<h2>III</h2>
<h3>FROM FUGUE TO SONATA</h3></div>
<p>If a pianoforte recital which begins with a Bach
fugue continues with a Beethoven sonata, it does
not require a very discriminating ear to note the
difference between the two. The Beethoven sonata is in
a style so entirely distinct from that of the fugue, and
sounds so wholly unlike it, that it seems as if Bach had
exerted no influence whatsoever upon the greatest master
of the period that followed his death. Although
Haydn and Mozart were nearer Bach in point of time
than Beethoven was, a sonata by either of them, if it
chanced to be on the program, would show the same
difference in style, the same radical departure from the
works of the master of counterpoint, as the Beethoven
sonata.</p>
<p>The question naturally suggests itself, did Bach’s
influence cease with his death? And the fact that this
question calls for an answer and that this answer leads
to a general consideration of the interim between Bach
and Beethoven, again shows how broad in its scope
as an instrument is the pianoforte and how comprehensive
in its application to music as a whole is the
music of that instrument. Two works on a recital
program furnish a legitimate basis for a discussion
of two important periods in the development of music!
<span class='pagenum pncolor'><SPAN name='page_79' name='page_79'></SPAN>79</span>
Who would have thought there was so much to a
pianoforte recital?</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“It would have been an eminently pardonable mistake
for any intelligent musician to have fallen into, in
the third quarter of the eighteenth century, if he had
concluded that Johann Sebastian Bach’s career was a
failure, and that his influence upon the progress of his
art amounted to the minimum conceivable. Indeed, the
whole course of musical history in every branch went
straight out of the sphere of his activity for a long
while; his work ceased to have any significance to the
generation which succeeded him, and his eloquence fell
upon deaf ears. A few of his pupils went on writing
music of the same type as his in a half-hearted way,
and his own most distinguished son, Philipp Emanuel,
adopted at least the artistic manner of working up
his details and making the internal organization of his
works alive with figure and rhythm. But even he,
the sincerest composer of the following generation, was
infected by the complacent, polite superficiality of his
time; and he was forced, in accepting the harmonic
principle of working in its Italian phase, to take with
it some of the empty formulas and conventional tricks
of speech which had become part of its being, and
which sometimes seem to belie the genuineness of his
utterances and put him somewhat out of touch with
his whole-hearted father.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This passage from one of the most admirably
thought-out books on music I know, Sir Hubert Parry’s
“Evolution of the Art of Music,” is no exaggeration.
<span class='pagenum pncolor'><SPAN name='page_80' name='page_80'></SPAN>80</span>
For many years after Bach’s death, for nearly a century
in fact, his influence was but little felt. And yet
so aptly does the development of art adjust itself to
human needs and aspirations, the very neglect into
which Bach fell turned music into certain channels
from which it derived the greater freedom of expression
essential to its progress and gave it the tinge of
romanticism which is the essence of modern music.</p>
<p>The greatness of Johann Sebastian Bach, on the technical
side at least, now is so universally acknowledged,
and professional musicians understand so well what
their art owes to him, we are apt to think of him as
the only musician of his day, whereas his significance
was but little appreciated by his contemporaries.
There were, in fact, other composers actively working
on other lines and turning music in the direction it was
destined to follow immediately after Bach’s death—and
for its own ultimate good, be it observed. The simple
fact is, that pure counterpoint culminated in Bach.
What he accomplished was so stupendous that his successors
could not keep up with him. They became
exhausted before they even were prepared to begin
where he left off. And yet the reaction from Bach
was, as I have indicated, absolutely necessary to the
further progress of music.</p>
<p>The scheme of musical development which the reader
should bear in mind if he desires to understand music,
and to arrive at that understanding with some kind
of system in his progress, was briefly as follows:</p>
<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><SPAN name='page_81' name='page_81'></SPAN>81</span></div>
<h4>Three Periods of Musical Development.</h4>
<p>First we have counterpoint, the welding together
of several themes each of equal importance. This style
of composition culminated in Bach. Its most elaborate
form of expression was the fugue; but it also employed
the canon and impressed into its service certain minor
forms like the allemande, courant, cha�onne, gavotte,
saraband, gigue, and minuet.</p>
<p>Next, after Bach music began to develop according
to the harmonic system, or, if I may be permitted for
the sake of clarity to use an expression which technically
is incorrect, according to the melodic system.
