ALLA BREVE 
 
 FROM BACH TO 'DEBUSSY 
 
 By 
 
 Carl Engel 
 
 
GIFT OF 
 Sir Henry Heyman 
 
ALLA BREVE 
 
ALLA BREVE 
 
 FROM BACH TO DEBUSSY 
 
 By 
 
 Carl Engel 
 
 d> 
 
 G. SCHIRMER, Inc., N. Y. 
 

 Copyright, 1921, by G. Schirmer, Inc. 
 30365 
 
 
 *<■ I 
 
 Printed in the U. S. A. 
 
^ 
 
 To 
 CARLETON NOYES 
 
 552514 
 
My dear Noyes, 
 
 Afflicted as you are with the delightful vices 
 of a bouquineur, you cannot be a stranger to 
 the kind of irreproachable effusion for which the 
 writer feels the need of apologizing in a humble 
 preface — that no one wants to read. You also 
 know the book in which the only thing worth read- 
 ing is a charming or brilliant preface — written 
 by some one other than the author. I would have 
 asked you to insure at least the merit of this latter 
 class to these few pages, had you not carried hu- 
 man kindness far enough in giving them the 
 benefit of your sagacious criticism, in sharing 
 the treacherous task of reading them when in 
 proof, and lastly, by helping them to an honest 
 label plainly suggestive of their literal and literary 
 stint. It is a bootless undertaking to sum up 
 the work of a Bach or the life of a Wagner in a 
 half hundred sentences, fashioned after the pruned 
 and formal manner of the First Grade Reader. 
 
 You are familiar with the origin of these 
 
 "lifelets": how a sanguine publisher, looking 
 
 for biographical notes to be included in twelve 
 
 piano albums, entitled "Master Series for the 
 
 Young," turned to me with an encouraging "and- 
 
it-might-as-well-be-you." So it was, indeed. 
 But now, after adding eight more to the original 
 twelve, and uniting them within one cover, I 
 wonder if the finished -product is of a sort that 
 could appeal to the ''''Trapper an 1 Injun" stage of 
 Youth for zvhich the publisher solicitously had 
 intended it. Even though it be no book in usum 
 Delphinum of the nation, I hope you will feel 
 that the not-too-young and the not-too-old lovers 
 of music, who are sometimes "too busy to read," 
 may find in these sketches — seen through the 
 wrong end of the opera-glass— a diminutive but 
 fairly vivid outline of their particular love, or 
 loves, and gain, incidentally, a glimpse of the pro- 
 gress which music has made within the last three 
 centuries. 
 
 It is not an irksome sense of duty that prompts 
 me thus to place your name at the head of this 
 volume. I should deprive myself of a great 
 pleasure and satisfaction, were I to dismiss 
 these sheets without a greeting addressed to you, 
 in token of friendship and appreciation. 
 
 Yours cordially, 
 C. E. 
 
 Marblehead, Massachusetts 
 August, IQ2I 
 

 CONTENTS 
 
 
 
 
 
 Page 
 
 Introduction 
 
 
 xi 
 
 I 
 
 Bach 
 
 1685-1750 
 
 3 
 
 II 
 
 Handel 
 
 1685-1759 
 
 23 
 
 III 
 
 Gluck 
 
 1714-1787 
 
 35 
 
 IV 
 
 Haydn 
 
 1732-1809 
 
 55 
 
 V 
 
 Mozart 
 
 1756-1791 
 
 65 
 
 VI 
 
 Beethoven 
 
 1770-1827 
 
 77 
 
 VII 
 
 Weber 
 
 1786-1826 
 
 91 
 
 VIII 
 
 Schubert 
 
 1797-1828 
 
 103 
 
 IX 
 
 Berlioz 
 
 1803-1869 
 
 115 
 
 X 
 
 Mendelssohn 
 
 1809-1847 
 
 129 
 
 XI 
 
 Chopin 
 
 1810-1849 
 
 139 
 
 XII 
 
 Schumann 
 
 1810-1856 
 
 153 
 
 XIII 
 
 Liszt 
 
 1811-1886 
 
 165 
 
 XIV 
 
 Wagner 
 
 1813-1883 
 
 179 
 
 XV 
 
 Verdi 
 
 1813-1901 
 
 199 
 
 XVI 
 
 Franck 
 
 1822-1890 
 
 215 
 
 XVII 
 
 Brahms 
 
 1833-1897 
 
 229 
 
 XVIII 
 
 TSCHAIKOWSKY 
 
 1840-1893 
 
 243 
 
 XIX 
 
 Grieg 
 
 1843-1907 
 
 255 
 
 XX 
 
 Debussy 
 
 1862-1918 
 
 267 
 
 Conclusion 
 
 
 283 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 Many have been the attempts to give a 
 definition of music. That none of them has 
 exhausted all that enters into the substance 
 of an orchestral symphony and a camel 
 driver's chant, sufficiently proves the com- 
 plexity of the matter. To call music "the 
 sounding art of numbers," is perhaps to 
 point toward its severest beauty. It also 
 links the apparent whims of changing moods 
 and studied fashions to something elemen- 
 tary, eternal. There are mathematical prob- 
 lems which admit of solutions that possess 
 the elegance and conclusiveness of a waltz 
 by Chopin. There are musical compositions 
 which have about as much charm as an al- 
 gebraic progression ad infinitum. But herein 
 lies one of the difficulties which we encount- 
 er when dealing with music, that there are 
 people — and not a few of them — to whom an 
 algebraic progression gives a thrill. And 
 that is, after all, their privilege and very 
 
 [xi] 
 
xii Introduction 
 
 private concern. Others are thrilled only 
 when 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 them 
 considers to be "music." For while it can be 
 raised to the lofty level of an art, it suffers 
 the common lot of all things handled by man- 
 kind, that it may be degraded to standards 
 inconceivably low. The important and dis- 
 concerting fact is, that all along this gradual 
 descent the mission of music remains identi- 
 cal: it ministers to the same wants; it springs 
 from, and appeals to, the same instincts and 
 emotions; it always appeases the craving 
 for a satisfaction which is differentiated only 
 by degrees of refinement. This refinement, 
 of course, is based primarily on the general 
 culture of the individual, but more partic- 
 ularly on the capacity of hearing, or the 
 development of the human ear. 
 
 Musical history is, in reality, nothing 
 but an account of the evolution of hearing. 
 
Introduction xiii 
 
 Most of the musical controversies are quarrels 
 between "retarded hearing" and "advanced 
 hearing." They often interfere with the 
 settling — comparatively easy — of 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 is 
 patient, and almost invariably it is just. 
 
 Music, as we understand it, does not 
 exist in nature. The scales, which so far 
 have been the basis of every tonal system, 
 in the Orient and Occident, were artificial 
 products, 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 must 
 accustom itself to a sound in order to derive 
 an aesthetic pleasure from it, and that as 
 soon as this has taken place, the novelty and, 
 with it, the pleasure begin to wane. Other 
 sounds, of new potency, must have birth. 
 Helmholtz, at the end of his researches, had 
 to acknowledge: "The system of scales and 
 
xiv Introduction 
 
 modes, and all the network of harmony 
 founded thereon, do not seem to rest on any 
 immutable laws of nature. They are due to 
 aesthetic principles which are constantly sub- 
 ject to change, according to the progressive 
 development of knowledge and taste." This 
 is not quite true, however. 
 
 It is not so much a constant progress of 
 "taste," for that is a fitful factor in the 
 growth of nations or individuals. It is 
 rather a steady forward reach of hearing, 
 which, incidentally, brings with it a deeper 
 "knowledge." Taste is something that 
 Mozart possessed not less than Debussy. 
 Nor is it always the most "knowing" master 
 who is the most "tasteful." But between 
 Mozart and Debussy the human ear learned 
 to hear many new things. It gained a finer 
 perception of, and greater subconscious 
 familiarity with, the inherent qualities of 
 musical tone and its several overtones. This 
 development clearly necessitated the recur- 
 ring demand for fresher and keener tonal 
 
Introduction xv 
 
 stimuli, with which to give our senses — when 
 they become dulled to accustomed impres- 
 sions — the 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 time 
 the tremolo of the strings, employed by 
 Monteverdi, were not less markedly stirred 
 by their experience, than we are in listening to 
 some of the musical manifestations of our day. 
 As our knowledge increases, it seems to 
 reveal more and more that, if music does not 
 exist in nature and is not based on "immut- 
 able laws of nature," there is in tone itself 
 a peculiarly communicative force. And one 
 wonders, is not this because in tone there 
 are present, and ever united, the fundamental 
 principles of motion, matter and law? Thus 
 tone would be a symbol of some trinity, 
 dimly perceived, variously interpreted, but 
 always active in this world. For tone is 
 "matter moving according to certain rules." 
 We are following these rules to farther 
 
xvi Introduction 
 
 regions, just as our widening comprehension 
 of the natural laws is winning us a slightly 
 clearer vision of the universe. As there 
 are eyes which will not see the light, so 
 there are always ears which prejudice closes 
 to innovations. A great deal of "older" 
 music still exerts a certain charm by reason 
 of its quaintness and the inclination of some 
 people to regret the past. There are works 
 of the earlier masters that are still pleasant to 
 hear, and are kept young, not by historical 
 interest, but by their ever-green, surpassing 
 beauty. And yet what is the age of Bach's 
 B minor Mass compared with that of the 
 Parthenon, the age of Palestrina's Madrigals 
 compared with the statuettes of Tanagra? 
 Future generations will undoubtedly have 
 an easier task — thanks to mechanical sound 
 reproduction — in forming an accurate opinion 
 of our present music, than we are facing in 
 our effort to understand the music of the 
 ancients. If it was simple, it was so only in 
 contrast with our own, just as the "futur- 
 
Introduction xvii 
 
 ists" will be deemed harmless in a century 
 or two. However modest the instrumental 
 resources of Egypt or Greece may have been, 
 the human voice, probably, was much the 
 same at all times, or at least ever since man 
 walked on his hind legs alone. The vocal 
 organ, possessing infinite flexibility and the 
 power of minutest differentiation, did, for that 
 very reason, always offer the ear a depend- 
 able medium by which to register the most 
 sensitive shades of tonal variation. But such 
 registration became subject to control by 
 the intellect. When science discovered the 
 nature of tone and found the mathematical 
 core of music, it forgot the sweet fruit that 
 surrounds it. Science tried to prescribe for 
 the ear such intervals as were mathematically 
 the most correct and purest. The ear re- 
 volted, the ear seemed to know better, and 
 to prefer the juicy fruit to the kernel. These 
 quarrels between theorists and composers 
 go back to the first records of musical history. 
 We know what the disputed subjects were, 
 
xviii Introduction 
 
 but we have no conception in what, for ex- 
 ample, the music of Aristoxenos differed 
 from that of Pythagoras, or how much nearer 
 Didymus came to inventing anything like 
 a "tune" than did the learned Ptolemy. We 
 have no music that dates back to Homer's 
 "Iliad" or to the Pyramids. The Gregorian 
 chant of the Catholic Church and the oriental 
 melismas of the Synagogue, which are the 
 oldest "living" music, are truly impressive 
 only in their proper place. We can admire 
 a 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 their 
 evocative strength, amount to little until 
 they are strung together into sentences of 
 articulate speech. They, too, must form a 
 complete whole to convey a message. 
 
 Tones are the words of music. But this 
 youngest of arts is still fashioning its speech 
 and is constantly enlarging its vocabulary. 
 This extension is the mooted question which 
 
Introduction xix 
 
 presents itself in every chapter of musical 
 history, to be settled always by common con- 
 sent, much as "good usage" has sanctioned 
 the valid transformations of a language. 
 Only the progress of music, having begun 
 much later, seems to have been the more 
 rapid. 
 
 Broadly speaking, the advance of music is 
 determined by our changing conceptions of 
 concord and discord, which, in turn, depend 
 upon the ability of the ear to assimilate more 
 and more overtones as consonant parts of one 
 sound. Discord forms a legitimate means 
 to artistic ends, without which music would 
 become stale. But because every discord 
 has a tendency to become a concord, when 
 the ear has grown to know it too familiarly, 
 bolder and subtler sounds must be found 
 to enrich harmony and amplify melody with 
 new discords. 
 
 Dr. Charles Burney, shrewd and industri- 
 ous musicographer, was singularly far-sighted 
 when in the course of his travels through 
 
xx Introduction 
 
 Italy he wrote: "No one will, I believe, at 
 present [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 opposition 
 and comparison, but, still further, as it be- 
 comes a necessary stimulus to the attention, 
 which would languish over a succession of 
 pure concords. It occasions a momentary 
 distress to the ear, which remains unsatisfied, 
 and even uneasy, till it hears something 
 better; for no musical phrase can end upon 
 a discord [?!]; the ear must be satisfied at 
 last. Now, as discord is allowable, and even 
 necessarily opposed to concord, why may not 
 noise, or a seeming jargon, be opposed to 
 fixed sounds and harmonical proportion? 
 Some of the discords in modern [1770!!] mu- 
 sic, unknown till this century, are what the 
 ear can but just bear, but have a very good 
 effect as to contrast. The severe laws of 
 preparing and resolving discord, may be too 
 
Introduction xxi 
 
 much adhered to for great effects ; I am con- 
 vinced, that provided the ear be at length 
 made amends, there are few dissonances too 
 strong for it." 
 
 That is an astoundingly lucid and correct 
 statement, considering the time when it was 
 written. But what would the learned Doctor 
 have said to Schonberg, or even Ravel; what 
 to the bruiteurs, the "noise-makers" of Milan? 
 Sometimes it is hard to live up to our own 
 theories. Is noise ever going to be really an 
 integral part of a musical art-work? Where 
 does the future of music lie? In a new divi- 
 sion of the octave into smaller steps than 
 "half-tones"? Will the octave itself become 
 an unbearably trite and offensive interval? 
 It is the simplest, regarded as the ratio of 
 2 : 1 between two sounds; it is the most 
 sensitively dangerous, regarded from a 
 contrapuntal angle. Perhaps the next 
 "liberation" of sound will not come from a 
 composer's brain until the scientist, in his 
 laboratory, has removed a few more shackles 
 
xxii Introduction 
 
 from the enthralled goddess. A new instru- 
 ment, or a new group of instruments (some- 
 how connected with electricity), will require 
 of the composer to unlearn his trade, to fit 
 himself with a new technique and find a novel 
 set of "rules." Music will no longer borrow 
 from architecture, painting and poetry 
 characteristics which are in reality foreign 
 to the art of sounds. Tonal sprays may 
 pour from a hose; a sounding stream, issuing 
 from a tap in the wall, may surge against 
 our ears and drown our senses in a bath of 
 ecstasy. Rhythm will be not only physically 
 reactive, it will have assumed an emotional 
 import. Having become more independent 
 of painting and poetry, music in combination 
 with colors or words will be a thing of height- 
 ened eloquence and deeper meaning. 
 
I 
 BACH 
 
 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 
 
JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH 
 
 It is not enough to say that all ancient 
 music was more or less primitive, and there- 
 fore cannot be of interest to us. The musi- 
 cal speculations of the Greeks retained vital 
 concern as late as the fifteenth and sixteenth 
 centuries, when theorists tried to establish 
 a division of the octave into intervals that 
 corresponded to those of the Hellenic phi- 
 losophers. Rousseau may be right in saying: 
 "C'est perdre son temps, et abuser de celui 
 du lecteur, que le promener par toutes ces 
 divisions"; but it is well and important to 
 remember that, as Columbus set out to find 
 the Western passage to India and discovered 
 America instead, so did these medieval 
 scientists, seeking for the modes of antiquity, 
 really furnish the impetus that led to our 
 present "tempered" diatonic scale, and to 
 the genera of major and minor. 
 
 [3] 
 
4 Alia Breve 
 
 With the practical demonstration of 
 "tempered" intervals (that is, with the 
 division of the octave into twelve approxi- 
 mately even half-tones) the foundation was 
 laid for our modern "enharmonic" system, 
 in which flats and sharps sound identical and 
 are interchangeable. The era of true chro- 
 maticism was inaugurated and it became 
 possible to construct satisfactory keyboard 
 instruments, which were no longer bound 
 to the painfully uncompromising modes 
 of the Greeks and the later Church, but 
 afforded an easy and instantaneous transit 
 through the circle of the twelve tonalities, 
 major and minor, giving thereby into the 
 hands of the composer the master-key of 
 modulation, which opened successive doors 
 to Palestrina, to Monteverdi and to Bach. 
 
 There are many mansions in the house 
 of music, and not a few of them still waiting 
 to be unlocked. 
 
 With difficulty can we realize what 
 patient and circuitous effort had to precede 
 
Johann Sebastian Bach 
 
 the final adoption of the key of C major, of 
 which the great theorist Zarlino (1517-1590) 
 spoke as being used only by the vulgar mu- 
 sicians of the street who accompanied rustic 
 dances in it, and which he called il modo 
 lascivo, or the wanton key! The most wanton 
 thing about it, perhaps, was that persistently 
 sharpened "leading-note," the seventh degree 
 of the scale, which clashed so openly with 
 the fourth degree that when the two were 
 brought together in the notorious "tritone" 
 (augmented fourth or diminished fifth) they 
 had to resolve by mutual repulsion into a 
 dulcet sixth, or fall into the arms of an 
 harmonious third. It became more and 
 more evident that tone combinations have 
 "tendencies," and that latent in every chord 
 there is a desire to move, by contraction or 
 expansion, into tension or release; that every 
 chord is a link in a chain of similitudes and 
 contrasts. The "leading-note," la note sen- 
 sible, in company with the dominant and its 
 seventh, was first to make this unequivocally 
 
6 Alia Breve 
 
 clear. The sense of tonality, the sense of 
 "inevitableness" in tonal progressions, took 
 root in the ear; and the theorists came 
 promptly straggling after with their rules 
 and vetoes, rearing that formidable structure 
 known 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 their 
 greatness, had to pass on before the "new" 
 spirit; their churchly modes lost all identity 
 in the fusion of "temperament"; the sway of 
 their grand vocal music was usurped by a 
 little instrument, a box of wire strings, which, 
 in time, begot that tribe of clavichords, 
 clavicembalos, harpsichords, virginals, spin- 
 ets, clavecins, pianofortes, Hammerklaviere, 
 concert-grands, and — player-pianos! Saint- 
 Saens, adroit master and independent 
 thinker, aptly characterizes these con- 
 sequences when he writes: "Who, in our 
 epoch, has not undergone the powerful in- 
 
Johann Sebastian Bach 
 
 fluencc of the piano? That influence began 
 even before the piano itself, with the 'Well- 
 tempered Clavichord' of Bach. With the 
 day that the 'temperament' in tuning had 
 brought about synonimousness of flats and 
 sharps, and allowed the free use of all tonali- 
 ties, the spirit of the keyboard entered the 
 world; that spirit has become a devastating 
 tyrant of music by propagating the heretical 
 enharmonic system. Practically all modern 
 music has sprung from that heresy: it has 
 been too fecund to deplore it; but a heresy 
 it remains, nevertheless, destined to dis- 
 appear on a probably distant and fatal day, 
 as a result of the same evolution which gave 
 it birth." 
 
 It is certain that the influence of Bach, 
 and especially of his cyclopedic "Well- 
 tempered Clavichord," on the music of the 
 last two centuries, was predominant. Bach 
 is the turning-point, the hinge of old and 
 new. He is as much the culmination of 
 
8 Alia Breve 
 
 medieval groping as he is the foundation of 
 all modern unfolding in music. 
 
 Bach does not stand isolated, unconnected 
 with the past, much though his all-believers 
 like to think so, even as "true-believers" are 
 willing to credit the coffin of Mohammet, at 
 Medina, with floating unsupported 'twixt 
 heaven and earth. Bach had, of course, 
 forerunners from whom he learned and 
 borrowed; how else could he and Handel 
 have been contemporaries? They drank 
 from the same source, but the draught 
 aifected each differently. Nor need one 
 seek this source in so remote a region as the 
 sixteenth century, with its Arcadelt and 
 Morales, Orlando and Palestrina, masters 
 of polyphonic vocal composition, carrying 
 their art to extremes of sophistication, until 
 it became music for the eye rather than the 
 ear, music that was stilted and grown life- 
 less. 
 
 The seventeenth century, not marked by 
 any overtowering musical genius, is the true 
 
Johann Sebastian Bach 
 
 period of preparation, counting ten prophets 
 to every messiah of the following saeculum. 
 There may be room for comparison between 
 that era and our own post-Debussyan days. 
 The year 1600 is a convenient date on which 
 to fasten the name of Claudio Monteverdi, 
 whose innovations, whose "New Discords, in 
 Five Parts," cannot easily be overestimated. 
 We are again living in an age when the 
 need for "new discords" seems paramount. 
 Three hundred years hence, will a writer of 
 "Musical Snap-shots" be able to dispose of 
 Richard Wagner in one sentence ? If Monte- 
 verdi, furtherer of opera, must thus sum- 
 marily be dealt with, Carissimi, elaborator 
 of cantata and oratorio, deserves at least 
 a mention; great men, both of them, 
 self-made and "radical," first to prove 
 definitely the expressive possibilities of the 
 recitativo. Music was beginning to assume 
 dramatic values. Among Carissimi's pupils 
 the most important was Alessandro Scar- 
 latti, fluent writer, himself an excellent 
 
10 Alia Breve 
 
 teacher, father of Domenico Scarlatti, to 
 whom belongs the distinction of having 
 evolved the harpsichord style which became 
 a model for all future piano music. 
 
 The type of "musica da camera" inti- 
 mate, learned and polished, was eminently 
 fitted as a field for experimentation. The 
 ricercari and fantasie were expanded and 
 given greater formal unity; they became 
 sonatas and concertos. Diversity was 
 gained, in instrumental music, by appropri- 
 ating and ennobling popular dance move- 
 ments. As to Arcangelo Corelli, one is 
 tempted to see in him even more than a 
 precursor. Orchestra technique owed much 
 to him. If, as we are told, he insisted on 
 uniformity in bowing with his players of 
 stringed instruments, it was probably because 
 he was the first to see the need of an even 
 and pliable orchestral body, preparing by 
 his training the later exploits of the famous 
 Mannheim Orchestra under Stamitz. 
 
Johann Sebastian Bach 11 
 
 However briefly these voices crying in 
 the wilderness may be evoked, that of the 
 Englishman, Henry Purcell, must not be 
 forgotten. "If ever it could with truth be 
 said of a composer that he had devance son 
 Steele, 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 Philippe 
 Rameau, animated with the spirit of research, 
 savant as much as fashioner of beautiful and 
 living sounds — before Rameau, France could 
 boast only of Jean Baptiste Lully, Italian 
 by birth and character, "creator of a style 
 of music which, since his time, instead of 
 advancing towards perfection, as is imagined, 
 has perhaps lost more than it has gained." 
 Lully's talent for intrigue was not matched 
 by sufficient musical originality to accom- 
 plish what he set out to do. Across the 
 Rhine, the road was opened by Schiitz, 
 brought up under Italian teachers though 
 
12 Alia Breve 
 
 he was, a Teuton to the core, and worthy to 
 take first rank as pioneer in German music. 
 Keiser, Pachelbel, Buxtehude and the erudite 
 Kuhnau, carried on his work, the first in 
 opera, the others in organ composition and 
 chamber 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 sons 
 were several noted musicians, who, in their 
 lifetime, attracted even greater attention 
 than did their illustrious parent. But they 
 have gone the way of all flesh; their com- 
 positions, with few exceptions, have been 
 forgotten, while the name and works of the 
 great Johann Sebastian are still alive to-day 
 and bid fair to outlive the music of to- 
 morrow. 
 
 With Spring's beginning, on March 21, 
 1685, Bach came into the world and brought 
 to it a newer, richer spring of music than it 
 had ever known. He was born in the lovely 
 
Johann Sebastian Bach 13 
 
 old town of Eisenach, nestled among the 
 pine- and oak-covered mountains of Thu- 
 ringia, with the famous Wartburg towering 
 above the valleys, that ancient castle where 
 Martin Luther translated the Bible into 
 the language of the people. Bach, a mu- 
 sical reformer, was brought up and steeped 
 in the very air of Protestant simplicity and 
 uprightness. What Luther did for the 
 Bible, Bach did for music, in making it speak 
 a language that goes straight to the heart of 
 all people. Many of his loftiest pages were 
 written for the service of the church. 
 
 Bach received his first music lessons 
 from his father, who was town-musician at 
 Eisenach. Orphaned, when he was ten 
 years old, he came to live and pursue his 
 studies with an older brother. But he was 
 not happy there, and soon went to Liine- 
 burg, a small town in Germany's vast region 
 of purple heather, darkgreen moors and 
 orange sunsets. Here he was accepted as 
 chorister at St. Michael's, was taught the 
 
14 Alia Breve 
 
 violin, organ and clavichord, and was fa- 
 miliarized with the rules and rudiments of 
 composition. He made frequent pilgrim- 
 ages to other towns, tramping the high-roads 
 alone or in the company of fellow-students, 
 to hear other musicians perform. Thus he 
 walked all the way to Lubeck to meet old 
 Buxtehude. The example of renowned 
 masters stimulated him to gain ever greater 
 perfection in his profession. When he fin- 
 ished his studies, he went, as was the custom 
 of the day, into the employ of princes or 
 wealthy parishes, as court musician or church 
 organist. 
 
 After a short stay in Weimar, as violinist 
 of the ducal orchestra, he obtained a position 
 as organist of the New Church at Arnstadt, 
 in Thuringia. It was here that, in 1706, the 
 Consistory formally charged him with hav- 
 ing been in the habit of making surprising 
 variationes in the chorales, and intermixing 
 divers strange sounds, so that thereby the 
 congregation were confounded." 
 
Johann Sebastian Bach 15 
 
 Having been called to the more lucrative 
 post of organist at Miihlhausen, in June 
 1707, he married in the following October 
 his cousin Maria Barbara Bach, who died 
 in 1720. He took for his second wife Anna 
 Magdalena Wiilken, a gifted musician. 
 
 The scenes of his activities shifted rather 
 frequently, until the year 1723, which marks 
 the date of Bach's most important appoint- 
 ment, as "Cantor" (choir director) at the 
 Thomas School in Leipzig, and as organist 
 at the church of the same name, succeeding 
 the admired and many-sided Johann Kuh- 
 nau. He remained a resident of this city 
 to the end of his life, and it was here that his 
 genius reached its fullest stature. His fame 
 spread throughout the land, although no 
 amount of honors could change his simple, 
 homely ways. In 1736 he was named court 
 composer to the Elector of Saxony, then also 
 King of Poland. In 1747 he accepted an 
 invitation of Frederick the Great, King of 
 Prussia, to visit Berlin, where his second son, 
 
16 Alia Breve 
 
 Karl Philipp Emanuel Bach, had estab- 
 lished himself and had gained an enviable 
 reputation. 
 
 Bach had been nearsighted from child- 
 hood, a failing that had become aggravated 
 by his long and industrious copying of older 
 masterworks and of his own compositions, 
 which was necessary in the days when the 
 printing of music was a rare and expensive 
 luxury. At last, in 1749, an unsuccessful 
 operation on his eyes was followed by total 
 blindness. His general health declined. 
 He regained his sight unexpectedly on July 
 10, 1750, but was stricken with apoplexy 
 ten days later, and died on July 28. 
 
 He had been working to the very end, 
 and his prolificness is as remarkable as his 
 originality. About one-third of the music 
 composed by him is said to have been lost. 
 Even so, the quantity of his preserved mu- 
 sic is enormous. It may be divided into 
 four groups: (1) the study material that he 
 wrote for the members of his family and his 
 
Johan n Sebastian Bach 17 
 
 many pupils; this material includes the 
 "Well-tempered Clavichord"; (2) the Pre- 
 ludes, Fugues, Toccatas, etc., for organ 
 which remain the daily mental food of 
 every good organist; (3) the Overtures, 
 Suites, etc., for Orchestra, the Chamber- 
 music and the Concertos and Concert-pieces 
 composed for artist friends and princely 
 patrons, and still the delight of concert- 
 goers; and (4) the works written for, or in- 
 spired by, the church. These last are Bach's 
 finest achievements. Built on the founda- 
 tion of supreme craftsmanship, they are 
 reared with the devotional fervor derived 
 from unbounded religious faith. Bach's set- 
 tings of the Lord's Passion according to St. 
 Matthew and St. John, and his B minor 
 Mass, belong to the greatest music of all 
 times. 
 
 It is for the great things we do, that we 
 are remembered, but for the little things, that 
 we are loved. Bach's work is full of "little 
 things," gem-like, perfect in cut and fire. We 
 
18 Alia Breve 
 
 are so apt to see in him only the abstract 
 of all musical science, weigh his powers as a 
 contrapuntist, admire his architectural mas- 
 tery on a gigantic scale. The father of 
 twenty children was a family-man, going 
 about his business undisturbed by whining 
 babies, writing little tunes for his wife, Anna 
 Magdalena, and for his boys when they grew 
 up. The austere and patriarchal head of the 
 house was also of a sensuous and loving 
 nature, simple and passionate. It is not 
 only the supreme agony of Christ that moves 
 his big heart to sublime utterance; many a 
 strain tucked away in this or that cantata, 
 suite or concerto, betrays the vibrant soul 
 that depends as much on the joys of this 
 world as it hopes in those of the next. 
 Circumspect and versatile, Bach was ob- 
 servant of all that went on, musically, around 
 him. His industry, his fixedness of pur- 
 pose, have not been surpassed. The "mo- 
 dernity" of harmonic progression he often 
 indulged in, remains almost as baffling to us 
 
Johann Sebastian Bach 19 
 
 as it was to the Consistory of Arnstadt. 
 Under his fingers, graceful old dance-tunes 
 sparkled with incisive rhythm. He could be 
 humorous, ultimate test of higher wisdom. 
 The glory of God, the inexorable majesty 
 of Death, have never been made more 
 plausible to the mind of man, than in some 
 eight or sixteen measures of a Bach chorale. 
 When concerned with the great issues of 
 human destiny, his music breathes immortal 
 life and lifts us from out the narrowing 
 conceptions of space and time. 
 
