This composition, or rather series of fragmentary musical sketches, containing some very original and telling movements, is wholly unknown to the American public, and unfamiliar to most musicians, except for the “Turkish Grand March,” the only number that has gained any considerable popularity. “The Ruins of Athens” is the name of a curious but very ingenious production for the stage, once quite popular in Germany—a sort of combination of the spectacular play, the musical melodrama and classical allegory, designated “A Dramatic Mask” by the author, a playwright of Vienna. It was written and produced at a time when the sympathies and interest of the Christian world were strongly enlisted for the Greeks in their gallant and desperate struggles for freedom from Turkish domination and oppression which ended successfully in 1829, after a contest of seven years.

The scene is laid in Athens, then practically in ruins. The characters, situations, and environment are all, of course, Greek. To this work Beethoven furnished the music, originally scored for orchestra, some numbers of which have since been transcribed for the piano. Of these, only two are of any real value or importance to the pianist.

Turkish Grand March

First, the “Turkish Grand March” referred to, written to accompany the march of the Turkish troops across the stage in one scene. Rubinstein, when in this country years ago, scored many of his greatest popular successes with his own effective arrangement of this number. It contains no great originality or musical depth, in fact is quite primitive in both content and structure, but is brilliant and pleasing, with a strongly marked, rhythmic swing and a shrill, strident melody which, in its intentional, bald simplicity, strongly suggests the rude but spirited martial music of a half-barbaric people, given by fife and drum. Its artistic effectiveness depends upon the skilful handling of an old but ever popular device, the audible illusion of approach and departure. The music, beginning with the softest possible pianissimo, swells in a gradual, almost imperceptible crescendo, to the heaviest obtainable triple forte, and then as gradually diminishes to double pianissimo, tapering off at last into silence; thus simulating the approach of marching troops from a distance nearer and nearer, till they pass across the stage in immediate proximity, and then their gradual receding till lost again in the distance. It is a device of which many composers have availed themselves, and makes great demands upon the player’s self-control and sense of proportion and gradation, as well as his command of the tonal resources of his instrument.

The Dance of the Dervishes

By far the most original of these numbers is “The Dance of the Dervishes,” the second one referred to. This brief but complete composition is full of striking originality and graphic realism. It is one in which Beethoven’s genius seems to have anticipated by half a century the pronounced modern trend toward descriptive or program music, and is as realistic a tone-painting as we might expect from the pen of Saint-Saëns, Wagner, or any of the recent writers. The dance was introduced into the play as an interesting local feature,—the dervishes being numerous in connection with the Turkish army,—and Beethoven naturally selected it as an effective subject for musical treatment. But, before speaking of their dancing as illustrated by Beethoven, it may be of sufficient historical interest to give a brief sketch of the dervishes themselves.

They developed as a sect or order from Mohammedanism after it was well established in the world. The name “dervishes,” which they assumed, comes from a Russian word which means “beggars from door to door.” The Arabic word which means the same thing is “fakirs.” So they are called dervishes or fakirs in different localities, but are the same body. They declared themselves Moslems, but their doctrines, in many respects, differed widely from those of Mohammed. Their beginnings are in obscurity, but they were a well-established order by the eleventh century. Their expressed beliefs, as we earliest come to know them, were chiefly and decidedly religious. They seemed to represent the spiritual and mystical side of Islam, having a philosophy much like that of the Hindus, and perhaps borrowed from them. Their central idea seemed to be that the soul is an emanation from God, and that man’s highest aim is to seek a total absorption in Him. Their various and strange rites and ceremonies seem only different ways by which they sought for union with the deity. In this way they claimed that they secured miraculous powers. At first they largely lived in convents, under rules and orders, giving themselves up to meditation and penance, observing the rules of poverty, abstinence from wine, and celibacy, in the higher classes. Their growth was rapid; but in time they largely fell away from their highest estate, ceased to be so strictly a religious body, broke up into various ranks and sub-orders, became more free from conventional rules, more nomadic, and more wild and fanatical; but their social and political influence ever increased, so that they have long been regarded as a dangerous element in the state. There are crowds of them all through the East that seem to belong to no society, wandering mendicants, and, though often skilled in trades, largely subsisting by professional jugglery, bigoted in their fantastic beliefs, and varying in their rites and strange ceremonies. And yet always and everywhere there is still some general adherence to the old appointed religious ways, a peculiar tie or affiliation with the distinctive body or sect, however differing in certain notions or modes of worship. The lowest devotee of them all claims that the dervishes or fakirs constitute a distinct body of religious believers in spite of all divisions and varieties in manifestation. They acknowledge no authority but that of their spiritual guides, as that of the Mahdi in the Soudan, where these fanatics have been so lately fighting the English. They agree also in not following the letter of the Koran, or the general teachings of its interpreters. As a whole body, in all its orders, all over the world, they seek, as an act of worship, to get into an ecstatic state. They do this in various ways: Sometimes by drinking hasheesh, but more generally by some physical or mental ways, and while under the excitement they perform astounding feats in jugglery or mysticism that really seem almost miraculous. We cannot stop to detail these different methods. One of them is the dance of a certain order which has received the name of the “dancing or whirling dervishes.”

