<h2>IV</h2>
<h3>DAWN OF THE ROMANTIC PERIOD</h3></div>
<p>All art begins with a groping after form, then attains
form, and then emancipates itself from too
great insistence upon rigidity of form without,
however, reverting to its early formless condition. It
was absolutely necessary to the establishment of music
as an art that at some period or periods in its development
it should “pull itself together” and focus itself
in certain forms, and adhere to them somewhat rigidly
and somewhat tenaciously until they had been perfected.</p>
<p>Without saying so in as many words, I have sought,
in speaking of the sonata, to let the modern lover of
music know that if he does not like sonatas he need
not be ashamed of that fact. A few minutes ago and
before writing this sentence, I left my desk and going
to the pianoforte, played through Beethoven’s “Sonata
Path�tique.” It used to be a thrilling experience to play
it or to hear it played. To-day the Grave which introduces
the first movement still seemed portentous,
the individual themes throughout the work had lost
none of their beauty. And yet the effect produced in
earlier years by this sonata as a whole was lacking. I
shall not say that it sounded pedantic, for I dislike to
apply that word to anything that sprang from the heart
<span class='pagenum pncolor'><SPAN name='page_101' name='page_101'></SPAN>101</span>
and brain of a genius like Beethoven’s, but there was
a feeling of restraint about it—the restraint of set
form, the restraint of pathos patterned to measure,
which is incompatible with our modern notions of absolute
freedom of expression in music. Moreover, there
is ample evidence that Beethoven himself chafed under
the restraint of the sonata form and constantly strove
to make it more elastic and more yielding to his inspiration.</p>
<h4>What a Sonata Is.</h4>
<p>The sonata form (that is to say, the movement from
which the sonata derives its name) consists of three
main divisions and can easily be studied by securing the
B�low and Lebert edition of the Beethoven sonatas in
Schirmer’s library, in which the various divisions and
subdivisions are indicated as they occur in the music.
The first division (sometimes with a slow introduction
like the Grave of the “Sonata Path�tique”) may be
called the exposition. It consists of the main theme in
the key of the piece, a connecting episode, a second
theme in a related key and contrasting with the first,
and a concluding passage. As a rule the exposition is
repeated—an extremely artificial proceeding, since
there is no esthetic or psychological reason for it.</p>
<p>After the exposition comes the second division, the
development or “working out,” a treatment of both
themes with much figuration and imitation, generally
called the “free fantasia” and consisting “chiefly of a
free development of motives taken from the first part”
(Baker). This leads into the third division, which is
<span class='pagenum pncolor'><SPAN name='page_102' name='page_102'></SPAN>102</span>
a restatement of the first, excepting that the second
theme, instead of being in a related key, is, like the
main theme, in the tonic.</p>
<h4>How Beethoven Enlarged the Form.</h4>
<p>This is the form of the sonata movement which was
handed down to Beethoven by Haydn and Mozart. It
very soon became apparent that the greatest genius of
the classical period found it too limited for his inspiration.
In his third sonata (Opus 2, No. 3) he makes
several innovations that, for their day, are most daring.
Following the first episode after the main theme,
he introduces a second episode with which he leads
into the second theme. Then using a variant of the
first episode as a connection he leads over to a third,
a closing theme. In fact, the material of the second
episode is so thematic that I see no reason why he
should not be said to use four themes in the exposition
instead of the customary two. In the free fantasia
he insistently reiterates the main theme, practically ignoring
the others, thus familiarizing the listener with
it and making it as welcome as an old friend when the
third division ushers it in again.</p>
<p>Instead of closing the movement at the end of the
usual third division, as his predecessors, Haydn and
Mozart, did, Beethoven introduces what is one of the
most important innovations grafted by him upon the
sonata form—a coda with a cadenza. I can imagine
that this movement made his contemporaries look
dubious and shake their heads. It must have seemed
to them originality strained to the point of eccentricity
<span class='pagenum pncolor'><SPAN name='page_103' name='page_103'></SPAN>103</span>
and more bizarre than effective. As we look back upon
it, after this long lapse of time, it must be reckoned
a most brilliant achievement in the direction of freer
form, and from this point of view—please bear in mind
the reservation—its creator not only never surpassed
it, but frequently fell behind it.</p>
<p>One of the movements of this sonata is a scherzo.