II 
 HANDEL 
 
 His works form, as it were, a monument, solitary 
 and colossal, raised at the end of some blind 
 avenue from which the true path of advance has 
 branched, and which, stately and splendid though 
 it be, is not the vestibule through which art has 
 passed to the discovery and exploration of new 
 forms of beauty. 
 
 — Edinburgh Review: January, 1887 
 
II 
 
 GEORGE FREDERIC HANDEL 
 
 There exists a well-known painting which 
 pictures the boy Handel, in his night-shirt, 
 seated before the old harpsichord in the 
 dead of night, and surprised by the astonished 
 family, which is headed by the father, lantern 
 in hand, all pressing into the room and be- 
 wildered at seeing the youngster's calm dis- 
 regard for paternal injunctions. History 
 does not tell whether the immediate con- 
 sequences of the discovery were sensibly 
 painful for little George; but if they were, 
 they did not deter him from pursuing, all 
 his life, a vocation to which his singular 
 genius called him in spite of his father's wish 
 that he should be a lawyer. And the little 
 player in a nightie grew up to be a great 
 master in a fine periwig, clothed in silk and 
 velvet, decked with jewels, the friend of 
 
 [23] 
 
24 Alia Breve 
 
 kings and dukes, basking in the glorious rays 
 of popular and universal veneration. 
 
 Handel was born at Halle, in Saxony, 
 on February 23 of the year 1685, or a little 
 less than a month before the birth-date of 
 J. S. Bach, whom he survived by nine years, 
 dying at London on April 14, 1759. But 
 the lives of these two great contemporaries 
 have little in common, save that both lost 
 their eyesight with advancing age. Bach 
 married twice, Handel not at all. Bach 
 never left the shadow of the church; Handel 
 was always drawn to the footlights of the 
 stage. Bach is the luminous daybreak, 
 Handel the towering sunset cloud. Simul- 
 taneous, they are well nigh antipodal. 
 
 Providence played an important role in 
 the life of Handel. A chance visit with 
 his father, a bleeder and surgeon, to the 
 court of a German princeling who expressed 
 his delight when he happened to hear the 
 boy play, was the cause of his receiving music 
 lessons. He made such rapid strides that, 
 
George Frederic Handel 25 
 
 ten years old, he was a performer of no mean 
 ability and had written several pieces. The 
 father, now proud of his prodigy, took him in 
 1696 to Berlin, where young Handel earned 
 the admiration of all the musicians, and where 
 for the first time he heard an opera, a style of 
 musical composition to which he was to 
 devote a great deal of his time, and a form of 
 entertainment hi the providing of which he 
 was to make, and subsequently lose, much 
 money. After the father's death, in 1697, 
 Handel, prompted by filial devotion, finished 
 his school education, and in 1702, as law stu- 
 dent, he entered the newly inaugurated Uni- 
 versity of Halle; he also filled a position of 
 church-organist, as a means of livelihood. 
 This entailed the writing of much music for 
 the services, and it is estimated that "in 
 twelve or fourteen months Handel composed 
 several hundred cantatas!" Little remains 
 of these cantatas, at least in their original 
 form, although it may be safe to assume that 
 the rather economic composer utilized a 
 
26 Alia Breve 
 
 great deal of these earlier inspirations in 
 works of his later period, a method he ad- 
 hered to all his life, and not uncommon 
 with other composers of his time. 
 
 But the lure of the stage was too strong. 
 In 1703 he went to Hamburg, where resided 
 the best German opera troupe of the day, 
 directed by the eminent and prolific Rein- 
 hard Keiser. Handel entered the theatre 
 orchestra as a violinist, later advancing to 
 the post of clavecinist, and finally graduating 
 conductor. All the while he busied himself 
 with the writing of operas, some of which were 
 successfully produced. His temperamental 
 ways once led him to quarrel at the theatre 
 with his associate Mattheson, a talented 
 composer and able historian, and after the 
 then current fashion they proceeded to settle 
 their differences with the aid of swords. If 
 Providence had not placed a large brass 
 button between the point of Mattheson's 
 weapon and Handel's heart, the story of 
 
George Frederic Ha ndel 27 
 
 his life would have ended here. The an- 
 tagonists are said to have made up forthwith. 
 Opera writing was Handel's avowed 
 ambition, and it could be developed only in 
 the land where opera had been invented a 
 mere hundred years earlier and was then 
 especially flourishing; that land was Italy. 
 Handel crossed the Alps in 1706, and spent 
 three fruitful years in studying the works 
 of Italian masters, among whom he made 
 many friends, and writing, in turn, many 
 master works of his own which won him the 
 enthusiastic plaudits of music-loving Flor- 
 ence, Venice, Naples and Rome. On his re- 
 return to Germany, he accepted a position as 
 court musician to the Elector of Hanover. 
 The desire to see new countries seized him 
 soon, however, and in 1710 he went to Eng- 
 land on a "leave of absence." London was 
 to be his real home. There his operas be- 
 came the rage. Fame and money effaced all 
 memories of, and sense of obligation to, 
 his Hanoverian employer. The English 
 
28 Alia Breve 
 
 court attracted him more; and, not paus- 
 ing to weigh political considerations, he 
 wrote a "Te Deum" in praise of the peace of 
 Utrecht, signed in 1713, whereby England 
 was distinctly favored at the expense of the 
 Continent, including the sulking Elector of 
 Hanover. Providence seemed sadly remiss 
 when in 1714, according to dynastic settle- 
 ment, this very Prince, as George I, ascended 
 the throne of Great Britain. Handel was in 
 an awkward situation. But Providence 
 came to the rescue with a royal pleasure trip 
 on the river Thames, for which Handel wrote 
 some "water music" that greatly delighted 
 the 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 the 
 Duke of Chandos; he gave the daughters of 
 the Prince of Wales lessons on the harpsi- 
 chord, writing for the young ladies, among 
 other studies, "The Harmonious Black- 
 smith." But his life was devoted to the 
 opera and to the theatre, composing many 
 
George Frederic Handel 29 
 
 of his scores in postcoaches on his mad 
 journeys across the Continent, in search for 
 singers, ever greater and more renowned, 
 with whom to attract a fickle crowd. The 
 story of these thousand and one evenings 
 of opera is almost as dramatic and fantastic 
 as are the tales of the Arabian Nights. 
 Princes of the blood royal and princesses of 
 florid song pass before us in a iong and bril- 
 liant chain, good genii who bring treasures to 
 the box office, demons sowing the seeds of 
 jealousy; magic airs which charm a populace, 
 tragic complications spelling ruin. A Dan- 
 ish traveller reports that in 1728, at the 
 debut of a new soprano, the audience threw 
 more than 1000 guineas on the stage, in 
 token — crude but positive — of its approval. 
 Competition added to the zest of the game. 
 If the composers Bononcini and Porpora were 
 not trying to steal the thunderbolt from 
 Handel, it was La Cuzzoni bent on wresting 
 from La Faustina the fulgurating flash of 
 coloratura. Intrigues, mismanagement, the 
 
30 Alia Breve 
 
 race with rival companies, led finally to 
 Handel's failure. Discouraged and broken 
 in health, he turned to another form of com- 
 position, the oratorio, in which he was to 
 immortalize himself. 
 
 Cured from a passing illness caused by 
 worries and nervous exertions, he showed in 
 his oratorios "Saul" and "Israel in Egypt" 
 (both written in 1738) that the old vigor re- 
 mained, if it was not even redoubled. The 
 organ concertos and concerti grossi for strings 
 and clavecin date from the same period of 
 remarkable creativeness. In November, 
 1741, he went to Dublin upon the invitation 
 of the Duke of Devonshire, lord-lieutenant 
 of Ireland, carrying in his trunk the manu- 
 script of "The Messiah," written in the 
 space of three weeks (from August 22nd to 
 September 14th). Destined to become an 
 institution of Musical Christendom, it was 
 first publicly performed at Dublin on April 
 13th, 1742. 
 
George Frederic Handel 31 
 
 According to Burney, "Handel at this 
 time 'did bestride our musical world like a 
 Colossus.' He had done with operas, and 
 after his return from Ireland, applied himself 
 wholly to the composition of sacred music. 
 In 1745, I performed in his band, sometimes 
 on the violin, and sometimes on the tenor, 
 and by attending the rehearsals, generally 
 at his own house in Lower Brook Street, 
 and sometimes at Carlton House, at the 
 desire of his constant patron the late Prince 
 of Wales, I gratified my eager curiosity in 
 seeing and examining the person and manners 
 of so extraordinary a man, as well as in 
 hearing him perform on the organ. He was 
 a blunt and peremptory disciplinarian on 
 these occasions, but had a humour and wit 
 in delivering his instructions, and even in 
 chiding and finding fault, that was peculiar 
 to himself, and extremely diverting to all 
 but those on whom his lash was laid." 
 
 Handel's oratorios are not written in 
 the style of Bach. They are not inter- 
 
32 Alia Breve 
 
 spersed with chorales in the singing of which 
 a pious congregation joins. His theatrical 
 mannerisms he retained. While his subjects 
 are sometimes biblical, they are more often 
 mythological or allegoric. His melodies 
 have 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 oratorios 
 and his numerous operas (to German, Italian 
 and English texts), Handel wrote other 
 works for the church, concertos for organ, 
 pieces for the harpsichord and much beauti- 
 ful chamber music. Through it all, you 
 hear the accomplished artist and idolized 
 man of the world who writes to obtain a cer- 
 tain effect, and achieves his ends with the 
 help of unflagging energy and inexhaustible 
 resourcefulness. — His ashes rest in West- 
 minster Abbey with those of his foster-land's 
 greatest sons. 
 
Ill 
 GLUCK 
 
 . . . 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 est 
 eloignee? Eh, bien, il n'en sera rien . . . j'aime, 
 je cheris le talent de M. Gretry, et j'estime et 
 admire celui de M. Gluck. 
 
 — Mile, de Lespinasse 
 
Ill 
 
 CHRISTOPH WILLIBALD GLUCK 
 
 Gluck was, first and last, a composer of 
 operas. 
 
 The opera is a mongrel thing, and, for 
 that reason perhaps, is afflicted with native 
 weaknesses which — ever since its conception 
 in the last years of the sixteenth century — 
 have caused its growth to be marked by so 
 many crises. This offspring from the union 
 of Poetry and Music, has also inherited im- 
 portant traits from other and more distant 
 relatives, such as Painting, Sculpture, Archi- 
 tecture, the Drama and the Pantomime. It 
 has always had to suffer from the jealous 
 interference of these different strains. No 
 sooner had the first, vague specimen of opera 
 been derived from the ballet and "pastorale" 
 by that circle of Florentine amateurs which 
 included the poet Rinuccini and the mu- 
 sicians Peri and Caccini, than Claudio 
 
 [35 1 
 
36 Alia Breve 
 
 Monteverdi, a man of genius, improved upon 
 the then prevailing methods of the chanted 
 play, and incidentally broke new roads into 
 theretofore unexplored realms of harmony. 
 Gluck, in his endeavor to fight the surfeit 
 of florid and meaningless melody indulged 
 in by the Italian school of 1750, not only 
 reorganized the opera, but paved a way for 
 Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, as well as for 
 Mozart's "Don Giovanni." Wagner — in op- 
 posing the froth and sparkle of Rossini, the 
 turgid pomp of Meyerbeer — followed his 
 own doctrine of the "music-drama" (akin, 
 in type, to that of Gluck) and wrought the 
 marvels of sound which have not ceased to 
 color the musical thought of his successors. 
 Then followed Debussy with "Pelleas et 
 Melisande," writing music in which the 
 spoken phrase again became decisive for the 
 melodic curve of the voice-parts (much in 
 accordance with Monteverdi's practice). 
 Lastly, Igor Stravinsky's "Petroushka," 
 abolishing the word completely, reverts to 
 
Christoph Willibald Gluck 37 
 
 pantomime and dance alone. The circle 
 seems closed, so far as concerns operatic 
 possibilities. But music has made greater 
 strides in those three centuries, through its 
 connection with the stage, than in the pre- 
 vious three thousand years. 
 
 The opera stage — that place where all the 
 Seven Arts so strangely mingle — has been the 
 favorite battleground on which these rival 
 relatives have settled their pretensions to 
 supremacy. It is significant that in these 
 combats music should oftenest have cham- 
 pioned the cause of either poetry, the drama, 
 or of painting, rather than her own, and yet 
 have reaped the spoils of victory herself in 
 what is not merely peculiar to dramatic ends, 
 but most essentially musical. Every time 
 that operatic reform was sought,- it was mu- 
 sical reform that was achieved. And reform, 
 in art, is not infrequently a remembering of 
 some vital principle, which in the course of 
 time has been lost to view, while less import- 
 ant factors have developed to such a degree 
 
38 Alia Breve 
 
 that real advance is possible only by the 
 return to an earlier point of departure, which 
 is generally identical with simplification of 
 artistic means. 
 
 Thus Dr. Burney, after meeting the com- 
 poser at Vienna in 1772, was justified in 
 writing: "The Chevalier Gluck is simplify- 
 ing music." That puts the facts into the 
 fewest possible words. But the story of how 
 Gluck was led to realize the need for simpli- 
 fication and succeeded in accomplishing it, 
 is not so easily told, particularly as much of 
 his early life and development is shrouded in 
 comparative darkness. 
 
 The parish register of Weidenwang, a 
 village of the Bavarian Palatinate, shows 
 that "Christophorus Wilibaldus" was bap- 
 tized there on July 4, 1714, but it is now 
 generally accepted that he was born at the 
 nearby Erasbach (not far from the Bohe- 
 mian border) on the second day of the 
 month. The station of Gluck's parents was 
 of the most humble. His father was a for- 
 
Christoph Willibald Gluck 39 
 
 ester in the services of various Austrian 
 and Bohemian noblemen. The family was 
 undoubtedly of Czech origin. It seems that 
 in 1717 the Glucks were transferred to the 
 Bohemian estates of Prince Lobkowitz, near 
 the town of Komotau. Christoph inherited 
 the love of music characteristic of the Bo- 
 hemian race, and grew up in a country where 
 the rich Catholic convents and landed gentry 
 cultivated all arts, especially music. Such 
 surroundings could not fail to kindle his 
 talents. He received a good school education, 
 and in 1732 was sent to the University of 
 Prague to finish his humanistic studies. In 
 order to replenish his meagre purse, he gave 
 music lessons, sang in church and played for 
 dances, receiving his pay sometimes in 
 victuals. 
 
 At Prague, the Minorite father Bohuslav 
 Czernohorsky (who had been choirmaster at 
 Saint Anne's of Padua and organist at Assisi) 
 gave Gluck the first systematic instruction 
 in composition. Through the munificence 
 
40 Alia Breve 
 
 of Prince Lobkowitz, Gluck was enabled in 
 1736 to go to Vienna, where he continued 
 his studies and often played at musical en- 
 tertainments in the house of his benefactor. 
 There he attracted the attention of the 
 Italian Count Melzi, who engaged him as 
 "private musician," and in 1737 took him to 
 Milan where he placed young Gluck under 
 the direction of J. B. Sammartini. Gluck re- 
 mained for four years the pupil of this able 
 musician. In 1741, when his apprenticeship 
 was nearing its end, he wrote his first opera, 
 "Artaserse," to words by Metastasio ; it 
 was produced at La Scala, and proved a great 
 success. Gluck, at that time, was imbued 
 with all the principles of Italian opera, and 
 the number of his works written in the 
 Italian manner, which he was later to re- 
 pudiate so fervently, is great, for they cover 
 more than thirty years of his life. His fame 
 as an opera composer began to spread beyond 
 the boundaries of Italy. 
 
Christ oph Willibald Gluck 41 
 
 In 1745, upon the invitation of Lord 
 Middlesex, manager of the Haymarket Thea- 
 tre, Gluck went to England. But the times 
 were not favorable to opera. Handel, as 
 a producer, had just gone through another 
 failure. In London the Rebellion was rag- 
 ing; all foreigners were suspected. Finally, 
 on January 7, 1746, the season opened with 
 Gluck's "La Caduta de' Giganti," which 
 had only five performances. Handel had a 
 very poor opinion of the young composer's 
 talents. Gluck also met Dr. Arne in Lon- 
 don. What influence the latter's simple 
 English ballads may have had on Gluck, is 
 difficult to determine. It is certain that to 
 these London days and to Gluck's bitter 
 experience with the unsuccessful adaptation 
 of new words to some of his older tunes, dates 
 his striving for "simplification" and his 
 realization that text and music should closely 
 fit each other: the word-sense admits of 
 only one musical interpretation, which must 
 be emotionally telling, metrically correct, 
 
42 Alia Breve 
 
 and supported by combinations of instru- 
 ments which lend proper coloring to the 
 dramatic situation. 
 
 Alert and ambitious in his youth, vain 
 and grasping in old age, always bent upon 
 the pleasures and riches of this world, Gluck 
 had that shrewdly calculating mind which, 
 paired with abundant inborn talent, pro- 
 duces the most spectacular careers of genius. 
 After returning to Germany in 1746, Gluck 
 spent some time in Dresden, and later went 
 back to Vienna. The opera composer of 
 those days led a vagrant life, as commissions 
 for new works were apt to come from all 
 points of the compass, and generally meant 
 that the composer had to prepare and con- 
 duct the performances of his work. In the 
 autumn of 1748 Gluck was filling such an 
 engagement at Hamburg. Thence he went 
 to Copenhagen, upon an invitation from the 
 royal Danish court to write a festival cantata. 
 His stay at Copenhagen is noteworthy only 
 in so far as it brought him into contact with 
 
Christopk JVillibald Gluck 43 
 
 Johann Adolf Scheibe, a mediocre composer, 
 but a keen critic and astute theorist. Gluck 
 possessed, in the same measure as Wagner, 
 the aptitude for absorbing, and improving 
 upon, the ideas of others. Thus he not only 
 fell heir to the melodies of his homeland, 
 traceable in more than one of his later works, 
 but successively he profited by the lessons 
 of the contrapuntist Czernohorsky, the har- 
 monist Sammartini, the balladist Arne, and 
 finally of the sesthetician Scheibe. The last- 
 named, who extolled the merits of Lully and 
 Rameau, and condemned all that was Italian, 
 had probably the greatest influence upon 
 the course which Gluck's development now 
 took. It was Scheibe who pronounced the 
 necessity for the overture of an opera to 
 "prepare" the listener for the drama, and 
 to "reflect," as it were, the whole of the 
 action. The second and revised edition of 
 his "Critical Musician" appeared in the 
 year in which Gluck visited Copenhagen. 
 The book contains in sum and substance 
 
44 Alia Breve 
 
 all of Gluck's later principles of "operatic 
 reform." Gluck did not put these ideas to a 
 test until he wrote "Telemacco" for the 
 Teatro Argentina of Rome, in 1750, which 
 was the first example of the later "Gluckian" 
 tendencies. 
 
 On his return to Vienna, from Copen- 
 hagen, he asked for the hand of one of his 
 pupils, Marianna, the daughter of Joseph 
 Pergin, a wealthy money-lender and trader. 
 But the father refused to have a musician 
 for son-in-law. When Gluck learned in 
 Italy, the following year, that old Pergin 
 had suddenly died, he hastened back to 
 Vienna and captured Marianna with her 
 handsome dowry. It proved a very happy 
 marriage, for loving and meek Marianna was 
 easily overawed by the splendid selfishness 
 of her great husband. 
 
 After the production of two new operas 
 in Rome, in 1754, Gluck was raised to the 
 rank of a papal nobile. Although no record 
 of the patent seems to exist in the archives 
 
Chris to ph IVillibald Gluck 45 
 
 of the Vatican, the fact remains that from 
 that time on he signed himself, and was 
 known to all, as the "Chevalier Gluck." In 
 the same year, he was appointed master of 
 the Imperial Chapel at Vienna and was en- 
 trusted with the musical education of the 
 little Archdukes and Duchesses, a position 
 which he held until 1764 and which, ten 
 years later, led to his warm reception in Paris 
 by his former pupil, Marie Antoinette, who 
 at the age of fifteen was married to the 
 Dauphin of France. 
 
 The man who provided Gluck with the 
 first libretto that answered the demands of 
 Scheibe was the Italian Calzabigi in Vienna. 
 Not a great poet, but a man with dramatic 
 instinct, he treated "Orfeo ed Euridice," a 
 subject dear to operatic composers since the 
 days of Monteverdi, in a manner that 
 afforded Gluck the opportunity to show his 
 "innovations." The novel work received 
 its first performance at Vienna, October 5, 
 1762, and created a sensation. The cast 
 
46 Alia Breve 
 
 included only three leading characters; for 
 the first time, the chorus entered into the 
 action of the drama; the music displayed 
 no brilliant fireworks, but was charged with 
 deep emotion. As though Gluck did not 
 at once feel secure in his new element, this 
 opera was followed by several others in which 
 the composer reverted to the old Italianism. 
 But with "Alceste," again to a text by 
 Calzabigi (1767), Gluck definitely abandoned 
 his earlier style, and in a celebrated pref- 
 ace to the score he laid down his new 
 creed. It is practically a declaration of war, 
 and begins with this challenge: "When I 
 undertook to set this poem it was my design 
 to divest the music entirely of all those 
 abuses with which the vanity of singers, or 
 the too great complacency of composers, 
 has long disfigured the Italian opera, and 
 rendered the most beautiful and magnificent 
 of all public exhibitions, the most tiresome 
 and ridiculous." The challenge was taken 
 up by the musicians whom he attacked. 
 
Christoph Willibald Gluck 47 
 
 The ideal at which Gluck was aiming had 
 been approached nowhere more closely than 
 in the French opera. It was to Paris, there- 
 fore, that he looked as the place where he 
 could 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 a 
 new work on which he and Gluck had col- 
 laborated. The difficulties which were 
 raised at Paris were finally brushed aside 
 through the intervention of the young 
 Dauphiness. On April 19, 1774, "Iphigenie 
 en Aulide," that gem of classic stagecraft 
 and inspired music, first saw the footlights 
 at 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 becoming 
 Queen of France, bestowed her royal grace 
 upon her old teacher, and with the support 
 of the court Gluck's position seemed im- 
 
48 Alia Breve 
 
 pregnable. Forever famous is that contro- 
 versy between the followers of Gluck and 
 those of the Italian opera composer, Piccinni, 
 who came to Paris in 1776, and whose works 
 had been loudly and justly acclaimed in 
 Italy, for he commanded a greater lyric 
 charm than Gluck possessed. The anti- 
 Austrian party, led by the Queen's aunts, 
 encouraged the Piccinnists with their ap- 
 proval. The political quarrel and artistic 
 competition were merged, to the great satis- 
 faction of Gluck's pugnacious nature. When 
 he was invited to take up his permanent 
 abode in Paris, he demanded 12,000 livres 
 the year, a carriage for his wife (!), and a 
 decent house. In return he agreed to fur- 
 nish one opera every year, except if prevented 
 by sickness, and he professed his willingness 
 to advise young composers, "so that good 
 taste may become established, without 
 danger of ever being changed." 
 
 Gluck's remarkable personality, not less 
 than his music, fascinated court and public. 
 
Christoph Willibald Gluck 49 
 
 When at rehearsals, in shirt-sleeves and with 
 a nightcap pulled over his bald head, he 
 finally got through shouting his disapproval 
 at singers and orchestra until his wishes were 
 carried out, and he sank exhausted and per- 
 spiring into a seat, the pairs of France would 
 wait on him with cooling lemonade, and 
 bring him his wig and velvet coat. 
 
 His letters, whether in German or French, 
 are marked by a haughty disregard for 
 orthography, and abound in sallies and clever 
 observations, also in bitter and spiteful 
 criticisms. In July, 1775, when he was at 
 work on the remodelling of "Alceste" for 
 Paris, he wrote to Du Rollet, who was making 
 a French translation of the libretto and 
 wanted to introduce at the end of the third 
 act a situation which was not according to 
 the composer's taste: "What, in the devil's 
 name, do you want Apollo to do there with 
 the Arts; they are only good in his company 
 on Mount Parnassus; here they interfere 
 with the interest in the catastrophe." He 
 
50 Alia Breve 
 
 proceeded to give minute directions for the 
 scene, going so far as to sketch out the 
 dialogue. His temper was formidable. 
 Burney speaks of him as "a very dragon, of 
 whom all are in fear." When at work his 
 head was "buzzing like a beehive, and his 
 wife in despair." But he could be charming 
 and captivating. When Burney visited him 
 in Vienna, on Wednesday, September 2, 
 1772, he found the composer "very well 
 housed," with a pretty garden and "a great 
 number of neat and elegantly furnished 
 rooms. . . . He has no children; Madame 
 Gluck, and his niece who lives with him, 
 came to receive us at the door as well as the 
 veteran composer himself. He is much 
 pitted with the smallpox, and very coarse 
 in figure and look, but was soon got into 
 good humour. He began, upon a very bad 
 harpsichord, by accompanying his niece, 
 who is but thirteen years old, in two of the 
 capital scenes of his famous opera of Alceste." 
 
Christoph Willibald Gluck 51 
 
 After the French performance of "Al- 
 ceste" in 1776, followed "Armide" the next 
 year, and in 1779 the wonderful "Iphigenie 
 en Tauride." His last work written for 
 Paris, "Echo et Narcisse," was a failure. 
 Disappointed, after five years of unheard-of 
 success and glorification, he retired sulkingly 
 to his castle Berchtholdsdorf, near Vienna, 
 where he remained for the last eight years 
 of his life in wilful silence, watching the 
 stock-market and enjoying the delicacies 
 of his well-appointed larder and cellar. On 
 May 30, 1780, he wrote to Paris: "I wish 
 that some one come to take my place, and 
 please the public with his music, that I be 
 left in peace, for I can't forget all the prattle 
 of friend and foe I had to listen to, with 
 regard to Narcissus, nor to pills I had to 
 swallow; the Frenchmen can't yet distinguish 
 a musical eglogue from an epic poem!" He 
 was peeved and did not hesitate to say so. 
 He sought solace in the blessings of rare 
 vintages. But after a stroke of apoplexy 
 
52 Alia Breve 
 
 he had to renounce them, too. On No- 
 vember 25, 1787, having two friends from 
 Paris for dinner, he could not resist the 
 temptation, and, at a moment when his 
 watchful spouse had left the room to order 
 the carriage for his regular afternoon drive, 
 he emptied a glass of wine, which brought on 
 another stroke. This time it was a fatal one. 
 
IV 
 
 HAYDN 
 
 Les ouvrages anciens ne sont pas classiques 
 parce qu lis sont vieux, mais parce qu'ils sont 
 energiques, frais, et dispos. 
 
 — Sainte-Beuve 
 
IV 
 JOSEF HAYDN 
 
 The lifetime of "Papa Haydn" covers one 
 of the most eventful epochs in history. Josef 
 was born in 1732 (on March 31) at Rohrau, 
 Lower Austria, seven years before Maria 
 Theresa (1740-80), Empress of Austria, 
 ascended the throne. He died in 1809 (on 
 May 31) at Vienna, a few days after. the 
 troops of Napoleon had occupied the Aus- 
 trian capital. 
 
 Within these dates lie the wars between 
 Prussia and Austria (1740-63), Bavaria and 
 Austria (1778-79), Turkey and Austria (1789- 
 91), the French Revolution, the advent of 
 Bonaparte and his victorious campaigns 
 against the greater part of Europe, especially 
 Austria. But not only in the countries in 
 which Haydn lived or which he visited, was 
 history being made, in his day; across the 
 Atlantic, a war of liberation from English 
 
 [55] 
 
56 Alia Breve 
 
 sovereignty was followed by the organizing 
 of thirteen colonies into the United States of 
 America. This war-ridden eighteenth cen- 
 tury is among the most fertile and highly 
 developed eras in the evolution of peace- 
 loving arts and sciences. 
 
 Music, when Haydn was born, was still 
 a comparatively young art, lacking in the 
 more rigorous conceptions of form. It owes 
 to him, especially in the field of orchestral 
 and chamber-music, the establishing of cer- 
 tain moulds and frames which still remain 
 the architectural basis of musical composi- 
 tion. This creative and unerring sense of 
 shape and balance is Haydn's distinguishing 
 mark among the masters of his time, and the 
 great heritage he left to his successors. He 
 had given early proof of musical talent and 
 had a fine voice, which was the cause of his 
 leaving the rural province of his birth, in 
 1740, and becoming a choirboy at St. 
 Stephen's, in Vienna, where he received a 
 musical and general education. In 1748 he 
 
Josef Haydn S7 
 
 lost his voice and his position in the choir. 
 Then began a time of hardships, during 
 which he gave lessons, played for dances and 
 street "serenades," which latter belonged 
 to the fashionable ways of courting in those 
 days. He lived in the same house with the 
 famous poet and librettist Metastasio, whose 
 young protegee, Marianna Martinez, became 
 one of his pupils. Through Metastasio he 
 made valuable acquaintances among mu- 
 sicians. The pupil grew up to be the famous 
 Mademoiselle Martinez whom the learned 
 English traveller and musicographer Burney 
 heard at Vienna, in 1773, and of whose 
 accomplishments he could not say enough. 
 Haydn soon found an opportunity to 
 come in touch with rich and noble amateurs 
 who did much for the cultivation of music 
 by maintaining private string-quartets, or- 
 chestras and even theatrical troupes. Haydn 
 wrote for them his first piano sonatas and 
 chamber-music; his first opera dates from 
 1753, three years before the birth of Mozart, 
 
58 Alia Breve 
 
 whom he survived by eighteen years, a 
 period pregnant with the composition of his 
 greatest oratorios, "The Creation" and "The 
 Seasons." 
 
