Carl Engel Alla Breve From Bach to Debussy

7/28/2019 Carl Engel Alla Breve From Bach to Debussy

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ALLA BREVEFROM BACH TO 'DEBUSSYByCarl Engel


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GIFT OFSir Henry Heyman


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ALLA BREVE


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ALLA BREVEFROM BACH TO DEBUSSYByCarl Engel

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G. SCHIRMER, Inc., N. Y.


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Copyright, 1921, by G. Schirmer, Inc.30365

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Printed in the U. S. A.


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My dear Noyes,Afflicted as you are with the delightful vices

of a bouquineur, you cannot be a stranger tothe kind of irreproachable effusion for which thewriter feels the need of apologizing in a humbleprefacethat no one wants to read. You alsoknow the book in which the only thing worth read-ing is a charming or brilliant prefacewrittenby some one other than the author. I would haveasked you to insure at least the merit of this latterclass to these few pages, had you not carried hu-man kindness far enough in giving them thebenefit of your sagacious criticism, in sharingthe treacherous task of reading them when inproof, and lastly, by helping them to an honestlabel plainly suggestive of their literal and literarystint. It is a bootless undertaking to sum upthe work of a Bach or the life of a Wagner in ahalf hundred sentences, fashioned after the prunedand formal manner of the First Grade Reader.You are familiar with the origin of these"lifelets": how a sanguine publisher, lookingfor biographical notes to be included in twelvepiano albums, entitled "Master Series for theYoung," turned to me with an encouraging "and-


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it-might-as-well-be-you." So it was, indeed.But now, after adding eight more to the originaltwelve, and uniting them within one cover, Iwonder if the finished -product is of a sort thatcould appeal to the ''''Trapper an 1 Injun" stage ofYouth for zvhich the publisher solicitously hadintended it. Even though it be no book in usumDelphinum of the nation, I hope you will feelthat the not-too-young and the not-too-old loversof music, who are sometimes "too busy to read,"may find in these sketchesseen through thewrong end of the opera-glassa diminutive butfairly vivid outline of their particular love, orloves, and gain, incidentally, a glimpse of the pro-gress which music has made within the last threecenturies.

It is not an irksome sense of duty that promptsme thus to place your name at the head of thisvolume. I should deprive myself of a greatpleasure and satisfaction, were I to dismissthese sheets without a greeting addressed to you,in token of friendship and appreciation.

Yours cordially,C. E.

Marblehead, MassachusettsAugust, IQ2I


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INTRODUCTIONMany have been the attempts to give a

definition of music. That none of them hasexhausted all that enters into the substanceof an orchestral symphony and a cameldriver's chant, sufficiently proves the com-plexity of the matter. To call music "thesounding art of numbers," is perhaps topoint toward its severest beauty. It alsolinks the apparent whims of changing moodsand studied fashions to something elemen-tary, eternal. There are mathematical prob-lems which admit of solutions that possessthe elegance and conclusiveness of a waltzby Chopin. There are musical compositionswhich have about as much charm as an al-gebraic progression ad infinitum. But hereinlies one of the difficulties which we encount-er when dealing with music, that there arepeopleand not a few of themto whom analgebraic progression gives a thrill. Andthat is, after all, their privilege and very

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xii Introduction

private concern. Others are thrilled onlywhen their heart is touched.

Differences in mentality and taste ac-count for the many and contrasting types of"music-lovers," and for what each of themconsiders to be "music." For while it can beraised to the lofty level of an art, it suffersthe common lot of all things handled by man-kind, that it may be degraded to standardsinconceivably low. The important and dis-concerting fact is, that all along this gradualdescent the mission of music remains identi-cal: it ministers to the same wants; it springsfrom, and appeals to, the same instincts andemotions; it always appeases the cravingfor a satisfaction which is differentiated onlyby degrees of refinement. This refinement,of course, is based primarily on the generalculture of the individual, but more partic-ularly on the capacity of hearing, or thedevelopment of the human ear.

Musical history is, in reality, nothingbut an account of the evolution of hearing.


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Introduction xiii

Most of the musical controversies are quarrelsbetween "retarded hearing" and "advancedhearing." They often interfere with thesettlingcomparatively easyof the ques-tion as to whether a piece of music is intrin-sically good or bad, or, more correctly,whether it is well or badly made. Time ispatient, and almost invariably it is just.

Music, as we understand it, does notexist in nature. The scales, which so farhave been the basis of every tonal system,in the Orient and Occident, were artificialproducts, arrived at by speculation or chance,and sanctioned by habit. Our present sys-tem may be overthrown at any moment.The paradox of music is that the ear mustaccustom itself to a sound in order to derivean aesthetic pleasure from it, and that assoon as this has taken place, the novelty and,with it, the pleasure begin to wane. Othersounds, of new potency, must have birth.Helmholtz, at the end of his researches, hadto acknowledge: "The system of scales and


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xiv Introduction

modes, and all the network of harmonyfounded thereon, do not seem to rest on anyimmutable laws of nature. They are due toaesthetic principles which are constantly sub-ject to change, according to the progressivedevelopment of knowledge and taste." Thisis not quite true, however.

It is not so much a constant progress of"taste," for that is a fitful factor in thegrowth of nations or individuals. It israther a steady forward reach of hearing,which, incidentally, brings with it a deeper"knowledge." Taste is something thatMozart possessed not less than Debussy.Nor is it always the most "knowing" masterwho is the most "tasteful." But betweenMozart and Debussy the human ear learnedto hear many new things. It gained a finerperception of, and greater subconsciousfamiliarity with, the inherent qualities ofmusical tone and its several overtones. Thisdevelopment clearly necessitated the recur-ring demand for fresher and keener tonal


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Introduction xvstimuli, with which to give our senseswhenthey become dulled to accustomed impres-sionsthe relatively same degree of satis-faction for which we are always craving.Probably the ladies who shed a polite tear{una lagrimettd) at hearing for the first timethe tremolo of the strings, employed byMonteverdi, were not less markedly stirredby their experience, than we are in listening tosome of the musical manifestations of our day.

As our knowledge increases, it seems toreveal more and more that, if music does notexist in nature and is not based on "immut-able laws of nature," there is in tone itselfa peculiarly communicative force. And onewonders, is not this because in tone thereare present, and ever united, the fundamentalprinciples of motion, matter and law? Thustone would be a symbol of some trinity,dimly perceived, variously interpreted, butalways active in this world. For tone is"matter moving according to certain rules."We are following these rules to farther


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xvi Introduction

regions, just as our widening comprehensionof the natural laws is winning us a slightlyclearer vision of the universe. As thereare eyes which will not see the light, sothere are always ears which prejudice closesto innovations. A great deal of "older"music still exerts a certain charm by reasonof its quaintness and the inclination of somepeople to regret the past. There are worksof the earlier masters that are still pleasant tohear, and are kept young, not by historicalinterest, but by their ever-green, surpassingbeauty. And yet what is the age of Bach'sB minor Mass compared with that of theParthenon, the age of Palestrina's Madrigalscompared with the statuettes of Tanagra?

Future generations will undoubtedly havean easier taskthanks to mechanical soundreproductionin forming an accurate opinionof our present music, than we are facing inour effort to understand the music of theancients. If it was simple, it was so only incontrast with our own, just as the "futur-


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Introduction xvii

ists" will be deemed harmless in a centuryor two. However modest the instrumentalresources of Egypt or Greece may have been,the human voice, probably, was much thesame at all times, or at least ever since manwalked on his hind legs alone. The vocalorgan, possessing infinite flexibility and thepower of minutest differentiation, did, for thatvery reason, always offer the ear a depend-able medium by which to register the mostsensitive shades of tonal variation. But suchregistration became subject to control bythe intellect. When science discovered thenature of tone and found the mathematicalcore of music, it forgot the sweet fruit thatsurrounds it. Science tried to prescribe forthe ear such intervals as were mathematicallythe most correct and purest. The ear re-volted, the ear seemed to know better, andto prefer the juicy fruit to the kernel. Thesequarrels between theorists and composersgo back to the first records of musical history.We know what the disputed subjects were,


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but we have no conception in what, for ex-ample, the music of Aristoxenos differedfrom that of Pythagoras, or how much nearerDidymus came to inventing anything likea "tune" than did the learned Ptolemy. Wehave no music that dates back to Homer's"Iliad" or to the Pyramids. The Gregorianchant of the Catholic Church and the orientalmelismas of the Synagogue, which are theoldest "living" music, are truly impressiveonly in their proper place. We can admirea Grecian torso. The fragment of an Egyp-tian column may set us dreaming. In music,fragments and torsos are unprofitable.Words, singly and dependent alone on theirevocative strength, amount to little untilthey are strung together into sentences ofarticulate speech. They, too, must form acomplete whole to convey a message.