Beethoven is the creator of this style of movement.
It is much less formal than the minuet which Haydn
introduced into the sonata. This especial scherzo has
a trio which in the broad sweep of its arpeggios is as
modern sounding as anything Beethoven wrote for
the pianoforte.</p>
<h4>His “Moonlight Sonata.”</h4>
<p>There are other sonatas by Beethoven that indicate
efforts on his part to be less trammeled by considerations
of form. Regard as an example the “Sonata Quasi
Una Fantasia,” Opus 27, No. 2, generally, and by
no means inaptly, called the “Moonlight Sonata.” This
begins with the broad and beautiful slow movement,
with its sustained melody, a poem of profound pathos
in musical accents. It is followed by an Allegretto, “<i>une
fleur entre deux ab�mes</i>” (a flower ’twixt two abysses)
Liszt called it; and then comes the concluding movement,
a Presto agitato, which is one of Beethoven’s
most impassioned creations. There are only three movements,
and the usual sequence is inverted, for the last
of the three is the Sonata movement. At the end of
the Adagio sostenuto and at the end of the Allegretto
as well, is the direction “<i>attacca subito il sequente</i>,” indicating
<span class='pagenum pncolor'><SPAN name='page_104' name='page_104'></SPAN>104</span>
that the following movement is to be attacked
at once and denoting an inner relationship, a psychological
connection between the three movements. Throughout
the work the themes are of extraordinary beauty
and expressiveness even for a Beethoven and the whole
is a genuine drama of human life and experience. This
impression is produced not only by the very evident
psychological connection between the movements, but
by the manner in which the composer holds on to his
themes, developing them through bar after bar as if
he himself appreciated their beauty and were reluctant
to let go of them and introduce new material. The entire
first movement, practically a song without words
of the most exquisite poignancy, is built on a single
motive with a brief episode which is more like an improvisation
than a set part of a movement; while the
last movement consists of four eloquent themes with
only the merest suggestion of connecting episodes.
The working out in the last movement is almost
wholly a persistent iteration of the second theme.
This persistent dwelling upon theme and the
psychological relation between the different movements
make this “Moonlight Sonata” to me the
most modern sounding of Beethoven’s pianoforte
works, although when mere structural greatness is considered,
most critics will incline to rank it lower than
the “Sonata Appassionata” and the four last sonatas,
Op. 106 and 109-11. Undoubtedly, however, it is the
most “temperamental” of his sonatas—and herein
again the most modern. My one quarrel with Von
B�low is that he made it so popular by his frequent
playing of it and his exceptionally poetic interpretation
<span class='pagenum pncolor'><SPAN name='page_105' name='page_105'></SPAN>105</span>
of it, that the great virtuosos shun it, very much
as they shun the sixth Chopin waltz (Mme. Dudevant’s
dog chasing its own tail), because it is played by every
pianoforte pupil of every girls’ boarding school everywhere.</p>
<h4>Striving for Freedom.</h4>
<p>In addition to what I have said of this sonata, it
was an immense gain for greater freedom of form, and
it is to be regretted that it is a more or less isolated
instance and that Beethoven did not adopt it as a standard
in shaping his remaining sonatas. Its most valuable
attribute from the modern point of view is a characteristic
to which I already have called attention several
times—the fact that its several movements stand
in psychological relation to one another; that there is
such real soul or temperamental connection between
them, that it would be doing actual violence to the work
as a whole if any one movement were to be played without
the others or if their sequence were to be inverted.</p>
<p>But, you may ask, is there not in all sonatas this
psychological inter-relationship of the several movements?