This is the dance of Beethoven—an ingenious method of excitement and self-torture, and at the same time a strict religious ceremonial. It consists of little more than an exceedingly rapid gyration upon an imaginary pivot, spinning round and round like tops, with almost incredible velocity, till overcome by dizziness from the protracted rotary motion, or by physical exhaustion, they fall in a swoon, after passing through all the successive stages of delirious frenzy always attending intense fanatical religious excitement, no matter what the race or faith. The dance is accompanied by frantic gestures, wild cries, and doleful groans, and often by a species of weird oriental music, adapted to its rhythm, and intended to stimulate the dancers to greater excitement, and consequently greater exertion and speed.

This music, as well as a portrayal of the dance, Beethoven gives us in this composition, which has been admirably transcribed for the piano by Saint-Saëns. It begins softly and a little slowly. As the dancers gradually get under way and warmed to their task, it gradually grows in speed and power as the frenzy increases, till it reaches a furious, almost insane climax; then rapidly diminishes as, one by one, the dancers, exhausted or swooning, drop out of the circle.

It demands great freedom and facility in octave playing, and endless verve and abandon of style; and needs, to be comprehended and enjoyed by an audience, some explanation of its character and artistic signification, either given by the player or printed on the program.

Critics have generally ascribed to this composition the honor of inaugurating a new and important department in the realm of tonal creation—namely, that of descriptive or program music; that is to say, music which attempts to embody in tone something more than mere ideal beauty of metrical form and rhythmic symmetry, and to express something more than vague emotional states, too intangible for utterance in words; music which conveys not only sensuous pleasure and indefinite moods, but a distinct, realistic suggestion; which gives, against a background of harmony, with its general emotional coloring, an actual picture of some scene in nature or experience in life; music, in a word, which takes its place in line with the advanced position of the other arts, in progress toward dramatic truth and worthy realism. Descriptive music, like landscape painting, has been the latest, and in some respects the loftiest, phase of the art to be developed.

We can scarcely with justice credit to Weber, as a strictly original departure, the opening of this new path in the domain of musical art, which was in modern times to lead so far and to such important and magnificent results. Descriptive music, of a more or less pronounced character, had already appeared from time to time, though rarely so labeled, and mostly in detached fragments, in the works of most of the greatest composers, preëminently in those of Haydn, Mozart, Gluck, and Beethoven. Even the austere Handel was not entirely free from occasional digressions into this field. But we may safely ascribe to Weber the honor of being one of the first to have the full courage of his convictions and to declare himself boldly for this phase of creative art, by giving to this distinctly descriptive composition an unmistakably descriptive title, thus fearlessly unveiling and emphasizing its realistic intentions.

The work opens with a simple but serious passage of recitative in single notes, in the baritone register, conveying the “Invitation to the Dance” as if by a mellow masculine voice. Then comes the reply, in a soft soprano, brief, kindly, but as if offering some playful objection, as the lady, true to her sex, waits to be asked a second time before saying yes. The invitation is repeated more urgently, followed by the assenting treble, as the lady steps upon the floor on the arm of her partner. A brief dialogue ensues, in which the two voices can be distinctly traced by their differing registers, alternating and interwoven, as the pair pace the polished floor, exchanging those airy nothings of the ball-room. Then the orchestra enters, with a passage of brilliant resonant chords, full of spirited life and gay challenge, calling the dancers to their places, and the waltz proper begins. Its crisp, piquant rhythm and free elasticity of movement, its bright, graceful melody and cheerful major harmony, all express youthful elation, fresh, joyous excitement, thoughtless, hence unmixed, gaiety.

