diff options
Diffstat (limited to '20139-h')
| -rw-r--r-- | 20139-h/20139-h.htm | 6157 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 20139-h/images/001.png | bin | 0 -> 6539 bytes |
2 files changed, 6157 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/20139-h/20139-h.htm b/20139-h/20139-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..69609b8 --- /dev/null +++ b/20139-h/20139-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,6157 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> + +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> + <head> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" /> + <title> + The Project Gutenberg eBook of Old Fogy, His Musical Opinions And Grotesques, by James Huneker. + </title> + <style type="text/css"> + +<!-- + p { margin-top: .75em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 { + text-align: center; + clear: both; + } + hr { width: 33%; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; + clear: both; + } + + table {margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;} + + body{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + + .pagenum { + + position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: smaller; + text-align: right; + } + + + .blockquot{margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 10%;} + .center {text-align: center;} + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + .u {text-decoration: underline;} + + .caption {font-weight: bold;} + + .figcenter {margin: auto; text-align: center;} + + + // --> + + </style> + </head> +<body> + + +<pre> + +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: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OLD FOGY *** + + + + +Produced by Jeffrey Johnson and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +</pre> + + + +<h1>OLD FOGY</h1> +<h2>HIS MUSICAL OPINIONS <br /> +AND GROTESQUES</h2> + +<h3>With an Introduction +and Edited</h3> + +<h4>BY</h4> +<h2>JAMES HUNEKER</h2> +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 158px;"> +<img src="images/001.png" width="158" height="118" alt="" title="" /> +</div> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<center>THEODORE PRESSER CO.<br /> +1712 Chestnut Street Philadelphia<br /> +London, Weekes & Co.<br /></center> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<center>Copyright, 1913, by <span class="smcap">Theodore Presser Co.</span></center> +<br /> +<center>International Copyright Secured.</center> +<br /> +<center>Third Printing, 1923</center>. + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<center>These Musical Opinions and Grotesques<br /> +are dedicated to</center><br /> + +<center>RAFAEL JOSEFFY</center><br /> + +<center>Whose beautiful art was ever a source of<br /> +delight to his fellow-countryman,</center><br /> + +<center>OLD FOGY</center><br /> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="INTRODUCTION" id="INTRODUCTION"></a>INTRODUCTION</h3> + + +<p>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 <span class="smcap">The Etude</span>. 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 <i>Hannele</i>, though he +despised the same dramatist's <i>Weavers</i>. 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.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> +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 <i>The Maiden's +Prayer</i> (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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Well-tempered +Clavichord</i> as a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span>weapon of offense wherewith to pound Liszt and +the <i>Lisztianer</i>. He attacked Wagner and Wagnerism with inappeasable +fury, but I suspect that he was secretly much impressed by several of +the music-dramas, particularly <i>Die Meistersinger</i>. 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.</p> + +<p>Nourished by the romantic writers of the past century, especially by +Hoffmann and his fantastic <i>Kreisleriana</i>, 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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span>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.</p> + +<p>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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span>Debussy +and the new school! But then he was an indifferent critic and an +enthusiastic advocate.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p><span style="margin-left: 37em;"><span class="smcap">James Huneker.</span></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span></p> + + +<h2>I</h2> + +<h3>OLD FOGY IS PESSIMISTIC</h3> + + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> +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 <i>C-sharp major Prelude</i> +belies his years. On the contrary, the <i>Well-tempered +Clavichord</i> grows younger with time. +It is the Book of Eternal Wisdom. It is the +Fountain of Eternal Youth.</p> + +<p>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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> +egotism of mankind, all the time slily insinuating +that it addresses the imagination. What +fudge! Yes, the imagination of your own +splendid <i>ego</i> 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!</p> + +<p>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 <i>Symphonic +Poem</i> or, rather, <i>Poéme Symphonique</i>, 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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> +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?</p> + +<p>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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> +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!</p> + +<p>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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> +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 <i>Don Juan</i>, it is <i>Don Quixote</i>—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.</p> + +<p>Now for my <i>Coda</i>! 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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> +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!</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 17em;"><span class="smcap">Dussek Villa-on-Wissahickon,</span></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 23em;"><span class="smcap">Near Manayunk, Pa.</span></span><br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span></p> + +<h2>II</h2> + +<h3>OLD FOGY GOES ABROAD</h3> + + +<p>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 <i>Ring</i> and <i>Die Meistersinger</i>.</p> + +<p>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, <i>modern</i> and insolent now +overruns Germany. The ingenuousness, the +<i>naïve</i> 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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> +is full of <i>doctrinaires</i>. They eagerly dispute +Wagner's meanings, and my venerable +notions of the <i>Ring</i> were not only sneered at, +but, to be quite frank with you, dissipated into +thin, metaphysical smoke.</p> + +<p>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 <i>café</i>, in +every summer-garden I sought I found groups +of young men talking heatedly about Nietzsche, +and the Over-Man, the <i>Uebermensch</i>, 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.</p> + +<p><i>Ach!</i> but I caught it, <i>ach!</i> 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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> +all, his <i>constructive</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> +over, saw Wagner's tomb, looked at the outside +of <i>Wahnfried</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Ring</i> sounded +antique to me, so strong were the disturbing +influences of my environment.</p> + +<p>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, + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> +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.</p> + +<p>I had all but forgotten the performances. +They were, as I declared at the outset, far from +perfect, far from satisfactory. The <i>Ring</i> was +depressing. Rosa Sucher, who visited us some +years ago, was a flabby <i>Sieglinde</i>. The <i>Siegmund</i>, +Herr Burgstalles, a lanky, awkward +young fellow from over the hills somewhere. +He was sad. Ernst Kraus, an old acquaintance, +was a familiar <i>Siegfried</i>. Demeter Popovici +you remember with Damrosch, also Hans +Greuer. Van Rooy's <i>Wotan</i> was supreme. +It was the one pleasant memory of Bayreuth, +that and the moon. Gadski was not an ideal + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> +<i>Eva</i> in <i>Meistersinger</i>, while Demuth was an excellent +<i>Hans Sachs</i>. The <i>Brünnhilde</i> was Ellen +Gulbranson, a Scandinavian. She was an heroic +icicle that Wagner himself could not melt. +Schumann-Heink, as <i>Magdalene</i> in <i>Meistersinger</i>, +was simply grotesque. Van Rooy's <i>Walther</i> +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 <i>tempi</i>. 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!</p> + +<p>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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> +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.</p> + +<p>I stopped over at Nuremberg and at a chamber +concert heard Schubert's quintet for piano and +strings, <i>Die Forelle</i>—and although I am no +trout fisher, the sweet, boyish loquacity, the pure +music made my heart glad and I wept.</p> + + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span></p> + +<h2>III</h2> + +<h3>THE WAGNER CRAZE</h3> + + +<p>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?"</p> + +<p>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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> +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!