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diff --git a/20139-0.txt b/20139-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..190f0c1 --- /dev/null +++ b/20139-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4339 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Old Fogy, by James Huneker + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Old Fogy + His Musical Opinions and Grotesques + +Author: James Huneker + +Release Date: December 19, 2006 [EBook #20139] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OLD FOGY *** + + + + +Produced by Jeffrey Johnson and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + OLD FOGY + + HIS MUSICAL OPINIONS + AND GROTESQUES + + With an Introduction + and Edited + + BY + JAMES HUNEKER + + THEODORE PRESSER CO. + 1712 Chestnut Street Philadelphia + London, Weekes & Co. + + * * * * * + + + Copyright, 1913, by Theodore Presser Co. + + International Copyright Secured. + + Third Printing, 1923. + + * * * * * + + These Musical Opinions and Grotesques + are dedicated to + + RAFAEL JOSEFFY + + Whose beautiful art was ever a source of + delight to his fellow-countryman, + + OLD FOGY + + * * * * * + + + + +INTRODUCTION + + +My friend the publisher has asked me to tell you what I know about Old +Fogy, whose letters aroused much curiosity and comment when they +appeared from time to time in the columns of The Etude. I confess I do +this rather unwillingly. When I attempted to assemble my memories of the +eccentric and irascible musician I found that, despite his enormous +volubility and surface-frankness, the old gentleman seldom allowed us +more than a peep at his personality. His was the expansive temperament, +or, to employ a modern phrase, the dynamic temperament. Antiquated as +were his modes of thought, he would bewilder you with an excursion into +latter-day literature, and like a rift of light in a fogbank you then +caught a gleam of an entirely different mentality. One day I found him +reading a book by the French writer Huysmans, dealing with new art. And +he confessed to me that he admired Hauptmann's _Hannele_, though he +despised the same dramatist's _Weavers_. The truth is that no human +being is made all of a piece; we are, mentally at least, more of a +mosaic than we believe. + +Let me hasten to negative the report that I was ever a pupil of Old +Fogy. To be sure, I did play for him once a paraphrase of _The Maiden's +Prayer_ (in double tenths by Dogowsky), but he laughed so heartily that +I feared apoplexy, and soon stopped. The man really existed. There are a +score of persons alive in Philadelphia today who still remember him and +could call him by his name--formerly an impossible Hungarian one, with +two or three syllables lopped off at the end, and for family reasons not +divulged here. He assented that he was a fellow-pupil of Liszt's under +the beneficent, iron rule of Carl Czerny. But he never looked his age. +Seemingly seventy, a very vital threescore-and-ten, by the way, he was +as light on his feet as were his fingers on the keyboard. A linguist, +speaking without a trace of foreign accent three or four tongues, he was +equally fluent in all. Once launched in an argument there was no +stopping him. Nor was he an agreeable opponent. Torrents and cataracts +of words poured from his mouth. + +He pretended to hate modern music, but, as you will note after reading +his opinions, collected for the first time in this volume, he very often +contradicts himself. He abused Bach, then used the _Well-tempered +Clavichord_ as a weapon of offense wherewith to pound Liszt and the +_Lisztianer_. He attacked Wagner and Wagnerism with inappeasable fury, +but I suspect that he was secretly much impressed by several of the +music-dramas, particularly _Die Meistersinger_. As for his severe +criticism of metropolitan orchestras, that may be set down to provincial +narrowness; certainly, he was unfair to the Philharmonic Society. +Therefore, I don't set much store on his harsh judgments of Tchaikovsky, +Richard Strauss, and other composers. He insisted on the superiority of +Chopin's piano music above all others; nevertheless he devoted more time +to Hummel, and I can personally vouch that he adored the slightly banal +compositions of the worthy Dussek. It is quite true that he named his +little villa on the Wissahickon Creek after Dussek. + +Nourished by the romantic writers of the past century, especially by +Hoffmann and his fantastic _Kreisleriana_, their influence upon the +writing of Old Fogy is not difficult to detect. He loved the fantastic, +the bizarre, the grotesque--for the latter quality he endured the +literary work of Berlioz, hating all the while his music. And this is a +curious crack in his mental make-up; his admiration for the exotic in +literature and his abhorrence of the same quality when it manifested +itself in tone. I never entirely understood Old Fogy. In one evening he +would flash out a dozen contradictory opinions. Of his sincerity I have +no doubt; but he was one of those natures that are sincere only for the +moment. He might fume at Schumann and call him a vanishing star, and +then he would go to the piano and play the first few pages of the +glorious A minor concerto most admirably. How did he play? Not in an +extraordinary manner. Solidly schooled, his technical attainments were +only of a respectable order; but when excited he revealed traces of a +higher virtuosity than was to have been expected. I recall his series of +twelve historical recitals, in which he practically explored all +pianoforte literature from Alkan to Zarembski. These recitals were +privately given in the presence of a few friends. Old Fogy played all +the concertos, sonatas, studies and minor pieces worth while. His touch +was dry, his style neat. A pianist made, not born, I should say. + +He was really at his best when he unchained his fancy. His musical +grotesques are a survival from the Hoffmann period, but written so as to +throw an ironic light upon the artistic tendencies of our time. Need I +add that he did not care for the vaporous tonal experiments of Debussy +and the new school! But then he was an indifferent critic and an +enthusiastic advocate. + +He never played in public to my knowledge, nor within the memory of any +man alive today. He was always vivacious, pugnacious, hardly sagacious. +He would sputter with rage if you suggested that he was aged enough to +be called "venerable." How old was he--for he died suddenly last +September at his home somewhere in southeastern Europe? I don't know. +His grandson, a man already well advanced in years, wouldn't or couldn't +give me any precise information, but, considering that he was an +intimate of the early Liszt, I should say that Old Fogy was born in the +years 1809 or 1810. No one will ever dispute these dates, as was the +case with Chopin, for Old Fogy will be soon forgotten. It is due to the +pious friendship of the publisher that these opinions are bound between +covers. They are the record of a stubborn, prejudiced, well-trained +musician and well-read man, one who was not devoid of irony. Indeed, I +believe he wrote much with his tongue in his cheek. But he was a +stimulating companion, boasted a perverse funny-bone and a profound +sense of the importance of being Old Fogy. And this is all I know about +the man. + +James Huneker. + + + + +I + +OLD FOGY IS PESSIMISTIC + + +Once every twelve months, to be precise, as the year dies and the sap +sinks in my old veins, my physical and psychologic--isn't that the +new-fangled way of putting it?--barometer sinks; in sympathy with Nature +I suppose. My corns ache, I get gouty, and my prejudices swell like +varicose veins. + +Errors! Yes, errors! The word is not polite, nor am I in a mood of +politeness. I consider such phrases as the "progress of art," the +"improvement of art" and "higher average of art" distinctly and +harmfully misleading. I haven't the leisure just now to demonstrate +these mistaken propositions, but I shall write a few sentences. + +How can art improve? Is art a something, an organism capable of "growing +up" into maturity? If it is, by the same token it can grow old, can +become a doddering, senile thing, and finally die and be buried with all +the honors due its long, useful life. It was Henrik Ibsen who said that +the value of a truth lasted about fifteen years; then it rotted into +error. Now, isn't all this talk of artistic improvement as fallacious as +the vicious reasoning of the Norwegian dramatist? Otherwise Bach would +be dead; Beethoven, middle-aged; Mozart, senile. What, instead, is the +health of these three composers? Have you a gayer, blither, more +youthful scapegrace writing today than Mozart? Is there a man among the +moderns more virile, more passionately earnest or noble than Beethoven? +Bach, of the three, seems the oldest; yet his _C-sharp major Prelude_ +belies his years. On the contrary, the _Well-tempered Clavichord_ grows +younger with time. It is the Book of Eternal Wisdom. It is the Fountain +of Eternal Youth. + +As a matter of cold, hard fact, it is your modern who is ancient; the +ancients were younger. Consider the Greeks and their naïve joy in +creation! The twentieth-century man brings forth his works of art in +sorrow. His music shows it. It is sad, complicated, hysterical and +morbid. I shan't allude to Chopin, who was neurotic--another empty +medical phrase!--or to Schumann, who carried within him the seeds of +madness; or to Wagner, who was a decadent; sufficient for the purposes +of my argument to mention the names of Liszt, Berlioz, Tchaikovsky and +Richard Strauss. Some day when the weather is wretched, when icicles +hang by the wall, and "ways be foul" and "foul is fair and fair is +foul"--pardon this jumble of Shakespeare!--I shall tell you what I think +of the blond madman who sets to music crazy philosophies, bloody +legends, sublime tommy-rot, and his friend's poems and pictures. At this +writing I have neither humor nor space. + +As I understand the rank and jargon of modern criticism, Berlioz is +called the father of modern instrumentation. That is, he says nothing in +his music, but says it magnificently. His orchestration covers a +multitude of weaknesses with a flamboyant cloak of charity. [Now, here I +go again; I could have just as easily written "flaming"; but I, too, +must copy Berlioz!] He pins haughty, poetic, high-sounding labels to his +works, and, like Charles Lamb, we sit open-mouthed at concerts trying to +fill in his big sonorous frame with a picture. Your picture is not +mine, and I'll swear that the young man who sits next to me with a silly +chin, goggle-eyes and cocoanut-shaped head sees as in a fluttering +mirror the idealized image of a strong-chinned, ox-eyed, classic-browed +youth, a mixture of Napoleon at Saint Helena and Lord Byron invoking the +Alps to fall upon him. Now, I loathe such music. It makes its chief +appeal to the egotism of mankind, all the time slily insinuating that it +addresses the imagination. What fudge! Yes, the imagination of your own +splendid _ego_ in a white vest [we called them waistcoats when I was +young], driving an automobile down Walnut Street, at noon on a bright +Spring Sunday. How lofty! + +Let us pass to the Hungarian piano-virtuoso who posed as a composer. +That he lent money and thematic ideas to his precious son-in-law, +Richard Wagner, I do not doubt. But, then, beggars must not be choosers, +and Liszt gave to Wagner mighty poor stuff, musically speaking. And I +fancy that Wagner liked far better the solid cash than the notes of +hand! Liszt, I think, would have had nothing to say if Berlioz had not +preceded him. The idea struck him, for he was a master of musical +snippets, that Berlioz was too long-winded, that his symphonies were +neither fish nor form. What ho! cried Master Franz, I'll give them a +dose homeopathic. He did, and named his prescription a _Symphonic Poem_ +or, rather, _Poéme Symphonique_, which is not quite the same thing. +Nothing tickles the vanity of the groundlings like this sort of verbal +fireworks. "It leaves so much to the imagination," says the stout man +with the twenty-two collar and the number six hat. It does. And the +kind of imagination--Oh, Lord! Liszt, nothing daunted because he +couldn't shake out an honest throw of a tune from his technical +dice-box, built his music on so-called themes, claiming that in this +matter he derived from Bach. Not so. Bach's themes were subjects for +fugal treatment; Liszt's, for symphonic. The parallel is not fair. +Besides, Daddy Liszt had no melodic invention. Bach had. Witness his +chorals, his masses, his oratorios! But the Berlioz ball had to be kept +a-rolling; the formula was too easy; so Liszt named his poems, named his +notes, put dog-collars on his harmonies--and yet no one whistled after +them. Is it any wonder? + +Tchaikovsky studied Liszt with one eye; the other he kept on Bellini and +the Italians. What might have happened if he had been one-eyed I cannot +pretend to say. In love with lush, sensuous melody, attracted by the +gorgeous pyrotechnical effects in Berlioz and Liszt and the pomposities +of Meyerbeer, this Russian, who began study too late and being too lazy +to work hard, manufactured a number of symphonic poems. To them he gave +strained, fantastic names--names meaningless and pretty--and, as he was +short-winded contrapuntally, he wrote his so-called instrumental poems +shorter than Liszt's. He had no symphonic talent, he substituted Italian +tunes for dignified themes, and when the development section came he +plastered on more sentimental melodies. His sentiment is hectic, is +unhealthy, is morbid. Tchaikovsky either raves or whines like the people +in a Russian novel. I think the fellow was a bit touched in the upper +story; that is, I did until I heard the compositions of R. Strauss, of +Munich. What misfit music for such a joyous name, a name evocative of +all that is gay, refined, witty, sparkling, and spontaneous in music! +After Mozart give me Strauss--Johann, however, not Richard! + +No longer the wheezings, gaspings, and short-breathed phrases of Liszt; +no longer the evil sensuality, loose construction, formlessness, and +drunken peasant dances of Tchaikovsky; but a blending of Wagner, Brahms, +Liszt--and the classics. Oh, Strauss, Richard, knows his business! He is +a skilled writer. He has his chamber-music moments, his lyric outbursts; +his early songs are sometimes singable; it is his perverse, vile orgies +of orchestral music that I speak of. No sane man ever erected such a mad +architectural scheme. He should be penned behind the bars of his own mad +music. He has no melody. He loves ugly noises. He writes to distracting +lengths; and, worst of all, his harmonies are hideous. But he doesn't +forget to call his monstrosities fanciful names. If it isn't _Don Juan_, +it is _Don Quixote_--have you heard the latter? [O shades of Mozart!] +This giving his so-called compositions literary titles is the plaster +for our broken heads--and ear-drums. So much for your three favorite +latter-day composers. + +Now for my _Coda_! If the art of today has made no progress in fugue, +song, sonata, symphony, quartet, oratorio, opera [who has improved on +Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert? Name! name! I say], +what is the use of talking about "the average of today being higher"? +How higher? You mean more people go to concerts, more people enjoy music +than fifty or a hundred years ago! Do they? I doubt it. Of what use huge +places of worship when the true gods of art are no longer worshiped? +Numbers prove nothing; the majority is not always in the right. I +contend that there has been no great music made since the death of +Beethoven; that the multiplication of orchestras, singing societies, and +concerts are no true sign that genuine culture is being achieved. The +tradition of the classics is lost; we care not for the true masters. +Modern music making is a fashionable fad. People go because they think +they should. There was more real musical feeling, uplifting and sincere, +in the Old St. Thomaskirche in Leipsic where Bach played than in all +your modern symphony and oratorio machine-made concerts. I'll return to +the charge again! + + Dussek Villa-on-Wissahickon, + Near Manayunk, Pa. + + + + +II + +OLD FOGY GOES ABROAD + + +Before I went to Bayreuth I had always believed that some magic spell +rested upon the Franconian hills like a musical benison; some mystery of +art, atmosphere, and individuality evoked by the place, the tradition, +the people. How sadly I was disappointed I propose to tell you, +prefacing all by remarking that in Philadelphia, dear old, dusty +Philadelphia, situated near the confluence of the Delaware and +Schuylkill, I have listened to better representations of the _Ring_ and +_Die Meistersinger_. + +It is just thirty years since I last visited Germany. Before the +Franco-Prussian War there was an air of sweetness, homeliness, an +old-fashioned peace in the land. The swaggering conqueror, the arrogant +Berliner type of all that is unpleasant, _modern_ and insolent now +overruns Germany. The ingenuousness, the _naïve_ quality that made dear +the art of the Fatherland, has disappeared. In its place is smartness, +flippancy, cynicism, unbelief, and the critical faculty developed to the +pathological point. I thought of Schubert, and sighed in the presence of +all this wit and savage humor. Bayreuth is full of _doctrinaires_. They +eagerly dispute Wagner's meanings, and my venerable notions of the +_Ring_ were not only sneered at, but, to be quite frank with you, +dissipated into thin, metaphysical smoke. + +In 1869 I fancied Reinecke a decent composer, Schopenhauer remarkable, +if somewhat bitter in his philosophic attitude towards life. Reinecke is +now a mere ghost of a ghost, a respectable memory of Leipsic, whilst +Schopenhauer has been brutally elbowed out of his niche by his former +follower, Nietzsche. In every _café_, in every summer-garden I sought I +found groups of young men talking heatedly about Nietzsche, and the +Over-Man, the _Uebermensch_, to be quite German. I had, in the innocence +of my Wissahickon soul, supposed Schopenhauer Wagner's favorite +philosopher. Mustering up my best German, somewhat worn from disuse, I +gave speech to my views, after the manner of a garrulous old man who +hates to be put on the shelf before he is quite disabled. + +_Ach!_ but I caught it, _ach!_ but I was pulverized and left speechless +by these devotees of the Hammer-philosopher, Nietzsche. I was told that +Wagner was a fairly good musician, although no inventor of themes. He +had evolved no new melodies, but his knowledge of harmony, above all, +his _constructive_ power, were his best recommendations. As for his +abilities as a dramatic poet, absurd! His metaphysics were green with +age, his theories as to the syntheses of the arts silly and +impracticable, while his Schopenhauerism, pessimism, and the rest sheer +dead weights that were slowly but none the less surely strangling his +music. When I asked how this change of heart came about, how all that I +had supposed that went to the making of the Bayreuth theories was +exploded moonshine, I was curtly reminded of Nietzsche. + +Nietzsche again, always this confounded Nietzsche, who, mad as a hatter +at Naumburg, yet contrives to hypnotize the younger generation with his +crazy doctrines of force, of the great Blond Barbarian, of the Will to +Destroy--infinitely more vicious than the Will to Live--and the inherent +immorality of Wagner's music. I came to Bayreuth to criticize; I go away +praying, praying for the mental salvation of his new expounders, praying +that this poisonous nonsense will not reach us in America. But it will. + +The charm of this little city is the high price charged for everything. +A stranger is "spotted" at once and he is the prey of the townspeople. +Beer, carriages, food, pictures, music, busts, books, rooms, nothing is +cheap. I've been all over, saw Wagner's tomb, looked at the outside of +_Wahnfried_ and the inside of the theater. I have seen Siegfried +Wagner--who can't conduct one-quarter as well as our own Walter +Damrosch--walking up and down the streets, a tin demi-god, a reduced +octavo edition of his father bound in cheap calf. Worse still, I have +heard the young man try to conduct, try to hold that mighty Bayreuth +orchestra in leash, and with painful results. Not one firm, clanging +chord could he extort; all were more or less arpeggioed, and as for +climax--there was none. + +I have sat in Sammett's garden, which was once Angermann's, famous for +its company, kings, composers, poets, wits, and critics, all mingling +there in discordant harmony. Now it is overrun by Cook's tourists in +bicycle costumes, irreverent, chattering, idle, and foolish. Even Wagner +has grown gray and the _Ring_ sounded antique to me, so strong were the +disturbing influences of my environment. + +The bad singing by ancient Teutons--for the most part--was to blame for +this. Certainly when Walhall had succumbed to the flames and the +primordial Ash-Tree sunk in the lapping waters of the treacherous Rhine, +I felt that the end of the universe was at hand and it was with a sob I +saw outside in the soft, summer-sky, riding gallantly in the blue, the +full moon. It was the only young thing in the world at that moment, this +burnt-out servant planet of ours, and I gazed at it long and fondly, for +it recalled the romance of my student years, my love of Schumann's +poetic music and other illusions of a vanished past. In a word, I had +again surrendered to the sentimental spell of Germany, Germany by night, +and with my heart full I descended from the terrace, walked slowly down +the arbored avenue to Sammett's garden and there sat, mused and--smoked +my Yankee pipe. I realize that I am, indeed, an old man ready for that +shelf the youngsters provide for the superannuated and those who +disagree with them. + +I had all but forgotten the performances. They were, as I declared at +the outset, far from perfect, far from satisfactory. The _Ring_ was +depressing. Rosa Sucher, who visited us some years ago, was a flabby +_Sieglinde_. The _Siegmund_, Herr Burgstalles, a lanky, awkward young +fellow from over the hills somewhere. He was sad. Ernst Kraus, an old +acquaintance, was a familiar _Siegfried_. Demeter Popovici you remember +with Damrosch, also Hans Greuer. Van Rooy's _Wotan_ was supreme. It was +the one pleasant memory of Bayreuth, that and the moon. Gadski was not +an ideal _Eva_ in _Meistersinger_, while Demuth was an excellent _Hans +Sachs_. The _Brünnhilde_ was Ellen Gulbranson, a Scandinavian. She was +an heroic icicle that Wagner himself could not melt. Schumann-Heink, as +_Magdalene_ in _Meistersinger_, was simply grotesque. Van Rooy's +_Walther_ I missed. Hans Richter conducted my favorite of the Wagner +music dramas, the touching and pathetic Nuremberg romance, and, to my +surprise, went to sleep over the _tempi_. He has the technique of the +conductor, but the elbow-grease was missing. He too is old, but better +one aged Richter than a caveful of spry Siegfried Wagners! + +I shan't bother you any more as to details. Bayreuth is full of +ghosts--the very trees on the terrace whisper the names of Liszt and +Wagner--but Madame Cosima is running the establishment for all there is +in it financially--excuse my slang--and so Bayreuth is deteriorating. I +saw her, Liszt's daughter, von Bülow, and Wagner's wife--or rather +widow--and her gaunt frame, strong if angular features, gave me the +sight of another ghost from the past. Ghosts, ghosts, the world is +getting old and weary, and astride of it just now is the pessimist +Nietzsche, who, disguised as a herculean boy, is deceiving his +worshippers with the belief that he is young and a preacher of the +joyful doctrines of youth. Be not deceived, he is but another veiled +prophet. His mask is that of a grinning skeleton, his words are bitter +with death and deceit. + +I stopped over at Nuremberg and at a chamber concert heard Schubert's +quintet for piano and strings, _Die Forelle_--and although I am no trout +fisher, the sweet, boyish loquacity, the pure music made my heart glad +and I wept. + + + + +III + +THE WAGNER CRAZE + + +The new century is at hand--I am not one of those chronologically stupid +persons who believes that we are now in it--and tottering as I am on its +brink, the brink of my grave, and of all born during 1900, it might +prove interesting as well as profitable for me to review my musical +past. I hear the young folks cry aloud: "Here comes that garrulous old +chap again with his car-load of musty reminiscences! Even if Old Fogy +did study with Hummel, is that any reason why we should be bored by the +fact? How can a skeleton in the closet tell us anything valuable about +contemporary music?" + +To this youthful wail--and it is a real one--I can raise no real +objection. I am an Old Fogy; but I know it. That marks the difference +between other old fogies and myself. Some English wit recently remarked +that the sadness of old age in a woman is because her face changes; but +the sad part of old age in a man is that his mind does not change. Well, +I admit we septuagenarians are set in our ways. We have lived our lives, +felt, suffered, rejoiced, and perhaps grown a little tolerant, a little +apathetic. The young people call it cynical; yet it is not +cynicism--only a large charity for the failings, the shortcomings of +others. So what I am about to say in this letter must not be set down as +either garrulity or senile cynicism. It is the result of a half-century +of close observation, and, young folks, let me tell you that in fifty +years much music has gone through the orifices of my ears; many artistic +reputations made and lost! + +I repeat, I have witnessed the rise and fall of so many musical +dynasties; have seen men like Wagner emerge from northern mists and die +in the full glory of a reverberating sunset. And I have also remarked +that this same Richard the Actor touched his apogee fifteen years ago +and more. Already signs are not wanting which show that Wagner and +Wagnerism is on the decline. As Swinburne said of Walt Whitman: "A +reformer--but not founder." This holds good of Wagner, who closed a +period and did not begin a new one. In a word, Wagner was a theater +musician, one cursed by a craze for public applause--and shekels--and +knowing his public, gave them more operatic music than any Italian who +ever wrote for barrel-organ fame. Wagner became popular, the rage; and +today his music, grown stale in Germany, is being fervently imitated, +nay, burlesqued, by the neo-Italian school. Come, is it not a comical +situation, this swapping of themes among the nations, this picking and +stealing of styles? And let me tell you that of all the Robber Barons of +music, Wagner was the worst. He laid hands on every score, classical or +modern, that he got hold of. + +But I anticipate; I put the _coda_ before the dog. When _Rienzi_ +appeared none of us were deceived. We recognized our Meyerbeer +disfigured by clumsy, heavy German treatment. Wagner had been to the +opera in Paris and knew his Meyerbeer; but even Wagner could not +distance Meyerbeer. He had not the melodic invention, the orchestral +tact, or the dramatic sense--at that time. Being a born mimicker of +other men, a very German in industry, and a great egotist, he began +casting about for other models. He soon found one, the greatest of all +for his purpose. It was Weber--that same Weber for whose obsequies +Wagner wrote some funeral music, not forgetting to use a theme from the +_Euryanthe_ overture. Weber was to Wagner a veritable Golconda. From +this diamond mine he dug out tons of precious stones; and some of them +he used for _The Flying Dutchman_. We all saw then what a parody on +Weber was this pretentious opera, with its patches of purple, its stale +choruses, its tiresome recitatives. The latter Wagner fondly imagined +were but prolonged melodies. Already in his active, but musically-barren +brain, theories were seething. "How to compose operas without music" +might be the title of all his prose theoretical works. Not having a +tail, this fox, therefore, solemnly argued that tails were useless +appanages. You remember your Æsop! Instead of melodic inspiration, +themes were to be used. Instead of broad, flowing, but intelligible +themes, a mongrel breed of recitative and _parlando_ was to take their +place. + +It was all very clever, I grant you, for it threw dust in the public +eye--and the public likes to have its eyes dusted, especially if the +dust is fine and flattering. Wagner proceeded to make it so by labeling +his themes, leading motives. Each one meant something. And the Germans, +the vainest race in Europe, rose like catfish to the bait. Wagner, in +effect, told them that his music required brains--Aha! said the German, +he means _me_; that his music was not cheap, pretty, and sensual, but +spiritual, lofty, ideal--Oho! cried the German, he means _me_ again. I +am ideal. And so the game went merrily on. Being the greatest egotist +that ever lived, Wagner knew that this music could not make its way +without a violent polemic, without extraneous advertising aids. So he +made a big row; became socialist, agitator, exile. He dragged into his +music and the discussion of it, art, politics, literature, philosophy, +and religion. It is a well-known fact that this humbugging comedian had +written the _Ring of the Nibelungs_ before he absorbed the +Schopenhauerian doctrines, and then altered the entire scheme so as to +imbue--forsooth!