 In 1761, Haydn entered the service of 
 the princely house of Esterhazy, Hungarian 
 magnates of immense wealth and great 
 culture; four masters, belonging to three 
 generations, were his kind and generous 
 protectors. He remained in their employ 
 for twenty-eight years (practically the whole 
 of Mozart's artistic career), spending the 
 summers in Eisenstadt, Hungary, and the 
 winters in Vienna. Paul Anton Esterhazy 
 dissolved the orchestra in 1790, granting 
 Haydn a substantial pension. Haydn now 
 felt free to accept the invitation which had 
 come from London to visit England and to 
 conduct orchestra concerts there, also to 
 write for these occasions a set of new sym- 
 phonies. He arrived in London on Jan- 
 uary 2, 1791, and stayed in England until 
 1792. On his return to the Continent, he 
 
Josef Haydn 59 
 
 passed through Bonn, where a musician 
 named Ludwig van Beethoven, aged twenty- 
 two, was introduced to him. He thought 
 so much of the young man's talents that 
 he urged Beethoven to follow him to 
 Vienna and study with him. In January, 
 1794, Haydn paid a second visit to London, 
 where the same honors and pecuniary gains 
 awaited him that had marked his first so- 
 journ in England. 
 
 When Haydn returned to Vienna, in 
 August, 1795, he was a celebrated master 
 and rich man. Nicolas Esterhazy, son of 
 Paul Anton, reinstalled the orchestra of 
 his grandfather and placed Haydn at the 
 head of it. Haydn bought a house near 
 Vienna and enjoyed the fruits of his in- 
 dustry together with the homage paid to 
 his genius. But the general unrest of Eu- 
 rope, particularly the revolutionary upheaval 
 in France, made itself felt even in the quiet 
 of Haydn's retreat. Napoleon Bonaparte 
 had started on his dazzling round of military 
 
60 Alia Breve 
 
 and diplomatic victories. In the month of 
 January, 1797, in which the great Corsican 
 overthrew the Austrians at Rivoli, Haydn — 
 being intensely patriotic — wrote the famous 
 imperial hymn, which quickly became the 
 rallying song of a faltering populace and 
 army. The hymn has lately been thrown 
 into the discard by a republican Austria. 
 
 In England, Haydn had heard wonder- 
 ful performances of Handel's oratorios, and 
 it was due to English influences that he 
 now tried his hand at the same form of com- 
 position. "The Creation" was finished in 
 1798, first given in Vienna during the follow- 
 ing year, and performed in Paris in 1800, the 
 year of Napoleon's victory at Marengo. It 
 was in Paris, too, that the first complete 
 edition of Haydn's quartets was published, 
 bearing the dedication "To the First Consul." 
 Haydn was sixty-nine years old when he 
 wrote "The Seasons," a work of perennial 
 charm and universal appeal. 
 
Josef Haydn 61 
 
 Continued wars had brought with them 
 conditions which could not fail to undermine 
 the already declining health of an aged and 
 sensitive person. Haydn fainted, on the 10th 
 of May, 1809, at the sound of French cannon 
 bombarding Vienna; his spirit was com- 
 pletely broken when the enemy entered the 
 Austrian capital, three days later; and on 
 May 31 Haydn expired with — as tradition 
 has it — a prayer for the house of Hapsburg 
 on his lips. 
 
 They were truly great times in which 
 this master lived; and great were his own 
 achievements. Music was in a formative 
 state, and it required just such a logical, 
 clear mind as that of Haydn to open for 
 it ways which made possible the organic 
 development that it received at the hands 
 of his successors. His special domains were 
 the orchestra and the string-quartet. Even 
 considering his long lifetime, his productive- 
 ness was amazing. Not equalling Mozart 
 in the sensuous beauty of that composer's 
 
62 Alia Breve 
 
 finest inspirations, nor Beethoven in the 
 grandeur of conception and power of expres- 
 sion, Haydn's music excels in animation, 
 grace, and polish of workmanship, which 
 are the salient features of that unique 
 period — marked by frills and furbelows, 
 Dresden china and minuets — commonly 
 known as rococo. 
 
V 
 
 MOZART 
 
 Je ferais dix lieues a pied par la crotte, la chose 
 que je dereste le plus au monde, pour assister a 
 une representation de "Don Juan" bien jouee. 
 
 — Stendhal 
 
V 
 WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART 
 
 Only with the reverence felt for saints and 
 martyrs, can one speak of Mozart's life and 
 death. If ever a master was born, not made, 
 it was the boy Wolfgang Amadeus, who 
 seemed to have been taught music in another 
 world, in a celestial realm, before he came 
 to dwell on earth. And it is music of the 
 spheres, indeed, that we hear in the "Jupiter 
 Symphony"; music of elemental power that 
 seizes our heart in the finale of "Don Gio- 
 vanni"; music of supernal serenity and 
 beauty that radiates from his adagios for 
 string-quartet. Everlasting youth seems to 
 have been bestowed by just divinities upon 
 the work of one they called away so young. 
 
 When Mozart was born at Salzburg, on 
 January 27, 1756, his father, Leopold, had 
 been for thirteen years court musician to 
 the Archbishop of that town; the family 
 
 [65] 
 
66 Alia Breve 
 
 lived in very modest circumstances. The 
 father, therefore, was quick in taking ad- 
 vantage of his son's phenomenal gifts, which 
 became apparent when the boy, at the age 
 of four, was able to improvise little pieces 
 at the clavichord. Being himself an excellent 
 musician, Leopold gave the youngster the 
 best of training. He obtained leave of 
 absence from the Archbishop, in 1762, and 
 took his six-year-old son and eleven-year-old 
 daughter (Maria Anna, also a talented 
 pianist) on their first concert tour. Now 
 began a time of travel through southern 
 Germany, to Paris, and to London, with 
 stops at every royal court or principality, 
 where the performances of the two prodigies 
 earned much applause and rich rewards. 
 The cherubic little fellow, whose delicate 
 features and gentle ways were the delight 
 of every one, passed from one princely knee 
 to another, the length and breadth of Europe, 
 being petted and caressed by soft, bejewelled 
 hands, and having his pockets filled with 
 
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 67 
 
 sweetmeats and ducats. The candy was 
 soon eaten and the money spent. In 1766 
 the travellers returned to Salzburg, and 
 young Mozart entered the Archbishop's or- 
 chestra at a salary of about three dollars a 
 month! He studied counterpoint and com- 
 position, and composed many works, some of 
 which were published; but his compositions 
 did not meet with unreserved approval. A 
 contemporary wrote of him: "He is one 
 further instance of early fruit being more 
 extraordinary than excellent." 
 
 Leopold Mozart, a far-seeing man, realized 
 that Salzburg could not offer the proper 
 development his son's talents demanded. 
 He obtained another leave of absence, and in 
 December, 1769, took the boy to Italy. 
 Here the child won triumphs wherever he 
 appeared. He received commissions for the 
 composition of operas and other music. 
 The eminent musician Padre Martini, of 
 Bologna, praised him warmly; the Pope in 
 Rome rewarded him with the "Order of the 
 
68 Alia Breve 
 
 Golden Spur"; at Milan, his opera "Mitri- 
 date" had twenty performances in succession. 
 After such experiences the provincial life 
 of Salzburg, the meager gain obtained there, 
 were naturally depressing and discouraging. 
 When the Archbishop refused him another 
 leave, in 1777, young Mozart resigned his 
 position, and tried his luck in Munich; but 
 here his reception was rather cool. He fared 
 better in Paris, where his symphonies had 
 great success. Nevertheless, he made only a 
 precarious living with teaching and with 
 playing at private concerts. He finally 
 was obliged to return into the service of 
 the Archbishop, this time at a somewhat 
 higher salary. With his "Idomeneo" he 
 began to follow the methods of Gluck, who 
 had imparted to opera dramatic life such 
 as it had not possessed before. 
 
 In 1781, Mozart definitely left Salz- 
 burg for Vienna. Joseph II became in- 
 terested in him and commissioned him to 
 write an opera for the German stage which 
 
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 69 
 
 had been inaugurated by the Emperor in 
 1778. Always fighting the adversities of 
 life and trying hard to earn his daily bread, 
 he sought refuge in the haven of marriage. 
 But ill winds pursued him still, and his 
 cares only grew. His superb opera, "The 
 Marriage of Figaro," which contains the 
 purest essence of charm, grace and wit (in- 
 spired by an epoch-making comedy of the 
 French author Beaumarchais), was nearly 
 made impossible at its first performance, 
 in 1785, by the intentional neglect of intri- 
 guing singers, so that the composer had to 
 appeal to the Emperor for help. In the same 
 year fall the six wonderful quartets, dedi- 
 cated to Haydn. "Don Giovanni" was 
 successfully given at Prague, in 1787. During 
 the period from 1788 to 1790 he composed his 
 ripest orchestral symphonies. 
 
 Michael Kelly, the Irish tenor, tells in his 
 Reminiscences of his first meeting with 
 Mozart in Vienna: "He favoured the com- 
 pany by performing fantasias and capriccios 
 
70 Alia Breve 
 
 on the piano-forte. His feeling, the rapidity 
 of his fingers, the great execution and 
 strength of his left hand particularly, and 
 the apparent inspiration of his modulations, 
 astounded me. After this splendid per- 
 formance we sat down to supper, and I had 
 the pleasure to be placed between him and 
 his wife, Madame Constance Weber, a 
 german lady of whom he was passionately 
 fond, and by whom he had three children. — 
 After supper the young branches of our host 
 had a dance, and Mozart joined them. Ma- 
 dame Mozart told me, that great as his 
 genius was, he was an enthusiast in dancing, 
 and often said that his taste lay in that art 
 rather than in music." — Would that he had 
 been a dancer, too, and could have earned 
 the salaries of a Vestris, d'Auberval or Du- 
 port, instead of often going hungry. The 
 world forgets sometimes to pay the piper. 
 
 Kelly gives this description of Mozart: 
 "He was a remarkably small man, very thin 
 and pale, with a profusion of fine hair, of 
 
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 7\ 
 
 which he was rather vain. — He was fond of 
 punch, of which beverage I have seen him 
 take copious draughts. He was also fond 
 of billiards, and had an excellent billiard 
 table in his house. Many and many a game 
 have I played with him, but always came 
 off second best." We can almost see the 
 sprightly figure jump around the green cloth, 
 and hear the boyish laughter at some 
 especially successful coup. Success was 
 so negligent of him during the last span 
 of his brief existence! 
 
 Named court-musician by the Emperor, 
 in 1789, he still lacked the financial support 
 that would have made his existence carefree. 
 He refused a lucrative position offered him 
 by the King of Prussia, because of his de- 
 votion to his imperial master. In the last 
 year of his life he wrote "The Magic Flute" 
 and "La Clemenza di Tito," two operas, the 
 one in German, the other in Italian. The 
 latter he completed in eighteen days. His 
 last work was a Requiem mass. He passed 
 
72 Alia Breve 
 
 away on December 5, 1791, and was buried 
 in a pauper's grave, unmarked and un- 
 remembered by his contemporaries. 
 
 The prodigy who could perform astound- 
 ing feats, had been showered with honors and 
 presents; the incomparable master, at the 
 height of his creative powers, was neglected 
 and died in want. The irony of Fate willed 
 that on his deathbed he should be apprised 
 of his nomination to the full conductorship 
 at the cathedral of St. Stephen's, the first 
 position that would have assured him ease. 
 But his peace was to be eternal, and his glory 
 immortal. 
 
 Mozart stands solitary in the history of 
 music, detached and unsurpassed. His sunny 
 nature, unclouded by the worries and griefs 
 that weighed on him, found expression in 
 tones that are, above all, human. His music 
 breathes serenity and simplicity; his is an 
 art that one is tempted to call "artless," 
 thereby paying it the highest tribute 
 possible. In his concertos and sonatas for 
 
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 73 
 
 piano or violin, in his chamber-music for 
 strings or wind-instruments, in his serious or 
 his comic operas, in his choral compositions 
 or orchestral symphonies — everywhere he 
 has impressed upon his work the stamp of 
 his personality, inimitable and unmistakable. 
 
VI 
 
 BEETHOVEN 
 
 Sorrow is hard to bear, and doubt is slow to clear, 
 Each sufferer says his say, his scheme of the 
 weal and woe: 
 But God has a few of us whom he whispers in the 
 
 The rest may reason and welcome: 'tis we 
 musicians know. 
 
 — Robert Browning 
 
VI 
 LUDWIG 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, tell 
 the growth of his marvelous genius from- 
 auspicious beginnings, through glorious 
 struggles, to tragic grandeur. When he 
 could no longer hear the sounds around him, 
 he listened to a voice within; shut off from 
 intercourse with humanity, he held commun- 
 ion with the stars. And then came into 
 being the Ninth Symphony, the Missa 
 solemnis, and the last string-quartets. 
 
 From the titles of some of Beethoven's 
 compositions, 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 
 
78 Alia Breve 
 
 friend and protector, Archduke Rudolf — 
 whose most illustrious title is not Prince 
 of the House of Austria-Lorraine, nor Arch- 
 bishop of Olmiitz, nor Cardinal of the 
 Roman Curia, but the "Piano-pupil of 
 Beethoven" — between that triumphant ex- 
 pression of religious faith and a little "con- 
 ciliatory" canon for Maelzel (the inventor 
 of the metronome, whose futile efforts to 
 perfect an ear-trumpet had irritated the 
 poor suiferer), what wealth, what variety 
 of "human documents!" Cries of passion, 
 that call to the perfect mate; hymns to 
 nature, which sing his love for wood and 
 field; professions of ardent patriotism, 
 evoked by the turn of political events: these 
 are the three main themes that run through 
 all of Beethoven's music, until at last they 
 seem to be fused into one, that of sublime 
 resignation. From a sentimental ballad, 
 Adelaide, of 1796, instantly acclaimed and 
 published in numberless transcriptions, to 
 the Eroica symphony, first "privately" per- 
 
Ludwig van Beethoven 79 
 
 formed in 1804; from the opera Fidelio, 
 coolly received in 1805, to the quartets of 
 1826, decried as the deed of a lunatic: what 
 stupendous 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 the 
 world knew that it had lost a Titan. 
 
 As certain towns of Italy, during the 
 Middle Ages, attracted painters from far 
 and near, to work there under the protection 
 afforded them by some art-loving dignitary 
 of the realm or church, so was Vienna for a 
 long time the goal of musicians, thanks to the 
 enlightenment 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 had 
 found early in his father's employer, Prince- 
 bishop Max Franz, Elector of Cologne, a 
 member of the Hapsburg family, who acted 
 as his benevolent patron. It was due to 
 
80 Alia Breve 
 
 the connections between Cologne and Vienna 
 that Ludwig, in his seventeenth year, was 
 sent to the Austrian capital to pursue his 
 piano studies. He had a few lessons from 
 Mozart. Unfortunately, his mother's death 
 soon called him back to Bonn, where he 
 remained, giving lessons and pursuing his 
 own studies, until in 1792 Haydn, passing 
 through Bonn on his return from England, 
 heard Beethoven and offered to accept him 
 as pupil if he settled in Vienna. This in- 
 vitation was too good to go unheeded. 
 Beethoven's friend, Count Waldstein — and 
 the story of Beethoven's life is largely a 
 story of Beethoven's friends — saw to it that 
 nothing interfered with the realization of 
 this plan. And so Beethoven went to 
 Vienna. He had great success with his 
 concerts and was graciously received by 
 Viennese society. He studied with Haydn, 
 with the contrapuntist Albrechtsberger, and 
 with the Italian Salieri. He was a brilliant 
 player, of striking exterior and strange shy- 
 
Ludwig van Beethoven 81 
 
 ness in his manner. Between a doting 
 mother and a dissipated father, the formation 
 of his character had been neglected, but his 
 musical education left nothing to be desired. 
 His zeal and earnestness enabled him in 
 those years to lay the foundation for all 
 of his future work. At first frankly imita- 
 tive, following his teacher Haydn as an 
 unparalleled example for the purely con- 
 structive part of music, using the sonatas 
 of K. Ph. Em. Bach as models of pianistic 
 style, he leaned toward the virtuoso and 
 conventional side of a school that had almost 
 outlived itself. From Haydn he learned 
 the treatment and development of themes, 
 the use of orchestral colors. The first piano 
 sonatas, trios and quartets, a septet and 
 the two first symphonies, with other works 
 of lesser distinction, belong to this period. 
 
 With the year 1801 a decided change 
 becomes noticeable. Beethoven has begun 
 to find himself. Growing deafness, the 
 first signs of which date back to 1796, his 
 
82 Alia Breve 
 
 various sentimental quests, too often end- 
 ing in deception, are bringing their in- 
 fluence to bear on his state of mind. He 
 confides the precarious state of his health 
 to a friend, pledging him to absolute secrecy. 
 A passing ray of sunshine pierces the clouds: 
 "My life is a little pleasanter since I get again 
 among people. You cannot conceive how 
 empty, how sad my existence has been 
 these last two years. Like a spectre my 
 feeble hearing appeared to me. I fled hu- 
 manity, had to be taken for a misanthrope, 
 so far from being one. These changes are 
 wrought by a dear, bewitching little maiden 
 who loves me and whom I love. After 
 years, again a few happy moments, and 
 for the first time I feel that — to marry could 
 make me happy. Unfortuntely she is not 
 
 of my station " And we see darkness 
 
 returning upon the scene of this emotional 
 drama. His malady grows worse. He seeks 
 the aid of doctors and medicasters; treat- 
 ments, sound or quack, are of no avail. 
 
Ludwig van Beethoven 83 
 
 His mental depression reaches its culmination 
 in the pathetic testament of Heiligenstadt, 
 October 1802; walled in by silence, he is 
 like one entombed alive. The care of needy 
 relatives adds to his burdens; and when 
 Napoleon's brother Jerome, King of West- 
 phalia, offers him a well-paid position, he 
 is tempted to accept it and go to Cassel. 
 But three of his friends — Archduke Rudolf, 
 Prince Lobkowitz and Count Kinsky — agree 
 to pay him a pension for life in order to 
 attach the first musician of Europe permantly 
 to Vienna. For Beethoven has become an 
 international figure, his fame has spread. 
 Feted at court and by the nobility, treated 
 with 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 of 
 the 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 
 
84 Alia Breve 
 
 sketch-books accompany him everywhere; 
 he composes in the street, on walks through 
 the woods; wherever the musical idea appears 
 to him, he seizes it and puts it on paper, 
 later subjecting it to numberless alterations, 
 to careful development. His summers are 
 spent in the country; his health demands a 
 trip to the baths of Teplitz, in Bohemia. 
 Here the II of -Compositeur van Beethoven 
 meets the "old and incredibly distinguished" 
 Geheimrat von Goethe, for whose drama 
 "Egmont" he had written such stirring 
 music. And the composer, pet of princes, 
 seems democratic to the point of rudeness, 
 compared with the artistocratic and affable 
 poet, true friend of the people, who willingly 
 acknowledged in his talks with Eckermann 
 his utter ignorance in matters musical. 
 Beethoven's admiration for Goethe is pro- 
 found; "he lives, he bids us all to live. That 
 is why one can set him to music. There is 
 nobody so easily set as he; only I am not 
 fond of writing songs." However, conversa- 
 
Ludwig van Beethoven 85 
 
 tion with the deaf musician is made possible 
 only through the aid of note-books that he 
 carries with him everywhere, and into which 
 his interlocutors must write their part of the 
 dialogue. Compassion actuates many a 
 woman's tender heart to show him the ut- 
 most kindness and affection. But none of 
 them can or will accept the honor of becoming 
 his wife. In 1812, the year of the Teplitz 
 interview, Beethoven apostrophises himself 
 in his diary: "You are not permitted to be 
 man — not for you, only for others; for you 
 there is no happiness but in yourself, in your 
 Art." Another reve passionnel had been 
 shattered. Which? — there were so many. 
 Beethoven's enigmatic "Immortal Beloved" 
 has her place in Elysium with Petrarca's 
 Laura and Dante's Beatrice. 
 
 The year 1814 sees all the statesmen of 
 Europe assembled in Vienna, to sit in high 
 conclave and decide the fate of nations. 
 Archduke Rudolf, in person, introduces his 
 beloved master to the crowned visitors who 
 
86 Alia Breve 
 
 bow before him whom Apollo had crowned. 
 Without a work of Beethoven, no program 
 of importance seems complete. He is not 
 wanting publishers: "My compositions bring 
 in much, and I can say that I have more 
 orders than it is possible for me to take care 
 of. For everything I write, I could have 
 six or seven publishers, if I wanted; they no 
 longer bargain with me, I demand and they 
 pay." And yet he feels "more lonesome 
 than ever in this big city." For, after all, it 
 is not the music written with his heart's- 
 blood that the populace is whistling, that 
 publishers are clamoring for, but some of his 
 incidental music to second-rate plays, mili- 
 tary marches, "Wellington's Victory at 
 Vittoria," that symphonic poem for which 
 the composer himself "would not give two- 
 pence"! But the loneliness, the grief and 
 disillusion, are to bring only riper fruit. 
 
 From 1815 to his death, Beethoven did 
 not write nearly as much as he composed 
 in his second, or transitory stage; but what 
 
Ludwig van Beethoven 87 
 
 he created was the result of deeper reflection, 
 of purer and more personal inspiration. His 
 ideals of friendship and his religious devotion 
 finally rise from beneath the sea of con- 
 flicting emotions. They form the rocks 
 upon which are built his two greatest works: 
 the Symphony with chorus and the Mass 
 in D. It was given to Beethoven, in spite 
 of so many afflictions, cares and disillusion- 
 men ts, to carry his creative task to a pinnacle 
 which overtowered everything that had gone 
 before. 
 
VII 
 
 WEBER 
 
 C'est une ere nouvelle que semble soudainement 
 proclamer ce melos inconnu jusqu'alors, dont la 
 seule harmonie est la moelle et l'essence. A 
 l'examen des prodromes et des suites, on y re- 
 connait la liberation a la fois la plus profonde et 
 la plus nette constatable dans devolution sonore 
 depuis Monteverdi et avant Claude Debussy. 
 
 — Jean Marnold 
 
VII 
 CARL MARIA von WEBER 
 
 Weber 'shares with Schubert the honor 
 of having founded the "romantic" school 
 of music. His influence as a composer, 
 however, has not affected the literature for 
 the piano as much as it has furthered the 
 advancement of orchestral technique. And 
 yet, even in his piano compositions, he was 
 an innovator and proved that he keenly felt 
 the tendencies of his time. These tendencies 
 aimed at freeing the older musical forms 
 from their restrictions, forms which did no 
 longer answer the increasing demand for 
 brilliant virtuosity rather than erudite work- 
 manship, for sensuous melody more than 
 contrapuntal cleverness. 
 
 The course which the development of 
 piano music has taken, was not infrequently 
 decided by a composer's personal style of 
 playing, or by his hand as much as by his 
 
 [91] 
 
92 Alia Breve 
 
 ear. While Chopin is perhaps the most 
 pronounced case in point, Weber's early 
 training as a pianist (whose teacher Heusch- 
 kel, at Hildburghausen, taught the boy of 
 ten to use his left hand as freely and in- 
 dependently as the right) led him eventually 
 to write more for the virtuoso and the large 
 public than for players of chamber-music 
 and their small but select audience. The 
 classic sonata now became a "Grand Sonata" 
 with plenty of technical fireworks; instead 
 of suites, fugues, inventions and toccatas, 
 we find the significant titles of Romance, 
 Capriccio, Potpourri; and with the "Char- 
 acter Pieces" we revert to the old French 
 Clavecinists and their quaint, imaginative 
 titles, minus the Frenchmen's sober elegance 
 and grace. The Waltz, at first decried as 
 an exhibition of vulgarity, which English 
 travellers, on seeing it danced in Paris at 
 the Tivoli in 1802, pronounced "most 
 shocking," began to oust Gavot and Minuet. 
 Weber's "Invitation to the Dance" con- 
 
Carl Maria von Weber 93 
 
 ferred upon it civic rights, while Chopin 
 was soon to give it a patent of nobility. 
 The patriotic fervor of 1813, uniting all 
 Germany in an effort to overthrow 
 Napoleonic rule, inspired Weber to sing 
 in eloquent and stirring music the aspira- 
 tions of an awakened national conscious- 
 ness. His settings of words by the gallant 
 soldier-poet Korner literally whipped the 
 people into frenzy. With peace restored, 
 Weber entered upon that part of his work 
 on which his fame is chiefly based — the 
 "romantic" opera. His interest in the in- 
 struments of the orchestra — shown by his 
 various compositions for horn, bassoon, 
 clarinet, etc. — had led him to experiment 
 in this domain with the most wonderful 
 success. He was the first musician to dis- 
 cover the "individuality" of certain in- 
 struments. His operas, "Der Freischutz," 
 "Euryanthe" and "Oberon" — founded on 
 folklore, mediaeval romance and fairy tale — ■ 
 ushered in a new era of dramatic music. 
 
94 Alia Breve 
 
 The overtures to these three works are 
 still the show pieces of every virtuoso- 
 orchestra and conductor. 
 
 Weber's short life of forty years was 
 spent, from birth to death, in almost con- 
 stant wanderings. Born December 18, 1786, 
 at Eutin, in Holstein, the son of an ec- 
 centric, erratic father, who travelled from 
 town to town as manager of opera-troupes, 
 he was practically brought up in the wings 
 of the stage, or in the lumbering post-coach. 
 When the boy began to show talent and 
 interest for music, his father saw to it that 
 Carl had occasional lessons in piano playing; 
 but not until 1796 did he seriously study. 
 This was when the father's business detained 
 the family for some time at Hildburghausen. 
 The next year the Webers migrated to 
 Salzburg. Here Michael Haydn, younger 
 brother of the great Josef, instructed the 
 boy in harmony and counterpoint. Before 
 the year was over, the youngster published 
 his first opus, consisting in "Six Fughettas." 
 
Carl Maria von Weber 95 
 
 The next year, 1798, was spent in Munich. 
 Carl studied with the excellent organist 
 and pianist Kalcher. He also became in- 
 terested in lithography, a process just then 
 discovered by Aloys Senefelder, and learned 
 to print his music as well as to compose it. 
 
 The wanderings began again. They 
 led this time to Vienna, the center of all 
 musical life in those days. Weber, how- 
 ever, was not apprenticed to one of the 
 "big men" then living, such as the aged 
 Josef Haydn, or the illustrious Salieri; nor 
 to the struggling Beethoven. Abbe Vogler 
 became his teacher, a man of indubitable, 
 though unbalanced, gifts; he was half 
 scientist, half adventurer, yet of real musical 
 sensitiveness, endowed with an inventive 
 and analytical turn of mind. Weber, in 
 later years, acknowledged unreservedly his 
 indebtedness to Vogler's teaching. 
 
 From 1804 to 1806, young Weber was 
 orchestra conductor at the theatre in 
 Breslau, where he had early and ample 
 
96 Alia Breve 
 
 opportunity to familiarize himself with 
 orchestral instruments. Prince Eugene of 
 Wiirttemberg, residing most of the time at 
 his Silesian estate, "Carlsruhe," engaged 
 Weber as conductor of his private orchestra. 
 The armies of Napoleon, which were in- 
 vading Prussia, cut short his stay in Silesia. 
 Prince Eugene joined his regiment in 1807, 
 and sent his private composer to Stuttgart 
 with a recommendation to his brother, 
 Prince Ludwig. Weber became Ludwig's 
 secretary; it was his irksome task to negoti- 
 ate the affairs of his dissolute and extrav- 
 agant master, besides having to care for his 
 old and ever more irresponsible parent, 
 whose complicated money matters, in 1810, 
 led to a public scandal, and to the expulsion 
 of father and son from Wiirttemberg "by 
 order of the King." The fugitives went to 
 Mannheim, where Carl found a lifelong 
 friend in Gottfried Weber, an able lawyer 
 and talented musician; and Carl's father 
 
Carl Maria von Weber 97 
 
 found in Gottfried's house a refuge till he 
 died, in 1812. 
 
 Weber now visited Darmstadt, where 
 his teacher Vogler was then residing. In 
 1811 he returned to Munich, and later went 
 on a concert tour to Switzerland. In 1812, 
 he set out to conquer Berlin, and was most 
 cordially received by public and musicians 
 of the Prussian capital. He entered the 
 employ of the Duke of Gotha, but was soon 
 offered the conductorship of the theatre- 
 orchestra in Prague, a position eagerly 
 accepted, and successfully filled until he 
 followed a call to Dresden, in 1816, where 
 the King of Saxony engaged him "for life" 
 as master of the royal chapel and director 
 of the German opera. 
 