</p> + +<p>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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> +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.</p> + +<p>But I anticipate; I put the <i>coda</i> before the dog. +When <i>Rienzi</i> 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 <i>Euryanthe</i> 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 <i>The Flying Dutchman</i>. 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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> +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 <i>parlando</i> was to +take their place.</p> + +<p>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 <i>me</i>; that his music was not cheap, +pretty, and sensual, but spiritual, lofty, ideal—Oho! +cried the German, he means <i>me</i> 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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> +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 <i>Ring of the Nibelungs</i> before he absorbed +the Schopenhauerian doctrines, and then +altered the entire scheme so as to imbue—forsooth!—his +music with pessimism.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Siegfried</i>; 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, + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> +and you catch a certain class of weak-minded +persons.</p> + +<p>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 <i>The Flying Dutchman</i> is absurd in +its story—what possible interest can we take in +the <i>Salvation</i> of an idiotic mariner, who doesn't +know how to navigate his ship, much less a wife?—what +is to be said of <i>Lohengrin</i>? 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 <i>not</i>, I +suppose. What puerile trumpery is that refusal +of a man to reveal his name! And <i>Elsa</i>! Why +not Lot's wife, whose curiosity turned her into a +salt trust!</p> + +<p>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. <i>Tannhäuser</i> is more manly +in its fiber. But the style, the mixture of styles; + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> +the lack of organic unity, the blustering orchestration, +and the execrable voice-killing vocal +writing! The <i>Ring</i> 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 <i>Ring</i> 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.</p> + +<p><i>Tristan und Isolde</i> 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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span> +anything? Every theme is butchered to death. +There is endless repetition in different keys, +with different instrumental <i>nuances</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>I admit that <i>Die Meistersinger</i> 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 <i>Wotan</i> motive is to be found +in Schubert's <i>Wanderer</i>. If you wish for the +<i>Waldweben</i> just go to Spohr's <i>Consecration of +Tones</i> symphony, first movement. And Weber +also furnishes a pleasing list, notably the <i>Sword</i> +motive from the <i>Ring</i>, which may be heard in +<i>Ocean, Thou Mighty Monster</i>. <i>Parsifal</i> I refuse +to discuss. It is an outrage against religion, + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> +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, <i>personal</i> 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. <i>Nunc Dimittis!</i></p> + + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> +<h2>IV</h2> + +<h3>IN MOZARTLAND WITH OLD FOGY</h3> + + +<p>The greatest musician the world has yet +known—Mozart. The greatest? Yes, +the greatest; greater than Bach, because +less studied, less artificial, professional, and +<i>doctrinaire</i>; 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 <i>Eroica</i>, always +in revolt, would not allow him tranquillity. +Now is the fashion for soul hurricanes, these +confessions of impotent wrath in music.</p> + +<p>Beethoven began this fashion; Mozart did not. +Beethoven had himself eternally in view when he +wrote. His music mirrors his wretched, though + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span> +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.</p> + +<p>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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> +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.</p> + +<p>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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> +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 <i>him</i>. +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—<i>ahem!</i>—I cannot stand +noise for noise's sake. Art for art they call it +nowadays.</p> + +<p>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, <i>bourgeois</i> 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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> +bridge over against the classic <i>façade</i> 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.</p> + +<p>"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 <i>Don Giovanni</i> or <i>Magic</i> + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> +<i>Flute</i> this afternoon?" I demanded. The man +stared at me angrily. "What you talk about? +It is <i>Tristan und Isolde</i>. 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!</p> + +<p>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 <i>Kapuzinberg</i> to the Mozart +cottage, where the <i>Magic Flute</i> was finished.</p> + +<p>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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> +of his <i>Cosi Fan Tutti</i> at the <i>Residenztheater</i>, +an ideal spot for this music. With the +accompaniment of an orchestra of thirty, more real +music was made and sung than the whole <i>Ring +Cycle</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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!</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> +<h2>V</h2> + +<h3>OLD FOGY DISCUSSES CHOPIN</h3> + + +<p>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:</p> + +<p>"Come, old fellow, here they are, these +friends of the past forty years. Here are the +yellow and bepenciled Bach <i>Preludes and +Fugues</i>, 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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> +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.</p> + +<p>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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> +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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>D-flat +Valse</i>, <i>E-flat</i> and <i>G minor Nocturnes</i>, the <i>A-flat +Ballade</i>, the <i>G minor Ballade</i>, the <i>B-flat minor +Scherzo</i>, the <i>Funeral March</i>, the two <i>G-flat +Etudes</i>, or, let us add, the <i>C minor</i>, the <i>F minor</i> +and <i>C-sharp minor studies</i>, the <i>G major</i> and +<i>D-flat preludes</i>, the <i>A-flat Polonaise</i>—or, worse +still, the <i>A major</i> and <i>C-sharp minor Polonaises</i>—the +<i>B minor</i>, <i>B-flat major Mazurkas</i>, the +<i>A-flat</i> and <i>C-sharp minor Impromptus</i>, and last, + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> +though not least, the <i>Berceuse</i>—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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>crux</i>: 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 <i>neglected</i> +masterpieces might furnish matter for afternoon +lectures now devoted to such negligible musical +<i>débris</i> as Parsifal's neckties and the chewing gum +of the flower maidens.</p> + +<p>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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> +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 <i>Allegro de Concert</i>, many +new mazurkas, the <i>F minor</i>, <i>F major</i>—<i>A minor +Ballades</i>, the <i>F-sharp</i> and <i>G-flat Impromptus</i>, +the <i>B minor Sonata</i>, certain of the <i>Valses</i>, <i>Fantasies</i>, +<i>Krakowiaks</i>, <i>Preludes</i>, <i>Studies</i> and <i>Polonaises</i>—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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span> +Do you know the <i>E major Scherzo, Op. 54</i>, +with its skimming, swallowlike flight, its delicate +figuration, its evanescent hintings at a serious +something in the major trio? Have you ever +heard Pachmann <i>purl</i> through this exquisitely +conceived, contrived and balanced composition, +truly a classic? <i>Whaur</i> is your Willy Mendelssohn +the <i>noo</i>? Or are you acquainted with the +<i>G-sharp minor Prelude</i>? Do you play the <i>E-flat +Scherzo</i> from the <i>B minor Sonata</i>? Have you +never shed a furtive tear—excuse my old-fashioned +romanticism—over the bars of the <i>B major +Larghetto</i> 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.]</p> + +<p>How about the first <i>Scherzo in B minor</i>? +You play it, but do you understand its ferocious +irony? [Oh, author of <i>Chopin: the Man and his +Music</i>, what sins of rhetoric must be placed at +your door!] And what of the <i>E-flat minor +Scherzo</i>? Is it merely an excuse for blacksmith +art and is the following <i>finale</i> only a study in +unisons? There is the <i>C-sharp minor Prelude</i>. +In it Brahms is anticipated by a quarter of a +century. The <i>Polonaise in F-sharp minor</i> was +damned years ago by Liszt, who found that it +contained pathologic states. What of it? It is + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> +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?