--his music with pessimism. + +Nor was there ever such folly, such arrant "faking" as this! What has +philosophy, religion, politics to do with operatic music? It cannot +express any one of them. Wagner, clever charlatan, knew this, so he +worked the leading-motive game for all it was worth. Realizing the +indefinite nature of music, he gave to his themes--most of them borrowed +without quotation marks--such titles as Love-Death; Presentiment of +Death; Cooking motive--in _Siegfried_; Compact theme, etc., etc. The +list is a lengthy one. And when taxed with originating all this futile +child's-play he denied that he had named his themes. Pray, then, who +did? Did von Wolzogen? Did Tappert? They worked directly under his +direction, put forth the musical lures and decoys and the ignorant +public was easily bamboozled. Simply mention the esoteric, the +mysterious omens, signs, dark designs, and magical symbols, and you +catch a certain class of weak-minded persons. + +Wagner knew this; knew that the theater, with its lights, its scenery, +its costumes, orchestra, and vocalizing, was the place to hoodwink the +"cultured" classes. Having a pretty taste in digging up old fables and +love-stories, he saturated them with mysticism and far-fetched musical +motives. If _The Flying Dutchman_ is absurd in its story--what possible +interest can we take in the _Salvation_ of an idiotic mariner, who +doesn't know how to navigate his ship, much less a wife?--what is to be +said of _Lohengrin_? This cheap Italian music, sugar-coated in its +sensuousness, the awful borrowings from Weber, Marschner, Beethoven, and +Gluck--and the story! It is called "mystic." Why? Because it is _not_, I +suppose. What puerile trumpery is that refusal of a man to reveal his +name! And _Elsa_! Why not Lot's wife, whose curiosity turned her into a +salt trust! + +You may notice just here what the Wagnerians are pleased to call the +Master's "second" manner. Rubbish! It is a return to the Italians. It is +a graft of glistening Italian sensuality upon Wagner's strenuous study +of Beethoven's and Weber's orchestras. _Tannhäuser_ is more manly in its +fiber. But the style, the mixture of styles; the lack of organic unity, +the blustering orchestration, and the execrable voice-killing vocal +writing! The _Ring_ is an amorphous impossibility. That is now +critically admitted. It ruins voices, managers, the public purse, and +our patience. Its stories are indecent, blasphemous, silly, absurd, +trivial, tiresome. To talk of the _Ring_ and Beethoven's symphonies is +to put wind and wisdom in the same category. Wagner vulgarized +Beethoven's symphonic methods--noticeably his powers of development. +Think of utilizing that magnificent and formidable engine, the Beethoven +symphonic method, to accompany a tinsel tale of garbled Norse mythology +with all sorts of modern affectations and morbidities introduced! It is +maddening to any student of pure, noble style. Wagner's Byzantine style +has helped corrupt much modern art. + +_Tristan und Isolde_ is the falsifying of all the pet Wagner +doctrines--Ah! that odious, heavy, pompous prose of Wagner. In this +erotic comedy there is no action, nothing happens except at long +intervals; while the orchestra never stops its garrulous symphonizing. +And if you prate to me of the wonderful Wagner orchestration and its +eloquence, I shall quarrel with you. Why wonderful? It never stops, but +does it ever say anything? Every theme is butchered to death. There is +endless repetition in different keys, with different instrumental +_nuances_, yet of true, intellectual and emotional mood-development +there is no trace; short-breathed, chippy, choppy phrasing, and never +ten bars of a big, straightforward melody. All this proves that Wagner +had not the power of sustained thoughts like Mozart or Beethoven. And +his orchestration, with its daubing, its overladen, hysterical color! +What a humbug is this sensualist, who masks his pruriency back of poetic +and philosophical symbols. But it is always easy to recognize the cloven +foot. The headache and jaded nerves we have after a night with Wagner +tell the story. + +I admit that _Die Meistersinger_ is healthy. Only it is not art. And +don't forget, my children, that Wagner's prettiest lyrics came from +Schubert and Schumann. They have all been traced and located. I need not +insult your intelligence by suggesting that the _Wotan_ motive is to be +found in Schubert's _Wanderer_. If you wish for the _Waldweben_ just go +to Spohr's _Consecration of Tones_ symphony, first movement. And Weber +also furnishes a pleasing list, notably the _Sword_ motive from the +_Ring_, which may be heard in _Ocean, Thou Mighty Monster_. _Parsifal_ I +refuse to discuss. It is an outrage against religion, morals, and +music. However, it is not alone this plagiarizing that makes Wagner so +unendurable to me. It is his continual masking as the greatest composer +of his century, when he was only a clever impostor, a theater-man, a +wearer of borrowed plumage. His influence on music has been deplorably +evil. He has melodramatized the art, introduced in it a species of +false, theatrical, _personal_ feeling, quite foreign to its nature. The +symphony, not the stage, is the objective of musical art. +Wagner--neither composer nor tragedian, but a cunning blend of +both--diverted the art to his own uses. A great force? Yes, a great +force was his, but a dangerous one. He never reached the heights, but +was always posturing behind the foot-lights. And he has left no school, +no descendants. Like all hybrids, he is cursed with sterility. The +twentieth century will find Wagner out. _Nunc Dimittis!_ + + + + +IV + +IN MOZARTLAND WITH OLD FOGY + + +The greatest musician the world has yet known--Mozart. The greatest? +Yes, the greatest; greater than Bach, because less studied, less +artificial, professional, and _doctrinaire_; greater than Beethoven, +because Mozart's was a blither, a more serene spirit, and a spirit whose +eyes had been anointed by beauty. Beethoven is not beautiful. He is +dramatic, powerful, a maker of storms, a subduer of tempests; but his +speech is the speech of a self-centered egotist. He is the father of all +the modern melomaniacs, who, looking into their own souls, write what +they see therein--misery, corruption, slighting selfishness, and +ugliness. Beethoven, I say, was too near Mozart not to absorb some of +his sanity, his sense of proportion, his glad outlook upon life; but the +dissatisfied peasant in the composer of the _Eroica_, always in revolt, +would not allow him tranquillity. Now is the fashion for soul +hurricanes, these confessions of impotent wrath in music. + +Beethoven began this fashion; Mozart did not. Beethoven had himself +eternally in view when he wrote. His music mirrors his wretched, though +profound, soul; it also mirrors many weaknesses. I always remember +Beethoven and Goethe standing side by side as some royal nobody--I +forget the name--went by. Goethe doffed his bonnet and stood uncovered, +head becomingly bowed. Beethoven folded his arms and made no obeisance. +This anecdote, not an apochryphal one, is always hailed as an evidence +of Beethoven's sturdiness of character, his rank republicanism, while +Goethe is slightly sniffed at for his snobbishness. Yet he was only +behaving as a gentleman should. If Mozart had been in Beethoven's place, +how courtly would have been the bow of the little, graceful Austrian +composer! No, Beethoven was a boor, a clumsy one, and this quality +abides in his music--for music is always the man. Put Beethoven in +America in the present time and he would have developed into a dangerous +anarchist. Such a nature matures rapidly, and a century might have +marked the evolution from a despiser of kings to a hater of all forms of +restrictive government. But I'm getting in too deep, even for myself, +and also far away from my original theme. + +Suffice to say that Bach is pedantic when compared to Mozart, and +Beethoven unbeautiful. Some day, and there are portents on the musical +horizon, some day, I repeat, the reign of beauty in art will reassert +its sway. Too long has Ugly been king, too long have we listened with +half-cracked ear-drums to the noises of half-cracked men. Already the +new generation is returning to Mozart--that is, to music for music's +sake--to the Beautiful. + +I went to Salzburg deliberately. I needed a sight of the place, a +glimpse of its romantic surroundings, to still my old pulse jangled out +of tune by the horrors of Bayreuth. Yes, the truth must out, I went to +Bayreuth at the express suggestion of my grandson, Old Fogy 3d, a +rip-roaring young blade who writes for a daily paper in your city. What +he writes I know not. I only hope he lets music alone. He is supposed to +be an authority on foot-ball and Russian caviar; his knowledge of the +latter he acquired, so he says, in the great Thirst Belt of the United +States. I sincerely hope that Philadelphia is not alluded to! I am also +informed that the lad occasionally goes to concerts! Well, he begged me +to visit Bayreuth just once before I died. We argued the thing all last +June and July at Dussek Villa--you remember my little lodge up in the +wilds of Wissahickon!--and at last was I, a sensible old fellow who +should have known better, persuaded to sail across the sea to a horrible +town, crowded with cheap tourists, vulgar with cheap musicians, and to +hear what? Why, Wagner! There is no need of telling you again what I +think of _him_. You know! I really think I left home to escape the +terrible heat, and I am quite sure that I left Bayreuth to escape the +terrible music. Apart from the fact that it was badly sung and +played--who ever does play and sing this music well?--it was written by +Wagner, and though I am not a prejudiced person--_ahem!_--I cannot stand +noise for noise's sake. Art for art they call it nowadays. + +I fled Bayreuth. I reached Munich. The weather was warm, yet of a +delightful balminess. I was happy. Had I not got away from Wagner, that +odious, _bourgeois_ name and man! Munich, I argued, is a musical city. +It must be, for it is the second largest beer-drinking city in Germany. +Therefore it is given to melody. Besides, I had read of Munich's model +Mozart performances. Here, I cried, here will I revel in a lovely +atmosphere of art. My German was rather rusty since my Weimar days, but +I took my accent, with my courage, in both hands and asked a coachman to +drive me to the opera-house. Through green and luscious lanes of foliage +this dumpy, red-faced scoundrel drove; by the beautiful Isar, across the +magnificent Maximilian bridge over against the classic _façade_ of the +Maximilineum. Twisting tortuously about this superb edifice, we tore +along another leafy road lined on one side by villas, on the other +bordered by a park. Many carriages by this time had joined mine in the +chase. What a happy city, I reflected, that enjoys its Mozart with such +unanimity! Turning to the right we went at a grand gallop past a villa +that I recognized as the Villa Stuck from the old pictures I had seen; +past other palaces until we reached a vast space upon which stood a +marmoreal pile I knew to be the Mozart theater. What a glorious city is +Munich, to thus honor its Mozart! And the building as I neared it +resembled, on a superior scale, the Bayreuth barn. But this one was of +marble, granite, gold, and iron. Up to the esplanade, up under the +massive portico where I gave my coachman a tip that made his mean eyes +wink. Then skirting a big beadle in blue, policemen, and loungers, I +reached the box-office. + +"Have you a stall?" I inquired. "Twenty marks" ($5.00), he asked in +turn. "Phew!" I said aloud: "Mozart comes high, but we must have him." +So I fetched out my lean purse, fished up a gold piece, put it down, and +then an inspiration overtook me--I kept one finger on the money. "Is it +_Don Giovanni_ or _Magic Flute_ this afternoon?" I demanded. The man +stared at me angrily. "What you talk about? It is _Tristan und Isolde_. +This is the new Wagner theater!" I must have yelled loudly, for when I +recovered the big beadle was slapping my back and urging me earnestly to +keep in the open air. And that is why I went to Salzburg! + +Despite Bayreuth, despite Munich, despite Wagner, I was soon happy in +the old haunts of the man whose music I adore. I went through the Mozart +collection, saw all the old pictures, relics, manuscripts, and I +reverently fingered the harpsichord, the grand piano of the master. Even +the piece of "genuine Court Plaister" from London, and numbered 42 in +the catalogue, interested me. After I had read the visitors' book, +inscribed therein my own humble signature, after talking to death the +husband and wife who act as guardians of these Mozart treasures, I +visited the Mozart platz and saw the statue, saw Mozart's residence, and +finally--bliss of bliss--ascended the _Kapuzinberg_ to the Mozart +cottage, where the _Magic Flute_ was finished. + +Later, several weeks later, when the Wagner municipal delirium had +passed, I left Salzburg with a sad heart and returned to Munich. There I +was allowed to bathe in Mozart's music and become healed. I heard an +excellent performance of his _Cosi Fan Tutti_ at the _Residenztheater_, +an ideal spot for this music. With the accompaniment of an orchestra of +thirty, more real music was made and sung than the whole _Ring Cycle_ +contains. Some day, after my death, without doubt, the world will come +back to my way of thinking, and purge its eyes in the Pierian spring of +Mozart, cleanse its vision of all the awful sights walled by the +dissonantal harmonies of Beethoven, Schumann, Wagner, and Richard +Strauss. + +I fear that this letter will enrage my grandson; I care not. If he +writes, do not waste valuable space on his "copy." I inclose a picture +of Mozart that I picked up in Salzburg. If you like it, you have my +permission to reproduce it. I am here once more in Mozartland! + + + + +V + +OLD FOGY DISCUSSES CHOPIN + + +Since my return from the outskirts of Camden, N. J., where I go fishing +for planked shad in September, I have been busying myself with the +rearrangement of my musical library, truly a delectable occupation for +an old man. As I passed through my hands the various and beloved +volumes, worn by usage and the passage of the years, I pondered after +the fashion of one who has more sentiment than judgment; I said to +myself: + +"Come, old fellow, here they are, these friends of the past forty years. +Here are the yellow and bepenciled Bach _Preludes and Fugues_, the +precious 'forty-eight'; here are the Beethoven Sonatas, every bar of +which is familiar; here are--yes, the Mozart, Schubert, and Schumann +Sonatas [you notice that I am beginning to bracket the batches]; here +are Mendelssohn's works, highly glazed as to technical surface, pretty +as to sentiment, Bach seen through the lorgnette of a refined, thin, +narrow nature. And here are the Chopin compositions." The murder is +out--I have jumped from Bach and Beethoven to Chopin without a twinge of +my critical conscience. Why? I hardly know why, except that I was +thinking of that mythical desert island and the usual idiotic question: +What composers would you select if you were to be marooned on a South +Sea Island?--you know the style of question and, alas! the style of +answer. You may also guess the composers of my selection. And the least +of the three in the last group above named is not Chopin--Chopin, who, +as a piano composer pure and simple, still ranks his predecessors, his +contemporaries, his successors. + +I am sure that the brilliant Mr. Finck, the erudite Mr. Krehbiel, the +witty Mr. Henderson, the judicial Mr. Aldrich, the phenomenal Philip +Hale, have told us and will tell us all about Chopin's life, his poetry, +his technical prowess, his capacity as a pedagogue, his reforms, his +striking use of dance forms. Let me contribute my humble and dusty mite; +let me speak of a Chopin, of the Chopin, of a Chopin--pardon my tedious +manner of address--who has most appealed to me since my taste has been +clarified by long experience. I know that it is customary to swoon over +Chopin's languorous muse, to counterfeit critical raptures when his name +is mentioned. For this reason I dislike exegetical comments on his +music. Lives of Chopin from Liszt to Niecks, Huneker, Hadow, and the +rest are either too much given over to dry-as-dust or to rhapsody. I am +a teacher of the pianoforte, that good old keyboard which I know will +outlive all its mechanical imitators. I have assured you of this fact +about fifteen years ago, and I expect to hammer away at it for the next +fifteen years if my health and your amiability endure. The Chopin music +is written for the piano--a truism!--so why in writing of it are not +critics practical? It is the practical Chopin I am interested in +nowadays, not the poetic--for the latter quality will always take care +of itself. + +Primarily among the practical considerations of the Chopin music is the +patent fact that only a certain section of his music is studied in +private and played in public. And a very limited section it is, as those +who teach or frequent piano recitals are able to testify. Why should the +_D-flat Valse_, _E-flat_ and _G minor Nocturnes_, the _A-flat Ballade_, +the _G minor Ballade_, the _B-flat minor Scherzo_, the _Funeral March_, +the two _G-flat Etudes_, or, let us add, the _C minor_, the _F minor_ +and _C-sharp minor studies_, the _G major_ and _D-flat preludes_, the +_A-flat Polonaise_--or, worse still, the _A major_ and _C-sharp minor +Polonaises_--the _B minor_, _B-flat major Mazurkas_, the _A-flat_ and +_C-sharp minor Impromptus_, and last, though not least, the +_Berceuse_--why, I insist, should this group be selected to the +exclusion of the rest? for, all told, there is still as good Chopin in +the list as ever came out of it. + +I know we hear and read much about the "Heroic Chopin", and the "New +Chopin"--forsooth!--and "Chopin the Conqueror"; also how to make up a +Chopin program--which latter inevitably recalls to my mind the old +_crux_: how to be happy though hungry. [Some forms of this conundrum lug +in matrimony, a useless intrusion.] How to present a program of Chopin's +_neglected_ masterpieces might furnish matter for afternoon lectures now +devoted to such negligible musical _débris_ as Parsifal's neckties and +the chewing gum of the flower maidens. + +As a matter of fact, the critics are not to blame. I have read the +expostulations of Mr. Finck about the untilled fields of Chopin. Yet his +favorite Paderewski plays season in and season out a selection from the +scheme I have just given, with possibly a few additions. The most +versatile--and--also delightful--Chopinist is Pachmann. From his very +first afternoon recital at old Chickering Hall, New York, in 1890, he +gave a taste of the unfamiliar Chopin. Joseffy, thrice wonderful wizard, +who has attained to the height of a true philosophic Parnassus--he only +plays for himself, O wise Son of Light!--also gives at long intervals +fleeting visions of the unknown Chopin. To Pachmann belongs the honor of +persistently bringing forward to our notice such gems as the _Allegro de +Concert_, many new mazurkas, the _F minor_, _F major_--_A minor +Ballades_, the _F-sharp_ and _G-flat Impromptus_, the _B minor Sonata_, +certain of the _Valses_, _Fantasies_, _Krakowiaks_, _Preludes_, +_Studies_ and _Polonaises_--to mention a few. And his pioneer work may +be easily followed by a dozen other lists, all new to concert-goers, all +equally interesting. Chopin still remains a sealed book to the world, +notwithstanding the ink spilled over his name every other minute of the +clock's busy traffic with Eternity. + +A fair moiety of this present chapter could be usurped by a detailed +account of the beauties of the Unheard Chopin--you see I am emulating +the critics with my phrase-making. But I am not the man to accomplish +such a formidable task. I am too old, too disillusioned. The sap of a +generous enthusiasm no longer stirs in my veins. Let the young fellows +look to the matter--it is their affair. However, as I am an inveterate +busybody I cannot refrain from an attempt to enlist your sympathies for +some of my favorite Chopin. + +Do you know the _E major Scherzo, Op. 54_, with its skimming, +swallowlike flight, its delicate figuration, its evanescent hintings at +a serious something in the major trio? Have you ever heard Pachmann +_purl_ through this exquisitely conceived, contrived and balanced +composition, truly a classic? _Whaur_ is your Willy Mendelssohn the +_noo_? Or are you acquainted with the _G-sharp minor Prelude_? Do you +play the _E-flat Scherzo_ from the _B minor Sonata_? Have you never shed +a furtive tear--excuse my old-fashioned romanticism--over the bars of +the _B major Larghetto_ in the same work? [The last movement is pure +passage writing, yet clever as only Chopin knew how to be clever without +being offensively gaudy.] + +How about the first _Scherzo in B minor_? You play it, but do you +understand its ferocious irony? [Oh, author of _Chopin: the Man and his +Music_, what sins of rhetoric must be placed at your door!] And what of +the _E-flat minor Scherzo_? Is it merely an excuse for blacksmith art +and is the following _finale_ only a study in unisons? There is the +_C-sharp minor Prelude_. In it Brahms is anticipated by a quarter of a +century. The _Polonaise in F-sharp minor_ was damned years ago by Liszt, +who found that it contained pathologic states. What of it? It is +Chopin's masterpiece in this form and for that reason is seldom played +in public. Why? My children, do you not know by this time that the +garden variety of pianoforte virtuoso will play difficult music if the +difficulties be technical not emotional, or emotional and not spiritual? + +_The F-sharp minor Polonaise_ is always _drummed_ on the keyboard +because some silly story got into print about Chopin's aunt asking the +composer for a picture of his soul battling with the soul of his pet +foe, the Russians. Militant the work is not, as swinging as are its +resilient rhythms: granted that the gloomy repetitions betray a morbid +dwelling upon some secret, exasperating sorrow; but as the human soul +never experiences the same mood _twice_ in a lifetime, so Chopin never +means his passages, identical as they may be, to be repeated in the same +mood-key. Liszt, Tausig, and Rubinstein taught us the supreme art of +color variation in the repetition of a theme. Paderewski knows the +trick; so do Joseffy and Pachmann--the latter's _pianissimi_ begin where +other men's cease. So the accusation of tonal or thematic monotony +should not be brought against this _Polonaise_. Rather let us blame our +imperfect sympathies and slender stock of the art of _nuance_. + +But here I am pinning myself down to one composition, when I wish to +touch lightly on so many! The _F minor Polonaise_, the _E-flat minor +Polonaise_, called the _Siberian_--why I don't know; _I_ could never +detect in its mobile measures the clanking of convict chains or the +dreary landscape of Siberia--might be played by way of variety; and then +there is the _C minor Polonaise_, which begins in tones of epic grandeur +[go it, old man, you will be applying for a position on the Manayunk +_Herbalist_ soon as a critic!] The _Nocturnes_--are they all familiar to +you? The _F-sharp minor_ was a positive novelty a few years ago when +Joseffy exhumed it, while the _C-sharp minor_, with its strong climaxes, +its middle sections so evocative of Beethoven's _Sonata_ in the same +key--have you mastered its content? _The Preludes_ are a perfect field +for the "prospector"; though Essipoff and Arthur Friedheim played them +in a single program. Nor must we overlook the so-called hackneyed +valses, the tinkling charm of the one in _G-flat_, the elegiac quality +of the one in _B minor_. The _Barcarolle_ is only for heroes. So I do +not set it down in malice against the student or the everyday virtuosos +that he--or she--does not attempt it. The _F minor Fantaisie_, I am +sorry to say, is beginning to be tarnished like the _A-flat Ballade_, by +impious hands. It is not for weaklings; nor are the other Fantaisies. +Why not let us hear the _Bolero_ and _Tarantella_, not Chopin at his +happiest, withal Chopin. Emil Sauer made a success of other brilliant +birdlike music before an America public. As for the _Ballades_, I can no +longer endure any but _Op. 38_ and _Op. 52_. Rosenthal played the +beautiful _D-flat Study_ in _Les Trois nouvelles Etudes_ with signal +results. It is a valse in disguise. And its neighbors in _A-flat_ and _F +minor_ are Chopin in his most winning moods. Who, except Pachmann, +essays the _G-flat major Impromptu_--wrongfully catalogued as _Des Dur_ +in the Klindworth edition? To be sure, it resumes many traits of the two +preceding _Impromptus_, yet is it none the less fascinating music. And +the _Mazurkas_--I refuse positively to discuss at the present writing +such a fertile theme. I am fatigued already, and I feel that my antique +vaporings have fatigued you. Next month I shall stick to my leathery +last, like the musical shoemaker that I am--I shall consider to some +length the use of left-hand passage work in the Hummel sonatas. Or shall +I speak of Chopin again, of the Chopin mazurkas! My sour bones become +sweeter when I think of Chopin--ah, there I go again! Am I, too, among +the rhapsodists? + + + + +VI + +MORE ANENT CHOPIN + + +I had fully intended at the conclusion of my last chapter to close the +curtain on Chopin and his music, for I agree with the remark Deppe once +made to Amy Fay about the advisability of putting Chopin on the shelf +for half a century and studying Mozart in the interim. Bless the dear +Germans and their thoroughness! The type of teacher to which Deppe +belonged always proceeded as if a pupil, like a cat, had nine lives. +Fifty years of Chopin on the shelf! There's an idea for you. At the +conclusion of this half century's immurement what would the world say to +the Polish composer's music? That is to say, in 1955 the unknown +inhabitants of the musical portion of this earth would have sprung upon +them absolutely new music. The excitement would be colossal, colossal, +too, would be the advertising. And then? And then I fancy a chorus of +profoundly disappointed lovers of the tone art. Remember that the world +moves in fifty years. Perhaps there would be no longer our pianoforte, +our keyboard. How childish, how simple would sound the timid little +Chopin of the far-away nineteenth century. + +In the turbulent times to come music will have lost its personal flavor. +Instead of interpretative artists there will be gigantic machinery +capable of maniacal displays of virtuosity; merely dropping a small coin +in a slot will sound the most abstruse scores of Richard Strauss--then +the popular and bewhistled music maker. And yet it is difficult for us, +so wedded are we to that tragic delusion of earthly glory and artistic +immortality, to conjure up a day when the music of Chopin shall be stale +and unprofitable to the hearing. For me the idea is inconceivable. Some +of his music has lost interest for us, particularly the early works +modeled after Hummel. Ehlert speaks of the twilight that is beginning to +steal over certain of the nocturnes, valses, and fantasias. Now Hummel +is quite perfect in his way. To imitate him, as Chopin certainly did, +was excellent practice for the younger man, but not conducive to +originality. Chopin soon found this out, and dropped both Hummel and +Field out of his scheme. Nor shall I insist on the earlier impositions +being the weaker; _Op. 10_ contains all Chopin in its twelve studies. +The truth is, that this Chopin, to whom has been assigned two or three +or four periods and styles and manners of development, sprang from the +Minerva head of music a full-fledged genius. He grew. He lived. But the +exquisite art was there from the first. That it had a "long foreground" +I need not tell you. + +What compositions, then, would our mythic citizens of 1955 +prefer?