prague he entered the Organ School (founded some thirty years before by a society for the encouragement of ecclesiastical music), and, from 1857 to 1860, worked his way through a period of diligent and laborious studentship. The difficulties that beset him were even greater than those that traditionally obstruct the path of genius. At first, no doubt, his father was able to make him a small monthly allowance; but even this slender income had soon to be withdrawn, and the boy, at sixteen years of age, was left to maintain himself by an art of which he knew little more than the rudiments, in a city which was almost wholly barren of opportunities. And it was not only the material problems of food and lodging that pressed him for a solution. He had learned next to nothing of composition, he was totally unacquainted with the great classics, he had no books and no money to buy them; even the teaching of his school seems to have been mainly concentrated upon organ technique, and to have given little or no assistance in wider fields of study. Berlioz was poor, but at least he had the library of the Paris Conservatoire. Wagner spent two years of grinding poverty, but at least he could compensate them with 'Rienzi' and the 'Flying Dutchman.' Here is a case in which everything alike is denied—not only recognition but power, not only the rewards of life but its very appliances. The most certain confidence, the most indomitable courage, might well have lost heart at a prospect so dreary and so disspiriting.

In order to obtain the bare means of livelihood he joined a small band of some twenty performers, and went about with them, earning a meagre pittance at the cafés and restaurants of the city. On Sundays he played the viola at a private chapel, where there was some show of an orchestral service, and, between his two engagements, contrived to amass a revenue of rather more than thirty shillings a month. Of course all systematic study, except at his organ classes, appeared to be out of the question. He could no more have hired a piano than he could have purchased the crown jewels; even music paper was a luxury of the rarest indulgence; and concerts were only attainable, when, now and again, some good-natured bandsman would see him standing wistfully at the door and would let him in as a stowaway. But in spite of all discouragements, he continued his work with unabating enthusiasm, and, in 1860, graduated at the Organ School as second prizeman of his year.

By a notable coincidence it happened that the fresh-levied forces of Bohemian music received their marching orders at almost exactly the same time. As Dvořák emerged from the training-yard to take his place among the ranks, there was already assembling a council of war which, before it rose, should appoint a national leader and proclaim a national advance. True, another decade was to pass before the new recruit bore any prominent part in the movement. As yet he was only a trooper, carrying his marshal's bâton in his knapsack, but bound, nevertheless, to wait in patient subservience until the fortune of battle gave him his opportunity. Yet, for all that, the difference made by the winter of 1860 was almost incalculable. It is one thing to idle in barracks with no cause to defend and no victory to share: it is another to stand at attention on the outskirts of the field when the front is busy with the enemy and at any moment an aide-de-camp may ride up with orders to engage. Hardly in the whole of artistic history shall we find a stranger chance than that which, against all expectation, brought the two centuries of bondage to so opportune a close.

It is beyond the scope of the present essay to describe the national movement in any detail. There are so many lines of progress, there are so many conflicting issues, that the task cannot adequately be attempted from the standpoint of a single art. But, to estimate the music of Dvořák, it is first requisite that we should understand his relation to his country, and trace, in however brief an outline, the course of revolution that culminated in his triumph. He plays so important a part in the later acts of a patriotic drama, that we may well be excused for prefacing his entry with some slight epitome of the plot.

Up to the Thirty Years' War, Bohemia maintained an honourable place in the fore-front of European civilisation. She was printing books when hardly any of her neighbours could read them: she inaugurated one of the greatest religious movements of the Middle Ages: her university took rank with Paris and Oxford: her teaching was accepted by scholars from every corner of Christendom. But in 1620 the whole national life came to a sudden and tragic end—shot down by Tilly's mercenaries at the battle of the White Mountain. The loss of political independence was followed by an almost entire cessation of intellectual activity: the language was prohibited, the literature was destroyed, arts and sciences either passed into servitude or fled with the 'Winter King' to a distant and inglorious exile: the voice that was once eloquent in the congress of the nations died away into silence and oblivion. 'Better a desert,' said the Emperor Ferdinand, 'than a land full of heretics,' and his order was followed with only too literal an obedience. For the next hundred and fifty years the history of Bohemia is a blank page: her highest achievement to bear the yoke of an alien power, her utmost hope to forget that she was once a people.