Tones are the words of music. But thisyoungest of arts is still fashioning its speechand is constantly enlarging its vocabulary.This extension is the mooted question which


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Introduction xix

presents itself in every chapter of musicalhistory, to be settled always by common con-sent, much as "good usage" has sanctionedthe valid transformations of a language.Only the progress of music, having begunmuch later, seems to have been the morerapid.

Broadly speaking, the advance of music isdetermined by our changing conceptions ofconcord and discord, which, in turn, dependupon the ability of the ear to assimilate moreand more overtones as consonant parts of onesound. Discord forms a legitimate meansto artistic ends, without which music wouldbecome stale. But because every discordhas a tendency to become a concord, whenthe ear has grown to know it too familiarly,bolder and subtler sounds must be foundto enrich harmony and amplify melody withnew discords.

Dr. Charles Burney, shrewd and industri-ous musicographer, was singularly far-sightedwhen in the course of his travels through


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Italy he wrote: "No one will, I believe, atpresent [1770!!], deny the necessity of dis-cord in the composition of music in parts;it seems to be as much the essence of music,as shade is of painting; not only as it im-proves and meliorates concord by oppositionand comparison, but, still further, as it be-comes a necessary stimulus to the attention,which would languish over a succession ofpure concords. It occasions a momentarydistress to the ear, which remains unsatisfied,and even uneasy, till it hears somethingbetter; for no musical phrase can end upona discord [?!]; the ear must be satisfied atlast. Now, as discord is allowable, and evennecessarily opposed to concord, why may notnoise, or a seeming jargon, be opposed tofixed sounds and harmonical proportion?Some of the discords in modern [1770!!] mu-sic, unknown till this century, are what theear can but just bear, but have a very goodeffect as to contrast. The severe laws ofpreparing and resolving discord, may be too


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much adhered to for great effects ; I am con-vinced, that provided the ear be at lengthmade amends, there are few dissonances toostrong for it."

That is an astoundingly lucid and correctstatement, considering the time when it waswritten. But what would the learned Doctorhave said to Schonberg, or even Ravel; whatto the bruiteurs, the "noise-makers" of Milan?Sometimes it is hard to live up to our owntheories. Is noise ever going to be really anintegral part of a musical art-work? Wheredoes the future of music lie? In a new divi-sion of the octave into smaller steps than"half-tones"? Will the octave itself becomean unbearably trite and offensive interval?It is the simplest, regarded as the ratio of2 : 1 between two sounds; it is the mostsensitively dangerous, regarded from acontrapuntal angle. Perhaps the next"liberation" of sound will not come from acomposer's brain until the scientist, in hislaboratory, has removed a few more shackles


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from the enthralled goddess. A new instru-ment, or a new group of instruments (some-how connected with electricity), will requireof the composer to unlearn his trade, to fithimself with a new technique and find a novelset of "rules." Music will no longer borrowfrom architecture, painting and poetrycharacteristics which are in reality foreignto the art of sounds. Tonal sprays maypour from a hose; a sounding stream, issuingfrom a tap in the wall, may surge againstour ears and drown our senses in a bath ofecstasy. Rhythm will be not only physicallyreactive, it will have assumed an emotionalimport. Having become more independentof painting and poetry, music in combinationwith colors or words will be a thing of height-ened eloquence and deeper meaning.


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IBACH

Begin the song, and strike the living lyre:Lo, how the years to come, a numerous and well-

fitted quire,All hand in hand do decently advance,And to my song with smooth and equal measure

dance;While the dance lasts, how long soe'er it be,My music's voice shall bear it company.Cowley


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JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACHIt is not enough to say that all ancientmusic was more or less primitive, and there-

fore cannot be of interest to us. The musi-cal speculations of the Greeks retained vitalconcern as late as the fifteenth and sixteenthcenturies, when theorists tried to establisha division of the octave into intervals thatcorresponded to those of the Hellenic phi-losophers. Rousseau may be right in saying:"C'est perdre son temps, et abuser de celuidu lecteur, que le promener par toutes cesdivisions"; but it is well and important toremember that, as Columbus set out to findthe Western passage to India and discoveredAmerica instead, so did these medievalscientists, seeking for the modes of antiquity,really furnish the impetus that led to ourpresent "tempered" diatonic scale, and tothe genera of major and minor.

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With the practical demonstration of"tempered" intervals (that is, with thedivision of the octave into twelve approxi-mately even half-tones) the foundation waslaid for our modern "enharmonic" system,in which flats and sharps sound identical andare interchangeable. The era of true chro-maticism was inaugurated and it becamepossible to construct satisfactory keyboardinstruments, which were no longer boundto the painfully uncompromising modesof the Greeks and the later Church, butafforded an easy and instantaneous transitthrough the circle of the twelve tonalities,major and minor, giving thereby into thehands of the composer the master-key ofmodulation, which opened successive doorsto Palestrina, to Monteverdi and to Bach.

There are many mansions in the houseof music, and not a few of them still waitingto be unlocked.

With difficulty can we realize whatpatient and circuitous effort had to precede


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Johann Sebastian Bachthe final adoption of the key of C major, ofwhich the great theorist Zarlino (1517-1590)spoke as being used only by the vulgar mu-sicians of the street who accompanied rusticdances in it, and which he called il modolascivo, or the wanton key! The most wantonthing about it, perhaps, was that persistentlysharpened "leading-note," the seventh degreeof the scale, which clashed so openly withthe fourth degree that when the two werebrought together in the notorious "tritone"(augmented fourth or diminished fifth) theyhad to resolve by mutual repulsion into adulcet sixth, or fall into the arms of anharmonious third. It became more andmore evident that tone combinations have"tendencies," and that latent in every chordthere is a desire to move, by contraction orexpansion, into tension or release; that everychord is a link in a chain of similitudes andcontrasts. The "leading-note," la note sen-sible, in company with the dominant and itsseventh, was first to make this unequivocally


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clear. The sense of tonality, the sense of"inevitableness" in tonal progressions, tookroot in the ear; and the theorists camepromptly straggling after with their rulesand vetoes, rearing that formidable structureknown as the ''Laws of Harmony," a struc-ture ever subject to repair and alteration!

The orthodox ecclesiastical composers,the Okeghems and Josquins, with their con-trapuntal skill and foibles, in spite of all theirgreatness, had to pass on before the "new"spirit; their churchly modes lost all identityin the fusion of "temperament"; the sway oftheir grand vocal music was usurped by alittle instrument, a box of wire strings, which,in time, begot that tribe of clavichords,clavicembalos, harpsichords, virginals, spin-ets, clavecins, pianofortes, Hammerklaviere,concert-grands, andplayer-pianos! Saint-Saens, adroit master and independentthinker, aptly characterizes these con-sequences when he writes: "Who, in ourepoch, has not undergone the powerful in-


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Johann Sebastian Bachfluencc of the piano? That influence beganeven before the piano itself, with the 'Well-tempered Clavichord' of Bach. With theday that the 'temperament' in tuning hadbrought about synonimousness of flats andsharps, and allowed the free use of all tonali-ties, the spirit of the keyboard entered theworld; that spirit has become a devastatingtyrant of music by propagating the hereticalenharmonic system. Practically all modernmusic has sprung from that heresy: it hasbeen too fecund to deplore it; but a heresyit remains, nevertheless, destined to dis-appear on a probably distant and fatal day,as a result of the same evolution which gaveit birth."

It is certain that the influence of Bach,and especially of his cyclopedic "Well-tempered Clavichord," on the music of thelast two centuries, was predominant. Bachis the turning-point, the hinge of old andnew. He is as much the culmination of


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medieval groping as he is the foundation ofall modern unfolding in music.

Bach does not stand isolated, unconnectedwith the past, much though his all-believerslike to think so, even as "true-believers" arewilling to credit the coffin of Mohammet, atMedina, with floating unsupported 'twixtheaven and earth. Bach had, of course,forerunners from whom he learned andborrowed; how else could he and Handelhave been contemporaries? They drankfrom the same source, but the draughtaifected each differently. Nor need oneseek this source in so remote a region as thesixteenth century, with its Arcadelt andMorales, Orlando and Palestrina, mastersof polyphonic vocal composition, carryingtheir art to extremes of sophistication, untilit became music for the eye rather than theear, music that was stilted and grown life-less.