--can't you see them crowding around the concert grand piano +listening to the old-fashioned strains as we listen today when some +musical antiquarian gives a recital of Scarlatti, Couperin, Rameau on a +clavecin! Still, as Mozart and Bach are endurable now, there is no +warrant for any supposition that Chopin would not be tolerated a half +century hence. Fancy those sprightly, spiritual, and very national +dances, the mazurkas, not making an impression! Or at least two of the +ballades! Or three of the nocturnes! Not to mention the polonaises, +preludes, scherzos, and etudes. Simply from curiosity the other night--I +get so tired playing checkers--I went through all my various editions of +Chopin--about ten--looking for trouble. I found it when I came across +five mazurkas in the key of C-sharp minor. I have arrived at the +conclusion that this was a favorite tonality of the Pole. Let us see. + +Two studies in _Op. 10_ and _25_, respectively; the +_Fantaisie-Impromptu_, _Op. 66_; five _Mazurkas_, above mentioned; one +_Nocturne, Op. 27, No. 1_; one _Polonaise, Op. 26, No. 1_; one _Prelude, +Op. 45_; one _Scherzo, Op. 39_; and a short second section, a +_cantabile_ in the _E major Scherzo, Op. 54_; one _Valse, Op. 64, No. +2_--are there any more in C-sharp minor? If there are I cannot recall +them. But this is a good showing for one key, and a minor one. Little +wonder Chopin was pronounced elegiac in his tendencies--C-sharp minor is +a mournful key and one that soon develops a cloying, morbid quality if +too much insisted upon. + +The mazurkas are worthy specimens of their creator's gift for varying +not only a simple dance form, but also in juggling with a simple melodic +idea so masterfully that the hearer forgets he is hearing a three-part +composition on a keyboard. Chopin was a magician. The first of the +_Mazurkas in C-sharp minor_ bears the early _Op. 6, No. 2_. By no means +representative, it is nevertheless interesting and characteristic. That +brief introduction with its pedal bass sounds the rhythmic life of the +piece. I like it; I like the dance proper; I like the major--you see the +peasant girls on the green footing away--and the ending is full of a sad +charm. _Op. 30, No. 4_, the next in order, is bigger in conception, +bigger in workmanship. It is not so cheerful, perhaps, as its +predecessor in the same key; the heavy basses twanging in tenths like a +contrabasso are intentionally monotone in effect. There is defiance and +despair in the mood. And look at the line before the last--those +consecutive fifths and sevenths were not placed there as a whim; they +mean something. Here is a mazurka that will be heard later than 1955! By +the way, while you are loitering through this Op. 30 do not neglect No. +3, the stunning specimen in D-flat. It is my favorite mazurka. + +Now let us hurry on to _Op. 41, No. 1_. It well repays careful study. +Note the grip our composer has on the theme, it bobs up in the middle +voices; it comes thundering at the close in octave and chordal +_unisons_, it rumbles in the bass and is persistently asserted by the +soprano voice. Its scale is unusual, the atmosphere not altogether +cheerful. Chopin could be depressingly pessimistic at times. _Op. 50, +No. 3_, shows how closely the composer studied his Bach. It is by all +odds the most elaborately worked out of the series, difficult to play, +difficult to grasp in its rather disconnected procession of moods. To me +it has a clear ring of exasperation, as if Chopin had lost interest, but +perversely determined to finish his idea. As played by Pachmann, we get +it in all its peevish, sardonic humors, especially if the audience, or +the weather, or the piano seat does not suit the fat little blackbird +from Odessa. _Op. 63, No. 3_, ends this list of mazurkas in C-sharp +minor. In it Chopin has limbered up, his mood is freer, melancholy as it +is. Louis Ehlert wrote of this: "A more perfect canon in the octave +could not have been written by one who had grown gray in the learned +arts." Those last few bars prove that Chopin--they once called him +amateurish in his harmonies!--could do what he pleased in the +contrapuntal line. + +Shall I continue? Shall I insist on the obvious; hammer in my truisms! +It may be possible that out here on the Wissahickon--where the summer +hiccoughs grow--that I do not get all the news of the musical world. Yet +I vainly scan piano recital programs for such numbers as those C-sharp +minor mazurkas, for the _F minor Ballade_, for that beautiful and +extremely original _Ballade Op. 38_ which begins in F and ends in A +minor. Isn't there a legend to the effect that Schumann heard Chopin +play his _Ballade_ in private and that there was no stormy middle +measures? I've forgotten the source, possibly one of the greater +Chopinist's--or _Chopine_-ists, as they had it in Paris. What a +stumbling-block that A minor explosion was to audiences and students +and to pianists themselves. "Too wild, too wild!" I remember hearing the +old guard exclaim when Rubinstein, after miraculously prolonging the +three A's with those singing fingers of his, not forgetting the pedals, +smashed down the keyboard, gobbling up the sixteenth notes, not in +phrases, but pages. How grandly he rolled out those bass scales, the +chords in the treble transformed into a _Cantus Firmus_. Then, his +Calmuck features all afire, he would begin to smile gently and lo!--the +tiny, little tune, as if children had unconsciously composed it at play! +The last page was carnage. Port Arthur was stormed and captured in every +bar. What a pianist, what an artist, what a _man_! + +I suppose it is because my imagination weakens with my years--remember +that I read in the daily papers the news of Chopin's death! I do long +for a definite program to be appended to the _F-major Ballade_. Why not +offer a small prize for the best program and let me be judge? I have +also reached the time of life when the _A-flat Ballade_ affects my +nerves, just as Liszt was affected when a pupil brought for criticism +the _G minor Ballade_. Preserve me from the _Third Ballade_! It is +winning, gracious, delicate, capricious, melodic, poetic, and what not, +but it has gone to meet the _D-flat Valse_ and _E-flat Nocturne_--as +the obituaries say. The fourth, the _F minor Ballade_--ah, you touch me +in a weak spot. Sticking for over a half century to Bach so closely, I +imagine that the economy of thematic material and the ingeniously spun +fabric of this _Ballade_ have made it my pet. I do not dwell upon the +loveliness of the first theme in F minor, or of that melodious approach +to it in the major. I am speaking now of the composition as a whole. Its +themes are varied with consummate ease, and you wonder at the corners +you so easily turn, bringing into view newer horizons; fresh and +striking landscapes. When you are once afloat on those D-flat scales, +four pages from the end nothing can stop your progress. Every bar slides +nearer and nearer to the climax, which is seemingly chaos for the +moment. After that the air clears and the whole work soars skyward on +mighty pinions. I quite agree with those who place in the same category +the _F minor Fantaisie_ with this _Ballade_. And it is not much played. +Nor can the mechanical instruments reproduce its nuances, its +bewildering pathos and passion. I see the musical mob of 1955 deeply +interested when the Paderewski of those days puts it on his program as a +gigantic novelty! + +You see, here I have been blazing away at the same old target again, +though we had agreed to drop Chopin last month. I can't help it. I felt +choked off in my previous article and now the _dam_ has overflowed, +though I hope not the reader's! While I think of it, some one wrote me +asking if Chopin's first _Sonata in C minor, Op. 4_, was worth the +study. Decidedly, though it is as dry as a Kalkbrenner Sonata for +Sixteen Pianos and forty-five hands. The form clogged the light of the +composer. Two things are worthy of notice in many pages choked with +notes: there is a menuet, the only essay I recall of Chopin's in this +graceful, artificial form; and the Larghetto is in 5/4 time--also a +novel rhythm, and not very grateful. How Chopin reveled when he reached +the _B-flat minor_ and _B minor Sonatas_ and threw formal physic to the +dogs! I had intended devoting a portion of this chapter to the +difference of old-time and modern methods in piano teaching. Alas! my +unruly pen ran away with me! + + + + +VII + +PIANO PLAYING TODAY AND YESTERDAY + + +How to listen to a teacher! How to profit by his precepts! Better +still--How to practice after he has left the house! There are three +titles for essays, pedagogic and otherwise, which might be supplemented +by a fourth: How to pay promptly the music master's bills. But I do not +propose indulging in any such generalities this beautiful day in late +winter. First, let me rid the minds of my readers of a delusion. I am no +longer a piano teacher, nor do I give lessons by mail. I am a very old +fellow, fond of chatting, fond of reminiscences; with the latter I bore +my listeners, I am sure. Nevertheless, I am not old in spirit, and I +feel the liveliest curiosity in matters pianistic, matters musical. +Hence, this month I will make a hasty comparison between new and old +fashions in teaching the pianoforte. If you have patience with me you +may hear something of importance; otherwise, if there is skating down +your way don't miss it--fresh air is always healthier than esthetic +gabbling. + +Do they teach the piano better in the twentieth century than in the +nineteenth? Yes, absolutely yes. When a young man survived the "old +fogy" methods of the fifties, sixties and seventies of the past century, +he was, it cannot be gainsaid, an excellent artist. But he was, as a +rule, the survival of the fittest. For one of him successful there were +one thousand failures. Strong hands, untiring patience and a deeply +musical temperament were needed to withstand the absurd soulless +drilling of the fingers. Unduly prolonged, the immense amount of dry +studies, the antique disregard of fore-arm and upper-arm and the +comparatively restricted repertory--well, it was a stout body and a +robust musical temperament that rose superior to such cramping pedagogy. +And then, too, the ideals of the pianist were quite different. It is +only in recent years that tone has become an important factor in the +scheme--thanks to Chopin, Thalberg and Liszt. In the early sixties we +believed in velocity and clearness and brilliancy. Kalkbrenner, Herz, +Dreyschock, Döhler, Thalberg--those were the lively boys who patrolled +the keyboard like the north wind--brisk but chilly. I must add that the +most luscious and melting tone I ever heard on the piano was produced by +Thalberg and after him Henselt. Today Paderewski is the best exponent of +their school; of course, modified by modern ideas and a Slavic +temperament. + +But now technic no longer counts. Be ye as fleet as Rosenthal and as +pure as Pachmann--in a tonal sense--ye will not escape comparison with +the mechanical pianist. It was their astounding accuracy that extorted +from Eugen d'Albert a confession made to a friend of mine just before he +sailed to this country last month: + +"A great pianist should no longer bother himself about his technic. Any +machine can beat him at the game. What he must excel in +is--interpretation and tone." + +Rosenthal, angry that a mere contrivance manipulated by a salesman could +beat his speed, has taken the slopes of Parnassus by storm. He can play +the Liszt _Don Juan_ paraphrase _faster_ than any machine in existence. +(I refer to the drinking song, naturally.) But how few of us have +attained such transcendental technic? None except Rosenthal, for I +really believe if Karl Tausig would return to earth he would be dazzled +by Rosenthal's performances--say, for example, of the Brahms-Paganini +_Studies_ and, Liszt, in his palmy days, never had such a technic as +Tausig's; while the latter was far more musical and intellectual than +Rosenthal. Other days, other ways! + +So tone, not technic alone, is our shibboleth. How many teachers realize +this? How many still commit the sin of transforming their pupils into +machines, developing muscle at the expense of music! To be sure, some of +the old teachers considered the second F minor sonata of Beethoven the +highest peak of execution and confined themselves to teaching Mozart and +Field, Cramer and Mendelssohn, with an occasional fantasia by +Thalberg--the latter to please the proud papa after dessert. Schumann +was not understood; Chopin was misunderstood; and Liszt was _anathema_. +Yet we often heard a sweet, singing tone, even if the mechanism was not +above the normal. I am sure those who had the pleasure of listening to +William Mason will recall the exquisite purity of his tone, the +limpidity of his scales, the neat finish of his phrasing. Old style, I +hear you say! Yes, old and ever new, because approaching more nearly +perfection than the splashing, floundering, fly-by-night, hysterical, +smash-the-ivories school of these latter days. Music, not noise--that's +what we are after in piano playing, the _higher_ piano playing. All the +rest is pianola-istic! + +Singularly enough, with the shifting of technical standards, more +simplicity reigns in methods of teaching at this very moment. The reason +is that so much more is expected in variety of technic; therefore, no +unnecessary time can be spared. If a modern pianist has not at _fifteen_ +mastered all the tricks of finger, wrist, fore-arm and upper-arm he +should study bookkeeping or the noble art of football. Immense are the +demands made upon the memory. Whole volumes of fugues, sonatas of +Chopin, Liszt, Schumann and the new men are memorized, as a matter of +course. Better wrong notes, in the estimation of the more superficial +musical public, than playing with the music on the piano desk. And then +to top all these terrible things, you must have the physique of a +sailor, the nerves of a woman, the impudence of a prize-fighter, and the +humility of an innocent child. Is it any wonder that, paradoxical as it +may sound, there are fewer great pianists today in public than there +were fifty years ago, yet ten times as many pianists! + +The big saving, then, in the pianistic curriculum is the dropping of +studies, finger and otherwise. To give him his due, Von Bülow--as a +pianist strangely inimical to my taste--was among the first to boil down +the number of etudes. He did this in his famous preface to the Cramer +_Studies_. Nevertheless, his list is too long by half. Who plays +Moscheles? Who cares for more than four or six of the Clementi, for a +half dozen of the Cramer? I remember the consternation among certain +teachers when Deppe and Raif, with his dumb thumb and blind fingers, +abolished _all_ the classic piano studies. Teachers like Constantine von +Sternberg do the same at this very hour, finding in the various +technical figures of compositions all the technic necessary. This method +is infinitely more trying to the teacher than the old-fashioned, +easy-going ways. "Play me No. 22 for next time!" was the order, and in a +soporific manner the pupil waded through all the studies of all the +_Technikers_. Now the teacher must invent a new study for every new +piece--with Bach on the side. Always Bach! Please remember that. +B-a-c-h--Bach. Your daily bread, my children. + +We no longer play Mozart in public--except Joseffy. I was struck +recently by something Fannie Bloomfield Zeisler said in this matter of +Mozart. Yes, Mozart is more difficult than Chopin, though not so +difficult as Bach. Mozart is so naked and unafraid! You must touch the +right key or forever afterward be condemned by your own blundering. Let +me add here that I heard Fannie Bloomfield play the little sonata, +wrongfully called _facile_, when she was a tiny, ox-eyed girl of six or +seven. It was in Chicago in the seventies. Instead of asking for candy +afterwards she begged me to read her some poetry of Shelley or +something by Schopenhauer! Veritably a fabulous child! + +Let me add three points to the foregoing statements: First, Joseffy has +always been rather skeptical of too _few_ piano studies. His argument is +that _endurance_ is also a prime factor of technic, and you cannot +compass endurance without you endure prolonged finger drills. But as he +has since composed--literally composed--the most extraordinary +time-saving book of technical studies (_School of Advanced Piano +Playing_), I suspect the great virtuoso has dropped from his list all +the Heller, Hiller, Czerny, Haberbier, Cramer, Clementi and Moscheles. +Certainly his Exercises--as he meekly christens them--are _multum in +parvo_. They are my daily recreation. + +The next point I would have you remember is this: The morning hours are +golden. Never waste them, the first thing, never waste your +sleep-freshened brain on mechanical finger exercise. Take up Bach, if +you must unlimber your fingers and your wits. But even Bach should be +kept for afternoon and evening. I shall never forget Moriz Rosenthal's +amused visage when I, in the innocence of my eighteenth century soul, +put this question to him: "When is the best time to study etudes?" "If +you must study them at all, do so after your day's work is done. By your +day's work I mean the mastery of the sonata or piece you are working at. +When your brain is clear you can compass technical difficulties much +better in the morning than the evening. Don't throw away those hours. +Any time will do for gymnastics." Now there is something for stubborn +teachers to put in their pipes and smoke. + +My last injunction is purely a mechanical one. All the pianists I have +heard with a beautiful tone--Thalberg, Henselt, Liszt, Tausig, +Heller--yes, Stephen of the pretty studies--Rubinstein, Joseffy, +Paderewski, Pachmann and Essipoff, sat _low_ before the keyboard. When +you sit high and the wrists dip downward your tone will be dry, brittle, +hard. Doubtless a few pianists with abnormal muscles have escaped this, +for there was a time when octaves were played with stiff wrists and +rapid _tempo_. Both things are an abomination, and the exception here +does not prove the rule. Pianists like Rosenthal, Busoni, Friedheim, +d'Albert, Von Bülow, _all the Great Germans_ (Germans are not born, but +are made piano players), Carreño, Aus der Ohe, Krebs, Mehlig are or were +artists with a hard tone. As for the much-vaunted Leschetizky method I +can only say that I have heard but two of his pupils whose tone was +_not_ hard and too brilliant. Paderewski was one of these. Paderewski +confessed to me that he learned how to play billiards from Leschetizky, +not piano; though, of course, he will deny this, as he is very loyal. +The truth is that he learned more from Essipoff than from her then +husband, the much-married Theodor Leschetizky. + +Pachmann, once at a Dôhnányi recital in New York, called out in his +accustomed frank fashion: "He sits too high." It was true. Dôhnányi's +touch is as hard as steel. He sat _over_ the keyboard and played _down_ +on the keys, thus striking them heavily, instead of pressing and +moulding the tone. Pachmann's playing is a notable example of plastic +beauty. He seems to dip his hands into musical liquid instead of +touching inanimate ivory, and bone, wood, and wire. Remember this when +you begin your day's work: Sit so that your hand is on a level with, +never below, the keyboard; and don't waste your morning freshness on +dull finger gymnastics! Have I talked you hoarse? + + + + +VIII + +FOUR FAMOUS VIRTUOSOS + + +Such a month of dissipation! You must know that at my time of life I run +down a bit every spring, and our family physician prescribed a course of +scale exercises on the Boardwalk at Atlantic City, and after that--New +York, for Lenten recreation! Now, New York is not quiet, nor is it ever +Lenten. A crowded town, huddled on an island far too small for its +inconceivably uncivilized population, its inhabitants can never know the +value of leisure or freedom from noise. Because he is always in a hurry +a New York man fancies that he is intellectual. The consequences +artistically are dire. New York boasts--yes, literally _boasts_--the +biggest, noisiest, and poorest orchestra in the country. I refer to the +Philharmonic Society, with its wretched wood-wind, its mediocre brass, +and its aggregation of rasping strings. All the vaudeville and +lightning-change conductors have not put this band on a level with the +Boston, the Philadelphia, or the Chicago organizations. Nor does the +opera please me much better. Noise, at the expense of music; quantity, +instead of quality; all the _tempi_ distorted and _fortes_ exaggerated, +so as to make effect. Effect, effect, effect! That is the ideal of New +York conductors. This coarsening, cheapening, and magnification of +details are resultants of the restless, uncomfortable, and soulless life +of the much overrated Manhattan. + +Naturally, I am a Philadelphian, and my strictures will be set down to +old fogyism. But show me a noise-loving city and I will show you an +inartistic one. Schopenhauer was right in this matter; insensibility to +noise argues a less refined organism. And New York may spend a million +of money on music every season, and still it is not a musical city. The +opera is the least sign; opera is a social function--sometimes a circus, +never a temple of art. The final, the infallible test is the maintenance +of an orchestra. New York has no permanent orchestra; though there is an +attempt to make of the New York Symphony Society a worthy rival to the +Philadelphia and Boston orchestras. So much for my enjoyment in the +larger forms of music--symphony, oratorio and opera. + +But my visit was not without compensations. I attended piano concerts by +Eugen d'Albert, Ignace Jan Paderewski, and Rafael Joseffy. Pachmann I +had heard earlier in the season in my own home city. So in one season I +listened to four out of six of the world's greatest pianists. And it was +very stimulating to both ears and memory. It also affords me an +opportunity to preach for you a little sermon on Touch (Tone and Technic +were the respective themes of my last two letters), which I have had in +my mind for some time. Do not be alarmed. I say "sermon," but I mean +nothing more than a comparison of modern methods of touch, as +exemplified by the performances of the above four men, with the style of +touch employed by the pianists of my generation: Thalberg, Liszt, +Gottschalk, Tausig, Rubinstein, Von Bülow, Henselt, and a few others. + +Pachmann is the same little wonder-worker that I knew when he studied +many years ago in Vienna with Dachs. This same Dachs turned out some +finished pupils, though his reputation, curiously enough, never equalled +that of the over-puffed Leschetizky, or Epstein, or Anton Door, all +teachers in the Austrian capital. I recall Anthony Stankowitch, now in +Chicago, and Benno Schoenberger, now in London, as Dachs' pupils. +Schoenberger has a touch of gold and a style almost as jeweled as +Pachmann's--but more virile. It must not be forgotten that Pachmann has +fine nerves--with such an exquisite touch, his organization must be of +supernal delicacy--but little muscular vigor. Consider his narrow +shoulders and slender arms--height of figure has nothing to do with +muscular incompatibility; d'Albert is almost a dwarf, yet a colossus of +strength. So let us call Pachmann, a survival of an older school, a +charming school. Touch was the shibboleth of that school, not tone; and +technic was often achieved at the expense of more spiritual qualities. +The three most _beautiful_ touches of the piano of the nineteenth +century were those of Chopin, Thalberg, and Henselt. Apart from any +consideration of other gifts, these three men--a Pole, a Hebrew, and a +German--possessed touches that sang and melted in your ears, ravished +your ears. Finer in a vocal sense was Thalberg's touch than Liszt's; +finer Henselt's than Thalberg's, because more euphonious, and nobler in +tonal texture; and more poetic than either of these two was Chopin's +ethereal touch. To-day Joseffy is the nearest approach we have to +Chopin, Paderewski to Henselt, Pachmann to Thalberg--save in the matter +of a robust _fortissimo_, which the tiny Russian virtuoso does not +boast. + +After Chopin, Thalberg, and Henselt, the orchestral school had its +sway--it still has. Liszt, Tausig, Rubinstein set the pace for all +latter-day piano playing. And while it may sound presumptuous, I am +inclined to think that their successors are not far behind them in the +matter of tonal volume. If Liszt or Tausig, or, for that matter, +Rubinstein, produced more clangor from their instruments than Eugen +d'Albert, then my aural memory is at fault. My recollection of Liszt is +a vivid one: to me he was iron; Tausig, steel; Rubinstein, gold. This +metallic classification is not intended to praise gold at the expense of +steel, or iron to the detriment of gold. It is merely my way of +describing the adamantine qualities of Liszt and Tausig--two magnetic +mountains of the kind told of in _Sinbad, the Sailor_, to which was +attracted whatever came within their radius. And Rubinstein--what a man, +what an artist, what a _heart!_ As Joseffy once put it, Rubinstein's was +not a pianist's touch, but the mellow tone of a French horn! + +Rosenthal's art probably matches Tausig's in technic and tone. +Paderewski, who has broadened and developed amazingly during ten years, +has many of Henselt's traits--and I am sure he never heard the elder +pianist. But he belongs to that group: tonal euphony, supple technic, a +caressing manner, and a perfect control of self. Remember, I am speaking +of the Henselt who played for a few friends, not the frightened, +semi-limp pianist who emerged at long intervals before the public. +Paderewski is thrice as poetic as Henselt--who in the matter of +emotional depth seldom attempted any more than the delineation of the +suave and elegant, though he often played Weber with glorious fire and +brilliancy. + +At this moment it is hard to say where Paderewski will end. I beg to +differ from Mr. Edward Baxter Perry, who once declared that the Polish +virtuoso played at his previous season no different from his earlier +visits. The Paderewski of 1902 and 1905 is very unlike the Paderewski of +1891. His style more nearly approximates Rubinstein's _plus_ the +refinement of the Henselt school. He has sacrificed certain qualities. +That was inevitable. All great art is achieved at the expense--either by +suppression or enlargement--of something precious. Paderewski pounds +more; nor is he always letter perfect; but do not forget that pounding +from Paderewski is not the same as pounding from Tom, Dick, and Harry. +And, like Rubinstein, his spilled notes are more valuable than other +pianist's scrupulously played ones. In reality, after carefully watching +the career of this remarkable man, I have reached the conclusion that he +is passing through a transition period in his "pianism." Tired of his +old, subdued, poetic manner; tired of being called a _salon_ pianist +by--yes, Oskar Bie said so in his book on the pianoforte; and in the +same chapter wrote of the fire and fury of Gabrilowitsch ("he drives the +horses of Rubinstein," said Bie; he must have meant "ponies!")