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The Project Gutenberg EBook of Old Fogy, by James Huneker
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
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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 ***
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<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;">
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<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>
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