As the steps and the pulses quicken, there comes on that exhilaration of mood familiar to all dancers, caused by the lights, the flowers, the perfumes, the music, the gay costumes, the beauty and the gallantry of a ball-room, the rhythmic exercise of the muscles and free circulation of the blood, all acting together to produce upon the senses and the fancy an effect amounting almost to intoxication; an echo of which is awakened in every breast, which has felt it often and keenly, on catching a strain of distant dance music, to the end of life. This mood is depicted in the composition before us by an exuberance of runs and ornamentation, following the first simple enunciation of the waltz melody.

After rising to quite a little climax of ecstasy, this mood lapses abruptly into the second waltz theme, slower, more lyric, dreamy, languorous, almost melancholy in tone, conveying that impression which every susceptible person feels, to the verge of rising tears, after listening long to waltz music, which is quite different from its first inspiring effect, and which every devoted dancer feels equally surely in the prolonged waltz. The time has come when one has grown so accustomed to the waltz movement as to be scarcely conscious of it, seems rather, in a state of rhythmic rest, to be floating on the atmosphere, which ebbs and flows to a three-four measure. Thoughts, breath, pulses, flying feet, the murmur of voices, all existence has adapted itself to this waltz tempo, as to its normal element, and the very planets seem to swing through space in triple rhythm. The true waltz has but two moods, which touch the opposite poles of emotion—that of joyous elation and of dreamy languor. We may call them the Allegro and the Penseroso of the waltz. And Weber, in the “Invitation to the Dance,” has recognized this and woven his composition of but two themes, representing the contrasting phases of feeling described.

In the midst of the second warm and sinuous melody, we hear again the masculine voice, in less conventional accents, and the soft responses of the treble, through quite a colloquy, while the accompaniment keeps ever steadily to the undulating waltz movement, till the two voices merge gradually into the general murmur and are drowned in the flourishes of the orchestra, as our couple disappears in the whirl, with which the waltz, taking up again the first sparkling melody with accelerated pace, draws with increasing confusion to its close. When the dance has ceased, and the orchestra is silent, the introductory theme recurs, as the gentleman leads his lady to a seat and expresses his thanks with the sedate courtesy of his first greeting; and thus ends this charming composition and this glimpse into that gay social world, where the hand some, talented, but rather dissolute young composer was only too great a favorite in his early years.

In spite of a certain baldness and primitive naïveté noticeable in the treatment at times, the “Invitation to the Dance,” so widely and justly popular, is one of Weber’s ablest pianoforte compositions, both from a musical and a dramatic standpoint. Regarded from that of pure music, it is especially interesting from the fact that it was the first composition to raise the waltz, used up to that time only as an accompaniment for dancing, to the level of legitimate and recognized artistic musical forms. In the hands of Schubert, Chopin, Strauss, Rubinstein, and Moszkowski, these successive kings of the waltz, it has since reached its present development.

The “Invitation to the Dance” was written a few months after Weber’s happy marriage with the opera singer, Caroline Brandt, and is dedicated to “My Caroline.”

The rondo is the most ancient, simple, and natural form of homophonic musical construction. It is based upon the folk-song and is always in one or the other of the more or less complex song forms. It consists of a simple melodic period, usually eight measures in length, bright and cheerful in character, alternating several times, virtually unchanged at each reappearance, with one or more subordinate subjects, in a more lyric or dramatic mood, for the sake of variety and contrast.

An apt but homely illustration of the rondo may be found in that most laborious and indigestible product of American cookery, that culinary absurdity, originating in our natural tendency toward display and dyspepsia, the layer cake. In the most primitive form of rondo, or more strictly speaking, rondino, the first theme appears but twice, corresponding to a first and second layer of cake, with the filling of cream or jelly between, represented by the second contrasting subject, of a more piquant and savory flavor, between the first theme and its reappearance—a sort of musical Washington pie. In the more extended forms, the principal melody recurs several times, occasionally with slight changes of treatment, but without radical transformation or development, like a successive series of cake layers of slightly different flavor, but the same fundamental material and an entirely different filling between them, each time; and a coda, or musical postscript, is occasionally added by way of frosting over the whole.

The rondo form is by nature adapted to the expression of the lighter, more pleasurable emotions. Graceful fancy, playful tenderness, arch coquetry, sparkling vivacity, here find their most ready and appropriate embodiment. The form is sometimes employed to express pensive sadness or restless, impatient longing, but never effectively to utter grave, profound thought or grand and lofty sentiment. Hence it most frequently appears as the final movement of symphony or sonata, a sort of light, pleasant dessert after the more substantial repast.