That is, instead of combining several themes, composers
took one theme or melody and supported it
with an accompaniment so that the melody stood out
in clear relief. This first decided melodic development
covers the classical period, the period after Bach to
Beethoven, and its highest form of expression was the
sonata, which in the orchestra became the symphony.</p>
<p>The romantic period comes after Beethoven. This,
to characterize it by the readiest means, by something
external, something the eye can see, is the “single
piece” period, the period in which the impromptu of
Schubert, the song without words of Mendelssohn, the
nocturne of Chopin, the novelette of Schumann, takes
the place of the sonata, which consists of a group of
pieces or movements. Composers begin to find a too
exacting insistence upon correctness of form irritating.
Expression becomes of more importance than form,
which is promptly violated if it interferes with the
composer’s trend of thought or feeling. Pieces are
<span class='pagenum pncolor'><SPAN name='page_82' name='page_82'></SPAN>82</span>
written in certain moods, and their melody is developed
so as to follow and give full expression to the
mood in which it is conceived. New harmonies are
fearlessly invoked for the same purpose. Everything
centres in the idea that music exists not as an accessory
to form, but for the free expression of emotion.
In his useful and handy “Dictionary of Musical
Terms,” Theodore Baker defines a nocturne as a title
for a piano piece “of a dreamily romantic or sentimental
character, but lacking a distinctive form.” When we
see the title “Sonata” over a composition we think of
form. When we see the title “Nocturne” we think of
mood, not manner. The title arouses within us, by anticipation,
the very feeling, the very mood, the very
emotional condition which the composer is seeking to
express. The form in which he seeks to express it
is wholly a secondary matter. A composition is a
sonata because it follows a certain formal development.
It is a nocturne because it is “dreamily romantic
or sentimental.” In no better way, perhaps, could
the difference between the classical period of music
and the romantic period which set in after Beethoven
be explained. The romanticist is no more hampered
by form than the writer of poetry or fiction is by facts.
Form dominates feeling in classical music, feeling dominates
form in romantic music.</p>
<p>We still are and, happily, ever shall remain in the
romantic period. The greatest of all romanticists and,
up to the present time, the greatest of all composers is
Richard Wagner, whose genius will be appreciated
more and more as years go by until, as may be the
case, a still greater one will arise; although as dramatic
<span class='pagenum pncolor'><SPAN name='page_83' name='page_83'></SPAN>83</span>
literature culminated in Shakespeare, so music may
have found its greatest master for all time in Wagner.
Wagner, of course, was not a composer for the pianoforte,
but when he reached back and to the fuller harmony
inherited from Beethoven added the counterpoint
of Bach, thus combining the two great systems of composition,
he indicated the only method of progress possible
for music of all kinds.</p>
<h4>Rise of the Melodic School.</h4>
<p>It must not be supposed that the melodic school
which came in after Bach and which, so far as the
classical form of the sonata is concerned, culminated
in Beethoven, was the mushroom growth of a night.
So much has been said of Bach that a person unfamiliar
with the history of music might draw the erroneous
conclusion that Bach was the only composer worth
mentioning before the classical period and Germany
the only country in which music had flourished. On
the contrary, Bach was the climax of a school to which
several countries had each contributed its share, partly
vocal, partly instrumental. Palestrina’s name naturally
comes to mind as representative of the early period
of Italian church music; there also was the “Belgian
Orpheus,” Orlandus Lassus (or Lasso), the greatest
composer of the Flemish school; and England had its
Gibbons and other madrigal composers. Their music
was vocal and requires to be considered more thoroughly
under the head of vocal music, but it also was
contrapuntal and played its part in the general development
of the art before Bach came upon the scene. Of
<span class='pagenum pncolor'><SPAN name='page_84' name='page_84'></SPAN>84</span>
course, there also was instrumental music in counterpoint
before Bach’s day. There is “Queen Elizabeth’s
Virginal Book,” a manuscript collection of music made
either during her reign or shortly afterward and containing
pieces for the virginal by Tallis, Bird, Giles,
Dr. John Bull and others, including also the madrigalist,
Gibbons. The Englishman, Henry Purcell
(1658-1695); the Frenchman, Fran�ois Couperin
(1668-1733), who wrote a harpsichord method; the
Germans, Hans Leo von Hasler (1564-1612) and Froberger;
and the Italian, Frescobaldi—these were some
among many composers of counterpoint more or less
noted in their day.</p>
<p>Bach, however, brought the art of counterpoint to
perfection, so that, so far as it is concerned, he neither
required nor even so much as left room for a successor.