--critics, +Paderewski began to study the grand manner. He may achieve it, for his +endurance is phenomenal. Any pianist who could do what I heard him do in +New York--give eight encores after an exhausting program--may well lay +claim to the possession of the grand manner. His tone is still forced; +you hear the _chug_ of the suffering wires; but who cares for +details--when the general performance is on so exalted a plane? And his +touch is absolutely luscious in cantabile. + +With d'Albert our interest is, nowadays, cerebral. When he was a youth +he upset Weimar with his volcanic performances. Rumor said that he came +naturally by his superb gifts (the Tausig legend is still believed in +Germany). Now his indifference to his medium of expression does not +prevent him from lavishing upon the interpretation of masterpieces the +most intellectual brain since Von Bülow's--and _entre nous_, ten times +the musical equipment. D'Albert plays Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms as no +one else on this globe--and he matches Paderewski in his merciless abuse +of the keyboard. Either a new instrument, capable of sustaining the +ferocious attacks upon it, must be fabricated, or else there must be a +return to older styles. + +And that fixed star in the pianistic firmament, one who refuses to +descend to earth and please the groundlings--Rafael Joseffy--is for me +the most satisfying of all the pianists. Never any excess of emotional +display; never silly sentimentalizings, but a lofty, detached style, +impeccable technic, tone as beautiful as starlight--yes, Joseffy is the +enchanter who wins me with his disdainful spells. I heard him play the +Chopin E minor and the Liszt A major concertos; also a brace of encores. +Perfection! The Liszt was not so brilliant as Reisenauer; but--again +within its frame--perfection! The Chopin was as Chopin would have had it +given in 1840. And there were refinements of tone-color undreamed of +even by Chopin. Paderewski is Paderewski--and Joseffy is perfection. +Paderewski is the most eclectic of the four pianists I have taken for my +text; Joseffy the most subtly poetic; D'Albert the most profound and +intellectually significant, and Pachmann--well, Vladimir is the _enfant +terrible_ of the quartet, a whimsical, fantastic charmer, an apparition +with rare talents, and an interpreter of the Lesser Chopin (always the +_great_ Chopin) without a peer. Let us be happy that we are vouchsafed +the pleasure of hearing four such artists. + + + + +IX + +THE INFLUENCE OF DADDY LISZT + + +Have you read Thoreau's _Walden_ with its smell of the woods and its +ozone-permeated pages? I recommend the book to all pianists, especially +to those pianists who hug the house, practising all day and laboring +under the delusion that they are developing their individuality. +Singular thing, this rage for culture nowadays among musicians! They +have been admonished so often in print and private that their ignorance +is not blissful, indeed it is baneful, that these ambitious ladies and +gentlemen rush off to the booksellers, to libraries, and literally gorge +themselves with the "ologies" and "isms" of the day. Lord, Lord, how I +enjoy meeting them at a musicale! There they sit, cocked and primed for +a verbal encounter, waiting to knock the literary chip off their +neighbor's shoulder. + +"Have you read"--begins some one and the chattering begins, _furioso_. +"Oh, Nietzsche? why of course,"--"Tolstoi's _What is Art?_ certainly, he +ought to be electrocuted"--"Nordau! isn't he terrible?" And the +cacophonous conversational symphony rages, and when it is spent, the +man who asked the question finishes: + +"Have you read the notice of Rosenthal's playing in the _Kölnische +Zeitung?_" and there is a battery of suspicious looks directed towards +him whilst murmurs arise, "What an uncultured man! To talk 'shop' like a +regular musician!" The fact being that the man had read everything, but +was setting a trap for the vanity of these egregious persons. The +newspapers, the managers and the artists before the public are to blame +for this callow, shallow attempt at culture. We read that Rosenthal is a +second Heine in conversation. That he spills epigrams at his meals and +dribbles proverbs at the piano. He has committed all of Heine to memory +and in the greenroom reads Sanscrit. Paderewski, too, is profoundly +something or other. Like Wagner, he writes his own program--I mean plots +for his operas. He is much given to reading Swinburne because some one +once compared him to the bad, mad, sad, glad, fad poet of England, +begad! As for Sauer, we hardly know where to begin. He writes blank +verse tragedies and discusses Ibsen with his landlady. Pianists are now +so intellectual that they sometimes forget to play the piano well. + +Of course, Daddy Liszt began it all. He had read everything before he +was twenty, and had embraced and renegaded from twenty religions. This +volatile, versatile, vibratile, vivacious, vicious temperament of his +has been copied by most modern pianists who haven't brains enough to +parse a sentence or play a Bach _Invention_. The Weimar crew all +imitated Liszt's style in octaves and hair dressing. I was there once, a +sunny day in May, the hedges white with flowers and the air full of +bock-bier. Ah, thronging memories of youth! I was slowly walking through +a sun-smitten lane when a man on horse dashed by me, his face red with +excitement, his beast covered with lather. He kept shouting "Make room +for the master! make way for the master!" and presently a venerable man +with a purple nose--a Cyrano de Cognac nose--came towards me. He wore a +monkish habit and on his head was a huge shovel-shaped hat, the sort +affected by Don Basilio in _The Barber of Seville_. + +"It must be Liszt or the devil!" I cried aloud, and Liszt laughed, his +warts growing purple, his whole expression being one of good-humor. He +invited me to refreshment at the Czerny House, but I refused. During the +time he stood talking to me a throng of young Liszts gathered about us. +I call them "young Liszts" because they mimicked the old gentleman in an +outrageous manner. They wore their hair on their shoulders, they +sprinkled it with flour; they even went to such lengths as to paint +purplish excrescences on their chins and brows. They wore +semi-sacerdotal robes, they held their hands in the peculiar and +affected style of Liszt, and they one and all wore shovel hats. When +Liszt left me--we studied together with Czerny--they trooped after him, +their garments ballooning in the breeze, and upon their silly faces was +the devotion of a pet ape. + +I mention this because I have never met a Liszt pupil since without +recalling that day in Weimar. And when one plays I close my eyes and +hear the frantic effort to copy Liszt's bad touch and supple, sliding, +treacherous technic. Liszt, you may not know, had a wretched touch. The +old boy was conscious of it, for he told William Mason once, "Don't copy +my touch; it's spoiled." He had for so many years pounded and punched +the keyboard that his tactile sensibility--isn't that your new-fangled +expression?--had vanished. His "orchestral" playing was one of those +pretty fables invented by hypnotized pupils like Amy Fay, Aus der Ohe, +and other enthusiastic but not very critical persons. I remember well +that Liszt, who was first and foremost a melodramatic actor, had a habit +of striding to the instrument, sitting down in a magnificent manner and +uplifting his big fists as if to annihilate the ivories. He was a master +hypnotist, and like John L. Sullivan he had his adversary--the +audience--conquered before he struck a blow. His glance was terrific, +his "nerve" enormous. What he did afterward didn't much matter. He +usually accomplished a hard day's threshing with those flail-like arms +of his, and, heavens, how the poor piano objected to being taken for a +barn-floor! + +Touch! Why, Thalberg had the touch, a touch that Liszt secretly envied. +In the famous Paris duel that followed the visits of the pair to Paris, +Liszt was heard to a distinct disadvantage. He wrote articles about +himself in the musical papers--a practice that his disciples have not +failed to emulate--and in an article on Thalberg displayed his bad taste +in abusing what he could not imitate. Oh yes, Liszt was a great thief. +His piano music--I mean his so-called original music--is nothing but +Chopin and brandy. His pyrotechnical effects are borrowed from Paganini, +and as soon as a new head popped up over the musical horizon he helped +himself to its hair. So in his piano music we find a conglomeration of +other men's ideas, other men's figures. When he wrote for orchestra the +hand is the hand of Liszt, but the voice is that of Hector Berlioz. I +never could quite see Liszt. He hung on to Chopin until the suspicious +Pole got rid of him and then he strung after Wagner. I do not mean that +Liszt was without merit, but I do assert that he should have left the +piano a piano, and not tried to transform it to a miniature orchestra. + +Let us consider some of his compositions. + +Liszt began with machine-made fantasias on faded Italian operas--not, +however, faded in his time. He devilled these as does the culinary +artist the crab of commerce. He peppered and salted them and then giving +for a background a real New Jersey thunderstorm, the concoction was +served hot and smoking. Is it any wonder that as Mendelssohn relates, +the Liszt audience always stood on the seats to watch him dance through +the _Lucia_ fantasia? Now every school girl jigs this fatuous stuff +before she mounts her bicycle. + +And the new critics, who never heard Thalberg, have the impertinence to +flout him, to make merry at his fantasias. Just compare the _Don Juan_ +of Liszt and the _Don Juan_ of Thalberg! See which is the more musical, +the more pianistic. Liszt, after running through the gamut of operatic +extravagance, began to paraphrase movements from Beethoven symphonies, +bits of quartets, Wagner overtures and every nondescript thing he could +lay his destructive hands on. How he maltreated the _Tannhäuser_ +overture we know from Josef Hofmann's recent brilliant but ineffectual +playing of it. Wagner, being formless and all orchestral color, loses +everything by being transferred to the piano. Then, sighing for fresh +fields, the rapacious Magyar seized the tender melodies of Schubert, +Schumann, Franz and Brahms and forced them to the block. Need I tell you +that their heads were ruthlessly chopped and hacked? A special art-form +like the song that needs the co-operation of poetry is robbed of +one-half its value in a piano transcription. By this time Liszt had +evolved a style of his own, a style of shreds and patches from the +raiment of other men. His style, like Joseph's coat of many colors, +appealed to pianists because of its factitious brilliancy. + +The cement of brilliancy Liszt always contrived to cover his most +commonplace compositions with. He wrote etudes _à la_ Chopin; clever, I +admit, but for my taste his Opus One, which he afterwards dressed up +into _Twelve Etudes Transcendentales_--listen to the big, boastful +title!--is better than the furbished up later collection. His three +concert studies are Chopinish; his _Waldesrauschen_ is pretty, but leads +nowhere; his _Années des Pèlerinage_ sickly with sentimentalism; his +_Dante Sonata_ a horror; his _B-minor Sonata_ a madman's tale signifying +froth and fury; his legendes, ballades, sonettes, Benedictions in out of +the way places, all, all with choral attachments, are cheap, specious, +artificial and insincere. Theatrical Liszt was to a virtue, and his +continual worship of God in his music is for me monotonously +blasphemous. + +The Rhapsodies I reserve for the last. They are the nightmare curse of +the pianist, with their rattle-trap harmonies, their helter-skelter +melodies, their vulgarity and cheap bohemianism. They all begin in the +church and end in the tavern. There is a fad just now for eating +ill-cooked food and drinking sour Hungarian wine to the accompaniment of +a wretched gypsy circus called a Czardas. Liszt's rhapsodies +irresistibly remind me of a cheap, tawdry, dirty _table d'hôte_, where +evil-smelling dishes are put before you, to be whisked away and replaced +by evil-tasting messes. If Liszt be your god, why then give me Czerny, +or, better still, a long walk in the woods, humming with nature's +rhythms. I think I'll read _Walden_ over again. Now do you think I am as +amiable as I look? + + + + +X + +BACH--ONCE, LAST, AND ALL THE TIME + + +I'm an old, old man. I've seen the world of sights, and I've listened +eagerly, aye, greedily, to the world of sound, to that sweet, maddening +concourse of tones civilized Caucasians agree is the one, the only art. +I, too, have had my mad days, my days of joys uncontrolled--doesn't Walt +Whitman say that somewhere?--I've even rioted in Verdi. Ah, you are +surprised! You fancied I knew my Czerny _et voilà tout_? Let me have +your ear. I've run the whole gamut of musical composers. I once swore by +Meyerbeer. I came near worshiping Wagner, the early Wagner, and today I +am willing to acknowledge that _Die Meistersinger_ is the very apex of a +modern polyphonic score. I adored Spohr and found good in Auber. In a +word, I had my little attacks of musical madness, for all the world like +measles, scarlet fever, chicken-pox, and the mumps. + +As I grew older my task clarified. Having admired Donizetti, there was +no danger of being seduced by the boisterous, roystering Mascagni. +Knowing Mozart almost by heart, Gounod and his pallid imitations did not +for an instant impose on me. Ah! I knew them all, these vampires who +not only absorb a dead man's ideas, but actually copy his style, hoping +his interment included his works as well as his mortal remains. Being +violently self-conscious, I sought as I passed youth and its dangerous +critical heats to analyze just why I preferred one man's music to +another's. Why was I attracted to Brahms whilst Wagner left me cold? Why +did Schumann not appeal to me as much as Mendelssohn? Why Mozart more +than Beethoven? At last, one day, and not many years ago, I cried aloud, +"Bach, it is Bach who does it, Bach who animates the wooden, lifeless +limbs of these classicists, these modern men. Bach--once, last, and all +the time." + +And so it came about that with my prying nose I dipped into all +composers, and found that the houses they erected were stable in the +exact proportion that Bach was used in the foundations. If much Bach, +then granted talent, the man reared a solid structure. If no Bach, then +no matter how brilliant, how meteoric, how sensational the talents, +smash came tumbling down the musical mansion, smash went the fellow's +hastily erected palace. Whether it is Perosi--who swears by Bach and +doesn't understand or study him--or Mascagni or Massenet, or any of the +new school, the result is the same. Bach is the touchstone. Look at +Verdi, the Verdi of _Don Carlo_ and the Verdi who planned and built +_Falstaff_. Mind you, it is not that big fugued finale--surely one of +the most astounding operatic codas in existence--that carries me away. +It is the general texture of the work, its many voices, like the sweet +mingled roar of Buttermilk Falls, that draws me to _Falstaff_. It is +because of Bach that I have forsworn my dislike of the later Wagner, and +unlearned my disgust at his overpowering sensuousness. The web he spins +is too glaring for my taste, but its pattern is so lovely, so admirable, +that I have grown very fond of _The Mastersingers_. + +Bach is in all great, all good compositions, and especially is he a test +for modern piano music. The monophonic has been done to the death by a +whole tribe of shallow charlatans, who, under the pretence that they +wrote in a true piano style, literally debauched several generations of +students. Shall I mention names? Better disturb neither the dead nor the +quick. In the matter of writing for more voices than one we have +retrograded considerably since the days of Bach. We have, to be sure, +built up a more complex harmonic system, beautiful chords have been +invented, or rather re-discovered--for in Bach all were latent--but, +confound it, children! these chords are too slow, too ponderous in gait +for me. Music is, first of all, motion, after that emotion. I like +movement, rhythmical variety, polyphonic life. It is only in a few +latter-day composers that I find music that moves, that sings, that +thrills. + +How did I discover that Bach was in the very heart of Wagner? In the +simplest manner. I began playing the _E-flat minor Prelude_ in the first +book of the _Well-tempered Clavichord_, and lo! I was transported to the +opening of _Götterdämmerung_. + +Pretty smart boy that Richard Geyer to know his Bach so well! Yet the +resemblance is far fetched, is only a hazy similarity. The triad of +E-flat minor is common property, but something told me Wagner had been +browsing on Bach; on this particular prelude had, in fact, got a +starting point for the Norn music. The more I studied Wagner, the more I +found Bach, and the more Bach, the better the music. Chopin knew his +Bach backwards, hence the surprisingly fresh, vital quality of his +music, despite its pessimistic coloring. Schumann loved Bach and built +his best music on him, Mendelssohn re-discovered him, whilst Beethoven +played the _Well-tempered Clavichord_ every day of his life. + +All _my_ pupils study the _Inventions_ before they play Clementi or +Beethoven, and what well-springs of delight are these two- and +three-part pieces! Take my word for it, if you have mastered them you +may walk boldly up to any of the great, insolent forty-eight +sweet-tempered preludes and fugues and overcome them. Study Bach say I +to every one, but study him sensibly. Tausig, the greatest pianist the +world has yet heard, edited about twenty preludes and fugues from the +Clavichord. These he gave his pupils _after_ they had played Chopin's +opus 10. Strange idea, isn't it? Before that they played the +_Inventions_, the symphonies, the _French_ and _English +Suites_--Klindworth's edition of the latter is excellent--and the +_Partitas_. Then, I should say, the Italian concert and that excellent +three-voiced fugue in A minor, so seldom heard in concert. It is +pleasing rather than deep in feeling, but how effective, how brilliant! +Don't forget the toccatas, fantasias, and capriccios. Such works as _The +Art of Fugue_ and others of the same class show us Father Bach in his +working clothes, earnest if not exactly inspired. + +But in his moments of inspiration what a genius! What a singularly happy +welding of manner and matter! The _Chromatic Fantasia_ is to me greater +than any of the organ works, with the possible exception of the _G +minor Fantasia_. Indeed, I think it greater than its accompanying _D +minor Fugue_. In it are the harmonic, melodic, and spiritual germs of +modern music. The restless tonalities, the agitated, passionate, +desperate, dramatic recitatives, the emotional curve of the music, are +not all these modern, only executed in such a transcendental fashion as +to beggar imitation? + +Let us turn to the _Well-tempered Clavichord_ and bow the knee of +submission, of admiration, of worship. I use the Klindworth, the Busoni +and sometimes the Bischoff edition, never Kroll, never Czerny. I think +it was the latter who once excited my rage when I found the C sharp +major prelude transposed to the key of D flat! This outrageous +proceeding pales, however, before the infamous behavior of Gounod, who +dared--the sacrilegious Gaul!--to place upon the wonderful harmonies of +the master of masters a cheap, tawdry, vulgar tune. Gounod deserved +oblivion for this. I think I have my favorites, and for a day delude +myself that I prefer certain preludes, certain fugues, but a few hours' +study of its next-door neighbor and I am intoxicated with _its_ +beauties. We have all played and loved the _C minor Prelude_ in Book +one--Cramer made a study on memories of this--and who has not felt happy +at its wonderful fugue! Yet a few pages on is a marvelous _Fugue in C +sharp minor_ with five voices that slowly crawl to heaven's gate. Jump a +little distance and you land in the _E flat Fugue_ with its +assertiveness, its cocksure subject, and then consider the pattering, +gossiping one in E minor. If you are in the mood, has there ever been +written a brighter, more amiable, graceful prelude than the eleventh in +F? Its germ is perhaps the _F major Invention_, the eighth. A marked +favorite of mine is the fifteenth fugue in G. There's a subject for you +and what a jolly length! + +Bach could spin music as a spider spins its nest, from earth to the sky +and back again. Did you ever hear Rubinstein play the _B-flat Prelude +and Fugue_? If you have not, count something missed in your life. He +made the prelude as light as a moonbeam, but there was thunder in the +air, the clouds floated away, airy nothings in the blue, and then +celestial silence. Has any modern composer written music in which is +packed as much meaning, as much sorrow as may be found in the _B-flat +minor Prelude_? It is the matrix of all modern musical emotion. + +I don't know why I persist in saying "modern," as if there is any +particular feeling, emotion, or sensation discovered and exploited by +the man of this time that men of other ages did not experience! But +before Bach I knew no one who ranged the keyboard of the emotions so +freely, so profoundly, so poignantly. + +Touching on his technics, I may say that they require of the pianist's +fingers individualization and, consequently, a flexibility that is +spiritual as well as material. The diligent daily study of Bach will +form your style, your technics, better than all machines and finger +exercises. But play him as if he were human, a contemporary and not a +historical reminiscence. Yes, you may indulge in _rubato_. I would +rather hear it in Bach than in Chopin. Play Bach as if he still +composed--he does--and drop the nonsense about traditional methods of +performance. He would alter all that if he were alive today. + +I know but one Bach anecdote, and that I have never seen in print. The +story was related to me by a pupil of Reinecke, and Reinecke got it from +Mendelssohn. Bach, so it appears, was in the habit of practising every +day in the Thomas-Kirche at Leipsic, and one day several of his sons, +headed by the naughty Friedmann, resolved to play a joke on their good +old father. Accordingly, they repaired to the choir loft, got the +bellows-blower away, and started in to give the Master a surprise. They +tied the handle of the bellows to the door of the choir, and with a long +rope fastened to the outside knob they pulled the door open and shut, +and of course the wind ran low. Johann Sebastian--who looked more like +E. M. Bowman than E. M. B. himself--suddenly found himself clawing +ivory. He rose and went softly to the rear. Discovering no blower, he +investigated, and began to gently haul in the line. When it was all in +several boys were at the end of it. Did he whip them? Not he. He locked +the door, tied them to the bellows and sternly bade them blow. They did. +Then the archangel of music went back to his bench and composed the +famous _Wedge_ fugue. How true all this is I know not, but anyhow it is +quaint enough. Let me end this exhortation by quoting some words of +Eduard Remenyi from his fantastic essay on Bach: "If you want music for +your own and music's sake--look up to Bach. If you want music which is +as absolutely full of meaning as an egg is full of meat--look up to +Bach." + +Look up to Bach. Sound advice. Profit by it. + + + + +XI + +SCHUMANN: A VANISHING STAR + + +The missing meteors of November minded me of the musical reputations I +have seen rise, fill mid-heaven with splendor, pale, and fade into +ineffectual twilight. Alas! it is one of the bitter things of old age, +one of its keen tortures, to listen to young people, to hear their +superb boastings, and to know how short-lived is all art, music the most +evanescent of them all. When I was a boy the star of Schumann was just +on the rim of the horizon; what glory! what a planet swimming freely +into the glorious constellation! Beethoven was clean obscured by the +romantic mists that went to our heads like strong, new wine, and made us +drunk with joy. How neat, dapper, respectable and antique Mendelssohn! +Being Teutonic in our learnings, Chopin seemed French and dandified--the +Slavic side of him was not yet in evidence to our unanointed vision. +Schubert was a divinely awkward stammerer, and Liszt the brilliant +centipede amongst virtuosi. They were rapturous days and we fed full +upon Jean Paul Richter, Hoffmann, moonshine and mush. + +What the lads and lassies of ideal predilections needed was a man like +Schumann, a dreamer of dreams, yet one who pinned illuminative tags to +his visions to give them symbolical meanings, dragged in poetry by the +hair, and called the composite, art. Schumann, born mentally sick, a man +with the germs of insanity, a pathological case, a literary man turned +composer--Schumann, I say, topsy-turvied all the newly born and, without +knowing it, diverted for the time music from its true current. He +preached Brahms and Chopin, but practised Wagner--he was the forerunner +to Wagner, for he was the first composer who fashioned literature into +tone. + +Doesn't all this sound revolutionary? An old fellow like me talking this +way, finding old-fashioned what he once saw leave the bank of melody +with the mintage glitteringly fresh! Yet it is so. I have lived to +witness the rise of Schumann and, please Apollo, I shall live to see the +eclipse of Wagner. Can't you read the handwriting on the wall? _Dinna ye +hear the slogan_ of the realists? No music rooted in bookish ideas, in +literary or artistic movements, will survive the mutations of the +_Zeitgeist_. Schumann reared his palace on a mirage. The inside he +called Bachian--but it wasn't. In variety of key-color perhaps; but +structurally no symphony may be built on Bach, for a sufficient reason. +Schumann had the great structure models before him; he heeded them not. +He did not pattern after the three master-architects, Haydn, Mozart, and +Beethoven; gave no time to line, fascinated as he was by the problems of +color. But color fades. Where are the Turners of yester-year? Form and +form only endures, and so it has come to pass that of his four +symphonies, not one is called great in the land where he was king for a +day. The B-flat is a pretty suite, the C-major inutile--always barring +the lyric episodes--the D-minor a thing of shreds and patches, and the +_Rhenish_--muddy as the river Rhine in winter time. + +The _E-flat piano Quintet_ will live and also the piano +concerto--originally a fantasia in one movement. Thus Schumann +experimented and built, following the line of easiest resistance, which +is the poetic idea. If he had patterned as has Brahms, he would have +sternly put aside his childish romanticism, left its unwholesome if +captivating shadows, and pushed bravely into the open, where the sun and +moon shine without the blur and miasma of a _decadent_ literature. But +then we should not have had Schumann. It was not to be, and thus it is +that his is a name with a musical sigh, a name that evokes charming +memories, and also, I must admit, a name that gently plucks at one's +heart-strings. His songs are sweet, yet never so spontaneous as +Schubert's, so astringently intellectual as Robert Franz's. His opera, +his string quartets--how far are the latter from the noble, +self-contained music in this form of Beethoven and Brahms!--and his +choral compositions are already in the sad, gray _penumbra_ of the +negligible. His piano music is without the clear, chiseled contours of +Chopin, without a definite, a great style, yet--the piano music of +Schumann, how lovely some of it is! + +I will stop my heartless heart-to-heart talk. It is too depressing, +these vagaries, these senile ramblings of a superannuated musician. Ah, +me! I too was once in Arcady, where the shepherds bravely piped original +and penetrating tunes, where the little shepherdesses danced to their +lords and smiled sweet porcelain smiles. It was all very real, this +music of the middle century, and it was written for the time, it suited +the time, and when the time passed, the music with the men grew stale, +sour, and something to be avoided, like the leer of a creaking, +senescent _beau_, like the rouge and grimace of a debile _coquette_. My +advice then is, enjoy the music of your epoch, for there is no such +thing as music of the future. It is always music of the present. +Schumann has had his day, Wagner is having his, and Brahms will be +ruler of all tomorrow. _Eheu Fugaces!