The seventeenth century, not marked byany overtowering musical genius, is the true


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period of preparation, counting ten prophetsto every messiah of the following saeculum.There may be room for comparison betweenthat era and our own post-Debussyan days.The year 1600 is a convenient date on whichto fasten the name of Claudio Monteverdi,whose innovations, whose "New Discords, inFive Parts," cannot easily be overestimated.We are again living in an age when theneed for "new discords" seems paramount.Three hundred years hence, will a writer of"Musical Snap-shots" be able to dispose ofRichard Wagner in one sentence ? If Monte-verdi, furtherer of opera, must thus sum-marily be dealt with, Carissimi, elaboratorof cantata and oratorio, deserves at leasta mention; great men, both of them,self-made and "radical," first to provedefinitely the expressive possibilities of therecitativo. Music was beginning to assumedramatic values. Among Carissimi's pupilsthe most important was Alessandro Scar-latti, fluent writer, himself an excellent


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teacher, father of Domenico Scarlatti, towhom belongs the distinction of havingevolved the harpsichord style which becamea model for all future piano music.

The type of "musica da camera" inti-mate, learned and polished, was eminentlyfitted as a field for experimentation. Thericercari and fantasie were expanded andgiven greater formal unity; they becamesonatas and concertos. Diversity wasgained, in instrumental music, by appropri-ating and ennobling popular dance move-ments. As to Arcangelo Corelli, one istempted to see in him even more than aprecursor. Orchestra technique owed muchto him. If, as we are told, he insisted onuniformity in bowing with his players ofstringed instruments, it was probably becausehe was the first to see the need of an evenand pliable orchestral body, preparing byhis training the later exploits of the famousMannheim Orchestra under Stamitz.


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However briefly these voices crying inthe wilderness may be evoked, that of theEnglishman, Henry Purcell, must not beforgotten. "If ever it could with truth besaid of a composer that he had devance sonSteele, Purcell is entitled to that praise"and British pride said not too much. France,on the other hand, in these years of fermenta-tion, had the least of musical yeast to offer,and before the advent of Jean PhilippeRameau, animated with the spirit of research,savant as much as fashioner of beautiful andliving soundsbefore Rameau, France couldboast only of Jean Baptiste Lully, Italianby birth and character, "creator of a styleof music which, since his time, instead ofadvancing towards perfection, as is imagined,has perhaps lost more than it has gained."Lully's talent for intrigue was not matchedby sufficient musical originality to accom-plish what he set out to do. Across theRhine, the road was opened by Schiitz,brought up under Italian teachers though


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he was, a Teuton to the core, and worthy totake first rank as pioneer in German music.Keiser, Pachelbel, Buxtehude and the eruditeKuhnau, carried on his work, the first inopera, the others in organ composition andchamber music craftsmen of merit all,commanding figures none of them.

Here entered Bach.Musical talent had distinguished many

of his ancestors, and among his eleven sonswere several noted musicians, who, in theirlifetime, attracted even greater attentionthan did their illustrious parent. But theyhave gone the way of all flesh; their com-positions, with few exceptions, have beenforgotten, while the name and works of thegreat Johann Sebastian are still alive to-dayand bid fair to outlive the music of to-morrow.

With Spring's beginning, on March 21,1685, Bach came into the world and broughtto it a newer, richer spring of music than ithad ever known. He was born in the lovely


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Johann Sebastian Bach 13old town of Eisenach, nestled among thepine- and oak-covered mountains of Thu-ringia, with the famous Wartburg toweringabove the valleys, that ancient castle whereMartin Luther translated the Bible intothe language of the people. Bach, a mu-sical reformer, was brought up and steepedin the very air of Protestant simplicity anduprightness. What Luther did for theBible, Bach did for music, in making it speaka language that goes straight to the heart ofall people. Many of his loftiest pages werewritten for the service of the church.

Bach received his first music lessonsfrom his father, who was town-musician atEisenach. Orphaned, when he was tenyears old, he came to live and pursue hisstudies with an older brother. But he wasnot happy there, and soon went to Liine-burg, a small town in Germany's vast regionof purple heather, darkgreen moors andorange sunsets. Here he was accepted aschorister at St. Michael's, was taught the


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violin, organ and clavichord, and was fa-miliarized with the rules and rudiments ofcomposition. He made frequent pilgrim-ages to other towns, tramping the high-roadsalone or in the company of fellow-students,to hear other musicians perform. Thus hewalked all the way to Lubeck to meet oldBuxtehude. The example of renownedmasters stimulated him to gain ever greaterperfection in his profession. When he fin-ished his studies, he went, as was the customof the day, into the employ of princes orwealthy parishes, as court musician or churchorganist.

After a short stay in Weimar, as violinistof the ducal orchestra, he obtained a positionas organist of the New Church at Arnstadt,in Thuringia. It was here that, in 1706, theConsistory formally charged him with hav-ing been in the habit of making surprisingvariationes in the chorales, and intermixingdivers strange sounds, so that thereby thecongregation were confounded."


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Johann Sebastian Bach 15Having been called to the more lucrative

post of organist at Miihlhausen, in June1707, he married in the following Octoberhis cousin Maria Barbara Bach, who diedin 1720. He took for his second wife AnnaMagdalena Wiilken, a gifted musician.

The scenes of his activities shifted ratherfrequently, until the year 1723, which marksthe date of Bach's most important appoint-ment, as "Cantor" (choir director) at theThomas School in Leipzig, and as organistat the church of the same name, succeedingthe admired and many-sided Johann Kuh-nau. He remained a resident of this cityto the end of his life, and it was here that hisgenius reached its fullest stature. His famespread throughout the land, although noamount of honors could change his simple,homely ways. In 1736 he was named courtcomposer to the Elector of Saxony, then alsoKing of Poland. In 1747 he accepted aninvitation of Frederick the Great, King ofPrussia, to visit Berlin, where his second son,


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Karl Philipp Emanuel Bach, had estab-lished himself and had gained an enviablereputation.

Bach had been nearsighted from child-hood, a failing that had become aggravatedby his long and industrious copying of oldermasterworks and of his own compositions,which was necessary in the days when theprinting of music was a rare and expensiveluxury. At last, in 1749, an unsuccessfuloperation on his eyes was followed by totalblindness. His general health declined.He regained his sight unexpectedly on July10, 1750, but was stricken with apoplexyten days later, and died on July 28.He had been working to the very end,and his prolificness is as remarkable as hisoriginality. About one-third of the musiccomposed by him is said to have been lost.Even so, the quantity of his preserved mu-sic is enormous. It may be divided intofour groups: (1) the study material that hewrote for the members of his family and his


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many pupils; this material includes the"Well-tempered Clavichord"; (2) the Pre-ludes, Fugues, Toccatas, etc., for organwhich remain the daily mental food ofevery good organist; (3) the Overtures,Suites, etc., for Orchestra, the Chamber-music and the Concertos and Concert-piecescomposed for artist friends and princelypatrons, and still the delight of concert-goers; and (4) the works written for, or in-spired by, the church. These last are Bach'sfinest achievements. Built on the founda-tion of supreme craftsmanship, they arereared with the devotional fervor derivedfrom unbounded religious faith. Bach's set-tings of the Lord's Passion according to St.Matthew and St. John, and his B minorMass, belong to the greatest music of alltimes.

It is for the great things we do, that weare remembered, but for the little things, thatwe are loved. Bach's work is full of "littlethings," gem-like, perfect in cut and fire. We


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are so apt to see in him only the abstractof all musical science, weigh his powers as acontrapuntist, admire his architectural mas-tery on a gigantic scale. The father oftwenty children was a family-man, goingabout his business undisturbed by whiningbabies, writing little tunes for his wife, AnnaMagdalena, and for his boys when they grewup. The austere and patriarchal head of thehouse was also of a sensuous and lovingnature, simple and passionate. It is notonly the supreme agony of Christ that moveshis big heart to sublime utterance; many astrain tucked away in this or that cantata,suite or concerto, betrays the vibrant soulthat depends as much on the joys of thisworld as it hopes in those of the next.Circumspect and versatile, Bach was ob-servant of all that went on, musically, aroundhim. His industry, his fixedness of pur-pose, have not been surpassed. The "mo-dernity" of harmonic progression he oftenindulged in, remains almost as baffling to us


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Johann Sebastian Bach 19as it was to the Consistory of Arnstadt.Under his fingers, graceful old dance-tunessparkled with incisive rhythm. He could behumorous, ultimate test of higher wisdom.The glory of God, the inexorable majestyof Death, have never been made moreplausible to the mind of man, than in someeight or sixteen measures of a Bach chorale.When concerned with the great issues ofhuman destiny, his music breathes immortallife and lifts us from out the narrowingconceptions of space and time.