</p> + +<p><i>The F-sharp minor Polonaise</i> is always +<i>drummed</i> 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 <i>twice</i> 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 <i>pianissimi</i> +begin where other men's cease. So the accusation +of tonal or thematic monotony should not +be brought against this <i>Polonaise</i>. Rather let +us blame our imperfect sympathies and slender +stock of the art of <i>nuance</i>.</p> + +<p>But here I am pinning myself down to one + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> +composition, when I wish to touch lightly on +so many! The <i>F minor Polonaise</i>, the <i>E-flat +minor Polonaise</i>, called the <i>Siberian</i>—why I +don't know; <i>I</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 <i>C minor +Polonaise</i>, which begins in tones of epic grandeur +[go it, old man, you will be applying for a position +on the Manayunk <i>Herbalist</i> soon as a critic!] +The <i>Nocturnes</i>—are they all familiar to you? +The <i>F-sharp minor</i> was a positive novelty a few +years ago when Joseffy exhumed it, while the +<i>C-sharp minor</i>, with its strong climaxes, its +middle sections so evocative of Beethoven's +<i>Sonata</i> in the same key—have you mastered its +content? <i>The Preludes</i> 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 <i>G-flat</i>, +the elegiac quality of the one in <i>B minor</i>. The +<i>Barcarolle</i> 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 <i>F minor Fantaisie</i>, I am sorry to say, +is beginning to be tarnished like the <i>A-flat +Ballade</i>, by impious hands. It is not for weaklings; + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> +nor are the other Fantaisies. Why not +let us hear the <i>Bolero</i> and <i>Tarantella</i>, not +Chopin at his happiest, withal Chopin. Emil +Sauer made a success of other brilliant birdlike +music before an America public. As for the +<i>Ballades</i>, I can no longer endure any but <i>Op. 38</i> +and <i>Op. 52</i>. Rosenthal played the beautiful +<i>D-flat Study</i> in <i>Les Trois nouvelles Etudes</i> with +signal results. It is a valse in disguise. And +its neighbors in <i>A-flat</i> and <i>F minor</i> are Chopin +in his most winning moods. Who, except +Pachmann, essays the <i>G-flat major Impromptu</i>—wrongfully +catalogued as <i>Des Dur</i> in the Klindworth +edition? To be sure, it resumes many +traits of the two preceding <i>Impromptus</i>, yet is it +none the less fascinating music. And the +<i>Mazurkas</i>—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?</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> +<h2>VI</h2> + +<h3>MORE ANENT CHOPIN</h3> + + +<p>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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> +sound the timid little Chopin of the far-away +nineteenth century.</p> + +<p>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; <i>Op. 10</i> +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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> +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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Two studies in <i>Op. 10</i> and <i>25</i>, respectively; the +<i>Fantaisie-Impromptu</i>, <i>Op. 66</i>; five <i>Mazurkas</i>, + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> +above mentioned; one <i>Nocturne, Op. 27, No. 1</i>; +one <i>Polonaise, Op. 26, No. 1</i>; one <i>Prelude, Op. +45</i>; one <i>Scherzo, Op. 39</i>; and a short second +section, a <i>cantabile</i> in the <i>E major Scherzo, Op. +54</i>; one <i>Valse, Op. 64, No. 2</i>—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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Mazurkas +in C-sharp minor</i> bears the early <i>Op. 6, No. 2</i>. +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. <i>Op. 30, No. 4</i>, the next in order, is +bigger in conception, bigger in workmanship. +It is not so cheerful, perhaps, as its predecessor + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> +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.</p> + +<p>Now let us hurry on to <i>Op. 41, No. 1</i>. 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 <i>unisons</i>, 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. <i>Op. 50, No. 3</i>, 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, + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> +especially if the audience, or the weather, or the +piano seat does not suit the fat little blackbird +from Odessa. <i>Op. 63, No. 3</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>F minor +Ballade</i>, for that beautiful and extremely original +<i>Ballade Op. 38</i> which begins in F and ends in A +minor. Isn't there a legend to the effect that +Schumann heard Chopin play his <i>Ballade</i> in +private and that there was no stormy middle +measures? I've forgotten the source, possibly +one of the greater Chopinist's—or <i>Chopine</i>-ists, +as they had it in Paris. What a stumbling-block +that A minor explosion was to audiences and + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span> +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 <i>Cantus Firmus</i>. 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 <i>man</i>!</p> + +<p>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 <i>F-major +Ballade</i>. 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 <i>A-flat Ballade</i> +affects my nerves, just as Liszt was affected +when a pupil brought for criticism the <i>G minor +Ballade</i>. Preserve me from the <i>Third Ballade</i>! +It is winning, gracious, delicate, capricious, +melodic, poetic, and what not, but it has gone to +meet the <i>D-flat Valse</i> and <i>E-flat Nocturne</i>—as + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> +the obituaries say. The fourth, the <i>F minor +Ballade</i>—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 +<i>Ballade</i> 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 +<i>F minor Fantaisie</i> with this <i>Ballade</i>. 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!</p> + +<p>You see, here I have been blazing away at the + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span> +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 <i>dam</i> +has overflowed, though I hope not the reader's! +While I think of it, some one wrote me asking if +Chopin's first <i>Sonata in C minor, Op. 4</i>, 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 <i>B-flat minor</i> and <i>B minor Sonatas</i> 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!</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> +<h2>VII</h2> + +<h3>PIANO PLAYING TODAY AND YESTERDAY</h3> + + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Do they teach the piano better in the twentieth + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> +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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> +course, modified by modern ideas and a Slavic +temperament.</p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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 <i>Don Juan</i> paraphrase +<i>faster</i> 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 <i>Studies</i> 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!</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> +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 +<i>anathema</i>. 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 <i>higher</i> piano playing. All the +rest is pianola-istic!</p> + +<p>Singularly enough, with the shifting of technical +standards, more simplicity reigns in methods +of teaching at this very moment. The reason + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> +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 <i>fifteen</i> +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!</p> + +<p>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 <i>Studies</i>. +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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> +Cramer? I remember the consternation among +certain teachers when Deppe and Raif, with his +dumb thumb and blind fingers, abolished <i>all</i> 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 <i>Technikers</i>. 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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>facile</i>, when she was a tiny, +ox-eyed girl of six or seven. It was in Chicago +in the seventies. Instead of asking for candy + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> +afterwards she begged me to read her some +poetry of Shelley or something by Schopenhauer! +Veritably a fabulous child!</p> + +<p>Let me add three points to the foregoing statements: +First, Joseffy has always been rather +skeptical of too <i>few</i> piano studies. His argument +is that <i>endurance</i> 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 (<i>School of Advanced Piano Playing</i>), +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 +<i>multum in parvo</i>. They are my daily +recreation.</p> + +<p>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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> +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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>low</i> 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 <i>tempo</i>. Both things +are an abomination, and the exception here does +not prove the rule. Pianists like Rosenthal, +Busoni, Friedheim, d'Albert, Von Bülow, <i>all the +Great Germans</i> (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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> +of his pupils whose tone was <i>not</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>over</i> the keyboard +and played <i>down</i> 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?