_ + +There was a time, _mes enfants_, when I played at all the Schumann +piano music. The _Abegg_ variations, the _Papillons_, the +_Intermezzi_--"an extension of the _Papillons_," said Schumann--_Die +Davidsbündler_, that wonderful _toccata in C_, the best double-note +study in existence--because it is music first, technics afterward--the +seldom attempted _Allegro, opus 8_, the _Carnaval_, tender and dazzling +miniatures, the twelve settings of Paganini, much more musical than +Liszt's, the _Impromptus_, a delicate compliment to his Clara. It is +always Clara with this Robert, like that other Robert, the strong-souled +English husband of Elizabeth Browning. Schumann's whole life romance +centered in his wife. A man in love with his wife and that man a +musician! Why, the entire episode must seem abnormal to the flighty, +capricious younger set, the Bayreuth set, for example. But it was an +ideal union, the woman a sympathetic artist, the composer writing for +her, writing songs, piano music, even criticism for and about her. +Decidedly one of the prettiest and most wholesome pictures in the +history of any art. + +Then I attacked the _F-sharp Minor Sonata_, with its wondrous +introduction like the vast, somber portals to some fantastic Gothic +pile. The _Fantasiestücke opus 12_, still remain Schumann at his +happiest, and easiest comprehended. The _Symphonic Variations_ are the +greatest of all, greater than the _Concerto_ or the _Fantasie in C_. +These almost persuade one that their author is a fit companion for +Beethoven and Chopin. There is invention, workmanship, and a solidity +that never for a moment clashes with the tide of romantic passion +surging beneath. Here he strikes fire and the blaze is glorious. + +The _F-minor Sonata_--the so-called _Concert sans orchestre_--a +truncated, unequal though interesting work; the _Arabesque_, the +_Blumenstück_, the marvelous and too seldom played _Humoreske_, opus 20, +every one throbbing with feeling; the eight _Novelletten_, almost, but +not quite successful attempts at a new form; the genial but +unsatisfactory _G-minor Sonata_, the _Nachtstücke_, and the _Vienna +Carnaval_, opus 26, are not all of these the unpremeditated outpourings +of a genuine poet, a poet of sensibility, of exquisite feeling? + +I must not forget those idylls of childhood, the _Kinderscenen_, the +half-crazy _Kreisleriana_, true soul-states, nor the _Fantasie, opus +17_, which lacks a movement to make it an organic whole. Consider the +little pieces, like the three romances, opus 28, the opus 32, the +_Album for the Young, opus 68_, the four fugues, four marches, the +_Waldscenen_--Oh, never-to-be-forgotten _Vogel als Prophet_ and +_Trock'ne Blumen_--the _Concertstück, opus 92_, the second _Album for +the Young_, the _Three Fantasy Pieces, opus 111_, the _Bunte +Blätter_--do you recall the one in F-sharp minor so miraculously varied +by Brahms, or that appealing one in A-flat? The _Albumblätter, opus +124_, the seven pieces in fughetta form, the never-played _Concert +allegro in D-minor, opus 134_, or the two posthumous works, the +_Scherzo_ and the _Presto Passionata_. + +Have I forgotten any? No doubt. I am growing weary, weary of all this +music, opiate music, prismatic music, "dreary music"--as Schumann +himself called his early stuff--and the somber peristaltic music of his +"lonesome, latter years." Schumann is now for the very young, for the +self-illuded. We care more--being sturdy realists--for architecture +today. These crepuscular visions, these adventures of the timid soul on +sad white nights, these soft croonings of love and sentiment are out of +joint with the days of electricity and the worship of the golden calf. +Do not ask yourself with cynical airs if Schumann is not, after all, +second-rate, but rather, when you are in the mood, enter his house of +dreams, his home beautiful, and rest your nerves. Robert Schumann may +not sip ambrosial nectar with the gods in highest Valhall, but he served +his generation; above all, he made happy one noble woman. When his music +is shelved and forgotten, the name of the Schumanns will stand for that +rarest of blessings, conjugal felicity. + + + + +XII + +"WHEN I PLAYED FOR LISZT" + + +To write from Bayreuth in the spring-time as Wagner sleeps calmly in the +backyard of _Wahnfried_, without a hint of his music in the air, is +giving me one of the deepest satisfactions of my existence. How came you +in Bayreuth, and, of all seasons in the year, the spring? The answer may +astonish you; indeed, I am astonished myself when I think of it. Liszt, +Franz Liszt, greatest of pianists--after Thalberg--greatest of modern +composers--after no one--Liszt lies out here in the cemetery on the +Erlangerstrasse, and to visit that forlorn pagoda designed by his +grandson Siegfried Wagner, I left my comfortable lodgings in Munich and +traveled an entire day. + +Now let me whisper something in your ear--I once studied with Liszt at +Weimar! Does this seem incredible to you? An adorer of Thalberg, +nevertheless, once upon a time I pulled up stakes at Paris and went to +the abode of Liszt and played for him exactly once. This was a +half-century ago. I carried letters from a well-known Parisian music +publisher, Liszt's own, and was therefore accorded a hearing. Well do I +recall the day, a bright one in April. His Serene Highness was at that +time living on the Altenberg, and to see him I was forced to as much +patience and diplomacy as would have gained me admittance to a royal +household. + +_Endlich_, the fatal moment arrived. Surrounded by a band of disciples, +crazy fellows all--I discovered among the rest the little figure of Karl +Tausig--the great man entered the _saal_ where I tremblingly sat. He was +very amiable. He read the letters I timidly presented him, and then, +slapping me on the back with an expression of _bonhomie_, he cried aloud +in French: "_Tiens!_ let us hear what this admirer of my old friend +Thalberg has to say for himself on the keyboard!" I did not miss the +veiled irony of the speech, the word _friend_ being ever so lightly +underlined; I knew of the famous Liszt-Thalberg _duello_, during which +so much music and ink had been spilt. + +But my agony! The _via dolorosa_ I traversed from my chair to the piano! +Since then the modern school of painter-impressionists has come into +fashion. I understand perfectly the mental, may I say the optical, +attitude of these artists to landscape subjects. They must gaze upon a +tree, a house, a cow, with their nerves at highest tension until +everything quivers; the sky is bathed in magnetic rays, the background +trembles as it does in life. So to me was the lofty chamber wherein I +stood on that fateful afternoon. Liszt, with his powerful profile, the +profile of an Indian chieftain, lounged in the window embrasure, the +light streaking his hair, gray and brown, and silhouetting his brow, +nose, and projecting chin. He alone was the illuminated focus of this +picture which, after a half-century, is brilliantly burnt into my +memory. His pupils were mere wraiths floating in a misty dream, with +malicious white points of light for eyes. And I felt like a disembodied +being in this spectral atmosphere. + +Yet urged by an hypnotic will I went to the piano, lifted the +fall-board, and in my misery I actually paused to read the maker's name. +A whisper, a smothered chuckle, and a voice uttering these words: "He +must have begun as a piano-salesman," further disconcerted me. I fell on +to the seat and dropped my fingers upon the keys. Facing me was the Ary +Scheffer portrait of Chopin, and without knowing why I began the weaving +Prelude in D-major. My insides shook like a bowl of jelly; yet I was +outwardly as calm as the growing grass. My hands did not falter and the +music seemed to ooze from my wrists. I had not studied in vain +Thalberg's _Art of Singing on the Piano_. I finished. There was a +murmur; nothing more. + +Then Liszt's voice cut the air: + +"I expected Thalberg's tremolo study," he said. I took the hint and +arose. + +He permitted me to kiss his hand, and, without stopping for my hat and +walking-stick in the antechamber, I went away to my lodgings. Later I +sent a servant for the forgotten articles, and the evening saw me in a +diligence miles from Weimar. But I had played for Liszt! + +Now, the moral of all this is that my testimony furthermore adds to the +growing mystery of Franz Liszt. He heard hundreds of such pianists of my +caliber, and, while he never committed himself--for he was usually too +kind-hearted to wound mediocrity with cruel criticism, yet he seldom +spoke the unique word except to such men as Rubinstein, Tausig, Joseffy, +d'Albert, Rosenthal, or von Bülow. A miraculous sort of a man, Liszt was +ever pouring himself out upon the world, body, soul, brains, art, +purse--all were at the service of his fellow-beings. That he was imposed +upon is a matter of course; that he never did an unkind act in his life +proves him to have been Cardinal Newman's definition of a gentleman: +"One who never inflicts pain." And only now is the real significance of +the man as a composer beginning to be revealed. Like a comet he swept +the heavens of his early youth. He was a marvelous virtuoso who mistook +the piano for an orchestra and often confounded the orchestra with the +piano. As a pianist pure and simple I prefer Sigismund Thalberg; but, as +a composer, as a man, an extraordinary personality, Liszt quite filled +my firmament. + +Setting aside those operatic arrangements and those clever, noisy +Hungarian Rhapsodies, what a wealth of piano-music has not this man +disclosed to us. Calmly read the thematic catalog of Breitkopf and +Härtel and you will be amazed at its variety. Liszt has paraphrased +inimitably songs by Schubert, Schumann, and Robert Franz, in which the +perfumed flower of the composer's thoughts is never smothered by +passage-work. Consider the delicious etude _Au bord d'une Source_, or +the _Sonnets After Petrarch_, or those beautiful concert-studies in +D-flat, F-minor, and A-flat; are they not models of genuine piano-music! +The settings of Schubert marches Hanslick declared are marvels; and the +_Transcendental Studies!_ Are not keyboard limitations compassed? +Chopin, a sick man physically, never dared as did Liszt. One was an +æolian-harp, the other a hurricane. I never attempted to play these +studies in their revised form; I content myself with the first sketches +published as an opus 1. There the nucleus of each etude may be seen. +Later Liszt expanded the _croquis_ into elaborate frescoes. And yet they +say that he had no thematic invention! + +Take up his B-minor sonata. Despite its length, an unheavenly length, it +is one of the great works of piano-literature fit to rank with +Beethoven's most sublime sonatas. It is epical. Have you heard Friedheim +or Burmeister play it? I had hoped that Liszt would vouchsafe me a +performance, but you have seen that I had not the courage to return to +him. Besides, I wasn't invited. Once in Paris a Liszt pupil, George +Leitert, played for me the _Dante Sonata_, a composition I heard thirty +years later from the fingers of Arthur Friedheim. It is the _Divine +Comedy_ compressed within the limits of a piano-piece. What folly, I +hear some one say! Not at all. In several of Chopin's Preludes--his +supreme music--I have caught reflections of the sun, the moon, and the +starry beams that one glimpses in lonely midnight pools. If Chopin could +mirror the cosmos in twenty bars, why should not a greater tone-poet +imprison behind the bars of his music the subtle soul of Dante? + +To view the range, the universality of Liszt's genius, it is only +necessary to play such a tiny piano-composition, _Eclogue_, from _Les +Années de Pèlerinage_ and then hear his _Faust Symphony_, his _Dante +Symphony_, his Symphonic Poems. There's a man for you! as Abraham +Lincoln once said of Walt Whitman. After carefully listening to the +_Faust Symphony_ it dawns on you that you have heard all this music +elsewhere, filed out, triturated, cut into handy, digestible fragments; +in a word, dressed up for operatic consumption, popularized. Yes, +Richard Wagner dipped his greedy fingers into Liszt's scores as well as +into his purse. He borrowed from the pure Rhinegold hoard of the +Hungarian's genius, and forgot to credit the original. In music there +are no quotation marks. That is the reason borrowing has been in vogue +from Handel down. + +The _Ring of the Nibelungs_ would not be heard today if Liszt had not +written its theme in his _Faust Symphony_. _Parsifal_ is altogether +Lisztian, and a German writer on musical esthetics has pointed out +recently, theme for theme, resemblance for resemblance, in this +Liszt-Wagner _Verhältniss_. Wagner owed everything to Liszt--from money +to his wife, success, and art. A wonderful white soul was Franz Liszt. +And he is only coming into his kingdom as a composer. Poor, petty, +narrow-minded humanity could not realize that because a man was a +pianist among pianists, he might be a composer among composers. I made +the error myself. I, too, thought that the velvet touch of Thalberg was +more admirable than the mailed warrior fist of Liszt. It is a mistake. +And now, plumped on my knees in Liszt's Bayreuth tomb, I acknowledge my +faults. Yes, he was a greater pianist than Thalberg. Can an +old-fashioned fellow say more? + + + + +XIII + +WAGNER OPERA IN NEW YORK + + +With genuine joy I sit once more in my old arm-chair and watch the +brawling Wissahickon Creek, its banks draped with snow, while overhead +the sky seems so friendly and blue. I am at Dussek Villa, I am at home; +and I reproach myself for having been such a fool as ever to wander from +it. Being a fussy but conscientious old bachelor, I scold myself when I +am in the wrong, thus making up for the clattering tongue of an active +wife. As I once related to you, I recently went to New York, and there +encountered sundry adventures, not all of them of a diverting nature. +One you know, and it reeks in my memory with stale cigars, witless talk, +and all the other monotonous symbols of Bohemia. Ah, that blessed +Bohemia, whose coast no man ever explored except gentle Will +Shakespeare! It is no-man's-land; never was and never will be. Its +misty, alluring signals have shipwrecked many an artistic mariner, +and--but pshaw! I'm too old to moralize this way. Only young people +moralize. It is their prerogative. When they live, when they fathom good +and evil and their mysteries, charity will check their tongues, so I +shall say no more of Bohemia. What I saw of it further convinced me of +its undesirability, of its inutility. + +And now to my tale, now to finish forever the story of my experiences in +Gotham! I declaimed violently against Tchaikovsky to my acquaintances of +the hour, because my dislike to him is deep rooted; but I had still to +encounter another modern musician, who sent me home with a headache, +with nerves all jangling, a stomach soured, and my whole esthetic system +topsy-turveyed and sorely wrenched. I heard for the first time Richard +Wagner's _Die Walküre_, and I've been sick ever since. + +I felt, with Louis Ehlert, that another such a performance would release +my feeble spirit from its fleshly vestment and send it soaring to the +angels, for surely all my sins would be wiped out, expiated, by the +severe penance endured. + +Not feeling quite myself the day after my experiences with the music +journalists, I strolled up Broadway, and, passing the opera-house, +inspected the _menu_ for the evening. I read, "_Die Walküre_, with a +grand cast," and I fell to wondering what the word _Walküre_ meant. I +have an old-fashioned acquaintance with German, but never read a line or +heard a word of Wagner's. Oh, yes; I forget the overture to _Rienzi_, +which always struck me as noisy and quite in Meyerbeer's most vicious +manner. But the Richard Wagner, the later Wagner, I read so much about +in the newspapers, I knew nothing of. I do now. I wish I didn't. + +Says I to myself, "Here's a chance to hear this Walkover opera. So now +or never." I went in, and, planking my dollar down, I said, "Give me the +best seat you have." "Other box-office, on 40th Street, please, for +gallery." I was taken aback. "What!" I exclaimed, "do you ask a whole +dollar for a gallery seat? How much, pray, for one down-stairs?" The +young man looked at me curiously, but politely replied, "Five dollars, +and they are all sold out." I went outside and took off my hat to cool +my head. Five good dollars--a whole week's living and more--to listen to +a Wagner opera! Whew! It must be mighty good music. Why I never paid +more than twenty-five cents to hear Mozart's _Magic Flute_, and with +Carlotta, Patti, Karl Formes, and--but what's the use of reminiscences? + +I could not make up my mind to spend so much money and I walked to +Central Park, took several turns, and then came down town again. My mind +was made up. I went boldly to the box-office and encountered the same +young man. "Look here, my friend," I said, "I didn't ask you for a +private box, but just a plain seat, one seat." "Sold out," he +laconically replied and retired. Then I heard suspicious laughter. +Rather dazed, I walked slowly to the sidewalk and was grabbed--there is +no other word--by several rough men with tickets and big bunches of +greenbacks in their grimy fists. "Tickets, tickets, fine seats for _De +Volkyure_ tonight." They yelled at me and I felt as if I were in the +clutches of the "barkers" of a downtown clothing-house. I saw my chance +and began dickering. At first I was asked fifteen dollars a seat, but +seeing that I am apoplectic by temperament they came down to ten. I +asked why this enormous tariff and was told that Van Dyck, Barnes, +Nordica, Van Rooy, and heaven knows who besides, were in the cast. That +settled it. I bargained and wrangled and finally escaped with a seat in +the orchestra for seven dollars! Later I discovered it was not only in +the orchestra, but quite near the orchestra, and on the brass and big +drum side. + +When I reached the opera-house after my plain supper of ham and eggs and +tea it must have been seven o'clock. I was told to be early and I was. +No one else was except the ticket speculators, who, recognizing me, gave +me another hard fight until I finally called a policeman. He smiled and +told me to walk around the block until half-past seven, when the doors +opened. But I was too smart and found my way back and everything open at +7.15, and my seat occupied by an overcoat. I threw it into the orchestra +and later there was a fine row when the owner returned. I tried to +explain, but the man was mad, and I advised him to go to his last home. +Why even the ushers laughed. At 7.45 there were a few dressed up folks +down stairs, and they mostly stared at me, for I kept my fur cap on to +heat my head, and my suit, the best one I have, is a good, solid +pepper-and-salt one. I didn't mind it in the least, but what worried me +was the libretto which I tried to glance through before the curtain +rose. In vain. The story would not come clear, although I saw I was in +trouble when I read that the hero and heroine were brother and sister. +Experience has taught me that family rows are the worst, and I wondered +why Wagner chose such a dull, old-fashioned theme. + +The orchestra began to fill up and there was much chattering and noise. +Then a little fellow with beard and eyeglasses hopped into the +conductor's chair, the lights were turned off, and with a roar like a +storm the overture began. I tried to feel thrilled, but couldn't. I had +expected a new art, a new orchestration, but here I was on familiar +ground, so familiar that presently I found myself wondering why Wagner +had orchestrated the beginning of Schubert's _Erlking_. The noise began +in earnest and by the light from a player's lamp I saw that the prelude +was intended for a storm. "Ha!" I said, "then it was the _Erlking_ after +all." The curtain rose on an empty stage with a big tree in the middle +and a fire burning on the hearth. + +There was no pause in the music at the end of the overture--did it +really end?--which I thought funny. Then a man with big whiskers, +wearing the skin of an animal, staggered in and fell before the fire. He +seemed tired out and the music had a tired feeling too. A woman dressed +in white entered and after staring for twenty bars got him a drink in a +ram's horn. The music kept right on as if it were a symphony and not an +opera. The yelling from the pair was awful, at least so it seemed to me. +It appears that they were having family troubles and didn't know their +own names. Then the orchestra began stamping and knocking, and a fellow +with hawk wings in his helmet, a spear and a beard entered, and some one +next to me said "There's the Hunding motive." Now I know my German, but +I saw no dog, besides, what motive could the animal have had. The three +people, a savage crew, sat down and talked to music, just plain talk, +for I didn't hear a solitary tune. The girl went to bed and the man +followed. The tenor had a long scene alone and the girl came back. They +must have found out their names, for they embraced and after pulling an +old sword out of the tree, they said a lot and went away. I was glad +they had patched up the family trouble, but what became of the big, +black-bearded fellow with the hawk wings in his helmet? + +The next act upset me terribly. I read my book, but couldn't make out +why, if _Wotan_ was the God of all and high much-a-muck, he didn't smash +all his enemies, especially that cranky old woman of his, _Fricka_? What +a pretty name! I got quite excited when Nordica sang a yelling sort of a +scream high up on the rocks. Not at the music, however, but I expected +her to fall over and break her neck. She didn't, and shouting Wagner's +music at that. Why it would twist the neck of a giraffe! Quite at sea, I +saw the brother and sister come in and violently quarrel, and Nordica +return and sing a slumber song, for the sister slept and the brother +looked cross. Then more gloom and a duel up in the clouds, and once more +the curtain fell. I heard the celebrated _Ride of the Valkyries_ and +wondered if it was music or just a stable full of crazy colts neighing +for oats. Dean Swift's Gulliver would have said the latter. I thought +so. The howling of the circus girls up on the rocks paralyzed my +faculties. + +It was a hideous saturnalia, and deafened by the brass and percussion +instruments I tried to get away, but my neighbors protested and I was +forced to sit and suffer. What followed was incomprehensible. The crazy +amazons, the Walk-your-horses, and the disagreeable _Wotan_ kept things +in a perfect uproar for half an hour. Then the stage cleared and the +father, after lecturing his daughter, put her to sleep under a tree. He +must have been a mesmerist. Red fire ran over the stage, steam hissed, +the orchestra rattled, and the bass roared. Finally, to tinkling bells +and fourth of July fireworks, the curtain fell on the silliest pantomime +I ever saw. + +The music? Ah, don't ask me now! Wait until my nerves get settled. It +never stopped, and fast as it reeled off I recognized Bach, Mozart, +Beethoven, Schumann, Weber--lots of Weber--Marschner, and Chopin. Yes, +Chopin! The orchestration seemed overwrought and coarse and the +form--well, formlessness is the only word to describe it. There was an +infernal sort of skill in the instrumentation at times, a short-breathed +juggling with other men's ideas, but no development, no final cadence. +Everything in suspension until my ears fairly longed for one perfect +resolution. Even in the _Spring Song_ it does not occur. That tune is +suspiciously Italian, for all Wagner's dislike of Italy. + +And this is your operatic hero today! This is your maker of music +dramas! Pooh! it is neither fish nor flesh nor good red herring. Give me +one page from the _Marriage of Figaro_ or the finale to _Don Giovanni_ +and I will show you divine melody and great dramatic writing! But I'm +old-fashioned, I suppose. I have since been told the real story of _Die +Walküre_ and am dumfounded. It is all worse than I expected. Give me my +Dussek, give me Mozart, let me breathe pure, sweet air after this +hot-house music with its debauch of color, sound, action, and morals. I +must have the grip, because even now as I write my mind seems tainted +with the awful music of Richard Wagner, the arch fiend of music. I shall +send for the doctor in the morning. + + + + +XIV + +A VISIT TO THE PARIS CONSERVATOIRE + + +I feel very much like the tutor of Prince Karl Heinrich in the pretty +play _Old Heidelberg_. After a long absence he returned to Heidelberg +where his student life had been happy--or at least had seemed so to him +in the latter, lonesome years. Behold, he found the same reckless crowd, +swaggering, carousing, flirting, dueling, debt-making, love-making, and +occasionally studying. He liked it so well that, if I mistake not, the +place killed him. I felt very much in the same position as the Doctor +Jüttner of the play when I returned to Paris last summer. The +_Conservatoire_ is still in its old, crooked, narrow street; it is still +a noisy sheol as one enters at the gate; and there is still the same old +gang of callow youths and extremely pert misses going and coming. Only +they all seem more sophisticated nowadays. They--naturally enough--know +more than their daddies, and they show it. As they brushed past, +literally elbowing me, they seemed contemptuously arrogant in their +youthful exuberance. And yet, and yet--_ego in Arcadia!_ + +I stood in the quadrangle and dreamed. Forty years ago--or is it +fifty?--I had stood there before; but it was in the chilly month of +November. I was young then, and I was very ambitious. The little Ohio +town whose obscurity I had hoped to transform into fame--ah! these mad +dreams of egotistical boyhood--did not resent my leaving it. It still +stands where it was--stands still. I seem to have gone on, and yet I +return to that little, dull, dilapidated town in my thoughts, for it was +there I enjoyed the purple visions of music, where I fondly believed +that I, too, might go forth into the world and make harmony. I did; but +my harmony exercises were always returned full of blue marks. Such is +life--and its lead-pencil ironies! + +To be precise as well as concise, I stood in the concierge's bureau some +forty years ago and wondered if the secretary would see me. He did. +After he had tortured me as to my age, parentage, nationality, +qualifications, even personal habits, it occurred to him to ask me what +I wanted in Paris. I told him, readily enough, that I had crossed the +yeasty Atlantic in a sailing vessel--for motives of economy--that I +might study the pianoforte in Paris. I remember that I also naïvely +inquired the hours when M. François Liszt--he called him _Litz!