Rondo is one of those words of many relatives, both in our own English and other languages. Probably the great-grandfather of them all is the Latin rotundus, and probably the first emigrant to America, in the musical line of descent, was the old-fashioned round, familiar to our ancestors. Cousins and other close connections of the rondo are in music the roundelay and in poetry the rondeau, rondel, and roundel, all bearing a striking family resemblance both in external features and inward characteristics.

The poet Algernon Charles Swinburne, in his “Century of Roundels,” presents to us many charming representatives of this most modern branch of the family. The following verses, quoted from the work mentioned, are the best possible descriptive illustration of the form, scope, and characteristics of both the roundel in poetry and the rondo in music:

The E flat rondo of Weber is a fine specimen of its class, perfect and considerably complex in form and charmingly exhilarating in mood, with just enough of dramatic suggestion to give the necessary contrast of shading. It is neither distinctly descriptive nor deeply emotional. It pleases like a piece of rare old lace or hand embroidery, rather than like a picture or poem, by its delicate workmanship, its fine finish, and its beautiful, skilfully combined materials. Its mission is to charm the esthetic taste, like some dainty little Italian villa of variegated marbles, half hidden in a grove of olive and orange trees, by its symmetry of outline, its harmony of varied colors, and the simple, joyous, sunshiny life and love of life which it suggests, rather than to arouse the intellect or stir the depths of feeling by historic or legendary association with vivid or tragic human interests.

This composition should be played freely and fluently, with a certain gaiety and vivacity, but at a reasonably moderate tempo, with a tone crisp and sparkling, not dry, yet not too legato; clear, but not heavy. The player should employ few, if any, of the modern rubato effects and be careful to avoid blurred or too close pedaling, especially in the first subject. A somewhat slower tempo and more decided lyric effect should be introduced when the left-hand theme in B flat major occurs, and still more during the suggestion of dramatic recitative, alternating between the two hands, which opens with the half note in the right hand on G flat, A natural, and E flat. But, as a whole, the tempo should be kept very steady, and a strongly marked rhythmic distinctness and precision are absolute essentials in the proper presentation of this, as of all Weber’s works.

Although written for piano and orchestra, and still occasionally given as a concerto in symphony concerts, this work is more familiar and more frequently heard as a piano solo merely, or with the orchestral parts arranged for second piano, in which form it is very popular, especially for use in pupils’ recitals and music schools. It is one of the best and most effective of Weber’s compositions for piano, and one of the most successful of his attempts in the line of descriptive music, in which he was a pioneer; for as Sir George Grove well says, “His talent shone most conspicuously whenever he had a poetical idea to interpret musically.” On the subject of this concerto, he continues: “Though complete in itself as a piece of music, it is prompted by a poetical idea, for a whole dramatic scene was in the composer’s mind when he wrote it.... The part which the different movements take in this program is obvious enough, but a knowledge of the program adds greatly to the pleasure of listening.”

It is rare indeed to find in print any accurate and detailed information concerning the artistic and dramatic content of any particular composition; but in regard to this Concertstück by Weber, we are fortunate enough to have the whole story on which the music was founded given in the words of Benedict, who had it from the composer himself.

“The châtelaine sits alone on her balcony, gazing far away into the distance. Her knight has gone to the Holy Land. Years have passed by, battles have been fought. Is he still alive? Will she ever see him again? Her excited imagination calls up a vision of her husband, lying wounded and forsaken on the battlefield. Can she not fly to him and die by his side? She falls back unconscious. But hark! What notes are those in the distance? Over there in the forest something flashes in the sunlight—nearer and nearer! Knights and squires with the cross of the crusaders, banners waving, acclamations of the people. And there, it is he! She sinks into his arms. Love is triumphant. Happiness without end. The very woods and waves sing the song of love. A thousand voices proclaim his victory.”

The composition is in four movements, and it is hardly necessary to add that the first, larghetto, represents the sorrowful meditation of the lonely châtelaine upon her balcony; the second, allegro, her lively imagination picturing her lord upon the field of battle; the third, march, the tramp of the returning crusaders with flying banners; and the fourth, finale, the reunion when “the very woods and waves sing the song of love.”