Have we not been told again and again that
there is?</p>
<p>Undoubtedly you, and others who have been misinformed
by enthusiasts who are unable to hear music
in anything that has been composed since Beethoven,
have been told so. But the sonata, with a few exceptions
like the “Moonlight,” simply is a group usually of
four movements, three long-ones with a shorter one
between, and, save for their being in related keys, there
is no temperamental relationship between the movements
<span class='pagenum pncolor'><SPAN name='page_106' name='page_106'></SPAN>106</span>
whatsoever, and to talk of there being such a
thing is nonsense. I believe the time will come when
virtuosos will not hesitate to lift single movements out
of the Beethoven sonatas and place them on their programs
and that there will be a sigh of relief from the
public because it can hear a movement that still sounds
fresh and modern without being obliged to listen to
two or three others that do not. Heresy? Maybe.
Galileo was accounted a heretic—yet the world moves
and the musical world with it.</p>
<h4>The Beethoven Periods.</h4>
<p>Beethoven was an intellectual as well as a musical
giant. He thought before he wrought. The division
of his activity into three periods, in each of which he
is supposed to have progressed further along the road
of originality and greatness, is generally accepted.
Nevertheless, it is an arbitrary one, especially as
regards the pianoforte sonatas, since it has been
seen that the first movement of one of his
earliest works, the third sonata (Opus 2, No.
3), is one of his most original contributions
to music, and one of the most strikingly developed
movements in sonata form that he has given us. The
period division which assigns this sonata as well as the
“Sonata Path�tique” to the first period is absurd. The
fact is, that the works of the so-called first and second
periods overlap; but there is a decided change in his
style when we come to his third period which, in the
pianoforte sonatas, begins with Opus 109. (The beginning
of this period usually is assigned to the sonata
<span class='pagenum pncolor'><SPAN name='page_107' name='page_107'></SPAN>107</span>
Opus 101, which seems to me too early.) Because here
a restless spirit seems to be brooding over his work, it
is thought by some that his mind and heart were
warped by his misfortunes—his deafness, the ingratitude
of a worthless nephew to whom he had been as
a father, and other family and material troubles. To
me, however, Beethoven seems in these sonatas to be
chafing more and more under the restraint of form and
to be struggling to free himself from it, bending all
his intellect to the task. Frankly, I do not think that
in these last sonatas he achieved his purpose. He
had outgrown the form he himself had perfected, and
the thoughts which toward the last he endeavored to
mould in it called for absolutely free and untrammeled
development. He had become too great for it and, as
a result, it cramped and hampered him in his latest
utterances. It is my firm belief that had Beethoven
come upon the scene fifty years later, he would not
have composed a single sonata, but have revived the
suite in modern style, as Schumann practically did in
his “Carnaval,” “Kreisleriana,” and “Faschingschwank
aus Wien,” or have created for the pianoforte something
corresponding to the freely developed tone poems
of Richard Strauss.</p>
<p>Because, however, Beethoven wrote thirty-two pianoforte
sonatas and because he was for many years the
all-dominating figure in the musical world, every great
composer who came after him and composed for the
pianoforte experimented with the sonata form, and
always, be it noted, with less success and less importance
to the real progress of music toward freedom
of expression than when he followed his own inner impulse
<span class='pagenum pncolor'><SPAN name='page_108' name='page_108'></SPAN>108</span>
and wrote the mood pieces, the “music of intention,”
the subjective expressions of indicated thoughts
and feelings, that were more consonant with the tendencies
of the romantic period which followed Beethoven
and for which he may be said to have paved
the way. For just as Bach brought the contrapuntal
form to such perfection that those who came after
him could not even begin where he left off, let alone
surpass him, so Beethoven brought the sonata form to
such perfection that no further advance in it was possible.