 The years in Prague were largely filled 
 with the sound of cannon and with battle- 
 hymns. Still, Weber wrote during that 
 period several operas which gained him a 
 growing surety of touch and mastery of his 
 material. In Dresden his duties at court 
 
98 Alia Breve 
 
 called frequently for the composition of 
 cantatas, masses and other music, destined 
 to embellish a royal fete, celebrate a princely 
 wedding, or heighten the impressiveness of 
 a special church function. Weber felt now 
 that he had obtained a secure position, and 
 married the singer Carolina Brand, in 
 November, 1817. He began work on "Der 
 Freischiitz," which was first produced in 
 Berlin, on June 18, 1821, and met with 
 instant and unparalleled success. Encour- 
 aged by his good fortune, he immediately 
 started on another opera, "Euryanthe," 
 which was written for an enterprising man- 
 ager at Vienna. The composition progressed 
 only slowly, as it was interrupted by many 
 royal "commands" for one or another occa- 
 sion. Hence the " Jubelouvertiire" "Fest- 
 musik" "Huldigungscantate" and more 
 works of that nature. Finally, "Euryanthe" 
 was given its first performance at Vienna, 
 on October 25, 1823. The next day the 
 • composer wrote to his wife: My reception, 
 
Ca r l Maria von Weber 99 
 
 when I appeared in the orchestra, was the 
 most enthusiastic and brilliant that one could 
 imagine. There was no end to it." Yet, the 
 playing and singing, on that occasion, is said 
 to have been not without faults. At its 
 first hearing in Berlin, the following year, 
 the overture fell flat. 
 
 Weber's constitution had never been 
 strong; his unstable mode of life had not 
 improved it; now his health began to fail 
 rapidly. He was honored by a commission 
 from London to write an opera for Covent 
 Garden. As subject he was to take "Faust" 
 or "Oberon"; he chose the latter. Working 
 with feverish ardor, he completed the opera 
 in a short time. "Oberon," in spite of its 
 involved libretto, was politely acclaimed 
 when London heard it for the first time on 
 April 12, 1826, conducted by the ailing 
 composer in person. Greatly enfeebled by 
 his exertions and his journey, Weber passed 
 away in the night of June 5, 1826. He was 
 buried in England; but eighteen years later. 
 
100 Alia Breve 
 
 his ashes were transferred to Dresden. The 
 solemn memorial services were directed by 
 the young conductor of the Dresden orches- 
 tra, who was none other than Richard 
 Wagner. It was a momentous day in the 
 history of German music, when the heir to 
 Weber's genius paid homage to his great 
 precursor's glory! 
 
VIII 
 
 SCHUBERT 
 
 Ich singe wie der Vogel singt, 
 Der in den Zweigen wohnet. 
 
 — J. W. von Goethe 
 
VIII 
 
 FRANZ PETER SCHUBERT 
 
 Considering the difference between the 
 works of Beethoven and Schubert, it is 
 difficult to believe that they were contem- 
 poraries and that the younger of the two, born 
 twenty-seven years after Beethoven, sur- 
 vived the older master only by twenty 
 months. The whole period of Schubert's 
 creative activity does not extend over more 
 than sixteen years; and when he died, at 
 the age of thirty-one — an age at which other 
 mortals have hardly begun their lifework — 
 he left not only an astoundingly large 
 number of compositions, but by the very 
 quality and nature of these compositions he 
 had sounded a new note in music that was 
 to herald the dawn of "romanticism." 
 
 The origin of Schubert, born January 31, 
 1797, the son of a poor schoolteacher, and 
 the circumstances in which the boy was 
 
 [103] 
 
104 Alia Breve 
 
 brought up, may not have been altogether 
 without influence upon the "romantic" char- 
 acter of his music. Schubert was the first 
 among the great masters living at the begin- 
 ning of the nineteenth century, who were not 
 either born within the purlieus of a palace 
 or reared under the patronage of a court, 
 secular or churchly. His family was of 
 common stock, and his life passed in sur- 
 roundings of plain and simple "homeliness." 
 No king or kaiser, much less a music-pub- 
 lisher, encouraged his beginnings with com- 
 missions. What he wrote, he composed 
 spontaneously, spurred by the extraordinary 
 fertility of his genius, and with an ear bent 
 rather to the song of the people than to the 
 favorite distraction of princes. It is not in- 
 significant that Schubert should have written 
 so many waltzes, ecossaises (schottisches), 
 polonaises, handler (country-dances), and 
 Singspiele (operettas), and that a great num- 
 ber of his songs early achieved a "popular" 
 success. Nor is it surprising that he excelled 
 
Fran z Peter Schubert 105 
 
 particularly as a writer of songs and became 
 the originator of the modern "Lied." 
 
 The fructifying influence of one art on 
 another is constantly in evidence, though 
 the roles are often interchanged. Schubert 
 found vital inspiration in the wonderful 
 song-literature that German poets like 
 Goethe, Kerner, Riickert, Moricke, Eichen- 
 dorff, and young Heinrich Heine, had brought 
 to an unprecedented height. The "roman- 
 ticism" of poetry was transplanted into music. 
 And there are several reasons why Schubert 
 should have been responsible for the trans- 
 planting. First of all, his sensitive nature, 
 his love for poetry, his kinship with a 
 movement that was breaking away from a 
 stiff and academic classicism, become stale 
 and arid, caused him to embrace with open 
 arms this "new" creed which forsook the 
 gods of Greece and Rome for the nymphs of 
 native rivers and familiar woodland fairies; 
 which replaced the "refined" and "pompous" 
 speech of a declining century of autocrats 
 
106 Alia Breve 
 
 with the more natural expressions of simple 
 human sentiments, voiced and understood by 
 people who had, directly or indirectly, tasted 
 of revolution and democracy. The second 
 reason may be found in the fact that Schubert 
 was practically self-taught, as far as compo- 
 sition was concerned, and that his sense of 
 musical shape, or his "architectural" ability, 
 had not been sufficiently developed. There- 
 fore his longer compositions are not always 
 free from lengthy repetitions and fillings that 
 a more disciplined appreciation of form 
 might have avoided. But the short, 
 strophic, song-text was the ideal basis upon 
 which to build his little masterpieces; and, 
 in the course of time, the knowledge gained 
 in the setting of "Lieder" benefited him 
 greatly in the construction of his shorter 
 instrumental numbers. Schubert's unerring 
 power of musical characterization, on the 
 other hand, his "lyricism," inborn and 
 unexcelled, enabled him to choose poems of 
 widely divergent styles, and to set them 
 
Franz Peter Schubert 107 
 
 all, with very few exceptions, to a music 
 which to this day has lost nothing of its 
 dramatic life or enchanting melodic appeal. 
 Full of harmonic innovations, of modulatory 
 departures that still retain the zest of 
 modernity, his songs, his piano-pieces, his 
 chamber-music, immortal strains from his 
 symphonic compositions — this wealth of 
 originality makes one wonder what the 
 world lost in his premature death. 
 
 The story of Schubert's life is all too 
 brief, nor is it marked by any events that 
 add to it high lights. Born in a suburb ol 
 Vienna, the semi-rural surroundings of his 
 infancy always attracted him. Having 
 given proof of precocious musical talent, 
 and being endowed with a pleasing voice, 
 he became a choirboy when eight years old, 
 and in 1808 he was admitted into the choir 
 of the imperial chapel. He received his 
 education at an institution connected with 
 the choir, where his principal music-teacher 
 was Antonio Salieri, director of the imperial 
 
108 Alia Breve 
 
 opera and chapel, at one time teacher of 
 Beethoven, a polite courtier and polished 
 mediocrity, who when young had enjoyed 
 the friendship of Gluck, and now only enjoys 
 the doubtful distinction of being known as 
 Mozart's jealous and intriguing enemy. But 
 Schubert could learn very little from a 
 musical style that lacked in the essentials of 
 life and truth. His keen sense of harmonic 
 possibilities, his beautiful discoveries in the 
 field of enharmonic modulation, soon taught 
 him to follow his own paths. He left the 
 choir in 1813, and next year became assis- 
 tant to his father, the schoolmaster. Of 
 figure stubby and thickset, not overcareful 
 in his dress, given to the convivial pleasures 
 of pot and glass, he was at heart an 
 Arcadian. 
 
 After three years of teaching, he decided 
 to devote his entire time to composition. 
 Several of his earliest and finest songs had 
 attracted considerable attention, and Schu- 
 bert hoped that he would find the same 
 
Franz Peter Schubert 109 
 
 appreciation for his bigger instrumental 
 works. But therein he was to be cruelly 
 undeceived. Ambitious to try his hand at 
 larger forms, he wrote symphony after sym- 
 phony, and selected, with rare lack of dis- 
 crimination, one unpractical or ineffective 
 opera-libretto after another. Interspersed 
 between these more voluminous works are 
 the songs (numbering about six hundred in 
 all), many of which were written at a 
 moment's inspiration upon the first reading 
 of the text; others, like his famous setting 
 of Goethe's "Erlking," were the outcome 
 of various sketches, discarded or painstak- 
 ingly rewritten. 
 
 An observation made by a discerning 
 English amateur, at London, in 1833, is of 
 interest: "At Mr. Wessel's German soiree I 
 heard some songs by Shobert [sic], a new 
 author. His 'Erl King,' sung by Mme. 
 Schroeder, and accompanied on the piano- 
 forte by Mme. Dulken, certainly was a 
 most terrific thing of its kind. The alarm- 
 
110 Alia Breve 
 
 ing intonation of the vocalist, and the 
 awful thunder which the pianist threw into 
 the bass, had a dramatic effect purely 
 German." And yet the accompanist, that 
 evening, was among the best of her time; 
 the singer, among the greatest of all times. 
 What would the Englishman have said to 
 Schubert's "Der Atlas," or "Gruppe aus 
 dem Tartarus," or any of the other grand and 
 "terrific" songs so studiously avoided by our 
 timid program-makers? 
 
 Schubert's charming, songful piano music, 
 the shorter pieces in particular, furnished the 
 direct pattern of Mendelssohn's "Songs with- 
 out Words," and of Schumann's "Novel- 
 lettes"; and his "Hungarian Divertissement," 
 composed during his stay in Hungary in 1818 
 as music-teacher in the family of Count 
 Johann Esterhazy, was, in a way, the model 
 for the many "Rhapsodies," Hungarian or 
 of other national flavors, that were to follow 
 him. He vainly tried to obtain employment 
 worthy of his talents. Pursued by ill luck, 
 
Franz Peter Schubert 111 
 
 plagued by failing health, ignored by the 
 distributors of lucrative positions, making 
 but a meagre living, he was at least blessed 
 with a few faithful friends and staunch be- 
 lievers in his greatness, and he had the 
 satisfaction of one public appearance, in 
 the Spring of 1828, at a successful concert 
 devoted to his own compositions. 
 
 But the Wanderer" was preparing to 
 leave again. The parting hour was near. 
 Thus has Sir George Grove set down the 
 last moments: Schubert, turning round, 
 clutched at the wall with his poor, tired 
 hands, and said in a slow, earnest voice, 
 Here, here is my end.' At three in the 
 afternoon of Wednesday, November 19, 
 1828, he breathed his last, and his simple, 
 earnest soul took its flight from the world. 
 There never has been one like him, and 
 there will never be another." 
 
IX 
 
 BERLIOZ 
 
 Berlioz' Notenzeichen sind im Klavierauszuge 
 eingetrocknete Mumien, dagegen gemahnen die 
 Partituren dieses Meisters an die Zauberbucher 
 des Prosper Alpanus im Klein Zaches, darin Kopf 
 und Hals, Punkte, Pausen, Notenschliissel und 
 Taktstriche ein geisterhaftes Leben fiihren. 
 
 — Hugo Wolf 
 
IX 
 
 HECTOR BERLIOZ 
 
 Berlioz left a detailed account of his 
 life, begun in 1848 at London, and carried 
 down to New Year's Day of 1865. We also 
 have much of his personal correspondence. 
 Letters and autobiographies are perhaps the 
 most interesting part of literature. But 
 autobiographies are not always trustworthy 
 documents. Only a few are the calm, en- 
 lightened review of facts, the dispassionate 
 probing into causes and effects, the enter- 
 taining and instructive painting of characters 
 and customs which are no more. Fre- 
 quently, such accounts are intended as 
 apologies or glorifications of the writer, 
 and as posthumous attacks upon dead ad- 
 versaries. The Memoirs of Berlioz suffer 
 from this fault to a not inconsiderable, but 
 highly excusable, degree. Godlike as were 
 his aspirations, his soul was human; he was 
 
 f 115 1 
 
116 Alia Breve 
 
 misunderstood and maligned in his youth, 
 grew old in disappointment and vexation. 
 He had the morbid need of self-revealment. 
 That he should have used the pen so ex- 
 tensively, and often caustically, in his own 
 defence, is but natural; nor is it to be re- 
 gretted by posterity, for his pen was brilliant. 
 Hector Berlioz was born December 11, 
 1803, at Cote-Saint-Andre, a small place 
 near Lyons, in the south of France. His 
 father was a physician, intelligent and broad- 
 minded, absorbed in his profession. His 
 mother was a fanatic and intolerant Catholic. 
 Berlioz was ever a victim of his shortcomings, 
 which were the result of parental short- 
 sightedness. Although he did not fail to 
 give early signs of musical talent and tempera- 
 mental impulsiveness, his technical train- 
 ing and moral discipline were vague and in- 
 effective. He learned to play the flute and 
 guitar, after a fashion, and was brought up 
 with the idea that he should end an honorable 
 country doctor. 
 
Hector Berlioz 117 
 
 He was sent to Paris to study medicine. 
 The French capital, in the first half of the 
 nineteenth century, was still reverberating 
 with the clangor of the revolution and the 
 wars of Bonaparte. New governments fol- 
 lowed each other in quick succession. 
 Revolutionary and bellicose was the romantic 
 spirit that possessed the literary and artistic 
 generation of the day. Young Berlioz, 
 ardent and exalted, was suddenly brought 
 face to face with a realization of his secret 
 dreams. He was swept off his feet. Having 
 drunk from the pure essence of Gluck, Beet- 
 hoven and Weber, he could no longer stand 
 the heavy atmosphere of the dissecting room. 
 He discarded his books on anatomy and 
 pathology for treatises on harmony and 
 counterpoint. 
 
 Berlioz was twenty-two years old when 
 he entered the Paris Conservatory and 
 became a pupil of Reicha, after having 
 taken a few lessons from Lesueur. Con- 
 spicuous in dress and manners, his fine head 
 
118 Alia Breve 
 
 crowned with a leonine crop of hair that 
 quivered like aspen leaves at his impassionate 
 gestures, he could not help attracting the 
 attention of every one. Notwithstanding 
 the remonstrances of his father, and the 
 actual curses of his bigoted mother, to whom 
 music was an agent of the devil, he pursued 
 his studies. He suffered want, earning a 
 pittance by singing in the chorus of a third- 
 rate theatre, and contracted debts in order to 
 perform the works he was now beginning to 
 compose. These works inflamed the younger 
 and progressive element with wild en- 
 thusiasm; they scandalized the fogies. Fetis, 
 the studious musicographer and Berlioz's 
 lifelong enemy, wrote in 1835, after some of 
 the composer's greatest and most magni- 
 ficent orchestral pieces had already been 
 heard in public: "According to my belief, the 
 things that M. Berlioz wiites do not belong 
 to what I am accustomed to consider as 
 music, and I am absolutely certain that the 
 conditions of this art are unknown to him." 
 
Hector Berlioz 119 
 
 Fetis saw only the flaws, and was blind to 
 the light of genius. But flaws there were, 
 and even Schumann, who had been the 
 loud and staunch defender of the younger 
 Berlioz, could write in later years to the 
 historian Ambros: "Time makes us severer. 
 In some of Berlioz's recent works there are 
 things which one can't forgive a man of 
 forty." 
 
 With due allowance made for such 
 blemishes, there remains the work of a 
 giant, an innovator, without whom music 
 would have lost much that was fructifying; 
 there remain the vast conceptions of an 
 inspired brain, hewed in large masses of 
 tone; there remain, above all, the creation of 
 the modern orchestra and the establishing of 
 the "program" symphony, two things which 
 his contemporaries and successors eagerly 
 appropriated. Heine called him ' the lark 
 with eagle wings." 
 
 Only after several attempts did he suc- 
 ceed, in December, 1830, in winning the 
 
120 Alia Breve 
 
 Rome Prize with a cantata sufficiently 
 academic in style to pass the judges. This 
 was three years after his first great emotional 
 crisis, brought on by an Irish actress, Harriet 
 Smithson, who gave English performances of 
 Shakespeare in Paris. Berlioz greatly ad- 
 mired Shakespeare, as he did Goethe and 
 Byron. He lost his head completely over his 
 Ophelia, walking the streets day and night 
 like one demented. A grande passion was 
 essential to his nature, and to accelerate 
 creation nothing served him so well as love 
 fulfilled or unrequited. The inapproach- 
 able Miss had passed from the scene, how- 
 ever, when Berlioz set out for his sojourn in 
 the Eternal City, as a pensioner of the French 
 Government. It was then Marie (Camille) 
 Mocke, a youthful and coquettish pianist, 
 who had captivated his heart. He. tore him- 
 self away and arrived at the Villa Medicis 
 about the middle of March, 1831. 
 
 When by the first of April he was still 
 without word from Marie, he fled from Rome 
 
Hector Berlioz 121 
 
 and got as far as Florence, where he fell ill. 
 Upon learning that Marie had meanwhile 
 married M. Pleyel, he swore vengeance, 
 meditated the murder of the faithless one, 
 and instantly proceeded on his homicidal 
 errand. But he had a timely change of 
 mind, was conscience-stricken, simulated an 
 attempt at suicide, wrote to Horace Vernet 
 — the director of the Villa Medicis — and 
 received a paternal and forgiving answer. 
 He returned to Rome, but never liked the city 
 very much. In 1832 he left the Villa, not 
 without having made love to Vernet's 
 daughter, for whose hand he asked Madame 
 Vernet in a letter dispatched as soon as he 
 arrived in Paris. 
 
 But here an unexpected discovery gave 
 events a different turn. He found that 
 Harriet Smithson was again in town, and the 
 old fire flamed up more violently than ever. 
 Not with ordinary wooing did he want to win 
 her, but by the impact with his "Fantastic 
 Symphony" (first performed in December, 
 
122 Alia Breve 
 
 1830, and then revised), a tremendous work 
 for those days, and reflecting with dramatic 
 vividness the emotions — real and imagined 
 — that his love for Harriet had awakened. 
 Miss Smithson heard the symphony at a 
 concert on December 9, 1832. The com- 
 poser's magnetic personality, the impression 
 produced by his remarkable work on an 
 audience which, though it contained enough 
 hostile reactionaries, gave overwhelming signs 
 of its admiration, combined to achieve the 
 desired effect. After parental objections 
 were overridden, the marriage finally took 
 place on October 3, 1833. It was not a 
 happy union. The wife grew more and more 
 jealous, the husband disillusioned. Con- 
 ditions became intolerable and a separation 
 followed. In 1843, after so many artistic, 
 pecuniary and domestic misadventures, 
 Berlioz left Paris for a concert tour through 
 Germany, Austria and Russia. He was 
 accorded everywhere the warm and intelli- 
 
Hector Berlioz 123 
 
 gent reception that his compatriots had 
 refused him. 
 
 Liszt, in particular, espoused his cause 
 and performed his works when called to 
 direct the musical affairs of Weimar. His 
 operas were heard in Germany before France 
 knew them. But it is not as an opera com- 
 poser that Berlioz excelled. Neither the 
 Shakespearean "Beatrice and Benedict" nor 
 the romantic "Benvenuto Cellini" have 
 found a permanent place in the operatic 
 repertory. "The Trojans," suggested by 
 Virgil's tale of iEneas, fared no better. The 
 dramatic symphony "Romeo and Juliet" 
 (1839) constituted a departure; as novel as 
 the form, as characteristic are the contents of 
 this splendid work. All things considered, 
 it ranks perhaps highest among the com- 
 poser's creations. His early reading had 
 furnished the inspirational germ for most 
 of his later compositions. Shakespearean 
 was the subject for the overture "King 
 Lear," for the orchestral fantasy "The 
 
124 Alia Breve 
 
 Tempest." We find Byron's glowing 
 flame in the symphonic poem "Harold in 
 Italy" (1834) and the "Corsair" overture. 
 Goethe is responsible for "The Damnation of 
 Faust" (1846), the work that did most to 
 earn the composer posthumous laurels. 
 
 Berlioz, a child of his age, was chivalrous. 
 When Harriet was dying in 1854, his affection 
 for her was still alive. As he had sung his love 
 in his "Fantastic Symphony," where the 
 obsessing idea of the beloved had taken musi- 
 cal shape in an equally obsessing theme — the 
 first true specimen of the Leitmotiv — so did he 
 mourn for her in his funeral music of Ophelia. 
 Death, in the soul-searching days of ro- 
 manticism, was a solemn and spectacular 
 thing. No one represented it more dra- 
 matically than did Berlioz in his Requiem 
 Mass (1837). It is, with the "Fantastic 
 Symphony," Berlioz's most astonishing 
 achievement in orchestral technique. His 
 instinct for unusual and graphic instrumenta- 
 tion was infallible. His treatise on the 
 
Hector Berlioz 125 
 
 instruments of the orchestra is the work of a 
 shrewd analyst, deft craftsman and sensitive 
 poet. 
 
 Berlioz had found, early in life, that his 
 literary and critical gifts were more de- 
 pendable breadwinners than was his musical 
 genius. As a critic on several newspapers, 
 notably Le Journal des Debats, which he 
 joined in 1838, he became a power and a 
 sort of oracle. He did not hesitate to avow 
 his antipathy to Wagner. Seldom did he 
 set down anything but his candid opinion. 
 He never used his influence for selfish ends. 
 His sharp wit, his enlightening observations, 
 make good reading in a day when most of 
 the works and persons that formed the 
 objects of his criticisms live only by the 
 praise or censure he bestowed on them. 
 Having survived a second wife, having 
 buried a son of his first marriage, and also 
 his sister, he was left solitary, a prey to his 
 dejected moods. He died on March 8, 
 
126 Alia Breve 
 
 1869. A grand and pathetic figure was this 
 hyper-emotional dreamer and combative 
 originator. 
 
X 
 
 MENDELSSOHN 
 
 Whatever be the reason, it is commonly ob- 
 served that the early writers are in possession of 
 nature, and their followers of art; that the first 
 excel in strength and invention, and the latter in 
 elegance and refinement. 
 
 — Dr. Samuel Johnson 
 
X 
 
 FELIX MENDELSSOHN-BARTHOLDY 
 
 The lives of so many great composers are 
 one long record of struggle, poverty, and dis- 
 appointment, that Felix Mendelssohn's career 
 would be remarkable if for no other reason 
 than the advantages, the affluence and the 
 success which he enjoyed during his lifetime. 
 His family was Jewish, and of humblest 
 origin. His grandfather, the eminent 
 philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, when 
 young, had still to suffer under the humiliat- 
 ing restrictions which, until the end of the 
 eighteenth century, actually segregated all 
 Jews in the towns of Europe from the normal 
 life of the community. This sage and eman- 
 cipator gradually conquered the prejudices of 
 the Christians and the bigotry of his own 
 people; he made a position for himself in 
 German literature, was the close friend of the 
 poet and dramatist Lessing, and practically 
 
 (129] 
 
130 Alia Breve 
 
 opened to his race the door that gave it access 
 into modern society. Abraham (the second 
 son of Moses and father of Felix), who later 
 in his life said laughingly: "When a boy, I 
 was known as the son of my father; now I 
 am known as the father of my son!" pos- 
 sessed qualities which, though peculiarly 
 Jewish, entitle him to not a little of the 
 glory that distinguished the Mendelssohn 
 family; and these qualities were precisely 
 those of an excellent son and an ideal father. 
 Abraham was clerk in the banking house 
 of Fould in Paris, when he married Lea 
 Salomon, the daughter of a rich merchant in 
 Hamburg. He became associated with his 
 elder brother, who conducted a banking and 
 brokerage business in Hamburg. It was the 
 time of the Napoleonic invasion. War means 
 the destruction of much property; it is also 
 the germ of new fortunes. Abraham settled 
 with his family in Berlin, in 1811; he was a 
 shrewd business man, and the banking house 
 which he founded is still in existence, and is 
 
Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy 131 
 
 still conducted by his descendants. Abraham 
 made excellent use of his riches in cultivat- 
 ing arts and letters, which had played such 
 great part in the life of his father. His 
 tastes were shared by his wife, a gifted 
 musician, who spoke several languages, and 
 read the old Greek and Latin authors in the 
 original. 
 
 It was into this atmosphere of ease and 
 culture that Felix was born at Hamburg, Feb- 
 ruary 3, 1809. Both he and his sister Fanny, 
 four years his elder, showed early signs of 
 great musical talent. Their mother gave 
 them their first music-lessons; but soon they 
 were ready to receive instruction from the 
 best teachers that the father's money could 
 procure. C. F. Zelter, the friend of Goethe, 
 was chosen to teach Felix composition. The 
 boy made wonderful progress. In the art- 
 loving home of the Mendelssohns, all 
 musicians and artists of renown that lived 
 in or passed through Berlin, convened for 
 the famous Sunday evening concerts, the 
 
132 Alia Breve 
 
 program containing always one or more com- 
 positions by the young prodigy. In 1821, 
 Zelter took Felix on a visit to Goethe, at 
 Weimar, where the boy played and ex- 
 temporized to the great delight of the Grand 
 Old Man. Felix had inherited his grand- 
 father's gift of expression, and the letters of 
 his youth already give vivid accounts of his 
 experiences. Throughout his life he kept up 
 a lively correspondence with his relatives 
 and friends, which makes excellent and 
 improving reading. 
 
 Abraham took his son to Paris in 1825, 
 and asked Cherubini's advice whether or 
 not the boy should continue to pursue a 
 musical profession. Cherubini left no doubt 
 in the father's mind, if any there was, but 
 Abraham would not consent to leaving his 
 son with Cherubini in Paris, and took him 
 back to Berlin, where he kept him under his 
 parental guidance and authority. 
 
 In 1826, Felix wrote the overture to 
 Shakespeare's "Midsummer Night's Dream," 
 
Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy 133 
 
 a work which discloses the full ripeness of 
 his musical genius. His first larger opera 
 was performed in Berlin, in 1827, but owing 
 to a poor libretto it had only mediocre 
 success. Intrigues at the opera house added 
 to the young man's annoyance, and the 
 incident was the beginning of a distinct 
 dislike that Mendelssohn felt ever after for 
 Berlin. During his musical studies he had 
 become engrossed in the works of Handel 
 and Bach, then hardly known by the 
 general public. It is not one of Mendels- 
 sohn's smallest merits to have rediscovered 
 these works; and his performance of Bach's 
 music for the "Passion according to St. 
 Matthew" on March 11, 1829, at Berlin, 
 will ever remain a memorable date in the 
 history of music. 
 
 Sent by his father, who always acted 
 as his son's adviser, he travelled to Switzer- 
 land and Italy, to France, and in 1829 to 
 England, where he achieved triumphs as 
 pianist, composer and conductor. He visited 
 
134 Alia Breve 
 
 England nine times, and travelled through 
 Scotland and Ireland, finding inspiration 
 wherever he went — witness his "Italian 
 Symphony," "Scotch Symphony," "Vene- 
 tian Gondolier Songs," "Hebrides" overture, 
 "Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage," and 
 so many other compositions. His famous 
 "Songs without Words" were really sketches 
 of a traveller, written for the delectation of 
 those who had stayed at home. They may 
 have the slightness of such sketches, but 
 they also have the vividness of indelible 
 impressions made on a sensitive and cultured 
 mind, and are drawn with infinite charm and 
 grace. 
 
 Mendelssohn acted as conductor at 
 various musical festivals, and spent a short 
 time as musical director in Diisseldorf, where 
 his oratorio "St. Paul" was brought out in 
 1836. Like his brother and his two sisters, 
 he was brought up in the Christian religion, 
 and in 1837 married the daughter of a 
 Protestant clergyman. His appointment as 
 
Felix M endelssohn-Bartholdy 135 
 
 conductor of the Leipzig Gewandhaus or- 
 chestra, in 1835, had given him at last a 
 position worthy of his extraordinary talents. 
 His influence made Leipzig the center of 
 musical life in Germany; his founding of 
 the Leipzig Conservatory of Music, in 1843, 
 created an institution which long remained 
 a model of its kind. On his last visit to 
 England, in 1846, he produced at Birming- 
 ham his oratorio "Elijah." 
 
 On his return to Leipzig, he began to 
 feel the effect of overwork; he resigned the 
 conductorship of the orchestra. The death 
 of his beloved sister Fanny broke his heart; 
 he passed away November 4, 1847. 
 
 Only at the end of his days did Felix 
 Mendelssohn learn to know the sorrow of 
 bereavement and the tragedy of human 
 helplessness. But then it was too late for 
 him to voice his grief in tones. As his life 
 was full of sunshine, so is his music; the 
 overpowering, elemental note is missing 
 even in his largest works. He was a classicist 
 
136 Alia Breve 
 
 by education, and a romanticist through 
 contagion. Weber's music decidedly in- 
 fluenced him. Fairy tale and folklore at- 
 tracted him as much as it had the older 
 master. Hence his music for a "Midsum- 
 mer Night's Dream," for Goethe's "The 
 First Walpurgis Night," the fragments of 
 an opera "The Loreley," and his overture 
 "The Lovely Melusine." He wrote several 
 choral works besides his two oratorios, 
 much chamber-music, and a violin concerto 
 that is especially noteworthy. All of his 
 music bears the stamp of refinement, the 
 glitter and opulence of the surroundings that 
 made his short life an unusually active and 
 happy one. 
 
XI 
 
 CHOPIN 
 
 Then were celestial harpings heard, not in full 
 symphony, as those by which the spheres are 
 tutored; but, as loudest instruments on earth 
 speak oftentimes, muffled; so to accommodate 
 their sound the better to the weak ears of the 
 imperfect-born. 
 