Those Philistines who contend that program music is but a mushroom growth of the last decades of the nineteenth century will hardly care to come face to face with this instance of it, backed by the authority of Grove, Benedict, and von Weber, and nearly a hundred years old.

Among the better class of rather old-fashioned but effective transcriptions for the piano, which have fallen somewhat into neglect of later years, Kullak’s pianoforte version of Weber’s “Lützow’s Wild Ride” deserves attention.

The original ballad, which formed the text of Weber’s song, was one of the best of many of similar character by Karl Theodor Körner, that trumpet-voiced Swabian poet, the popular idol of his time in southern Germany, who sounded the notes of patriotism, conflict, and heroism in simple but ringing verses, which still echo in the hearts of his countrymen, and which describe the scenes, and glow with the fervid spirit of the century’s dawn.

Major Lützow, the hero of the ballad, was an officer in the Prussian Hussars during the brief and disastrous struggle with Napoleon in 1813, when his country went down, crushed well-nigh out of existence, by the invincible power and iron hand of the all-conquering Emperor. When Berlin surrendered, the Prussian army was disarmed and disbanded, and the King, Frederick William III, was forced to accept with thanks the most humiliating conditions of peace; and even the beautiful Queen Louisa, the people’s beloved divinity, had to humble herself in her despair to beg from the generosity of the victor the most ordinary concessions to the vanquished. Major Lützow indignantly repudiated the disgraceful treaty and openly defied the vengeance of the great Napoleon. Rallying a few of his gallant riders about him, he escaped to the forests, and there organized a guerrilla band, for months waging a phenomenally desperate but successful war on his own account with the world’s conqueror and his matchless army.

Lützow and his “Black Riders” were soon known far and near, the hope and pride of friends, the terror of foes; and hundreds of the best martial spirits of Germany flocked to his standard. He pushed his daring raids even across the Rhine into France, sweeping down like a whirlwind apparently from the sky, at the most unexpected times and places, leaving consternation and destruction in his track, and was gone again before the French could rally to oppose him. Soon the belief spread that the “Black Riders” were a supernatural phenomenon, an incarnation of the bloody spirit of the time, half men, half demons, bearing charmed lives, ignoring time, distance, and other human limitations, and liable to appear at any moment, without warning, in the midst of the imperial camp, or in the heart of Paris. Their very name was enough to shake the nerves of the bravest veteran.

This element of the supernatural Körner has ingeniously worked into the ballad, and it adds materially to the thrilling power of the heroic narration, though it is used, and very judiciously, not in the form of positive statement, but in a mood of shuddering inquiry and doubt.

Weber, in his vocal setting of the ballad, with his usual ability in grasping and utilizing every realistic suggestion of his subject, has emphasized both the martial and the spectral phases of the theme, treating with equal skill the spirit of martial daring and heroic patriotism which spoke in Lützow’s deeds, and the supernatural terrors which they awoke. One moment the “Black Huntsmen” sweep by us across some open moonlit plain, with a wild haste, with the clang of saber, the ring of bugle, and the tramp of rushing steeds; the next they flit before us through the gloom of the forests, vague, mysterious, like the indistinct phantoms of war. The distinct imitation of the rhythmic beat of galloping hoofs, so frequent a device in descriptive music, is effectively utilized here in accompaniment, while the melody of the song, full of trumpet-like suggestions, is raid to consist in part of actual bugle calls which were used among Lützow’s raiders.

Kullak, in his instrumental transcription, while preserving with artistic fidelity the composer’s intention in all the original effects of the song, has broadened, enriched, and intensified them, and at the same time adapted them cleverly to the resources of the piano. In places they may be still further enhanced by playing, as I would recommend to those possessing sufficient technic for it, all the scale passages for both hands in octaves, instead of single notes, as they are written, thus adding volume and brilliancy to the work as a whole.

The introduction, in rapid triplets, with marked accentuation, reproducing the exact rhythm of the gallop of horses, should begin softly, as if distant, and rise in a steady crescendo to a strong climax, suggesting the swift approach of a troop of riders; then the melody enters, bold and distinct, as if in trumpet tones, or given by the resonant voices of the dashing troopers. The piece must be varied by frequent and marked contrasts; now a trumpet-call, clear and sharp, answered by a distant echo; now a whispered hint of spectral terrors; again the sweep and rush, the clash and clamor, the delirious excitement of the impetuous charge.