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IIHANDEL

His works form, as it were, a monument, solitaryand colossal, raised at the end of some blindavenue from which the true path of advance hasbranched, and which, stately and splendid thoughit be, is not the vestibule through which art haspassed to the discovery and exploration of newforms of beauty.Edinburgh Review: January, 1887


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II

GEORGE FREDERIC HANDELThere exists a well-known painting which

pictures the boy Handel, in his night-shirt,seated before the old harpsichord in thedead of night, and surprised by the astonishedfamily, which is headed by the father, lanternin hand, all pressing into the room and be-wildered at seeing the youngster's calm dis-regard for paternal injunctions. Historydoes not tell whether the immediate con-sequences of the discovery were sensiblypainful for little George; but if they were,they did not deter him from pursuing, allhis life, a vocation to which his singulargenius called him in spite of his father's wishthat he should be a lawyer. And the littleplayer in a nightie grew up to be a greatmaster in a fine periwig, clothed in silk andvelvet, decked with jewels, the friend of

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kings and dukes, basking in the glorious raysof popular and universal veneration.

Handel was born at Halle, in Saxony,on February 23 of the year 1685, or a littleless than a month before the birth-date ofJ. S. Bach, whom he survived by nine years,dying at London on April 14, 1759. Butthe lives of these two great contemporarieshave little in common, save that both losttheir eyesight with advancing age. Bachmarried twice, Handel not at all. Bachnever left the shadow of the church; Handelwas always drawn to the footlights of thestage. Bach is the luminous daybreak,Handel the towering sunset cloud. Simul-taneous, they are well nigh antipodal.

Providence played an important role inthe life of Handel. A chance visit withhis father, a bleeder and surgeon, to thecourt of a German princeling who expressedhis delight when he happened to hear theboy play, was the cause of his receiving musiclessons. He made such rapid strides that,


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George Frederic Handel 25ten years old, he was a performer of no meanability and had written several pieces. Thefather, now proud of his prodigy, took him in1696 to Berlin, where young Handel earnedthe admiration of all the musicians, and wherefor the first time he heard an opera, a style ofmusical composition to which he was todevote a great deal of his time, and a form ofentertainment hi the providing of which hewas to make, and subsequently lose, muchmoney. After the father's death, in 1697,Handel, prompted by filial devotion, finishedhis school education, and in 1702, as law stu-dent, he entered the newly inaugurated Uni-versity of Halle; he also filled a position ofchurch-organist, as a means of livelihood.This entailed the writing of much music forthe services, and it is estimated that "intwelve or fourteen months Handel composedseveral hundred cantatas!" Little remainsof these cantatas, at least in their originalform, although it may be safe to assume thatthe rather economic composer utilized a


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great deal of these earlier inspirations inworks of his later period, a method he ad-hered to all his life, and not uncommonwith other composers of his time.

But the lure of the stage was too strong.In 1703 he went to Hamburg, where residedthe best German opera troupe of the day,directed by the eminent and prolific Rein-hard Keiser. Handel entered the theatreorchestra as a violinist, later advancing tothe post of clavecinist, and finally graduatingconductor. All the while he busied himselfwith the writing of operas, some of which weresuccessfully produced. His temperamentalways once led him to quarrel at the theatrewith his associate Mattheson, a talentedcomposer and able historian, and after thethen current fashion they proceeded to settletheir differences with the aid of swords. IfProvidence had not placed a large brassbutton between the point of Mattheson'sweapon and Handel's heart, the story of


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George Frederic Handel 27his life would have ended here. The an-tagonists are said to have made up forthwith.

Opera writing was Handel's avowedambition, and it could be developed only inthe land where opera had been invented amere hundred years earlier and was thenespecially flourishing; that land was Italy.Handel crossed the Alps in 1706, and spentthree fruitful years in studying the worksof Italian masters, among whom he mademany friends, and writing, in turn, manymaster works of his own which won him theenthusiastic plaudits of music-loving Flor-ence, Venice, Naples and Rome. On his re-return to Germany, he accepted a position ascourt musician to the Elector of Hanover.The desire to see new countries seized himsoon, however, and in 1710 he went to Eng-land on a "leave of absence." London wasto be his real home. There his operas be-came the rage. Fame and money effaced allmemories of, and sense of obligation to,his Hanoverian employer. The English


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court attracted him more; and, not paus-ing to weigh political considerations, hewrote a "Te Deum" in praise of the peace ofUtrecht, signed in 1713, whereby Englandwas distinctly favored at the expense of theContinent, including the sulking Elector ofHanover. Providence seemed sadly remisswhen in 1714, according to dynastic settle-ment, this very Prince, as George I, ascendedthe throne of Great Britain. Handel was inan awkward situation. But Providencecame to the rescue with a royal pleasure tripon the river Thames, for which Handel wrotesome "water music" that greatly delightedthe King and led to a reconciliation. There-after, Handel was in high favor at the Court.For a time he was attached as organist to theDuke of Chandos; he gave the daughters ofthe Prince of Wales lessons on the harpsi-chord, writing for the young ladies, amongother studies, "The Harmonious Black-smith." But his life was devoted to theopera and to the theatre, composing many


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George Frederic Handel 29of his scores in postcoaches on his madjourneys across the Continent, in search forsingers, ever greater and more renowned,with whom to attract a fickle crowd. Thestory of these thousand and one eveningsof opera is almost as dramatic and fantasticas are the tales of the Arabian Nights.Princes of the blood royal and princesses offlorid song pass before us in a iong and bril-liant chain, good genii who bring treasures tothe box office, demons sowing the seeds ofjealousy; magic airs which charm a populace,tragic complications spelling ruin. A Dan-ish traveller reports that in 1728, at thedebut of a new soprano, the audience threwmore than 1000 guineas on the stage, intokencrude but positiveof its approval.Competition added to the zest of the game.If the composers Bononcini and Porpora werenot trying to steal the thunderbolt fromHandel, it was La Cuzzoni bent on wrestingfrom La Faustina the fulgurating flash ofcoloratura. Intrigues, mismanagement, the


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race with rival companies, led finally toHandel's failure. Discouraged and brokenin health, he turned to another form of com-position, the oratorio, in which he was toimmortalize himself.Cured from a passing illness caused byworries and nervous exertions, he showed inhis oratorios "Saul" and "Israel in Egypt"(both written in 1738) that the old vigor re-mained, if it was not even redoubled. Theorgan concertos and concerti grossi for stringsand clavecin date from the same period ofremarkable creativeness. In November,1741, he went to Dublin upon the invitationof the Duke of Devonshire, lord-lieutenantof Ireland, carrying in his trunk the manu-script of "The Messiah," written in thespace of three weeks (from August 22nd toSeptember 14th). Destined to become aninstitution of Musical Christendom, it wasfirst publicly performed at Dublin on April13th, 1742.


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George Frederic Handel 31According to Burney, "Handel at this

time 'did bestride our musical world like aColossus.' He had done with operas, andafter his return from Ireland, applied himselfwholly to the composition of sacred music.In 1745, I performed in his band, sometimeson the violin, and sometimes on the tenor,and by attending the rehearsals, generallyat his own house in Lower Brook Street,and sometimes at Carlton House, at thedesire of his constant patron the late Princeof Wales, I gratified my eager curiosity inseeing and examining the person and mannersof so extraordinary a man, as well as inhearing him perform on the organ. He wasa blunt and peremptory disciplinarian onthese occasions, but had a humour and witin delivering his instructions, and even inchiding and finding fault, that was peculiarto himself, and extremely diverting to allbut those on whom his lash was laid."

Handel's oratorios are not written inthe style of Bach. They are not inter-


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spersed with chorales in the singing of whicha pious congregation joins. His theatricalmannerisms he retained. While his subjectsare sometimes biblical, they are more oftenmythological or allegoric. His melodieshave the grander sweep, the richer ornamen-tation of stage music. His massive chor-uses have dramatic life rather than devo-tional depth. Outside of his many oratoriosand his numerous operas (to German, Italianand English texts), Handel wrote otherworks for the church, concertos for organ,pieces for the harpsichord and much beauti-ful chamber music. Through it all, youhear the accomplished artist and idolizedman of the world who writes to obtain a cer-tain effect, and achieves his ends with thehelp of unflagging energy and inexhaustibleresourcefulness.His ashes rest in West-minster Abbey with those of his foster-land'sgreatest sons.