It may not be pertinent to the argument, yet it may
well be questioned whether, had the classical trio,
Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, endeavored to carry
on the contrapuntal school, they would not, in spite of
their genius, have relegated music to a more primitive
state than it occupied when Bach died. It seems a
fortunate circumstance to me that Bach’s son appears
to have realized his inferiority to his father and that, in
consequence, he turned from counterpoint to the development
of harmony—the working out of a clearly
defined theme or melody supported by accompaniment.</p>
<p>Counterpoint is said to be polyphonic, a term composed
of two Greek words signifying many-voiced, the
combination in music of several parts or themes. Opposed
to it is homophonic, or single-voiced, music, in
which one melody or part is supported by an accompaniment.
<span class='pagenum pncolor'><SPAN name='page_85' name='page_85'></SPAN>85</span>
Italy, with its genius for the sensuous and
emotional in music, already had developed a school of
melodic music, and to this Philipp Emanuel Bach turned
for a model. In Italy the pianoforte, through its employment
for the freer harmonic support of dramatic
solo singing in opera, an art form that is indigenous
to Italy, gradually had emancipated itself there from
counterpoint and acquired a style of its own. Girolamo
Frescobaldi (1583-1644), a famous Italian pianoforte
and organ virtuoso, whose first organ recital in
St. Peter’s, Rome, is said to have attracted an audience
of thirty thousand, and whose mantle fell upon his two
most renowned pupils, the German, Johann Jacob Froberger,
and the Italian, Bernardo Pasquini, not only experimented
with our modern keys, seeking to replace
with them the old ecclesiastical modes in which Palestrina
wrote, but also simplified the method of notation.
For even what seems to us so simple a matter as the
five-line staff is the result of slow evolution.</p>
<h4>Scarlatti’s Importance as Composer and Virtuoso.</h4>
<p>The Italian genius who gave the greatest impulse to
the progress of pianoforte music and who, for his day,
immensely improved the technique of pianoforte playing,
was Domenico Scarlatti (1683-1757), the famous
son of a famous father, Alessandro Scarlatti, the leading
dramatic composer of his time. Domenico Scarlatti
interests us especially because he is the only one
of the early Italians whose work retains an appreciable
foothold on modern recital programs. Von B�low
edited selections from his works, and I recall from personal
<span class='pagenum pncolor'><SPAN name='page_86' name='page_86'></SPAN>86</span>
experience, because I was at the concert, the delight
with which some of these were received the first
time Von B�low played them on his initial visit to this
country during the season of 1875-76. Amateurs on
the outlook for something new (even though it was
very old) took up Scarlatti, and this early Italian’s suddenly
acquired popularity was comparable with the
“run” on the Rachmaninoff “Prelude” when it was
played here by Siloti many years later.</p>
<p>Scarlatti has been called the founder of modern
pianoforte technique. Although he composed for the
harpsichord, he understood the instrument so thoroughly
and what he wrote for it accords so well with
its genius, that by unconscious anticipation it also was
adapted to the genius of the modern pianoforte. It
still is pianistic; more pianistic and more suitable to
the modern repertoire than a good deal of music by
greater men who lived considerably later. I should
say, for example, that Scarlatti’s name is found more
frequently on pianoforte recital programs than Mozart’s,
although Mozart was incomparably the greater
genius. But there is about Scarlatti’s music such a
quaint and primitive charm that one always listens to
it with the zest of a discoverer, whereas Mozart’s pianoforte
music, although more modern, just misses being
modern enough. This clever Italian gives us the early
beginnings of the sonata form. He merely lisps in
sonata accents, it is true, but his lisp is as fascinating
as the ingenuous prattle of an attractive child. His best,
known work, “The Cat’s Fugue,” the subject of which
is said to have been suggested to him by a cat gliding
over the keyboard, is indeed contrapuntal. But even
<span class='pagenum pncolor'><SPAN name='page_87' name='page_87'></SPAN>87</span>
this is a movement in a sonata, and the characteristic
of his works as a whole is the fact that in most of them
he developed and worked out a melody or theme, and
that he established the fundamental outlines of the
sonata form.</p>
<p>Comparatively few laymen have more than a vague
idea of what is meant by sonata form. To them a
sonata simply is a composition consisting of several
movements, usually four, three of them of considerable
length, with a shorter one (a minuet or scherzo) between
the first and second or the second and fourth.