The exultant climax, at the close, well expresses the sentiment of the final verse of the ballad:

This composition of Weber’s, when given by a rousing, ringing, full-voiced male chorus of Germans, stirs the martial spirit in every breast, just as the Marseillaise fires the blood of the French. In its piano transcription, by Kullak, I recommend it to every player and teacher who is seeking something which is very difficult to find—namely: a good and effective number, martial and rhythmic in character, which is of real merit, and is a novelty to the audience of to-day, and yet has a classic name attached. It is admirably adapted to close a program or to end a group of several shorter compositions of varying mood.

Franz Schubert, the golden sands of whose brief existence, rich with the jewel gleams of genius, ran all too swiftly through the glass of time, between the years 1797 and 1828, may be considered, if not the strongest, certainly the most genial, fluent, and spontaneous composer of the modern Romantic School, which arose and flourished so luxuriantly during the vigorous youth of our own century. He is most generally known as the master of the German “Lied” or song. This brief, concise, epigrammatic form of condensed musical expression, though not, of course, original with Schubert, received at his hand its fullest development, its highest perfection, both as regards intrinsic beauty and dramatic precision; while in quantity, as well as quality, he far surpasses all competitors in this vein of creative work. There are something like 600 of these songs from his pen, and such was his fluent versatility of production, that he is known to have completed seven of these inimitable musical gems in one day. His instrumental compositions, whether for orchestra or piano, though far less numerous, are for the most part equally able and effective, and deserve a much more frequent hearing in the concert-room than they at present receive, displaying, as they do, to the full, his inventive spontaneity, his inexhaustible fund of fresh, original melody, and the peculiar, tender, poetic grace of his style.

Most of Schubert’s best known pianoforte works, like the composition under discussion, belong to the smaller, more modest, and unpretentious forms. They are eminently soft, sweet, and winning, rarely exhibiting that breadth, grandeur, and passionate intensity with which such composers as Chopin, Schumann, and Liszt have made us familiar. But who would despise the wood anemone because it chances not to possess the voluptuous perfume of the queenly rose or the gorgeous hues of the wizard poppy?

The “theme and variations,” of which this work is an excellent example, is one of the most ancient, natural, and logical forms of musical construction. A simple melody, clearly enunciated at the beginning, is used by the composer as the musical germ of his work, from which he evolves, as by the process of spontaneous growth, all its manifold possibilities for varied expression and contrasted effect; much as the skilful orator expands from his tersely stated thesis or text, by means of elaborate comparison, analysis, antithesis, and peroration, all that far-reaching sequence of deduction and argument latent in his thought-germ. It is always fascinating to watch this growth, this gradual evolution, this play of many colored lights over the familiar theme, under the skilful and ingenious manipulation of a master hand. But there is, I claim, a deeper interest and a higher pleasure to be derived from seeking, beneath the smoothly flowing harmonies and graceful, rippling embellishment, for the allegorical significance or suggestion mirrored in their clear depths, as scenes and faces are reflected in the tranquil stream, and which are rarely, if ever, wanting in the true art work.

The “theme and variations” in music, which owes its origin to the first crude attempts of early composers to elongate and develop a musical idea into a symmetrical art form, corresponds to a very early phase of another art. I refer to the series of progressive pictures carved on the friezes of many ancient Oriental and Grecian temples, portraying successive episodes in the life of some god, hero, king, or prophet. The central figure is ever the same, however attitude, action, mood, and environment may vary, to suit the stage of his story represented in each scene. No smoke of battle, strangeness of garb, or storm of emotion can so obscure or distort the familiar lineaments that they are not recognizable, though they take contour and expression from circumstances, those variations in the theme of life. The same idea is carried out in pictorial art in the interiors of more modern edifices, when the walls of cathedrals are adorned with frescoes representing the life of Christ, in numerous consecutive panels, from the infant in the manger to the death upon the cross. Painting can tell a story, within certain limitations, as well as words, and more powerfully. The same is true of music, for those who have ears to hear.

As already stated in connection with the Beethoven sonata, Op. 26, to me the “theme and variations” always seems to represent a given character or personality, met at different times, amid varying scenes and circumstances, in many moods and situations, as would be the case in real life; developing with the progress of acquaintance and contrasting experiences, showing now one aspect, now another, according to the changes of inner emotion or outward environment, but always preserving the same individuality, an identity which lends itself to, but does not lose itself in, the vicissitudes of human existence. In the particular work before us, let the first fresh, simple, tender theme symbolize a maiden, the heroine of the story we will call her, fair, with the delicate freshness of first youth, full of the winning grace, the naïve simplicity and the dreamy poetic fancy of one of Lytton’s heroines: a young girl,

All the manifold vicissitudes of life are lying untried before her, with the latent possibilities of her nature waiting to be unfolded and developed by experience, that climate of the soul.