No wonder therefore that the pianoforte sonatas
of the romanticists are comparatively few in number
and the least satisfactory of their works. These composers
seem to have written sonatas simply to show
that they could write them and under a mistaken idea
that length is a measure of greatness and that shorter
pieces are minor achievements, whereas as much genius
can be displayed in a nocturne as in a sonata.</p>
<h4>Sonatas Now Old-fashioned.</h4>
<p>Lawrence Gilman, one of our younger American
critics, in his “Phases of Modern Music,” a collection
of essays, brief but containing a wealth of suggestion
and breathing throughout the spirit of modernity,
sums up the matter in speaking of Edward MacDowell’s
“Keltic Sonata”: “I cannot help wishing
that he might contrive some expedient for doing away,
so far as he himself is concerned, with the sonata form
which he occasionally uses, rather inconsistently, as a
vehicle for the expression of that vision and emotion
that are in him; for, generally speaking, and in spite of
<span class='pagenum pncolor'><SPAN name='page_109' name='page_109'></SPAN>109</span>
the triumphant success of the ‘Keltic,’ Mr. MacDowell
is less fortunate in his sonatas than in those freer and
more elastically wrought tone poems in which he voices
a mood or an experience with epigrammatic concision
and directness. The ‘Keltic’ succeeds in spite of its
form, ... though even here, and notwithstanding
the freedom of manipulation, one feels that he
would have worked to still finer ends in a more flexible
and fluent form. He is never so compelling, so persuasively
eloquent, as in those impressionistically conceived
pieces in which he moulds his inspiration upon
the events of an interior emotional program, rather
than upon a musical formula necessarily arbitrary and
anomalous.” This applies to pianoforte music in general
since Beethoven. Such I believe to be the consensus
of opinion among the younger generation of
critics, to whom, after all, the future belongs, as well
as the opinion of those older critics who refuse to allow
themselves to be pitchforked by their years into the
ranks of the old fogies and who still hold themselves
ever receptive to every new manifestation in music that
is based on a union of mind and heart.</p>
<p>Unless otherwise specifically mentioned I have, in
speaking of the sonata form, referred to it in connection
with the pianoforte. But it also is the form employed
for the symphony (which simply is a sonata
for orchestra); for pianoforte trios, quartets and quintets;
for string quartets and other branches of
chamber music (which are sonatas written for the combination
of instruments mentioned and such others
as are employed in chamber music), and for concertos
(which are sonatas for the combination of a
<span class='pagenum pncolor'><SPAN name='page_110' name='page_110'></SPAN>110</span>
solo instrument like the pianoforte, violin or violoncello,
with orchestra). In these branches the sonata
form has held its own more successfully than on the
pianoforte, and for several extraneous reasons. In the
symphony it is due largely to the greater variety that
can be achieved through orchestral coloring; in chamber
music largely to the somewhat super-refined and
timorous taste of its devotees which would regard any
startling innovation as highly indecorous; and in the
concerto to the fact that a soloist who appears at an
orchestral concert is supposed to play a concerto simply
because the orchestra is there to play it with him, although
he, as well as the audience, probably would find
a group of solos far more effective. In fact I think
that much of the applause which usually follows a great
pianist’s playing of a concerto is due not so much to
the audience’s enthusiasm over it as to the hope that
he may be induced to come out and play something
alone. So far as the symphony is concerned, it is liberating
itself more and more from the sonata form and
taking the direction indicated by Liszt in his symphonic
poems and by Richard Strauss in his tone poems,
the freest form of orchestral composition yet conceived.</p>
<h4>The First Romantic Composers.</h4>
<p>In music, as in other arts, periods overlap. We have
seen that during Bach’s life Scarlatti in Italy was laying
the foundations of the harmonic system and shaping
the outlines of the sonata form which was to develop