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IllGLUCK

. . . vous esperez que je vais mettre Gretry au-dessus de Gluck parce que 1'impression du moment,fut-elle plus faible, doit effacer celle qui esteloignee? Eh, bien, il n'en sera rien . . . j'aime,je cheris le talent de M. Gretry, et j'estime etadmire celui de M. Gluck. Mile, de Lespinasse


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CHRISTOPH WILLIBALD GLUCKGluck was, first and last, a composer ofoperas.The opera is a mongrel thing, and, for

that reason perhaps, is afflicted with nativeweaknesses whichever since its conceptionin the last years of the sixteenth centuryhave caused its growth to be marked by somany crises. This offspring from the unionof Poetry and Music, has also inherited im-portant traits from other and more distantrelatives, such as Painting, Sculpture, Archi-tecture, the Drama and the Pantomime. Ithas always had to suffer from the jealousinterference of these different strains. Nosooner had the first, vague specimen of operabeen derived from the ballet and "pastorale"by that circle of Florentine amateurs whichincluded the poet Rinuccini and the mu-sicians Peri and Caccini, than Claudio

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Monteverdi, a man of genius, improved uponthe then prevailing methods of the chantedplay, and incidentally broke new roads intotheretofore unexplored realms of harmony.Gluck, in his endeavor to fight the surfeitof florid and meaningless melody indulgedin by the Italian school of 1750, not onlyreorganized the opera, but paved a way forBeethoven's Ninth Symphony, as well as forMozart's "Don Giovanni." Wagnerin op-posing the froth and sparkle of Rossini, theturgid pomp of Meyerbeerfollowed hisown doctrine of the "music-drama" (akin,in type, to that of Gluck) and wrought themarvels of sound which have not ceased tocolor the musical thought of his successors.Then followed Debussy with "Pelleas etMelisande," writing music in which thespoken phrase again became decisive for themelodic curve of the voice-parts (much inaccordance with Monteverdi's practice).Lastly, Igor Stravinsky's "Petroushka,"abolishing the word completely, reverts to


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Christoph Willibald Gluck 37

pantomime and dance alone. The circleseems closed, so far as concerns operaticpossibilities. But music has made greaterstrides in those three centuries, through itsconnection with the stage, than in the pre-vious three thousand years.

The opera stagethat place where all theSeven Arts so strangely minglehas been thefavorite battleground on which these rivalrelatives have settled their pretensions tosupremacy. It is significant that in thesecombats music should oftenest have cham-pioned the cause of either poetry, the drama,or of painting, rather than her own, and yethave reaped the spoils of victory herself inwhat is not merely peculiar to dramatic ends,but most essentially musical. Every timethat operatic reform was sought,- it was mu-sical reform that was achieved. And reform,in art, is not infrequently a remembering ofsome vital principle, which in the course oftime has been lost to view, while less import-ant factors have developed to such a degree


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that real advance is possible only by thereturn to an earlier point of departure, whichis generally identical with simplification ofartistic means.

Thus Dr. Burney, after meeting the com-poser at Vienna in 1772, was justified inwriting: "The Chevalier Gluck is simplify-ing music." That puts the facts into thefewest possible words. But the story of howGluck was led to realize the need for simpli-fication and succeeded in accomplishing it,is not so easily told, particularly as much ofhis early life and development is shrouded incomparative darkness.

The parish register of Weidenwang, avillage of the Bavarian Palatinate, showsthat "Christophorus Wilibaldus" was bap-tized there on July 4, 1714, but it is nowgenerally accepted that he was born at thenearby Erasbach (not far from the Bohe-mian border) on the second day of themonth. The station of Gluck's parents wasof the most humble. His father was a for-


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ester in the services of various Austrianand Bohemian noblemen. The family wasundoubtedly of Czech origin. It seems thatin 1717 the Glucks were transferred to theBohemian estates of Prince Lobkowitz, nearthe town of Komotau. Christoph inheritedthe love of music characteristic of the Bo-hemian race, and grew up in a country wherethe rich Catholic convents and landed gentrycultivated all arts, especially music. Suchsurroundings could not fail to kindle histalents. He received a good school education,and in 1732 was sent to the University ofPrague to finish his humanistic studies. Inorder to replenish his meagre purse, he gavemusic lessons, sang in church and played fordances, receiving his pay sometimes invictuals.

At Prague, the Minorite father BohuslavCzernohorsky (who had been choirmaster atSaint Anne's of Padua and organist at Assisi)gave Gluck the first systematic instructionin composition. Through the munificence


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of Prince Lobkowitz, Gluck was enabled in1736 to go to Vienna, where he continuedhis studies and often played at musical en-tertainments in the house of his benefactor.There he attracted the attention of theItalian Count Melzi, who engaged him as"private musician," and in 1737 took him toMilan where he placed young Gluck underthe direction of J. B. Sammartini. Gluck re-mained for four years the pupil of this ablemusician. In 1741, when his apprenticeshipwas nearing its end, he wrote his first opera,"Artaserse," to words by Metastasio ; itwas produced at La Scala, and proved a greatsuccess. Gluck, at that time, was imbuedwith all the principles of Italian opera, andthe number of his works written in theItalian manner, which he was later to re-pudiate so fervently, is great, for they covermore than thirty years of his life. His fameas an opera composer began to spread beyondthe boundaries of Italy.


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In 1745, upon the invitation of LordMiddlesex, manager of the Haymarket Thea-tre, Gluck went to England. But the timeswere not favorable to opera. Handel, asa producer, had just gone through anotherfailure. In London the Rebellion was rag-ing; all foreigners were suspected. Finally,on January 7, 1746, the season opened withGluck's "La Caduta de' Giganti," whichhad only five performances. Handel had avery poor opinion of the young composer'stalents. Gluck also met Dr. Arne in Lon-don. What influence the latter's simpleEnglish ballads may have had on Gluck, isdifficult to determine. It is certain that tothese London days and to Gluck's bitterexperience with the unsuccessful adaptationof new words to some of his older tunes, dateshis striving for "simplification" and hisrealization that text and music should closelyfit each other: the word-sense admits ofonly one musical interpretation, which mustbe emotionally telling, metrically correct,


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Christopk JVillibald Gluck 43

Johann Adolf Scheibe, a mediocre composer,but a keen critic and astute theorist. Gluckpossessed, in the same measure as Wagner,the aptitude for absorbing, and improvingupon, the ideas of others. Thus he not onlyfell heir to the melodies of his homeland,traceable in more than one of his later works,but successively he profited by the lessonsof the contrapuntist Czernohorsky, the har-monist Sammartini, the balladist Arne, andfinally of the sesthetician Scheibe. The last-named, who extolled the merits of Lully andRameau, and condemned all that was Italian,had probably the greatest influence uponthe course which Gluck's development nowtook. It was Scheibe who pronounced thenecessity for the overture of an opera to"prepare" the listener for the drama, andto "reflect," as it were, the whole of theaction. The second and revised edition ofhis "Critical Musician" appeared in theyear in which Gluck visited Copenhagen.The book contains in sum and substance


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all of Gluck's later principles of "operaticreform." Gluck did not put these ideas to atest until he wrote "Telemacco" for theTeatro Argentina of Rome, in 1750, whichwas the first example of the later "Gluckian"tendencies.

On his return to Vienna, from Copen-hagen, he asked for the hand of one of hispupils, Marianna, the daughter of JosephPergin, a wealthy money-lender and trader.But the father refused to have a musicianfor son-in-law. When Gluck learned inItaly, the following year, that old Perginhad suddenly died, he hastened back toVienna and captured Marianna with herhandsome dowry. It proved a very happymarriage, for loving and meek Marianna waseasily overawed by the splendid selfishnessof her great husband.

After the production of two new operasin Rome, in 1754, Gluck was raised to therank of a papal nobile. Although no recordof the patent seems to exist in the archives


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Christoph IVillibald Gluck 45of the Vatican, the fact remains that fromthat time on he signed himself, and wasknown to all, as the "Chevalier Gluck." Inthe same year, he was appointed master ofthe Imperial Chapel at Vienna and was en-trusted with the musical education of thelittle Archdukes and Duchesses, a positionwhich he held until 1764 and which, tenyears later, led to his warm reception in Parisby his former pupil, Marie Antoinette, whoat the age of fifteen was married to theDauphin of France.

The man who provided Gluck with thefirst libretto that answered the demands ofScheibe was the Italian Calzabigi in Vienna.Not a great poet, but a man with dramaticinstinct, he treated "Orfeo ed Euridice," asubject dear to operatic composers since thedays of Monteverdi, in a manner thatafforded Gluck the opportunity to show his"innovations." The novel work receivedits first performance at Vienna, October 5,1762, and created a sensation. The cast


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included only three leading characters; forthe first time, the chorus entered into theaction of the drama; the music displayedno brilliant fireworks, but was charged withdeep emotion. As though Gluck did notat once feel secure in his new element, thisopera was followed by several others in whichthe composer reverted to the old Italianism.But with "Alceste," again to a text byCalzabigi (1767), Gluck definitely abandonedhis earlier style, and in a celebrated pref-ace to the score he laid down his newcreed. It is practically a declaration of war,and begins with this challenge: "When Iundertook to set this poem it was my designto divest the music entirely of all thoseabuses with which the vanity of singers, orthe too great complacency of composers,has long disfigured the Italian opera, andrendered the most beautiful and magnificentof all public exhibitions, the most tiresomeand ridiculous." The challenge was takenup by the musicians whom he attacked.