</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> +<h2>VIII</h2> + +<h3>FOUR FAMOUS VIRTUOSOS</h3> + + +<p>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 <i>boasts</i>—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, + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> +at the expense of music; quantity, instead of +quality; all the <i>tempi</i> distorted and <i>fortes</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>But my visit was not without compensations. +I attended piano concerts by Eugen d'Albert, +Ignace Jan Paderewski, and Rafael Joseffy. + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> +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.</p> + +<p>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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> +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 <i>beautiful</i> 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 <i>fortissimo</i>, which the tiny +Russian virtuoso does not boast.</p> + +<p>After Chopin, Thalberg, and Henselt, the orchestral +school had its sway—it still has. Liszt, + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> +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 <i>Sinbad, the +Sailor</i>, to which was attracted whatever came +within their radius. And Rubinstein—what a +man, what an artist, what a <i>heart!</i> As Joseffy +once put it, Rubinstein's was not a pianist's +touch, but the mellow tone of a French horn!</p> + +<p>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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> +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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>plus</i> 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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span> +passing through a transition period in his "pianism." +Tired of his old, subdued, poetic manner; +tired of being called a <i>salon</i> 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 <i>chug</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>entre +nous</i>, ten times the musical equipment. D'Albert +plays Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms as + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> +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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>enfant +terrible</i> of the quartet, a whimsical, fantastic + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span> +charmer, an apparition with rare talents, and an +interpreter of the Lesser Chopin (always the +<i>great</i> Chopin) without a peer. Let us be happy +that we are vouchsafed the pleasure of hearing +four such artists.</p> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> +<h2>IX</h2> + +<h3>THE INFLUENCE OF DADDY LISZT</h3> + + +<p>Have you read Thoreau's <i>Walden</i> 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.</p> + +<p>"Have you read"—begins some one and the +chattering begins, <i>furioso</i>. "Oh, Nietzsche? +why of course,"—"Tolstoi's <i>What is Art?</i> certainly, +he ought to be electrocuted"—"Nordau! +isn't he terrible?" And the cacophonous conversational + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> +symphony rages, and when it is spent, +the man who asked the question finishes:</p> + +<p>"Have you read the notice of Rosenthal's +playing in the <i>Kölnische Zeitung?</i>" 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.</p> + +<p>Of course, Daddy Liszt began it all. He had + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> +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 <i>Invention</i>. +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 <i>The Barber of Seville</i>.</p> + +<p>"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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span> +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.</p> + +<p>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, + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> +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!</p> + +<p>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. + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> +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.</p> + +<p>Let us consider some of his compositions.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Lucia</i> fantasia? Now every school +girl jigs this fatuous stuff before she mounts her +bicycle.</p> + +<p>And the new critics, who never heard Thalberg, +have the impertinence to flout him, to make +merry at his fantasias. Just compare the <i>Don +Juan</i> of Liszt and the <i>Don Juan</i> 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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span> +he could lay his destructive hands on. How he +maltreated the <i>Tannhäuser</i> 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.</p> + +<p>The cement of brilliancy Liszt always contrived +to cover his most commonplace compositions +with. He wrote etudes <i>à la</i> Chopin; clever, I +admit, but for my taste his Opus One, which he +afterwards dressed up into <i>Twelve Etudes +Transcendentales</i>—listen to the big, boastful +title!—is better than the furbished up later collection. +His three concert studies are Chopinish; +his <i>Waldesrauschen</i> is pretty, but leads nowhere; +his <i>Années des Pèlerinage</i> sickly with + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span> +sentimentalism; his <i>Dante Sonata</i> a horror; his +<i>B-minor Sonata</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>table d'hôte</i>, 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 <i>Walden</i> over again. Now do +you think I am as amiable as I look?</p> + + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span> +<h2>X</h2> + +<h3>BACH—ONCE, LAST, AND ALL THE TIME</h3> + + +<p>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 <i>et voilà tout</i>? 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 <i>Die Meistersinger</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> +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."</p> + +<p>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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> +the touchstone. Look at Verdi, the Verdi of +<i>Don Carlo</i> and the Verdi who planned and built +<i>Falstaff</i>. 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 <i>Falstaff</i>. 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 <i>The +Mastersingers</i>.</p> + +<p>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! + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span> +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.</p> + +<p>How did I discover that Bach was in the very +heart of Wagner? In the simplest manner. I +began playing the <i>E-flat minor Prelude</i> in the +first book of the <i>Well-tempered Clavichord</i>, and +lo! I was transported to the opening of <i>Götterdämmerung</i>.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Well-tempered +Clavichord</i> every day of his life.</p> + +<p>All <i>my</i> pupils study the <i>Inventions</i> before they + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> +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 +<i>after</i> they had played Chopin's opus 10. Strange +idea, isn't it? Before that they played the +<i>Inventions</i>, the symphonies, the <i>French</i> and +<i>English Suites</i>—Klindworth's edition of the +latter is excellent—and the <i>Partitas</i>. 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 <i>The Art of Fugue</i> and others of +the same class show us Father Bach in his working +clothes, earnest if not exactly inspired.</p> + +<p>But in his moments of inspiration what a +genius! What a singularly happy welding of +manner and matter! The <i>Chromatic Fantasia</i> +is to me greater than any of the organ works, +with the possible exception of the <i>G minor</i> + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> +<i>Fantasia</i>. Indeed, I think it greater than its +accompanying <i>D minor Fugue</i>. 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?</p> + +<p>Let us turn to the <i>Well-tempered Clavichord</i> +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 <i>its</i> +beauties. We have all played and loved the +<i>C minor Prelude</i> in Book one—Cramer made a +study on memories of this—and who has not +felt happy at its wonderful fugue! Yet a few + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> +pages on is a marvelous <i>Fugue in C sharp minor</i> +with five voices that slowly crawl to heaven's +gate. Jump a little distance and you land in the +<i>E flat Fugue</i> 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 <i>F major Invention</i>, the +eighth. A marked favorite of mine is the +fifteenth fugue in G. There's a subject for +you and what a jolly length!</p> + +<p>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 <i>B-flat Prelude +and Fugue?</i> 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 <i>B-flat minor Prelude?</i> It +is the matrix of all modern musical emotion.</p> + +<p>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! + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> +But before Bach I knew no one who +ranged the keyboard of the emotions so freely, +so profoundly, so poignantly.</p> + +<p>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 <i>rubato</i>. 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.</p> + +<p>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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> +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 <i>Wedge</i> 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."</p> + +<p>Look up to Bach. Sound advice. Profit by it.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> +<h2>XI</h2> + +<h3>SCHUMANN: A VANISHING STAR</h3> + + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>What the lads and lassies of ideal predilections + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> +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.