In the first variation, with its tremulous yet flowing embellishment, all is vague, uncertain, conjectural. She seems in a mood of speculation, of reverie, to be gazing forward down the dim vista of the years, and wondering, with a thrill at heart, what they promise or presage for her. It is the first rosy, dawning twilight of as yet indefinite hope and desire.

In the second, her pulses beat to a swifter, stronger measure. She has begun to taste the zest of life and is borne along impetuously on the stream of youthful exhilaration and unbroken confidence, out into the broad, full sunlight of the first great happiness. Light ripples of laughter, quick-drawn breaths of delight, a sunny circuit of bright and blithe fancies, envelop the theme and well-nigh conceal it.

The mournful melody, somber minor harmonies, and sobbing accompaniment of the third variation, so full of passionate pain, express the all too certain reaction from the former hilarious mood, the coming of that inevitable shadow of all great joy—its corresponding grief. The hour has come when the first great, crushing sorrow surges in upon the soul, in a resistless, overwhelming tide; and our heroine, from fancying that her life’s pathway was to be all roses and sunshine, is forced to find it, for the time at least, all thorns and midnight darkness, and to match her single strength with the might of woe in that struggle for supremacy which must come soon or late to all.

The fourth again changes wholly in character; is bold, energetic, spirited, almost martial. The struggle of life is in full progress. The resolute, forceful bass tones, with which the left hand enters from time to time, seem like the impetus of a strong will giving momentum to earnest purpose. This variation tells in stirring trumpet tones of victory, of the dauntless courage and the elastic strength born in noble natures of endurance and endeavor, of a character invigorated by conflict, deepened and matured by adversity; and it leads us back, at its close, through many winding ways and devious modulations, to a later happiness, expressed in the fifth and last—a happiness hard-won, but more complete than the first, though less exuberant, more ethereal and spiritual, with something in it of the mellow sunset glow.

The work closes with a tranquil coda, a brief evening retrospect, grave and thoughtful; but, on the whole, cheerful in tone, as if the backward glance were, all in all, fraught with satisfaction. Here we find the opening theme, the character melody, in all its first simplicity, but given an octave lower, in slower tempo and in full chords. Our heroine has not altered; the contours are clear, the proportions identical, not a note is wanting; but the leit-motif of her personality is deeper, broader, and fuller for the experiences of life behind her, and seems to bear the imprint as of an epitaph, “I have lived and loved and labored. All is well.”

Not long since, when urging upon a pupil the necessity of bringing out the deeper mood and meaning of a certain composition, the present writer received this response: “I am afraid to make it say all that, to put so much of myself into it; people will call me sentimental!”

The reply voiced a prevailing and thoroughly American weakness. It is far too common here to find, especially among our girls, a bright, warm, impulsive nature, full of genuine sentiment and poetic fancy, choked and perverted, turned shallow and bitter, by this same paralyzing fear of ridicule; to meet persons who take a morbid pride in concealing and repressing their better selves so effectually, that even their most intimate friends shall never suspect them of being one degree less frivolous and heartless than their companions, who in their turn are doubtless vying with them in this deplorable, misguided effort to belittle themselves, their lives and influence.

It is one of the most significant and lamentable signs of the time, that any allusion to or expression of a warm, true, earnest sentiment is met in society with more or less open and bitter derision, even by those who are secretly in sympathy with it, admire the courage and sincerity of its champion, and would gladly take the same bold stand in its defense, but dare not, and so add their coward voices to swell the majority. This is the more deplorable, since this tendency is at once cause and effect. The continual and systematic denial and suppression of emotion and ideality result finally in their complete extinction in most cases, or leave them deformed and feeble, to struggle for a precarious existence in some dark, hidden recess of the soul, whose highest throne is their rightful heritage.