 — Charles Lamb 
 
XI 
 
 FREDERIC CHOPIN 
 
 The path of Chopin's life may be retraced 
 with a few strokes; no words can adequately 
 describe the magic of his music. And yet, 
 much has been written about it by masters 
 of the sonorous phrase, by cavilling critics or 
 fanatic worshippers — often extravagantly, 
 never impassively! Nor was it only after 
 death that man and work were paid their due, 
 although the masses, ever attracted by 
 obvious virtuosity, could not have been 
 expected to prefer the seer of strange and 
 novel beauty to his shallow contemporaries, 
 much as it disappointed the hypersensitive 
 and morbid artist. But it was honor, indeed, 
 to be hailed by a Schumann as "the boldest, 
 proudest poet-soul of his time," and pardon- 
 able, perhaps, in a disillusioned, self-centered 
 mind not to return the greeting; it was sweet 
 
 [139] 
 
140 Alia Breve 
 
 to receive fervent homage from the fairest, 
 and gratifying to enjoy the friendship of the 
 greatest among kindred spirits. 
 
 Chopin was born February 22, 1810, in a 
 village not far from Warsaw, the capital of 
 Poland. His father taught at a school 
 which was frequented by children of the 
 Polish aristocracy, and where young Fre- 
 deric formed many blackboard acquaint- 
 ances that ripened into pleasant connections 
 of helpful influence on his future. The boy's 
 musical talents became apparent at an 
 early age. The teacher who did most for 
 their development was Joseph Eisner (1769- 
 1854), a man of sound intelligence and taste. 
 Chopin soon gained a reputation as a fin- 
 ished pianist and a composer of distinction. 
 However, fame could be bought only in the 
 cosmopolitan music marts of Europe. He 
 visited Berlin in 1828; in the following year 
 he went to Vienna, where he played success- 
 fully in public. He returned to Warsaw 
 by way of Prague, Dresden and Breslau, 
 
Frederic Chopin 141 
 
 widening everywhere his circle of musical 
 relations. In November, 1830, Chopin set 
 out for a second visit to Vienna.' But the 
 Viennese public did not quicken to the 
 charms of his touch as it had done in 1829. 
 More boisterous players had ensnared it. 
 To the disillusionment of the musician was 
 added that of the patriot who saw another 
 of the periodic Polish revolutions, an 
 attempt in December, 1830, to shake off 
 Russia's yoke, finally and dismally collapse 
 before the overwhelming armies of the Czar. 
 He decided to try his luck in England, started 
 on his way to Munich, and arrived at Paris 
 in October, 1831. Here he remained, with 
 few and short interruptions, for the rest of 
 his life. 
 
 The Paris of 1831 was the gathering 
 place of illustrious men and women, the 
 caldron in which new creeds of art and poli- 
 tics fermented. The democratic monarchy 
 of Louis-Philippe, King by the grace of the 
 "July revolt" of 1830 and deposed by the 
 
142 Alia Breve 
 
 "February insurrection" of 1848, offered 
 shelter to a large number of political refu- 
 gees from other countries. Chopin, who 
 was never to return to Poland, found here 
 many of his compatriots and intimate 
 friends. His ardent love for the Polish 
 fatherland, the melancholy fate of the exiled, 
 are voiced in some of the most chivalrous 
 and lofty pages of his music, as well as in 
 some of the tenderest and saddest. His 
 aspirations and dreams, his sorrow and grief, 
 were shared by the nobility of blood and 
 brain that welcomed in him a precious 
 addition to their colony. It is not sur- 
 prising that he should have been drawn to 
 Heine, likewise an exile, whose warm lyri- 
 cism and icy wit formed such an incom- 
 parable combination. The parallel between 
 the musician and the poet is unavoidable; 
 it sounds the tonic triad in the gamut of 
 their emotions: homesick, lovesick, soulsick. 
 Chopin gave his first recital in Paris 
 under the auspices of the publisher and 
 
Frederic Chopin 143 
 
 piano manufacturer Camille Pleyel, from 
 the "slightly veiled, yet silvery sonorous- 
 ness" of whose instrument he drew sounds 
 such as had not been heard before. After 
 1835, he appeared but seldom in public. He 
 devoted his time to composing and teaching. 
 The majority of Chopin's compositions were 
 written in Paris and during the summers 
 that he spent at Nohant, the country-seat 
 of that extraordinary woman who wrote 
 under the pen-name of "George Sand" and 
 who made a specialty of gleaning the ma- 
 terial for her romances from personal ex- 
 perience. They met in 1837 and parted 
 ten years later. Soon after his arrival in 
 Paris, Chopin, in order to make a living, 
 had settled down to a routine of teaching, 
 and numerous were the pupils who came 
 to take lessons from this pale young man of 
 languid airs, of faultless manners and attire, 
 succumbing each and all to their teacher's 
 irresistible fascination, many of them loyal 
 in their cult for him unto the end, like that 
 
144 Alia Breve 
 
 privileged Miss Stirling who sent him from 
 Edinburgh twenty thousand francs when 
 she heard the ailing master was in need; 
 like the Countess Delphine Potocka who 
 rushed from Nice to his deathbed, and — 
 we are told — brightened his last hours with 
 her singing; like Adolph Gutmann — one of 
 his favorite pupils, to whom the C# minor 
 Scherzo was inscribed — in whose arms he 
 is said to have expired, after so much physi- 
 cal and mental suffering. 
 
 The seductive grace that distinguishes 
 many of Chopin's compositions, the often 
 painful languor which he puts into a melody, 
 the incisiveness that he imparts to a rhythm, 
 account for the present hold of his music on 
 all the world, including the unmusical half. 
 What the musician never tires of admiring 
 in this remarkable innovator — ranking as 
 such with Bach, Wagner and Debussy — is 
 the keenness of his divining ear, the surety 
 of his revealing fingers. Chopin wrote 
 practically only for the piano, the real 
 
Frederic Chopin 145 
 
 possibilities of which he was the first to 
 discover. Under his hands the instrument 
 ceased to be a mechanism of "percussion." 
 The "Hammerclavier" was taught subjec- 
 tion to his varying moods of passion, tender- 
 ness or playful irony; of anger, simple love- 
 liness, or gloom; from the keyboard he 
 drew the brilliant glare of trumpets or the 
 throb of muffled drums; but he always had 
 regard for "musical sonority," for harmo- 
 nious distribution of chord and arpeggio, 
 and proved that even little "hammers" 
 were intended — first and last — to sing! The 
 shimmering iridescence of his chromati- 
 cism — harmonic as well as melodic — is Cho- 
 pin's greatest gift to music; he tapped a 
 source that has not been exhausted to this 
 day. The pearly sinuosities of his runs, 
 his filigree of dazzling arabesques, inaugu- 
 rated a new era in musical "embellish- 
 ments." Peculiar to his music was the 
 style of his performance: that flexibility of 
 "tempo rubato," almost imperceptible and 
 
146 Alia Breve 
 
 indefinable, yet so essential and so telling. 
 Each new mode of musical expression 
 demands a special and fitting manner of 
 rendition to become articulate. What ap- 
 plies to the difference of orchestral technique 
 in Mozart, Berlioz and Stravinsky, is equally 
 true of the piano styles of Chopin, Debussy 
 and the later Scriabin, fundamentally re- 
 lated though the three may be. Schumann 
 had said of the "Preludes," after praising 
 them loudly: "The Philistines must keep 
 away." But Ignaz Moscheles, musical 
 middle-man, disregarded the warning, and 
 wrote, upon having become acquainted with 
 Chopin's compositions: "I am charmed with 
 their originality, and the national colouring 
 of his subjects. My thoughts, however, 
 and through them my fingers, stumble at 
 certain hard, inartistic, and to me incon- 
 ceivable modulations. On the whole I find 
 his music too sweet, not manly enough, and 
 hardly the work of a profound musician." 
 Thus the value of contemporary musical 
 
Frederic Chopin 147 
 
 criticism, based on "retarded hearing," re- 
 mains forever patent. Moscheles corrected 
 himself later (1839) in a description of 
 Chopin's person and playing: "His appear- 
 ance completely resembles his music — they 
 are both delicate and dreamy. He played 
 to me, in compliance with my request, and 
 I now for the first time understand his 
 music, and all the raptures of the ladies' 
 world become intelligible. The ad libitum 
 playing, which in the hand of other in- 
 terpreters of his music degenerates into a 
 constant uncertainty of rhythm, is with him 
 an element of exquisite originality; the 
 hard, inartistic [!] modulations, so like those 
 of a dilettante — which I never can manage 
 when playing Chopin's music — cease to shock 
 me, for he glides over them almost im- 
 perceptibly with his elfish fingers. His soft 
 playing being a mere breath, he requires no 
 powerful forte to produce the desired con- 
 trasts. — He played me some of his Etudes, 
 and his latest work, 'Preludes.' — Chopin's 
 
148 Alia Breve 
 
 excellent pupil Gutmann played his manu- 
 script Scherzo in C-sharp minor, Chopin 
 himself his manuscript Sonata in B-flat 
 minor, with the Funeral March." 
 
 Nervously high-strung, physically weak, 
 Chopin had no reserve power to fight con- 
 sumption when it attacked his lungs. On 
 the return from a visit to England, during 
 the winter of 1848-49, his condition grew 
 rapidly worse. He became so feeble that 
 he could no longer walk. He died in Paris, 
 in the early morning of October 17, 1849. 
 And now let Liszt, that great and generous 
 musician, the friend of Chopin, give you his 
 version of the end: 
 
 "The final agony commenced about 
 two o'clock; a cold sweat ran profusely 
 from his brow; after a short drowsiness, he 
 asked, in a voice scarcely audible: 'Who is 
 near me?' Being answered, he bent his head 
 to kiss the hand of M. Gutmann, who still 
 supported it; — while giving this last tender 
 
Frederic Chopin 149 
 
 proof of love and gratitude, the soul of the 
 artist left its fragile clay. He died as he 
 had lived — in loving." 
 
XII 
 
 SCHUMANN 
 
 It is the addition of strangeness to beauty that 
 constitutes the romantic character in art; and the 
 desire of beauty being a fixed element in every 
 artistic organization, it is the addition of curiosity 
 to this desire of beauty that constitutes the 
 romantic temper. 
 
 — IV alter Pater 
 
XII 
 
 ROBERT SCHUMANN 
 
 Out of the skies of poetry the spirit of 
 "romanticism" had descended upon music 
 at the beginning of the nineteenth century, 
 and musicians went forth to preach, in a 
 universal tongue, the evangel of Goethe and 
 Heine, of Byron, Lamartine and Victor 
 Hugo. The age of chivalry seemed to have 
 returned, bringing with it new troubadours 
 to praise high deeds of manly prowess and 
 sing the charms and virtues of fair women. 
 The mysticism of pious knights and militant 
 monks took the form of a pagan love for 
 nature's hidden beauties. Music was no 
 longer satisfied with giving puerile imitations 
 of bird calls, babbling brooks and rumbling 
 thunder. The secret wonders of night, the 
 conquering advent of spring, the grandeur 
 of mountain and sea, found expression in 
 tones. And as this could be done by im- 
 
 [153] 
 
154 Alia Breve 
 
 plication only, by a suggestion of mood 
 rather than pictorial preciseness, that quality 
 of the human mind known as imagination 
 became paramount with the composer and 
 indispensable to the interpreter of music. 
 Romanticism is fancy freed from the bounds 
 of convention and reason, is the lure of ex- 
 ploring unexplorable realms that border on 
 the confines of madness, where E. T. A. 
 Hoffmann, the spinner of fantastic tales, 
 and Robert Schumann, the musician of the 
 "Fantasiestucke," penetrated farthest and 
 were lost. 
 
 Schumann was born June 8, 1810, at 
 Zwickau in Saxony, the youngest son of his 
 parents. His father was a bookseller, a 
 man of good liteiary taste. We may as- 
 sume that in the home of the Schumanns 
 bookish questions were frequently discussed, 
 that "best sellers" and startling novelties 
 were often mentioned, and that thereby the 
 interest in Robert was awakened for that 
 new movement in poetry and fiction which 
 
Robert Schumann 155 
 
 was holding the reading public of Europe in 
 its grip. The boy received the higher school 
 education necessary for entering a university. 
 He began to compose music when he was 
 seven years old, and learned to play the 
 piano. But his musical preoccupations 
 were not permitted to interfere with the 
 course of his humanistic studies. He was 
 admitted to the University of Leipzig in 
 1828, and attended lectures on law, philoso- 
 phy and literature. Following the ancient 
 custom of continental scholars to go from one 
 college to another, in order to choose the 
 best teachers and most congenial surround- 
 ings, Schumann went to Heidelberg in 1829. 
 The lovely old town on the banks of the 
 Neckar with its wooded hills, crowned by a 
 famous ruin, was just the place for this 
 impressionable youth. Meanwhile he had 
 not neglected his music, and when he re- 
 turned to Leipzig, in the following year, 
 he decided to prepare himself for the 
 career of a concert pianist under the tuition 
 
156 Alia Breve 
 
 of Fr. Wieck, whose house became his second 
 home. But certain methods which he em- 
 ployed in order to hasten technical progress 
 proved harmful to his hands, and he had to 
 abandon his plans. Composition now be- 
 came his main occupation, together with 
 literary work, especially musical criticism. 
 Schumann founded a review which rendered 
 important service in directing public taste 
 and in paving the way for new composers. 
 It was he who first called attention in Ger- 
 many to the music of Chopin, and twenty 
 years later saluted young Brahms as a 
 rising genius. In 1840, Schumann married 
 Clara Wieck, daughter of his teacher, herself 
 an eminent pianist who became the ideal 
 performer of her husband's music. From 
 this period date the songs that make Schu- 
 mann one of the first lyric tone-poets of all 
 times. To name the finest, one would have 
 to name them nearly all; to mention but the 
 strangest and least known, one might point 
 
Robert Schumann 157 
 
 to "Im Zwielicht" and "Auf einer alten 
 Burg." 
 
 Clara was ever the faithful watcher and 
 intelligent ministrant, wife and artist. Her 
 family life was burdened with many griefs. 
 But she shared to the fullest Robert's 
 ecstatic joys of creation. When he was at 
 work on his Symphony in D minor, she 
 made this entry in her diary under the date 
 of May 31, 1841: "Robert began yesterday 
 another symphony, which will be in one 
 movement, and yet contain an adagio and 
 a finale. I have heard nothing about it, 
 yet I see Robert's bustle, and I hear the 
 D minor sounding wildly from a distance, 
 so that I know in advance that another work 
 will be fashioned in the depths of his soul. 
 Heaven is kindly disposed toward us: Robert 
 cannot be happier in the composition than 
 I am when he shows me such a work." 
 
 In 1843 Schumann was invited by 
 Mendelssohn to join the faculty of the newly 
 founded conservatory in Leipzig, but his 
 
158 Alia Breve 
 
 stay was a short one. He toured Russia in 
 company with his wife, in 1844, and in the 
 autumn of the same year settled in Dresden. 
 He preferred the comparative quiet of this 
 place: This suits my condition, for I still 
 suffer very much from my nerves." Here 
 he remained until 1850, when he was called 
 to Diisseldorf as municipal director of music. 
 Three years later, the wonderful brain that 
 had fashioned so many gems of the purest 
 water, became clouded, and final darkness 
 slowly settled around him who had sent so 
 much light into the world. His attacks of 
 mental depression dated from about his 
 twenty-fifth year; they grew steadily worse, 
 and when he attempted to commit suicide 
 by jumping into the Rhine in February, 
 1854, his condition had to be acknowledged 
 hopeless. He was placed in an asylum at 
 Endenich, near Bonn on the Rhine, where 
 he died July 29, 1856. 
 
 Schumann the dreamer, the visionary, 
 the chivalrous champion, the poet, sang 
 
Robert Schumann 159 
 
 with a voice that reflected all the delicate 
 musings and imaginings of his mind. Whim- 
 sical or tender, brilliant or simple, shy or 
 exuberant — his music is always expressive, 
 his characterization infallible. Labelled in 
 fanciful manner, his piano pieces — not less 
 than his songs — always tell their story, if 
 properly retold! Exquisite miniaturist in 
 his "Scenes of Childhood," etcher of opulent 
 light and shade in his "Carnival," "Kreis- 
 leriana" and "Novellettes," wielder of larger 
 brushes in his remarkable piano concerto, 
 he wrote for the instrument what may justly 
 be called the most picturesque, the most 
 romantic, of all romantic music. 
 
 A fresh gust, freighted with all the scents 
 of May, was blowing through the grove of 
 Music. Birdlings were tuning up in a soar- 
 ing treble, to the basso ostinato of croaking 
 frogs. Let us ponder what Moscheles, the 
 pedantic pianist and malicious diarist, wrote 
 in 1850, after hearing Schumann's opera 
 "Genoveva" : "There is a want of intelligible, 
 
160 Alia Breve 
 
 flowing, rhythmical melody; I am one of 
 Schumann's worshippers, but cannot conceal 
 from myself this weakness. We applauded 
 enthusiastically, and called him forward at 
 the end, but there was not a single 'encore'." 
 
 Schumann was never intended for an 
 opera composer. But "want of melody" was 
 certainly not his! 
 
 In 1853, reviewing the trend of the 
 times, as it were, Moscheles had this to say: 
 "Brahms' compositions are of a really 
 elevated character, and Schumann, whom 
 he has chosen as a model, recommends him 
 as the 'Messiah of Music' I find him, like 
 Schumann, often piquant, but occasionally 
 too labored. Even Beethoven's music was 
 objected to, people say, when it first ap- 
 peared, as being too far-fetched, and difficult 
 to understand. True it is that Beethoven's 
 genius lured him away to paths never trodden 
 before, which are not accessible to everyone, 
 and yet since that time it has been proved 
 that he not only sought but found what he 
 
Robert Schumann 161 
 
 wished to express in music. Let us hope that 
 this also may be the lot of the younger com- 
 posers. Brahms' technical powers, his reading 
 from sight, do him and his teacher, Eduard 
 Marxsen, great credit. — I have heard a good 
 deal of Berlioz, and give him my closest at- 
 tention. My opinion of his music remains 
 unshaken, I acknowledge his merit, but 
 cannot always understand him — or is such 
 music as the 'Witches' Sabbath' not meant 
 to be understood ? Curious — one now listens 
 again with pleasure to the simple opera, 
 'Doctor and Apothecary,' by Dittersdorf; 
 one forgets how Rossini in his 'Tell,' and 
 Meyerbeer in his 'Roberto,' have crammed 
 us with their loaded instrumentation and 
 scenic effects, and how Wagner has gone 
 beyond both. Les extremes se touchent." 
 
 But what if there be no extremes in music, 
 save those of boredom and sterility? 
 
XIII 
 
 LISZT 
 
 It is by art and religion that men have always 
 sought rest. Art is a world of man's own making, 
 in which he finds harmonious development. Relig- 
 ion is the anodyne cup — indeed of our own blood — 
 at which we slake our thirst when our hearts are 
 torn by personal misery, or weary and distracted by 
 life's heat and restless hurry. 
 
 — Havelock Ellis 
 
XIII 
 
 FRANZ LISZT 
 
 What the Romans meant by vales — 
 divinely inspired singer and prophet, leader 
 in his chosen art — such was Liszt. As these 
 ancient magi were believed to hold com- 
 munion with the supernatural, only so could 
 a world that was fortunate enough to live 
 under the spell of Liszt's piano playing, ex- 
 plain his wizardry. Legend has taken pos- 
 session of him; as he was worshipped in the 
 living person, so has his memory become 
 a veritable cult, with the obligatory rites 
 and relics. We can but regret that his day 
 did not know the uncanny "recording" ap- 
 pliances of our own. If his performance is 
 receding more and more to the dim region 
 of fable, the greatness of his heart and the 
 true originality of his music are shining in 
 ever-growing brightness. As a character 
 and a composer, posterity is beginning to 
 
 [165 1 
 
166 Alia Breve 
 
 judge him more fairly than did his contem- 
 poraries, who could not do sufficient honor 
 to the eccentric virtuoso. 
 
 The life of Liszt was brilliant, spectacular. 
 Drab words can give only a glimpse of it. 
 A youth, portrayed by the music-mad Ingres 
 as a dreamy Apollo in London-tailored 
 clothes, his golden curls were the admiration 
 of all romantic women in the romantic Paris 
 of 1830, while his demoniacal hands were 
 the dread and envy of his pianistic rivals. 
 At seventy, robed in priestly black, the white 
 curls that framed his warty, wrinkled face 
 were still coveted by doting femininity, his 
 fingers still conjured up enchantment from 
 out a case of wire strings: his spirit had not 
 aged. His personality and manners, not 
 less than his art and wit, made him beloved 
 by all. No man of his time was more truly 
 the grand seigneur of music, or the fairy-god- 
 father of struggling talent. In the Parisian 
 salons of the July monarchy he was a peer of 
 Chopin, Victor Hugo, George Sand and 
 
Franz Liszt 167 
 
 Heine. Between rapid-fire runs and octave 
 trills he could shrewdly discuss Saint-Simon's 
 nouveau christianisme or political and social 
 problems. He was at ease strolling with 
 Napoleon III on the terrace of the Tuileries, 
 or with Pius IX in the gardens of the Vatican. 
 Whether living with the astonishing Countess 
 d'Agoult on the shores of Lake Geneva, or 
 at Weimar's "Altenburg" with the solicitous 
 Princess Sayn- Wittgenstein in attendance; 
 whether in the blaze of a crowded concert 
 hall or in cloistral retirement at Santa 
 Francesca Romana, with the ruins of the 
 Forum at his door, the various scenes in 
 this unparalleled career were always of a sort 
 to keep the tongues of Europe wagging, to 
 satisfy the public's craving for picturesque 
 effects and sentimental complications. 
 
 While he furnished his publishers with 
 numberless transcriptions of all the tunes in 
 vogue, formed the most notable group of 
 pianists any master ever reared, fought the 
 battles of Wagner and a score of lesser 
 
168 Alia Breve 
 
 Zukunftsmusiker, attended to a stupendous 
 correspondence and other literary work, 
 he still found time to write those compositions 
 which reveal him the exalted soul and daring 
 pioneer he was. 
 
 Born at Raiding, near Oedenburg in 
 Hungary, on October 22nd, 1811, Franz 
 Liszt was fortunate in having a musical 
 father who gave the boy his first piano lessons 
 and left nothing undone to develop the 
 exceptional abilities of his son. Aged nine, 
 Franz played before an audience of Hun- 
 garian nobles, who were so impressed that 
 they contributed to a fund which permitted 
 the father to give up his position as farm 
 superintendent of Count Esterhazy, and 
 take his little prodigy to Czerny in Vienna. 
 In 1823 Beethoven heard him play, and 
 embraced him — the latter is authenticated, 
 the former at least doubtful, considering the 
 great man's tragic deafness. At the age 
 of twelve Liszt was taken to Paris, where 
 he created a furore. Cherubini would not 
 
Fr anz Liszt 169 
 
 accept him at the Conservatoire, under the 
 pretext that he was a foreigner. Reicha 
 became his teacher in composition; on the 
 piano there was little left for him to learn. 
 Switzerland and London were next to hear 
 him. For the long journeys in his travelling 
 coach, he carried with him a little silent 
 clavier to train his technique in daily ex- 
 ercises. After his father died, in 1827, Liszt 
 taught and concertized in order to support 
 his mother. He soon amassed a fortune. 
 In the winter of 1833-34 he met Countess 
 d'Agoult. Liszt vainly tried to escape the 
 charms of this politico-poetic Circe. Their 
 attachment created a scandal. It proved 
 anew that our moral code was drawn up 
 without consulting genius. One of their 
 three children, Cosima, was married to Hans 
 von Biilow, and later to Richard Wagner. 
 Four years they lived within the tolerant 
 confines of the Helvetian republic, or 
 travelling in Italy. Then Liszt resumed 
 his concertizing. With a large gift of money 
 
170 Alia Breve 
 
 from the proceeds of his recitals, he made 
 possible the completion of the Beethoven 
 monument at Bonn. In 1844 growing mis- 
 understandings led to the final separation 
 from the Countess. His wanderings lasted 
 till 1847, carrying him through Germany, 
 Russia, Sweden and Spain, feted wherever 
 he went. The university of Konigsberg, 
 where Kant had lectured, gave him a doctor's 
 degree. Kings and Emperors had to be 
 content to offer him orders, jewels and other 
 costly trifles. Having entered into very 
 cordial relations with the reigning house of 
 Saxe-Weimar, he accepted the Grand-duke's 
 offer in 1848, to become director of the 
 court opera and concerts. From 1848 to 
 1861 he resided more or less permanently 
 in the "city of the Muses," forever dis- 
 tinguished by Goethe and Schiller; but even 
 in later years he liked to return to this 
 charming quiet spot among the wooded 
 mountains of Thuringia. During this period 
 he wrote his most important orchestral works. 
 
Franz Liszt 171 
 
 In his symphonic poems he followed the 
 example of Berlioz, but with a greater 
 felicity in the choice of his subjects, with a 
 broader command of sensuous melody, and 
 with a richer palette of instrumental colors. 
 "Dante," "Tasso" and the "Faust Sym- 
 phony" contain remarkable inventions in 
 tonal beauty. By applying his methods 
 of orchestration to the piano, he augmented 
 its range and endowed it with a new wealth 
 of dynamic shadings and contrasting so- 
 norities. 
 
 During this first Weimar period he be- 
 came the champion of Wagner. Memorable 
 letters were exchanged between Liszt and 
 Wagner, who, as a political exile from 
 Germany, was not able to hear the first 
 performance of his "Lohengrin" on August 
 28, 1850. Liszt's influence quickened the 
 advance of music incalculably. Berlioz 
 found in him an enthusiastic interpreter. 
 These progressive tendencies met, as usual, 
 with attacks from the reactionary element 
 
172 Alia Breve 
 
 and, tired of petty cabals, Liszt left Weimar 
 in 1861 and went to Rome, where he resided 
 until 1870. His religious contemplations 
 led him to study the old liturgical chants 
 and sacred music; he was prompted now 
 himself to write for the church. As his 
 pupils and admirers had followed him wher- 
 ever he went, so did they soon gather around 
 him in the Eternal City, and he again held 
 his court. He taught, composed, encouraged 
 — always kind and hospitable — enjoying a 
 glass of cognac and a rubber of whist, not- 
 withstanding his clerical aspirations. He 
 took the lower orders in 1865, and thereafter 
 Abbe Liszt wore the Roman frock. 
 
 In 1875 he was made director of the 
 musical Academy in Budapest, dividing his 
 time between the Hungarian capital, Rome, 
 and Weimar, to which old associations drew 
 him ever again. His declining years were 
 dimmed by the rising star of his son-in-law, 
 Richard Wagner, who helped himself to 
 much of what Liszt had created. Carrying 
 
Franz Liszt 173 
 
 his train of disciples the length and breadth 
 of Europe, spending royally of his wisdom 
 and encouragement, his earthly travels came 
 to an end at Bayreuth, on July 31, 1886, 
 during a visit to the Wagnerian Mecca. 
 Thus died he who was counted on as an added 
 attraction to the "shrine" — lonely and in- 
 considerately — in the midst of the festivities 
 presided over by his calculating daughter, 
 Cosima. 
 
 The number of Liszt's compositions is 
 very large. Not all of them withstand the 
 wear of time. They can be classed roughly 
 as, first, his piano music; second, his or- 
 chestral tone-poems; and third, his religious 
 music. Each of these classes may be sub- 
 divided into the many pieces d'occasion, 
 compositions written, as it were, to order, 
 and those which are the spontaneous work 
 of his own choosing and devising. His songs, 
 while they are interesting and often beauti- 
 ful, are rather contrived" than inspired. 
 It was only natural that the virtuoso should 
 
174 Alia Breve 
 
 write to dazzle the public. He did it with 
 his "Hungarian Rhapsodies," his Etudes 
 and Concertos. He could also be simple, 
 and wove intimate confessions into the 
 shorter sketches that illustrate, autobio- 
 graphically, some memorable hours in his 
 journeys and emotional life. His church music 
 is not that of an ingenuous mind, after all, 
 but betrays a sort of dilettante asceticism. 
 He emphasized the obvious effects of the 
 most effective ritual in Christendom. When 
 he played some of his church music for 
 Wagner, at Venice, in 1883, the latter re- 
 marked: "Your God makes a lot of noise." 
 In a work like his "Legend of St. Elisabeth" 
 the composer's dramatic and religious in- 
 stincts mingle in more fruitful union. His 
 "program symphony" was the model for a 
 long line of successors, who must trace to 
 him what they learned about the art of evok- 
 ing mental conceptions and distinctive moods 
 through aural sensations. "Till Eulen- 
 spiegel" of Richard Strauss, Rachmaninoff's 
 
Franz Liszt 175 
 
 "Island of the Dead," and Debussy's "La 
 Mer," are descendants of Liszt's "Mazeppa," 
 "Battle of the Huns," "Les Preludes," and 
 all his other orchestral pieces broidered upon 
 the woof of some poetic or pictorial subject. 
 But his contribution to music, as such and 
 apart from programmatic associations, is 
 the really vital service he rendered his art. 
 Gifted with an ear that caught some of the 
 unheard harmonies still stored beyond the 
 threshold of consciousness, and opening the 
 door for an instant, he let a fresh gust of 
 sounding beauty into the world. He was the 
 only composer of the nineteenth century 
 who would have understood and liked the 
 music of the early twentieth, because, among 
 all the musicians of his time, he had the 
 farthest vision and the least conceit. 
 