</p> + +<p>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? <i>Dinna ye hear the slogan</i> +of the realists? No music rooted in bookish +ideas, in literary or artistic movements, will +survive the mutations of the <i>Zeitgeist</i>. 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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span> +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 <i>Rhenish</i>—muddy as the +river Rhine in winter time.</p> + +<p>The <i>E-flat piano Quintet</i> 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 <i>decadent</i> 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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span> +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 +<i>penumbra</i> 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!</p> + +<p>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 +<i>beau</i>, like the rouge and grimace of a debile +<i>coquette</i>. 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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span> +his, and Brahms will be ruler of all tomorrow. +<i>Eheu Fugaces!</i></p> + +<p>There was a time, <i>mes enfants</i>, when I played +at all the Schumann piano music. The <i>Abegg</i> +variations, the <i>Papillons</i>, the <i>Intermezzi</i>—"an +extension of the <i>Papillons</i>," said Schumann—<i>Die +Davidsbündler</i>, that wonderful <i>toccata in C</i>, +the best double-note study in existence—because +it is music first, technics afterward—the +seldom attempted <i>Allegro, opus 8</i>, the +<i>Carnaval</i>, tender and dazzling miniatures, the +twelve settings of Paganini, much more musical +than Liszt's, the <i>Impromptus</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>Then I attacked the <i>F-sharp Minor Sonata</i>, +with its wondrous introduction like the vast, + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> +somber portals to some fantastic Gothic pile. +The <i>Fantasiestücke opus 12</i>, still remain Schumann +at his happiest, and easiest comprehended. +The <i>Symphonic Variations</i> are the greatest of all, +greater than the <i>Concerto</i> or the <i>Fantasie in C</i>. +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.</p> + +<p>The <i>F-minor Sonata</i>—the so-called <i>Concert +sans orchestre</i>—a truncated, unequal though +interesting work; the <i>Arabesque</i>, the <i>Blumenstück</i>, +the marvelous and too seldom played +<i>Humoreske</i>, opus 20, every one throbbing with +feeling; the eight <i>Novelletten</i>, almost, but not +quite successful attempts at a new form; the +genial but unsatisfactory <i>G-minor Sonata</i>, the +<i>Nachtstücke</i>, and the <i>Vienna Carnaval</i>, opus 26, +are not all of these the unpremeditated outpourings +of a genuine poet, a poet of sensibility, +of exquisite feeling?</p> + +<p>I must not forget those idylls of childhood, the +<i>Kinderscenen</i>, the half-crazy <i>Kreisleriana</i>, true +soul-states, nor the <i>Fantasie, opus 17</i>, which lacks +a movement to make it an organic whole. Consider +the little pieces, like the three romances, + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span> +opus 28, the opus 32, the <i>Album for the Young, +opus 68</i>, the four fugues, four marches, the +<i>Waldscenen</i>—Oh, never-to-be-forgotten <i>Vogel +als Prophet</i> and <i>Trock'ne Blumen</i>—the <i>Concertstück, +opus 92</i>, the second <i>Album for the Young</i>, +the <i>Three Fantasy Pieces, opus 111</i>, the <i>Bunte +Blätter</i>—do you recall the one in F-sharp minor +so miraculously varied by Brahms, or that appealing +one in A-flat? The <i>Albumblätter, opus 124</i>, +the seven pieces in fughetta form, the never-played +<i>Concert allegro in D-minor, opus 134</i>, +or the two posthumous works, the <i>Scherzo</i> and +the <i>Presto Passionata</i>.</p> + +<p>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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span> +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.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> +<h2><a name="XII" id="XII"></a>XII</h2> + +<h3>"WHEN I PLAYED FOR LISZT"</h3> + + +<p>To write from Bayreuth in the spring-time as +Wagner sleeps calmly in the backyard of +<i>Wahnfried</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> +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.</p> + +<p><i>Endlich</i>, 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 <i>saal</i> +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 <i>bonhomie</i>, he cried aloud in French: "<i>Tiens!</i> +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 <i>friend</i> being ever so lightly underlined; I +knew of the famous Liszt-Thalberg <i>duello</i>, during +which so much music and ink had been spilt.</p> + +<p>But my agony! The <i>via dolorosa</i> 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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span> +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.</p> + +<p>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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> +Thalberg's <i>Art of Singing on the Piano</i>. I +finished. There was a murmur; nothing more.</p> + +<p>Then Liszt's voice cut the air:</p> + +<p>"I expected Thalberg's tremolo study," he +said. I took the hint and arose.</p> + +<p>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!</p> + +<p>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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span> +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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Au bord +d'une Source</i>, or the <i>Sonnets After Petrarch</i>, 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 <i>Transcendental +Studies!</i> 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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> +content myself with the first sketches published +as an opus 1. There the nucleus of each etude +may be seen. Later Liszt expanded the <i>croquis</i> +into elaborate frescoes. And yet they say that +he had no thematic invention!</p> + +<p>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 <i>Dante Sonata</i>, a composition +I heard thirty years later from the fingers +of Arthur Friedheim. It is the <i>Divine Comedy</i> +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?</p> + +<p>To view the range, the universality of Liszt's +genius, it is only necessary to play such a tiny + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span> +piano-composition, <i>Eclogue</i>, from <i>Les Années de +Pèlerinage</i> and then hear his <i>Faust Symphony</i>, +his <i>Dante Symphony</i>, his Symphonic Poems. +There's a man for you! as Abraham Lincoln once +said of Walt Whitman. After carefully listening +to the <i>Faust Symphony</i> 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.</p> + +<p>The <i>Ring of the Nibelungs</i> would not be heard +today if Liszt had not written its theme in his +<i>Faust Symphony</i>. <i>Parsifal</i> is altogether Lisztian, +and a German writer on musical esthetics has +pointed out recently, theme for theme, resemblance +for resemblance, in this Liszt-Wagner +<i>Verhältniss</i>. 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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> +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?</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> +<h2>XIII</h2> + +<h3>WAGNER OPERA IN NEW YORK</h3> + + +<p>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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span> +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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Die Walküre</i>, +and I've been sick ever since.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Not feeling quite myself the day after my experiences +with the music journalists, I strolled +up Broadway, and, passing the opera-house, +inspected the <i>menu</i> for the evening. I read, +"<i>Die Walküre</i>, with a grand cast," and I fell to +wondering what the word <i>Walküre</i> 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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> +<i>Rienzi</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>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 +<i>Magic Flute</i>, and with Carlotta, Patti, Karl +Formes, and—but what's the use of reminiscences?</p> + +<p>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. + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> +"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 <i>De Volkyure</i> +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.</p> + +<p>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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span> +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.</p> + +<p>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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> +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 <i>Erlking</i>. 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 <i>Erlking</i> +after all." The curtain rose on an empty stage +with a big tree in the middle and a fire burning on +the hearth.</p> + +<p>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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> +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?</p> + +<p>The next act upset me terribly. I read my +book, but couldn't make out why, if <i>Wotan</i> was +the God of all and high much-a-muck, he didn't +smash all his enemies, especially that cranky +old woman of his, <i>Fricka?