A sonata, however, must have one of its movements
(and generally it will be found to be the first) written
in a certain form. Regarding the Scarlatti sonatas,
suffice it to say here that with him the form still is in
its primitive simplicity. For example, the true sonata
movement as we now understand it employs two
themes, the second contrasting with the first. As a
rule, Scarlatti is content with one theme. It is the
peculiar merit of Philipp Emanuel Bach that he introduced
a second theme into his sonatas, or suggested it
by striking modulations when he employed only one
theme, and thus paved the way for its further elaboration
by Joseph Haydn. Mozart elaborated the form
still further, and then came Beethoven, with whom the
classical period reached its climax and whose sonatas
for all practical purposes have completely superseded
those of his forerunners.</p>
<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><SPAN name='page_88' name='page_88'></SPAN>88</span></div>
<h4>Rise of the Amateur.</h4>
<p>Characteristic of the period of transition from Bach
to Beethoven, from the fugue to the sonata, was the
development of popular interest in music. Scarlatti
begins a brief introduction to a collection of thirty of
his pianoforte pieces which were published in 1746, by
addressing the “amateur or professor, whoever you be.”
Significant in this is the inclusion of, in fact the seeming
preference given to the amateur. Music of the
counterpoint variety had been music for the church,
the court and the professional. Now, with the development
of the freer harmonic or melodic system, it
was growing more in touch with the people. During
Philipp Emanuel Bach’s life the increase of popular interest
in music was remarkable. The titles that began
to appear on compositions show that composers were
reaching out for a larger public. Bie quotes some of
them: “Cecilia Playing on the Pianoforte and Satisfying
the Hearing”; “The Busy Muse Clio”; “Pianoforte
Practice for the Delight of Mind and Ear, in Six
Easy <i>Galanterie Parties</i> Adapted to Modern Taste,
Composed Chiefly for Young Ladies”; “The Contented
Ear and the Quickened Soul”; while Philipp Emanuel
Bach inscribes some of his pieces as “easy” or “for
ladies.” Evidently the “young person” figured as extensively
in the calculations of musical composers then
as she does now in those of the publishers of fiction.
Musical periodicals sprang up like mushrooms—“Musical
Miscellany,” “Floral Garnerings for Pianoforte
Amateurs,” “New Music Journal for Encouragement
and Entertainment in Solitude at the Pianoforte for the
<span class='pagenum pncolor'><SPAN name='page_89' name='page_89'></SPAN>89</span>
Skilled and Unskilled,” such were some of the titles.
These periodicals often went the way of most periodical
flesh and in the customary brief period, but they show a
quickened public interest in music—the “contented ear
and the quickened soul,” so to speak.</p>
<h4>Changes in Musical Taste.</h4>
<p>If I dismiss Philipp Emanuel Bach rather curtly and,
in this portion of the book at least, do the same with
Haydn and Mozart, this is not because I fail to appreciate
their importance in musical history, but because
they have failed to retain their hold on the modern
pianoforte repertoire. The simple fact is that the pianoforte
as an instrument has outgrown their music. We
can get more out of it than they gave it. If we bear
in mind that the pianoforte, as well as music itself, has
developed, it will aid us in understanding why so much
music, once considered far in advance of its time and
even revolutionary, has so soon become antiquated.
Why ignore facts? Some examples of primitive music
still survive because they charm us with their quaintness.
But the classical period is retiring more and
more into the shadow of history. Whatever importance
Haydn and Mozart may possess for the student,
their pianoforte music, so far as practical program-making
is concerned, is to-day a negligible quantity.
I remember the time when, as a pupil, I pored with
breathless interest over the pages of Mozart’s “Sonata
in A Minor” and his “Fantasy and Sonata in C Minor.”