XIV 
 
 WAGNER 
 
 Et tremblant et ravi, Ton sort de la vulgaire 
 salle ou le miracle de cette essentielle musique 
 s'est accompli. 
 
 — J.-K. Huysmans 
 
XIV 
 
 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 Blazoned in blinding light — clear and 
 sharp — stands the amazing Master of Bay- 
 reuth. He is the apotheosis of an era. 
 Transfiguring the musical heritage of cen- 
 turies, he is in himself a transfiguration. 
 Rooted in the loam of tradition, his work 
 branches into a gigantic tree, bearing fruit 
 unlike any other; proudly lifting its top- 
 most boughs into the heavens; clad in foliage 
 that changed, through all the stages of life's 
 ripening seasons, from the pale monochrome 
 of Spring to the riotous splendor of the 
 autumnal mountainside. If ever there was 
 music that by sheer force and intensity 
 "carried away" the hearer, it is Wagner's. 
 Many have slandered and defiled it; more 
 have waxed dithyrambic over it. Although 
 the man and his work invite a careful applica- 
 tion of critical probe and scalpel, one who 
 [179] 
 
180 Alia Breve 
 
 has throbbed under the spell of "Tristan's" 
 magic can speak of that experience only in 
 enviously wishing for the language of Francis 
 Thompson's "Shelley." 
 
 Wagner was concentration and vigor 
 personified. From both a physical and 
 spiritual point of view, such achievements as 
 his could have been accomplished only by a 
 dynamic nature, loving controversy and un- 
 daunted by adversity. His ambitions were 
 supported by absolute fatalism and bound- 
 less egoism. His mentality was complex; 
 high ideals and lack of scruples did not prove 
 incompatible with him. Wagner, for all 
 his weakness, was a genius; he was an artist 
 in spite of his theories. What the shell is to 
 the egg, such are theories to a new germ in 
 art. They are essential for a time. But the 
 bird, when it is fully hatched, breaks the 
 native prison and leaves it behind. Some 
 artistic movements are not content to imitate 
 the bird; they cling to their shell. The 
 theories of Wagner — musical, philosophical, 
 
R ichard Wagner 181 
 
 sociological and political — did more to ob- 
 struct his success than to further it; they 
 have caused among his followers more con- 
 fusion than enlightenment. If his music 
 conquered all obstacles that were placed in 
 its way, if it is still the most radiant emana- 
 tion of musical energy, it is because of its 
 unprecedented gorgeousness and sensuous 
 beauty. Also, because it was the work of a 
 master craftsman, whose technique evolved 
 with the higher reach of his aims. 
 
 It is idle to speculate whether the 
 theatrical environments in which the boy 
 grew up, and a fondness for the stage in- 
 herited from his father, helped Wagner or 
 not. He wrote hardly any music that was 
 not conceived as part of, or influenced by, 
 a dramatic action. What few purely in- 
 strumental compositions he left, not 
 originally intended for the theatre, are 
 not among his best. He was dependent 
 upon a "story" and a "scene" for inspiration. 
 And thus a tin swan, cardboard dragon 
 
182 Alia Breve 
 
 and stuffed dove became living symbols to 
 him; hissing steam pipes, gauze veils and 
 burning pitch he saw as mighty elements. 
 They were responsible for some of his most 
 kindling and imposing music. In child- 
 hood he became saturated with the atmo- 
 sphere peculiar to the stage. He had literary 
 propensities; while in school, he wrote poetry. 
 Wagner was a true poet only in the sense 
 that he contrived for his operas situations 
 which gave him opportunities to write poetic 
 music. His verses, even as opera verses go, 
 are not always felicitous and need the 
 palliative song. Although possessed of a 
 strong Saxon dialect, he delighted in reading 
 the poems of his operas to his admirers. In 
 his very extensive prose writings, the style 
 often falls below the lofty idea he wishes to 
 express. Prompted by his dislike for the 
 Semitic race, he prophesied, in 1852, that 
 the time was approaching when, intellect- 
 ually, Germans "should be such paupers 
 that the appearance of a new book from the 
 
Richard Wagner 183 
 
 pen of Heinrich Heine would create quite 
 a sensation." He little realized that this 
 Jew from Diisseldorf, exiled in Paris, was 
 one of the last great masters of the German 
 tongue. 
 
 Wagner, the poet and essayist, cannot 
 compare with the musician, nor was the latter 
 primarily an opera composer, contrary to 
 his own estimate. Much of Wagner's music 
 is as thrilling in the concert room as it is 
 in the theatre; the voice, particularly that 
 belonging to the typically Wagnerian Held 
 or "dramatic singer," is not always missed. 
 And yet, who would do without that dark 
 and empty street of Nuremberg, at the end 
 of the second act of "Die Meistersinger," 
 during the eighteen most ravishing measures 
 in that ravishing score? Could we forgo 
 the delicious liquidness of the three women's 
 voices, with their inevitable "untempered- 
 ness," in the trio of the G otter dammerung 
 Rheinmaidens? 
 
184 Alia Breve 
 
 Crowded with portentous happenings, 
 intricately connected with many currents of 
 his time, the life of Richard Wagner is not 
 adequately treated in a few pages. What 
 the world of art, science and politics com- 
 prised of distinguished men and women, in 
 his day, knew him as friend or enemy. His 
 friends, whether in humble walks or seated 
 upon thrones, were to him always welcome 
 tools for obtaining small comforts or great 
 advantages. Nor did he hesitate to hurt 
 them to the quick, if his interest or whim 
 seemed to demand it. His indebtedness to 
 Liszt, only two years his senior, in matters of 
 musical criticism and prompting, will never 
 be known to a fraction. Had it not been 
 for this magnanimous and intrepid champion, 
 Wagner's star would have risen much later, 
 events might have shaped themselves differ- 
 ently. 
 
 (Wilhelm) Richard Wagner, the youngest 
 of seven children, was born May 22, 1813, 
 at Leipzig, one day after Napoleon's victory 
 
Richard Wagner 185 
 
 at Bautzen. Five months later, Napoleon 
 was decisively beaten at Leipzig, and in the 
 wake of the terrible carnage came sickness. 
 Wagner's father, a police official, was among 
 those who succumbed to the epidemic. Two 
 years after his death, the widow married an 
 actor, Ludwig Geyer, with whom the family 
 moved to Dresden. Geyer died in 1821. 
 From 1822 to 1827 Richard Geyer, as he 
 was then known, went to school in Dresden. 
 Upon the return of the family to Leipzig, 
 in 1828, he continued his studies, and in 
 February, 1831, entered the University. 
 
 His music lessons, so far, had not been 
 systematic. He had tried his hand at the 
 composition of overtures, and liked to 
 "bluster about politics with young literati"; 
 but not until Theodor Weinlig, Cantor of the 
 Thomas School, had directed him to the 
 right road, did his musical education make 
 much headway. He began to devour Beet- 
 hoven, he enthused over Weber's "Frei- 
 schiitz," His first large work was a sym- 
 
186 Alia Breve 
 
 phony, wholly imitative of Mozart and 
 Beethoven, which was successfully given 
 at the Leipzig Gewandhaus on January 10, 
 1833. It did in no wise show great talent, 
 and much less originality. Four weeks 
 earlier, in December 1832, at Paris, Berlioz's 
 "Fantastic Symphony" had received a memo- 
 rable performance. Thus approached, the 
 two dates become indicative. 
 
 From February 1833 to January 1834 
 Wagner filled the position of chorusmaster 
 at the little opera house in Wiirzburg, where 
 his brother Albert was engaged as a singer. 
 In the Autumn of 1834 he became conductor 
 at the theatre in Magdeburg. This stage 
 was the first to present an opera by Wagner; 
 it was "Das Liebesverbot," poorly played 
 and coolly received on March 29, 1836. At 
 Magdeburg Wagner fell in love with the 
 actress Minna Planer, whom he married on 
 November 24, 1836, at Konigsberg, where 
 both had found engagements. When the 
 manager failed, the Wagners were fortunate 
 
Richard Wagner 187 
 
 in being asked to join the troupe of the newly 
 organized theatre at Riga, where they re- 
 mained until July, 1839. They were not 
 well suited to each other; yet Minna, in- 
 capable of comprehending her husband, 
 stood faithfully by him through the period 
 of his greatest want. When twenty years 
 later she had cause to be jealous, and showed 
 her feelings too violently, it came to a sepa- 
 ration. Wagner wrote of that parting, 1858, 
 — made final in 1861 — in his Reminiscences: 
 "It was the most brilliant summer day with 
 a bright, cloudless sky; I remember that I 
 never once looked back, or shed a tear on 
 taking leave of her, and this almost terrified 
 me." 
 
 The time of their hardest trials awaited 
 Wagner and his wife at Paris, where they 
 arrived in the Autumn of 1839, having 
 journeyed by boat from Pillau to London, 
 remaining there a week, thence going to 
 Boulogne. Here Wagner met Meyerbeer, 
 who received him cordially and gave him 
 
188 Alia Breve 
 
 letters of introduction to influential people 
 in Paris. But the sojourn in Paris from 
 September 1839 to April 1842 was a long 
 succession of hardships and disappointments. 
 Wagner had to do hack work and arrange- 
 ments in order to make a living. The only 
 composition of his performed in Paris during 
 that time (Feb. 1841) was an overture to 
 a play, "Columbus," written in Magdeburg. 
 He tried in vain to interest the director of 
 the Paris Opera in his "Rienzi," which he 
 had begun at Riga. Several opera projects 
 had occupied him, but this one, carried out 
 according to the Meyerbeerian formula, 
 was the first work which established Wagner's 
 reputation when it was finally brought out at 
 Dresden, October 20, 1842. In Paris Wagner 
 had written an orchestral work, "Eine Faust- 
 ouverture," and completed his opera "Der 
 fliegende Hollander" during the summer of 
 1841. "Under the stress of the most terrible 
 privations" he orchestrated the opera. All 
 efforts to have it accepted failed. He sold 
 
Richard Wagner 189 
 
 the French rights to the plot, and with the 
 proceeds returned to Germany. 
 
 The performance of "Rienzi" at Dresden 
 had as a consequence Wagner's engagement 
 at the Royal Opera House. It was there 
 that "Der fliegende Hollander" was first 
 given, in 1843, and "Tannhauser" in 1845. 
 As early as 1848 he began to sketch a libretto 
 founded on the Nibelungen saga. He was 
 compromised in the revolutionary May riots 
 of 1849 and had to flee from Dresden. He 
 turned to Liszt at Weimar, who was then 
 preparing a performance of "Tannhauser"; 
 but on learning that a warrant had been 
 issued for his capture, he hurried to Paris, 
 and from there went to Zurich, where he 
 arrived in June. The warrant, in giving his 
 signalement, said of the fugitive that "in 
 moving and speaking, he is hasty." 
 
 During his stay in Switzerland his pen 
 was busier with literary essays than with 
 musical compositions. In 1852 he made 
 the acquaintance of Otto Wesendonck, a 
 
190 Alia Breve 
 
 rich merchant whose wife, Mathilde, was as 
 much attracted by Wagner as she attracted 
 him; their friendship proved a great inspira- 
 tion to the musician. The beginnings of 
 "Tristan und Isolde" date from that period. 
 Although, after six years, misunderstandings 
 led to a break, their correspondence con- 
 tinued. In 1853 the poem of theNibelungen 
 tetralogy was privately printed. Wagner 
 finished the composition of "Das Rheingold" 
 in 1854. In the following year he conducted 
 a series of orchestra concerts at London. 
 "Die Walkure" was completed in 1856; 
 "Siegfried" was begun; but Wagner laid 
 aside the "Ring" for "Tristan." 
 
 He went to Venice, late in August, 1858, 
 and found quarters in one of the ancient 
 palazzi, writing in his Reminiscences: "I 
 gazed down from my balcony with growing 
 satisfaction on the wonderful canal, and 
 said to myself that here I would complete 
 'Tristan'." He completed only the second 
 
Richard Wagner 191 
 
 act in Venice; the third was finished at 
 Lucerne, in August, 1859. 
 
 He tried his luck once more in Paris, in 
 the early part of 1860, with three concerts 
 which created hot discussion. They were 
 the signal for animated attack and defence; 
 they incited Beaudelaire, the poet, nobly 
 and intelligently to expound the merits of 
 a music that musicians scorned. Though 
 these concerts proved a financial failure, 
 they led to the notorious performance of 
 "Tannhauser" in Paris on March 13, 1861. 
 
 A political amnesty made it possible for 
 Wagner to return to Germany. "Tristan" 
 was accepted at Vienna, but after 57 re- 
 hearsals it had to be abandoned as "im- 
 possible." During the following winter, 
 Wagner wrote the book of "Die Meister- 
 singer," the first sketches of which date 
 back to 1845; he began to compose the music 
 at Bieberich, on the Rhein, in 1862. The 
 score was finished five years later. 
 
192 Alia Breve 
 
 A concert tour took him to Leipzig, St. 
 Petersburg, Moscow, Pest, Breslau, and 
 finally back to Vienna. Money matters 
 grew constantly worse; he moved heaven and 
 earth to straighten out his affairs. He left 
 Vienna to seek refuge in Switzerland, and 
 had reached Stuttgart, in the spring of 1864, 
 when an emissary from King Ludwig II 
 (who had just ascended the Bavarian throne) 
 brought him a letter from the young mon- 
 arch, inviting him to Munich, where ease 
 and peace should be his. Providence had 
 intervened at the most critical hour and in 
 the most wonderful manner. Wagner ended 
 his personal Reminiscences, which extend to 
 this point with these words: "The dangerous 
 road along which Fate beckoned me to such 
 great ends, was not destined to be clear of 
 troubles and anxieties of a kind unknown to 
 me heretofore, but I was never again to feel 
 the weight of the everyday hardships of 
 existence under the protection of my exalted 
 friend." 
 
Richard Wagner 193 
 
 Attentions and honors were showered 
 on Wagner by his royal benefactor. Ludwig, 
 the dreamer and phantast, did all he could 
 to make the phantastic musician's dream 
 come true. Thus "Tristan und Isolde" 
 was brought out at Munich in 1865, and 
 three years later "Die Meistersinger" re- 
 ceived a brilliant performance. But 
 jealousies and cabals had made Wagner 
 so unpopular in Munich, that he preferred 
 to return to the country that had given 
 him shelter before. He settled this time 
 at Triebschen, near Lucerne, where he 
 stayed most of the time from December, 
 1865, until he took up his abode at Bayreuth 
 in 1872. He married Cosima von Biilow, a 
 daughter of Liszt, in August, 1870. Writing, 
 in June, to a friend about the impending 
 ceremony, Wagner said of his wife: She 
 has defied all disapprobation and taken upon 
 herself every condemnation. She has borne 
 to me a wonderfully beautiful and vigorous 
 boy, whom I could boldly call Siegfried." 
 
194 Alia Breve 
 
 And for a birthday present, on December 
 25 of the same year, Wagner presented 
 Cosima with the wonderfully beautiful and 
 tender "Siegfried Idyl." 
 
 In his quest for the idyllic home of his 
 fulness and the site of his perfect stage, 
 Wagner had chosen Bayreuth. A theatre 
 was to be built especially for his Nibelungen 
 tetralogy, which was nearing its completion. 
 The cornerstone of the "Festspielhaus" was 
 laid on Wagner's birthday, 1872, and the 
 first performance of "The Ring of the Ni- 
 belung" was given there in its entirety in 
 August, 1876. The large deficit was covered 
 by the foundation of numerous Wagner So- 
 cieties the world over, which collected funds 
 by the performance of the master's works. 
 "Parsifal," ruminated for a long time, was 
 written during 1878 and 1879, the orchestra- 
 tion was finished in January, 1882, and this 
 "Biihnenweihfestspiel" had its first public 
 hearing at Bayreuth in the summer of the 
 same year. It was the culmination of Wag- 
 
Richard Wagner 195 
 
 ner's career. Seeking rest from his exertions 
 of preparing the performance, and in order 
 to improve his failing health, Wagner spent 
 the winter at Venice. Here, at the palazzo 
 Vendramin on the Grand Canal, he died on 
 February 13, 1883. His body was buried 
 in the grounds of his house "Wahnfried" at 
 Bayreuth. 
 
 It matters little, to-day, what principles 
 were involved in Wagner's reforms; they 
 have conserved only historical interest. His 
 "music of the future" belongs now to the 
 past, no matter how long we shall continue 
 to enjoy and need it. Wagner abolished 
 in his operas the "aria" and all other mu- 
 sical "numbers" which were introduced for 
 the music's sake alone. To him the dramatic 
 continuity of the play was paramount, and 
 in order to maintain it he invented what he 
 called the "continuous melody." He was 
 the first to label consistently, with pertinent 
 musical motives (Leitmotive), certain char- 
 acters or ideas as they entered and reappeared 
 
196 Alia Breve 
 
 in the course of the action. But it is safe 
 to say that all these innovations would have 
 counted for little, had not his dramas 
 possessed such grandeur, his melodies such 
 power, his motives such psychologic truth. 
 He was accused, in his lifetime, of shunning 
 "sweet concord" and revelling in noise and 
 dissonance. Each advance in music has to 
 be fought for against the natural prejudices 
 of "retarded hearing." The lessons of yester- 
 day should make us cautious in judging the 
 harmonic adventures of to-morrow. There 
 will always be a "music of the future," which 
 some day will be old and cherished as a 
 patrimonial treasure, provided it be so 
 soundly and supremely "musical" as was 
 the music of Richard Wagner. 
 
XV 
 
 VERDI 
 
 Die Verachter italienischer Musik werden einst 
 in der Holle ihrer wohlverdienten Strafe nicht 
 entgehen und sind vielleicht verdammt, die lange 
 Ewigkeit hindurch nichts anderes zu horen als 
 Fugen von Sebastian Bach. 
 
 — Heinrich Heine 
 
XV 
 
 GIUSEPPE VERDI 
 
 Three centuries of Italian opera lie be- 
 tween the first real attempt at this form of 
 musico-dramatic expression, the "Dafne" 
 of Rinuccini, and "Falstaff," the octogenarian 
 Verdi's last and finest work for the stage. 
 Rinuccini's poem with the music by Peri 
 and Corsi was performed privately in Corsi's 
 house at Florence, some time after 1594 
 and before 1597. Between 1600 and 1800, 
 the mythological subject of Daphne's change 
 into a laurel tree, as related in Ovid's "Met- 
 amorphoses," had been used by no fewer 
 than fifteen composers, including Handel. 
 At about the same time that the circle of 
 Florentine dilettanti was experimenting with 
 "chanted plays," substituting the solo voice 
 with instrumental accompaniment for the 
 then prevailing type of choral part-writing 
 (chiefly unaccompanied), Shakespeare was 
 
 [199] 
 
200 Alia Breve 
 
 immortalizing the character of FalstafI in 
 his "Henry IV" and "The Merry Wives of 
 Windsor." Falstaff had appeared in 
 fourteen different operas before Arrigo Boito, 
 poet and composer, wrote his libretto for 
 Verdi, whose opera was first presented at 
 La Scala in Milan, on February 9, 1893. 
 
 Not until 1637, at Venice, was the first 
 opera house opened to the general public. 
 These novel spectacles soon formed the 
 chief attraction of the Carnival season, not 
 only in the rich and pleasure-loving Venetian 
 republic, but at all the courts of Italy, great 
 or small. The rest of Europe quickly 
 followed the Italian example. It became 
 the ambition of most composers to write 
 for the stage. Church music, which had 
 attained such splendor in the fifteenth and 
 sixteenth centuries, was neglected, and even 
 religious compositions now seemed written 
 for an altar that was lit, not by the mystic 
 flickering of blessed candles, but by the brazen 
 glare of footlights. A successful opera was 
 
Giuseppe Verdi 201 
 
 a lucrative thing, and theatrical managers 
 everywhere commissioned prominent mu- 
 sicians to write new works for each succeeding 
 season. The names of Draghi, Leo, Jom- 
 melli, Sarti, Sacchini, Paesiello, Piccinni, 
 Cimarosa, to mention but a few, stand for 
 so many battles hotly waged in the boxes, 
 pit and galleries— battles for the public favor 
 of a moment, fought with the weapons of 
 intrigue, invective, tumultuous applause and 
 merciless catcalls. It was the age that gave 
 birth to that vainest, most petted and 
 highest-paid artist, the opera singer. Over 
 a dulcet aria d'abilitd, an elaborate roulade 
 or the quality of a trill the affairs of state 
 and civilization were forgotten; or again 
 politics seized upon the make-believe world 
 of flitter and tinsel, and in the guise of the 
 play and to the tune of stirring airs, national 
 questions or aspirations became a public 
 show, with an audience divided by party 
 lines rather than difference of musical opinion. 
 
202 Alia Breve 
 
 The opera evolved, and with it pro- 
 gressed music; but as a social institution it 
 has hardly changed since its inception. In 
 the nineteenth century many names were 
 added to the long roll of Italians who 
 achieved fame as opera composers, great 
 names like those of Donizetti, Bellini and 
 Rossini — with that of Verdi to crown the 
 list. 
 
 Giuseppe Verdi was born October 10, 
 1813, at Roncole, a village near the little 
 town of Busseto, in the former grand-duchy 
 of Parma. He was therefore only seven 
 months younger than Richard Wagner. At 
 the time of his birth, Italy formed part of 
 the French empire, under Napoleon I. At 
 Napoleon's abdication in 1814, the duchy 
 of Parma was allotted to Marie Louise, 
 Napoleon's dethroned wife and daughter 
 of the Austrian emperor. The subsequent 
 rule of persecution and oppression, how- 
 ever, was inspired by Vienna. Verdi's youth 
 and musical development coincided with the 
 
Giuseppe Verdi 203 
 
 period of Italian struggle for emancipation 
 from the Austrian yoke. His parents made 
 a meagre living by keeping an inn and a 
 small shop in Roncole. Although brought 
 up in the humblest surroundings, it was 
 fortunate that Giuseppe found incentive 
 and understanding for his talents in a com- 
 munity which was intensely musical. The 
 village organist gave him his first lessons; 
 the father bought him a rickety little spinnet. 
 In time he was sent to Busseto, three miles 
 distant from Roncole, to get what rudi- 
 mentary knowledge the school-teacher had 
 to impart. While still a mere lad he was 
 chosen to succeed the old organist at Ron- 
 cole, who had died. Every Sunday and 
 holiday saw him on the highroad, walking 
 the three miles from Busseto to the little 
 village church, where, to the great pride 
 not only of his parents but of all the wor- 
 shippers, "Giuseppino" fingered the clatter- 
 ing keys and occasionally stretched his little 
 
204 Alia Breve 
 
 foot for a deep pedal note that mightily 
 reverberated from the vaulted roof. 
 
 Busseto enjoyed the distinction of possess- 
 ing an orchestra formed by capable amateurs, 
 under the direction of a musician named 
 Provesi. One of the leading spirits in this 
 little band was a distiller, Barezzi, a friend 
 of old Verdi. When Giuseppe had finished 
 his school education, he entered the employ 
 of Barezzi, who housed and treated him like 
 a son. Barezzi possessed a thing very rare 
 for those days, a grand piano of Viennese 
 make; he also possessed a pretty and musical 
 daughter, Margherita. Young Verdi was 
 much attracted by both the precious in- 
 strument and the charming girl. His studies 
 in counterpoint and composition were now 
 directed by Provesi. The town of Busseto 
 granted him a stipend which enabled him 
 to seek further and better instruction in 
 Milan. But upon his asking for admission 
 to the Milan conservatory of music, it was 
 refused by the director on account of "lack 
 
Giuseppe Verdi 205 
 
 of technical equipment." Perhaps this is 
 not so surprising as it may seem. The 
 academic training essential in an institution 
 of that kind, Verdi had not acquired. Had 
 he been brought up in a manner conforming 
 to these academic standards, his natural 
 impulse might have been dwarfed or diverted. 
 He might have become an obscure composer 
 of creditable masses and motets. As it was, 
 he had been permitted to "grow up mu- 
 sically" in an unsophisticated world where a 
 "tune" counted for everything, where popular 
 taste was all for le belle romanze. However, 
 while the doors of the august conservatory 
 remained closed to him, he found an ex- 
 cellent teacher in Vincenzo Lavigna, con- 
 ductor of the orchestra at La Scala, the grand 
 opera house of Milan. This association with 
 theatrical circles had a directing influence 
 upon Verdi's development. He began to 
 compose more ambitious works, but none of 
 them had significant merits. Upon the death 
 of Provesi, in 1833, the boy of twenty was 
 
206 Alia Breve 
 
 invited to return to Busseto and become the 
 successor of his old master as conductor of 
 the little orchestra and organist at the cathe- 
 dral. He did not obtain the latter position, 
 because of strong objections from part of 
 the town authorities to whom the young 
 man's musical tendencies seemed altogether 
 "too worldly." But Barezzi received his 
 protege with open arms, and two years later 
 accorded him the hand of Margherita. The 
 little town did not offer room enough for 
 Verdi's ambition; therefore he went, with 
 his wife and two little sons, to Milan in 1837, 
 intending to enter the operatic field. He 
 found a librettist in the nineteen-year-old 
 poet Temistocle Solera, and in 1839 the first 
 fruit of their collaboration, "Oberto, conte 
 di San Bonifacio," was successfully produced 
 at La Scala. All seemed to point to a 
 splendid future for the youthful composer. 
 He was commissioned to write a comic opera, 
 and was in the midst of this work, when his 
 wife and both his children died within the 
 
Giuseppe Verdi 207 
 
 space of two months. Under such mental 
 stress it was impossible for him to give of his 
 best. Although he completed the opera, 
 it was a failure. Discouraged by so much 
 misfortune, he retired to Busseto. But he 
 found that only renewed activity could really 
 bring the oblivion he sought, so he finally 
 returned to Milan. The director of La 
 Scala offered him a libretto that had been 
 rejected by Otto Nicolai, the composer of 
 "The Merry Wives of Windsor." The li- 
 bretto was that of "Nabucco," a biblical 
 story. Verdi felt attracted by the subject, 
 and went to work. The 'success of the pre- 
 miere on March 9, 1842, decided Verdi's 
 future. The leading soprano in the cast of 
 "Nabucco" was Giuseppina Strepponi, who 
 later became Verdi's second wife. 
 
 From that point on, Verdi's career re- 
 sembled that of all other Italian opera 
 composers who had preceded him. Failures 
 alternated with successes. A constant de- 
 mand for new works left no time to ponder 
 
208 Alia Breve 
 
 over either. The old "opera d'obbligo" was 
 still necessary to the Carnival season, and 
 every year witnessed these rival productions 
 in all the larger cities of Italy. On February 
 11, 1843, "I Lombardi," first given at La 
 Scala, confirmed Verdi's operatic ascendancy. 
 Rossini had given up writing operas; Doni- 
 zetti had but five more years to live, with 
 his mental powers beginning to give way; 
 Bellini had died, thirty-three years old, in 
 1835. That Wagner's "The Flying Dutch- 
 man" was the contemporary of Verdi's 
 "Nabucco" is of interest, considering that 
 it was thirty years 'before the Italian's work 
 became in the slightest degree influenced by 
 the German's novel procedures. Eleven 
 operas had followed "I Lombardi" (with 
 only "Ernani," first performed March 9, 
 1844, as a striking success) before "Rigo- 
 letto," on March 11, 1851, set Venice literally 
 wild with enthusiasm. The text, fashioned 
 upon Victor Hugo's "Le roi s'amuse," had 
 to be subjected to various revisions before the 
 
Giuseppe Verdi 209 
 
 Austrian censor would pass it. Verdi was 
 known for his patriotic sentiments. Northern 
 Italy was infested with spies, paid by the 
 Viennese police. Any allusion, however 
 veiled, to governmental abuses or longings 
 for independence, was ruthlessly prosecuted. 
 "Rigoletto" was followed in quick succession 
 by "II Trovatore" and "La Traviata." When 
 "II Trovatore" was sung for the first time, in 
 Rome on January 19, 1853, the Tiber had 
 overflowed the streets of the city. Yet, 
 ankle-deep in water, people stood at the gates 
 from nine o'clock in the morning, on the 
 day of the first performance, in order to 
 gain admission. "La Traviata" seemed 
 doomed to failure, owing to the poor in- 
 terpreters at the premiere. Verdi remained 
 silent for four years. In 1855 followed "The 
 Sicilian Vespers," written for the Opera in 
 Paris. "Un Ballo in Maschera" again at- 
 tracted the censor's attention in 1858, and 
 the murdered King Gustavus III of Sweden 
 had to be turned into a "Governor of Bos- 
 
210 Alia Breve 
 
 ton," the opera coming too soon after the 
 attempted assassination of Napoleon III by 
 the Italian Orsini. But Napoleon, stirred to 
 action at last, espoused the cause of Italy 
 against Austria, and after the battles of 
 Magenta and Solferino, in June, 1859, the 
 dream of a United Kingdom of Italy was 
 nearing its realization. The name of 
 VERDI, standing for Vittore Emanuele Re 
 d'ltalia, became the battle-cry of the 
 patriots. 
 