_--gave +his lessons. The secretary was too polite to laugh at my provincial +ignorance, but he coughed violently several times. Then I was informed +that M. Liszt never gave piano-lessons any time, any-where; that he was +to be found in Weimar; but only by passed grand masters of the art of +pianoforte-playing. Still undaunted, I insisted on entering my name +amongst those who would compete at the forthcoming public examination. I +was, as I said before, very young, very inexperienced, and I was alone, +with just enough money to keep me for one year. + +I lived in a fourth-story garret in a little alley--you couldn't call it +a street--just off the exterior boulevard. Whether it was the Clichy or +the Batignolles doesn't matter very much now. How I lived was another +affair--and also an object lesson for the young fellows who go abroad +nowadays equipped with money, with clothes, with everything except +humility. Judging from my weekly expenses in my native town, I supposed +that Paris could not be very much higher in its living. So I took with +me $600 in gold, which, partially an inheritance, partially saved and +borrowed, was to last me two years. How I expected to get home was one +of those things that I dared not reflect upon. Sufficient for the day +are the finger exercises thereof! I paid $8 a month--about 40 +francs--for my lodgings. Heavens--what a room! It was so small that I +undressed and dressed in the hall, always dark, for the reason that my +bed, bureau, trunk, and upright piano quite crowded me out of the +apartment. I could lie in bed and by reaching out my hands touch the +keyboard of the little rattletrap of an instrument. But it was a piano, +after all, and at it I could weave my musical dreams. + +I forgot to tell you that my eating and drinking did not cut important +figures in my scheme of living. I had made up my mind early in my career +that tobacco and beer were for millionaires. Coffee was the grand +consoler, and with coffee, soup, bread, I managed to get through my +work. I ate at a café frequented by cabmen, and for ten cents I was +given soup, the meat of the soup--tasteless stuff--bread, and a potato. +What more did an ambitious young man want? There were many not so well +off as I. I took two meals a day, the first, coffee and milk with a +roll. Then I starved until dark for my soup meat. I recall wintry days +when I stayed in bed to keep warm, for I never could indulge in the +luxury of fire, and with a pillow on my stomach I did my harmony +lessons. The pillow, need I add, was to suppress the latent pangs of +juvenile appetite. My one sorrow was my washing. With my means, fresh +linen was out of the question. A flannel shirt, one; socks at intervals, +and a silk handkerchief, my sole luxury, was the full extent of my +wardrobe. + +When the wet rain splashed my face as I walked the boulevards on the +morning of the examination I was not cast down. I had determined to do +or die. With a hundred of my sort, both sexes and varying nationality, I +was penned up in a room, one door of which opened on the stage of the +Conservatory theater. I looked about me. Giggling girls in crumpled +white dresses stalked up and down humming their arias, while shabbily +dressed mothers gazed admiringly at them. Big boys and little, bad boys +and good, slim, fat, stupid, shrewd boys, encircled me, and, as I was +mature for my age, joked me about my senile appearance. I had a numbered +card in my hand, No. 13, and all those who saw it shuddered, for the +French are as stupid as old-time Southern "darkies." Something akin to +the expectant feeling of the early Christian martyrs was experienced by +all of us as a number was called aloud by a hoarse-voiced Cerberus, and +the victim disappeared through the narrow door leading to the lions in +the arena. At last, after some squabbling between No. 14 and No. 15, +both of whom thought they had precedence over No. 13, I went forth to +my fate. + +I came out upon a dimly lighted stage which held two grand pianofortes +and several chairs. A colorless-looking individual read my card and with +marked asperity asked for my music. Frightened, I told him I had brought +none. There were murmurings and suppressed laughter in the dim +auditorium. _There_ sat the judges--I don't know how many, but one was a +woman, and I hated her though I could not see her. She had a +disagreeable laugh, and she let it loose when the assistant professor on +the platform stumbled over the syllables of my very Teutonic name. I +explained that I had memorized a Beethoven sonata, all the Beethoven +sonatas, and that was the reason I left my music at home. This +explanation was received in chilly silence, though I did not fail to +note that it prejudiced the interrogating professor against me. He +evidently took me for a superior person, and he then and there mentally +proposed to set me down several pegs. I felt, rather than saw, all this +in the twinkling of an eye. I sat down to the keyboard and launched +forth into Beethoven's first _Sonata in F minor_, a favorite of mine. +Ominous silence broken by the tapping of a nervous lead pencil in the +hand of a nervous woman. I got through the movement and then a voice +punctuated the stillness. + +"Ah, Mozart is _so_ easy! Try something else!" And then I made my second +mistake. I arose and, bowing to the invisible one in the gloom, I said: +"That, was _not_ Mozart, but Beethoven." There was an explosion of +laughter, formidable, brutal. The feminine voice rose above it all in +irritating accents. + +"Impertinent! And what a silly beard he has!" I sat down in despair, +plucking at my fluffy chin-whiskers and wondering if they looked as +frivolous as they felt. + +Nudged from dismal reverie, I saw the colorless professor with a music +book in his hand. He placed it on the piano-desk and mumbled: "Very +indifferent. Read this at sight." Puzzled by the miserable light, the +still more wretched typography, I peered at the notes as peers a miser +at the gold he is soon to lose. No avail. My vision was blurred, my +fingers leaden. Suddenly I noticed that, whether through malicious +intent or stupid carelessness, the book was upside down. Now, I knew my +Bach fugues, if I may say it, backward. Something familiar about the +musical text told me that before me, inverted, was the _C-sharp Major +Prelude_ in the first book of the _Well-tempered Clavichord_. +Mechanically my fingers began that most delicious and light-hearted of +caprices--I did not dare to touch the music--and soon I was rattling +through it, all my thoughts three thousand miles away in a little Ohio +town. When I had finished I arose in grim silence, took the music, held +it toward the chief executioner, and said: + +"And upside down!" + +There was another outburst, and again that woman's voice was heard: + +"What a comedian is this young Yankee!" + +I left the stage without bowing, jostled the stupid doorkeeper, and fled +through the room where the other numbers huddled like sheep for the +slaughter. Seizing my hat I went out into the rain, and when the +concierge tried to stop me I shook a threatening fist at him. He stepped +back in a fine hurry, I assure you. When I came to my senses I found +myself on my bed, my head buried in the pillows. Luckily I had no +mirror, so I was spared the sight of my red, mortified face. That night +I slept as if drugged. + +In the morning a huge envelope with an official seal was thrust through +a crack in my door--there were many--and in it I found a notification +that I was accepted as a pupil of the Paris _Conservatoire_. What a +dream realized! But only to be shattered, for, so I was further +informed, I had succeeded in one test and failed in another--my sight +reading was not up to the high standard demanded. No wonder! Music +reversed, and my fingers mechanically playing could be hardly called a +fair sight-reading trial. Therefore, continued this implacable document, +I would sit for a year in silence watching other pupils receiving their +instruction. I was to be an _auditeur_, a listener--and all my musical +castles came tumbling about my ears! + +What I did during that weary year of waiting cannot be told in one +article; suffice it to say I sat, I heard, I suffered. If music-students +of today experience kindred trials I pity them; but somehow or other I +fancy they do not. Luxury is longed for too much; young men and young +women will not make the sacrifices for art we oldsters did; and it all +shows in the shallow, superficial, showy, empty, insincere +pianoforte-playing of the day and hour. + + + + +XV + +TONE VERSUS NOISE + + +The tropical weather in the early part of last month set a dozen +problems whizzing in my skull. Near my bungalow on the upper Wissahickon +were several young men, camping out for the summer. One afternoon I was +playing with great gusto a lovely sonata by Dussek--the one in +A-flat--when I heard laughter, and, rising, I went to the window in an +angry mood. Outside were two smiling faces, the patronizing faces of two +young men. + +"Well!" said I, rather shortly. + +"It was like a whiff from the eighteenth century," said a stout, dark +young fellow. + +"A whiff that would dissipate the musical malaria of this," I cried, for +I saw I had musicians to deal with. There was hearty laughter at this, +and as young laughter warms the cockles of an old man's heart, I invited +the pair indoors, and over some bottled ale--I despise your new-fangled +slops--we discussed the Fine Arts. It is not the custom nowadays to +capitalize the arts, and to me it reveals the want of respect in this +headlong irreverent generation. To return to my mutton--to my sheep: +they told me they were pianists from New York or thereabouts, who had +conceived the notion of spending the summer in a tent. + +"And what of your practising?" I slyly asked. Again they roared. "Why, +old boy, you must be behind the times. We use a dumb piano the most part +of the year, and have brought a three-octave one along." That set me +going. "So you spend your vacation with the dumb, expecting to learn to +speak, and yet you mock me because I play Dussek! Let me inform you, my +young sirs, that this quaint, old-fashioned music, with its faint odor +of the _rococo_, is of more satisfying musical value than all your +modern gymnasiums. Of what use, pray, is your superabundant technics if +you can't make music? Training your muscles and memorizing, you say? +Fiddlesticks! The _Well-tempered Clavichord_ for one hour a day is of +more value to a pianist technically and musically than an army of +mechanical devices. + +"I never see a latter-day pianist on his travels but I am reminded of a +comedian with his rouge-pot, grease-paints, wigs, arms, and costumes. +Without them, what is the actor? Without his finger-boards and +exercising machines, what is the pianist of today? He fears to stop a +moment because his rival across the street will be able to play the +double-thirds study of Chopin in quicker _tempo_. It all hinges on +velocity. This season there will be a race between Rosenthal and Sauer, +to see who can vomit the greater number of notes. Pleasing, laudable +ambition, is it not? In my time a piano artist read, meditated, communed +much with nature, slept well, ate and drank well, saw much of society, +and all his life was reflected in his play. There was sensibility--above +all, sensibility--the one quality absent from the performances of your +new pianists. I don't mean super-sickly emotion, nor yet sprawling +passion--the passion that tears the wires to tatters, but a poetic +sensibility that infused every bar with humanity. To this was added a +healthy tone that lifted the music far above anything morbid or +depressing." + +I continued in this strain until the dinner-bell rang, and I had to +invite my guests to remain. Indeed, I was not sorry, for all old men +need some one to talk to and at, else they fret and grow peevish. +Besides, I was anxious to put my young masters to the test. I have a +grand piano of good age, with a sounding-board like a fine-tempered +fiddle. The instrument, an American one, I handle like a delicate +thoroughbred horse, and, as my playing is accomplished by the use of my +fingers and not my heels, the piano does not really betray its years. + +We dined not sumptuously but liberally, and with our pipes and coffee +went to the music room. The lads, excited by my criticisms and good +cheer, were eager for a demonstration at the keyboard. So was I. I let +them play first. This is what I heard: The dark-skinned youth, who +looked like the priestly and uninteresting Siloti, sat down and began +idly preluding. He had good fingers, but they were spoiled by a +hammer-like touch and the constant use of forearm, upper-arm, and +shoulder pressure. He called my attention to his tone. Tone! He made +every individual wire jangle, and I trembled for my smooth, well-kept +action. Then he began the _B-minor Ballade_ of Liszt. Now, this +particular piece always exasperates me. If there is much that is +mechanical and conventional in the Thalberg fantasies, at least they are +frankly sensational and admittedly for display. But the Liszt _Ballade_ +is so empty, so pretentious, so affected! One expects that something is +about to occur, but it never comes. There are the usual chromatic +modulations leading nowhere and the usual portentous roll in the bass. +The composition works up to as much silly display as ever indulged in by +Thalberg. My pianist splashed and spluttered, played chord-work +straight from the shoulder, and when he had finished he cried out, +"There is a dramatic close for you!" + +"I call it mere brutal noise," I replied, and he winked at his friend, +who went to the piano without my invitation. Now, I did not care for the +looks of this one, and I wondered if he, too, would display his biceps +and his triceps with such force. But he was a different brand of the +modern breed. He played with a small, gritty tone, and at a terrible +speed, a foolish and fantastic derangement of Chopin's _D-flat Valse_. +This he followed, at a break-neck _tempo_, with Brahms' dislocation of +Weber's _C major Rondo_, sometimes called "the perpetual movement." It +was all very wonderful, but was it music? + +"Gentlemen," I said, as I arose, pipe in hand, "you have both studied, +and studied hard," and they settled themselves in their bamboo chairs +with a look of resignation; "but have you studied well? I think not. I +notice that you lay the weight of your work on the side of technics. +Speed and a brutal _quasi_-orchestral tone seem to be your goal. Where +is the music? Where has the airy, graceful valse of Chopin vanished? +Encased, as you gave it, within hard, unyielding walls of double thirds, +it lost all its spirit, all its evanescent hues. It is a butterfly +caged. And do you call that music, that topsy-turvying of the Weber +_Rondo_? Why, it sounds like a clock that strikes thirteen in the small +hours of the night! And you, sir, with your thunderous and grandiloquent +Liszt _Ballade_, do you call that pianoforte music, that constant +striving for an aping of orchestral effects? Out upon it! It is hollow +music--music without a soul. It is easier, much easier, to play than a +Mozart sonata, despite all its tumbling about, despite all its notes. +You require no touch-discrimination for such a piece. You have none. In +your anxiety to compass a big tone you relinquish all attempts at finer +shadings--at the _nuance_, in a word. Burly, brutal, and overloaded in +your style, you make my poor grand groan without getting one vigorous, +vital tone. Why? Because elasticity is absent, and will always be +absent, where the fingers are not allowed to make the music. The +springiest wrist, the most supple forearm, the lightest upper arm cannot +compensate for the absence of an elastic finger-stroke. It is what +lightens up and gives variety of color to a performance. You are all +after tone-quantity and neglect touch--touch, the revelation of the +soul." + +"Yes, but your grand is worn out and won't stand any forcing of the +tone," answered the Liszt _Ballade_, rather impudently. + +"Why the dickens do you want to force the tone?" said I, in tart +accents. "It is just there we disagree," I yelled, for I was getting +mad. "In your mad quest of tone you destroy the most characteristic +quality of the pianoforte--I mean its lack of tone. If it could sustain +tone, it would no longer be a pianoforte. It might be an organ or an +orchestra, but not a pianoforte. I am after tone-quality, not tonal +duration. I want a pure, bright, elastic, spiritual touch, and I let the +tonal mass take care of itself. In an orchestra a full chord +_fortissimo_ is interesting because it may be scored in the most +prismatic manner. But hit out on the keyboard a smashing chord and, +pray, where is the variety in color? With a good ear you recognize the +intervals of pitch, but the color is the same--hard, cold, and +monotonous, because you have choked the tone with your idiotic, +hammer-like attack. Sonorous, at least, you claim? I defy you to prove +it. Where was the sonority in the metallic, crushing blows you dealt in +the Liszt _Ballade_? There was, I admit, great clearness--a clearness +that became a smudge when you used the damper pedal. No, my boys, you +are on the wrong track with your orchestral-tone theory. You transform +the instrument into something that is neither an orchestra nor a +pianoforte. Stick to the old way; it's the best. Use plenty of finger +pressure, elastic pressure, play Bach, throw dumb devices to the dogs, +and, if you use the arm pressure at all, confine it to the forearm. That +will more than suffice for the shallow dip of the keys. You can't get +over the fact that the dip is shallow, so why attempt the impossible? +For the amount of your muscle expenditure you would need a key dip of +about six inches. Now, watch me. I shall, without your permission, and +probably to your disgust, play a nocturne by John Field. Perhaps you +never heard of him? He was an Irish pianist and, like most Irishmen of +brains, gave the world ideas that were promptly claimed by others. But +this time it was not an Englishman, but a Pole, who appropriated an +Irishman's invention. This nocturne is called a forerunner to the Chopin +nocturnes. They are really imitations of Field's, without the blithe, +dewy sweetness of the Irishman's. First, let me put out the lamps. There +is a moon that is suspended like a silver bowl over the Wissahickon. It +is the hour for magic music." + +Intoxicated by the sound of my own voice, I began playing the _B-flat +Nocturne_ of Field. I played it with much delicacy and a delicious +touch. I am very vain of my touch. The moon melted into the apartment +and my two guests, enthralled by the mystery of the night and my music, +were still as mice. I was enraptured and played to the end. I waited for +the inevitable compliment. It came not. Instead, there were stealthy +snores. The pair had slept through my playing. Imbeciles! I awoke them +and soon packed them off to their canvas home in the woods hard by. +They'll get no more dinners or wisdom from me. I tell this tale to show +the hopelessness of arguing with this stiff-necked generation of +pianists. But I mean to keep on arguing until I die of apoplectic rage. +Good-evening! + + + + +XVI + +TCHAIKOVSKY + + +A day in musical New York! + +Not a bad idea, was it? I hated to leave the country, with its rich +after-glow of Summer, its color-haunted dells, and its pure, searching +October air, but a paragraph in a New York daily, which I read quite by +accident, decided me, and I dug out some good clothes from their +fastness and spent an hour before my mirror debating whether I should +wear the coat with the C-sharp minor colored collar or the one with the +velvet cuffs in the sensuous key of E-flat minor. Being an admirer of +Kapellmeister Kreisler (there's a writer for you, that crazy Hoffmann!), +I selected the former. I went over on the 7.30 A. M., P. R. R., and +reached New York in exactly two hours. There's a _tempo_ for you! I +mooned around looking for old landmarks that had vanished--twenty years +since I saw Gotham, and then Theodore Thomas was king. + +I felt quite miserable and solitary, and, being hungry, went to a +much-talked-of café, Lüchow's by name, on East Fourteenth Street. I saw +Steinway and Sons across the street and reflected with sadness that +the glorious days of Anton Rubinstein were over, and I still a useless +encumberer of the earth. Then an arm was familiarly passed through mine +and I was saluted by name. + +"You! why I thought you had passed away to the majority where Dussek +reigns in ivory splendor." + +I turned and discovered my young friend--I knew his grandfather years +ago--Sledge, a pianist, a bad pianist, and an alleged critic of music. +He calls himself "a music critic." Pshaw! I was not wonderfully warm in +my greeting, and the lad noticed it. + +"Never mind my fun, Mr. Fogy. Grandpa and you playing Moscheles' +_Hommage à Fromage_, or something like that, is my earliest and most +revered memory. How are you? What can I do for you? Over for a day's +music? Well, I represent the _Weekly Whiplash_ and can get you tickets +for anything from hell to Hoboken." + +Now, if there is anything I dislike, it is flippancy or profanity, and +this young man had both to a major degree. Besides, I loathe the modern +musical journalist, flying his flag one week for one piano house and +scarifying it the next in choice Billingsgate. + +"Oh, come into Lüchow's and eat some beer," impatiently interrupted my +companion, and, like the good-natured old man that I am, I was led like +a lamb to the slaughter. And how I regretted it afterward! I am cynical +enough, forsooth, but what I heard that afternoon surpassed my +comprehension. I knew that artistic matters were at a low ebb in New +York, yet I never realized the lowness thereof until then. I was +introduced to a half-dozen smartly dressed men, some beardless, some +middle-aged, and all dissipated looking. They regarded me with +curiosity, and I could hear them whispering about my clothes, I got off +a few feeble jokes on the subject, pointing to my C-sharp minor colored +collar. A yawn traversed the table. + +"Ah, who has the courage to read Hoffmann, nowadays?" asked a +boyish-looking rake. I confessed that I had. He eyed me with an amused +smile that caused me to fire up. I opened on him. He ordered a round of +drinks. I told him that the curse of the generation was its cold-blooded +indifference, its lack of artistic conscience. The latter word caused a +sleepy, fat man with spectacles to wake up. + +"Conscience, who said conscience? Is there such a thing in art any +more?" I was delighted for the backing of a stranger, but he calmly +ignored me and continued: + +"Newspapers rule the musical world, and woe betide the artist who does +not submit to his masters. Conscience, pooh-pooh! Boodle, lots of it, +makes most artistic reputations. A pianist is boomed a year ahead, like +Paderewski, for instance. Paragraphs subtly hinting of his enormous +success, or his enormous hair, or his enormous fingers, or his enormous +technic----" + +"Give us a _fermata_ on your enormous story, Jenkins. Every one knows +you are disgruntled because the _Whiplash_ attacks your judgment." This +from another journalist. + +Jenkins looked sourly at my friend Sledge, but that shy young person +behaved most nonchalantly. He whistled and offered Jenkins a cigar. It +was accepted. I was disgusted, and then they all fell to quarreling over +Tchaikovsky. I listened with amazement. + +"Tchaikovsky," I heard, "Tchaikovsky is the last word in music. His +symphonies, his symphonic poems, are a superb condensation of all that +Beethoven knew and Wagner felt. He has ten times more technic for the +orchestra than Berlioz or Wagner, and it is a pity he was a suicide--" +"How," I cried, "Tchaikovsky a suicide?" They didn't even answer me. + +"He might have outlived the last movement of that B-minor symphony, the +suicide symphony, and if he had we would have had another ninth +symphony." I arose indignant at such blasphemy, but was pushed back in +my seat by Sledge. "What a pity Beethoven did not live to hear a man who +carried to its utmost the expression of the emotions!" I now snorted +with rage, Sledge could no longer control me. + +"Yes, gentlemen," I shouted; "utmost expression of the emotions, but +what sort of emotions? What sort, I repeat, of shameful, morbid +emotions?" The table was quiet again; a single word had caught it. "Oh, +Mr. Fogy, you are not so very Wissahickon after all, are you? You know +the inside story, then?" cried Sledge. But I would not be interrupted. I +stormed on. + +"I know nothing about any story and don't care to know it. I come of a +generation of musicians that concerned itself little with the scandals +and private life of composers, but lots with their music and its +meanings." "Go it, Fogy," called out Sledge, hammering the table with +his seidl. "I believe that some composers should be put in jail for the +villainies they smuggle into their score. This Tchaikovsky of +yours--this Russian--was a wretch. He turned the prettiness and favor +and noble tragedy of Shakespeare's _Romeo and Juliet_ into a bawd's +tale; a tale of brutal, vile lust; for such passion as he depicts is +not love. He took _Hamlet_ and transformed him from a melancholy, a +philosophizing Dane into a yelling man, a man of the steppes, soaked +with _vodka_ and red-handed with butchery. Hamlet, forsooth! Those +twelve strokes of the bell are the veriest melodrama. And _Francesca da +Rimini_--who has not read of the gentle, lovelorn pair in Dante's +priceless poem; and how they read no more from the pages of their book, +their very glances glued with love? What doth your Tchaikovsky with this +Old World tale? Alas! you know full well. He tears it limb from limb. He +makes over the lovers into two monstrous Cossacks, who gibber and squeak +at each other while reading some obscene volume. Why, they are too much +interested in the pictures to think of love. Then their dead carcasses +are whirled aloft on screaming flames of hell, and sent whizzing into a +spiral eternity." + +"Bravo! bravo! great! I tell you he's great, your friend. Keep it up old +man. Your description beats Dante and Tchaikovsky combined!" I was not +to be lured from my theme, and, stopping only to take breath and a fresh +dip of my beak into the Pilsner, I went on: + +"His _Manfred_ is a libel on Byron, who was a libel on God." "Byron, +too," murmured Jenkins. "Yes, Byron, another blasphemer. The six +symphonies are caricatures of the symphonic form. Their themes are, for +the most part, unfitted for treatment, and in each and every one the +boor and the devil break out and dance with uncouth, lascivious +gestures. This musical drunkenness; this eternal license; this want of +repose, refinement, musical feeling--all these we are to believe make +great music. I'll not admit it, gentlemen; I'll not admit it! The piano +concerto--I only know one--with its fragmentary tunes; its dislocated, +jaw-breaking rhythms, is ugly music; plain, ugly music. It is as if the +composer were endeavoring to set to melody the consonants of his name. +There's a name for you, Tchaikovsky! 