</i> 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 <i>Ride +of the Valkyries</i> and wondered if it was music or + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span> +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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Wotan</i> +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.</p> + +<p>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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> +ideas, but no development, no final cadence. +Everything in suspension until my ears fairly +longed for one perfect resolution. Even in the +<i>Spring Song</i> it does not occur. That tune is +suspiciously Italian, for all Wagner's dislike of +Italy.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Marriage of Figaro</i> or the finale to +<i>Don Giovanni</i> 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 <i>Die Walküre</i> 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.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span> +<h2>XIV</h2> + +<h3>A VISIT TO THE PARIS CONSERVATOIRE</h3> + + +<p>I feel very much like the tutor of Prince +Karl Heinrich in the pretty play <i>Old Heidelberg</i>. +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 <i>Conservatoire</i> 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—<i>ego in Arcadia!</i></p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span> +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!</p> + +<p>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 <i>Litz!</i>—gave his lessons. + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span> +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.</p> + +<p>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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> +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.</p> + +<p>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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> +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.</p> + +<p>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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span> +whom thought they had precedence over No. 13, +I went forth to my fate.</p> + +<p>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. <i>There</i> 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 <i>Sonata +in F minor</i>, 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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span> +movement and then a voice punctuated the stillness.</p> + +<p>"Ah, Mozart is <i>so</i> 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 <i>not</i> Mozart, but Beethoven." +There was an explosion of laughter, formidable, +brutal. The feminine voice rose above it all in +irritating accents.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>C-sharp Major Prelude</i> in the +first book of the <i>Well-tempered Clavichord</i>. + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> +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:</p> + +<p>"And upside down!"</p> + +<p>There was another outburst, and again that +woman's voice was heard:</p> + +<p>"What a comedian is this young Yankee!"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Conservatoire</i>. What a dream realized! +But only to be shattered, for, so I was + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> +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 <i>auditeur</i>, a listener—and +all my musical castles came tumbling +about my ears!</p> + +<p>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.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span> +<h2>XV</h2> + +<h3>TONE VERSUS NOISE</h3> + + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Well!" said I, rather shortly.</p> + +<p>"It was like a whiff from the eighteenth century," +said a stout, dark young fellow.</p> + +<p>"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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span> +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.</p> + +<p>"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 <i>rococo</i>, 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 <i>Well-tempered Clavichord</i> for one +hour a day is of more value to a pianist technically +and musically than an army of mechanical devices.</p> + +<p>"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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> +because his rival across the street will be able +to play the double-thirds study of Chopin in +quicker <i>tempo</i>. 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."</p> + +<p>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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span> +my fingers and not my heels, the piano does not +really betray its years.</p> + +<p>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 <i>B-minor Ballade</i> +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 <i>Ballade</i> 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, + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span> +played chord-work straight from the shoulder, +and when he had finished he cried out, "There +is a dramatic close for you!"</p> + +<p>"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 <i>D-flat Valse</i>. This he followed, +at a break-neck <i>tempo</i>, with Brahms' dislocation +of Weber's <i>C major Rondo</i>, sometimes called +"the perpetual movement." It was all very +wonderful, but was it music?</p> + +<p>"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 <i>quasi</i>-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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> +do you call that music, that topsy-turvying of the +Weber <i>Rondo?</i> 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 <i>Ballade</i>, 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 <i>nuance</i>, +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."</p> + +<p>"Yes, but your grand is worn out and won't +stand any forcing of the tone," answered the +Liszt <i>Ballade</i>, rather impudently.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span> +"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 <i>fortissimo</i> 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 <i>Ballade?</i> 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; + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span> +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."</p> + +<p>Intoxicated by the sound of my own voice, I +began playing the <i>B-flat Nocturne</i> 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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span> +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!</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span> +<h2>XVI</h2> + +<h3>TCHAIKOVSKY</h3> + + +<p>A day in musical New York!</p> + +<p>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 +<i>tempo</i> for you! I mooned around looking for +old landmarks that had vanished—twenty years +since I saw Gotham, and then Theodore Thomas +was king.</p> + +<p>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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span> +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.</p> + +<p>"You! why I thought you had passed away to +the majority where Dussek reigns in ivory splendor."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Never mind my fun, Mr. Fogy. Grandpa +and you playing Moscheles' <i>Hommage à Fromage</i>, +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 <i>Weekly Whiplash</i> and can get +you tickets for anything from hell to Hoboken."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Oh, come into Lüchow's and eat some beer," + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span> +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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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:</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span> +"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——"</p> + +<p>"Give us a <i>fermata</i> on your enormous story, +Jenkins. Every one knows you are disgruntled +because the <i>Whiplash</i> attacks your judgment." +This from another journalist.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"He might have outlived the last movement of +that B-minor symphony, the suicide symphony, + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> +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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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 <i>Romeo and Juliet</i> into a bawd's +tale; a tale of brutal, vile lust; for such passion + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span> +as he depicts is not love. He took <i>Hamlet</i> and +transformed him from a melancholy, a philosophizing +Dane into a yelling man, a man of the +steppes, soaked with <i>vodka</i> and red-handed with +butchery. Hamlet, forsooth! Those twelve +strokes of the bell are the veriest melodrama. +And <i>Francesca da Rimini</i>—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."</p> + +<p>"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:</p> + +<p>"His <i>Manfred</i> is a libel on Byron, who was a +libel on God." "Byron, too," murmured Jenkins. + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> +"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.</p> + +<p>"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, + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span> +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 +<i>volks</i> 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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> +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——"</p> + +<p>"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!