 The last in this almost uninterrupted 
 chain of operas was also the revelation of a 
 new and greater Verdi. It was "Aida," 
 written upon command of the Viceroy of 
 Egypt, finished in 1869, and performed at 
 Cairo in 1871. The composer could not be 
 persuaded to cross the Mediterranean. When 
 the opera was given in Europe, Verdi had the 
 satisfaction of winning serious and enthusi- 
 astic consideration from even the sternest 
 music critics, who had up to that time spoken 
 lightly of his "melodic facility and harmonic 
 
Giuseppe Verdi 211 
 
 shallowness." But what seemed to these 
 critics the composer's splendid swan-song, 
 was in reality only the first of three works 
 which ultimately showed Verdi's genius at 
 its full stature. After another pause of 
 eighteen years he gave the world his magnifi- 
 cent "Otello." In his eightieth year, 1893 — 
 as though at last in the happy calm of old 
 age he had rediscovered the humorous vein 
 that fifty-three years ago the annihilation 
 of his young family had cut — he wrote that 
 masterful "Falstaff," perhaps the finest of 
 all Italian comedy-operas, sparkling with 
 youthfulness and subtle musical wit, the 
 ultimate proof of Verdi's consummate 
 artistry. 
 
 No sum of honors or distinctions could 
 induce Verdi to abandon the quietude of his 
 country estate Sant' Agata near his native 
 Busseto, where he died on Jan. 27, 1901. As 
 a landed gentleman he preferred to live the 
 summers amid surroundings beloved since 
 
212 Alia Breve 
 
 childhood; his winters were passed mostly 
 at Genoa. 
 
 Much of Verdi's inspiration responded 
 to a purely popular note. No composer's 
 melodies have been sung and whistled by a 
 greater number of people than were his. A 
 Requiem Mass, composed in 1874 in memory 
 of the poet Manzoni, is more theatrical than 
 churchly, and it can hardly be counted 
 a departure from Verdi's style. The public 
 of Italy that attended the first opera per- 
 formance at Venice in 1637 had grown into 
 the public of the world. And that public 
 looked to Verdi for its greatest joys, with 
 almost fanatic devotion. His last two 
 operas, revealing all his ripened mastery, 
 are those least performed. It is still the 
 wealth of sensuous melody contained in 
 "Rigoletto," "II Trovatore" and "Aida" 
 that sends thrills through the crowded opera 
 houses of both hemispheres and perpetuates 
 the glory of Italian opera in the work of 
 Italy's greatest maestro. 
 
XVI 
 
 FRANCK 
 
 Tout n'est pas lumiere dans cette ame; la lumiere 
 n'en est que plus emouvante parce qu'elle brille 
 au loin. 
 
 — Romain Rolland 
 
XVI 
 
 CESAR FRANCK 
 
 Cesar (-Auguste) Franck was born in the 
 Belgian town of Liege, December 10, 1822. 
 His father, a stern and self-willed man, took 
 it into his head to make musicians of his two 
 sons, Joseph, the older by two years, and 
 Cesar. It so happened for once that this 
 paternal dictation was not followed by 
 disaster, but helped to develop at least one 
 of the children into a musical genius of the 
 first order. When Cesar was eleven years 
 old, he played the piano well enough to under- 
 take a concert tour through Belgium, always 
 accompanied by his eager and watchful sire. 
 In 1835 the boys had apparently learned 
 all that local masters could teach them, and 
 their father decided to take them to Paris. 
 Cesar's first teacher there was Anton Reicha, 
 the friend of Beethoven, who had just suc- 
 ceeded to Boieldieu's chair in the French 
 
 [215] 
 
216 Alia Breve 
 
 Academy, an honor he was not to enjoy very 
 long, for he died in the following year. In 
 1837 Cesar became a pupil in the Conserva- 
 toire, which he reentered thirty-five years 
 later as professor. His talents received due 
 acknowledgment from the faculty, bringing 
 him even an "extraordinary" prize when, at 
 an examination in sight-reading in 1838, he 
 transposed the test piece a minor third lower, 
 playing it thus without the shadow of 
 hesitancy. But even so, he was only one 
 of the countless host of young and confident 
 musicians who, armed with medals and di- 
 plomas, go every year into the cruel fight 
 for existence, out of which the majority 
 comes disappointed, with nothing saved 
 but medals and diplomas. As far as arduous 
 toil and lack of wordly rewards were con- 
 cerned, the life of Cesar Franck differed but 
 little from the run of academic prize-winners, 
 who find it so hard afterwards to win their 
 pittance of daily bread. 
 
Cesar Franck 217 
 
 Having taken organ lessons from Benoist 
 since 1841, and having made such progress in 
 composition under Leborne's tuition that 
 he was ready to compete for the prize of all 
 prizes, the one that led to Rome, his father 
 suddenly decreed that, for financial reasons, 
 Cesar should take up the career of a vir- 
 tuoso. Therefore, instead of going to the 
 Villa Medicis, young Franck had to traverse 
 the provinces, playing show pieces of his 
 own and others' making, to thrill rural 
 audiences at the thought of hearing a 
 medailliste. 
 
 In 1844, the family settled permanently 
 in Paris. From that time on until his death 
 — a little less than half a century — Cesar 
 Franck taught music. We must discount, 
 against the dozen men of genuine gifts 
 who in the course of time came under his 
 influence and valued his advice, the more 
 than hundred dozen lessons that this gentle, 
 conscientious man wasted on mediocrity. 
 
218 Alia Breve 
 
 Franck's first work of importance was 
 the oratorio "Ruth," performed in 1846. 
 Liszt was impressed by it, as we may see 
 from a letter of his, written in 1854: "Many 
 years ago I conceived a very favorable 
 opinion of the talent of M. Cesar Franck 
 as a composer at a performance of his Trios 
 (very remarkable, in my opinion, and far 
 superior to other works of the same type 
 published these last few years). His oratorio 
 'Ruth' also contains some very beautiful 
 things and bears the stamp of an elevated 
 and well sustained style." 
 
 On February 22, 1848, in the midst of 
 the revolution, Franck married a young 
 actress; fortunately for him, she was made 
 of different stuff from Berlioz's Irish "Ophe- 
 lia." The ceremony took place at Notre- 
 Dame de Lorette, where Franck had been 
 appointed organist, and to reach it the 
 bridal pair and guests had to climb over 
 barricades erected by insurgents. Shortly, 
 the couple left the parental home and 
 
Cesar Franck 219 
 
 founded a hearth of their own. In 1858 
 Franck became choirmaster at Sainte-Clo- 
 tilde, and a little later was made organist 
 at the same church. In the unrelieved 
 shadow of this organ-loft Franck spent the 
 better part of his life. From the many- 
 voiced instrument, whispering softly above 
 the murmured prayers of the worshippers or 
 shouting triumphantly its Hosannas, he 
 often lit the spark of composition by his 
 superb improvisation. Franck wrote during 
 these years much sacred music, but aside from 
 the larger oratorios, like "The Beatitudes," 
 on which he worked from 1869 to 1879, and 
 "Redemption" (1873), most of his masses 
 and motets are, in spite of his sincere religious 
 fervor, routine music fitted to churchly 
 routine. The note of sublime contriteness 
 and faith, of inexplicable and unshakable 
 belief, sounds deepest in the instrumental 
 works belonging to the last period of his 
 life, and on which his glory rests. 
 
220 Alia Breve 
 
 Franck became the successor of his 
 teacher Benoist at the Conservatoire, on the 
 latter's retirement in 1872. And as a simple 
 professor he remained at that institution 
 until his death. He did not have the 
 aggressiveness that captures worldly honors. 
 Comparatively few were the occasions on 
 which he was permitted the joy of hearing 
 his own music played. Outside of a small 
 circle of disciples, his worth was hardly 
 recognized. Several symphonic poems, in- 
 fluenced by Liszt, whom he greatly revered, 
 had brought his name before the larger 
 public, but none of these works had made 
 a decided impression. His pupils and friends 
 collected funds for a Franck Festival, which 
 took place in January, 1887, but the ill- 
 prepared performance was far from satis- 
 factory. When his Symphony in D minor, 
 dedicated to his pupil Henri Duparc, was 
 first performed, most of the critics did not 
 know what to make of it. But Franck was 
 satisfied, and, on returning home, he an- 
 
Cesar Franck 221 
 
 swered his family's impatient queries about 
 the reception of the work with a simple: 
 "Oh, it sounded well; just as I thought it 
 would!" In April, 1890, the composer had 
 the satisfaction of his first real success, when 
 the remarkable string quartet was played by 
 Eugene Ysaye and his associates at a con- 
 cert of the Societe Nationale, of which 
 Franck was a founder and of which he had 
 been elected president. 
 
 In May of the same year, on his way to 
 one of his pupils, he was run into by an 
 omnibus and severely injured. He rallied 
 slowly, but in the Autumn he had an attack 
 of pleurisy to which he succumbed on No- 
 vember 8, 1890. His funeral was simple; 
 the mourners included but few representa- 
 tives of musical Paris. France was not 
 aware then that a very great master had 
 passed away. 
 
 The ripest works that Franck has left us 
 had their origin after 1872. They include 
 the symphony, the string quartet, the piano 
 
222 Alia Breve 
 
 quintet, the sonata for violin and piano, 
 the two triptychs for piano alone — namely, 
 the "Prelude, Choral and Fugue" (1884) 
 and the "Prelude, Aria and Finale" (1887) — 
 and his last work, the three monumental 
 chorales for organ. These show Franck's 
 final manner and full mastery. He possessed 
 to an uncommon degree what one might 
 call the instinct of counterpoint. He de- 
 lighted, in the artful interweaving of themes, 
 in which the independence of the organ 
 manuals and pedals had liberally trained 
 him. With a polyphonic dexterity equalled 
 only by Bach, he combined a love for sen- 
 suous suavity and brilliant emphasis peculiar 
 to Liszt. Wholly of his own devising are 
 the extraordinary mobility and felicitousness 
 of his modulations. The inflections of his 
 short but pregnant melodic phrases are as 
 unmistakably "Franckian" as certain shifting 
 progressions of his harmony. His "generat- 
 ing motive," the kernel of endless per- 
 mutations in the progress of a work, enhanced 
 
Cesar Franc k 223 
 
 at each reappearance with new color and 
 added import, has marked a whole epoch 
 in musical composition; the "cyclic" form, 
 so much favored by him, threatened for a 
 time to exercise an undue tyranny over the 
 methods of his followers. His leaning to- 
 ward rhythmic squareness is not always 
 helpful to the general effect. His music was 
 slow in gaining universal esteem; but as so 
 often with the work of a neglected genius, 
 posterity, once it had awakened to the beauty 
 of that music, proceeded to bestow on it the 
 doubtful favor of making it a household 
 necessity and a program certainty. 
 
 Franck's nature was humble, pious and 
 kind. Apparently unwearied by his constant 
 drudgery, he seized what spare moments he 
 found to let the source of his imaginings yield 
 him the ecstatic mood in which his master- 
 works were born. Sometimes we hear an 
 outcry in this music, a rattling at the prison 
 gates of earthly confining, and we begin 
 to wonder if the devout mind of this Catholic 
 
224 Alia Breve 
 
 was never subjected to doubt or to the 
 experiences of Saint Anthony. The loveli- 
 ness of some ingratiating melody, the red- 
 blooded sensuousness of some bold harmonic 
 progression, followed by awesome pages of 
 hopeless gloom, hint at the complicated 
 mentality which belonged to this outwardly 
 amiable and simple man. He reminds one 
 of the painter-monks in the Middle Ages, 
 who blended in the traits of smiling 
 Madonnas their sacred hopes and secular 
 regrets. The mysticism of that little music 
 teacher with the gray side-whiskers, who 
 gave piano lessons at three francs an hour to 
 anaemic daughters of "our better people," is 
 the longing for a Paradise in which the saints 
 of heaven betray their Olympian ancestry. 
 In spite of forty years, cloistered in a dim 
 organ-loft where the stale odor of yesterday's 
 incense lingered always, his nostrils seem 
 to have caught — as if remembering a foregone 
 incarnation — the rich and pungent smell of 
 the salt sea and mountain laurel that sultry 
 
Cesar Franck 225 
 
 winds are blowing around the rocks of 
 Naxos, lost in the blue y£gean and dreaming 
 of Ariadne. That is the wonder of Franck's 
 finest music, this pagan passion, illuminated 
 with the patient and multi-colored artistry 
 of medieval missals. 
 
XVII 
 
 BRAHMS 
 
 Besides temporary or accidental biases, there 
 seem to be sects and parties in taste and criticism 
 (with a set of appropriate watch words) coeval 
 with the arts and composition, and that will last 
 as long as the difference with which men's minds 
 are originally constituted. 
 
 — William Hazlitt 
 
XVII 
 
 JOHANNES BRAHMS 
 
 Nothing in the comparatively quiet life 
 of Brahms was so resounding as his entrance 
 into the musical arena. Heralded by Schu- 
 mann in the famous article of the Neue 
 Zeitschrift fur Musik (October 23, 1853) as 
 sprung "like Minerva fully armed from the 
 head of Jove," welcomed as "a young blood 
 by whose cradle graces and heroes kept 
 watch," the twenty-year-old composer had 
 gained a reputation overnight. But it was 
 a reputation that he had to fight for and live 
 up to, nevertheless, amid the strife of 
 opposing "tendencies." The romanticist 
 Schumann claimed discovery of "the elect" 
 who would lead music along "new paths," 
 letting it be understood that they were a 
 prolongation of the road which Schumann 
 himself had taken. The followers of Liszt, 
 on the other hand — always eager to enroll 
 
 [229] 
 
230 Alia Breve 
 
 "young blood" under the banner of Wagner's 
 young Germany" — were ready to count this 
 startling newcomer among their number. 
 Brahms disappointed both, romanticists as 
 well as progressives. He was, and remained, 
 a modern classicist and, as such, a thing 
 apart in music. 
 
 In thanking Schumann, the bewildered 
 recipient of so high an honor wrote: "The 
 public praise you have bestowed on me will 
 have fastened general expectation so ex- 
 ceptionally upon my performances that I do 
 not know how I shall be able to do any 
 justice to it." Natural as such doubt may 
 seem, it does not appear to have bothered 
 Brahms very much. While not insensible 
 to homage paid by the public, and valuing 
 particularly the appreciation of kindred 
 spirits, he went his own way stolidly so far as 
 concerned the quarrels of "Philistines" and 
 "Reformers." 
 
 Brahms and Wagner, though contempo- 
 raries, were contrary poles. Simultaneous 
 
Johannes Brahms 231 
 
 but opposite currents are not uncommon in 
 art. The relation between Wagner and 
 Brahms, twenty years younger, is approxi- 
 mately the same as that between Leonardo 
 da Vinci and Albrecht Durer, the younger 
 by nineteen years. Wagner and Leonardo 
 are the painters and psychologists, Durer 
 and Brahms the anatomists and draftsmen. 
 Durer visited Venice, but his contact with 
 the colored opulence of the Italians did not 
 alter his manner. Brahms passed the better 
 part of his life during the turbulent ascend- 
 ancy of "representative music" as Liszt 
 and Wagner understood it: and yet he kept 
 faith with the traditions of "absolute music." 
 He shunned Bayreuth. In 1882, when "Par- 
 sifal" was to be. given its first performance, 
 he wrote to Hans von Bulow, who pressed 
 for his acceptance of an invitation: "The 
 fact that I cannot come to a decision about 
 Bayreuth probably means that I am unable 
 to produce that 'Yes'. I need hardly say 
 that I go in dread of the Wagnerians, who 
 
232 Alia Breve 
 
 would spoil my pleasure in the best of 
 Wagners." He never took the risk. 
 
 In more ways than one, Brahms suggests 
 the bearded, curly-haired master of Nurem- 
 berg, the artisan, man of the people, humble 
 and indefatigable worker, patient elaborator 
 of detail, whose burin delighted in formal 
 arrangement, fanciful ornament, variation 
 of pattern, boldness of outline, and knew 
 how to light the depths of darkness by rays 
 of a mysterious glitter. The processes of 
 different arts should never be confounded. 
 A.nd yet, by borrowing the terminology of 
 one, the intent of another is often explained. 
 If chamber-music is the etching of tonal art, 
 then Brahms may be justly called the 
 Diirer among musicians. 
 
 Johannes Brahms came of peasant stock. 
 His ancestors had lived in the marshy low- 
 lands of Holstein, in the heath country of 
 Liineburg. He was born May 7, 1833, at 
 Hamburg. His father played the double- 
 bass in a theatre orchestra. His principal 
 
Johannes Brahms 233 
 
 teacher of piano and theory was Eduard 
 Marxsen, to whom Brahms later dedicated 
 his second piano concerto. In 1847, Jo- 
 hannes played for the first time in public. 
 Other appearances, with increasing success, 
 followed in 1848. Years of struggle marked 
 that period of Brahms's youth, like the 
 beginnings of so many great musicians. 
 He played for dances, arranged music, and 
 earned a few Groschen wherever he could. 
 He began to work on his first compositions 
 of importance, among which two piano 
 sonatas bear the opus-numbers 1 and 2. 
 
 When the Hungarian violinist Remenyi 
 visited Hamburg, in 1852, Brahms joined 
 him as accompanist. It was through Re- 
 menyi that he first learned to know and love 
 Hungarian dance-music, and was introduced 
 to Remenyi's countryman, the young violin 
 virtuoso Joseph Joachim. The friendship 
 of Brahms and Joachim was lifelong. Jo- 
 achim was instrumental in sending Brahms 
 to Liszt at Weimar, where the shy and 
 
234 Alia Breve 
 
 nervous Johannes made no impression. Jo- 
 achim urged Brahms to seek Schumann, at 
 Dusseldorf, and in the course of a journey 
 along the Rhein, in the autumn of 1853, the 
 notable meeting took place. From that date 
 Brahms came forward as an acknowledged 
 composer of highest ideals. In steady growth 
 his talents ripened and broadened along lines 
 that were rather a continuation of classic 
 forms than the branching out in new direc- 
 tions. 
 
 There are not many events to record 
 which mark a change in his activities. From 
 1854-58 he was director of music at the 
 court of Lippe-Detmold, a sleepy little 
 duchy. His occupation left him much leisure 
 to compose. But he longed for livelier 
 surroundings. In 1860 he spent some time 
 at Winterthur, in Switzerland, to be with 
 the musician Theodor Kirchner. Biilow 
 wrote in 1853: "Winterthur is several de- 
 cades more advanced than Munich." 
 Brahms appeared occasionally in public, 
 
Johannes Brahms 235 
 
 playing mostly his own compositions, but 
 he abhorred concert tours. 
 
 A turning-point in the life of Brahms 
 was his visit to Vienna, in 1862, and his 
 subsequent choice of the Austrian capital 
 as his permanent abode. He felt attracted 
 by the light-hearted characteristics of the 
 Viennese and their proverbial love for music. 
 From 1863-64 he conducted the Vienna 
 Singakademie, and from 1871-74 the con- 
 certs of the "Society of the Friends of Mu- 
 sic." These were the only "official" 
 positions he held in Vienna. They may 
 have contributed an incentive to the writing 
 of Brahms' two greatest choral works, the 
 "German Requiem" (1867) and the "Song 
 of Fate" (1871). The first is a Christian, 
 the second a pagan interpretation of mortal 
 woes and heavenly blessings, of life and death 
 and immortality. Eduard Hanslick, the 
 Viennese critic and perfervid apostle of 
 Brahms, wrote: "Since Bach's B minor 
 Mass and Beethoven's Missa solemnis, noth- 
 
236 Alia Breve 
 
 ing had been written, in kind, to compare 
 with the 'German Requiem'." 
 
 His systematic and assiduous labors 
 were interrupted only by travels and vaca- 
 tions, every year, in some summer resort or 
 other. He was a child of nature and never 
 happier than when he could escape the tur- 
 moil of city life, to find peace and inspiration 
 in absolute abandonment to wood or moun- 
 tain, lake or sea. He seldom made plans: 
 "My movements depend on my whim, the 
 weather and various attractions that may 
 offer." When the time came to leave his 
 plain but comfortable bachelor quarters 
 in Vienna, he would seek congenial com- 
 panions and set out to explore the natural 
 beauties or artistic wealth of foreign places. 
 One of his friends gives this description of 
 him on such an excursion: "He was most at 
 his ease in a striped flannel shirt, without 
 either tie or stiff collar: even his soft felt hat 
 was more often carried, in his hand than 
 on his head. In bad weather a brownish- 
 
Johannes Brahms 237 
 
 gray shawl, thrown around the shoulders 
 and fastened on the breast with a huge pin, 
 completed the curious unfashionable attire 
 at which people gazed in astonishment." 
 Brahms greatly cared for Italy. When he 
 visited Sicily with his friend Billroth, the 
 famous surgeon wrote from Taormina to 
 Hanslick: "Five hundred feet above the 
 murmuring waves! Full moon! Intoxicating 
 scent of orange blossoms, red cactus blooming 
 as richly on the huge, picturesque rocks as 
 moss does with us! Forests of palms and 
 lemons, Moorish castles, well-preserved 
 Greek theatre! The broad line of snow- 
 clad Etna, the pillar of flame! Add to this 
 a wine called Monte Venere! Above all, 
 Johannes in ecstasy!' 1 '' 
 
 The correspondence of Brahms affords 
 helpful glimpses into the workings of his 
 mind, especially with regard to the history 
 of some of his compositions. But he was 
 not a brilliant letter-writer, nor did he have 
 illusions on that point, as may be seen from 
 
238 Alia Breve 
 
 what he wrote, in 1883, to George Henschel, 
 then in Boston: "I beg you once for all to 
 remember that with me the moment is still 
 to come when I shall write the first letter 
 with pleasure!" His aversion to public ap- 
 pearances prompted him to write, at another 
 time: "I hardly think I shall allow myself 
 to be persuaded to give concerts; but to 
 listen, to enjoy, and afterwards to drink with 
 you — all that I do to perfection." He was 
 a connoisseur in matters of his two most 
 delectable brews, coffee and beer. Though 
 he always liked solitude when engaged in 
 work, he found social intercourse and frank 
 gaiety no less necessary. An early riser, 
 temperate of habits, he led a calm and happy 
 existence to which the ordinary griefs of life 
 and the extraordinary joys of great artistic 
 achievements brought their contrasting emo- 
 tions. He died at Vienna, April 3, 1897. 
 
 The music of Brahms derives much of its 
 peculiar charm from two widely differing 
 elements. The composer's fondness for the 
 
Johannes Brahms 239 
 
 lyrical expressions of the common people is 
 not only evidenced by his many and ex- 
 quisite arrangements of folk-songs; it leads 
 him often to imitate this artlessness in the 
 melodic contours of his own invention. 
 Joined to this homely tenderness or vigor 
 is the delight — and sometimes the absorp- 
 tion — in a learned and cunning manipulation 
 of his material, producing the very opposite 
 of simplicity. Even Hanslick had to admit 
 this "noble but dangerous inclination to 
 conceal his ideas under a web of poly- 
 phony." Modern in the sense that he 
 sounded a personal note in his music, he 
 nevertheless was a classicist by his adher- 
 ence to standard forms, albeit his freedom 
 in the employment of these forms gives them 
 the appearance of ample and harmonious 
 raiment rather than of confining bounds. 
 The compositions in which the art of Brahms 
 unfolds itself most fully are his chamber 
 music, many of his songs, and several of his 
 pieces for the piano. His four symphonies 
 
240 Alia Breve 
 
 contain lofty ideas and passages of exalted 
 loveliness, as well as stretches that drag 
 laboriously and drearily along. The many- 
 voiced orchestra did not always yield him 
 the richness of sonority that he could draw 
 from a trio or quartet of instruments, united 
 in the noblest type of "absolute" music. 
 His Horn-trio (Op. 40), the Piano-quintet 
 (Op. 34), the Piano-trios (Op. 8 and 101), 
 together with the Clarinet-quintet (Op. 115), 
 are as plates imprinted with the mark of 
 genius, in which the etcher conjures up 
 vaulted domes, glittering facades, or the 
 transcendent landscapes of the soul. 
 
XVIII 
 
 TSCHAIKOWSKY 
 
 We have an instinctive sense of the fugitive and 
 perishing nature of all sweet things, — of beauty, 
 of youth, of life; of all those fair shows of the world, 
 of which music seems to be the voice, and of whose 
 transitory nature it reminds us most when it is 
 most beautiful, because it is then that we most 
 regret our mortality. 
 
 — Leigh Hunt 
 
XVIII 
 
 PETER ILJITCH TSCHAIKOWSKY 
 
 The musician Tschaikowsky, although at 
 times as Russian as any of his musical com- 
 patriots and contemporaries, was not so 
 strongly "of the soil," not so much reared 
 on Slavic folk-tunes or nurtured by Asiatic 
 influences, as were, for instance, Balakiref, 
 Moussorgsky or Rimsky-Korsakof. Nor 
 was he fond of the parochial pose. What he 
 coined had not merely national currency; 
 his music bore on its face the stamp of genius 
 and on the reverse showed the mark of 
 universal circulation, which in all art is 
 sensuous beauty. The man Tschaikowsky, 
 on the other hand, as much "of the world" 
 as he was — at home in Paris, Venice or Vien- 
 na, not less than in St. Petersburg or Tiflis — 
 never could free himself from racial fetters, 
 and always remained Russian to the core. 
 Hence that morbid sensibility, self-love, 
 
 [243] 
 
244 Alia Breve 
 
 exaggeration in despair or pride, which are 
 revealed in the diaries and letters of this 
 curiously introspective mind. What could 
 be more characteristic than the hopeless 
 cry: "Poor Russia! Everything there is so 
 depressing . . . ," and the fatalistic resigna- 
 tion of "Let come, what may!" It is the 
 Slavic soul laid bare. 
 
 Peter, the son of Ilja Tschaikowsky, was 
 born May 7, 1840, at the small town 
 of Wotkinsk, where his father was inspector 
 of the mines. The boy's musical talents 
 were neither precocious, nor did he seem 
 to be drawn toward music with indomitable 
 force. He offered no serious resistance to 
 his father's wish that he should study law. 
 He entered the government service and 
 worked for a time at the Ministry of Justice 
 in St. Petersburg. His acquaintance with 
 musicians like the brothers Rubinstein — 
 Anton and Nikolai — however, gave his 
 tastes and ambitions a different direction, 
 and when Anton became instrumental in 
 
Peter Iljitch Tschaikozusky 245 
 
 founding the St. Petersburg Conservatory, 
 in 1862, Peter entered the institution as a 
 student of harmony and composition. His 
 quick progress made it possible for him, four 
 years later, to join the faculty of the Mos- 
 cow Conservatory, founded and directed by 
 Nikolai Rubinstein. He retained his position 
 on the teaching staff until 1877. He was en- 
 abled to relinquish his onerous and rather 
 unremunerative task through the generosity 
 of Nadejda von Meek, widow of a rich rail- 
 road engineer, who not only helped him out 
 of his momentary embarrassment by paying 
 his debts, but settled on him a yearly stipend 
 of 6000 rubles (33000), that he might enjoy 
 the leisure necessary to undisturbed crea- 
 tion and find artistic incentive in travelling 
 through foreign lands. This strange bene- 
 factor lived most of the time as a recluse on 
 her estates; she and her protege intentionally 
 never met face to face, but they kept up an 
 extended and intimate correspondence 
 through nearly fifteen years. In her first 
 
246 Alia Breve 
 
 letter to Tschaikowsky, December, 1876, 
 she told him that his music made "life easier 
 and pleasanter to live." This unusual friend- 
 ship, while it lasted, was a great inspiration 
 to the composer. When it ended in 1891 
 for reasons which were supposed to lie in 
 the financial ruin that threatened Mme. von 
 Meek; when all payments and letters from 
 her stopped, Tschaikowsky wrote: "The 
 inconceivable has happened, and all my 
 ideas of human nature, all my faith in the 
 best of mankind, have been turned upside 
 down. My peace is broken, and the share 
 of joy which fate has allotted me is em- 
 bittered and spoilt." Tschaikowsky died 
 at St. Petersburg, November 6, 1893, dur- 
 ing a cholera epidemic, whispering, it is 
 said, the name of her who had procured 
 him so much happiness and dealt him such 
 a staggering blow. 
 
 Tschaikowsky's music, more perhaps 
 than that of most great masters, suffers 
 from a certain unevenness. His inspiration 
 
Peter Iljitch Tschaikowsky 247 
 
 was not unflagging; he confessed to times 
 of mental depression, when work seemed 
 particularly hard. And yet, in the finest of 
 his orchestral pages, in some of his chamber 
 music, and certain portions of his operas, 
 he plumbs unfathomed depths of pathos or 
 mounts rare heights of ecstasy. His instru- 
 mentation is always rich and brilliant; it does 
 not shrink from blatant and barbaric colors; 
 often it is novel and haunting. He is in- 
 clined to be spectacular or over-sentimental. 
 Shakespeare's melancholy Prince of Den- 
 mark and unhappy lovers of Verona serve 
 him as welcome pegs on which to hang his 
 own moods and disillusionment. Poush- 
 kin's nostalgic "Eugene Oniegin" and fan- 
 tastic "Queen of Spades" are chosen as 
 opera-libretti; Byron's sombre and roman- 
 tic "Manfred" is provided with a symphonic 
 background. The love of the Russians for 
 elaborate ballets is responsible for some of 
 his most charming and graceful music. Many 
 pieces for the piano and numerous songs 
 
248 Alia Breve 
 
 were written in an endeavor to give his 
 publisher "short things" that the public 
 would buy. As a matter of fact, the public 
 bought a great deal of his music, and not 
 alone in Russia. His works were produced 
 in Germany and France as early as 1878. 
 Ten years later his fame was international. 
 In 1891 he accepted an invitation to come to 
 America, to assist in the inauguration of 
 Carnegie Hall, New York. This journey 
 made strong and varied impressions on him. 
 We find in his diary these entries: "I am 
 convinced that I am ten times more famous 
 in America than I am in Europe." — "The 
 Americans strike me as very remarkable." — 
 "We went to see the Brooklyn Bridge. 
 From there we went to see Schirmer, who 
 owns the largest music business in America. 
 Schirmer begged to be allowed to publish 
 some of my compositions." — "The houses 
 downtown are simply colossal [1891!]; I can- 
 not understand how any one can live on the 
 
Peter Iljitch Tschaikowsky 249 
 
 13th floor!" — "Quite the worst part of a 
 sea-voyage is having to know all the pas- 
 sengers on board." 
 