'Shriekhoarsely' is more like it." +There was more banging of steins, and I really thought Jenkins would go +off in an apoplectic fit, he was laughing so. + +"The songs are barbarous, the piano-solo pieces a muddle of confused +difficulties and childish melodies. You call it naïveté. I call it +puerility. I never saw a man that was less capable of developing a theme +than Tchaikovsky. Compare him to Rubinstein and you insult that great +master. Yet Rubinstein is neglected for the new man simply because, with +your depraved taste, you must have lots of red pepper, high spices, +rum, and an orchestral color that fairly blisters the eye. You call it +color. I call it chromatic madness. Just watch this agile fellow. He +lays hold on a subject, some Russian _volks_ melody. He gums it and +bolts it before it is half chewed. He has not the logical charm of +Beethoven--ah, what Jovian repose; what keen analysis! He has not the +logic, minus the charm, of Brahms; he never smells of the pure, open +air, like Dvořák--a milkman's composer; nor is Tchaikovsky master of the +pictorial counterpoint of Wagner. All is froth and fury, oaths, +grimaces, yelling, hallooing like drunken Kalmucks, and when he writes a +slow movement it is with a pen dipped in molasses. I don't wish to be +unjust to your 'modern music lord,' as some affected idiot calls him, +but really, to make a god of a man who has not mastered his material and +has nothing to offer his hearers but blasphemy, vulgarity, brutality, +evil passions like hatred, concupiscence, horrid pride--indeed, all the +seven deadly sins are mirrored in his scores--is too much for my nerves. +Is this your god of modern music? If so, give me Wagner in preference. +Wagner, thank the fates, is no hypocrite. He says out what he means, and +he usually means something nasty. Tchaikovsky, on the contrary, taking +advantage of the peculiar medium in which he works, tells the most +awful, the most sickening, the most immoral stories; and if he had +printed them in type he would have been knouted and exiled to Siberia. +If----" + +"Time to close up," said the waiter. I was alone. The others had fled. I +had been mumbling with closed eyes for hours. Wait until I catch that +Sledge! + + + + +XVII + +MUSICAL BIOGRAPHY MADE TO ORDER + + +No longer from Dussek-Villa-on-Wissahickon do I indite my profound +thoughts (it is the fashion nowadays in Germany for a writer to proclaim +himself or herself--there are a great many "hers"--profound; the result, +I suppose, of too much Nietzsche and too little common sense, not to +mention modesty--that quite antiquated virtue). I am now situated in +this lovely, umbrageous spot not far from the Bohemian border in +Germany, on the banks of the romantic river Pilsen. To be sure, there +are no catfish and waffles _à la_ Schuylkill, but are there any to be +found today at Wissahickon? On the other hand, there is good cooking, +excellent beer and in all Schaumpfeffer, a town of nearly 3000 souls, +you won't find a man or woman who has heard of any composer later than +Haydn. They still dance to the music of Lanner and the elder Strauss; +Johann, Jr., is considered rather an iconoclast in his _Fledermaus_. I +carefully conceal the American papers, which are smuggled out to my +villa--Villa Scherzo it is called because life is such a joke, +especially music--and I read them and all modern books (that is, those +dating later than 1850) behind closed doors. Oh, I am so cheerful over +this heavenly relief from thrice-accursed "modernity." I'm old, I admit +(I still recall Kalkbrenner's pearly touch and Doehler's chalky tone), +but my hat is still on the piano top. In a word, I'm in the ring and +don't propose to stop writing till I die, and I shan't die as long as I +can hold a pen and protest against the tendencies of the times. Old Fogy +to the end! + +I walk, I talk, I play Hummel, Bach, Mozart, and occasionally Stephen +Heller--he's a good substitute for the sickly, affected Chopin. I read, +read too much. Lately, I've been browsing in my musical library, a large +one as you well know, for I have been adding to it for the last two +decades and more by receiving the newest contributions to what is called +"musical literature." Well, I don't mind telling you that the majority +of books on music bore me to death. Particularly books containing +apochryphal stories of the lives of great composers or executive +musicians. Pshaw! Why I can reel off yarns by the dozen if I'm put to +it. Besides, the more one reads of the private lives of great musicians, +the more one's ideal of the fitness of things is shocked. Paderewski +putting a collar button in his shirt and swearing at his private +chaplain because some of the criticisms were underdone, is not half so +fearsome as Chopin with the boils, or Franz Schubert advertising in a +musical journal. After years of reading I have reached the conclusion +that the average musical Boswell is a fraud, a snare, a pitfall, and a +delusion. The way to go about being one is simple. First acquaint +yourself with a few facts in the lives of great musicians, then, on a +slim framework, plaster with fiction till the structure fairly trembles. +Never fear. The publishers will print it, the public will devour it, +especially if it be anecdotage. Let me reveal the working of the musical +fiction mill. Here, for example, is something in the historical vein. Of +necessity it must be pointless and colorless; that lends the touch of +reality. Let us call it--"Bach and the Boehm Flute." + +Once upon a time it is related that the great Johann Sebastian Bach +visited Frederick the Great at Potsdam. Stained with travel the +wonderful fugue-founder was ushered into the presence of Voltaire. +"Gentlemen," cried that monarch to his courtiers, "Old Bach has arrived; +let us see what this jay looks like." Frederick was always fond of a +joke at the expense of the Boetians. Attired as he was, Bach was ushered +into the presence of his majesty. In his hand he held a small box--or, +if you prefer it stated symbolically, a small bachs. "Ah! Master Bach," +said the Prussian King, condescendingly, "What have you in your hand?" +"A Boehm flute, your majesty," answered Bach; "for it I have composed a +concerto in seven flats." "You lie!" retorted the bluff monarch, "the +Boehm flute has not yet been invented. Away with you, hayseed from +Halle." Whereat the mighty Bach softly laughed, being tickled by the +regal repartee, and stole home, and there he sat him down and composed a +nine-part fugue for Boehm flute and jackpot on the word Potsdam, the +manuscript of which is still extant. + +How's that? Or, suppose Beethoven's name be mentioned. Here is a +specimen brick from the sort of material Beethoven anecdotes are made. +Call it, for the sake of piquancy, "Beethoven and Esterhazy." + +"No," yelled the composer of the _Ninth Symphony_, throwing a bootjack +at his house-keeper--thus far the eleventh, I mean house-keeper and not +bootjack--"No, tell the thundering idiot I'm drunk, or dead, or both." +Then, with a sigh, he took up a quart bottle of Schnapps and poured the +contents over his hair, and with beating heart penned his immortal _Hymn +to Joy_, Prince Esterhazy, his patron, greatly incensed at the refusal +of Beethoven to admit him, hastily chalked on his door a small offensive +musical theme, which the great composer later utilized in the allegro of +his _Razzlewiski quartet_ (C sharp minor). From such small beginnings, +etc. + +You will observe how I work in Beethoven's frenetic rage, his rudeness, +absent-mindedness, and all the rest of the things we are taught to +believe that Beethoven indulged in. Now for something more modern and in +a lighter vein. This is for the Brahms lover. Let us call it "Brahms' +hatred of Cats." + +Brahms, so it is said, was an avowed enemy of the feline tribe. Unlike +Scarlatti, who was passionately fond of chords of the diminished cats, +the phlegmatic Johannes spent much of his time at his window, +particularly of moonlit nights, practising counterpoint on the race of +cats, the kind that infest back yards of dear old Vienna. Dr. Antonin +Dvořák had made his beloved friend and master a present of a peculiar +bow and arrow, which is used in Bohemia to slay sparrows. In and about +Prague it is named in the native tongue, "Slugj hym inye nech." With +this formidable weapon did the composer of orchestral cathedrals spend +his leisure moments. Little wonder that Wagner became an +anti-vivisectionist, for he, too, had been up in Brahms' backyard, but +being near-sighted, usually missed his cat. Because of arduous practice +Brahms always contrived to bring down his prey, and then--O diabolical +device!--after spearing the poor brutes, he reeled them into his room +after the manner of a trout fisher. Then--so Wagner averred--he eagerly +listened to the expiring groans of his victims and carefully jotted down +in his note-book their antemortem remarks. Wagner declared that he +worked up these piteous utterances into his chamber-music, but then +Wagner had never liked Brahms. Some latter-day Nottebohm may arise and +exhibit to an outraged generation the musical sketch-books of Brahms, so +that we may judge of the truth of this tale. + +For a change, drop the severe objectivity of the method historical and +attempt the personal. It is very fetching. Here's a title for you: "How +I met Richard Wagner." + +The day was of the soft dreamy May sort. I was walking slowly across the +Austernheim-hellmsberger Platz--local color, you observe!--when my eyes +suddenly collided with a queer apparition. At first blush it looked like +a little old woman, in visage a veritable witch; but horrors! a witch +with whiskers. This old woman, as I mistook her to be, was attired in +an Empire gown, with crinoline under-attachments. Around the neck was an +Elizabethan ruff, and on the head was a bonnet of the vogue of 1840; +huge, monstrously trimmed and bedecked with a perfect garden of +artificial flowers. The color of the dress was salmon-blue, with pink +ribbons. Altogether it was a fearful get-up, and, involuntarily, I +looked about me expecting to see people stopping, a crowd forming. But +no one appeared to notice the little old woman except myself, and as she +drew near I discovered that she wore spectacles and a fringe of +iron-gray hair around her face. Her eyes were piercingly bright and on +her lips was etched a sardonic smile. Not quite knowing how to explain +my rude stare, I was preparing to turn in another direction, when the +stranger accosted me, and in the voice of a man: "Perhaps you don't know +that I am Richard Wagner, the composer of the _Ring_? I am also Liszt's +son-in-law, and from the way you turn your feet in, I take you to be a +pianist and a Leschetizky pupil!" Marvelous psychologist! A regular +Sherlock Holmes. And then, with a snort of rage, the Master walked away, +a massive Dachshund viciously snapping at a link of sausage that idly +swung from his pocket. + +There, you have the Wagner anecdote orchestrated to suit those musical +persons who believe that the composer was fond of nothing but millinery +and dogs. Finally, if your publisher clamors for something about Liszt +or Chopin, you may quote this; not forgetting the allusion to George +Sand. To mention Chopin without Sand would be considered excessively +inaccurate. I call the story, "Liszt's Clever Retort." + +It was midwinter. As was his wont in this season, Chopin was attired +from head to foot in white wool. His fragile form and spiritual face, +with its delicate smile, made him seem a member of some heavenly +brotherhood that spends its existence praying for the expiation of the +wickedness wrought by men. The composer was standing near the fireplace; +without it snowed, desperately snowed. He was not alone. Half sitting, +half reclining on a chair, his feet on the mantelpiece, was a man, spare +and sinewy as an Indian. Long, coarse, brown hair hung mane-like upon +his shoulders. His lithe, powerful fingers almost seemed to crush the +short white Irish clay pipe from which he occasionally took a whiff. It +was Liszt, Franz Liszt, Liszt Ferencz--don't forget the accompanying +_Eljen!_--the pet of the gods, the adored of women; Liszt who never had +a hair-cut; Liszt the inventor of the Liszt pupil. There had evidently +been a heated discussion, for Chopin's face was adorned with bright +hectic spots, his smile was sardonic, and a cough shook his ascetic +frame as if from suppressed chagrin. Liszt was surly and at intervals +said "basta!" beneath his long Milesian upper lip. Such silence could +not long endure; an explosion was imminent. Liszt, quickly divining that +Chopin was about to break forth in an hysterical fury, forstalled him by +jocosely crying: "Freddy, my old son, the trouble with you is that you +have no Sand in you!" And before the enraged Pole could answer this +cruel, mocking raillery, the tall Magyar leaned over, pressed the button +three times, and the lemonade came in time to avert blood-shed. + +There, Mr. Editor, you have a pleasing comminglement of romance and +colloquialism. Now that I have shown how to play the trick, let all who +will go ahead and be their own musical Boswell. + +But a truce to such foolery. I am wayward and gray of thought today. My +soul is filled with the clash and dust of life. I hate the eternal +blazoning of fierce woes and acid joys upon the orchestral canvas. Why +must the music of a composer be played? Why must our tone-weary world +be sorely grieved by the subjective shrieks and imprudent publications +of some musical fellow wrestling in mortal agony with his first love, +his first tailor's bill, his first acquaintance with the life about him? +Why, I ask, should music leave the page on which it is indited? Why need +it be played? How many beauties in a score are lost by translation into +rude tones! How disenchanting sound those climbing, arbutus-like +arpeggios and subtle half-tints of Chopin when played on that brutal, +jangling instrument of wood, wire and iron, the pianoforte! I shudder at +the profanation. I feel an oriental jealousy concerning all those +beautiful thoughts nestling in the scores of Chopin and Schubert which +are laid bare and dissected by the pompous pen of the music-critic. The +man who knows it all. The man who seeks to transmute the unutterable and +ineffable delicacies of tone into terms of commercial prose. And +newspaper prose. Hideous jargon, I abominate you! + +I am suffering from too many harmonic harangues. [Isn't this one?] I +long for the valley of silence, Edgar Poe's valley, wherein not even a +sigh stirred the amber-colored air [or wasn't it saffron-hued? I forget, +and Poe is not to be had in this corner of the universe]. Why can't +music be read in the seclusion of one's study, in the company of one's +heart-beats? Why must we go to the housetop and shout our woes to the +universe? The "barbaric yawp" of Walt Whitman, over the roofs of the +world, has become fashionable, and from tooting motor-cars to noisy +symphonies all is a conspiracy against silence. At night dream-fugues +shatter the walls of our inner consciousness, and yet we call music a +divine art! I love the written notes, the symbols of the musical idea. +Music, like some verse, sounds sweeter on paper, sweeter to the inner +ear. Music overheard, not heard, is the more beautiful. Palimpsestlike +we strive to decipher and unweave the spiral harmonies of Chopin, but +they elude as does the sound of falling waters in a dream. Those violet +bubbles of prismatic light that the Sarmatian composer blows for us are +too fragile, too intangible, too spirit-haunted to be played. [All this +sounds as if I were really trying to write after the manner of the busy +Princess Sayn-Wittgenstein, who helped Liszt to manufacture his book on +Chopin; indeed, it is suspected, altered every line he wrote of it.] + +O, for some mighty genius of color who will deluge the sky with +pyrotechnical symphonies! Color that will soothe the soul with +iridescent and incandescent harmonies, that the harsh, brittle noises +made by musical instruments will no longer startle our weaving fancies. +Yet if Shelley had not sung or Chopin chanted, how much poorer would be +the world today. But that is no reason why school children should scream +in chorus: "Life, like a dome of many-colored glass, stains the white +radiance of eternity," or that tepid misses in their 'teens should +murder the nocturnes of Chopin. Even the somnolent gurgle of the +bullfrog, around the ponds of Manayunk, as he signals to his mate in the +mud, is often preferable to music made by earthly hands. Let it be +abolished. Electrocute the composer and banish the music-critic. Then +let there be elected a supervisory board of trusty guardians, men +absolutely above the reproach of having played the concertina or plunked +staccato tunes on a banjo. Entrust to their care all beautiful music and +poetry and prohibit the profane, vulgar, the curious, gaping herd from +even so much as a glance at these treasures. For the few, the previous +elect, the quintessential in art, let no music be sounded throughout the +land. Let us read it and think tender and warlike silent thoughts. + +And now, having too long detained you with my vagaries, let me say "good +night," for it is getting dark, and before midnight I must patrol the +keyboard for at least four hours, unthreading the digital intricacies of +Kalkbrenner's Variations on the old melody, _Sei ruhig mein Herz, or the +Cat will hear you_. + + + + +XVIII + +OLD FOGY WRITES A SYMPHONIC POEM + + +"Definite feelings and emotions are unsusceptible of being embodied in +music," says Eduard Hanslick in his _Beautiful in Music_. Now, you +composers who make symphonic poems, why don't you realize that on its +merits as a musical composition, its theme, its form, its treatment, +that your work will endure, and not on account of its fidelity to your +explanatory program? + +For example, if I were a very talented young composer--which I am +not--and had mastered the tools of my trade--knew everything from a song +to a symphony, and my instrumentation covered the whole gamut of the +orchestral pigment.... Well, one night as I tossed wearily on my bed--it +was a fine night in spring, the moon rounded and lustrous and silvering +the lake below my window--suddenly my musical imagination began to work. + +I had just been reading, and for the thousandth time, Browning's _Childe +Roland_, with its sinister coloring and spiritual suggestions. Yet it +had never before struck me as a subject suitable for musical treatment. +But the exquisite cool of the night, its haunting mellow flavor, had +set my brain in a ferment. A huge fantastic shadow threw a jagged black +figure on the lake. Presto, it was done, and with a mental snap that +almost blinded me. + +I had my theme. It will be the first theme in my new symphonic poem, +_Childe Roland_. It will be in the key of B minor, which is to be +emblematic of the dauntless knight who to "the dark tower came," +unfettered by obstacles, physical or spiritual. + +O, how my brain seethed and boiled, for I am one of those unhappy men +who the moment they get an idea must work it out to its bitter end. +_Childe Roland_ kept me awake all night. I even heard his "dauntless +horn" call and saw the "squat tower." I had his theme. I felt it to be +good; to me it was Browning's Knight personified. I could hear its +underlying harmonies and the instrumentation, sombre, gloomy, without +one note of gladness. + +The theme I treated in such a rhythmical fashion as to impart to it +exceeding vitality, and I announced it with the English horn, with a +curious rhythmic background by the tympani; the strings in division +played tremolando and the bass staccato and muted. This may not be clear +to you; it is not very clear to me, but at the time it all seemed very +wonderful. I finished the work after nine months of agony, of revision, +of pruning, clipping, cutting, hawking it about for my friends' +inspection and getting laughed at, admired and also mildly criticized. + +The thrice fatal day arrived, the rehearsals had been torture, and one +night the audience at a great concert had the pleasure of reading on the +program Browning's _Childe Roland_ in full, and wondering what it was +all about. My symphonic poem would tell them all, as I firmly believed +in the power of music to portray definitely certain soul-states, to +mirror moods, to depict, rather indefinitely to be sure, certain +phenomena of daily life. + +My poem was well played. It was only ninety minutes long, and I sat in a +nervous swoon as I listened to the _Childe Roland_ theme, the squat +tower theme, the sudden little river motif, the queer gaunt horse theme, +the horrid engine of war motif, the sinister, grinning, false guide +subject--in short, to all the many motives of the poem, with its +apotheosis, the dauntless blast from the brave knight as he at last +faced the dark tower. + +This latter I gave out with twelve trombones, twenty-one bassett horns +and one calliope; it almost literally brought down the house, and I was +the happiest man alive. As I moved out I was met by the critic of _The +Disciples of Tone_, who said to me: + +"Lieber Kerl, I must congratulate you; it beats Richard Strauss all +hollow. _Who_ and what was _Childe Roland_? Was he any relation to +Byron's _Childe Harold_? I suppose the first theme represented the +'galumphing' of his horse, and that funny triangular fugue meant that +the horse was lame in one leg and was going it on three. Adieu; I'm in a +hurry." + +Triangular fugue! Why, that was the crossroads before which Childe +Roland hesitated! How I hated the man. + +I was indeed disheartened. Then a lady spoke to me, a musical lady, and +said: + +"It was grand, perfectly grand, but why did you introduce a funeral +march in the middle--I fancied that Childe Roland was not killed until +the end?" + +The funeral march she alluded to was not a march at all, but the +"quagmire theme," from which queer faces threateningly mock at the +knight. + +"Hopeless," thought I; "these people have no imagination." + +The next day the critics treated me roughly. I was accused of cribbing +my first theme from _The Flying Dutchman_, and fixing it up +rhythmically for my own use, as if I hadn't made it on the spur of an +inspired moment! They also told me that I couldn't write a fugue; that +my orchestration was overloaded, and my work deficient in symmetry, +repose, development and, above all, in coherence. + +This last was too much. Why, Browning's poem was contained in my +tone-poem; blame Browning for the incoherence, for I but followed his +verse. One day many months afterward I happened to pick up Hanslick, and +chanced on the following: + +"Let them play the theme of a symphony by Mozart or Haydn, an adagio by +Beethoven, a scherzo by Mendelssohn, one of Schumann's or Chopin's +compositions for the piano, or again, the most popular themes from the +overtures of Auber, Donizetti or Flotow, who would be bold enough to +point out a definite feeling on the subject of any of these themes? One +will say 'love.' Perhaps so. Another thinks it is longing. He may be +right. A third feels it to be religion. Who may contradict him? Now, how +can we talk of a definite feeling represented when nobody really knows +what is represented? Probably all will agree about the beauty or +beauties of the composition, whereas all will differ regarding its +subject. To represent something is to exhibit it clearly, to set it +before us distinctly. But how can we call that the subject represented +by an art which is really its vaguest and most indefinite element, and +which must, therefore, forever remain highly debatable ground." + +I saw instantly that I had been on a false track. Charles Lamb and +Eduard Hanslick had both reached the same conclusion by diverse roads. I +was disgusted with myself. So then the whispering of love and the clamor +of ardent combatants were only whispering, storming, roaring, but not +the whispering of love and the clamor; musical clamor, certainly, but +not that of "ardent combatants." + +I saw then that my symphonic poem, _Childe Roland_, told nothing to +anyone of Browning's poem, that my own subjective and overstocked +imaginings were not worth a rush, that the music had an objective +existence as music and not as a poetical picture, and by the former and +not the latter it must be judged. Then I discovered what poor stuff I +had produced--how my fancy had tricked me into believing that those +three or four bold and heavily orchestrated themes, with their restless +migration into different tonalities, were "soul and tales marvelously +mirrored." + +In reality my ignorance and lack of contrapuntal knowledge, and, above +all, the want of clear ideas of form, made me label the work a symphonic +poem--an elastic, high-sounding, pompous and empty title. In a spirit of +revenge I took the score, rearranged it for small orchestra, and it is +being played at the big circus under the euphonious title of _The Patrol +of the Night Stick_, and the musical press praises particularly the +graphic power of the night stick motive and the verisimilitude of the +escape of the burglar in the coda. + +Alas, _Childe Roland!_ + +Seriously, if our rising young composers--isn't it funny they are always +spoken of as rising? I suppose it's because they retire so late--read +Hanslick carefully, much good would accrue. It is all well enough to +call your work something or other, but do not expect me nor my neighbor +to catch your idea. We may be both thinking about something else, +according to our temperaments. I may be probably enjoying the form, the +instrumentation, the development of your themes; my neighbor, for all we +know, will in imagination have buried his rich, irritable old aunt, and +so your pæan of gladness, with its brazen clamor of trumpets, means for +him the triumphant ride home from the cemetery and the anticipated joys +of the post-mortuary hurrah. + + + + +XIX + +A COLLEGE FOR CRITICS + + +Yes, it was indeed a hot, sultry afternoon, and as the class settled +down to stolid work, even Mr. Quelson shifted impatiently at the +blackboard, where he was trying to explain to a young pupil from +Missouri that Beethoven did not write his oratorio, _The Mount of +Olives_, for Park and Tilford. It was no use, however, the pupil had +been brought up in a delicatessen foundry and saw everything musical +from the comestible viewpoint. + +The sun blazed through the open oriel windows at the western end of the +large hall, and the class inwardly rebelled at its task and thought of +cool, green grottoes with heated men frantically falling over the +home-plate, while the multitude belched bravos as Teddy McCorkle made +three bases. Instead of the national game the class was wrestling with +figured bass and the art of descant, and again it groaned aloud. + +Mr. Quelson faced his pupils. In his eyes were tears, but he must do his +duty. + +"Gentlemen," he suavely said, "the weather is certainly trying, but +remember this is examination day, and next week you, that is some of +you, will go out into the great world to face its cares, to wrestle for +its prizes, to put forth your strength against the strength of men; in a +word, to become critics of music, and to represent this college, wherein +you have imbibed so much generous and valuable learning." + +He paused, and the class, which had pricked up its ears at the word +"imbibe," settled once again to listen in gloomy silence. Their +dignified preceptor continued. + +"And now, gentlemen of the Brahms Institute, I hasten to inform you that +the examining committee is without, and is presently to be admitted. Let +me conjure you to keep your heads; let me beg of you to do yourself +justice. Surely, after five years of constant, sincere, and earnest +study you will not backslide, you will not, in the language of the great +Matthewson, make any muffs." Professor Quelson looked about him and +beamed benignly. He had made a delicate joke, and it was not lost, for +most sonorously the class chanted, "He's a jolly good fellow," and in +modern harmonies. Their professor looked gratified and bowed. Then he +tapped a bell, which sounded the triad of B flat minor, and the doors at +the eastern end of the hall parted asunder, and the examining committee +solemnly entered. + +It was an august looking gang. Two music-critics from four of the +largest cities of the country comprised the board of examination, with a +president selected by common vote. This president was the distinguished +pianist and literator, Dr. Larry Nopkin, and his sarcastic glare at the +pupils gave every man the nervous shivers. Funereally the nine men filed +by and took their seats on the platform, Dr. Nopkin occupying with Mr. +Quelson the dais, on which stood a grand piano. + +There was a brief pause, but pregnant with anxiety. Mr. Quelson, all +smiles, handed Dr. Nopkin a long list of names, and the committee fanned +itself and thought of the _Tannhäuser-Busch Overture_ which it had +listened to so attentively in the Wagner coaches that brought it to +Brahms Institute. + +The only man of the party who seemed out of humor was Mr. Blink, who +grumbled to his neighbor that the name of the college was in bad taste. +It should have been called the Chopin Retreat or the Paderewski Home, +but Brahms--pooh! + +Dr. Nopkin arose, put on a pair of ponderous spectacles, and grinned +malevolently at his hearers. + +"Young men," he squeakily said, "I want to begin with a story. Once +upon a time a certain young man, full of the conviction that he was a +second Liszt, sought out Thalberg, when that great pianist--" + +"Great pianist!" whispered Blink, sardonically. + +"Yes, I said great pianist--greater than all your Paderewski's, your--" + +"I protest, Mr. President," said Mr. Blink, rising to his feet; at the +same time a pink flush rose to his cheek. "I protest. We have not come +here to compare notes about pianists, but to examine this class." + +The class giggled, but respectfully and in a perfect major-accord. Dr. +Nopkin grew black in the face. Turning to Mr. Quelson he said: + +"Either I am president or I am not, Mr. Quelson." + +That gentleman looked very much embarrassed. + +"Oh, of course, doctor, of course; Mr. Blink was carried away, you +know--carried away by his professional enthusiasm--no offense intended, +I am sure, Mr. Blink." + +By this time Mr. Blink had been pulled down in his seat by Mr. +Sanderson, the critic of the _Skyrocket_, and order was restored. + +The class seemed disappointed as Dr. Nopkin proceeded: "As I was saying +when interrupted by my Wagnerian associate, the young man went to +Thalberg and played an original composition called the _Tornado Galop_. +It was written exclusively for the black keys, and a magnificent +_glissando_, if I do flatter myself, ended the piece most brilliantly. +Thalberg--it was in the year '57, if I remember aright." + +"You do," remarked the class in pleasing tune. + +"Thank you, gentlemen, I see dates are not your weak point. Thalberg +remarked--" + +"For goodness sake give us a rest on Thalberg!" said the irrepressible +Blink. + +"A rest, yes, a _fermata_ if you wish," retorted the doctor, and the +witticism was received with a yell, in the Doric mode. You see +Rheinberger had not quite sapped the sense of humor of Mr. Quelson's +young acolytes. + +Considerably pleased with himself Dr. Nopkin continued: + +"Thalberg said to the young man, 'Honored sir, there is too much wind in +your work, give your Tornado more earth, and less air.' Now the point of +this amiable criticism is applicable to your work now and in the future. +Give your readers little wind, but much soil. Do not indulge in fine +writing, but facts, facts, facts!" Here the speaker paused and glanced +severely at his colleagues, who awoke with a start. The ear of the +music critic is very keen and long practice enables him to awaken at the +precise moment the music ceases. + +Then Dr. Nopkin announced that the examinations would begin, and again +from a tapped bell sounded the triad of B flat minor. The class looked +unhappy, and the young fellow from Missouri burst into tears. For a +moment a wave of hysterical emotion surged through the hall, and there +being so much temperament present it seemed as if a crisis was at hand. +Mr. Quelson rose to the