But to-day, when I read in a book published about
twenty-five years ago that Mozart indulged in harmonies,
<span class='pagenum pncolor'><SPAN name='page_90' name='page_90'></SPAN>90</span>
chord progressions and modulations, “sometimes
considered of doubtful propriety even now” and
“quite as harshly censured as are to-day the similar
licenses of free-thinking composers”—I wonder where
they are. For his own day, nevertheless, Mozart was
an innovator, as every genius is; for it is through those
daring deviations of genius from established rule and
tradition, which contemporaries regard as unjustifiable
license, that art progresses. This should be borne in
mind by those who were intolerant toward the opponents
of Wagner, yet now are guilty of a similar
solecism in proclaiming Richard Strauss a charlatan.</p>
<p>Assuming that the modern pianoforte pupil is but
indifferently nourished on the Mozart pabulum, let
me add that this composer also was a virtuoso, and
by his choice of the pianoforte over the clavichord did
much toward making the modern instrument more
popular. He also developed the sonata form so that
Beethoven found it ready moulded for his genius. In
fact the sonata form as we know it is so much a Mozart
creation that Mr. Hanchett, in his “Art of the Musician,”
suggests calling the sonata movement proper a
mozarta—a suggestion which I presume will never be
adopted.</p>
<h4>Beethoven and the Epoch of the Sonata.</h4>
<p>In the history of music there are three figures that
easily tower above the rest. Each represents an era.
They are Bach, who stands for counterpoint, the epoch
of the fugue; Beethoven, who represents the epoch of
the sonata; Wagner, who represents the epoch of the
<span class='pagenum pncolor'><SPAN name='page_91' name='page_91'></SPAN>91</span>
music-drama. The first two summed up in themselves
certain art forms which others had originated. Bach’s
root goes back to Palestrina, Beethoven’s to Scarlatti.
Wagner presents the phenomenon of being both the
germ and the full fruition of the art form for which
he stands. It is conceivable that the work of these
men will at some time fall into desuetude, for in art
all things are possible, and the classical period seems
to be losing its grip on music more and more every day
and we ourselves may live to see the sonata movement
become obsolete. It certainly is having less and less
vogue, and a composer who now writes a sonata with
undeviating allegiance to its classical outlines, deliberately
invites neglect, because the listener no longer
cares to have his faculties of appreciation restricted by
too rigid insistence upon form, preferring that genius
should have the utmost latitude and be absolutely untrammeled
in giving expression to what it has to say.
Nevertheless, music always will bear the impress of
these three master minds, just as our language, although
we do not speak in blank verse, always will bear
the impress of Shakespeare. “I don’t think much of
that play,” exclaimed the countryman, after hearing
“Hamlet” for the first time. “It’s all made up of quotations!”
Equally familiar, not to say colloquial, are
certain musical phrases, certain modulations, which
have come down to us from the masters.</p>
<p>Although Beethoven no longer is the all-dominant
figure in the musical world that he was fifty years ago,
and it requires a performance of the “Ninth Symphony”
given under specially significant circumstances
(such as the conducting of a Felix Weingartner) to attract
<span class='pagenum pncolor'><SPAN name='page_92' name='page_92'></SPAN>92</span>
as many to a concert hall as would be drawn by an
ordinary Wagner program, I trust I shall know how
to appreciate his importance to the development of musical
art and approach him with the reverence that is
his due. Like all great men who sum up an epoch, he
found certain things ready to hand. The Frenchman,
Jean Philippe Rameau (1683-1764), “the creator of
the modern system of harmony,” had published his
“Nouveau Syst�me de Musique Th�orique”; the sonata
movement from its tentative beginnings under Scarlatti
had been developed through Philipp Emanuel
Bach, Haydn and Mozart into a definite art form
awaiting the final test of a great genius—which Beethoven
proved to be.</p>
<h4>Beethoven’s Slow Development.</h4>
<p>I already have pointed out that while pianoforte and
orchestra have developed side by side, the general belief
that the pianoforte merely has been the handmaiden
of the orchestra is a mistaken one. On the contrary,
until the end of the classical period, at least, the pianoforte
was the pioneer. It has blazed the way for the
orchestra and led it, instead of bringing up the rear.
Thus the sonata form was developed by the pianoforte
and then was handed over by that instrument to the
orchestra under the name of symphony, which, the
reader should bear in mind, simply is a sonata written
for orchestra instead of for the pianoforte. Even Beethoven,
before he composed his first symphony, which
is his Opus 21, tested his mastery of the form and his
ideas regarding certain further developments in it, by
<span class='pagenum pncolor'><SPAN name='page_93' name='page_93'></SPAN>93</span>
first composing thirteen pianoforte sonatas, including
the familiar “Path�tique,” which used to be to concert
programs what Liszt’s “Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2”
is now—the <i>cheval de battaille</i>, on which pianists
pranced up and down before the ranks of their astonished
audiences and unfortunate amateurs sought to
retain their equilibrium.</p>
<p>This experimentation, this comparatively slow development,
was characteristic of Beethoven; is, in fact,
characteristic of every genius who works from the soul
outward. “Like most artists whose spur is more in
themselves than in natural artistic facilities, he was
very slow to come to any artistic achievement,” writes
Sir Hubert Parry. “It is almost a law of things
that men whose artistic personality is very strong, and
who touch the world by the greatness and the power of
their expression, come to maturity comparatively late,
and sometimes grow greater all through their lives—so
it was with Bach, Gluck, Beethoven and Wagner—while
men whose aims are more purely artistic and
whose main spur is facility of diction, come to the
point of production early and do not grow much afterward.