</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span> +<h2>XVII</h2> + +<h3>MUSICAL BIOGRAPHY MADE TO ORDER</h3> + + +<p>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 <i>à la</i> 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 <i>Fledermaus</i>. 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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span> +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!</p> + +<p>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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span> +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."</p> + +<p>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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span> +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.</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>"No," yelled the composer of the <i>Ninth +Symphony</i>, 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 <i>Hymn to Joy</i>, + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span> +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 <i>Razzlewiski quartet</i> (C sharp +minor). From such small beginnings, etc.</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>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, + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span> +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.</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span> +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 +<i>Ring?</i> 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.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> +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."</p> + +<p>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 +<i>Eljen!</i>—the pet of the gods, the adored of + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span> +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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span> +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!</p> + +<p>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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span> +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.]</p> + +<p>O, for some mighty genius of color who will +deluge the sky with pyrotechnical symphonies! +Color that will soothe the soul with iridescent and + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> +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.</p> + +<p>And now, having too long detained you with my +vagaries, let me say "good night," for it is getting + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span> +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, <i>Sei ruhig mein Herz, or the +Cat will hear you</i>.</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span> +<h2>XVIII</h2> + +<h3>OLD FOGY WRITES A SYMPHONIC POEM</h3> + + +<p>"Definite feelings and emotions are unsusceptible +of being embodied in music," +says Eduard Hanslick in his <i>Beautiful in +Music</i>. 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?</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>I had just been reading, and for the thousandth +time, Browning's <i>Childe Roland</i>, 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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span> +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.</p> + +<p>I had my theme. It will be the first theme in +my new symphonic poem, <i>Childe Roland</i>. 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.</p> + +<p>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. +<i>Childe Roland</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span> +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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Childe Roland</i> 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.</p> + +<p>My poem was well played. It was only ninety +minutes long, and I sat in a nervous swoon as I +listened to the <i>Childe Roland</i> 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.</p> + +<p>This latter I gave out with twelve trombones, +twenty-one bassett horns and one calliope; it +almost literally brought down the house, and I + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span> +was the happiest man alive. As I moved out I +was met by the critic of <i>The Disciples of Tone</i>, +who said to me:</p> + +<p>"Lieber Kerl, I must congratulate you; it +beats Richard Strauss all hollow. <i>Who</i> and +what was <i>Childe Roland</i>? Was he any relation +to Byron's <i>Childe Harold</i>? 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."</p> + +<p>Triangular fugue! Why, that was the crossroads +before which Childe Roland hesitated! +How I hated the man.</p> + +<p>I was indeed disheartened. Then a lady spoke +to me, a musical lady, and said:</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Hopeless," thought I; "these people have no +imagination."</p> + +<p>The next day the critics treated me roughly. +I was accused of cribbing my first theme from + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span> +<i>The Flying Dutchman</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p>"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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span> +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."</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>I saw then that my symphonic poem, <i>Childe +Roland</i>, 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."</p> + +<p>In reality my ignorance and lack of contrapuntal + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span> +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 <i>The Patrol of the Night Stick</i>, +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.</p> + +<p>Alas, <i>Childe Roland!</i></p> + +<p>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.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span> +<h2>XIX</h2> + +<h3>A COLLEGE FOR CRITICS</h3> + + +<p>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, <i>The Mount of Olives</i>, +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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Mr. Quelson faced his pupils. In his eyes +were tears, but he must do his duty.</p> + +<p>"Gentlemen," he suavely said, "the weather +is certainly trying, but remember this is examination +day, and next week you, that is some + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span> +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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span> +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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Tannhäuser-Busch +Overture</i> which it had listened to so attentively +in the Wagner coaches that brought it +to Brahms Institute.</p> + +<p>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!</p> + +<p>Dr. Nopkin arose, put on a pair of ponderous +spectacles, and grinned malevolently at his +hearers.</p> + +<p>"Young men," he squeakily said, "I want to + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span> +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—"</p> + +<p>"Great pianist!" whispered Blink, sardonically.</p> + +<p>"Yes, I said great pianist—greater than all +your Paderewski's, your—"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>The class giggled, but respectfully and in a perfect +major-accord. Dr. Nopkin grew black in +the face. Turning to Mr. Quelson he said:</p> + +<p>"Either I am president or I am not, Mr. +Quelson."</p> + +<p>That gentleman looked very much embarrassed.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>By this time Mr. Blink had been pulled down +in his seat by Mr. Sanderson, the critic of the +<i>Skyrocket</i>, and order was restored.</p> + +<p>The class seemed disappointed as Dr. Nopkin +proceeded: "As I was saying when interrupted + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span> +by my Wagnerian associate, the young man went +to Thalberg and played an original composition +called the <i>Tornado Galop</i>. It was written exclusively +for the black keys, and a magnificent +<i>glissando</i>, if I do flatter myself, ended the piece +most brilliantly. Thalberg—it was in the year +'57, if I remember aright."</p> + +<p>"You do," remarked the class in pleasing tune.</p> + +<p>"Thank you, gentlemen, I see dates are not +your weak point. Thalberg remarked—"</p> + +<p>"For goodness sake give us a rest on Thalberg!" +said the irrepressible Blink.</p> + +<p>"A rest, yes, a <i>fermata</i> 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.</p> + +<p>Considerably pleased with himself Dr. Nopkin +continued:</p> + +<p>"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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span> +ear of the music critic is very keen and long +practice enables him to awaken at the precise +moment the music ceases.</p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p>"Gentlemen, give me the low pitch A!"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>The committee, now thoroughly awake, looked +gratified, and the examination began.</p> + +<p>After glancing through the list, Dr. Nopkin +called aloud:</p> + +<p>"Mr. Hogwin, will you please tell me the date +of the death of Verdi?"</p> + +<p>"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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> +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 <i>Anvil Chorus</i>.</p> + +<p>"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 <i>Journal of +Music</i>, containing a criticism of his "passionate +octave playing." Mr. Blink arose and took the +list.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Obliging of him," insinuated Mr. Tile of the +<i>Daily Bulge</i>.</p> + +<p>"Gentlemen, gentlemen," groaned poor Quelson; +"think of the effect on the class if this spirit +of irreverent repartee is maintained."