through Philipp Emanuel Bach, Haydn and Mozart
and find its greatest master in Beethoven. Likewise,
<span class='pagenum pncolor'><SPAN name='page_111' name='page_111'></SPAN>111</span>
even while Beethoven was creating those works which
are the glory of the classical period, two of his contemporaries,
Carl Maria von Weber, who died one year
before him, and Franz Schubert, who survived him
by only a year, were writing music which was destined
to turn the art into new channels. Weber (1786-1826)
is indeed regarded as the founder of the romantic
school through his opera “Der Freisch�tz.” It seems to
me, however, that Schubert (1797-1828) contributed
quite as much to the new movement through his songs,
while the contributions of both to the pianoforte are
important. Weber was a finished pianist, had an enormous
reach (he could stretch a twelfth), and besides
utilizing the facility thus afforded him to add to the
brilliancy of pianoforte technique (as in his well-known
“Concert Piece for Piano and Orchestra”), he deliberately,
in some of his compositions, ignored the sonata
form and wrote a “Momento Capriccioso,” a “Polonaise,”
a “Rondo Brilliant,” a “Polacca Brilliant” and
the fascinating “Invitation to the Dance.” The last,
even in its original form and without the elaborations
in Tausig’s version of it, and the “Concert Piece” still
are brilliant and effective numbers in the modern pianoforte
repertoire. Considering the age in which they
were composed, their freedom from pedantry is little
short of marvelous.</p>
<h4>Schubert’s Pianoforte Music.</h4>
<p>Schubert was not a virtuoso and passed his life almost
in obscurity, but we now recognize that, although
he lived but thirty-one years, few composers wrought
<span class='pagenum pncolor'><SPAN name='page_112' name='page_112'></SPAN>112</span>
more lastingly than he. Of course, the proper place for
an estimate of his genius is in the chapter on song, but
as a pianoforte composer he is, even to this day, making
his influence more and more felt. Living in Vienna,
Beethoven’s city, and a fervent admirer of that genius,
it was natural that he should have composed sonatas,
and there is a whole volume of them among his pianoforte
works. Nevertheless, so original was his genius
and so fertile, that, in addition to his numerous other
works, he composed eight impromptus, among them
the highly poetic one in G flat major (Opus 42, No. 2),
usually called “The Elegy”; another in B flat major
(Opus 142, No. 3), which is a theme with variations,
some of them brilliant, others profoundly expressive;
and the beautifully melodious one in A flat major; six
dainty “Moments Musicals”; the exquisite little waltz
melodies from which Liszt fashioned the “Soir�es de
Vienne”; the “Fantasia in G,” from which the popular
minuet is taken; and the broadly dramatic “Fantasia”
on a theme from his song, “The Wanderer,” for which
Liszt wrote an orchestral obbligato, thus converting it
into a highly effective and thoroughly modern fantasy
for pianoforte and orchestra. These detached compositions
are as eloquent in their appeal to-day as if they
had been written during the last ten years instead of
during the first quarter of the last century. They are
melodious with the sustained melody that delights the
modern ear. There is not, as in the sonata form or,
for that matter, in all the classical music that Schubert
heard around him, the brief giving out of a theme, then
an episode, then another brief theme and so on, all
couched in the formulas in which the classicists delighted,
<span class='pagenum pncolor'><SPAN name='page_113' name='page_113'></SPAN>113</span>
but instead of these postulates of formality,
melody fully developed and wrought out by one who
reveled in it and was willing that his hearers should
revel in it as well. To distinguish between the classicists
and this early romantic composer, whose work survives
in all its freshness and beauty to this day, it may be
said that their music was thematic—based on the kind
of themes that lent themselves to formal working out
as prescribed by the sonata formula; whereas these detached
pieces of Schubert are based on melodies—long-drawn-out
melodies, if you wish, and be grateful that
they are—that conjure up mood pictures and through
their exquisite harmonization exhale the very fragrance
of romanticism.</p>
<p>Naturally, the sonatas from his pen are more set.