It is true that, in the latter half of the eighteenth century, a few Bohemian musicians began to make their appearance: it is equally significant that, without exception, they left their native land and tried their fortunes as free-lances in a foreign service. Myslivecek won his title of 'Il Divino' from the careless enthusiasm of Italy; Reicha settled in Paris, where his lectures on composition embittered the early years of Berlioz: Dussek, the greatest of them all, became frankly German in aim and method: from first to last they turned their steps across the border in search of a career which their own country was too fast in prison to afford. It is, of course, idle to reproach them with a want of patriotism: there was no cause to which patriotism could attach itself: but none the less we may find in their denial of their country a conclusive reason for their ultimate failure. They were men of undoubted gifts—rapid, facile and copious of production, well-read in the musical learning of their time, fluent of phrase, prompt of resource, skilful and dexterous in the treatment of their material; and yet, at the distance of a century, there is only one of the whole band who is anything more than a name to us. Even Dussek has but a fading reputation: his work is lost under the shadow of its own laurels: and for the rest, it is not once in a decade that some student takes down their dusty volumes from the shelf and marvels at the misapplied talent and the wasted ability.

A curious illustration, half pathetic and half humorous, may be found in the career of Anthony Heinrich. He was born at Schönbüchel in 1781, served his apprenticeship at Covent Garden, and finally established himself in America, where, for some five-and-thirty years, he produced a continuous series of ineffectual compositions. There is an oratorio, written in ten real parts, and 'scored,' as its author proudly affirms, 'for all known orchestral instruments:' there are symphonies, such as the Eroica and the Tower of Babel; there are overtures—one to Washington, another to Niagara, another to the great Condor of the Andes; there are 'Mythological concerti grossi;' there are scenes from the Autobiography of a Troubadour; there are songs, studies, virtuoso-pieces without limit. It should be added that the official catalogue, which is appended to the excerpts in the National Museum at Prague, mentions with particular emphasis a concert overture per recte et retro, entitled 'The Advance and the Retreat.' If this incredible composition was ever written, it says something for Heinrich's counterpoint, and at the same time explains his total failure to win any position as an artist. But, apart from this, the explanation lies open on every page. Here is talent, here is technical skill, here is even some approach to originality: and the whole is ruined by uncertainty of aim and by want of earnestness. It all lies on the surface; it has no character, no stability, no inherent power of growth, and because it has no root it withers away.

We may conclude that the first efforts of the Bohemian renaissance were wholly misdirected and unavailing. The national art was no more to be created by 'La Consolation' than by mythological concerti grossi and overtures to the great condor. But in the meantime a small body of men was beginning at home to collect the scattered ruins of past achievement, and to lay them in order as the foundation of a more durable superstructure. Scholars like Dobrovsky set themselves to regather the language from the valleys and uplands of a rustic dialect: poets like Tyl and Hálek built up a fabric of literature from the artless rhymes of the country village: music itself began to stir, to awaken, to stand on the alert until its time should come. There could be little organisation, for the citadel was still in the hands of an adverse power; there could be little publicity, for the work might be at any moment prohibited by official censorship: but, in spite of all obstacles and difficulties, the movement gradually took shape and direction—now hampered by popular indifference, now thrown back by some political outbreak, never losing heart or turning aside from its purpose. Yet, before its purpose could be attained, there were two further conditions to satisfy. Hitherto the pioneers of Bohemian music, like those of the French language, had conducted their research as a matter of private interest and private enterprise: before they could combine into an academy of any mark or moment, they needed a parliamentary charter, and they needed a Malherbe. In other words, to encourage the hope of any further progress, it was necessary—first, that Austria should allow its dependent State a fuller measure of intellectual freedom; and secondly, that there should appear some man of sufficient authority and genius to undertake the leadership.

A sudden turn of the wheel, and the two conditions were fulfilled. In October 1860 the gift of liberty was granted by Imperial diploma; a few months later came news that Smetana had resigned his appointment at Gothenburg, and that he was returning to assume the direction of the national forces. His arrival was welcomed with an enthusiasm to which Bohemia had long been a stranger; new hopes were formed, new plans were discussed, the whole land shook off its lethargy and applied itself eagerly to the work. For his own part, the leader announced his method without hesitation. He had no sympathy with the more developed classical forms: in any case, he found them unsuitable to a music of which the very foundations were still to be laid: the first need, he said, was to engage the popular ear, and to show the true value and import of the national melodies. Bohemia should cut her corner-stone from her own quarries, and build her art on the peasant tunes in which the whole of her musical tradition was comprised. The next generation might look to questions of treatment; the business of the present was to gather material, and to utilise the abundant store which lay neglected in every village and hamlet of the country-side.