</p> + +<p>"Mr. Beckmesser McGillicuddy, will you +please stand up?" requested Mr. Blink.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span> +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 <i>Carmen</i>, +and McGillicuddy looked grateful.</p> + +<p>"You wish to become a music critic, do you +not?" inquired Mr. Blink, patronizingly.</p> + +<p>"What do you think I'm here for?" asked +the student, in firm, cool tones.</p> + +<p>"Tell me, then, did Wagner ever wear paper +collars?"</p> + +<p>"Celluloid," was the quick answer, and the +class cheered. Mr. Quelson looked unhappy, +and Tile sneered in a minor but audible key.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>Little Mr. Slehbell arose, and the class again +trembled. They had read his <i>How to See +Music Although a Deaf Mute</i>, 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:</p> + +<p>"Mr. Krap is here, I hope?"</p> + +<p>"Get into line, Billy Krap; get into line, + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span> +Billy. Give him as good as he gives you; so fall +into line, Billy Krap."</p> + +<p>This was first sung by the class with antiphonal +responses, then with a fugued finale, and +Mr. Slehbell was considerably impressed.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Isn't Slehbell marvellous on philology?" +said Sanderson, and Dr. Nopkin looked shocked.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Mr. McVickar, you are an American, I presume?"</p> + +<p>"No, sir; I am an Australian, I am happy to + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span> +say." A slight groan was heard from the lips of +an austere youth with a Jim Corbett pompadour.</p> + +<p>"You may groan all you like," said McVickar, +fiercely; "but Fitzsimmons licked him and that +blow in the solar plexus—"</p> + +<p>Mr. Slehbell raised his hands deprecatingly.</p> + +<p>"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?"</p> + +<p>"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:</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>McVickar hesitated a moment after silence had +been restored, and then answered Mr. Slehbell's +question:</p> + +<p>"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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span> +works of Carl Czerny; and I know how to spell +Mascagni."</p> + +<p>"Heavens," screamed Blink, and he fainted +from fright. Beer was ordered, and after a short +piano solo—Czerny's <i>Toccata in C</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>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:</p> + + +<div class="blockquot"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span> +<p><span style="margin-left: 14em;"><span class="smcap">An Interesting Evening</span></span></p> + +<p>"It was a startling sight that met the eyes of +the musical editor of the <i>Evening Buzzard</i> 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 <i>Faust</i>. 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.)</p> + +<p>"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."</p></div> + +<p>Dr. Nopkin read:</p> + + + + +<div class="blockquot"><p><span style="margin-left: 14em;"><span class="smcap">How I Heard Paderewski!</span></span></p> +<p>"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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span> +determined to forget it and go listen to some music.</p> + +<p>"Music always soothes my nerves.</p> + +<p>"Does it soothe yours, gentle reader?</p> + +<p>"I went to hear Paderewski.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"Some day I shall tell you about my adventure +with a car. Dear Lord, what an adventure +it was!</p> + +<p>"Ah, the bitter-sweet days! the long-ago days +when we were young and trolleyed.</p> + +<p>"But let me tell you how Paderewski played!</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p></div> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span></p> +<div class="blockquot"> +<p>"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?</p> + +<p>"Dear Lord, dear Lord—!"</p></div> + +<p>Mr. Quelson looked interrogatively at the +committee when the doctor finished.</p> + +<p>"The personal note, you know," he said, +"the note that is so valued nowadays in criticism."</p> + +<p>"Personal rubbish," grunted the doctor, and +Mr. Slehbell joyously laughed.</p> + +<p>"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 <i>Morning Fowl</i>, was, +as usual, fast asleep. [This was the manner in +which he composed himself.]</p> + +<p>Mr. Quelson handed the doctor the following:</p> + + +<div class="blockquot"><p><span style="margin-left: 14em;"><span class="smcap">Solid Musical Meat</span></span></p> + +<p>"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</p></div> + <p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span></p> +<div class="blockquot"><p>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—"</p></div> + +<p>"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!"</p> + +<p>In a moment the committee was on its legs + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span> +howling and jabbering; poor Mr. Quelson vainly +endeavoring to keep order. After ten minutes +of rowing, during which the class sang <i>The +Night That Larry Was Stretched</i>, 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!"</p> + +<p>"My Lord," groaned Mr. Quelson, "they have +gone to that infernal Gregorian chant-cricket +match; wait till I get hold of that Palestrina +McVickar!"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span> +<h2>XX</h2> + +<h3>A WONDER CHILD</h3> + + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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, + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span> +infant violinists, and baby singers, <i>ad nauseam</i>, +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 <i>Marche Funèbre à la +Tartare</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span> +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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span> +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, <i>L'Orage</i>, by +Steibelt; a fugue for the left hand alone, by +Czerny, and a set of etudes after Czerny, being +free transcriptions of his famous <i>Velocity Studies</i>, +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.</p> + +<p>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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span> +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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>After fairly tottering from side to side in his + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span> +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.</p> + +<p>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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span> +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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>brittle</i>, so to + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span> +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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span> +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 <i>L'Orage</i>, +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 +<i>Velocity Studies</i> 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 <i>Hexameron</i>, that remarkably +difficult and old set of variations on the march +in <i>Puritani</i>, by Liszt, Chopin, Pixis, and Thalberg.</p> + +<p>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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> +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 <i>only</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span> +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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Marche Funèbre à la Tartare</i> +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.</p> + +<p>It was the funeral march of some mid-Asiatic +pachyderm, and the whole herd were howling + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span> +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, <i>capo d'astro</i>, +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.</p> + +<p>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 + <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span></p> +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 <i>dead man</i> (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." + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +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-h.htm or 20139-h.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. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at +http://gutenberg.org/license). + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +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 + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org. + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at +http://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at +809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email +business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact +information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official +page at http://pglaf.org + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit http://pglaf.org + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. +To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + http://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. + + +</pre> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/20139-h/images/001.png b/20139-h/images/001.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..efe6ddb --- /dev/null +++ b/20139-h/images/001.png |