occasion. Crying aloud in a massive voice, he +asked: + +"Gentlemen, give me the low pitch A!" + +Instantly the note was sounded; even the weeping pupil hummed it through +his tears, and a panic was averted by the coolness of a massive brain +fertile in expedients. + +The committee, now thoroughly awake, looked gratified, and the +examination began. + +After glancing through the list, Dr. Nopkin called aloud: + +"Mr. Hogwin, will you please tell me the date of the death of Verdi?" + +"Don't let him jolly you, Hoggy, old boy," sang the class in an +immaculate minor key. The doctor was aghast, but Mr. Quelson took the +part of his school. He argued that the question was a misleading one. +They wrangled passionately over this, and Blink finally declared that if +Verdi was not dead he ought to be. This caused a small riot, which was +appeased by the class singing the _Anvil Chorus_. + +"Well, I give in, Mr. Quelson; perhaps my friend Blink would like to put +a few questions." Dr. Nopkin fanned himself vigorously with an old and +treasured copy of Dwight's _Journal of Music_, containing a criticism of +his "passionate octave playing." Mr. Blink arose and took the list. + +"I see here," he said, "the name of Beckmesser McGillicuddy. The name is +a promising one. Wagner ever desired the Celt to be represented in his +scheme of the universe." + +"Obliging of him," insinuated Mr. Tile of the _Daily Bulge_. + +"Gentlemen, gentlemen," groaned poor Quelson; "think of the effect on +the class if this spirit of irreverent repartee is maintained." + +"Mr. Beckmesser McGillicuddy, will you please stand up?" requested Mr. +Blink. + +"Stand up, Gilly! Stand up Gilly, and show him what you are. Don't be +afraid, Gilly! We will see you through," chanted the class with an +amazing volume of tone and in lively rhythm. + +The young man arose. He was 6 feet 8, with a 17 waist, and a 12-1/2 +neck. Yet he looked intelligent. The class watched him eagerly, and the +Missouri member, now thoroughly recovered, whistled the Fate-motif from +_Carmen_, and McGillicuddy looked grateful. + +"You wish to become a music critic, do you not?" inquired Mr. Blink, +patronizingly. + +"What do you think I'm here for?" asked the student, in firm, cool +tones. + +"Tell me, then, did Wagner ever wear paper collars?" + +"Celluloid," was the quick answer, and the class cheered. Mr. Quelson +looked unhappy, and Tile sneered in a minor but audible key. + +"Good," said Mr. Blink. "You'll do. Would any of my colleagues care to +question this young and promising applicant, who appears to me to have +thoroughly mastered modern music?" + +Little Mr. Slehbell arose, and the class again trembled. They had read +his _How to See Music Although a Deaf Mute_, and they knew that there +were questions in it that could knock them out. The critic secured the +list, and after hunting up the letter K, he coughed gently and asked: + +"Mr. Krap is here, I hope?" + +"Get into line, Billy Krap; get into line, Billy. Give him as good as +he gives you; so fall into line, Billy Krap." + +This was first sung by the class with antiphonal responses, then with a +fugued finale, and Mr. Slehbell was considerably impressed. + +"I must say," he began, "even if you do not become shining lights as +music critics, you are certainly qualified to become members of an Opera +Company. But where is Mr. Krap--a Bohemian, I should say, from his +name." + +"Isn't Slehbell marvellous on philology?" said Sanderson, and Dr. Nopkin +looked shocked. + +No Krap stood up, so the name of Flatbush was called. He, too, was +absent, and Mr. Quelson explained in exasperated accents that these two +were his prize pupils, but had begged off to umpire a game of +Gregorian-chant cricket down in the village. "Ask for Palestrina +McVickar," said Mr. Quelson, in an eager stage whisper. + +The new man proved to be a wild-looking person, with hair on his +shoulders, and it was noticeable that the class gave him no choral +invitation to arise. He looked formidable, however, and you could have +heard an E string snap, so intense was the silence. + +"Mr. McVickar, you are an American, I presume?" + +"No, sir; I am an Australian, I am happy to say." A slight groan was +heard from the lips of an austere youth with a Jim Corbett pompadour. + +"You may groan all you like," said McVickar, fiercely; "but Fitzsimmons +licked him and that blow in the solar plexus--" + +Mr. Slehbell raised his hands deprecatingly. + +"Really, young gentlemen, you seem very well posted on sporting matters. +What I wish to ask you is whether you think Dvořák's later, or American +manner, may be compared to Brahms' second or D minor piano concerto +period?" + +"He doesn't know Brahms from a bull's foot," roared the class, in +unison. "Ask him who struck Billy Patterson?" Once more the quick eye of +Mr. Quelson saw an impending rebellion, and quickly rushing among the +malcontents he bundled five of them out of the room and returned to the +platform, murmuring: + +"Such musical temperaments, you know; such very great temperaments!" +Incidentally, he had rid himself of five of the most ignorant men of the +class. Quelson was really very diplomatic. + +McVickar hesitated a moment after silence had been restored, and then +answered Mr. Slehbell's question: + +"You see, sir, we are no further than Leybach and Auber. The name you +mention is not familiar to me, but I can tell you all the different +works of Carl Czerny; and I know how to spell Mascagni." + +"Heavens," screamed Blink, and he fainted from fright. Beer was ordered, +and after a short piano solo--Czerny's _Toccata in C_, from Dr. Larry +Nopkin--order reigned once more. The class gazed enviously at the +committee as it sipped beer, and longed for the day when it would be +free and critics of music. Then Mr. Quelson said that questioning was at +an end. He had never endeavored to inculcate knowledge of a positive +sort in his pupils. Besides, what did music critics want with knowledge? +They had Grove's Dictionary as a starter, and by carefully negativing +every date and fact printed in it, they were sure to hit the truth +somewhere. A ready pen was the thing, and he begged the committee to be +allowed to present specimens of criticisms of imaginary concerts, +written by the graduating class of 1912. + +The request was granted, and Dr. Nopkin selected as the reader. There +was an interval of ten minutes, during which the doctor played snatches +of De Koven and Scharwenka, and the class drove its pen furiously. +Finally, the bell sounded, and the following criticisms were handed to +the president, and read aloud while the class blushed in ruddy ensemble: + + _An Interesting Evening_ + + "It was a startling sight that met the eyes of the musical editor of + the _Evening Buzzard_ when he entered the De Pew Opera House last + night at 8.22. All the leading families of Mushmelon, arrayed in + their best raiment, disported themselves in glittering groups, and it + was almost with a feeling of disappointment that we saw the curtain + arise on the seventh act of _Faust_. Of course the music and singing + were applauded to the echo, and the principals were forced to bow + their acknowledgments to the gracious applause of the upper ten of + Mushmelon. The following is a list of those present," etc. (Here + follow names.) + + "A rattling good notice that," said one of the older members of the + committee. Mr. Quelson hastened to explain that it was intended for + an emergency notice, when the night city editor was unmusical. "But," + he added, "here is something in a more superior vein." + +Dr. Nopkin read: + + _How I Heard Paderewski!_ + + "Of course I heard Paderewski. Let me tell you all about it. I had + quarreled with my dear one early in the day over a pneumatic tire, so + I determined to forget it and go listen to some music. + + "Music always soothes my nerves. + + "Does it soothe yours, gentle reader? + + "I went to hear Paderewski. + + "Taking the Broadway car, me and my liver--my liver is my worst + enemy; terrible things, livers; is life really worth the liver?--I + sat down and paid my fare to a burly ruffian in a grimy uniform. + + "Some day I shall tell you about my adventure with a car. Dear Lord, + what an adventure it was! + + "Ah, the bitter-sweet days! the long-ago days when we were young and + trolleyed. + + "But let me tell you how Paderewski played! + + "After I reached my seat 4000 women cheered. I was the only man in + the house; but being modest, I stood the strain as long as I could, + and then--why, Paderewski was bowing, and I forgot all about the + women and their enthusiasm at the sight of me. + + "Fancy a slender-hipped orchidaceous person, an epicene youth with + Botticellian hair and a Nietzsche walk. Fancy ten fluted figures and + then--oh, you didn't care what he was playing--indeed, I mislaid my + program--and then it was time to go home. + + "Some day I shall give you my impressions of the Paderewskian + technique, but today is a golden day, the violets are smiling, + because God gave them perfume; a lissome lass is in the foreground; + why should I bother about piano, Paderewski, or technique? + + "Dear Lord, dear Lord--!" + +Mr. Quelson looked interrogatively at the committee when the doctor +finished. + +"The personal note, you know," he said, "the note that is so valued +nowadays in criticism." + +"Personal rubbish," grunted the doctor, and Mr. Slehbell joyously +laughed. + +"Give us one with more matter and less manner," remarked Mr. Sanderson, +who had quietly but none the less determinedly eaten up all the +sandwiches and drunk seven bottles of beer. Mr. Van Oven, of the +_Morning Fowl_, was, as usual, fast asleep. [This was the manner in +which he composed himself.] + +Mr. Quelson handed the doctor the following: + + _Solid Musical Meat_ + + "The small hall of the Mendelssohn Glee Club was crowded to listen to + the polished playing of the Boston Squintet Club last night. It was a + graciously inclined audience, and after + + Haydn, Grieg, and Brahms had been disclosed, it departed in one of + those frames of mind that the chronicler of music events can safely + denominate as happy. There were many reasons, which may not be + proclaimed now why this should be thus. The first quartet, one of the + blithest, airiest, and most serene of Papa Haydn's, was published + with absolute finish, if not with abandon. Its naïve measures were + never obsessed by the straining after modernity. The Grieg is hardly + strict quartet music. It has a savor, a flavor, a perfume, an odor, + even a sturdy smell of the Norway pine and fjord; but it is lacking + woefully in repose and euphony, and at times it verges perilously on + the cacophonous. Mr. Casnoozle and his gifted associates played a + marvelous accord and slid over all the yawning tonal precipices, but, + heavens, how they did perspire! The Brahms Quartet--" + +"I protest," said Mr. Blink, hastily rising. "I've been insulted ever +since I entered the building. Why, the very name of the institution is +an insult to modern musicians! Brahms! why, good heavens, Brahms is only +a whitewashed Hummel! And to think of these young minds being poisoned +by such antique rot as Brahms' music!" + +In a moment the committee was on its legs howling and jabbering; poor +Mr. Quelson vainly endeavoring to keep order. After ten minutes of +rowing, during which the class sang _The Night That Larry Was +Stretched_, Dr. Nopkin was pushed over the piano and fell on the treble +and hurt his lungs. The noise brought to their senses the irate men, and +then, to their consternation, they discovered that the class had sneaked +off during the racket, and on the blackboard was written: "Oh, we don't +know, you're not so critical!" + +"My Lord," groaned Mr. Quelson, "they have gone to that infernal +Gregorian chant-cricket match; wait till I get hold of that Palestrina +McVickar!" + +The committee left in a bad humor on the next train, and the principal +of Brahms Institute gave his class a vacation. Hereafter he will do his +own examining. + + + + +XX + +A WONDER CHILD + + +A recent event in the musical world of Laputa has been of such +extraordinary moment as to warrant me in making some communication of +same to your valuable sheet, and although in these days of electricity +one might reasonably imagine the cable would have outstripped me, still +by careful examination of American newspapers I find only meagre mention +of the remarkable musical occurrence that shook all Laputa to its centre +last month. As you know, we pride ourselves on being a thoroughly +musical nation; our symphony concert programs and our operatic repertory +contain all the novelties that are extant. To be sure, we are a little +conservative in our tastes and relish Mozart, and, must it be confessed, +even Haydn; but, on the other hand, we have a penchant for the +Neo-Russian school and hope some day to found a trans-Asiatic band of +composers whose names will probably be as hard as their harmonies are to +European and American ears. + +The event I speak of transcends anything in the prodigy line that we +have ever encountered, for while we have been deluged with boy pianists, +infant violinists, and baby singers, _ad nauseam_, still it must be +confessed that a centenarian piano virtuoso who would make his début +before a curious audience on his hundredth birthday was a novelty +indeed, particularly as the aged artist in question had been studying +diligently for some ninety-five years under the best masters (and with +what opportunities!) and would also on this most auspicious occasion +conduct an orchestral composition of his own, a _Marche Funèbre à la +Tartare_, for the first time in public. This, then, I repeat, was a +prodigy that promised to throw completely in the shade all competitors, +in addition to its being an event that had no historical precedence in +the annals of music. + +With what burning curiosity the night of the concert was awaited I need +not describe, nor of the papers teeming with anecdotes of the venerable +virtuoso whose name betrayed his Asiatic origin. His great-grandchildren +(who were also his managers) announced in their prospectus that their +great-grandfather had never played in public before, and with, of +course, the exception of his early masters, had never even played for +anybody outside of his own family circle. Born in 1788, he first studied +technics with the famous Clementi and harmony with Albrechtsberger. His +parents early imbued him (by the aid of a club) with the idea of the +extreme importance of time and its value, if rightfully used, in +furthering technique. So, from five hours a day in the beginning he +actually succeeded in practising eighteen hours out of the twenty-four, +which commendable practice (literally) he continued in his later life. + +Although he had only studied with one master, the Gospadin Bundelcund, +as he was named, had been on intimate terms with all the great virtuosi +of his day, and had heard Beethoven, Steibelt, Czerny, Woelfl, +Kalkbrenner, Cramer, Hummel, Field, Hiller, Chopin, Mendelssohn, Liszt, +Henselt, and also many minor lights of pianism whose names have almost +faded from memory. Always a man of great simplicity and modesty, he +retired more and more amidst his studies the older he grew, and even +after his marriage he could not be induced to play in public, for his +ideal was a lofty one, and though his children, and even his +grandchildren, often urged him to make his début, he was inflexible on +the subject. His great-grandchildren, however, were shrewd, and, taking +advantage of the aged pianist's increasing senility, they finally +succeeded in making him promise to play at a grand concert, to be given +at the capital of Laputa, and, despite his many remonstrances, he at +last consented. + +It goes without saying that the attendance at our National Opera House +was one of the largest ever seen there. The wealth and brains of the +capital were present, and all eagerly watched for the novel apparition +that was to appear. The program was a simple one: the triple piano +concerto of Bach, arranged for one piano by the Gospadin; a movement +from the G minor concerto of Dussek; piano solos, _L'Orage_, by +Steibelt; a fugue for the left hand alone, by Czerny, and a set of +etudes after Czerny, being free transcriptions of his famous _Velocity +Studies_, roused the deepest curiosity in our minds, for vague rumors of +an astonishing technique were rife. And, finally, when the stage doors +were pushed wide open and a covered litter was slowly brought forward by +six dusky slaves and gently set down, the pent up feelings of the +audience could not be restrained any longer, and a shout that was almost +barbaric shook the hall to its centre. + +An Echtstein grand piano, with the action purposely lightened to suit +the pianist's touch, stood in the centre of the stage, and a large, +comfortable looking high-backed chair was placed in front of it. The +attendants, after setting the litter down, rolled the chair up to it, +and then parting the curtains carefully, and even reverently, lifted out +what appeared to be a mass of black velvet and yellow flax. This bundle +they placed on the chair and wheeled it up to the piano and then +proceeded to bring forth a quantity of strange looking implements, such +as hand guides, gymnasiums, wires and pulleys, and placed them around +the odd, lifeless looking mass on the chair. Then a solemn looking +individual came forth and announced to the audience that the soloist, +owing to his extreme feebleness, had been hypnotized previous to the +concert, as it was the only manner in which to get him to play, and that +he would be restored to consciousness at once and the program proceeded +with. + +There was a slight inclination on the part of the audience to hiss, but +its extreme curiosity speedily checked it and it breathlessly awaited +results. The doctor, for he was one, bent over the recumbent figure of +the pianist and, lifting him into an upright position, made a few passes +over him and apparently uttered something into his ear through a long +tube. A wonderful change at once manifested itself, and slowly raising +himself on his feet there stood a gaunt old man, with an enormous +skull-like head covered with long yellowish white hair, eyes so sunken +as to be invisible, and a nose that would defy all competition as to +size. + +After fairly tottering from side to side in his efforts to make a bow, +the Gospadin (or, as you would say, Mister or Herr) Bundelcund fell back +exhausted in his seat, and while a murmur of pity ran through the house +his attendants administered restoratives out of uncanny looking phials +and vigorously fanned him. By this time the audience had worked itself +up to a fever pitch (at least eight tones above concert pitch) and +nothing short of an earthquake would have dispersed it; besides the +price of admission was enormous and naturally every one wanted the worth +of his money. I had a strong glass and eagerly examined the old man and +saw that he had long skinny fingers that resembled claws, a cadaverous +face and an air of abstraction one notices in very old or deaf persons. +To my horror I noticed that the doctor in addressing him spoke through a +large trumpet and then it dawned on me that the man was deaf, and hardly +was I convinced of this when my right hand neighbor informed me that the +Gospadin was blind also, and being feeble and exhausted by piano +practice hardly ever spoke; so he was practically dumb. + +Here was an interesting state of things, and my forebodings as to the +result were further strengthened when I saw the attendants place the old +man's fingers in the technique-developing machines that encumbered the +stage, and vigorously proceeded to exercise his fingers, wrists, and +forearms, he all the while feebly nodding, while two other attendants +flapped him at intervals with bladders to keep him from going to sleep. +Again my right-hand neighbor, who appeared to be loquacious, informed me +that the Gospadin's mercenary great-grandchildren kept him awake in this +manner and thus forced him to play eighteen hours a day. What a cruelty, +I thought, but just then a few muffled chords aroused me from my +thoughts and I directed all my attention to the stage, for the +performance had at last begun. + +Never shall I forget the curious sensation I experienced when the aged +prodigy began the performance of the first number, his own remarkable +arrangement for piano solo of the Bach concerto in D minor for three +pianos, and I instantly discovered that the instrument on which he +played had organ pedals attached, otherwise some of the effects he +produced could not have been even hinted at. His touch was weird, his +technique indescribable, and one no longer listened to the piano, but to +one of those instruments of Eastern origin in which glass and metal are +extensively used. The quality of tone emanating from the piano was +_brittle_, so to speak; in a word, sounded so thin, sharp, and at times +so wavering as to suggest the idea that it might at any moment break. +And then it made me indescribably nervous to see his talon-like fingers +threading their way through the mazes of the concerto, which was a tax +on any player, and though the three piano parts were but faintly +reproduced, the arrangement showed ability and musicianship in the +handling of it. But a vague, far-away sort of a feeling pervaded the +whole performance, which left me at the end rather more dazed than +otherwise. + +During the uproarious applause that followed my neighbor again remarked +to me that though the old man did not appear to be as much exhausted as +he had anticipated, still he feared the worst from this great strain of +his appearing before such a public and under such exciting +circumstances, and then becoming confidential he whispered to me that +the agents for the Paul von Janko keyboard had approached the venerable +pianist, but after inspecting the invention the latter had replied +wearily that he was too old to begin "tobogganing" now. My neighbor +seemed to be amused at this joke, and not until the orchestra had begun +the tutti of the G minor concerto of Dussek (an intimate friend of the +Gospadin's, by the way) did he cease his chuckling. + +The concerto was played in a dreary fashion, and only the strenuous +efforts of the attendants on each side of the soloist kept him from +going off into a sound nap during every tutti. The rest of the piano +program was almost the same story. The Steibelt selection, the +old-fashioned _L'Orage_, was no storm at all, but a feeble, maundering +up and down the keyboard. The Czerny fugue was better and the +performance of the same composer's _Velocity Studies_ was a marvel of +lightness and one might almost say volubility. In these etudes his +wonderful stiff arm octave playing, in the real old-fashioned manner, +showed itself, for in every run in single notes he introduced octaves. +The applause after this was so great and the flappers at the pianist's +side plied him so vigorously that the Gospadin actually began playing +the _Hexameron_, that remarkably difficult and old set of variations on +the march in _Puritani_, by Liszt, Chopin, Pixis, and Thalberg. + +These he played, it must be confessed, in a masterly manner, but at the +end he introduced a variation, prodigious as to difficulty, which I +failed to recognize as ever having seen it in the printed copy of the +composition. Again my right-hand neighbor, appearing to anticipate my +question on the subject, informed me that it was by Bundelcund himself, +and that he had been angered beyond control by the refusal of the +publishers to print it with the rest, and had written a lengthy letter +to Liszt on the subject, in which he told him that he considered him a +charlatan along with Henselt, Chopin, Hiller, and Thalberg, and that he +was the _only_ pianist worth speaking of, which information threw an +interesting side light on our Asiatic virtuoso's character, and showed +that he was made of about the same metal, after all, as most of your +European manipulators of ivory. + +By this time the stage had been cleared of the piano and the litter, and +a conductor's stand was brought forward, draped in black velvet trimmed +with white, and appropriately wreathed with tuberoses, whose +deathly-sweet odor diffused itself throughout the house and caused an +unpleasant shudder to circulate through the audience, who were beginning +to realize the mockery of this modern dance of death, but who remained +to see the end of the sad comedy. The orchestra, which was reinforced by +several uncanny looking instruments, strange even to Asiatic eyes, were +seated, and then the dusky servants lifted with infinite care the aged +Bundelcund into a standing posture, placed him at the stand, and while +four held him there the two flappers were so unremitting in their +attentions that one might suppose the old man's face would be sore, +were it not for its almost total absence of flesh, and also his long, +thick hair, which fell far below his waist. + +Standing in an erect attitude he was an appalling figure to behold, and +the two lighted tapers in massive candelabras on each side of the desk +lighted up his face with an unholy and gruesome glare. The funereal +aspect of the scene was heightened by the house being in total darkness, +and though many women had fainted, oppressed by the charnel-house +atmosphere that surrounded us, still the audience as a whole remained +spellbound in their seats. The medical man now plied the +conductor-pianist with the contents of the mysterious phial, and placing +a long, white ostrich plume in his hand, he made a signal for the +orchestra to begin. The conductor, despite his deafness, appeared to +comprehend what was going on and feebly waved the plume in air, and the +first gloomy chords of the _Marche Funèbre à la Tartare_ were heard. Of +all the funeral marches ever penned this composition certainly outdid +them all in diabolical waitings and the gnashing of teeth of damned +souls. + +It was the funeral march of some mid-Asiatic pachyderm, and the whole +herd were howling their grief in a manner which would put Wagner, +Berlioz, and Meyerbeer to shame; for such a use of brass had never been +even dreamed of, and the peculiar looking instruments I first spoke of +now came to the fore and the din they raised was positively hellish. +Those who could see the composer's face afterward declared it was +wreathed in smiles, but this, of course, I could not see; but I did see, +and we all saw, after the rather abrupt end of the march (which finished +after a long-drawn-out suspension, _capo d'astro_, resolved by the use +of the diseased chord of the minor thirteenth into a dissipated fifth), +the venerable virtuoso suddenly collapse, and suddenly fall into the +arms of the attendants, whose phlegm, while being thoroughly Oriental, +still smacked of anticipation of this very event. Instantly the lights +went out and a panic ensued, everyone getting into the street somehow or +other. I found myself there side by side with my neighbor, who informed +me in an oracular manner that he had expected this all along. + +Then an immense crowd, angered by the cruel exhibition which they had +witnessed, searched high and low for the miscreant and mercenary +great-grandchildren who had so ruthlessly sacrificed their talented +progenitor for the sake of pelf, but they were nowhere to be found, and +they doubtlessly had escaped with their booty to a safe place. The +doctor had also disappeared and with him all traces of the Gospadin +Bundelcund, and soon after sinister rumors were spread that the man we +had heard performing was a _dead man_ (horrible idea!) that he had been +dead for years, but by the aid of that new and yet undeveloped science, +hypnotism, he had been revived and made to automatically perform, and +that the whole ghastly mummery was planned to make money. Certain it was +that we never heard of any of the participants in the affair again, and +I write to you knowing that American readers will be interested in this +queer musical and psychical prodigy. His epitaph might be given in a +slightly altered quotation, "Butchered to make a Laputian's holiday." + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Old Fogy, by James Huneker + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OLD FOGY *** + +***** This file should be named 20139-0.txt or 20139-0.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/2/0/1/3/20139/ + +Produced by Jeffrey Johnson and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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