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The ideal at which Gluck was aiming hadbeen approached nowhere more closely thanin the French opera. It was to Paris, there-fore, that he looked as the place where hecould realize his dreams. Du Rollet, at-tached to the French embassy at Vienna,entered appreciatively into Gluck's plan,and tried to interest the Paris Opera in anew work on which he and Gluck had col-laborated. The difficulties which wereraised at Paris were finally brushed asidethrough the intervention of the youngDauphiness. On April 19, 1774, "Iphigenieen Aulide," that gem of classic stagecraftand inspired music, first saw the footlightsat the Royal Academy in Paris.

Ten days after the premiere of "Iphi-genie," Louis XV, returning from a hunt,fell ill with smallpox, and died on May 10,1774. Marie Antoinette, upon becomingQueen of France, bestowed her royal graceupon her old teacher, and with the supportof the court Gluck's position seemed im-


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pregnable. Forever famous is that contro-versy between the followers of Gluck andthose of the Italian opera composer, Piccinni,who came to Paris in 1776, and whose workshad been loudly and justly acclaimed inItaly, for he commanded a greater lyriccharm than Gluck possessed. The anti-Austrian party, led by the Queen's aunts,encouraged the Piccinnists with their ap-proval. The political quarrel and artisticcompetition were merged, to the great satis-faction of Gluck's pugnacious nature. Whenhe was invited to take up his permanentabode in Paris, he demanded 12,000 livresthe year, a carriage for his wife (!), and adecent house. In return he agreed to fur-nish one opera every year, except if preventedby sickness, and he professed his willingnessto advise young composers, "so that goodtaste may become established, withoutdanger of ever being changed."

Gluck's remarkable personality, not lessthan his music, fascinated court and public.


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When at rehearsals, in shirt-sleeves and witha nightcap pulled over his bald head, hefinally got through shouting his disapprovalat singers and orchestra until his wishes werecarried out, and he sank exhausted and per-spiring into a seat, the pairs of France wouldwait on him with cooling lemonade, andbring him his wig and velvet coat.

His letters, whether in German or French,are marked by a haughty disregard fororthography, and abound in sallies and cleverobservations, also in bitter and spitefulcriticisms. In July, 1775, when he was atwork on the remodelling of "Alceste" forParis, he wrote to Du Rollet, who was makinga French translation of the libretto andwanted to introduce at the end of the thirdact a situation which was not according tothe composer's taste: "What, in the devil'sname, do you want Apollo to do there withthe Arts; they are only good in his companyon Mount Parnassus; here they interferewith the interest in the catastrophe." He


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proceeded to give minute directions for thescene, going so far as to sketch out thedialogue. His temper was formidable.Burney speaks of him as "a very dragon, ofwhom all are in fear." When at work hishead was "buzzing like a beehive, and hiswife in despair." But he could be charmingand captivating. When Burney visited himin Vienna, on Wednesday, September 2,1772, he found the composer "very wellhoused," with a pretty garden and "a greatnumber of neat and elegantly furnishedrooms. . . . He has no children; MadameGluck, and his niece who lives with him,came to receive us at the door as well as theveteran composer himself. He is muchpitted with the smallpox, and very coarsein figure and look, but was soon got intogood humour. He began, upon a very badharpsichord, by accompanying his niece,who is but thirteen years old, in two of thecapital scenes of his famous opera of Alceste."


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After the French performance of "Al-ceste" in 1776, followed "Armide" the nextyear, and in 1779 the wonderful "Iphigenieen Tauride." His last work written forParis, "Echo et Narcisse," was a failure.Disappointed, after five years of unheard-ofsuccess and glorification, he retired sulkinglyto his castle Berchtholdsdorf, near Vienna,where he remained for the last eight yearsof his life in wilful silence, watching thestock-market and enjoying the delicaciesof his well-appointed larder and cellar. OnMay 30, 1780, he wrote to Paris: "I wishthat some one come to take my place, andplease the public with his music, that I beleft in peace, for I can't forget all the prattleof friend and foe I had to listen to, withregard to Narcissus, nor to pills I had toswallow; the Frenchmen can't yet distinguisha musical eglogue from an epic poem!" Hewas peeved and did not hesitate to say so.He sought solace in the blessings of rarevintages. But after a stroke of apoplexy


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he had to renounce them, too. On No-vember 25, 1787, having two friends fromParis for dinner, he could not resist thetemptation, and, at a moment when hiswatchful spouse had left the room to orderthe carriage for his regular afternoon drive,he emptied a glass of wine, which brought onanother stroke. This time it was a fatal one.


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IVHAYDN

Les ouvrages anciens ne sont pas classiquesparce qu lis sont vieux, mais parce qu'ils sontenergiques, frais, et dispos. Sainte-Beuve


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IVJOSEF HAYDN

The lifetime of "Papa Haydn" covers oneof the most eventful epochs in history. Josefwas born in 1732 (on March 31) at Rohrau,Lower Austria, seven years before MariaTheresa (1740-80), Empress of Austria,ascended the throne. He died in 1809 (onMay 31) at Vienna, a few days after. thetroops of Napoleon had occupied the Aus-trian capital.

Within these dates lie the wars betweenPrussia and Austria (1740-63), Bavaria andAustria (1778-79), Turkey and Austria (1789-91), the French Revolution, the advent ofBonaparte and his victorious campaignsagainst the greater part of Europe, especiallyAustria. But not only in the countries inwhich Haydn lived or which he visited, washistory being made, in his day; across theAtlantic, a war of liberation from English

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sovereignty was followed by the organizingof thirteen colonies into the United States ofAmerica. This war-ridden eighteenth cen-tury is among the most fertile and highlydeveloped eras in the evolution of peace-loving arts and sciences.

Music, when Haydn was born, was stilla comparatively young art, lacking in themore rigorous conceptions of form. It owesto him, especially in the field of orchestraland chamber-music, the establishing of cer-tain moulds and frames which still remainthe architectural basis of musical composi-tion. This creative and unerring sense ofshape and balance is Haydn's distinguishingmark among the masters of his time, and thegreat heritage he left to his successors. Hehad given early proof of musical talent andhad a fine voice, which was the cause of hisleaving the rural province of his birth, in1740, and becoming a choirboy at St.Stephen's, in Vienna, where he received amusical and general education. In 1748 he


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Josef Haydn S7lost his voice and his position in the choir.Then began a time of hardships, duringwhich he gave lessons, played for dances andstreet "serenades," which latter belongedto the fashionable ways of courting in thosedays. He lived in the same house with thefamous poet and librettist Metastasio, whoseyoung protegee, Marianna Martinez, becameone of his pupils. Through Metastasio hemade valuable acquaintances among mu-sicians. The pupil grew up to be the famousMademoiselle Martinez whom the learnedEnglish traveller and musicographer Burneyheard at Vienna, in 1773, and of whoseaccomplishments he could not say enough.

Haydn soon found an opportunity tocome in touch with rich and noble amateurswho did much for the cultivation of musicby maintaining private string-quartets, or-chestras and even theatrical troupes. Haydnwrote for them his first piano sonatas andchamber-music; his first opera dates from1753, three years before the birth of Mozart,


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whom he survived by eighteen years, aperiod pregnant with the composition of hisgreatest oratorios, "The Creation" and "TheSeasons."

In 1761, Haydn entered the service ofthe princely house of Esterhazy, Hungarianmagnates of immense wealth and greatculture; four masters, belonging to threegenerations, were his kind and generousprotectors. He remained in their employfor twenty-eight years (practically the wholeof Mozart's artistic career), spending thesummers in Eisenstadt, Hungary, and thewinters in Vienna. Paul Anton Esterhazydissolved the orchestra in 1790, grantingHaydn a substantial pension. Haydn nowfelt free to accept the invitation which hadcome from London to visit England and toconduct orchestra concerts there, also towrite for these occasions a set of new sym-phonies. He arrived in London on Jan-uary 2, 1791, and stayed in England until1792. On his return to the Continent, he


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Josef Haydn 59passed through Bonn, where a musiciannamed Ludwig van Beethoven, aged twenty-two, was introduced to him. He thoughtso much of the young man's talents thathe urged Beethoven to follow him toVienna and study with him. In January,1794, Haydn paid a second visit to London,where the same honors and pecuniary gainsawaited him that had marked his first so-journ in England.When Haydn returned to Vienna, inAugust, 1795, he was a celebrated masterand rich man. Nicolas Esterhazy, son ofPaul Anton, reinstalled the orchestra ofhis grandfather and placed Haydn at thehead of it. Haydn bought a house nearVienna and enjoyed the fruits of his in-dustry together with the homage paid tohis genius. But the general unrest of Eu-rope, particularly the revolutionary upheavalin France, made itself felt even in the quietof Haydn's retreat. Napoleon Bonapartehad started on his dazzling round of military


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and diplomatic victories. In the month ofJanuary, 1797, in which the great Corsicanoverthrew the Austrians at Rivoli, Haydnbeing intensely patrioticwrote the famousimperial hymn, which quickly became therallying song of a faltering populace andarmy. The hymn has lately been throwninto the discard by a republican Austria.