Nevertheless, so long as it seems that we must have
sonatas on our recital programs, the neglect of those
by Schubert is shameful. I am willing to stake his
sonata No. 5, in A minor, against any sonata ever written,
and from several of the sonatas single movements
can be detached which I should think any pianist would
be glad to add to his repertoire. Among these is the
lithesome scherzo from the sonata No. 10, in B flat
major, and the beautiful slow movement (Andante sostenuto)
from the same work.</p>
<p>Schubert also wrote many valuable pianoforte duets,
among them several sets of marches and polonaises and
an elaborate and stirring “Divertissement � l’Hongroise,”
which last seems to foreshadow the
“Hungarian Rhapsodies” of Liszt. In these and
the detached pianoforte solo pieces a special value
lies in that they do not appear to have been
<span class='pagenum pncolor'><SPAN name='page_114' name='page_114'></SPAN>114</span>
composed as a protest against the sonata form, but
spontaneously and without a thought on Schubert’s
part that he was doing anything in any way
remarkable. They are expressions of musical feeling
in the manner that appealed to him as most natural.
The “Moments Musicals” especially are little mood
pieces and impressionistic sketches with here and there
a bit of realism. Who, for example, is apt to forget
Essipoff’s playing of the third “Moment” in Hungarian
style, with a long crescendo and diminuendo (the same
effect used by Rubinstein, when he played his arrangement
of the “Turkish March” from Beethoven’s “Ruins
of Athens”), so that it seemed as if a band of gypsies
approached from afar, danced by, and vanished in the
distance? Thoroughly modern is Schubert, a most
modern of the moderns, whether we listen to his original
pianoforte compositions, or to the Schubert-Liszt
waltzes, or “Hark, Hark, the Lark,” “To Be Sung on
the Water” (barcarolle) and other songs of his which
have been arranged for the pianoforte by Liszt.</p>
<h4>Mendelssohn’s “Songs Without Words.”</h4>
<p>Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, the musical idol of his
day and now correspondingly neglected, contributed to
the romantic movement his “Songs Without Words,”
short pieces for the pianoforte and aptly named because
their sustained melody clearly defined against a purposely
subordinated accompaniment gives them the
character of songs, in the popular meaning of the word.
Mendelssohn was a fluent, gentlemanly composer,
whose music was readily understood and therefore attained
<span class='pagenum pncolor'><SPAN name='page_115' name='page_115'></SPAN>115</span>
immediate popularity. But the very qualities
that made it popular—its smoothness and polish and
its rather commonplace harmlessness—have caused it
to lose caste. The “Songs Without Words,” however,
still occupy a place in the music master’s curriculum,
forming a graceful and easily crossed bridge from classical
to romantic music. I can remember still, when,
as a lad, I received from my music teacher my first
Mendelssohn “Song Without Words,” the G minor barcarolle,
how it seemed to open up a new world of music
to me. Many of these compositions, which are unique
in their way, still will be found to possess much merit.
That they are polished little pieces and poetic in feeling
almost goes without saying. The “Spring Song”
may be one of the most hackneyed of pianoforte pieces
and the same may be true of the “Spinning Song,” but
it is equally true that the former is as graceful and
charming as the latter is brilliant and showy. A tender
and expressive little lyric is the one in F major (No.
22), which Joseffy frequently used as an encore and
played with exquisite effect. A group of Mendelssohn’s
“Songs Without Words” is never out of place on
a pianist’s program. At least half a dozen of them, I
think, are apt to survive the vicissitudes of many years
to come. Mendelssohn wrote three sonatas, a “Sonata
Ecossaies” (Scotch), several capriccios and other pieces
for the pianoforte, besides two pianoforte concertos, of
which the one in G minor is the stock selection of conservatory
pupils at their graduation exercises and later
at their d�but. With it they shoot the musical
chutes.</p>
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