 But not only of this American visit do 
 we find an interesting account in these notes 
 and letters of Tschaikowsky. We learn to 
 know a singular musician who adored Mo- 
 zart and hated Handel, worshipped Schu- 
 mann and saw little in Chopin, thought the 
 world of Grieg, but wrote after hearing 
 Tristan una 1 Isolde for the first time in Ber- 
 lin, January, 1883 : "The work does not 
 give me any pleasure, although I am glad 
 to have heard it, for it has done much to 
 strengthen my previous views of Wagner." 
 We read of his infatuation for Bizet's Car- 
 men, which he pronounces the ideal opera; 
 from Rome he writes in December, 1881: 
 "Liszt's works leave me cold." He de- 
 lights in the fluent melodies of Delibes' 
 ballet Sylvia, and says of Brahms: "He 
 has no charms for me." His estimate of 
 the "Russian School" is significant. "Cui 
 
250 Alia Breve 
 
 is an amateur. . . . Borodin has not as 
 much taste as Cui, and his technique is so 
 poor that he cannot write a bar without 
 assistance." Moussorgsky is "used up" 
 and "likes what is coarse, unpolished and 
 ugly." Rimsky-Korsakof, in his opinion, 
 is the best in this circle of five, but he sums 
 up his verdict in characterizing Balakiref 
 as the head of a group that "unites so many 
 undeveloped, falsely developed, or pre- 
 maturely decayed, talents." 
 
 In one of his first letters to Mme. von 
 Meek he tried to account for their mutual 
 sympathy by a common bond which linked 
 them together, and which consisted, as 
 he put it, in their "suffering from the same 
 malady," namely, misanthropy. Tschaikow- 
 sky is at his best when he feels worst, nor 
 is this meant facetiously. The man who 
 could write from Rome: "My brother and 
 I have just been to see St. Peter's; all I 
 have gained by it is overwhelming physical 
 fatigue"; who (half-humorously only!) 
 
Peter Iljitch Tschaikowsky 251 
 
 called music "this detestable art, which 
 seems to possess the quality of interesting 
 everybody" — this man succeeded, as no 
 one else has, in expressing by means of 
 music a temperament distinctly perverse, 
 though peculiarly human. And therefore 
 the Symphonie pathetique and Francesca da 
 Rimini will probably carry his name down 
 to many another generation afflicted with 
 the heritage of that "same malady," and 
 finding balm in listening to these superbly 
 poignant works. 
 
XIX 
 
 GRIEG 
 
 Only by contact with the art of foreign nations 
 does the art of a country gain that individual and 
 separate life which we call nationality. 
 
 —Oscar Wilde 
 
XIX 
 EDVARD GRIEG 
 
 The ancestors of Edvard Grieg, on his 
 father's side, were Scottish; his mother came 
 of purely Scandinavian stock. He was born 
 June 15, 1843, at Bergen, a small trading 
 town in the nothernmost part of Norway, 
 land of the midnight sun, fir-hung and snow- 
 capped mountains, deep blue sea-fjords; 
 land of ancient sagas, telling the deeds of 
 mighty Norse gods and heroic forebears; 
 land of songs so old that their origin is lost 
 in the dim beginnings of its fabled story. 
 From generation to generation these songs 
 were transmitted, songs that accompanied 
 the toil or pleasures of sturdy inhabitants 
 who jealously guarded their seclusion and 
 racial traditions. 
 
 Edvard Grieg fell heir not only to this 
 treasure of aboriginal melody, but from his 
 mother he directly inherited musical talents 
 
 [255] 
 
256 Alia Breve 
 
 of an uncommon order. She was his first 
 music-teacher. He learned to play the 
 piano when he was six, and began to com- 
 pose at the age of twelve. In his fifteenth 
 year he played his youthful creations for 
 Ole Bull, the picturesque and far-famed 
 violinist, who was visiting the Griegs, and 
 earnestly advised the parents to let the boy 
 become a musician. Edvard was sent to 
 the Leipzig Conservatory and received there 
 a thorough musical education. He studied 
 piano, theory, counterpoint and composition, 
 applying himself with such strenuous zeal 
 that in 1860, as a result of overwork, he 
 was seriously ill with lung trouble, and the 
 effects of the malady left his health per- 
 manently impaired. After a sojourn in his 
 native country, the invigorating air of 
 which did much to improve his condition, 
 he returned to Leipzig and continued his 
 studies until he graduated in 1862. 
 
 So far, his music adhered more or less to 
 the Mendelssohnian ideals which were 
 
Edvard Grieg. 257 
 
 preached as gospel truth at Leipzig. But 
 after he went to Copenhagen, in 1863, where 
 he met Gade, Hartman, and young Nor- 
 draak, the influence of these men — especially 
 of the last named — awakened in him an 
 appreciation for the beauties of Scandinavian 
 folk-tunes; he realized their possibilities of 
 artistic development, and he began to adopt 
 the peculiar inflections and modulations of 
 this national music, thereby giving his work 
 its novel and distinguishing mark. He be- 
 came the apostle of a nationalistic school 
 engaged in systematic propaganda, and suc- 
 ceeded, by the force of his genius, in gaining 
 universal recognition and admiration for 
 the music of the North. His example has 
 had many followers, and to-day Scandinavia 
 possesses a musical literature as distinct as 
 the works of her poets and novelists, and 
 as typical as that of Russia, Spain or France. 
 In later years, Grieg characterized his 
 purpose and achievement in these words: 
 "Those who can appreciate this kind of 
 
258 Alia Breve 
 
 music will be delighted at the extraordinary 
 originality of these tunes, their blending of 
 delicacy and grace with rough power and 
 untamed wildness as regards the melody 
 and, more particularjy, the rhythm. These 
 traditional tunes, handed down from an age 
 when the Norwegian pea'santry was isolated 
 from the world in its solitary mountain 
 valleys, all bear the stamp of an imagination 
 equally daring and bizarre. My object in 
 arranging this music for the pianoforte was 
 to attempt to raise these folk-tunes to an 
 artistic level by harmonizing them in a style 
 suitable to their nature." However, it 
 must not be understood that Grieg's work is 
 chiefly or even largely based on existing 
 material. By far the greater part of his 
 themes are free and original inventions, 
 which, though consciously cast in the 
 moulds of "traditional tunes," are vivified 
 by a personal element which is wholly 
 Grieg's. 
 
Edvard Grieg 259 
 
 After a short stay in Rome, during the 
 winter of 1865, Grieg went to live at Christi- 
 ania, where he remained for eight years, 
 busied with composing, teaching and con- 
 ducting. He married his cousin Nina Hage- 
 rup in 1867, and his wife became known as 
 the best interpreter for her husband's songs, 
 being especially liked in England, which the 
 Griegs visited several times. The composer 
 received valuable encouragement from 
 Franz Liszt, who treated him with signal 
 kindness when they met, in 1868, at Rome. 
 In 1874 the Swedish crown awarded Grieg a 
 yearly stipend for his life. His native Ber- 
 gen now became his favorite abode. Not 
 far from the town, amid the wonders of the 
 fjords, he lived in surroundings that were 
 congenial and inspiring. It was there that 
 most of his masterworks were composed. 
 His intimacy with two eminent Scandi- 
 navian writers, Bjornstjerne Bjornson and 
 Henrik Ibsen, influenced him in setting 
 many poems by the first and in providing 
 
260 Alia Breve 
 
 the latter's Peer Gynt with music that did 
 much to carry Grieg's fame abroad. It was 
 at Bergen, too, that Grieg died on Septem- 
 ber 4, 1907, succumbing at last to his old 
 malady. 
 
 His figure was short, he always looked 
 frail, and was slightly bent from asthma. 
 Tschaikowsky, who greatly admired the 
 Norwegian's music, painted him thus in his 
 diary: "He had an unusual charm, and blue 
 eyes, not very large, but irresistibly fascinat- 
 ing, recalling the glance of a charming and 
 candid child." 
 
 Foremost in importance and scope 
 among Grieg's compositions are his songs 
 and his piano pieces, especially the latter; 
 and here again the shorter and more 
 "lyrical" ones contain the finest essence of 
 his exquisite and personal style. With a 
 simplicity and economy of means that are 
 the secret of mastery, he develops a mood, 
 tender and elegiac, or rollicking and droll, 
 that is always unmistakably tinged with the 
 
Edvard Grieg 261 
 
 colors of Norwegian folk-music. His violin 
 sonatas, his piano concertos as well as his 
 orchestral pieces, all bear the hall-mark of 
 his individuality: refined craftsmanship, 
 sensitive perception, and ardent love for his 
 home-land. 
 
 It is not improbable that with the recog- 
 nition, by the general public, of Grieg's 
 "nationalistic" tendencies, the interest in 
 other national schools of music was greatly 
 kindled. Folk-songs, the root of all racially 
 distinctive music, are traditional tunes, be- 
 queathed from age to age, of uncertain 
 origin in most cases, often dating back to 
 the vague beginnings of race-conscious- 
 ness. As "comparative-etymology" — the 
 analysis and comparison of word roots com- 
 mon or related to various languages — has 
 rendered great services towards obtaining 
 a clearer insight into historical regroupings 
 of tribes and peoples, so does a comparative 
 study of folk-songs add a great deal of light 
 to the understanding of human civilisation. 
 
262 Alia Breve 
 
 Song was born with man. It accom- 
 panied, ever since his cultural infancy, the 
 labor of single or concerted effort, making, 
 by rhythmic regularity, his task more easy 
 and the work more telling. It accompanied, 
 ever since he became subject to emotional 
 sway, the rites of his worship, the pleasures 
 of the dance; in short, it was indispensable 
 to many acts of private and communal life. 
 
 While traces of folk-songs may be en- 
 countered, undisguised as well as "refined," 
 in the art-music of the middle ages, sacred 
 and secular, the development of definite 
 nationalistic styles is of rather recent date. 
 In Mozart and Beethoven an occasional 
 snatch of melody betrays kinship to some 
 "popular" air of their day: in Haydn we may 
 meet with a suggestion of "Hungarian" 
 music; in Corelli, with an echo from Spain; 
 but it is not until the early part and middle 
 of the nineteenth century that we can speak 
 of truly Slavic, Spanish, or any other national 
 art-music. Spain has but few authentic 
 
Edvard Grieg 263 
 
 representatives who have achieved universal 
 success, such as Albeniz and Granados; but 
 the "Spanish manner" has found more 
 imitators than any other, especially among 
 the neighboring French, from Bizet and 
 Chabrier to Debussy and Ravel. The Rhap- 
 sodies of Liszt have made the rhythms and 
 melodic inflections of Hungary the common 
 property of the world. Grieg, aided by 
 Gade and Nordraak, established the identity 
 of Scandinavian music; men like Sibelius 
 and Palmgren have added the Finnish note 
 to these voices of the North. Glinka, Mous- 
 sorgsky, Balakiref— with their numerous 
 followers — are the ancestors of a line that 
 has given us Scriabin and Stravinsky. From 
 Russia may come a regeneration of music. 
 Poland's spirit lives in the melodies of Chopin 
 and Moniuszko. Bohemia is worthily repre- 
 sented by Smetana and Dvorak. The latter, 
 during his sojourn in America, became in- 
 terested in the music of the colored race. 
 
264 Alia Breve 
 
 Exoticism and orientalism — mostly of 
 the "pseudo" kind — are rampant in modern 
 music. They seem to offer a legitimate 
 excuse for the grotesqueness, the certain 
 barbarism, by which to-morrow is trying 
 to abolish the neurotic super-refinement of 
 yesterday. There is "colored" music as 
 there is "Hebrew" music, unmistakably 
 charged with the musical idiosyncracies of 
 each race. But neither can be regarded 
 as the soil for a "national music" that may 
 give rise to a school of national composers. 
 Hence the clever use which MacDowell and 
 other musicians have made of negro or 
 Indian themes will never lead to an American 
 style. That is already shaping from different 
 material, and promises to be as elastic, and 
 yet uncompromising, as is the American 
 character itself. The coat will be of so 
 many colors, that the total effect will amount 
 to the creation of a new shade. And that is 
 what we call, in music, Progress. 
 
XX 
 
 DEBUSSY 
 
 Car nous voulons la Nuance encor, 
 Pas la Couleur, rien que la nuance! 
 Oh! la nuance seule fiance 
 Le reve au reve et la flute au cor ! 
 
 — Paul Ferlaine 
 
XX 
 
 CLAUDE DEBUSSY 
 
 Of the musicians considered in these 
 chapters, Claude Debussy is closest to our 
 day. Little more than three years have 
 passed since he died in Paris, on March 26, 
 1918. Hardly is the echo stilled of the 
 vociferous and turbulent receptions given 
 to his first "revolutionary" works; barely 
 has his music been recognized as perhaps the 
 most radical advance of the art since Bach; 
 and already groups of young composers are 
 forming who proclaim their affranchisement 
 from the "yoke of Debussyism," who qualify 
 the master's formulas as "antiquated," and 
 are exploring wider, freer horizons illumined 
 by a new dawn. Thus do artists — if not 
 art — forever crave to be considered modern. 
 But who deserves this epithet ? \\ hat is the 
 essential requirement in modern art? Is not 
 Bach more modern than Haydn, Schubert 
 
 [267 1 
 
268 Alia Breve 
 
 more modern than Mendelssohn, Berlioz— 
 in spite of his shortcomings — younger and 
 fresher than Brahms? 
 
 Haydn, Mendelssohn and Brahms gave 
 new and firmer lines to the form; they per- 
 fected the container rather than the contents. 
 Nor are their services to be judged lightly 
 for that reason. Bach's mighty genius, on 
 the other hand, was content with stereotype 
 dance-suites, the "concerto" inherited from 
 Corelli, and churchly conventions dating 
 back still further. Schubert's fertile im- 
 agination was lost in the mould of the 
 Beethovenian symphony, which clung to 
 him like a robe too big for his stature; Ber- 
 lioz, exalted like a god and platitudinous 
 like a bourgeois, created forms and means 
 cyclopean, which had that drawback of one- 
 eyed perspective — lack of depth. And yet 
 these were, and always will be, moderns. 
 
 It is not mere posteriority, then, that 
 confers this jealously sought distinction upon 
 the work of a man; it is rather the spirit 
 
Claude Debussy 269 
 
 which pervades the work, the renovating 
 force and degree of independence. But it 
 is difficult to say just in what musical in- 
 dependence, or originality, consists. It is 
 easy enough to point to this or that chord, 
 to one or another harmonic departure, en- 
 countered for the first time in a certain 
 composition. That is as far as we may go 
 in labelling and dating new ideas. Such 
 chord, however, or such harmonic departure, 
 will be found latent, perhaps, in the works 
 of older and lesser masters; it may be nothing 
 but the flower that is drawing its sap from 
 soil tilled by more or less distant and unre- 
 membered precursors. Musical history is 
 not a succession, but an overlapping, of dif- 
 ferent epochs. 
 
 And so, while we stand yet bewildered 
 with the burden of beauty bequeathed to 
 us by Debussy, his achievement already 
 enters the sanctuary of Classicism, that 
 temple which has withstood the onset of so 
 many "moderns" throughout all ages, and 
 
270 Alia Breve 
 
 which perpetually finds itself assailed anew. 
 Debussy himself would not have had it other- 
 wise: "Is it not our duty to find the sym- 
 phonic formula which fits our time, one 
 which progress, daring and modern victory 
 demand? The century of aeroplanes has a 
 right to its own music." 
 
 If ever genius gave wings to music and 
 sent it soaring up to heights to which — agile 
 pedestrian — -it could not have risen other- 
 wise, it was the liberating influence of De- 
 bussy. His hypersensitive ear was attuned 
 to overhear the shy tremor of Springtide in 
 the woods, to record the primeval song of 
 the wave, to note the chord-progressions of 
 the sunset mirrored in the lake, to catch the 
 overtones that float above the perfumes of 
 the night. His aim differed from that of 
 his predecessors, and to reach it he had to 
 find new ways. In music, new ways lie gen- 
 erally in the direction of unexplored or 
 unused discords. The line which separates 
 our conceptions of concordant and discordant 
 
Claude Debussy 271 
 
 sounds has gradually changed position. Tone 
 is the sensuous element of music, and in order 
 to enlarge its scope, we must convince the 
 hearer that tone-combinations which the ear 
 has heretofore rejected as harsh and un- 
 satisfactory, can be made to sound sensuously 
 beautiful and satisfying. That the applica- 
 tion of such novel stuff should condition a 
 new technique or procedure, is wholly in- 
 cidental. 
 
 We are too near the marvelous mani- 
 festations of Debussy's personality to see 
 clearly the point to which his powers rose, at 
 which they may have halted, or from which 
 they even may have sunk. It is for a later 
 generation, this profitless task of critical de- 
 termination. Meanwhile, the materials for 
 Debussy's biography are less abundant than 
 with Wagner, Weber or Mozart. But the 
 significance of his life is none the less evident. 
 
 Claude [-Achille] Debussy was born Au- 
 gust 22, 1862, at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, the 
 picturesque old residential town of French 
 
272 Alia Breve 
 
 royalty, only a few miles distant from Paris. 
 All his biographers emphasize the point that 
 in childhood his musical talents were far 
 from obvious, that he did not receive piano 
 lessons until he was nine years old, and that 
 even then his father still destined him for the 
 navy. 
 
 In 1873 he entered the Paris Conser- 
 vatory, that formidable stronghold of tradi- 
 tion. He rapidly advanced in the piano 
 classes of Marmontel, winning three times 
 the hallowed reward of academic "medals." 
 His exploits in the harmony course met, on 
 the contrary, with equally signal and re- 
 peated failure. These studies were inter- 
 rupted, in 1879, by a journey to Russia in 
 the capacity of "privy pianist" attached 
 to the retinue of the wife of a rich railroad 
 engineer. His sojourn in St. Petersburg and 
 Moscow is said to have brought him in con- 
 tact with the works of the young Russian 
 composers and especially with the exotic and 
 uncharted music of gypsy bands, whence he 
 
Claude Debussy 273 
 
 may have derived a taste for barbaric splen- 
 dor, Oriental languor and "lawless" 
 harmonies. He resumed his studies at the 
 Paris Conservatory in 1880, winning a first 
 prize in the classe d'accompagnement, which 
 consisted in improvising, at the keyboard, 
 a harmonization of a given melody or bass. 
 He did not feel drawn to attend the organ 
 classes of Cesar Franck. His teacher in 
 composition was Ernest Guiraud (1837- 
 1892), a man of culture and musician of 
 taste. He perceived the "insurgent" ten- 
 dencies of his pupil, and gave him the 
 benevolent advice to keep them in the back- 
 ground until the portals of the Conservatory 
 had definitely shut behind him. This event, 
 eagerly awaited, occurred in 1884, when 
 Debussy won the Prix de Rome with his 
 cantata "L'enfant prodigue." The pastoral 
 tenderness of the subject well suited his 
 nature, and though the music caused the 
 shaking of many a gray head, it had to be 
 
274 Alia Breve 
 
 counted the work of an original and well- 
 equipped composer. 
 
 From Rome Debussy sent the obligatory 
 envois to the French Institut, and, remember- 
 ing Guiraud's remark, he threw restraint 
 to the balmy winds that blew around the 
 Villa Medicis. The result was his first 
 official clash with smug conventionality. 
 His orchestral suite "Printemps" was fiercely 
 denounced by the accredited sages of the 
 government, and when they refused to have 
 it performed, the composer, in turn, with- 
 drew his next envoi, the setting of Rossetti's 
 "The Blessed Damozel" in a French trans- 
 lation. It amounted to a declaration of 
 hostilities; the war was on, not to be ter- 
 minated until thirty years later. The 
 "Debussyistes" began to form a phalanx 
 of enthusiastic and irrepressible supporters 
 whose glory consists in having measured 
 thus early the greatness of their idol. 
 
 It was some time after his return from 
 Rome that Debussy is said to have come 
 
Claude Debussy 275 
 
 across the authentic score of Moussorgsky's 
 opera "Boris Godounov" and to have been 
 deeply interested in the musical vocabulary 
 and syntax of this extraordinary Russian 
 who, at that time, and outside of Russia, 
 was unknown to all but a few musicians. 
 In 1889 Debussy visited Bayreuth, and he 
 knew the tense atmosphere of the Festspiel- 
 hiigel from which the Master's figure had 
 disappeared only six years before. We are 
 told that the "Ring" and "Tristan" moved 
 the impressionable youth to tears. He re- 
 turned to Bayreuth the next summer, but 
 his mind was already set in a trend diametri- 
 cally opposite to that which Wagner had 
 pursued. 
 
 And here it may be well to remember that 
 racial differences would have precluded any- 
 other issue. Debussy was essentially Gallic, 
 as were Couperin and Rameau, his nearest 
 kin among French composers. Moreover, 
 as German poetry at the beginning of the 
 nineteenth century had precipitated roman- 
 
276 Alia Breve 
 
 ticism in music, so did the French poets of the 
 impressionist and symbolist school imprint 
 their creeds and methods upon the French 
 musicians of the declining century. It was 
 Verlaine, distiller of volatile and aromatic 
 phrases, painter in iridescent words, whose 
 poignant, yet so elusive, verses inspired 
 Debussy to write the first songs {Mandoline; 
 Ariettes oubliees, 1890; Fetes Galantes, 1st 
 Ser., 1892) which have all the salient qualities 
 of the composer's final style, a style un- 
 precedented and unmatched. In 1892 was 
 also written the "Prelude to the Afternoon 
 of a Faun," based on Stephane Mallarme's 
 unique poem. As the poet had merely 
 wished to give verbal suggestions of a mood, 
 a passionate attitude, a vague concern, 
 fleeting and unseizable, so did the composer 
 mix his sonorous half-tints into a wondrously 
 frail [land yet suggestive color-scheme. It 
 remains among all of Debussy's orchestral 
 pieces the most perfect; what seemed in 1894 
 sheer madness, has proved to be sane and 
 
Cl aude Debussy 277 
 
 sober art, devised with a clear-sighted crafts- 
 manship and revealing now the inevitable 
 consequentialness of the composer's cool 
 and deliberate reasoning. 
 
 In the summer of 1892, Debussy chanced 
 to read Maeterlinck's drama "Pelleas et 
 Melisande," and was instantly taken with 
 the desire to set it to music. He obtained 
 Maeterlinck's authorization and went to 
 work, beginning with the duo of the fourth 
 act. Ten years passed before all the music 
 took shape, conceived though it was in one 
 moment of intense creative impregnation. 
 Like Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde" and 
 Mozart's "Magic Flute," its effectiveness as 
 an opera is as debatable as the music to 
 these three plays is indisputably among the 
 greatest ever written. The first public per- 
 formance of "Pelleas et Melisande" took 
 place April 30, 1902, at the Opera-Comique 
 in Paris. 
 
 Meanwhile, the String Quartet had been 
 played by Eugene Ysaye and his associates 
 
278 Alia Breve 
 
 on December 29, 1893, at the "Societe 
 Nationale," that progressive organization 
 of French composers which brought out so 
 many of Debussy's works. Between 1890 
 and 1900 fall furthermore his earlier piano 
 pieces (none of them ranking with his most 
 distinctive compositions), a number of songs 
 (among them his finest), and the ravishing 
 "Nocturnes" for orchestra. It is significant 
 that the songs of this epoch are the more 
 characteristic and riper works; evidently 
 the music was feeling its way into harmonic 
 terra ignota with a guiding-staff lent by the 
 poetry of Verlaine, Beaudelaire and Pierre 
 Louys. 
 
 After 1900 the composer became more and 
 more absorbed in the discovery of new 
 pianistic possibilities. Not since Chopin 
 had the row of black and white keys been 
 made to radiate so many different and 
 dazzling hues. The piano became a new 
 instrument. Between 1900 and 1910 ap- 
 peared, among other things, the superb 
 
Claude Debussy 279 
 
 "Estampes," containing "Soiree dans Gre- 
 nade" and "Jardins sous la pluie," and the 
 "Images" (second series), of which the 
 limpid "Reflets dans l'eau," the polyphone 
 "Cloches a travers les feuilles" and the 
 shimmering "Poissons d'or" are the best 
 known. His most important piano works, 
 however, were published after 1910, and 
 comprise the two sets of preludes, twenty- 
 four in all, among which there are some that 
 will long remain the most beautiful things 
 that man has fashioned with our present, 
 unpliant enharmonic scale. They also con- 
 tain the first signs that the composer's 
 manner had reached the point of degenerat- 
 ing into mannerism; and subsequent works 
 showed Debussy more and more copying 
 Debussy. In a set of Etudes he seemed 
 intent upon giving labels to these manner- 
 isms himself, upon revealing the principal 
 pianistic devices dear to his fingers. His 
 touch of the piano was indescribable. To 
 hear him play his own music (with an ill- 
 
280 Alia Breve 
 
 concealed look of boredom directed at the 
 audience) was a revelation. 
 
 In his youth Debussy had known the 
 cares of a struggling genius. For a time the 
 publisher Georges Hartman supported the 
 poor student; later it was Jacques Durand 
 who paid lavishly for the privilege of pub- 
 lishing the master's music. Debussy married 
 twice. He conducted his own works in 
 England and Russia, visiting St. Petersburg 
 and Moscow, for the last time, in the winter 
 before the outbreak of the world war. 
 Towards the end of his life he suffered long 
 and patiently from malignant diseases which 
 caused his death. 
 
 Debussy was an astute critic of the work 
 of others as well as his own. He wrote 
 extensively for various daily papers and 
 periodicals. The collection of his critical 
 writings will some day form one of the most 
 interesting and valuable works on musical 
 aesthetics. He seems to have shown the way 
 to his successors, when he wrote in November, 
 
Claude Debussy 281 
 
 1913: "Let us purify our music. Let us 
 try to scarify it. Let us seek to obtain a 
 music which is barer {plus nue). We must 
 guard against the stifling of emotion under 
 the heap of motives and superimposed de- 
 signs: how can we render its bloom or its 
 force while we remain preoccupied with all 
 those details of writing, while we try to 
 maintain an impossible discipline among the 
 swarming pack of little themes which topple 
 over and jump on each other to bite poor 
 sentiment in the legs and send it off seeking 
 salvation in flight! As a general rule, each 
 time that, in art, someone thinks of com- 
 plicating a form or a sentiment, it means 
 that he does not know what he wants to 
 say." 
 
CONCLUSION 
 
 In these pages, no attempt has been made 
 to analyze, technically, any of the works 
 mentioned. The musical student cannot do 
 without such analysis; to the listener, in 
 general, it is profitless. While the painter 
 should know each nerve and sinew in the 
 body, he bids you behold in his picture 
 only an attitude of the human form, destined 
 to make you share his vision of its inherent 
 beauty. Musical appreciation is not gained 
 by the process of dissection, any more than 
 is a realization of the warmth in Rubens' 
 flesh-tints by visits to the morgue. Music — 
 all pulse and vibration — is the most "living" 
 of the arts. Its sensuous appeal to our or- 
 ganism is more direct than that of any other 
 art; it is also more specific. Its rational 
 plan and contents require mental grasp. 
 Thus fullest receptivity, keenest enjoyment, 
 belong to him who comes to music with 
 
 [283 1 
 
284 Alia Breve 
 
 a natural predisposition, a special state of 
 mind, and more or less training. 
 
 To listen attentively to certain kinds of 
 music is often very difficult. Music's finest 
 power being that of firing our fancy, we 
 sometimes lose consciousness of a composi- 
 tion's actual progress, and abandon ourselves 
 to the flight of our thoughts. Nor will each 
 hearer take away the same impressions, for 
 the attention may fasten upon, and become 
 absorbed by, different qualities or charac- 
 teristics of the music. Discrimination in art 
 is a privilege of gust and culture, more fre- 
 quently innate than acquired. But one may 
 at least learn to distinguish between various 
 types and styles of music, and recognize the 
 intentions of each. Incomprehension should 
 not lead to condemnation. Personal "taste" 
 is not a brevet to the rank of critic. Yet, 
 the best musical criticism is colored by indi- 
 vidual prejudices. 
 
 Music, in order to satisfy the highest 
 demands, must be well made, sincere and in- 
 
Conclusion 285 
 
 spired. Much music wishes merely to enter- 
 tain; nor is it for that reason less important 
 or legitimate. The rarified air on mountain 
 peaks is not the normal atmosphere for all 
 mankind. A little garden patch in the valley, 
 sweet with the healthy smell of rosemary 
 and phlox, is good to breathe in. But a 
 room, rank with the scent of wilting helio- 
 trope and violets, is obnoxious. And yet, so 
 many people are content with music that is 
 as fetid weeds. Simplicity, frank uncon- 
 cern in music, is a virtue; commonplaceness, 
 pretentious show, an abomination. 
 
 Music is bountiful, it is of all times and 
 places: it brings us the pleasurable pains of 
 utter spiritual transport; it caters to the 
 painful pleasures of vulgar frenzy. Strike a 
 little above midway between these two ex- 
 tremes, and you enter — not a temple nor a 
 bagnio — but a palace, spacious with varied 
 chambers. Large and small, lit brightly or 
 mysteriously darkened, they offer shelter 
 according to your moods and needs. Street 
 
286 Alia Breve 
 
 and number may indicate your station in 
 the lists of the community; the address of 
 your soul is that apartment, in the house 
 of music, which you occupy. 
 
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