In England, Haydn had heard wonder-ful performances of Handel's oratorios, andit was due to English influences that henow tried his hand at the same form of com-position. "The Creation" was finished in1798, first given in Vienna during the follow-ing year, and performed in Paris in 1800, theyear of Napoleon's victory at Marengo. Itwas in Paris, too, that the first completeedition of Haydn's quartets was published,bearing the dedication "To the First Consul."Haydn was sixty-nine years old when hewrote "The Seasons," a work of perennialcharm and universal appeal.


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Josef Haydn 61Continued wars had brought with them

conditions which could not fail to underminethe already declining health of an aged andsensitive person. Haydn fainted, on the 10thof May, 1809, at the sound of French cannonbombarding Vienna; his spirit was com-pletely broken when the enemy entered theAustrian capital, three days later; and onMay 31 Haydn expired withas traditionhas ita prayer for the house of Hapsburgon his lips.

They were truly great times in whichthis master lived; and great were his ownachievements. Music was in a formativestate, and it required just such a logical,clear mind as that of Haydn to open forit ways which made possible the organicdevelopment that it received at the handsof his successors. His special domains werethe orchestra and the string-quartet. Evenconsidering his long lifetime, his productive-ness was amazing. Not equalling Mozartin the sensuous beauty of that composer's


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finest inspirations, nor Beethoven in thegrandeur of conception and power of expres-sion, Haydn's music excels in animation,grace, and polish of workmanship, whichare the salient features of that uniqueperiodmarked by frills and furbelows,Dresden china and minuetscommonlyknown as rococo.


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VMOZART

Je ferais dix lieues a pied par la crotte, la choseque je dereste le plus au monde, pour assister aune representation de "Don Juan" bien jouee.Stendhal


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VWOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZARTOnly with the reverence felt for saints and

martyrs, can one speak of Mozart's life anddeath. If ever a master was born, not made,it was the boy Wolfgang Amadeus, whoseemed to have been taught music in anotherworld, in a celestial realm, before he cameto dwell on earth. And it is music of thespheres, indeed, that we hear in the "JupiterSymphony"; music of elemental power thatseizes our heart in the finale of "Don Gio-vanni"; music of supernal serenity andbeauty that radiates from his adagios forstring-quartet. Everlasting youth seems tohave been bestowed by just divinities uponthe work of one they called away so young.When Mozart was born at Salzburg, onJanuary 27, 1756, his father, Leopold, hadbeen for thirteen years court musician tothe Archbishop of that town; the family

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lived in very modest circumstances. Thefather, therefore, was quick in taking ad-vantage of his son's phenomenal gifts, whichbecame apparent when the boy, at the ageof four, was able to improvise little piecesat the clavichord. Being himself an excellentmusician, Leopold gave the youngster thebest of training. He obtained leave ofabsence from the Archbishop, in 1762, andtook his six-year-old son and eleven-year-olddaughter (Maria Anna, also a talentedpianist) on their first concert tour. Nowbegan a time of travel through southernGermany, to Paris, and to London, withstops at every royal court or principality,where the performances of the two prodigiesearned much applause and rich rewards.The cherubic little fellow, whose delicatefeatures and gentle ways were the delightof every one, passed from one princely kneeto another, the length and breadth of Europe,being petted and caressed by soft, bejewelledhands, and having his pockets filled with


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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 67

sweetmeats and ducats. The candy wassoon eaten and the money spent. In 1766the travellers returned to Salzburg, andyoung Mozart entered the Archbishop's or-chestra at a salary of about three dollars amonth! He studied counterpoint and com-position, and composed many works, some ofwhich were published; but his compositionsdid not meet with unreserved approval. Acontemporary wrote of him: "He is onefurther instance of early fruit being moreextraordinary than excellent."

Leopold Mozart, a far-seeing man, realizedthat Salzburg could not offer the properdevelopment his son's talents demanded.He obtained another leave of absence, and inDecember, 1769, took the boy to Italy.Here the child won triumphs wherever heappeared. He received commissions for thecomposition of operas and other music.The eminent musician Padre Martini, ofBologna, praised him warmly; the Pope inRome rewarded him with the "Order of the


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Golden Spur"; at Milan, his opera "Mitri-date" had twenty performances in succession.After such experiences the provincial lifeof Salzburg, the meager gain obtained there,were naturally depressing and discouraging.When the Archbishop refused him anotherleave, in 1777, young Mozart resigned hisposition, and tried his luck in Munich; buthere his reception was rather cool. He faredbetter in Paris, where his symphonies hadgreat success. Nevertheless, he made only aprecarious living with teaching and withplaying at private concerts. He finallywas obliged to return into the service ofthe Archbishop, this time at a somewhathigher salary. With his "Idomeneo" hebegan to follow the methods of Gluck, whohad imparted to opera dramatic life suchas it had not possessed before.

In 1781, Mozart definitely left Salz-burg for Vienna. Joseph II became in-terested in him and commissioned him towrite an opera for the German stage which


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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 69had been inaugurated by the Emperor in1778. Always fighting the adversities oflife and trying hard to earn his daily bread,he sought refuge in the haven of marriage.But ill winds pursued him still, and hiscares only grew. His superb opera, "TheMarriage of Figaro," which contains thepurest essence of charm, grace and wit (in-spired by an epoch-making comedy of theFrench author Beaumarchais), was nearlymade impossible at its first performance,in 1785, by the intentional neglect of intri-guing singers, so that the composer had toappeal to the Emperor for help. In the sameyear fall the six wonderful quartets, dedi-cated to Haydn. "Don Giovanni" wassuccessfully given at Prague, in 1787. Duringthe period from 1788 to 1790 he composed hisripest orchestral symphonies.

Michael Kelly, the Irish tenor, tells in hisReminiscences of his first meeting withMozart in Vienna: "He favoured the com-pany by performing fantasias and capriccios


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on the piano-forte. His feeling, the rapidityof his fingers, the great execution andstrength of his left hand particularly, andthe apparent inspiration of his modulations,astounded me. After this splendid per-formance we sat down to supper, and I hadthe pleasure to be placed between him andhis wife, Madame Constance Weber, agerman lady of whom he was passionatelyfond, and by whom he had three children.After supper the young branches of our hosthad a dance, and Mozart joined them. Ma-dame Mozart told me, that great as hisgenius was, he was an enthusiast in dancing,and often said that his taste lay in that artrather than in music."Would that he hadbeen a dancer, too, and could have earnedthe salaries of a Vestris, d'Auberval or Du-port, instead of often going hungry. Theworld forgets sometimes to pay the piper.

Kelly gives this description of Mozart:"He was a remarkably small man, very thinand pale, with a profusion of fine hair, of


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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 7\which he was rather vain.He was fond ofpunch, of which beverage I have seen himtake copious draughts. He was also fondof billiards, and had an excellent billiardtable in his house. Many and many a gamehave I played with him, but always cameoff second best." We can almost see thesprightly figure jump around the green cloth,and hear the boyish laughter at someespecially successful coup. Success wasso negligent of him during the last spanof his brief existence!Named court-musician by the Emperor,in 1789, he still lacked the financial supportthat would have made his existence carefree.He refused a lucrative position offered himby the King of Prussia, because of his de-votion to his imperial master. In the lastyear of his life he wrote "The Magic Flute"and "La Clemenza di Tito," two operas, theone in German, the other in Italian. Thelatter he completed in eighteen days. Hislast work was a Requiem mass. He passed


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away on December 5, 1791, and was buriedin a pauper's grave, unmarked and un-remembered by his contemporaries.

The prodigy who could perform astound-ing feats, had been showered with honors andpresents; the incomparable master, at theheight of his creative powers, was neglectedand died in want. The irony of Fate willedthat on his deathbed he should be apprisedof his nomination to the full conductorshipat the cathedral of St. Stephen's, the firstposition that would have assured him ease.But his peace was to be eternal, and his gloryimmortal.

Mozart stands solitary in the history ofmusic, detached and unsurpassed. His sunnynature, unclouded by the worries and griefsthat weighed on him, found expression intones that are, above all, human. His musicbreathes serenity and simplicity; his is anart that one is tempted to call "artless,"thereby paying it the highest tributepossible. In his concertos and sonatas for


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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 73piano or violin, in his chamber-music forstrings or wind-instruments, in his serious orhis comic operas, in his choral compositionsor orchestral symphonieseverywhere hehas impressed upon his work the stamp ofhis personality, inimitable and unmistakable.