It is interesting to see the new Malherbe making his appeal to the people, and 'finding his masters in language among the porters at the hay-gate.' But there can be no doubt that, under existing conditions, his method was the only means of attaining success. The first requisite for a national art is the establishment of a national speech; and until this is done in its simplest and most unsophisticated shape, there is no proper material for the artist to work upon. Of course, the great structures of sonata and symphony are only developments of the form that is already held in germ by the folk-song: still they are developments, and to begin with them is to begin at the wrong end. The same life runs through the whole course of artistic evolution, but, if there be life at all, it will trace its origin from its most rudimentary embodiment.

Again, it was a stroke of good-fortune that Smetana's genius should turn at once in the direction of opera. Among all means of artistic expression, the theatre is the most direct and the most comprehensive: it draws on the resources of literature, of painting, of music; it can reach a public that has not yet learned to appreciate the separate forms. The golden age of French poetry began with the Cid; the whole history of modern music began with Eurydice: in like manner, Bohemia may date her renaissance from her first school of operatic composers. In 1862 the Interimstheater was opened; in 1863 came Smetana's 'Brandenburgs in Bohemia,' then followed a long and unbroken series of dramatic works—tragedy that took its theme from patriotic legend, comedy that turned to account the picturesque humours of the village life—all of native growth and of native origin, racy of the soil, simple, genuine, unaffected. To us, who look upon Prague from the standpoints of Dresden or Vienna, the music of these men may seem unduly artless and immature: with Wagner on the one side, with Brahms on the other, we have little time to bestow on tentative efforts and incomplete production. Some day we shall learn that we are in error. The 'Bartered Bride' is an achievement that would do credit to any nation in Europe; and, apart from its intrinsic value, it claims our interest as the turning-point of an artistic revolution. There is little wonder that Smetana has been almost canonised by his people. He was, in the truest sense of the term, the first Bohemian composer; and, though his country has one son to whose work she may look with a fuller admiration, she has none to whom she owes the debt of a more profound and cordial gratitude.

Such was the cause in which Dvořák found himself enlisted when he closed behind him the door of the Organ School, and set forth boldly in quest of a career. At first, no doubt, his part in the movement was humble enough: he had not yet tried his strength, he had not yet won his spurs, he had not shown any qualification that could raise him above the bare level of the rank-and-file. But, in the meantime, his opportunities of education were gradually widening. A place was offered him in the orchestra of the Interimstheater, which not only made him a member of the patriotic party, but threw him into closer relation with its more prominent representatives; and, from one of these—Karel Bendl, the composer—he received assistance and encouragement at a time when both were sorely needed. He was still too poor to buy scores; but now, thanks to the kindness of Bendl, he was able to borrow them; and his own force and energy soon recovered the ground that he had lost through the tyranny of circumstance. Every spare kreutzer was expended on music-paper; every free hour was devoted to study or composition; for nearly twelve years there followed a course of training as complete as the most rigorous self-discipline could make it. In all this period, nothing is less important than the record of its external events. There were some whispers of plot and counter-plot after Sadowa: there was some little excitement when the 'Hussite' riots took place, and Prague was declared to be in a state of siege; there was an outburst of rejoicing on the arrival of the second Imperial diploma: but these were mere matters of political change, which art had by this time grown strong enough to disregard. Even the history of the Theatre passes for the moment into a remoter background. The true biographical interest is centred within the four walls of a meagre lodging, where, day after day, an obscure student sat poring over Beethoven, in hopes to discover the secret of that magic style which transmutes all fancies into gold, and the elements of that unknown elixir which brings to music the gift of immortal life.

II
DURCH KAMPF ZU LICHT

The record of Dvořák's earlier compositions is involved in a good deal of doubt and perplexity. Many of the works were meant simply as exercises and were destroyed as soon as their purpose had been fulfilled: some still remain in manuscript: one or two have passed beyond the reach of conjecture. But at least it appears certain that a string quintett was completed by 1862, that shortly afterwards followed two volumes of songs, printed later as Op. 2 and Op. 3, and that in 1865 came a symphony in B flat (Op. 4),[45] and another in E minor. There is some mention, too, of a grand opera on the subject of Alfred, the libretto of which seems to have been taken from an old German almanack; but the score has long ago vanished into space, and has left behind it nothing more than the bare title. For the rest, we can only say that they would serve to illustrate Bacon's allegory of the 'River of Time.' A few pages of ballad and romance have floated down to us—a dozen songs, a set of short pieces for the pianoforte, a violin tune with orchestral accompaniment—and all the more serious production has sunk on the way. Yet enough is left to give presage of future greatness. No hand but Dvořák's could have written Blumendeutung or Die Sterne, or Der Herr erschuf das Menschenherz. The work may be slight of structure and narrow of range, but from the first it bears clear impress of its author's own character.