George Sand says, somewhere, speaking of the French, “We once had sentiment, but the sirocco of sarcasm has scorched it from our hearts, and where it grew is a desert place!” Alas for the people of whom this is true! Alas for the young man or maiden who can say, “I have no sentiment,” and speak truth. And let me here caution any young person against a light and frequent, even though purposely insincere, denial of any characteristic of value; for there is a strange and subtle sympathy between the heart and the lips, which works steadily, if stealthily, to bring them more and more into accord. A lie is in every sense a violation of the laws of nature; and what is first uttered as a conscious, flagrant falsehood, becomes less so with each repetition, till unawares a day will come which shall see it transformed into a glaring truth. Such a person, no matter how highly organized, or perfectly trained otherwise, is no better than a machine. He does not live, he simply runs.

One may not be to blame for a natural deficiency in those higher qualities which make a life warm and rich and attractive, which mark a personality as something more than an animated clod, or even a well-adjusted mental mechanism; he must be pitied even though instinctively shunned; but he who wantonly draws the fatal knife of sarcasm across the throat of a true sentiment or a lofty ideal, however feebly or imperfectly embodied, commits a crime against humanity at large, more injurious and far-reaching in its effects than slaughter of the body only. Above all, let us beware how we tamper with the natural, essential relations between art and the emotions. Good-by to the artist who has no place or use for sentiment in his work; he should turn his attention at once to some more practical and creditable branch of mechanics.

One grievous mistake in our American system of training is that we ignore almost altogether this phase of culture. We develop the conscience, the reason, the memory, but do nothing for the taste, the imagination, the esthetic sense, the whole ideal and spiritual side of the character. The faithful, protracted study of music, or other branch of art, even though it never result in any financial profit or the smallest degree of professional success, will develop faculties and tendencies of more advantage to the student and to all who may come in contact with him in private life, than any amount of algebra, or any number of Greek roots. The German methods of study, especially for young ladies, might teach us a valuable lesson in this connection.

He who would attain the best results in art should remember that we do not gather dates of thorns, nor figs of thistles; that “only life begets life,” and that after its own kind; that an art product, to be really good and great, must be the concentrated, crystallized essence of the best that is in him, the epitome of his highest moods and aspirations, of those rare, intuitive glimpses of a loftier existence, to which in favorable moments he can lift himself, the distilled perfume of weeks, it may be years, of living. He should subject himself to every possible cultivating, elevating influence, should train, not only hand and head, but heart as well; for these three are the inseparable trinity of art. He should increase his resources, widen his experiences, expand his horizon; not by cramming a quantity of facts, or by the conquest of mere technical means—what use in commanding words, or tones, if one has nothing to express withal?—but by increased familiarity with and capacity to appreciate and exercise the qualities so constantly requisite in his work.

Let us remember, too, what the scientists tell us, that light and heat radiated from a given center are dissipated in force and intensity in proportion to the square of the distance to be traversed. The same is emphatically true of emotion. If one would stir his audience to a pleasurable excitement, he must himself be shaken as in a tempest; to warm them, he must be at white heat.

Should the question arise, How shall one learn to feel music more deeply and make it more expressive? my answer would be, Read, think, feel, dream, love, live! Read—not musical history and biography—these give information, not culture; they are valuable, but not in this connection; read poetry, especially the lyric and dramatic, and good prose literature. A person entirely unaccustomed to understand or to utter anything in tones, will often find the key to this unfamiliar medium of expression by the following indirect method: Find some work, a poem is best, because briefer and more concrete, which expresses, approximately at least, the sentiment of the composition to be studied. Most persons are more familiar with the language of words than with that of tones, and will reach a given mood more directly and easily through that channel. Let the poem be well studied, not only with the mind, but with the imagination, dwelling upon it, trying to feel its meaning and beauty as deeply as possible; then throw the same emotional content into the music, making the tones tell what the words have said. The present writer has found this course in teaching very effective with all sensitive natures, even with those who have but the rudiments of an artistic temperament.

Above all, artist or amateur, teacher or pupil, fear not to use in your work to the full all the emotional power you have or can acquire. It may be the injudicious application of force that sometimes impairs artistic results; it is never the excess. Vital energy should be controlled, regulated, but never stinted. Ill-timed frenzy is not art, of course; but where intensity is demanded and proper gradations and proportions are observed, no dirge is ever too deeply gloomy, no dramatic climax too strong. The danger is always of tameness, rather than of excessive fervor.

Let us, then, be genuine, earnest, whole-hearted, open, in our allegiance to the ideal; and as for those who sneer at sentiment in art or in life, why, let them rave. We adhere to the creed which T. T. Munger has beautifully formulated for our profession in his “Music as Revelation”: “Emotion is the summit of existence, and music is the summit of emotion, the art pathway to God.”