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VIBEETHOVEN

Sorrow is hard to bear, and doubt is slow to clear,Each sufferer says his say, his scheme of theweal and woe:

But God has a few of us whom he whispers in theThe rest may reason and welcome: 'tis wemusicians know. Robert Browning


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VILUDWIG van BEETHOVEN

No composer left a clearer and more con-nected story of his life, than that which Beet-hoven wrote into his music. These works,stretching over a period of forty years, tellthe growth of his marvelous genius from-auspicious beginnings, through gloriousstruggles, to tragic grandeur. When hecould no longer hear the sounds around him,he listened to a voice within; shut off fromintercourse with humanity, he held commun-ion with the stars. And then came intobeing the Ninth Symphony, the Missasolemnis, and the last string-quartets.

From the titles of some of Beethoven'scompositions, from the dedications of others,and from the contents of nearly all of them,one may read the course of his life, and re-trace an epoch in the world's history. Be-tween that solemn mass, written for his

[ 77 1


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friend and protector, Archduke Rudolfwhose most illustrious title is not Princeof the House of Austria-Lorraine, nor Arch-bishop of Olmiitz, nor Cardinal of theRoman Curia, but the "Piano-pupil ofBeethoven"between that triumphant ex-pression of religious faith and a little "con-ciliatory" canon for Maelzel (the inventorof the metronome, whose futile efforts toperfect an ear-trumpet had irritated thepoor suiferer), what wealth, what varietyof "human documents!" Cries of passion,that call to the perfect mate; hymns tonature, which sing his love for wood andfield; professions of ardent patriotism,evoked by the turn of political events: theseare the three main themes that run throughall of Beethoven's music, until at last theyseem to be fused into one, that of sublimeresignation. From a sentimental ballad,Adelaide, of 1796, instantly acclaimed andpublished in numberless transcriptions, tothe Eroica symphony, first "privately" per-


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formed in 1804; from the opera Fidelio,coolly received in 1805, to the quartets of1826, decried as the deed of a lunatic: whatstupendous strides, and also what illuminat-ing side-lights on contemporary appreciation!And yet all Vienna followed his hearse,when he died on March 26, 1827, and all theworld knew that it had lost a Titan.

As certain towns of Italy, during theMiddle Ages, attracted painters from farand near, to work there under the protectionafforded them by some art-loving dignitaryof the realm or church, so was Vienna for along time the goal of musicians, thanks to theenlightenment and munificence of the Aus-trian court and aristocracy. No one bene-fited more thereby than did Beethoven.Although born at Bonn, on the Rhine(December 16, 1770), young Ludwig hadfound early in his father's employer, Prince-bishop Max Franz, Elector of Cologne, amember of the Hapsburg family, who actedas his benevolent patron. It was due to


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the connections between Cologne and Viennathat Ludwig, in his seventeenth year, wassent to the Austrian capital to pursue hispiano studies. He had a few lessons fromMozart. Unfortunately, his mother's deathsoon called him back to Bonn, where heremained, giving lessons and pursuing hisown studies, until in 1792 Haydn, passingthrough Bonn on his return from England,heard Beethoven and offered to accept himas pupil if he settled in Vienna. This in-vitation was too good to go unheeded.Beethoven's friend, Count Waldsteinandthe story of Beethoven's life is largely astory of Beethoven's friendssaw to it thatnothing interfered with the realization ofthis plan. And so Beethoven went toVienna. He had great success with hisconcerts and was graciously received byViennese society. He studied with Haydn,with the contrapuntist Albrechtsberger, andwith the Italian Salieri. He was a brilliantplayer, of striking exterior and strange shy-


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Ludwig van Beethoven 81ness in his manner. Between a dotingmother and a dissipated father, the formationof his character had been neglected, but hismusical education left nothing to be desired.His zeal and earnestness enabled him inthose years to lay the foundation for allof his future work. At first frankly imita-tive, following his teacher Haydn as anunparalleled example for the purely con-structive part of music, using the sonatasof K. Ph. Em. Bach as models of pianisticstyle, he leaned toward the virtuoso andconventional side of a school that had almostoutlived itself. From Haydn he learnedthe treatment and development of themes,the use of orchestral colors. The first pianosonatas, trios and quartets, a septet andthe two first symphonies, with other worksof lesser distinction, belong to this period.

With the year 1801 a decided changebecomes noticeable. Beethoven has begunto find himself. Growing deafness, thefirst signs of which date back to 1796, his


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various sentimental quests, too often end-ing in deception, are bringing their in-fluence to bear on his state of mind. Heconfides the precarious state of his healthto a friend, pledging him to absolute secrecy.A passing ray of sunshine pierces the clouds:"My life is a little pleasanter since I get againamong people. You cannot conceive howempty, how sad my existence has beenthese last two years. Like a spectre myfeeble hearing appeared to me. I fled hu-manity, had to be taken for a misanthrope,so far from being one. These changes arewrought by a dear, bewitching little maidenwho loves me and whom I love. Afteryears, again a few happy moments, andfor the first time I feel thatto marry couldmake me happy. Unfortuntely she is notof my station " And we see darknessreturning upon the scene of this emotionaldrama. His malady grows worse. He seeksthe aid of doctors and medicasters; treat-ments, sound or quack, are of no avail.


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Ludwig van Beethoven 83His mental depression reaches its culminationin the pathetic testament of Heiligenstadt,October 1802; walled in by silence, he islike one entombed alive. The care of needyrelatives adds to his burdens; and whenNapoleon's brother Jerome, King of West-phalia, offers him a well-paid position, heis tempted to accept it and go to Cassel.But three of his friendsArchduke Rudolf,Prince Lobkowitz and Count Kinskyagreeto pay him a pension for life in order toattach the first musician of Europe permantlyto Vienna. For Beethoven has become aninternational figure, his fame has spread.Feted at court and by the nobility, treatedwith princely lavishness by his friend Lich-nowsky, he leads the expensive life of a fash-ionable and idolized artist. Karl Czerny,pupil of Beethoven, gives this description ofthe master at work: "While composing, Beet-hoven tried his music often at the piano,until it suited him, singing all the while.His voice in singing was dreadful." But


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sketch-books accompany him everywhere;he composes in the street, on walks throughthe woods; wherever the musical idea appearsto him, he seizes it and puts it on paper,later subjecting it to numberless alterations,to careful development. His summers arespent in the country; his health demands atrip to the baths of Teplitz, in Bohemia.Here the IIof-Compositeur van Beethovenmeets the "old and incredibly distinguished"Geheimrat von Goethe, for whose drama"Egmont" he had written such stirringmusic. And the composer, pet of princes,seems democratic to the point of rudeness,compared with the artistocratic and affablepoet, true friend of the people, who willinglyacknowledged in his talks with Eckermannhis utter ignorance in matters musical.Beethoven's admiration for Goethe is pro-found; "he lives, he bids us all to live. Thatis why one can set him to music. There isnobody so easily set as he; only I am notfond of writing songs." However, conversa-


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Ludwig van Beethoven 85tion with the deaf musician is made possibleonly through the aid of note-books that hecarries with him everywhere, and into whichhis interlocutors must write their part of thedialogue. Compassion actuates many awoman's tender heart to show him the ut-most kindness and affection. But none ofthem can or will accept the honor of becominghis wife. In 1812, the year of the Teplitzinterview, Beethoven apostrophises himselfin his diary: "You are not permitted to bemannot for you, only for others; for youthere is no happiness but in yourself, in yourArt." Another reve passionnel had beenshattered. Which?there were so many.Beethoven's enigmatic "Immortal Beloved"has her place in Elysium with Petrarca'sLaura and Dante's Beatrice.

The year 1814 sees all the statesmen ofEurope assembled in Vienna, to sit in highconclave and decide the fate of nations.Archduke Rudolf, in person, introduces hisbeloved master to the crowned visitors who


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bow before him whom Apollo had crowned.Without a work of Beethoven, no programof importance seems complete. He is notwanting publishers: "My compositions bringin much, and I can say that I have moreorders than it is possible for me to take careof. For everything I write, I could havesix or seven publishers, if I wanted; they nolonger bargain with me, I demand and theypay." And yet he feels "more lonesomethan ever in this big city." For, after all, itis not the music written with his heart's-blood that the populace is whistling, thatpublishers are clamoring for, but some of hisincidental music to second-rate plays, mili-tary marches, "Wellington's Victory atVittoria," that symphonic poem for whichthe composer himself "would not give two-pence"! But the lon

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