Such composers as Mozart and Mendelssohn
succeeded in expressing themselves brilliantly at a very
early age; but their technical facility was out of proportion
to their individuality and their force of human
nature, and therefore there is no such surprising difference
between the work of their later years and the
work of their childhood as there is in the case of Beethoven
and Wagner.”</p>
<p>In writing sonatas Haydn and Mozart had been satisfied
with grace of outward form and a smooth and
<span class='pagenum pncolor'><SPAN name='page_94' name='page_94'></SPAN>94</span>
pretty flow of melody within that form. Beethoven
was a man of intellectual force as well as of musical
genius. He applied his intellect to enlarging the sonata
form, his musical genius to supplying it with contents
worthy of the greater opportunities he himself had
created for it. There is a wonderful union of mind
and heart in Beethoven’s work. The sonata form, as
perfected by him, is a monument to his genius. It
remains to this day the flower of the classical period.</p>
<h4>The Passing of the Sonata.</h4>
<p>Nevertheless, the Beethoven sonatas no longer retain
the place of pre-eminence once accorded them on pianoforte
recital programs. When Von B�low was in this
country during the season of 1875-76 he frequently
gave concerts at which he played only Beethoven
sonatas. I doubt if any of the great pianists of to-day
could now awaken as much public interest by such programs
as Von B�low did. I remember the concert at
which, among others of the Beethoven sonatas, this virtuoso
played Opus 106 (“Grosse Sonata f�r das Hammerklavier”).
After he had played through part of
the first movement he became restless, and from time
to time peered over the keyboard and into the instrument
as if something were wrong with it. Finally he
broke off in the middle of the movement, rose from his
seat and walked off the stage. When he reappeared, he
had with him an attendant from the firm of manufacturers
whose pianofortes he used, and together they
fussed over the instrument for a while, before the attendant
made his exit and the irate little pianist began
<span class='pagenum pncolor'><SPAN name='page_95' name='page_95'></SPAN>95</span>
the sonata all over again. We considered the mishap
that gave us opportunity to hear him play so much of
the work twice, a piece of great good luck for us.
Would we so consider it now?</p>
<p>Von B�low has passed into musical history as a great
Beethoven player, and such he undoubtedly was. I
doubt, however, if he was a greater Beethoven player
than several living pianists. Some seasons ago Eug�ne
d’Albert played a Beethoven program. His performance
did not evoke the enthusiasm he anticipated. In
fact there were intimations in the comments on his
performance that he was not as great a Beethoven
player as he thought he was. Personally, and having
a very clear recollection of Von B�low’s Beethoven
recitals, because I attended every one he gave in New
York, and in my mind’s eye can see him sitting at the
pianoforte, bending away over, with his ear almost to
the keyboard, I think d’Albert played his Beethoven
program quite as well. What had happened, however,
was this: A little matter of thirty years had passed
and with it the classical period and its efflorescence, the
sonata form, had faded by just so much, and by just
so much no longer was considered by the public the
crucial test of a pianist’s musicianship. Incidentally it
is worth noting that the public usually is far ahead of
the profession and of the majority of critics in appreciating
new tendencies in music and in realizing what
is passing away; and the same thing probably prevails
in other arts.</p>
<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><SPAN name='page_96' name='page_96'></SPAN>96</span></div>
<h4>Orchestral Instead of Pianistic.</h4>
<p>I am aware that Beethoven was a pianist of the first
rank and that within the limitations of the sonata form
he developed the capacity of the pianoforte. I also
have read Richard Strauss’s opinion, in his edition of
Berlioz’s work on instrumentation, that Beethoven
treated the orchestra pianistically. Nevertheless, from
the modern viewpoint the essential fault of the sonata,
Beethoven’s sonatas included, seems to me to be that
it is too orchestral and not sufficiently <i>clavierm�ssig</i>
(pianistic) in character; not sufficiently adapted to the
genius of the pianoforte as we know it to-day. It is
possible that for the times in which they were composed,
the sonatas of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven
were most pianistic. But as music has become more
and more an intimate phase of life, and as our most
intimate instrument, the instrument of the household,
is the pianoforte, we understand its capacity for the
intimate expression of moods and fancies, the lights
and shadows of life, as it never was understood before.
The modern lover of music, if I may judge his standpoint
from my own, feels that while the sonatas of
the masters I have named were written for the pianoforte,
they were thought out for orchestra, and that
even a Beethoven sonata is an engraving for pianoforte
of a symphony for orchestra. He composed nine symphonies
and thirty-two sonatas. If he had written his
nine symphonies for pianoforte, we would have had
nine more sonatas. If he had composed his sonatas
for orchestra, we would have had thirty-two more symphonies.</p>
<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><SPAN name='page_97' name='page_97'></SPAN>97</span></div>
<p>This orchestral (as opposed to pianistic) character
of the Beethoven sonatas accounts for passages in
them so awkwardly written for the instrument that
they are difficult to master, and yet, when mastered, are
not effective in proportion to their difficulty. Between
enlarging the capacity of an instrument through the
problems you give the player to solve and writing passages
that are awkwardly conceived for it, and hence
ineffectual after they have been mastered, there is a
great difference. Chopin, Liszt and others pile Pelion
on Ossa in their technical requirements of the pianist;
but when he has surmounted them, he has climbed a
mountain, and from its peak may watch the world at
his feet. I think the orchestral character of much that
Beethoven wrote for the pianoforte partly accounts for
the fact that his sonatas no longer attract the great virtuosos
as they formerly did and that the public no
longer regards them as the final test of a pianist’s rank.</p>
<p>I speak so unreservedly because I have lived through
the change of taste myself. By way of personal explanation
I may be permitted to say, that while I am
not a professional musician, music was so much a
part of my life that I studied the pianoforte almost
as assiduously as if I had intended becoming a
public player, and that I was proficient enough to
meet once a week with the first violinist and the first
violoncellist of the New York Philharmonic Society
for the practice of chamber music. If there is any one
who should worship at the shrine of the sonata form,
and especially at that of the Beethoven sonatas, it should
be myself, for I was brought up on the form and those
sonatas were my daily bread. When I went to the
<span class='pagenum pncolor'><SPAN name='page_98' name='page_98'></SPAN>98</span>
Von B�low Beethoven recitals it was with book in hand,
to follow what he played note for note for purposes of
study and assimilation. Those were years when, in
the hours during which one seeks communion with
one’s other self, the Beethoven sonatas were the medium
of communication. But now—give me the men who
emancipated themselves from a form that fettered the
individuality of the pianoforte, Chopin, Liszt, Schumann,
and the pianoforte scores of the Wagner music-dramas,
which actually sound more pianistic than the
sonatas of the classical period and in which it is a
delight to plunge oneself and be borne along on a flood
of free, exultant melody.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, the sonata has had a great part to play
in the history and development of music and has played
it nobly, and we must no more forget this than we
should allow present-day hero worship to supplant the
memory of the heroes who went before. The sonata is
the firm and solid bridge over which music passed from
the contrapuntal period to the romantic, and doubtless
there still are some who prefer to linger on the bridge
rather than cross it to the promised land to which it
leads. Always there are conservatives who stand still
and look back; and that these still should let their eyes
rest longingly on the great master of the classical
epoch, Beethoven, is, to say the least, comprehensible.
One would have to be unresponsive indeed not to be
thrilled by the story of his life—his force of character,
his rugged personality, his determination in spite of
one of the greatest misfortunes that could befall a
musician, deafness; and the intellectual power which
he displayed in bending a seemingly rigid art form to
<span class='pagenum pncolor'><SPAN name='page_99' name='page_99'></SPAN>99</span>
his will and making it the receptacle of his inspiration.</p>
<p>Well may these considerations be borne in mind
whenever a Beethoven sonata is on a pianoforte recital
program. If it does not move us as profoundly
as music more modern does, that is not because its
composer was less deeply concerned with the problems
of life than those who have come after him. For his
time he was wonderfully “subjective,” drawing his
inspiration from the heart, yet always preserving a sane
mental poise. If to-day the sonatas of this great genius
and splendid man seem to us less dramatic and emotional
than they once did to audiences, it is because
of the progress of music toward greater plasticity of
expression and our conviction that such should be its
mission.</p>
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